SKETCHES OF SOUTH-CAROLINA.
TO PLEASURE.
THE TRYSTING HOUR.
THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.
MOHAWK.
SABBATH IN THE COUNTRY.
SONG.
THE DEVIL-TAVERN.
AN EPITAPH.
JUNE.
CÀ ET LÀ.
FORGET-ME-NOT: 'MYOSOTIS AVENSIS.'
OUR PUBLIC MEN.
A CONTRASTED PICTURE.
THE MAIL ROBBER.
LETTER SECOND.
MEMORIALS.
LITERARY NOTICES
EDITOR'S TABLE
LITERARY RECORD.
OR
NEW-YORK MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
VOLUME XXII.
NEW-YORK:
PUBLISHED BY JOHN ALLEN, NASSAU-STREET.
1843.
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and forty-three.
BY JOHN ALLEN,
In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York.
THE KNICKERBOCKER.
Vol. XXII. JULY, 1843. No. 1.
It was as beautiful an evening as a lover could ask, the second day of April, 1842, that I bade my friend Dana good-bye, and started in my sulky for a tour over the land of Nullification. I left Charleston in the evening, that the wearisome task of crossing the river might be over, and the earlier start upon my journey be made the following morning. Tarrying at the house of a fine old planter during the night, who amused me until nearly cock-crowing with his long stories of revolutionary days, I arose, after a very slight refreshment from sleep, and was on my way toward Georgetown an hour before sunrise. It was a toilsome way enough, the road running parallel with the sea-shore the whole distance of sixty miles, just far enough inland never to catch a glimpse of the water, and leading you over a dreary pine barren, where neither house, cultivated field, nor flowing streamlet occurred to divert your attention for the whole day. It was pleasant enough at first to feel one's self alone in those boundless forests of pine; and for an hour or two of the early morning I was sufficiently amused by the novel sight of some young alligator splashing into the water from the road-side, as the noise of my wheels awoke him from his siesta, or of a huge moccasin darting away beneath the dense reeds and lily-pads of the swamp, or of the ever-varying, myriad-toned music of the mocking birds who filled the air with their melody. But by degrees, as the sun began to rise above the trees, and the heavens to assume that brazen face which characterizes a southern sky, the never-changing scenery about me grew dull and wearisome, and I found myself looking forward in the hope of finding some place by the roadside where my horse might slake his thirst. No such place, however, appeared; on and onward we jogged over that apparently unending level of creaking sand, without one sign of human industry or human life. As matters began to grow serious, and my[2] weary steed to manifest symptoms of dissatisfaction which could not be mistaken, a kind Providence sent a fellow-being along my path, in the shape of the most hideous, tattered, and wo-begone negro I had ever seen—my first specimen of a plantation servant. The poor fellow's face and garments, however, sadly belied him; for upon my salutation of 'Boy, good morning; can you tell me where I can find water for my horse?' he touched his rimless hat and most civilly replied:
'Oh, yes, Massa! dere is fine water just back ob you!'
'Back of me?' I replied. 'Strange I did not see it!' and turning my horse to retrace the path, the negro discovered my greenness, and laughing, said:
'Why, Massa, you 'ab no bucket to water de horse!'
'Bucket?' I inquired in astonishment! 'Bucket? What do you mean, boy? What do you mean?'
The poor fellow could scarcely contain his gravity, while he replied, pointing to the bottom of the sulky: 'Sure, Massa 'ab no bucket! Massa no bin long in Carolina to tink water he horse widout bucket! Every body hab bucket on he carriage in Carolina!'
Here was indeed a perplexity of which I had never dreamed, and to extricate myself from which more than surpassed my share of even Yankee shrewdness. I could not think of driving fourteen long miles back to my morning resting-place in the heat of that torrid sun, nor of going forward the twelve miles to my first stopping place on the Georgetown road; and yet, from all the information I could gain from the negro, these seemed the only conditions upon which horse or driver were ever again to meet with the proprieties of civilized existence. In utter despair I looked up to my informer, with a respect I had never bestowed upon tattered garments before, and asked: 'Boy, what am I to do?'
'Don' know, Massa! Neber see a carriage wid'out bucket afore! Don' know, Massa!'
Though my informant had hitherto evidently been greatly amused at my perplexity, the despair of my countenance, or his pity for the jaded beast, now awakened his sympathies; and after scratching his head—a manipulation which the negro invariably performs when he is in trouble—he suddenly rolled the whites of his great eyes up to me and said with quickness, 'Me tink now, Massa! Me tink how Massa water he horse!' and plunging into the woods, presently returned with his hat filled with water. It was a capital thought, and the promptitude of its execution would have done honor to a Connecticut pedler. My dilemma was over; the negro's hat of water was a goblet of ambrosia to my steed; and the tattered son of Ham became in my eyes fair as a messenger of the gods.
Between the Ashly and Santee rivers, a distance of more than thirty miles, there are upon the main thoroughfare but three dwelling-houses. Upon the banks of the latter, one begins first to see something of the wealth of the Carolina rice-plantations. For many miles up and down the North and South Santee rivers, which[3] are here separated but a single mile, are cultivated those deep, rich bottoms, annually flowed and inexhaustible in resource, which are the glory of the State. The lordly owners of these manors pass the winter months in superintending the affairs of the homesteads, gathering about them all those luxuries which minister to ease and pleasure, of which none better understand the value, or select with more taste, than do these descendants of king Charles's cavaliers, and entering with a zeal and alacrity into those rural sports which are the zest and glory of a southern country life. Finer horsemen, more skilled marksmen, on the plain or in the forest, hardier frames for pugilistic feats, or a quicker eye and prompter hand for a game at fence, the world cannot produce. They are generally men also of liberal learning and generous dispositions; frank, hospitable, and courteous; and, bating a tithe of that hot-blood chivalry upon which they are too apt to pride themselves, noble and humane in all their impulses.
One marks every where at the South the eminently kind relations which exist between master and servant. To every man born and bred upon the plantation, the negro seems essential, in a thousand respects with which a northerner can have no sympathy. I saw nothing of what we call prejudice against color in all my travels. In infancy the same nurse gives food and rest to her own child and to her master's; in childhood the same eye watches and the same hand alternately caresses and corrects them; they mingle their sports in boyhood; and through youth up to manhood there are ties which link them to each other by an affinity that no time or circumstances can destroy. An illiterate, rough planter, who was by no means remarkable for the kindness he showed his servants, said to me one day: 'I travelled last summer all over Iowa territory, and I didn't see a nigger in two months. To be sure I felt kind o' badly, but it couldn't be helped; so I made the best of it, thinking all the time I should be home again bye and bye. Well, Sir, I got back again as far as Zanesville in 'Hio, where there was a gineral muster and a heap of people; and pretty soon I heard a banjo; thinks I, there's some of our folks, I know; and sure enough there was two niggers and a wench going it powerful; and the way I went up to 'em and got hold of their hands, and says I, 'How are you, my good fellows? how are you, girl?' and the way I shook and they shook, was a caution to abolitionists, I tell you?'
Georgetown District is the wealthiest portion of the State; but a more miserable collection of decayed wood domicils and filthy beer shops than are clustered together to make up the town, it would be difficult to find. Indeed, unlike the free States, the wealth of the South lies almost entirely in the country; the towns, unless Charleston form an exception, being made up of artizans and traders. The historical associations of Georgetown District are of great interest; and many of the localities, rendered famous by feats of valor during the war of our Revolution, are still pointed out. An old soldier, whom I met by accident at the ferry-house on the banks of the Pedee, conducted me to the spot where General Marion invited the[4] British officer to dinner—a scene immortalized by the pencil of White. Marion had long contended against the enemies of his country at fearful odds, and though the poverty and daily diminution of his troops were not known to the British, yet to himself, through the whole of the first campaign in South Carolina, they were sources of great disquietude and alarm. He managed, however, by celerity of movement and a perfect knowledge of the country to keep the enemy's forces in constant fear, and now and then to obtain over detached bodies of troops a signal victory. It was after one of these sudden dashes upon a foraging party whom the British colonel had sent into the country, in which Marion had been even more successful than usual, that an officer was sent to his camp with a flag of truce to propose an exchange of prisoners. Marion received him in the woods, negotiated the terms upon which the exchange should be made, passed the writings necessary for the purpose, and, after concluding all the preliminaries, invited the officer to dine with him. The invitation was accepted, and Marion, leading the way still farther into the forest, took his seat upon a log near which a watch-fire was burning, and invited the officer to do the same. Presently a negro appeared, and, raking open the ashes, uncovered a batch of roasted potatoes, which he presented upon a board, first to the stranger, and then to his master. No apologies were offered for the meagre fare, and after the dinner was over, the officer departed with his flag. It is said that upon regaining his own lines, he forthwith threw up his commission, on the ground that it was hopeless to contend with an enemy who required no shelter but that of the forest trees, and no food but roasted potatoes.
As you advance inland from Georgetown, and begin to enter the cotton country, the scenery is completely changed. The huge live oaks, draperied with moss, the peculiar characteristic of the sickly lowlands, all disappear, and with them depart nearly all the evidences of wealth or taste or refinement. Instead of princely mansions surrounded by old parks and highly cultivated plantations, one sees nothing but low, piazza'd domicils, in fields bare of vegetation, and the appendage of miserable hovels scattered at short distances here and there for the field-hands. In the low country the rank growth upon the marshes affords some compensation for the want of green fields of grass; but in the up country every shade of greenness is lost in the interminable red clay-fields which spread out every where around you. It was new to me that the upland grasses could not be cultivated below Virginia, but so it is. Every where, by the road side, in the court-yard, over the fenced fields, and in the forest, the bosom of mother earth is bared before you; and to one accustomed to the green mantle with which she robes herself in New England, the sight is almost shocking. Equally so was another sight, with which, however, I soon became familiar, but which at the outset startled my sense of decency to a degree; I refer to the nudity of the young negroes. Up to ten and eleven years of age, the colored children of both sexes run about entirely naked; and in the[5] more secluded plantations they may be seen at even a later age, without a fig-leaf of covering to their jetty limbs. I beg my friends, the abolitionists, will not set this down as a new instance of the cruelty of the masters, as I had repeated and indubitable evidence of its being a habit of such determinate choice upon the part of the children, as to defy every effort to break it up. That it manifests the state of utter degradation to which the slaves are reduced, I do not deny; for every where, in lowland and highland, country and city, nothing is more evident than the mental and moral degradation of the negro.
As the value of the lands and the wealth of the inhabitants decrease, while you journey toward the back country, so also does the intelligence of the people. I never met in my whole life with so many white persons who could neither read nor write, who had never taken a newspaper, who had never travelled fifty miles from home, or who had never been to the house of God, or heard a sentence read from his Holy Word, as I found in a single season in South Carolina. Like the inhabitants of Nineveh, many of them could not discern between the right hand and the left. What wonder then that the hosts of Yankee pedlers, until driven out by the sumptuary laws, fattened upon the land! 'What do you think I gave for that?' asked an ignorant planter in Sumpter district, while pointing to a Connecticut wooden clock which stood upon a shelf in the corner of the room. 'I don't know,' was my answer; 'twenty dollars, or very likely twenty-five!' 'Twenty-five dollars, stranger!' replied the planter; 'why, what do you mean? Come, guess fair, and I'll tell you true!' I answered again, that twenty-five dollars was a high price for such a clock, as I had often seen them sold for a quarter of that sum. The man was astonished. 'Stranger,' said he, 'I gave one hundred and forty-four dollars for that clock, and thought I got it cheap at that! Let me tell you how it was. We had always used sundials hereabout, till twelve or fourteen years ago, when a man came along with clocks to sell. I thought at first I wouldn't buy one, but after haggling about the price for a while, he agreed to take sixteen dollars less than what he asked, for his selling price was one hundred and sixty dollars; and as I had just sold my cotton at thirty-four cents, I concluded to strike the bargain. It's a powerful clock, but I reckon I gave a heap of money for it!'
In fact, during those years when the staples of Carolina sold for nearly thrice their intrinsic value, and wealth flowed in an uninterrupted stream through every channel of industry, the plantations of the South became the legitimate plunder of Yankee shrewdness. It was no meeting of Greek with Greek in the contest of wits, but a perfect inrush of shrewd, disciplined tacticians in the art of knavery, upon a stupid and ignorant population. The whole country was flooded with itinerant hawkers. There is scarcely an article in the whole range of home manufactures upon which fortunes were not made during those times of inflated prices of the southern staple products. Through the mountain passes of Buncombe county there flowed a stream of pedlers' carts, wagons, carry-alls, and[6] arks, which inundated the land. Indeed, so great at length became the evil, and so overmatched in the contest of wits were the planters of the uplands, that the legislature passed laws forbidding a Yankee pedler to enter the State.
It is this deplorable ignorance, which is prevalent over a large portion of South Carolina, that constitutes the most insuperable obstacle to the removal of slavery. Among the more wealthy and intelligent of the population, juster sentiments prevail in regard to that great evil; but their opinions and wishes are greatly overbalanced by the masses of the middling classes. They, wedded to the customs of their fathers beyond all hope of improvement; vegetators upon the soil cleared and prepared by their ancestors; ignorant, idle, and overbearing; driven by thriftless modes of agriculture, and the impoverishing system of slave-labor, to penurious economy, and scouting every suggestion of manual toil as servile and degrading; they compose the great barrier around the institution of negro servitude, which the tide of public sentiment never reaches, and which the advancing intelligence of other portions of the world cannot soon affect. To them, hedged in by the antiquated prejudices of a barbarous age, alike unfitted to know and unwilling to receive the new truths of humanity and religion, the negro seems the connecting link between man and the brute. Of their own origin and destiny they know and care little; of him who toils for them, less; and it is vain to hope, until the States between them and the free people of the North shall have broken down the system which curses alike the owner and his soil, that the intelligence of an independent and virtuous people can ever reach them.
In these Sketches, which are now brought to a close, I have endeavored to represent the condition of South Carolina as I saw it. Of slavery I have said what I believe, and of its white population what I know to be true. There, as elsewhere in a world tainted by evil, injustice too often embitters the cup of life. But it is not the slave only, bending to his irksome task, nor he who toils under the heat of a southern sky alone, who drains it to its dregs. The chalice is commended to the lips every where. And deeply has the writer drank, from the hands of those who profess to be guided by the divine precepts of Christ, banded as they were to subvert oppression and wrong in southern institutions, a draft of injustice more poisonous than the bitterest potion of slavery.
W. P. P.
BY MRS. R. S. NICHOLS.
Harry Harson.
In the same room which has been already described, in Harry Harson's dwelling, and in one of the stout, plethoric chairs before mentioned as constituting a part of its furniture, and beneath the superintendence of the busy clock, and under the watchful eye of that respectable dog Spite, sat Jacob Rhoneland, with his elbow resting on the table, his cheek leaning on the palm of his hand, and his eyes half shaded by his long blanched locks, listening with deep anxiety to Harson, who occupied a chair opposite, and was speaking with an earnestness which showed that the subject on which he discoursed was one in which he felt no slight interest.
The manner of old Rhoneland would have attracted the notice of even a casual observer. He seemed restless and nervous; and at times even frightened. Occasionally he smiled faintly, and shaking his head, half rose from his seat, but sat down, scarcely conscious of what he did; and leaning his forehead on the palm of his hand, seemed to listen with breathless attention, as if dreading to lose a word of Harson's remarks, which were occasionally strengthened by his pressing his hand gently on Rhoneland's, as it rested on the table. At last, Harson, in conclusion, said in an earnest tone: 'Now tell me, Jacob, on your honor, do you love her?'
'Do I love her?' repeated Rhoneland; 'do I love my own little Kate, who slept in my arms when a child, and who, now that she has become quite a woman, and I am gray, and feeble, and broken down, still clings to me? Others found me a querulous, troublesome old man, and fell away from me; but she never did. Don't ask me if I love her, Harry, don't ask that again,' said he, shaking his head, and looking reproachfully at Harson. 'Do I think of any one else, or care for any one else? Dead and frosty as this old heart is, she has the whole of it; and she deserves it; God bless her! God bless her! It's not a little matter that would make me forget Kate.'
The old man raised his head; and his eye lighted up with an expression of pride, as he thought of his child. It was transient, and as it passed off he seemed to be absorbed in deep thought; and sat for some time with his eye resting on a small speck of blue sky which looked cheerily in at the open window. What strange things peopled those few moments of thought; for each moment in the memory of the old is teeming with phantoms of hopes and dreams, which once crowded about them; familiar things, part of themselves,[9] of their very being, but now melted into air; faded and gone, they cannot tell when or whither; and of faces and forms long since shrouded in the tomb. And in the dim fancy of age, in faint whispers, speak voices whose tones are never to be heard again; awakening old affections for those at rest, subdued indeed by time, but yet unextinguished, and slumbering in hidden corners of memory, and appealing to the heart of the living, and begging still to be cherished there. Rhoneland sighed as he turned his eyes from the window, and looked down at his withered hands. 'They were not so when Kate was a child. He was far from young, even then, but not so old and shattered as now. Kate's mother was living too; she was much younger than he was; and he had hoped that she would have outlived him; but he had followed her to the grave, and he was left alone with his little girl.' His lip quivered; for he remembered her watchful kindness; her patience; the many marks of affection which had escaped her, showing that he was always uppermost in her thoughts; and that amid all other occupations, she never forgot him. They were trifling indeed; perhaps unnoticed at the time; but he missed them when she was in her grave, and they came no more. She had begged him to cherish and guard their child when she should be gone, and there would be none to love her but him. Had he done so? Ay! with heart and soul; with heart and soul,' muttered he, rising and walking across the room, to conceal the working of his countenance, and the tears which started in his eyes.
'Oh Harry!' said he, turning to Harson, 'if you knew all, you wouldn't ask if I love Kate. She's every thing to me now. All are gone but her; all—all!'
He returned, and seated himself, with a deep sigh. His lips moved as if he were speaking, though no sound escaped them; but after a moment he said: 'It's all that I can do for one who's dead.'
'I do believe that your child is dear to you, Jacob; I never doubted it,' said Harson; but there is another question which I must ask. 'Have you observed her of late? Have you noticed her drooping eye, her want of spirits, and failing strength?'
Rhoneland moved restlessly in his chair, and then answered: 'No, no, Harry, you're jesting. Kate's eye is bright, and her cheek full and round; her step elastic and firm. I watch that, Harson. Oh! Harry, you don't dream how anxiously I watch her. Her life is mine; her heart's blood is my heart's blood. She's in no danger, no danger, Harry,' said he, taking Harson's hand between his, and looking appealingly in his face. 'Is she in any danger? Don't deceive me. Is any thing the matter with her?'
'No, not just now,' replied Harson. 'But suppose you should see her becoming thin, and her looks and health failing; and even though she should not die, suppose her young heart was heavy, and her happiness destroyed—and by you?'
The old man looked at Harson with a troubled, wistful eye, as he said: 'Well, Harry, well; I 'm old—very old; don't trifle with me, I can't bear it. What do you mean? Is Kate ill?'
'No, not exactly ill,' replied Harson, much at a loss how to introduce his subject. 'Suppose, in short, that she should fall in love, some day—for young girls will do these things—and suppose that the young fellow was a noble, frank-hearted boy, like—like Ned Somers, for instance—would you thwart her? I only say suppose it to be Somers.'
'Kate doesn't think of these things,' said the old man, in a querulous tone. 'She's a child; a mere child. It will be time enough to talk of them years hence. God help me!' muttered he, pressing his hands together, 'Can it be that she, my own little Kate, will desert me? I'll not believe it! She's but a child, Harry; only a child.'
'Kate is nearly eighteen, Jacob,' replied Harson, 'and quite a woman for her years. She's beautiful, too. I pretend to no knowledge of women's hearts, nor of the precise age at which they think of other things than their dolls; but were I a young fellow, and were such a girl as Kate Rhoneland in my neighborhood, I should have been over head and ears in love, months ago.'
Jacob Rhoneland folded his hands on the table, and leaned his head upon them, without speaking, until Harson said, after the lapse of some minutes, 'Come, Jacob, what ails you?'
Without making any reply to this question, Rhoneland sat up, and looking him full in the face, asked, in a sad tone: 'Do you think, Harry, that Kate, my own child, has turned her back upon me, and given her heart to a stranger? And do you think that she will desert her father in his old age, and leave him to die alone?'
'Come, come, Rhoneland, this is too bad,' said Harson; 'this is mere nonsense. If the girl should happen to cast a kind glance at Ned, Ned's a fine fellow; and if Ned should happen to think that Kate had not her equal among all whom he knew, he would be perfectly right. And then if, in the course of time, they should happen to carry matters farther, and get married, I don't see why you should take it to heart, or should talk of desertion, and dying alone. I'll warrant you Ned is not the man to induce a girl to abandon her friends. No, no; he's too true-hearted for that.'
'Well, well,' said the old man, rising and gazing anxiously about him, 'God grant that it may never happen. It will be a sad day for me when it does. I'd rather be in my grave. I cannot tell you all; but if you knew what I do, perhaps you'd think so too. Indeed you would, Harry. There's one who knows more about Somers than either you or I; much that's bad, very bad. I can't tell his name.'
'I know it already,' replied Harson: 'Michael Rust.'
'Ha!' ejaculated Rhoneland, in a faint voice, his cheek growing ghastly pale; 'You know Michael Rust, do you?'
'I know something of him, and but little in his favor. What he says against Somers is not worth thinking of. Let him clear his own name. Perhaps he may be called on to do it some day, and may find it no easy matter. And now, my old friend,' said he, taking Rhoneland by the hand, 'since we have spoken of this Rust, let[11] me caution you against him. Listen to no tales of his respecting Kate, or Ned, or any one else. Beware of all connection with him. Above all, give him no hold on yourself; for if you do, depend on it, you'll rue it. I've made inquiries about him; and you may rest assured that I do not speak unadvisedly.'
Rhoneland had risen to go; but as Harson spoke he sank feebly in his chair, and buried his face in his hands, his long hair falling over them, and shrouding them and it from view; but no sound of emotion escaped him; although Harson could see that he trembled violently, and that there was a great internal struggle going on. At last he said: 'It's very hard, Harry, to feel, that you are in the power of a man who would not hesitate to sacrifice even your life to his own ends; and yet to know that it must be so; that, hate and loathe as you may, your fate is linked with his, and that he and you must sink or swim together. But so it is, God help me! a poor, bewildered old man! Oh! Harry, could I but die; with none to molest me, or see me, but my own dear child; with no one to haunt my death-bed, and torture me; and threaten me and her; and could I but know that when I am gone she at least will be happy, I'd do it, Harry, I'd do it! Life is not to me what it once was. It's dull enough, now.'
'And who is this who has such power over you?' inquired Harson, placing his hand on his shoulder; 'Come, be frank with me, Jacob; who is it? Is it Michael Rust?'
Rhoneland started up, looked suspiciously about the room, and said in a quick, husky voice: 'Did I say it was Rust? I'm sure I did not, Harry. Oh! no, not Rust. He's a noble, generous fellow; so frank, and free, and bold. Oh! no, not Rust; he's my best friend. I wouldn't offend Rust, nor thwart him, nor cross his path, nor even look coldly on him. Oh! no, no, no! Don't speak of him. I don't like to talk of him. Let's speak of something else; of yourself, or Ned, or Kate—of Kate, my own dear little Kate. She's a noble girl, Harry, is she not? Ha! ha! that she is!' and the old man laughed faintly, drew a deep sigh, and turned abruptly away.
'Harry,' said he, after a pause, 'Will you make me a promise?'
'If it is one which a man may honestly keep, I will,' replied Harson.
'When I am dead will you be a father to Kate?—love her as I have loved her—no, no that you cannot—but love her you can, and will; and above all,' said he, sinking his voice, 'let no evil tales respecting her father be whispered in her ear; let her believe that he was all that was virtuous and good. It's an honest fraud, Harry, a deceit without sin in it, and I know you'll do it; for when I'm in my grave, her heart will be the last hold I shall have on earth. When the dead are swept from memory, too, the earth is lost to them indeed. Will you promise, Harry?'
'I will,' said Harson; 'as my own child, will I guard her from all harm.'
'That's all; and now, God bless you! I've lingered here too long. Don't forget your promise. I feel happier for it, even now.'
Jacob Rhoneland, however, was not doomed to reach his home in the same frame of mind in which he then was; for he had not gone a great distance from Harson's house, when a voice whose tones sent the blood rushing to his heart, exclaimed: 'Ha, Jacob! my old friend Jacob! It makes my heart dance to see you walking so briskly, as if old age and the cares of life left no mark upon you. You're a happy man, Jacob.'
Rhoneland started; for in front of him, bowing, and smirking, and rubbing his hands together, stood Michael Rust, his eyes glowing and glittering, with a glee that was perfectly startling. Rhoneland muttered something of its being a fine day, and of the pleasant weather, which had tempted him abroad, and then stopped abruptly.
'You acted unwisely, my friend, very unwisely, in being from home at such a moment,' said Rust, 'for I just came from there; and such doings, Jacob! such plots! such contrivances! such intrigues, and love-making, and billing, and cooing, and whispering! and such conspiracies against old dad! Not that I believe little Kate has any thing to do with it. Oh, no! but she's young, and Ned Somers is—no matter what. I know what he is; and others know too. But I never make mischief, nor meddle. I say nothing against him. No! he's a noble fellow—very noble; so open and candid! Ha! ha! ha! I hope you won't go to your house some day and find your daughter flown, and with him; and I hope if it is with him, that it will be to the church; that's all—that's all. Good-bye, Jacob; I'm in a vast hurry,' said he, bustling off, as if recollecting some important engagement. 'Dear me! I've lost a world of time. Good-bye, good-bye. If you should happen to get home soon, you'll surprise them both.'
As he went off, he turned back, and muttered to himself: 'I've sown the seeds of suspicion in his heart against his own child. Let him hate her, if needs be; and let him think her the vilest of the vile. It will favor my ends.'
The old man stood for a long time where Rust had left him, with his hands clasped, looking about him with a bewildered air. He seemed like one stunned by some heavy and overpowering blow. He took one or two steps, tottering as he went, and then leaned feebly against a house. The words 'my child! my child!' once or twice escaped him, in a low, moaning tone; he passed his fingers over the buttons of his coat, unconsciously twitching and jerking them; he looked on the pavement, and seemed endeavoring to regain some train of thought which had passed through his mind; and then shaking his head, as if disappointed at his want of success, scarcely knowing what he did, he commenced counting the cracks in the bricks. A few small stones were lying on the sidewalk, and he went to them, and idly kicked them off, one by one: his thoughts wandered from one subject to another, until he began to watch the smoke, as it escaped from the chimneys of the houses opposite. Some was dark and brown, and some blue and bright, and circled upward, until it and the sky became one; while the[13] other floated off, a dark lowering mass, as long as he could see it. People were passing in various directions; and he wondered whither they were going, and how many there were; he commenced counting them; he made a mistake; he had got to twenty, when three or four passed together; so he wiped the score from his memory, and commenced afresh. At last a man jostled him, as he stood, and told him to get out of the way, and not to occupy the whole walk. This recalled him to himself; and he set out for home. As he went on, the recollection of what Rust had told him again crossed his mind; and his feeling of indifference gave place to one of fierce excitement. With his teeth hard set, his eyes flashing fire, his long hair streaming in the wind, his step rapid, yet tottering and irregular, and with an expression of bitter anger mingled with intense mental anguish on every line of his face, he bent his steps toward his own house. It was a bright day, and the warm sunshine was sleeping on roof and wall; on cellar and house-top, warming many a sad heart; lighting up many a heavy eye, and calling forth all that is happy and joyous in earth and man. Strange was it! that under such a sky, with such a glad world about him, an old man, hanging over the grave, should dare to utter curses and imprecations against his fellow man. Yet such was the tenor of his words:
'Curses on them! curses on them!' muttered he; 'the false ones! When I was striving like a very beast of burden, yielding body and soul to torments, for her sake, to play me false! It was bitter, but it was human. Whenever troubles thicken about a man; when he is blighted and crushed to the earth; when his heart is bruised and bleeding, and yearns for the love and sympathy of those about him; when a mild word, a kind look, are of more worth than gold or jewels, then friends drop off. Suffering and trouble drive off friends, like a pestilence. I was in drivelling dotage, to think that she would be aught else than the rest of them. What though I did give her life, and fondle her on my knee in infancy; and hang over her when she slept; and pray, come what might to me, that she might be happy? What though I did cherish and protect her, and love her, when this old heart was warped against all the rest of the world, until every fibre of it was entwined with hers; until every thought was for her; and how I should plot, and plan, and contrive to preserve the accumulations of a hard life, so that when the earth covered me, she might live luxuriously, and think kindly of me? What though I did all this? I became in her way; for I had gold, and she wanted it! That's it! Oh! what a fool I was,' continued he, bitterly, 'to imagine that she would prove true, when all others have proved false; and that gratitude would bind her to me, so that when I should become decrepid, and so that I could not totter about, but must mope out the remnant of my life, like a chained prisoner, that she would be near me, with her bright face and cheerful voice; and would cheer me up; and would tell me that I had watched over her childhood; and that she loved me for it. Happy dreams they were!' said he, mournfully; 'happy dreams! Ah, Kate! my own little child! you should not have forgotten your old father; indeed[14] you should not. But no, no!' he added, checking himself, 'it could not have been her; I'll not believe it. It was not her—poor child; she never did harm in her life. She was always good tempered, and kind, and patient. I have tried her patience sadly. As my faculties desert me, and my mind becomes feebler, I grow more and more peevish, and I want her more and more. Oh, no! she must not leave me—she must not. I'll go to her, and kneel to her, and pray to her not to turn me off. I am too old now to find a new friend. I'll beg her to stay with me until I die. I'll not live long, now, to trouble her; and perhaps she will bear with me till then; she must not go; oh, no! she must not. Go,' muttered he, his mood changing, and his eyes beginning to flash; 'go where? with Somers? with Somers! Can it be that he has been all this while scheming to rob me of her? Go with Somers? with Ned Somers? He said he hoped it would be to the church. What did he mean? what could he mean? But I'll soon know,' said he, hurrying on; 'I'll soon know!'
Impetuous the old man had always been, though age had in a great measure subdued his spirit; but now the recollection of Rust's words lashed him into fury; and when he reached his house, he dashed into it without pausing to reflect what he should say, or how he should act. He flung the door open; and, as if to justify the very tale of Michael Rust, there stood Kate, with her hand in Ned's, and her head resting against his shoulder.
'Ha! ha! taken! taken!' shouted the old man, with a kind of frenzied glee; 'taken in the very act! Plotting treason! plotting treason! It was a glorious conspiracy, was it not, Ned Somers? to steal into a man's house, and, under the garb of friendship, to endeavor to wean away his child, and to carry her off? Oh! how some men can fawn! what open, frank faces they can have! how they can talk of love, and honor, and generosity! what friendly smiles they can wear! And yet, Ned, these very men are lying, and all the while the Devil is throned in their hearts, and sits grinning there!'
Somers stared at him in undisguised astonishment; for he was fully convinced that the old man had lost his reason; and under that impression he placed himself between him and Kate, lest in his fury he should injure her.
This movement did not escape Rhoneland. 'Good God!' said he, raising his clasped hands to heaven, 'he already keeps me from my child! Shall this be? Out of my house! out of my house!' shouted he, advancing toward him, and shaking his fist.
'Never,' returned Somers, 'until I am convinced that you will not harm your daughter.'
'I harm her! I harm her!' repeated Rhoneland. 'God of heaven! what black-hearted villains there are! The very man who would by false oaths and protestations decoy her from her own hearth, and when she had deserted all for him, would cast her off, a branded thing, without name or fame, he, he talks of protecting her from her own father! No, no, Ned Somers,' he said, in a voice of bitter calmness, 'you may go; I'll not harm her.'
His words had given Somers a clue to the cause of his conduct; and pale as death, but with a calm face, he said, 'Will you hear me, Mr. Rhoneland?'
'Hear you! Have I not heard you and believed you? Ay, I have. I was in my dotage; and you too, Kate, you listened and believed, did you not? Ah! girl, girl! a serpent charmed in Eden! But it's past now. I'll love you, Kate, though he do not. They said that gold was my God. They said that for gold I would barter everything; but they didn't know me. He told you so too, Kate, did he not?—he told you that I'd sell you for that. He whispered tales of your father in your ear, until you became a renegade at heart; and you, my own child, plotted with a stranger to desert your home. He told you that he loved you; and would make you his wife; did he not? Poor child! poor child! God help her! she knows no better! Ned Somers,' said he, turning to the young man, 'you must leave this house, and come here no more. My daughter is all I have to bind me to life, and I cannot spare her. You must go elsewhere to spread your web. For your vile designs upon her, may God forgive you—I never will!'
'Jacob Rhoneland,' said Somers, 'I have borne more from you than I would have taken from any other man. You are not now in a state to listen to reason, nor perhaps am I able just now to offer it; but you have said that of me which I should be false to myself not to answer; and which I declare to be utterly untrue. I do love your daughter; and love her well and honestly; and I would like to see the man, excepting yourself, who dare say otherwise. Some one has been lying to you; and can I but find him out, he shall pay for it. You, Kate, don't believe it?' said he, turning to the girl, who stood by, with blanched cheek, and the tears in her eyes.
'No, no, Ned; I do not; nor will father, when he's calm,' said she, taking the old man's hand. 'Some person has been slandering you to him; but he'll get over it soon.'
Rhoneland drew his hand hastily from her, and turning to Ned, said: 'Leave the house! I have already told you to do so. Will you wait until you are thrust from it? Begone, I say!'
'Go, go, Ned, for my sake!' exclaimed Kate, pushing him toward the door. 'He'll never be right while you are here. Go, dear Ned, go.'
'I can't go before I've told your father how matters stand.'
'No matter for that now,' said Kate, earnestly; 'I'll make all right; go, go!'
Half pushing, half persuading him, she finally induced him to leave the house.
'Friend Ned seems in a hurry,' said a voice in his ear, when he had gone but a hundred yards. 'Has sweet little Kate been unkind? Has she told you that she loved Michael Rust? Ha! ha! Or has old dad been crabbed? Ha! ha! A queer old boy that dad of hers, Ned; a queer old fellow; full of freaks! Do you know he hinted to me that he thought you had an eye on Kate, and wanted to run off with her? Wasn't that a good one, Ned? Ha! ha! It makes me laugh to think of it. He didn't know that Michael Rust was the fellow; that he was the one to guard against.'
'I believe you,' said Ned, bitterly; 'I believe that Michael Rust is the one to guard against; and Jacob Rhoneland will find it out some day.'
'To be sure he will, to be sure he will!' said Rust. 'Yet the old fellow was afraid of you; you Ned, you! He even hinted that your purposes were not honest. Some kind friend had been at work and filled his head with queer tales about you. And all the time he did'nt dream of me; and didn't know that it was me that Kate was dying for. He'll find me his son-in-law yet, some day. I wish you would keep away from his house, Ned. To tell the truth, I'm jealous of you. For in confidence, Ned, I do believe that Kate is a little of a coquette at heart; and I have often said to myself: 'Although I see nothing particularly kind in her manner to Somers, who knows what it may be when they're alone? I'm sure there's nothing in her actions, when others are present, to betray how kind and coaxing she is to me when we are alone. Ah! Ned; she is all tenderness in our moments of privacy. The last time I saw her she said that she respected you, but swore that she did not care the snap of a finger for you. God bless her for that! how happy it made me! how charming she looked! Ah! she's an angel! upon my soul I must go back and kiss her!'
Somers, chafing with fury at being thus beset, had walked on with a rapid step, while Rust kept pace with him, hissing his words in his ear; but as he uttered the last sentence, Rust turned away. As he did so, Somers caught him by the collar, and drawing him close to him, said:
'Michael Rust, I believe that every word you have just uttered is false, and a vile slander against as noble a girl as ever lived. I will not punish you as you deserve, because I promised Kate Rhoneland that I would not; but before you go let me tell you this: A greater liar and villain than yourself, never walked. Things are oozing out about you, which will make this city ring with your infamy. Tongues which have been tied by gold have found fear more powerful, and have spoken; and there are those tracking out Michael Rust's course, for the last few years, who will not let him rest till they have run him down. You're fond of figures of speech; there's one. Now go and kiss Kate Rhoneland, with what satisfaction you may!'
He flung him from him; and, without looking at him, turned off in a by street.
The few words uttered by Somers, as he flung his tormentor from him, threw Michael Rust into a fit of profound abstraction. Pondering over his schemes, and wondering which particular one was about to fail; and yet so confident in his own sagacity and clear-sightedness, that he felt disposed to think failure impossible; he took his way to his own house. There, assuming the same costume[17] which he usually wore when in his office, and which, in age, certainly added ten years to his appearance, he locked the door of his room, put the key in his pocket, and sallied into the street.
'If what he said be true,' muttered he, 'there must be a traitor. Him I can put my finger on; and first of all, him will I punish; and now, for a trial of that new animal Kornicker. Bah!'
Had Mr. Kornicker overheard this allusion to himself, it is scarcely probable that his gratification would have been extreme; for admitting himself and all the rest of the human race, zoologically speaking, to be animals; even then, there was much in the tone of Michael Rust to indicate that Mr. Kornicker belonged to a genus distinct from and inferior to the human species in general; and this was a position against which there is little doubt that Mr. Kornicker would have contended manfully. Without pausing to reflect upon the justice or injustice of his observation, and in truth forgetting that he had made it, Rust took the shortest route to his office, whither, to explain what will follow, it may not be amiss to precede him.
From the day on which he had taken Kornicker into his service, he had not been at his office, nor had he met his new clerk, or seen him, or heard from him. In truth, many other matters pressing upon him, prevented his calling there; and although he did not forget that Kornicker was almost a stranger to him, for he forgot nothing, yet knowing that he could do no harm where he was, and that there was little to embezzle or steal, except the door-key, he in a great measure dismissed him from his thoughts, until he required his services. Although this matter dwelt thus lightly on the mind of Rust, it was the source of much profound thought and intense abstraction on the part of Kornicker. He had endeavored to learn something respecting Rust; and even formed an intimacy with 'the desperadoes,' for that purpose; and what little he learned there certainly did not make him more at ease; for even the most desperate of them shook his head, and gave him a friendly caution 'to look sharp;' at the same time adding, though in less refined language, that Rust was 'a small colored man, but hard to masticate.' It was observed, however, that by degrees Mr. Kornicker's abstraction grew less and less, and his spirits rose. At times, unnatural sounds, such as loud laughter, and even songs, were heard to emanate from Rust's hitherto silent room; and in the dusk of the evening, dim figures were seen skulking to and from it; and in the day time, shabby-genteel men loitered carelessly through the entry, and after listening at the key-hole, gave a shrill whistle, which being answered from within, they dove into the room, and disappeared. At times, too, the clinking of knives and forks against crockery was heard from within; and on such occasions, the phantom of the small boy with a white cap on his head was seen to flit up and down the stairs, with a dish in his hand, or a bottle under his arm, always vanishing at Rust's office, or disappearing in the bowels of the refectory below.
But notwithstanding all these symptoms of returning vivacity,[18] Mr. Kornicker's mind was far from tranquil on the subject of the mystery of his present situation.
'Fallen into the toils of a little old man,' said he to himself, as he sat, on the morning on which we open this chapter, in front of the fire, with his legs stretched at full length in front of him; the toe of one foot, supporting the heel of the other; of a little old man, with a red handkerchief tied round his head, a broad brimmed hat on the top of that, and a camblet cloak over his shoulders. 'It's too deep for me. I can't fathom it. The victim of a hideous compact, whereby I am decoyed into his service, to sit in a room eight feet by twelve, on a chair without a cushion, a yellow wooden chair, with four legs, and a back made of the most uneasy kind of timber, probably lignum-vitæ, and yet with no cushion; to wait for people who never come, eat without drinking, and submit to divers other small inconveniences; such as bringing up coal in a pail without a handle; kindling my own fire with damp wood, and snuffing sixpenny dips with a pair of tongs, one of whose feet is absent. There's something very mysterious about it—very. All I hope is, that this Mr. Rust is not the 'Old Boy.' That's all. I don't wish to speak disrespectfully of him: but I do sincerely hope, for his own sake, that he isn't the 'Old Boy.' It would be bad for him, if he was. As for myself,' said he, drawing out his snuff-box, and snuffing with great absence of mind, 'it makes no difference; I'm used to it. I've been brought up in trying circumstances. I slept in a grocery sand-bin on the north corner of a street for a week. Not such a bad place either, in warm weather; but I was ousted by a tipsy gentleman, whom I found there one night. The tipsy gentleman was sick, too; and when tipsy gentlemen get sick, most people know what follows. The place was untenantable afterward. But that was nothing to this; positively nothing. I knew what I was about then; now I don't. I never met but one case in point with mine. It was that of the fellow who fell into the clutches of forty unknown women, and remained with them, feasted with them, and all that—they paying the shot, as in my case—until one morning they all came weeping, and wailing, and gnashing their teeth, to tell him that they were off by the first boat; and that he must stay there until they came back, and might do whatever he liked, and go wherever he chose, except into the stable. There 's no stable here, but I'm restricted in liquors; that carries out the simile. The house-keeper handed him the keys, and he went jingling about, for forty days, with the keys hanging at his button-hole; his hands in his breeches pockets, whistling and yawning; locking and unlocking doors, and smelling flowers; eating apples, and pea-nuts, I suppose, although they were not specially mentioned, and poking his nose into all the odd corners. There the simile fits again; only it's soon got through with here, seeing that there 's only under the table and up the chimney to look, and I've done both. No matter; that chap wound up by having an eye knocked out; and I hope the joke won't be carried so far with me.'
Mr. Kornicker cut short his reflections and remarks; and sitting[19] upright, pulled up his vest, and felt in the neighborhood of his watch-pocket. Suddenly recollecting, however, that he had left the article which belonged there in the safe-keeping of a friend, who, with a kindness worthy of all praise, not only took charge of it for him, but actually paid for the privilege of doing so; he pulled down his vest and said, 'he supposed that it was all right, and that they would be here presently.' If his last remark applied to guests whom he expected, he was apparently correct in his surmise; for he had scarcely uttered it, when there was a single sharp knock at the door.
'Who's there?' demanded he, without starting.
'Open the door!' replied a voice from without.
'It isn't locked,' said Kornicker; and it might have been observed that there was a remarkable abatement of firmness in the tone of his reply.
In pursuance of this hint, the door opened, and in walked Michael Rust!
Mr. Kornicker, in the course of his checkered existence, had frequently found himself in positions in which he was taken dreadfully aback; but it is doubtful whether he had ever detected himself in a situation which threw him into a state of such utter and helpless consternation as his present one; for, relying on the continued absence of his employer, he had that day invited four particular friends 'to drop into the office,' and, as he had carelessly observed, 'to take potluck with him—a trifle or so; anything that should turn up.' This was the very hour; and here was Rust.
He made an unsuccessful effort to welcome his visiter. He got up, muttered something about 'unexpected pleasure,' looked vacantly round the room; rubbed his hands one over the other; made an attempt to smile, which terminated in a convulsive twitching of his lips; and finally sat down, with his intellect completely bewildered, and without having succeeded in any thing, except exciting the surprise and suspicion of Rust.
'There'll be hell to pay!' said he, communing with his own thoughts, 'there positively will; I know it; I see it, I feel it; I'm done up; no hope for me! There comes one of them,' thought he, as a step deliberately ascended the stair; but it passed to the flight above. There was some relief in that; but it was only a respite. Come they must! He wrung his hands, snuffed spasmodically, returned the box to his pocket, and took it out again instantly. 'What shall I do? What shall I do? What the Devil shall I do?' exclaimed he, mentally.
Rust had spoken to him three times, but he had not heard a word. 'This is all very strange,' muttered Rust, looking about the room as if to seek some explanation. The first thing which attracted his attention was the fact that the two chairs which he had left in the office had by some odd process of multiplication increased to six.
'There are six chairs here,' said he, addressing his clerk, in a stern tone; 'where did they come from? Who are they for?'
Mr. Kornicker looked round, and smiled helplessly. 'Six? Oh, ay; one, two, three, four, five—six. So there are six,' said he.
'Well?'
'Well; oh, well? Oh, yes, quite well, I thank you; very well,' said Mr. Kornicker, whose ideas were rapidly becoming of a very composite order, and who caught only the monosyllable, without exactly taking in its meaning.
'I'm afraid that Mr. Kornicker is lonely in the absence of his friend Michael Rust,' said Rust, with his usual sneer; 'that he finds this dull, dingy room too dreary for him; and has invited six chairs to keep him company, and cheer up his spirits.'
Kornicker made no reply; he could not, for he was stupefied by hearing another step ascending the stairs. This time it paused at the door, as if the visiter were adjusting his collar, and pulling down his wristbands; after which, a thinnish gentleman, dressed in a green coat, with wide skirts; white at the elbows, and polished at the collar, and pantaloons tightly strapped down, gray and glistening at the knees, and not a little torn at the pockets, sauntered carelessly in.
'Servant, Sir; servant, Sir;' said he, nodding to Rust, at the same time, advancing with a familiar air, and swinging in his hand a particularly dingy handkerchief. 'This, I suppose, is one of us. He's an old chip; but he may be come of a prime block.' The latter part of this remark was addressed to Kornicker; and terminated with a request, that he would 'do the genteel, and present him to his friend.' Kornicker, however, sat stock-still, looking in the grate, and evincing no signs of life, except by breathing rather hard.
'Ha! ha! Ned's gone again—brown study!' said the gentleman, winking at Rust, touching his own forehead, and at the same time extending his hand. 'It's his way. I suppose you're one of our social little dinner-party to-day?'
'Yes, oh, yes!' said Rust, quietly; for these words, and the six chairs, afforded an immediate solution of his difficulties. 'I dropped in; and being intimate with Ned, thought I'd stop.'
'So I supposed,' said the other. 'As Ned won't, I will. My name's Sludge, Mr. Thomas Sludge,' said he, extending his hand to Rust. 'Happy to make your acquaintance. Your name is—eh? eh?'
'Quite a common one; Smith; Mr. Smith,' replied Rust.
'Ha! ha! you're joking; but no—you don't belong to that numerous family, though, do you? Eh? well; I thought from the cut of your eye, that you were an old quiz, and supposed, of course, you were joking.'
At the announcement of the name, Kornicker looked round with a vague hope that he might have been mistaken; and that it was not Michael Rust who had thus interrupted his plans; but there he stood. 'He's a dreadful reality!' thought he, shaking his head. 'He's no Smith. He's Michael Rust. God knows what he's going to do, I don't. If they come, I pity them. That's all I can[21] do for them; but it's their affair; they must trust to their own resources, and the care of an overruling Providence. I suppose they'll survive it. If they don't, Rust will have to bury them.'
He was too much overwhelmed by what had already occurred, and by what was to come, to attempt to extricate himself from his difficulties. They had fallen upon him with a weight which was insupportable; and now, a ton or two more would make but little difference. They might mash him flat if they chose; he should not resist them.
In the mean time, Rust and Sludge became exceedingly sociable. They conversed on all topics, cracked their jokes, and were exceedingly merry on the subject of Kornicker and his employee, and of the tricks which were played upon that respectable personage.
'Ha! ha!' said Mr. Sludge, 'wouldn't he kick up a rumpus if he did but know what was going on here? The very idea of Rust arriving at this stage of knowledge, seemed so absurd that they laughed until the room rang.
It was not long before their number was increased by the addition of a short, square-built gentleman, with round cheeks and green spectacles, who was introduced by Mr. Sludge as 'Mr. Steekup, one of us.' He was followed by a thin fellow in elderly attire, and with a very red nose. This latter person was supported by a friend with very large whiskers, and a shaggy great-coat with huge pockets. The first of these two was presented as Mr. Gunter, and the last as Mr. Buzby. Each of these gentlemen, as they respectively entered, went up to Kornicker, and slapped him on the shoulder, at the same time saluting him with the appellation of 'my tulip,' or 'my old buck,' or 'my sodger,' or some other epithet of an equally friendly character; to all of which they received not a word in reply. But though Kornicker's bodily functions were suspended, his thoughts were wonderfully busy.
He felt that he was done for; completely, irremediably done for. He had an earnest wish, coupled with a hope, a very faint hope; a hope so vague and indefinable that it seemed but the phantom of one; that his guests would be suddenly seized with convulsions of an aggravated character, and die on the spot, or jump out of the window, or bolt up the chimney, or cut each other's throats, or melt into air. He did not care what, or which, or how, or when, or where. All his thoughts and wishes tended to one particular end; that was, their abrupt departure, in some sudden and decisive manner. But they evinced no disposition to avail themselves of either means of getting out of his way, of which he left them so liberal a choice. And to increase his misery, amidst them all sat Rust, with his head bound in his red silk handkerchief, bowing and smirking, and passing himself off as one of themselves; drawing out their secrets, and quizzing old Rust, and occasionally casting on his clerk an eye that seemed red-hot; cracking double-sided jokes, which made them laugh, and took the skin off him; and calling him 'Ned,' and asking why he was dull, and why he didn't make himself at[22] home as he did; and whether he didn't think that old Rust would make 'a flare up,' if he should happen to drop in; and why he didn't ask old Rust to his dinners sometimes; and all in so pleasant a tone, that the guests swore he was a diamond of the first water, and Mr. Sludge hugged him on the spot.
Mr. Kornicker wondered if he was not dreaming; and whether Rust was in reality there, and whether he himself was not sitting in front of the fire sound asleep. It would be pleasant to wake up and find it so; but no, it could not be; people in dreams didn't laugh like these fellows. How could they laugh as they did, when he was in such a state! How little they understood the game that was going on! How they'd alter their tone, if they did! It was ridiculous; it was exceedingly ridiculous. He ought to laugh; he felt that he ought; but he wouldn't yet; the dinner was to come, and perhaps he might then; he didn't know; he couldn't say; he'd see about it. Hark! There was a thump against the wall below, and a jingling of spoons, and knives and forks, against crockery. Now for it! Another thump; another, accompanied by another jingle. He wondered whether the boy had spilt the gravy. He hoped he hadn't; but supposed he had. It made no difference. He wondered whether he'd brought the brandy; supposed he had; of course he had. It only wanted that to damn him! and of course he would be d—d. He always had been, and always would be; it was his luck. The person who was bringing the dinner stumbled again; but he didn't fall. 'No such good luck! If he had fallen, if he only had fallen, and broke his neck, or smashed the dinner, or any thing, to prevent his reaching that door; but no; he was too sure-footed for that; any other boy would have done so; but he didn't. He reached the door, and saluted it with a hearty kick; at the same time informing the company that if they were hungry, he rather guessed they'd better open it, as his hands were full. Kornicker thought that his hands were full too; and even had a faint idea of laughing at this play upon words; but the inclination passed off without his doing so. Michael Rust opened the door, and the boy came in. Kornicker knew it. He neither looked round nor moved; in fact, he closed his eyes; yet he knew it—he felt it. He had an innate perception that the boy was there, within three feet of him, bearing in his hands a large tray, with dishes, and a brandy bottle on it. And now the clattering commenced; and he was conscious that the boy was setting the table. What would be the end of all this; what could be? After all, Michael Rust might be a jolly fellow, and he hadn't found it out; and perhaps he wanted to make him at home, and keep up the joke, to save his feelings. He would be glad to think so; but he didn't; no, no, he was certain that there was some devil's play going on.'
The only person who seemed fully to appreciate his situation was the boy from the refectory, who, with the instinct peculiar to boys of that class, had detected it on the spot; and abruptly placing a dish on the table, retired to a corner, with his face to the wall, where he laughed violently in private. A warning look from Rust[23] put a stop to his mirth; nor did he again indulge it, until the table being set, and being informed that the guests were not proud, and could wait on themselves, he retreated to the entry, where he became exceedingly hilarious.
'Come Ned, my boy, be seated,' said Rust, going up to Kornicker, and slapping him on the shoulder. 'Wake up; you know we must be merry sometimes; and when could there be a better opportunity than when that old fool Rust is away? He'll never find it out. Oh, no; come, come.'
Kornicker made a faint effort to decline; but a look from Rust decided him, and he rose, went to the table, and mechanically seated himself in the lap of Mr. Sludge, who reminded him that he was not a chair, but that there was an article of that description vacant at his side. Kornicker smiled feebly, bowed abstractedly, and took a seat. He could not eat. He attempted to sip a little brandy, but choked in swallowing it. The dinner, however, went on merrily. The knives and forks clattered against the plates; the roast beef grew smaller and smaller; the vegetables skipped down the throats of the guests as if by magic; and the bottle knew no rest. In fact, the only article on the table which stood its ground, was a sturdy old Dutchman in a cocked-hat, who had been metamorphosed into a stone pitcher; and sat there, with his stomach filled with cold water, and his hands clasped over it. Lord! how merry they were! And as the dinner went on, and the bottle grew low, and another was called for by Rust, how uproarious they became! How they sang, and howled, and hooted! What a din they created in the building! By degrees the entry became filled with the 'desperadoes' from the upper stories, who, attracted by doings kindred to their own, accumulated there in a mass, and enlivened the performances, by howling through the key-hole, and echoing all the other cries, from the bottom of their lungs. But loudest and merriest, and as it appeared to Kornicker, most diabolical of all, was Michael Rust; helping every one; passing the bottle, and laughing, and yet constantly at work, endeavoring to worm out of his companions something against Kornicker which might render him amenable to the law, and which he might hold over his head; a rod to bend him to his purposes, should he ever prove refractory.
As the dinner advanced, and the bottle declined, the guests grew humorous. Mr. Buzby in particular, who after several unsuccessful efforts succeeded in describing the painful situation of a pig, in whose ear a dog was whispering some confidential communication. He also attempted to imitate the remonstrating scream of the animal; but failed, owing to his utterance having become somewhat thick. Mr. Gunter then rose to offer thanks to Mr. Kornicker; but sat down on discovering that Mr. Buzby was terminating his communication by an address of a similar character; and that Mr. Steekup was engaged in restraining Mr. Sludge, who was bent on performing an intricate hornpipe on the table, which he guaranteed[24] to do without breaking a plate or discomposing a glass; but which Mr. Steekup resisted, being of opinion that his guarantee was but doubtful security. Mr. Sludge, however, was not to be thwarted. He grew animated; Rust encouraged him; he discussed the matter vehemently; he addressed every body, on all subjects; he struggled; he fought, and was finally removed from the room, and cast into the arms of the desperadoes, in the entry, to whom he protested manfully against this treatment; and one of the skirts of his coat, which had been torn off in the debate, was ejected after him. This occurrence, together with the fact that a third bottle had become empty; and that no more was called for by Rust; and that it was growing dark, which was the hour for deeds of chivalry among choice spirits like themselves, seemed to be the signal for a general break-up. After shaking hands affectionately with Rust, and telling him that he was 'a potatoe of the largest kind,' and slapping Kornicker kindly but violently on the back, and saying that they were sorry to see him so 'd—d glum,' they all spoke on promiscuous subjects at once, and departed in a body, each trying in a very earnest manner to impress upon the rest something which he forgot before he uttered it, but which he supposed he would remember presently.
Rust waited until the silence showed that the guests and the 'desperadoes' had departed together; and then turning to Kornicker, and rubbing his hands together, said:
'A very pleasant little party we've had, Mr Kornicker; a very pleasant little party. Michael Rust is much obliged to you for dispelling the gloom of his office, and making it the gathering-place of such select society. He can't express his thanks in terms sufficiently strong. He feels grateful, too, for your strict adherence to the terms of the agreement between us. Twenty dollars a month, meals for one, liquor for none. These were the terms, I think; but Michael Rust is growing old, and his memory may have failed him. Perhaps, too, brandy isn't a liquor; he isn't certain; it used to be, when he was a boy; and he doesn't think that it has changed its character; but it may have done so, and he may have forgotten it; for you know he's old and childish, and even in his dotage.'
Mr. Kornicker shook his head. 'I knew it must come!' thought he. He muttered something about his 'standing the shot for the brandy himself.' He made a futile effort to get at his snuff-box, but failed; said something about 'apology to offer,' and was silent.
'Well, Sir,' said Rust, after a pause, altering his manner, 'I have found you out. You haven't yet discovered what I am. Get these things removed; for I have that on hand which must be attended to. I'll overlook this, but it must never be repeated.'
'Kornicker, glad to escape thus easily, and yielding, partly to that ascendancy which Rust invariably acquired over those whom he made use of, and partly cowed by the consciousness of guilt, and the fear of losing a comfortable situation, slunk out of the room in search of the boy from the refectory.
A CLUSTER OF SONNETS TOUCHING THAT VALLEY.
BY H. W. ROCKWELL
H. W. R.
Utica, (New-York,) 1843.
BY PETER VON GRIST.
It is Sunday in our pleasant village, and the very air seems to feel it. It is lighter and purer than it was yesterday, and moves stealthily, as though afraid of breaking the general stillness by its rustling. The shops are all shut, but there is no gloominess about them: they too are enjoying the season of rest. And three or four venerable cows are stretched on the green common, lulled to a state of philosophic calmness, and sunk in sober meditation. What delicious music the church-bell makes! It rings out, sotto voce; and the still, charmed air modulates with a gentle motion, like unbroken ripples on the surface of a sleeping pond. First comes a single, heavy peal; then a vibration, like a distant echo; then another, fainter and more distant still; and another, and another, each fainter and quicker than the preceding; till in the course of a few seconds nothing is heard but a confused jingling; and while we are thinking whether this jingling is not that which we sometimes hear in our ears at the dead of night, and which we then decide to be fairy-bells, afar off, another heavy stroke sends down another clear, sweet wave of sound, and the process of vibrations is repeated.
But now the people from the country around begin to come in. Huge lumber-wagons, containing farmers and their sons, in Sunday coats and stiff collars, with their wives and daughters in straw bonnets and pink ribands, and calico dresses, come rattling through the streets, and deposit their loads on the church-steps. The villagers too come out of their houses and walk slowly over toward the meeting-house. It is easy to distinguish the great men of the place; (what place has not its great men, on one scale or another?) the lawyer, the physician, and those older inhabitants, who came here first, and have grown rich through age. They wear finer clothes, their boots are polished, and perhaps their faces are ornamented with spectacles. It is easy to distinguish them, too, by their demeanor. Their walk shows their consciousness of possessing superior importance; and a very pleasant thing that consciousness is, on any scale. Arrived on the steps, they accost each other with affability; nod to the farmers with benignity, and say, 'How do you do, Mrs. Johnson?' in an open tone of voice, that the standers-by may see how friendly they are to all. The young men and maidens look on them with silent veneration: for from their earliest youth they have been accustomed to regard Doctor Brown and 'Squire White as among the greatest in the land; men who had a care over the whole country, and whose dignity of bearing was the consequence and indication of that elevation of mind which was necessary in order to take in such wide views. They are men whose knowledge[27] knows no bounds; they are the ones who make speeches on the Fourth of July; are officers of the temperance society, and the regiment of militia; and therefore the young men and maidens reverence them, and the old men make way for them, in the assembly of the people. It is a natural feeling, natural and pleasant to all parties; and I cannot tell to which it is the most pleasant, the admirer or the admired. But they are going in: I enter with them, and walk down the aisle with a sedate step and slow.
One of those of whom I have spoken last, the doctor, I should judge from his appearance, has given me a seat in his slip, near the centre of the church. What a holy repose steals over the spirit, as we sit down in the house of worship! The strife and turmoil of the world never obtrude themselves into this sacred place; all are for a while forgotten. The oil of awe, and yet of gladness, is poured on the bubbling waters of passion, and they sink to rest. The faint heart, 'wounded, sick, and sore,' is revived and healed by the very breath of the sanctuary; for within these walls the air itself seems consecrated. A solemn and reverential feeling settles down on the mind of the worshipper; and he involuntarily assumes a serious deportment. The people come in, one by one, and take their seats noiselessly, as though they had put off their shoes from their feet on this holy ground. The light rustle of a lady's dress, and the occasional slam of a pew-door, in opening or shutting, alone are heard; and these interruptions only serve to make the succeeding silence more deeply felt.
I look around on the assembly, and among so many men, who for the past week have been digging in the earth, or hammering incessantly on the anvil or the lap-stone, or engaged in the most mean and unintellectual employments, there is not one careless or vacant face. Every heart is elevated, and every face is refined in its expression, by the associations of the place. The humble are exalted, as it is in man's nature to be, when his eyes and thoughts, from being fixed on the earth, are lifted up, and hold communion with things above the earth. Ambition of honor or wealth is shamed; the world is but a little thing, when, as now, we look down on it; and here pride finds no place. Care smooths his rugged brow, and over the sunny face of the maiden steals a shade of deeper thought. Therefore we are all alike; the barriers of ice which during the week have separated man from his fellow, are to-day broken down; and we feel, sitting here worshipping together, that we are fellow-pilgrims; that we are indeed of the same family.
Anon the minister comes in, with reverend countenance and careful step. Every eye is bent on him, with affectionate respect, as he places his hat on the bright little table under the desk, and mounts up to, and shuts himself in, the pulpit. Instinctively we all rise when he does, and invoke the divine presence; though we are conscious that that presence has been with us, and around us, ever since we entered the house. When the rustle of re-seating ourselves, like that of many dry leaves shaken by the wind, has subsided,[28] how calmly and soothingly the voice of the speaker falls on our ears, reading out of the holy book! It is a familiar passage; a passage which I had heard often and often before I could read it, or understand all the words; one which I learned by heart almost as soon as I could learn any thing; which I have heard repeated week after week for many years; and yet now every syllable is sounded so distinctly that the picture comes up as vividly as ever, and I cannot help listening. I forget for the time all that is to come; submit myself to follow slowly along with the words of the speaker, and feel my quiet heart overflowing, as it receives the beautiful story, with its simple and sublime moral.
While I sit and suffer these thoughts, like the spontaneous images of a dream, to pass over my mind, the hymn has been read, and my reveries are broken by music from the choir, floating softly down. I am in no mood to criticise, and it is not difficult to imagine that the sounds do not proceed from mere human lips; but that beings who take a deeper interest in man's welfare than he himself takes, are clothing their words of exhortation or comfort in melody, and speaking at once to our heart and understanding. If this was not fully imagined before, it becomes almost real when the last long-drawn note dies away, as though the sweet minstrels had accomplished their mission to this earthly tabernacle, and had departed toward their own abode.
And now rises the preacher, severe and grave. Every glance is directed toward him, and every ear is open to catch the first, long-coming accents. I do not wonder that they love to gaze on him; even I do now. He is a man past the prime of life; gray hairs are plentifully sprinkled over his head; his face is somewhat thin and worn, as though with long watching and study; but his frame is upright, and the look which he slowly casts over the expectant congregation, is full of import and solemnity. There is a mild, affectionate light in his eye, and love to God and to all God's creatures beams out from every lineament of his countenance. Calmly he displays, after the good old fashion, his handkerchief of spotless white, and calmly deposits it under the right lid of the book before him. There is such an air of quiet dignity about the movement, that I love him for it. But the preparations are all gone through with; a routine which we would not miss, and which he would be lost without. He reads his text with emphatic enunciation, and begins his heart-felt address. It is evident that he does feel it. I cannot doubt it for a moment, when I look on his face. I can see that it is heart-felt; and therefore it is not strange that it should be heart-felt by his hearers too.
What a luxury to hear those plain truths! There is no mystery about them, no darkness. The mind is not led off into futile speculations concerning things infinitely above its reach, or so subtle as for ever to elude its grasp; but the grandest principles—and there are none but what are grand—appear on their natural level, the level of the humblest comprehension. While we are least thinking of it, the good man turns some general remark, in the truth of[29] which we have just acquiesced, toward us, personally, as individuals; meanwhile, by his eye, making every hearer feel that he is meant. I cannot divert my attention; I am compelled to think only as he wills, and am startled by the conviction which forces itself on me, so personally does he speak to me, that he is looking strait into my heart. The chapel becomes a hall of justice; my evil motives, and passions, and actions, in long array come thronging up, and I must perforce sit in judgment on them. No excuses or shiftings avail; in the twinkling of an eye, I see the character of the motive or action, and, in spite of myself, decide justly respecting them. It is humbling, truly, and it ought to do me good.
In fact, it has done me good already, as well as the rest who hear. For now, when the speaker comes to tell of love, and goodness, and mercy, how much sweeter sound the words than ever they did before! The house itself seems lighter, and the faces of all in it are brightened, like the faces of men which have been darkened through fear, under the shadow of an eclipse, when it passes happily away. We all feel that it is good for us to be here, and are surprised that it is so late, when, after another brief prayer, we are summoned to rise and receive the benediction—it seems to me that we should kneel to receive a blessing from such lips—and the morning services are over.
If I followed my inclinations, I should stay here during the intermission; but that would expose me to notice; so I take up my hat, and mingle in the crowd which is pouring out. How different from the crowd which one meets in the saloon of fashion, or at a political meeting, or at any other place, where men are accustomed to congregate! Here we are all jostled together, but gently, decorously. We do not lose sight of ourselves, or of the dignity of reflecting beings. We are rather a company so full of the thoughts which we have just received, that we must think them all over again, and have no time to stop and exchange compliments, or to respond to them with laughter equally inane. Not even when we emerge on to the common, and all take our diverging ways toward home, can a voice be heard rising higher than a whisper. A Sabbath stillness reigns over all.
In the afternoon, the scene is much the same as in the morning. With the first stroke of the bell, I take my former seat, and occupy myself with turning over the leaves of a pocket-Bible that belongs to the slip. There is rather more confusion and noise of people coming in, than there was in the forenoon. Footsteps fall heavier, and pew-doors slam louder. A few old ladies, collected into two or three contiguous seats, for the purpose of enjoying, in the interval of worship, a little whispering consultation, have not yet intermitted their humming voices. Children, released from the Sunday school, come clattering along the aisles. Young gentlemen and ladies do not appear quite so stiff as they did in the morning, and are not so careful that their attitudes should be exactly perpendicular. The chorister also makes some remarks to the choir on the importance of keeping time, and on sundry other things, in a tone of mild command.[30] All these little things go to make up a good deal of confusion in the house; all which, nevertheless, it is exceedingly pleasant to sit and listen to.
But the pastor enters; the bell ceases its tolling; the whispering old ladies disperse themselves to their respective seats; the deacons, who have been waiting for the minister on the steps, follow him in; and in less than a minute silence once more settles down on the assembly.
It may be fancy, but it strikes me that the choir sing a trifle louder and freer than before; that the female singers put in variations, which are not set down for them in the book, sliding graces, one might call them; all indicative of increased confidence in their own powers. However this may be, I am certain that the young damsel in the slip before me, whose face I have not seen, is mingling her voice in the harmony. I can almost hear it. But while I am watching to catch her tones, a universal shutting of books announces that the hymn is ended.
It may be fancy, too, but the preacher seems to me a thought less solemn than in the forenoon; perhaps a little warmer and more animated. Perhaps, too, the hearers are more restless and disposed to be critical. There is not that same hush of breathless listening. But they are sweet words; and the speaker appears to be conscious that he is not giving utterance to idle breath, so deliberately and thoughtfully do the lessons of good come from his lips. And this deliberation and thoughtfulness increase as he draws near the close of the sermon; till at last, his voice is sunk almost to a whisper; and our attention has to be closely riveted to catch the sounds. Now may be seen the whole congregation bending forward with strained eyes, and animated faces, drinking in the thoughts and precepts, and exhortations, as though for their lives. And when the conclusion of the whole matter comes, 'And thereby shall ye have hope of eternal life,' and during the deep pause which succeeds the enunciation of these words, an hundred long-drawn sighs may be heard, telling of relieved and lightened bosoms.
After the prayer, a hymn is read; a good old hymn, unmutilated from Watts, and we all rise to sing it. It is set to a good old tune too, one with which every body is familiar, and the first verse is carried roundly off. The second verse sets in heavier; the voices of the singers grow louder through use. The bass, which before was rather faint, now comes out with the power of a dozen organs, from fifty pairs of lungs that never knew what weakness was. The air, too, has cast off its timidity, and rises high and shrill; while the alto and tenor, each clear and distinct, fill up the intermediate space, and all four blend together harmoniously, so that no jar or dissonance is perceptible. The tide of song sways up and down, like the breathless rocking of the wave. The whole house is crowded with sound. The voices gush out and swell with measured movement; and while the different parts combine and unite, a mingled stream of harmony and praise is sent up toward the heavens. It is evident that the hearts of the singers are rising with their words.[31] I can speak for myself, at least; I find it difficult to resist the current of enthusiasm; so I allow myself to be borne away; and, albeit somewhat unskilled in the gentle art of psalmody, into this grand hallelujah chorus I cast the strength of my voice with right good will.
A TALE OF TINNECUM
Copied from Mrs. Pettit's Album at Rockaway.
The winter had given a few premonitory symptoms, the winds beginning to come with a cutting edge from the north, the last flowers of the season having long dropped their disconsolate heads, where they had been cut down in their late bloom, and short icicles depending from the eaves on the frosty mornings. One by one, the charms which crown the country during so many months, its roses, its green-sward, its foliage, nay, even the melancholy tints of autumn were withdrawn, until all was bare and desolate, and there was nothing left of all the glorious scene, except to those who can bow down to Nature in her severest moods, and can admire the symmetry of the dismantled oak with as true a feeling as when its limbs were robed in green. Still can you see in its majestic trunk and faultless anatomy, why it bore its honors so gracefully. But the woods were literally stripped. Here and there a dry leaf, crumpled up, shook on the end of a limb with a palsied motion, producing a death-noise, not unlike the reiterated strokes of a small wood-pecker's bill upon the bark. For the rest, a thin layer of dry leaves whirling about among the skeleton shadows of trees, or gathered together in the hollows and the valleys, was all that remained of the tissue of that massive, overarching pall which stretched over the forest for miles. How contractile is the power of death! Caw! caw! caw! The crows flapped their jet black wings over the region of desolation; and hark to the roar of the distant sea! The beautiful shores of the Long-Island Sound, its promontories, coves, and recesses, so late the resort of the invalid or the idle; the trout-streams, the wide plains, the forests filled with sleek deer, as also the places of note upon the sea-shore, had become deserted. Montauk-Point jutted out into the sea more lonely than ever. Glen-Cove lost all its charms, and not the least were those it borrowed from thy presence, glorious Araminta! The Baron Von Trinkets swore that he would die for thee. The Pavilion at Rockaway, where beauty and fashion had so lately woven the dance, was forsaken in all its halls, corridors, and piazzas; while the old steward sat by night in the kitchen-wing, tapping his feet on the hearth to the remembered music of galopades, and voluptuous waltzes. It was, in fact, the latter end of November—a pretty season for an excursion into the Tinnecum bay!
Tertullian insisted upon my going with him to shoot black duck, which were said to be more plentiful than for many years, affording great sport. But water-parties, to my mind, cease to be desirable when coal fires have become agreeable. Nevertheless, ad sauromatas, to oblige a friend. So we overhauled lock, stock, and barrel, which had become rusty since snipe-shooting, and, busying ourselves a whole evening in screwing, unscrewing, oiling, and getting in order our implements to make war upon the black ducks, the morrow found us ready. Tertullian shook me by the shoulders as I lay softly pillowed, and in the midst of pleasant dreams. With a yawn and a groan I acknowledged the salutation, and looking out saw the stars yet shining in the sky. The morning air felt cold! cold! As I stood shivering in my long robes, I was ready to sacrifice my friendship for Tertullian, and to plunge again beneath the warm sheets, and recur to my happy dreams. The rolling of wheels over the frozen ground beneath the windows, and Cudjo's sharp reproaches to the mules, indicated that all parties were on the ground; and although I considered it almost as bad as fighting a duel at that unseasonable hour, I clenched my teeth with determination, as if to preclude the possibility of a shiver. In a few moments we were armed and equipped, provisions for the day were placed in the bottom of the wagon, and Cudjo drove us out on the commencement of the cheerless journey. My friend, lover as he was of aquatic pastimes, and wild-duck shooting, shrugged his shoulders as we passed over the bleak meadows. There had evidently been a fall of snow during the night, somewhere among the Highlands, to judge by the sharper edge of the winds. In the course of half an hour we arrived at a landing-place, where a small creek put up from the bay. Here two negro boatmen, from New-Guinea, a small African settlement in the neighboring woods, had consented to meet us, and row us out in their new sedge-boat, which was first called the Pumpkin-Seed, from some allusion to its shape, but afterward from their own names, The Sam and Jim. On arriving at the wharf nothing presented itself but the old mill, with its wheel encased in ice, and as far as the eye could reach, the bleak meadows and the tortuous creek, and the Tinnecum bay. But the black gentlemen who were to be our guides did not show their faces, but were probably with the rest of New-Guinea dreaming of clams and eels, or of the gala-day when their new boat, fresh and gaudily painted, was launched into the black waters, below the dam of the Three-Mile Mill. The 'Sam and Jim' lay high and dry upon the shore, chained, padlocked, and protected from the weather. It must be confessed, that the promise of the day's sport was small. With no Palinurus to guide us, and the wind blowing as if it came from an iceberg, the black ducks might take a new lease of their lives, for all the damage we should do them. Tertullian swore roundly, stamped his feet, and went raving round the old mill, which we tried to enter, but the doors were locked. Then getting upon a pile of mill-stones he gazed wistfully into all quarters of the horizon, and raising his trumpet voice[34] as if he had been among the very huts of New-Guinea, called upon the delinquents, Sam and Jim. Still no human being appeared to offer assistance, and echo only answered 'Sam and Jim.' The sun began to appear well above the horizon, the tide was on the ebb; if a little more time were lost, it would be impossible to get over the bar, and return by night-fall. The miller's house stood near, whither we immediately hastened, and having aroused him by a volley of kicks against his door, asked his ghostly advice about an expedition into the bay. Joe Annis thanked us in language not very flowery for breaking his slumbers, and then telling us that his two boats, the 'Spasm' and 'Paroxysm,' (so named by some country doctor in that vicinity,) were a little way down creek, and that we might take either one, and row ourselves out, drew in his powdered head. Difficulties only serve to quicken the energies of men of nerve. 'Courage! courage! mon ami!' exclaimed my friend, wagging his haunches in the direction of the wharf in a great hurry. Tertullian was for ever speaking French and Latin. The first was tolerable, as far as it went, which was to the end of a very small vocabulary; but for the latter, Erasmus help us! it was of the canine species, except some few phrases, very pure, drawn right out from the body of the Roman authors. Of the latter was Quid agis? 'What are you about there? What are you doing—in the stern of the boat? Ohe! jam satis! Come, no more of your fun. Dic, age tibia. Wake up, and tune your pipes.' But then, the melancholy, barbarian ages succeeding, 'Miror quid diabolus faciemini sine Sam et Jimmo!'
On examining the boats, we found them not very well adapted to the purpose. They were rather small skiffs, and might be easily tilted over, or capsized in a squall. We took the Spasm. She was clean, tight, and ready to be launched; but the Paroxysm was in bad condition, full of mud, grass, clams, shells, broken rum-jugs, and decayed cucumbers. In a trice we had effected the launch, victualled the boat for a day's voyage, and seizing the oars pulled with great vigor and hearty determination. We had been both indifferently acquainted with the bay, knew its shores, and bottom, and the fishing-grounds which were once visited with success. But such knowledge acquired in school-boy days had become dim. It might be that the old land-marks were destroyed; for if a certain row of poplars which stood upon the plain had been cut down during the prevailing unpopularity of poplars, we might be puzzled to find the entrance of the creek upon our return. 'Courage! courage!' exclaimed Tertullian; 'range your eye along the summits of the salt hay-stacks, thence onward over the ridge of the old boat-house, and you will see the trees, with their dry and decayed limbs rattling aloft, like pipe-stems:
'Altas maritat populos.'
The broad expanse of the bay seemed to lie before us at a little distance, but the course of the stream was winding and ambiguous, often making a turn and bringing you back to nearly the same[35] place, which by dint of laborious rowing you deemed you were leaving far in the back-ground. Thus, often in life, do we seek to arrive upon the scene of some expansive prospect, but that which seemed a little interval turns out to be a weary distance, to be overcome only by patient determination. The exercise of pulling at the oars sent warmth through our bodies, and made the blood tingle in all our limbs, although the flags upon the shores were glazed, and sharp icicles hung from the banks, which the sun had not yet power to dissolve. At last the shores began to widen, and we emerged into a broad basin, where, coasting warily for a while, we ventured upon another more expansive. Here we saw a loon, who screamed out when he saw the skiff, in great alarm; but no harm was done to him. Some pieces of ice were seen floating, not of any great size. Having pulled heartily thus far, we considered it 'about time' to take a small pull at the brandy-bottle. The sun was by this time pretty high up in the heavens; the day though cold was of an amber clearness; the black ducks pretty scarce; but other things promising well, Tertullian broke out into music; a jovial, marine song, of which he expected me to sustain a part in the chorus:
'Mehercle!' exclaimed he, breaking off suddenly, 'ecce duos oves!'
'Where?' replied I, in astonishment, looking up to the sky, and suspecting that he made some punning allusion to a few fleecy clouds.
'Two teal, by Jupiter!' said he, cocking his piece, and rising up in the boat with great eagerness. Looking in the direction to which he pointed, I saw the birds rising up and down on the rough waves, and occasionally bobbing their heads beneath the brine. There is a grace and sleek elegance which belongs to animals in their state of utmost wildness, that is incomparable. Swans in the tranquil lake, and kine in the richest pastures, are beautiful for the eye to rest on. But the bird which looks out from some high, extreme limb in the wood—even if it be the small, red robin, stretching out its long neck, and displaying an elegance of form, very different from its summer plumpness, ready to flap its wings at the merest crackling of a leaf, or approach of the distant shadow; the straggler from that long file of migratory birds, (how beautifully it undulates, and swerves from a rigid line in yon high aërial flight,) descending to bathe in the woodland swamp, and plunging its head deep into the waves as the quick eye of the sportsman, the flash, and the report are simultaneous; the stag listening with erect ear to the fall of far-off footsteps in the forest, and expressing in that tremulous air the full force of his incipient bound;
these express an idea of ecstatic life and enjoyment, which it is difficult for the painter to depict.
Tertullian could not get a shot at the teal, for they went under, and never came up again, that we could discover. Nor was the loss of sport to be regretted, as, had he discharged his piece standing, heavily loaded as it was, the recoil would have been sufficient to upset the skiff. Such casualties are not infrequent. It was near this very place that Pomp Ruin, poor black! in his eagerness to shoot a wild duck, got kicked overboard, and went down, with all his sins upon his head; and as the colored clergyman truly observed, in improving the subject on the Sunday following: 'My brudren, he was never hëered of arterwards.' Coasting along still with resolution, we doubled Cape Round-your-hat, and it being high-noon, drew up on the beach at Rider's to dine. An hour and a half was suffered to elapse before we got off from this sterile place, and the afternoon beginning to wear away in divers cruisings, we thought it high time to begin to think of a return.
We had been resting on our oars for a few minutes, Tertullian ceasing from his French and Latin, and maintaining a profound silence. 'Hearken!' said he, suddenly rising up, in an attitude of intense listening; 'it is the surf bursting upon the shore!' I put down my ear, and heard the hollow, heavy roar, and booming of the breakers, rolling upon the beach at Rockaway. 'We are near the mouth of the inlet,' said he; 'pull for the point of yonder island, or we shall be carried out to sea.' I remembered a story told me by Captain Phibious, of the small schooner Sally Jane, who got carried out into the Gulf Stream, four or five hundred miles, without provisions, in which expedition all hands liked to have perished. Fear lent strength and vigor to our arms. Into what peril were we brought through the remissness of those irredeemable negroes Sam and Jim! With such good effect did we pull at the oars, that in a little while we struck the point of land, and leaped upon the shore in safety. 'Do you know where you are!' exclaimed Tertullian.
'Certainly not, except upon a desert strip of sand.'
'You are on Scollop Island.'
My blood froze in my veins. 'We are then,' said I, 'upon the dominions of Floys Boyo, and within the precincts of the Devil-Tavern.'
'The same,' answered he; 'let us draw up the boat.'
Scollop Island, whither we had now come, was a small, barren place, which lies just at the mouth of the inlet, opposite to the Rockaway beach. It consists of little hillocks of white sand, and intervening valleys, with here and there a few groves of pines, and gnarled oaks, whortleberry-bushes, and brambles, or whatever will grow on so unpropitious a site. Beside these, there is at any time little sign of life. Only one house or tenement was visible upon its highest point, before which the broken mast of some wrecked schooner was planted in the sand; and half way up jutted out a sign, on which was painted some figure, not intended to be human. Some beaks, figure-heads, and gilded ornaments, the relics of unfortunate ships, lay about, or were nailed over the doors. The house, it must be confessed, had never borne an excellent reputation.[37] Gibbs and Wamsley had resorted to it frequently, and are said to have made some deposits of treasure in the sands of the island which have never yet been turned up. The boatmen who tarry there usually do so, for the purpose of some drunken spree too riotous and noisy for the main land. But the Devil-Tavern had at least one merit, for it discarded all semblance of hypocrisy, and did not even assume to itself the vestige of a good name. It may be said that the present one was forced upon it; at any rate it had borne it a long time, and put forth no protest to vindicate the reputation of the house. The virtuous were afraid of it, and preferred, if carried thither in some summer excursion, to wander about the hot beach, rather than seek the comparative coolness of its walls. It had received its name for many reasons, any one of which might be deemed sufficient. A hundred years ago its founder was a man of such outrageous character, and withal so successful in his career, that it was thought the very Devil helped him. He was leagued with wicked landsmen, who, when they had accomplished their nefarious plans, sailed hither, and revelled jollily until the storm blew over. Many a bottle of pure wine was cracked in their convivialities, very different from the vile and burning fluids now served up at the bar. But Cargills was at last hanged, having been taken unawares at the Anchor Tavern, in New-York, whither he went when oppressed with ennui, and to get his feelings in tune. A set of landlords succeeded him, any one of whom had made society too hot to hold them. At last a certain humorist who happened to be there, snatching a pot of paint one day, which was near at hand to paint the bows of a schooner, clambered up by the aid of a ladder, and inscribed upon the sign-board, with great freedom of brush, a picture of that ancient gentleman, the Devil. He painted him rampant, with all that dismal aspect which is usually attributed to him, with hell-flames bristling from his forked tongue, his tail coiled up and superfluous, while in the back-ground was an extent of highly picturesque country, whence he had just issued, seeking whom he might devour. The semblance must have been correct, since by those that came there, the recognition was pleasurable and immediate. Indeed, the frequenters of the place for the last fifty years had been distinguished by the harsh term of hellicat devils. Latterly, nothing specific had been alleged against the Inn, only some murderous suspicions connected with the gangs which frequented it, and the very unsatisfactory character of a bad name.
The present landlord, Floys Boyo, came here originally from Thimble Islands, and managed to gain a miserable subsistence throughout the year by the entertainment of strangers, and the sale of strong waters. Of whatever else he did for a living, there are no witnesses. We now proposed to make his acquaintance, and we could have wished under better auspices, unless his hospitality would overflow toward those thrown by accident upon his shores at an inclement time. Objects were waxing dim in the declining light, and the 'wind of the winter night' blew dismally around the coasts of Scollop Island. We drew up the skiff upon the land,[38] took our over-coats and fowling-pieces, and went in the direction of the house, along the ill-beaten tracks, with heads bent down to shield us from the sharpness of the wind. Tertullian received my reproaches for bringing me upon the expedition, and for conducting the ship into such a harbor. The appearance of the house, upon a nearer aspect, was eminently cheerless, without tree or dried bush, or enclosure, or domestic animals, or any thing to remind one of life, or cheerfulness, or hope. The wind had blown the white sand to the very threshold of the door, while, scarcely visible in the declining day, the Devil looked down upon us with a malignant leer. A dim light appeared in front at the windows, through the only panes of glass the house could boast. Nearly all were shingled over, or otherwise stopped. The barking of a dog would not have been unwelcome, though it had been a snarl. It was a place into which one feels an instinctive reluctance to intrude.
There are some houses which by their very air and aspect, as plainly as if characters of hospitality were written upon the lintels, extend to the stranger the undoubted welcome of a home. Others are guarded in all their avenues by their own repulsiveness. We inspected the premises narrowly, examined the house on all sides, as if the entrance were doubtful, then came again in front, and looked up at the eaves. A little smoke curled out of the chimney, indicating the presence of small warmth within. Tertullian set up a strong claim upon the sympathy of the convent, by hammering against the door with his musket. A response came from within like the howl of a wild beast aroused from his lair, an outburst of compound curses, unknown to the every-day swearer. 'Floys Boyo is in his tantrums; knocking is too gentle an etiquette at the Devil-Tavern; he must be mollified with hard words, and subdued with counter-oaths. Follow me,' said Tertullian; 'it is but a specimen of his airs and graces.'
Pushing into the room, we found it black and dismal, and all things in correct keeping. The smell of gin filled it like a fume. In one corner a small greasy enclosure of boards, breast-high, likewise shut off by pendant pickets from the wall above, formed that spiritual sanctum, usually called the bar. Behind it were a number of dripping glasses, whose only washings were from the dregs of those little corpulent barrels, and whose only wipings were from the foul lips of the frequenters of the Devil-Tavern. An irregular file of bottles and cracked decanters eked out the remaining crockery. The beams and walls of the room overhead were darkened with smoke; the floor was filthy; and greasy, unwashed vessels lay about in profusion, among the remnants of chairs, and broken benches, and the last timbers of a cradle, of which the baby was gone. Three men moped in the fire-place, thrusting the heels of their gigantic boots into the coals, muttering and cursing in cheerless companionship. They were without coat, vest, or neckcloth, their red shirts were open upon their necks and hairy bosoms, their marred faces, lip-corners streaming with tobacco, harsh beards, and shaggy heads, made them look like a group of infernals.
Floys Boyo, the captain of this delectable crew, was distinguished from the rest by a scar or gash, which from the corner of his eye came down his right cheek in a deep gulley as far as his nose, where it branched off, and cut his upper lip into two parts, which had been ill patched together.
'We're going to lodge here,' said Tertullian, walking up and slapping Boyo upon the back.
'H—ll!' replied the other, not pretending to move from his seat, while the rest of the company rolled up their eyes in silence.
'Yes; and want some south-side clams for supper; there's bread enough in the boat.'
'You won't get no supper, and there's very little lodging for you. Do you think we're as dead as door-nails, d—n you, and as deaf as stones? Hammer the door down next time, will you? Bullion, call the old woman.'
It was evident that Boyo meant to entertain us, notwithstanding his threatening and sullen aspect; and although he fulfilled his word by making no preparations for supper, yet a chamber was getting ready for our repose in the cockloft of the Devil-Tavern. This, in the inclemency of the season, and the want of another house or place of shelter on the island, we considered a piece of princely hospitality, worthy to be paid with gold. Ensconced within the jambs of the fire-place (how different from the blazing, hospitable hearth of the farm-house!) we read the horrid physiognomies around us, and did not derive much comfort from the perusal. Silence reigned in the company. The men had arrived at that brutal stage of the process of intoxication, when the excitement of the brain having passed away, there comes a sullen mood. A host of worse spirits take possession of the man, which, if they are not so turbulent, are of a more fiendish nature. The dull eye, the downcast look, the moping silence, show forth the vile temper which lays its vindictive hands on a woman, and speaks harsh words to the wife of one's bosom. Then come lust, murder, revenge—the passions which vaunt themselves less furiously at other times, and the slow working resolve of the mutinous.
The night became colder, and the fire more dim. Floys Boyo ordered Bullion peremptorily to fetch some 'kindlings.' The latter did not disobey the command, but went out grumbling, and returned with some sticks, and wreck-wood, and by the aid of the paint which adhered to them, a more cheerful flame was produced. But it only served to make the darkness more visible; to bring into stronger relief the bar, the cobwebbed ceiling, the filth and squalid wretchedness of the apartment. An uncomfortable feeling of insecurity increased upon me, notwithstanding Tertullian's perpetual 'Courage!' and'Cras magnum iterabimus aquor.' Extremes are always suggestive of their opposites. I thought of the cheerful study at home; the fire blazing; the faces of friends; the hot-pressed volume, the Magazines for the month. There, by the side of Blackwood, brought in violent haste by the last steam-packet, lay the Old Knick., first in our affections, whose plain exterior of blue but ill bespeaks[40] the luxury within; whose pages, co-rivals of the Alpine flakes, are never stained by impurity; but there the old man chirrups with the vivacity of youth, and the young has managed to assume the wisdom of the sage. Both meet together in loving cheerfulness, and the ancient sits in his gubernatorial chair, and puffs the long pipe in that dreamy atmosphere. Let the old Dutch spirit reign for ever in 'our beloved regions of Manahatta.'
A prisoner for the night in that dreary place, I felt as if I were a thousand miles from the abodes of civilization; and as one naturally does, amused myself by examining with intense curiosity the most indifferent object which served to remind me of more congenial places. I kept my eye long fixed on the lock of my fowling-piece, which had the word 'London,' and the maker's name engraved upon it; then looked in the bottom of my cap, and was peculiarly interested with the vignette which accompanied the manufacturer's name; and an old almanac seemed to link me with the literary world, although it was out of date by several years. The pictured little page, and calculations of eclipses which had come off, and gone into the musty record of by-gone events, the signs of the zodiac, the prophecies of wind and weather, the old maxim of 'early to bed and early to rise' and the way to make an apple-pudding, these had a fresh interest and a zest hardly to be equalled by Bulwer's last novel. I felt that there must be an 'imperfect sympathy' between Scollop Island and the great world of literature, art, and learning.
But a deeper sense of satisfaction and security arose from the presence of woman. A fair face and a fragile form glanced occasionally across the apartment where we were seated, but retired, driven back by harsh words and vile language. It was the wife of Floys Boyo. She bore about her the marks of former beauty, although altered in all its lines by a prevailing expression of wo, but she still performed the duties of a wife with unflinching patience, though coarse and cruel treatment had long since rendered it a heartless task. Floys Boyo married her in the comparative innocence of his youth, before he had yet blunted all the kindly feelings of his nature. He had taken her from the abounding plenty of a farm-house, and from parents who loved her with the tenderness which falls to the lot of an only child. Afterward, as is always the case with a drunkard, he cherished her no longer with affection; dragged her about from one comfortless abode to another; and at last, on this desert place, cut her off from the last link which attached her to her friends. Still she adhered to him, when she might have returned to the bosom of her family; so hard is it to shake the fidelity which is a component part of a woman's nature, and so often in this world are the extremes of disposition linked together, the fierceness of the vulture with the enduring gentleness of the dove!
It was not until a late hour that we left the kitchen of the Devil-Tavern, and retired to our apartment for the night; for the prospect of sleep did not bring with it much consolation, although extremely weary. Floys Boyo conducted us, leading the way up the steps of[41] a perpendicular ladder to a landing, whence he stepped into a cockloft, set down the lamp on an empty barrel, and departed with an oath, grumbling about the trouble which we had given him, and wishing us in the Rockaway surf. 'He is an atrocious devil,' said Tertullian; 'let us inspect the den, while the lamp holds out to burn.'
We found neither lock, catch, nor fastening of any description; and to have our slumbers supervised by any of the amiable crew below, was not pleasant. Having tortured ingenuity a little, we took an eel-spear and a broken oar which lay on the beams beneath the roof, crossed them, and secured them against the door by the aid of some tarred ropes, which were likewise at hand. Then we made a broken barb of the spear serviceable by jamming it violently between the floor and the lower part of the door; after which we lugged a heavy old chest, and deposited it, together with whatever movables were to be found in the room. This done, we threw ourselves down upon the straw in all our clothes, drew over us our cloaks, and over these the blankets which belonged to the bed, and placing our fowling-pieces by our side, abandoned ourselves to the protection of a kind Providence. In less than half an hour Tertullian snored prodigiously, and had I been stretched on clover, fanned with the sweetest airs of summer, and without a care to ruffle my tranquillity, I never could have slept a wink with such an uproarious fellow beside me. As it was, there were other causes which kept me wakeful. For, beside the fears which might assail one at midnight in such a solitude, it was dismal to hear the winds raving about the house; the bricks tumbling from the chimney and rolling with a hollow noise down the roof; the blast now screaming in your ear and instantly heard afar off, as if it had gone off to join the troops of the winds; the rattling of doors and loosened window-frames, and the creaking on its rusty hinges and slam-banging of the sign of the Devil-Tavern. To this might be added the moaning of pine trees as their heavy tops swayed in the grove, the plashing of the waves on the still shore, the roll and confusion of the breakers at Rockaway. How impatiently I counted the hours, and longed again for the light of day, that scatters fears and vagaries with the brooding shades, and imparts fresh life, and courage, and determined zeal.
It must have been half past two o'clock, or thereabout, in the morning, when, being all on the alert, I was sure I heard a movement in the house. A sound came from below stairs like the gruff voices of men engaged in low conversation. It kept dying away as the winds exceeded it in loudness, and then it came back monotonous, and was continued several minutes without cessation. Then a door opened, and a confused whispering succeeded, after which, slowly, and with a creaking noise, I heard steps, one by one, ascend the rungs of the ladder; and springing up on my elbow, my heart thumped so furiously, and my brain whirled in such confusion, that for a moment I could hear nothing. But a bar of light coming through the crevice in the partition, flashed across the wall. Then[42] there was an evident pressure and force applied to the door, which it resisted well. I sprang out of bed, pressed my eye to a crevice in the wall, and saw the red-flannel shirt of one of the men; then rushing back, I shook Tertullian violently by the shoulders. He rose up a moment, uttered something impatiently, and fell back into bed. 'Tullian!' said I, shaking him energetically, 'Tullian! Tullian! up, for heaven's sake! we shall be—(here I placed my mouth close to his ear, and whispered)—murdered!'
He pressed his fists to his eyes, and sprang upon his heels. I never knew him wanting in an emergency. He rallied his senses, and understood my suspicions in an instant. He understood them, and supposed them ill-founded. But as we stood with our fowling-pieces in our arms, the violence against the door was continued, with angry imprecations, by those without. It was evident that the pressure of the whole gang was upon it, and it could not hold out long. What could we do against their numbers, and with so contracted a place for battle? 'Up with the window and out of it!', exclaimed Tertullian. As he uttered the words, he sprang toward the sash, uplifted it, and told me to leap. I set my foot upon the sill, crouched down in order to squeeze through the narrow aperture, and sprang in safety upon the sands below. The distance was not very great, but it was a leap in the dark. Before I could look up for him, Tertullian was by my side, the sash slamming down as he leaped, and the broken glass tinkling in little pieces at our feet. At the instant a crash, an onset was heard above; oars, eel-spears, chest, chairs, and the whole barricade must have given way, a light streamed into the room and lit up the casement, shadows flitting about; a shout and confused mingling of voices met our ears; we could distinguish those of Floys Boyo and his men: 'The birds have flown!' 'To the shore! to the shore!' exclaimed Tertullian, grasping my arm, and attempting to hurry me along.
It was very dark, and I remember that we rushed through the deep sands in company with frantic haste, never turning round, now cast down by getting our feet entangled in briers, then panting on against the cold night wind. It seemed as if our pursuers were very near us, nay, almost at arm's length, outnumbering us, with the weapons of death in their hands, and the only remedy was to flee, flee for our very lives! Already I imagined the grasp of Floys Boyo upon my throat, and the death-struggle near. Life, with its delightful memories, its hopes of the future, the loves and affections which were in store for me, a host of ideas and emotions rushed through my brain with the rapidity of characters perused upon the same page. There was a sudden and intense conception of the preciousness of life, and the agony of losing it; and persisting in the chase, I felt as one does who labors under a horrid night-mare, and is pursued by phantoms or fiends, while his limbs refuse to do their office, and his shrieks are inaudible murmurs, which die away in the utterance. Oh, my sisters! my fair cousins! dear, and beautiful betrothed! would to God I had never come to Scollop Island! Onward, onward we went, scarce guided by the dim star-light.[43] 'Tullian, Tullian, I can go no farther; we can never reach the water's edge!' Scarce had I spoken when the ground gave way beneath us, we plunged forward, and sank into a hollow twelve or fifteen feet. Breathless and wearied, we lay together in the sand, with our fowling-pieces by our side. We were in a sort of cavern, where the earth caving in stood around in semi-circular walls, and was slightly arched above us. The place was sheltered from the northern blast, and a pine grove partly shielded it from the icy breath which came over the waves, while the sun had shone all day upon its sands.
Were we pursued by the gang?—or had my fears as well as my ears deceived me. 'Hush!' whispered Tertullian; 'do you hear voices? Here they come! Lie perfectly close; if the worst comes to the worst——' At the instant a clamor was heard behind us, as if a half a dozen men were calling to each other from different points; it came nearer, and ever and anon the oaths of the crew were borne with horrid distinctness to our ears. Floys Boyo's hoarse voice called his men to follow him to the shore. They passed round the hollow where we lay buried, through the pine grove, and so down to the water's edge, where their lanterns kept flashing about as they ran upon the sands with a vain search, and we heard the hollow tramp of their feet, as they leaped upon a sedge-boat which lay anchored near by. We examined our locks and percussion-caps, and lay silently, looking up at the stars, in painful doubt and suspense, as to what issue was at hand; and unwilling to part with our 'sweet lives.'
How dreary and disconsolate were those moments! What a contrast with the present, the scene which I had witnessed only three evenings before; lights, and voluptuous music, beauty, and the dance; now Scollop Island, Floys Boyo and his chosen men, and above us the cold sky, about us the howling winds, and perpetual roar and confusion of the sea. Hark! that was a woman's voice! A scream! Inarticulate sounds come up from the shore, as if another boat well manned had arrived. They are on the return to the Devil-Tavern. They approach us; now they are by the pine grove; their indistinct forms are visible by the light of the lanterns; Bullion stood there in a horrible tableau! 'To Bone Cavern! to Bone Cavern!' we heard them say, but the wind blew the remaining words away. 'Tullian! Tullian! now comes the trial! Here they are!' murmured I, leaning my head upon his shoulder. 'Stand fast! stand fast!' replied he. We held our hands upon the triggers of our fowling-pieces. The men stood upon the bank directly above us, causing the loose sand and gravel to roll about us, and bury us still deeper, while the twigs and bushes were now and then illuminated by the dancing lights which glittered upon the ends of our guns.
It seemed at that moment that my heart, which had been fluttering so long and fast, became perfectly calm, and wound up by the excitement of the crisis which had at last come. I lay there, uncertain, yet ready and composed, listening intently to every word which[44] they said. While I ardently awaited their movements, they turned their backs upon the place where we lay, and moved off; the light of the lanterns disappeared; their voices becoming more and more indistinct, at last died away; and except the waves which plashed upon the shore, there reigned a deep silence: we were comparatively safe. We drew the sands around us, and lying close together in our coats composed ourselves for the night. In a little while Tertullian snored; and I myself, overwrought with excitement, fell fast asleep. It was a sleep without dreams; and when we awoke the sun had risen, and was shining into our eyes. We sprang from our resting-place, clambered to the summit of the bank, and looked around us in the direction of the Devil-Tavern. There hung its sign, still creaking in the breeze, but not a sign of life appeared around it. Its inmates must have resigned themselves to slumber. It was a bright day, and the solitary island looked pleasant. We ran to the shore, pushed off the skiff which lay safely in the place where we had drawn it, seized the oars, and pulled merrily. The breeze blew cold, but refreshing, and the sun glanced over the waves. We were full of life and vigor, delighted with the idea of a safe return. In a little while we paused to release some choice spirits which were imprisoned in a bottle of old Otard. Tertullian poured forth a volume of pure Latinity, and again a chorus was heard over the waves which might have roused Floys Boyo and his crew:
The 'Spasm' shot over the waves with the speed of light; the shores faded in the distance; our ancient adversary the Devil was lost in his pictured proportions; and with a light heart we bade farewell to Scollop-Island, and to the hospitalities of the Devil-Tavern.
James Aldrich.
New-York, June, 1843
BY HANS VON SPIEGEL.
June, 1843
BY THE FLÂNEUR.
It is the beginning, the premier pas qui coute, in all compositions. Once started, there is no difficulty in proceeding; but how to begin! Shall we borrow of the prolific James?
'Upon a lovely morning in November, that season of the year when the woods have doffed their summer green to robe themselves in sombre russet, two horsemen were seen riding down a glade of one of those noble old forests which are still to be met with in some parts of England. The elder of the two, a fine, soldier-like figure, sat his horse,' etc., etc. And there we will leave him, and look out for our own beginning. Strange that a chapter on this subject is nowhere to be found in any book on rhetoric or criticism. For our part we are determined not to begin at all for the present, but to propound a number of queries suggested to us by the name of the exuberant novelist above mentioned.
First, then: Why are tears always called 'pearly drops?' Would not that definition apply better to drops of milk? Lands have been said to flow with milk, but never did the wildest romancer assert that the lachrymal duct in the human subject was a milky-way.
Then, why does the chevelure of dark-haired persons always resemble the 'raven's wing?' Why not his tail-feathers, occasionally, for the sake of variety? Or a crow's wing, a black-bird's wing? Or why not say, 'Dark as the wool on negro's poll?'—or as the mane of a bay horse?—or 'as black as my hat?' Is it absolutely necessary that it should always be a raven's wing?
When you say, 'cherry lips,' do you particularize sufficiently? Some cherries are yellow, some black. Should you not say 'red cherry lips? If any 'young orphan' happens to be engaged in novel-writing when cherries are in season, let him place two in juxta-position, and remark what a mouth such a pair of labia would make! Why are these cherry lips always slightly parted? Does not this give that stupid expression which the French call 'bouche béante?
Why are all necks, not bull-necks, 'swan-like?' Why does swan-like in necks mean beautiful and well-proportioned, and crane-like abominably extended, when the neck of a crane is no longer than that of a swan? Why are handsome noses always 'chiselled?' Why are fingers always 'taper?' And finally, for we must stop somewhere, why are beauties 'lovelier far in tears?' Did swollen eyes, bound with red, and nose pinkish in tinge at its extremity, ever improve the appearance of any mortal since the flood?
As it is not fair to destroy without creating something to supply the place of the destroyed, we take the liberty of showing our own ideal in stories:
'Upon a crimson sofa, in a darkened room, sits a lovely lady. Bright are her eyes as gas-lights in a shop-window; dark her hair as Day and Martin's best; and her red lips contrast with her white skin as do the red stripes with the white in Stewart's peppermint candy. Salt tears trickle from her eyes as fall the drops from an umbrella in a gentle November drizzle; and James's last novel lies unnoticed upon her lap. Why sits the lovely lady on the crimson sofa? And why does she rest her pensive and pomatum'd brow upon her embroidered handkerchief?'
That we flatter ourselves is an exordium, over which a discerning public may hang entranced.
'This young lady was hight Liner, Catherine Julia Liner. She wept for love of Shuffleshank, her inconstant beau.
'For one whole season Shuffleshank, whose soul, if he had any, was in his toes, hovered about Miss Liner, and attended her every where. He waltzed with her night after night, (and Shuffleshank twirled divinely,) and in the pauses of the dance he wiped the perspiration from his face, and with his touching and tender eyes,
until her parents and herself were quite certain of an offer. He certainly owed her one. She deserved some compensation for listening to his interminable stories, which were as monotonous as long. So celebrated a narrator was he, that his friends, when endeavoring to give each other an idea of some distance traversed, would say, 'It was one of Shuffleshank's stories,' or two stories. Sometimes unfortunate men could tell of a six-story walk, and these were looked upon as persons of great strength and vast powers of endurance. But the heartless, ungrateful Shuffleshank[47] allowed the mercury to descend in the thermometer of his affections for Miss Liner, and gradually his attentions grew colder and colder, until they sunk below zero and became neglect. But the faithless one did not long survive his treachery. He broke his wind in attempting to finish his tenth story that day, and expired soon after suddenly. He was discovered lying on his back, his toes turned out, and his head resting on a volume of Cotillons à quatre mains. His executors found among his papers the first sheet of a pamphlet on his favorite science, waltzing, dated only a few days before his decease.
You will pardon us, friend Knickerbocker, for giving your readers one or two original rules of so great a professor:
'Rule I. The cavalier should endeavor to waltz with women of a suitable size. The relative test is, that the noses of the couple be on a level.
'Rule II. He should put his right arm as far round the lady's waist as possible, and draw her toward him with the other hand, so that the noses before mentioned shall be not more than half an inch apart.
'Rule III. In case the lady should be inclined to jump, he must hold her down to the floor by pressing firmly upon her tournure.'
Society has indeed suffered a sad loss by his untimely death. But before we go any farther with our story, we will give a crow-quill croquis of the career of Miss Catherine Liner, down to the period of Shuffleshank's catastrophe.
'Miss Liner was of a good family: her pa, a retired merchant, with some tincture of the humanities, and she herself well educated; that is, she knew enough Italian to say pesch'e; enough German for 'es ist warm;' and enough French for 'Oh, vee.' Music she loved to distraction. True, she sometimes nodded at a concert, but then it was only to beat the time, and when awakened by a crash, she would shake her head in languid ecstasy, and sigh out a sentimental 'ah!' Or, if the nature of the air required it, she could shout in a voice sonorous as a cricket's: 'Divine!' 'magnifique!' 'grandioso!' or the hardest word she might remember out of any language. The gentlemen in waiting caught the cue; and men who had not ear enough to keep time when dancing, were unintelligibly scientific in allegros and andantes, and made frequent and familiar allusions to Hummel, Meyerbeer, Beethoven, and Weber. We ourselves must plead guilty of claiming an acquaintance where we never had an introduction. How true is that saying of Fuller: 'The best of God's children have a smack of hypocrisy!'
Miss Catherine's papa Silas was rich, and Miss Catherine was fashionable. She came out and offered a book-muslin view of herself to two hundred and fifty warm people. Bouquets, ay, double-bouquets, were sent her by insane beaux, by means of which young gentlemen who only knew two ladies in the room were converted into flower-stands for an hour or two, trying to look easy and at home, by gently rubbing the camelias against their noses from time to time. And when Miss Catherine had given a ball herself,[48] then did she become perfect in manner; then handled she her fan with consummate dexterity, and adopted an expression of intense fashionable agony when a badly-dressed woman passed by, or a clumsy Unshuffleshankian waltzer ran against her. Then sighed she in German to a gentleman from Connecticut, lisped in French to a dandy from Philadelphia, and whispered in Tuscan to her Italian master, if he happened to be within hail. Then waltzed she with young men, warm or cold, dry or moist; she would have taken a turn with a steaming tea-kettle, if tea-kettles wore white vests and valsed. Then danced she like a Bacchante, and only left the ball-room just before the lights; while melancholy Silas, pining for his pillow, clasped his hands and sometimes muttered, 'Ultima July;' and sometimes, as if desparing of rest below, 'in cœlo quies.' To have seen Miss Catherine Julia, you would have sworn that she was a descendant of Lord Lanesboro', si passionné pour la danse, who, after the death of Prince George of Denmark, waited upon Queen Anne, and advised her to take a quarter, by way of consolation.
Let us pause a while to take breath.
FROM THE GERMAN: BY FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.
PERSONAL TRAITS OF PRESIDENT TYLER AND HIS FAMILY.
The interest which is felt in the personal history of a distinguished man is materially increased in the person of Mr. Tyler, for and against whom so much has been said and written. And as I am no politician, but have had the opportunity of seeing a great deal of our Chief Magistrate, personally and in private, I propose to give to the readers of the Knickerbocker a few personal characteristics of the President, drawn from my own knowledge and observation. They are not in themselves of any deep interest, being such as arise in the every-day occurrences of life; but they therefore the better portray the man, and are of much interest on that account.
I remember one evening that a plain countryman from the interior of Pennsylvania called upon the President, and seemed to eye him with keen scrutiny. He was evidently a person well-to-do in the world; who owned the acres that he tilled, and had a good many broad ones; a holder of his own plough, from habits of industry rather than from necessity; and one who, evidently, had always spoken his mind without fear or favor. His plain but clean attire, and his honest, open countenance and proper bearing, struck me very forcibly, and reminded me of a remark which I once heard General Harrison make of Tecumseh, the celebrated Indian warrior, who has been called the 'Napoleon of the West.' General Harrison observed that the Indian was one of the most gentlemanly men he had ever seen. I asked him how that could be?
'Why,' he replied, 'he had self-possession and self-respect.'
This old farmer had these manly qualities. After a long chat with the President, he observed:
'Well, Mr. Tyler, you are a very different man from what I took you to be.'
'How so?' asked the President, laughing.
'Why I thought you were a large, red-faced, haughty man, with your hair combed back and tied in an old-fashioned cue, and that you were as proud as Lucifer. Why, you are as plain as a pikestaff, and as free-spoken as if you had no secrets in the world. I am glad I came to see you, Sir; I have been much deceived.' And so has every man been much deceived who has taken upon hearsay personal prejudices against the President. His personal appearance is very prepossessing. He is above the middle height, and slim, with long arms, and a quick, active gait. His forehead is prominent and very intellectual, with the perceptive faculties, according to phrenology, strongly developed. His hair is light and[50] thin, and mixed with gray. His eye is a light blue, quick and penetrating; at the same time it is frank and open, with a quiet humor lurking in the corner. His nose is remarkably prominent, cheeks thin, and mouth compressed. The whole face is full of character, and the features are remarkably plastic and expressive; changing with every shade of thought that passes through his mind. He is said to bear a strong resemblance to the Duke of Wellington, but his features have none of that rigidity which marks those of the Duke. His conversational talents are of the first order, and he tells a tale with great unction and glee, and with remarkable effect.
I remember the first time I saw the President, I was invited to dine at the White House by his son; and it so happened that after dinner I fell into conversation with the Chief Magistrate upon Mr. Jefferson, of whom he spoke in terms of great enthusiasm. I have since seen a letter from an old friend of the President's, reminding him that he had often expressed the wish before the decease of Mr. Jefferson, an event which, from his advanced age was long expected, that he might deliver his eulogy. It so turned out that the President was appointed; and any one who will read the different eulogies pronounced upon Jefferson, will be struck with the republican appreciation of his character and virtues which Mr. Tyler has set forth with such earnest and vivid eloquence.
I remember well seeing the President the day after the first veto. Great excitement prevailed in all parties throughout the day. The avenue was alive with groups of people in earnest talk, and many visiters, particularly, members of the Democratic party, repaired to the White House at night to tender their thanks to the President for the course he had pursued.
In the dead of the night the inhabitants of the President's square were aroused by the shouts of a drunken mob, who, with discordant fife and old tin-pans for drums, proceeded to the executive mansion and yelled, in consequence of the veto, those insults in the ears of the President and his family, among whom was the wife of the President, then in extremely delicate health. The day after all this, I met Mr. Robert Tyler in the street, as I was proceeding to my dinner, who invited me to dine with him, observing that there was nobody at the house but the family. We entered the White House at the southern front, and found the President seated with his son Tazwell by his side, a lad of fourteen, whom the President was teaching his lesson. It instantly struck me that there was a moral energy in the President of which his enemies little dreamed.
says Milton, in his splendid lines to Cromwell, and this is one of them. For months every persuasion to which eloquence could give power, had been exerted on the President, to obtain his veto on the one hand, and his signature on the other. The Whig party, in the plenitude of its power, personified in the person of their bold leader, the 'lord of the lion heart and eagle eye,' and standing on the grave of General Harrison, hallowed by his death, and full of the[51] dictation of success, felt themselves like Olympian Jove with thunderbolt in hand ready to strike down to endless political perdition the 'Acting President' if he dared to veto. The threat was made in tones of thunder, by their great champion. But, lo! the veto came, and calm amidst the breaking of the storm, the President was teaching his little son his lesson. It was a Roman one. In the battle-field a moment often decides the victory. A moment of decisive action which requires no wear and tear of spirit for days, weeks, and months—amidst imprecations and execrations—but an energy which springs to life on the instant, such as Napoleon exerted at Lodi, but which exhibits no greater powers of purpose than President Tyler exhibited—for none but those who witnessed it, can have any idea of the many and the powerful influences which were brought to bear, to obtain the President's signature to the Bank Bill—influences exerted not only by the distinguished and the powerful, face to face with the Chief Magistrate, but through the portentous threatenings of anonymous letters, of the most assassin-like and dastardly character.
We all remember the effigy-burning that succeeded the veto, and which, the President said, 'served but to light him in the path of duty.' A little anecdote which occurred at the dinner-table one day between Mr. John Tyler, Jr. and the President, will show how good-humoredly the President bore a jest upon the subject. There were several young gentlemen present at table, guests of the sons of the President. The Chief Magistrate sat among them, enjoying the talk with apparently as much interest as if the magnates of the nation were around him.
The conversation happened to turn upon the question as to which was the greatest man, Napoleon or Cæsar; and during the conversation, Mr. John Tyler, Jr. chanced to observe, that he had seen it stated, that Pompey's statue, at the base of which Cæsar fell, had been discovered in some excavations made in Rome. 'Ah?' said the President; 'well, John, was there any blood upon it?'
'You don't believe it, I suppose, father?' said the son.
'Why, John, I don't doubt that you have read of the excavation, but I doubt very much if it was truly Pompey's statue; for, after the lapse of so many centuries, the authentication of the statue must be very doubtful.'
'Well, Mr. President,' replied his son, very archly, 'I will tell you of one thing, of which there will be little doubt.'
'What's that?' asked the President.
'Why, some years from this, when some well-digger, or house-builder, or other person, is excavating in the neighborhood of Nashville Tennessee, Louisville Kentucky, or some other place that might be named, he may light upon a stuffed Paddy some six feet high, the earth half burned, with a rope around its neck: 'Ah, what's this?' some one may inquire. 'Why,' replies another, 'it is the effigy of that John Tyler, who vetoed the Bank Bill!'
'Ah,' said the President, laughing heartily, 'you have me there, John.'
I may here remark of Mr. John Tyler, Jr., who is the private[52] secretary of the President, that he is a very handsome man, with courtly manners; that his partialities are to the study of the sciences, rather than to politics; and that he has written a pamphlet upon electricity, which is said to exhibit much knowledge and originality.
Those who have not witnessed the terror which prevails among the clerks, on a change of parties in power at Washington, or even of a change of the head of a department, who, it is rumored, intends to make removals, can have no idea of it. Some poor clerk, who supports a large family upon one thousand or twelve hundred dollars, may have inadvertently let slip an imprudent expression, which some ready spy retails and makes public, with a thousand exaggerations, and, lo! the report takes wind that he is to be removed. Then comes the distress of his agonized wife and children, while the poor woman hurries to the President, or to the head of the department to which her husband belongs, to intercede for him, and save herself and family from ruin.
When General Harrison came into power, multitudes of such fears prevailed, and with fearful truth for their foundation. The good old General himself had no wish to proscribe, but proscription was the word with too many of his friends. I may mention a circumstance which came under my own knowledge.
The head of a certain department, shortly before General Harrison's death, turned out a clerk of his, who was accused of having busied himself in politics—a poor man, who had a wife and six children. She is a beautiful woman, but twenty-six years of age. Her agony was such as to render her almost insane. The removal left her and her children houseless and homeless, with the husband and father in debt. Fiction has wrung many a heart to tears with a fancied picture not to compare in sorrow to the truth of this. Shortly after this removal, General Harrison died, and was laid in state in the hall of the White House, whither flocked multitudes to gaze upon his lifeless remains, and reflect upon the instability of earthly power, and the vanity of all human greatness. I met the lady of the removed official with, another lady, and but one escort, on their way to look their first and last upon the departed President; and I joined her. General Harrison I had known well, and I spoke of his goodness of heart, and manliness of character, as we proceeded, with an earnest truthfulness, which seemed to impress the wife of the official, by whose side I walked.
'I blame —— for my trouble,' she said, naming the head of the department, half to herself; 'I believe the old General was good-hearted.'
We entered the White House. In state, just before the entrance, lay the General. His features were placid, and betrayed little or none of the sufferings of the departed spirit. My companion gazed upon him earnestly and long, and then said, with a hysteric start:
'I would to God it was —— who was lying in that coffin! I'd give a party to-night, poor as I am!'
One may well fancy how deep the agony of heart of a sensitive lady must have been, to wring from her such an expression. In fancy, she heard the voice of her children crying to her for bread;[53] and to her excited mind they appeared before her, dead as the departed President, and of hunger; for so she said, in speaking of her expression afterward.
It was a scene, in those days, to see the department 'let out,' as the boys would say at school. The aspect of those clerks whose political bias was known to be against the party in power, was lugubrious enough. They did not look like gentlemen who, after their official labors were over, were going to their dinners, but as if they were wrapped in sorrow, and wending to a funeral.
One day, shortly after the succession of President Tyler, a certain gentleman turned out fifteen of his officials, in one fell swoop. They got their notices that their services were no more needed by the department, about two o'clock, P. M. The public gardener happened to be in the President's grounds when he heard the news, and seeing the President on the portico, he advanced to him and said:
'Mr. President, only think of it; they're turning all the poor clerks out.'
The President immediately despatched a note for the official, who was soon in the President's presence, and ready to recount the political sins of the expelled.
'Reinstate them,' said the President; 'I cannot bear to have their wives and children coming to me with accounts of their sufferings, when I can prevent it.'
The President never thinks of making a display of mere official dignity. He never thinks of the President, unless he is fulfilling some presidential duty, or unless some one presumes, from his kindness of manner, to encroach upon his dignity; and then the encroacher instantly discovers how much he has erred. This, more than one senator and representative can tell, who has undertaken the task of dictation to the President.
Dickens, who found so much fault with our institutions, and our people generally, justly remarked of our Chief Magistrate, when he called to pay his respects to him: 'The expression of his face was mild and pleasant, and his manners were remarkably unaffected and agreeable. I thought that in his whole carriage and demeanor he became his station singularly well. And yet, as I have before said, he never seems to think of the display of official dignity.'
A distinguished artist who had been employed by the King of France to copy Stuart's full length likeness of Washington which hangs in the White House, was invited by the President to be his guest while copying the picture. The President also employed him to take the likeness of himself, Mrs. Robert Tyler, and his youngest daughter, Alice. The artist's manners were distinguished by the profoundest observance of courtly etiquette; and the Jeffersonian ease of the President's manners served to surprise him. I remember one day while the family circle were all seated round the fire after dinner, the artist rose, and with a profound salaam, said: 'Mr. President, with your permission I will retire to my work.'
'My good fellow, do just what you please,' replied the President, good-humoredly smiling, as the artist bowed himself out of the room.
The President has a peculiar power of inspiring confidence in all who approach him. In the summer-time it is the custom for the National Band of the Marine Barracks to play alternately at the Capitol and in the President's grounds. Crowds of citizens, with senators and representatives accompanying the ladies of their families, walk through the grounds while the band is playing, salute their acquaintances and chat with their friends till the music ceases, when they all, as the sun goes down, loiteringly leave. The President and his family always appear on the portico that fronts on the grounds of the White House, to which steps ascend from both sides, and receive their friends and acquaintances, who call on these occasions to pay their respects to the Chief Magistrate and his household. His manners are so very unpretending that, but for the respect that is paid him, you would not distinguish the Chief Magistrate from the group among which he familiarly mingles, unless you were an observer of character, and then you would know him from the absence of all restraint in his person and conversation, and the freedom and entire frankness of his intercourse with those around him.
On one of these Saturday afternoons, two countrymen, who looked like persons who had come to market, approached the portico, evidently with a desire to see the President. One of them asked a gentleman who was ascending the steps, which was the President. The gentleman pointed out the Chief Magistrate, and asked the countryman if he would like to be introduced to him.
'Why,' replied the countryman, 'I am not of his way of thinking, but they say so much about him and against him, that I should like to have a good look at him, any how.'
'Come up; he 'll be glad to see you. Won't your friend come?'
The friend declined; and the gentleman with his new acquaintance beside him, who gave him his name, ascended the steps. The President instantly noticed the countryman, and observed that the visiter felt some diffidence in approaching him. Mr. Tyler accordingly quit the group by which he was surrounded, and advanced to meet him. On his name being mentioned, the President gave him a hearty shake of the hand, and asked him from what State he came?
The countryman replied, from Virginia.
The President entered into conversation with him, and they stood talking together some ten minutes or more, when with a smiling countenance, and a frank offering of his hand, the visiter withdrew.
'There,' said the President, as the visiter left, 'is a man who, consulting the native manliness of his impulses, has a propriety of deportment that is better than any thing that Chesterfield has taught. He is one of Nature's noblemen.'
After hearing this remark, the introducer was anxious to know what impression the President had made upon a political opponent, who had made such an impression upon the President. He accordingly followed him as he walked away with his friend, who had waited below.
He was persuading his friend to go up and be presented to the President, and his introducer overheard him say:
'I tell you what it is, neighbor, I believe they lie about him faster than Eclipse can run.'
The President is truly a republican. He is often heard to express the loftiest sentiments of patriotism in his family circle, when he can have no purpose of popularity in view, but merely the wish to give utterance to his feelings. A visiter at the White House remembers well on one occasion, being then the only guest, when the Rhode Island difficulties were in their midst, when some one laughingly asked him, 'how he would like to be a King?' The reply was: 'I am afraid, in spite of my democracy, that I should say what the king of Prussia said to Doctor Franklin, that were he in the Doctor's situation he would be a republican too; but being born a king, he was determined to support king-craft.'
The President, who was gazing out of the window, and as it was thought not at all attending to the idle talk, turned quickly round and said with animation:
'I would rather settle the Rhode Island question upon the true principles of the constitution, establish a just treaty with Great Britain, and give my administration an honorable place in the history of the republic, than win and wear the most princely crown in christendom.'
The jokes between Mr. Wise and the President are often very amusing. Mr. Wise is the devoted friend of the President. The representative from Virginia drives a little one-horse carriage, and one day the President observed to him:
'Wise, that carriage of yours looks like a candle-box on wheels; why don't you get a more genteel one?'
'Why, Mr. President, it is a much more genteel one than yours. You keep four horses, which you don't drive more than once a month; and when you do, you hitch them to a second-hand carriage.'
'Why, Wise, how did you find that out?'
'Find it out? Didn't you drive it about for a month, with the coat of arms of Mr. Paulding, late Secretary of the Navy upon it?'
'What of that? Is not Paulding the real Simon Pure of the democracy?'
'Democracy blazoning its coat of arms!' replied Wise. 'I was really glad one day when I stopped at the carriage-maker's to get my truly republican vehicle mended, to see the ex-secretary's carriage there, and a workman employed erasing the coat of arms; making a plain pannel for your excellency.'
'Well,' replied the President, 'I claim to be descended from Wat Tyler, the blacksmith, and I had better have a good stout arm grasping an uplifted hammer, blazoned on my pannel; don't you think so? It would be a real democratic knock-down to Paulding's heraldry.'
Speaking of the President's carriage, reminds me of an anecdote of his coachman, Burrell. Somebody asked Burrell which he liked best, Virginia or Washington?
'Virginia,' replied Burrell. 'I think there are more gentlemen in Virginia, Sir, than there are about Congress. In Virginia, Sir, if a gentleman wanted to abuse the President, he wouldn't come right[56] by his carriage, where I, his coachman, am sitting, to talk it out so as I can hear it. I, Sir, I've waited on him ever since he was first married; I ought to know what kind of a man he is; and the way they lie about him makes me so savage sometimes, that I feel as if I'd like to have some on 'em tied to a tree, and have fair play at 'em with this horse-whip.'
This anecdote is enough to show what kind of a master the President is.
When Pettrick the sculptor was stabbed by some midnight assassin, as soon as the President heard of it he hurried to his studio, where the deed was perpetrated, and not only ordered him to be provided for, but saw him attended to himself.
One Sunday just after dinner, there were several loud ringings of the front door bell, when the President, who had left a gentleman alone in the dining-room, returned and said: 'They have it through the city that I have been shot!'
'With paper bullets of the brain, I suppose they mean, Mr. President,' said the guest.
'No,' replied the President, 'with leaden bullets from a pistol. Come, walk out on the portico, and smoke your cigar.'
The President with his guest walked out on the portico, whither soon came thronging a crowd of the President's friends, who, hearing the report through the city, had hastened to the White House to learn if there was any truth in the story.
There was no truth whatever in it; but every body present was struck with the President's indifference to the report, and the absence of all curiosity on his part as to how it originated. He only remarked: 'If I am shot at, gentlemen, it will be more in malice than in madness;' and apologizing, by saying that daily confinement required that he should take exercise, he rode away in his carriage unattended.
As a husband and a father, President Tyler is a model for any man; and particularly for public men, who too often neglect their families. For a very long time the lady of the President was in feeble health, which terminated in her death last summer. It was a beautiful moral spectacle to see the President, amidst all the cares and perplexities of his exalted station, beset by so many detractors, so devotedly watchful of Mrs. Tyler's declining condition. In the midst of the veto days, when engaged in the most animated political conversation, if Mrs. Tyler chanced to be in the room, the President's eye every minute wandered to her, in affectionate regard; and when she left the room upon the arm of her son or daughter, he would watch her anxiously and in silence till she withdrew, and would often remain in melancholy thoughtfulness for minutes afterward, forgetful of the conversation and those around him.
In bringing up his family, Mr. Tyler has been fortunate. His daughters, except the youngest, Alice, who is at school, are happily married, and his sons who are grown, Mr. Robert and Mr. John Tyler, are gentlemen of honor, manliness, and intellect; and Tazwell, his youngest son, is a lad of promise. Miss Elizabeth Tyler,[57] who is now Mrs. Waller, and living with her husband in Virginia, was much admired in her bellehood when in the White House. Her unpretending and gentle manners inspired with admiration all who approached her.
'Well,' exclaimed a fashionably ambitious young lady one day to a gentleman who was attending her on a visit to Miss Tyler, 'if I were Miss Tyler, I'd blaze my bellehood out as long as my father was President, and make the most devoted lover in christendom bide my beck in the crowd.'
The fair Virginian had no such ambition, and thereby proved herself worthy of the manly heart that has won her.
Mr. Robert Tyler, the eldest son of the President, is a young man of brilliant genius. As a poet, in high-wrought and vivid imagery, he resembles Shelley, whose likeness he personally resembles; and as an orator, there is not a speaker of his years in our country who has made a greater impression than he made in two extemporaneous efforts before the Irish Association. Bold, eloquent, and manly, he dashes into his subject with his whole soul, while comprehensiveness, energy, and point characterize every thing he says.
Certain persons, forgetting the decencies of life, have abused and calumniated Mr. Robert Tyler in the most gross and libellous manner. It is therefore due to him to say, that a kinder son, a more devoted husband and father, or a firmer friend, those who know him have never known. Magnanimous and chivalrous, he throws no veil over either his actions or opinions; and his frank and high bearing wins the regard of all those who come in personal contact with him, however much they may have been before prejudiced against him.
The lady of Mr. Robert Tyler does the honors of the White House. She is the grand-daughter of the late Major Fairlie, of New-York, a soldier of the revolution, and a distinguished citizen, who was well known to many of the oldest inhabitants of that city. Her mother was a celebrated belle, whom our present minister to Spain, Washington Irving, remembers vividly as his friend, and one of the most brilliant women of the day; a fair and witty and most worthy lady, who might well have inspired the author of the 'Sketch Book' with those exalted perceptions of female character which glow so brilliantly in his portraits of the sex.
Mr. Cooper, the celebrated tragedian, married this lady, and Mrs. Tyler is their eldest daughter. Three years since Miss Cooper married Mr. Robert Tyler. Dickens says when he visited the White House, that Mrs. Tyler 'acted as the lady of the mansion, and a very interesting, graceful, and accomplished lady too.'
The just perception of Dickens understood at once the character of Mrs. Tyler. She does the duties of the White House with a graceful naturalness that is remarked by every one, and she combines with a keen perception of character, an acute sense of the ridiculous and a ready wit, the most feminine gentleness of manner and deportment; qualities which are rarely found in combination. Mrs. Tyler is devoted to her children, and she dresses them as[58] plainly as if they were dwellers on a retired estate in Virginia. Her own attire is simple, and she never departs from this simplicity except when state occasions demand some little ornament. The greatest sense of propriety marks her whole deportment in every relation of life.
Mrs. Robert Tyler is now on a visit to a married sister in Alabama; for another beautiful trait of her character is her devotion to her sisters and brother. The only inmates of the White House at present (May first) are the President with his three sons, and Mrs. Jones, his eldest daughter. Mrs. Semple, the President's second daughter, is living in Virginia, and is a lady of great beauty, and in the bloom of health.
The fine features of Mrs. Jones are wan with long illness. She never leaves her room except on some balmy day, to take a short ride. The President always accompanies her, supporting her in his arms to and from her chamber to the carriage, with a tenderness as gentle and as watchful as her own to her babe. The President, unlike some distinguished statesmen of other as well as of our times, is remarkable for his high estimate of female character. He receives the lady visiters of the White House with a deference and respect which has been much noticed, and which is not the manner of a worldling and a courtier, compliment and hollowness, but the impulse of a lofty and holy sentiment. When a lad at school, he prepared as a theme for declamation an essay upon female education, in which the boy expressed those opinions which have ever since been entertained by the man.
The President is a man of the strongest sympathies. There is not a human being about him, from his servants to his children, of whose feelings he is not regardful, and in whose welfare he does not feel a daily and living interest. If the day be cool, he will ask his coachman why he has not his overcoat. If his servant happens not to be cheerful, he will ask him, in the kindest manner, what's the matter with him. And the complaint, if the servant have one, is made without the least hesitation, and with the certainty that he will meet at the President's hands both sympathy and justice. In his intercourse with his servants he is always kind, and frequently jocular, for he is a great lover of a harmless jest.
A few weeks since, the Irishmen of the Capitol waited on the President in a body, and through Mr. Hobson, their orator, expressed their gratitude for the interest he had taken in them, and their profound respect for his character, to which the President made a most eloquent reply.
It was amusing to watch the interest which the President's servants, all of whom belong to him, except Wilkins, the butler of the establishment, and his son, felt in his speech. They modestly took their station by the door, to listen to their master's reply, for they are devotedly attached to him.
'Short,' asked a gentleman, of one of these humble listeners, 'how did you like the President's speech?'
'I always likes the President's speeches, Sir, but I don't think[59] this one of his happiest efforts. I prefers him, Sir, before a jury. He can beat any man in Virginia, before a jury,' was the reply.
The President's love for Virginia is truly worthy of a mother, whose 'jewels are her children.' He delights in telling anecdotes of his early days, in Virginia; and he always has the most cordial greeting for his old Virginia friends, however humble they may be, when they call to see him. How is such and such a one? he will inquire, from the humblest laborer on a farm, up to the highest dignitary of the State.
President Tyler is a man of very unsuspicious nature, and there is no morbidity of feeling in him. He is always cheerful and natural. In the midst of great difficulties of state, when the Cabinet have held protracted meetings, and when, doubtless, there were differences of opinion among them; when the Secretary of State, with his beetling brows and cavernous eyes, passed by alone, absorbed in his own thoughts; when Mr. Spencer's quick step lost some of its elasticity, and the frank and firm Kentuckian, at the head of the Post Office Department, wore an anxious look; and the Attorney-General forgot, for a moment, his courteous salutation to a friendly passer-by; when that true statesman of the old Virginia school, Judge Upshur, seemed involved in what those who have not the mind to comprehend him, call 'abstractions;' and when Mr. Forward looked as if the cares of the Church, as well as those of the Treasury were resting on his shoulders; the President would pass from their midst to his family circle, assembled for dinner, greet most cordially, and apparently without a care, whatever person might chance to be their guest, and mix in the cheerful chat around him, as if he had no thought but the wish to promote it.
The President is a statesman with no secret opinions. He speaks out plainly whatever he thinks; and he listens respectfully, nay, kindly, to the adverse opinions of others, without the least spirit of dictation.
He is not the least of a formalist. If he has a guest, whom he asks to take a glass of wine with him, he will himself search for the keys of the side-board, if the servant happens to be absent, produce the decanters and glasses himself, and tell some pleasant story the while. When he talks of men, he speaks of their worth, and seldom of their wealth. With his purse he is too open, and too often he bestows more than his means warrant, upon some needy applicant, for whom he can find no office, or whom he may think unfitted for one.
For the President his family have the most unbounded love. The only restraint they know, is what they think he would not approve; and their familiar talk among themselves is never checked, in the least, by his entrance; it is, on the contrary, promoted.
These little personal traits of President Tyler and his family, which might be easily extended into a volume, are offered to the readers of the Knickerbocker as being not without interest, since they illustrate the private character of the Chief Magistrate of our great Republic, and with the assurance that they are strictly true.
F.
FROM 'PASSION ODE,' AN UNPUBLISHED POEM BY J. RHEYN PIKSOHN
TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'KNICKERBOCKER.'
'Sir: At a prayer-meeting held in the house of a friend of mine, in Bleecker-street, one of our most respectable and talented financiers, and who was connected with myself in the late Post-office transaction, of which I have favored you with a development, I was thunder-struck at being shown the last number of your somewhat amusing but reckless Magazine.
'My friend is a subscriber of yours, and was of course greatly agitated and offended at the unexpected and astounding disclosure of the private affair which you have so unwarrantably dished up for the public. As was very natural, he charged me with the authorship of that communication; and as a man of conscientious principle and high moral sense, I was of course unable to deny it. By this time the other gentlemen, our colleagues in said Post-office business, one of whom is in Bangor, the other in Texas, have probably seen the article in question; and you will perceive that I am thus made, through your violation of the sanctity of correspondence, to stand with them in the odious light of an informer.
'Sir, I supposed that your common perception of what is due to the ordinary courtesies of epistolary intercourse rendered it unnecessary for me to desire you not to publish any thing of a personal nature. What is to become of our 'areas and focus,' of our altars and fires? what is to become of the bonds of social faith, the cherished sentiments of domestic communion, the implicit confidence between man and man, if delicate matters of peculiar and single interest are thus to be blurted by an unreflecting conductor of a journal into the face of all mankind and half New-York? To use the emphatic expression of the western settler, who returned from hunting to find his house and family rifled, (rifled in both senses,) and the walls of his cabin plastered with the brains of his wife and children, it is 'a little too ridiculous.'
'The mischief, however, is done, and is past recall. The least you can do is to make what pecuniary compensation you consider due to my outraged sensibilities. Your Magazine is reputed to be profitable, and for the pile of correspondence which I have placed at your disposal the remuneration ought to be generous. I am no judge of poetry, but the quality of the article which I have sent you I have several times heard spoken of as first-rate.
'If you will enclose a draft through the post to the address of 'A. B. C. D. E. F.,' a portion of the fund shall go to soothe the lacerated feelings of my friend in Bleecker-street, and the rest shall be devoted to charitable purposes, or to the temperance cause.
'I had intended to write more fully upon this very vexatious subject, but as the ladies are waiting for me to attend a revival at the Tabernacle this evening, you must allow me to subscribe myself,
'Yours, truly mortified, —— ——.'
Fearless in the discharge of our duties to the public, as an 'able editor,' we have no hesitation in following the example of all able editors, and give to our readers whatever we think will be considered as a fair part of their money's worth. It is very odd that our sensitive correspondent, so keenly alive to the sufferings of his friend, the talented but lacerated financier of Bleecker-street, does not see that the same sympathy which he insists upon would equally apply to the persons abroad, whose letters he has 'so unwarrantably' made public. This, however, is in the true spirit of the age, which is so remarkably obtuse to that proverbial fact in natural history, that the same sauce which suits the female gander is equally adapted to the male goose.
TO THOMAS CARLYLE, ESQUIRE, LONDON.
T.W.P.
Who that surveys this span of earth we press,
This speck of life in Time's great wilderness,
This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas,
The past, the future—two eternities,
Would sully the bright spot, or leave it bare,
When he might build him a proud temple there;
A name that long shall hallow all its space,
And be each purer soul's high resting-place?
Travels in Egypt, Arabia Petrea, and the Holy Land. By Rev. Stephen Olin, D. D., President of the Wesleyan University. With twelve Illustrations, on Steel. New-York: Harper and Brothers.
The descriptions of the Eastern hemisphere, by enlightened American travellers, are the richest contributions to our native literature; and especially the pictures of Western Asia and Egypt, with which the constant perusal of the Bible has already made us familiar. Hence, the principle declared by Dr. Olin in his preface is undeniable: 'An unexceptionable book of oriental travels is a commentary upon the Bible, whose divine teachings derive from no other source illustrations so pleasing, so popular, and so effective.' This statement is true, not only of the erudite researches made expressly to elucidate the apparent difficulties in the sacred volume, but also of the unpretending notices of the visiter who merely records the objects as they passed before his eyes, and the actual impressions derived from the scenes as he surveyed them. From the first publication of that pioneer work, 'Harmer's Observations,' through all its successors of the same character, the result has been identical; the evidence has been progressively cumulative, to verify the infallible accuracy of the historical details connected with the scriptural archæology; and to American citizens probably the illustrations of antiquity, especially of Palestine, Egypt, and the intermediate Deserts, are the most acceptable; because our native travellers have none of the prejudices and prepossessions with which almost all the European monarchists, and especially those of Britain, are trammelled; and the anti-Asiatic citizens of this republic inspect the 'modern antiques' of the old countries through a medium of original freshness and simplicity, which give to their narrative a peculiar naïveté and vividness, evidently distinguished from the impressions on the minds of Europeans. The correctness of this position is obvious on all the pages of Dr. Olin's interesting volumes; and while he has expressly and designedly excluded all exhibitions of 'critical, philological, and antiquarian learning,' he has yet given us a work which, instead of satiating the desire to know the character of Egypt, Arabia Petrea, and the Holy Land, produces an earnest solicitude for a more extensive and profound acquaintance with those countries, with which all our loftiest mental and devout associations are inseparably conjoined.
It is not an easy task to specify any particular passages which require distinct notice, in volumes where all is so excellently adapted to interest and edify; but we may remark that Dr. Olin's disquisition on Mohammed Ali is the best article that we have seen on that topic. Every pure sensibility of the heart is awakened, as we peruse the writer's transcript of his emotions and reminiscences while roaming along the Red Sea; as he read the decalogue on Mount Sinai; studied the prophecies concerning Edom at Petra; contemplated 'the cave in the field of Macphelah;' chanted the songs of David at Bethlehem; surveyed the 'Potter's field;' 'fell among thieves' near Jericho; bathed[67] over the ruins of 'Sodom and Gomorrah;' walked in the garden of Gethsemane; and explored 'the city of the great King.' From all those subjects, lucid passages of great pathos and elegance might be cited to recommend Dr. Olin's volumes.
The decisively emphatic testimony which he has given to the dignified character and the noble qualifications of all the American Protestant missionaries, is of the highest importance and value, and constitutes a very forcible recommendation of his excellent work to every patriot and philanthropist. It is proper also to add, that the amiable spirit and the expansive benevolence which it every where developes, render it as grateful as it is instructive and refreshing. We cannot, however, better express our judgment of Dr. Olin's volumes, than in a sentiment from his own preface: 'Whether considered in reference to the intellectual tastes and habits produced or fostered by this species of reading, or to the doubtful or pernicious character of the lighter literature which it may supersede, every simple and true account of foreign countries, of their physical or moral peculiarities, manners, institutions, and historical monuments, and of their intellectual and economical condition, brings a valuable contribution to the best interests of education, good morals, and public happiness.' Without doubt such will be the benign effects of the work before us, wherever it is introduced. It will both extend very useful knowledge, and exert a most salutary influence among all who peruse it. Therefore we may hope, to adopt again our author's own language, that 'the fruits of his weakness and affliction will promote the cause which is so dear to his heart,' by the circulation of his travels among Bible classes and Sabbath schools, so that his 'highest ambition may be gratified,' and that 'good reward of his labors' be returned to him in ample abundance, for his perennial enjoyment.
A Memoir of the Construction, Cost, and Capacity of the Croton Aqueduct: Compiled from Official Documents: together with an Account of the Civic Celebration of the Completion of the Great Work, etc. By Charles King. In one volume, royal quarto, pp. 306.
Mr. King, by the production of this elaborate work, has linked his name with one of the most grand and beneficent enterprises of the present century, and the fame of which will be perpetuated so long as the Croton river courses through our streets, or bursts in its freshness from a thousand hydrants, or surges into the serene sky from hundreds of fountains. We can well believe that the extent and variety of research, and the perspicuous collation of relevant facts, which this work exhibits, are the result of a toil which could have been to the author none other than a 'labor of love' for the renown of 'the city of his birth and his affections.' Indeed there is nothing omitted, which could add to the interest or value of the book. A preliminary essay presents us with a cursory but clear and well-arranged examination and description of the chief ancient and modern aqueducts, as well as of the devices for supplying themselves with water, in use among the earliest peoples. The memoir of the Croton Aqueduct is in all respects complete and authentic; and includes, we are glad to perceive, a sketch of the numerous attempts which, from an early day, were made by the citizens of our metropolis to insure a supply of pure and wholesome water. The principal public water-works of other cities and towns of the United States are not forgotten: a general description of them leaves nothing in this regard to be desired. That this excellent record of our crowning glory as a city will attain a wide metropolitan and State circulation, it would be unjust even to doubt; but it should do more; it should be in the hands of the citizens of other cities all over the Union. Emulation of a great local good may thus be stimulated, as well as that just pride of country, which every addition to our public enterprises is so well calculated to inspire. The volume, which is printed with great luxury of type and paper, is embellished with a fine steel engraving of the Croton dam, and three or four minor illustrations. The dedication[68] of the book to the people of New-York, and their representatives in the successive Common Councils, is brief, forcible, and in good taste. In short, the work is an honor alike to the city and to the author.
The Illustrated Edition of the Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments; and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church: according to the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America: together with the Psalter, or Psalms of David. Edited by Rev. J. M. Wainwright, D. D. New-York: H. W. Hewet, Publisher.
Six numbers of this exceedingly beautiful publication are before us; and we hazard little in saying, that when completed it will form one of the most elegant volumes of a kindred character that has ever been produced in this country. The whole work will be concluded in twenty semi-monthly numbers, or within six months from the present time. The illustrations consist of vignettes of a beautiful character and design, and of sacred subjects, from the works of the first masters, adapted to the Epistles and Gospels, and the Psalter. That these will be tasteful and appropriate, may be inferred from the fact that their arrangement and adaptation are confided to the capable supervision of the accomplished editor. The greater part of them will be selected from the English edition of the Pictorial Prayer Book; many others, however, will be added from original drawings, prepared expressly for the work, by Mr. J. G. Chapman. Thus far, they have been engraved in a masterly manner, reflecting additional beauty upon the clear letter-press and pure white paper by which the emulous printer is perpetuating the remembrance of his care and skill. 'As an appropriate companion for the work, Dr. Wainwright will prepare a history of the Liturgy, together with a commentary upon the text and rubrics. This work will be embellished with designs having special reference to the church in this country. It will be comprised in twenty numbers. The whole will form two handsome volumes in royal octavo. Either of these volumes may, however, be taken independently of the other, so arranged as to be bound in a single volume.' The cost of the numbers is but thirty-one cents each! The enterprise has received the warmest eulogiums and recommendations from the entire clergy of New-York and Brooklyn, as well as from the clergy and laymen of other States.
Lays of my Home, and other Poems. By John G. Whittier. In one volume, pp. 122. Boston: William D. Ticknor.
We regard Mr. Whittier as one among the very first of our poets. With one or two eminent exceptions, no one of our best writers excels him in the melody of his verse, and the appositeness and beauty of his imagery. There is, moreover, a depth of feeling, an earnestness and ardor, visible in his later writings, which sufficiently distinguish him from the herd who write verse as they would write an advertisement; stimulated, too often it may be, by the same impulse in the one case as in the other. Mr. Whittier never sits down with a pen in his hand and a sheet of foolscap before him, to 'pump up a feeling' touching some pliable theme or another, as to the precise nature of which he is either entirely ignorant or quite undecided. How many of our rhymists, miscalled poets, differ from our friend in this! Sitting down with a desperate determination to get up an afflatus; to write, and to rhyme, at all events; to secure the requisite number of feet and the required number of necessary lines; is a process of composition which can never result in the production of poetry. A goodly proportion, and the best parts (evidently so deemed by the writer, who has given them the place of honor) of the volume before us appeared originally in the Knickerbocker. Much of the remainder, although not now first published, will be new to many of our readers, to all of whom we cordially commend Friend Whittier's neat and tastefully-executed volume.
Early Writings of the late R. C. Sands: Third Notice.—Through the continued kindness of the co-member of the 'Literary Confederacy,' of which the lamented Sands was so bright an ornament, we are enabled to set before our readers another Salmagundi from that gifted writer's facile pen. We have lately touched in these pages upon the character and proceedings of the early Puritans; and as a pleasant illustration of their peculiar views, manners, and customs, we shall venture to select a few passages from 'Salem Witchcraft, an Eastern Tale,' in which Sands's love of the ludicrous and the burlesque is forcibly exhibited. The era of the story is that annus mirabilis, 1692; the scene the town of Salem, (Mass.,) into which a stranger, mounted on a charger, descended from John of Gaunt's ploughing team, enters at a devout gait. This is Faithful Handy, an ordained teacher of the Word, who has 'a recommend' from a reverend brother to Deliverance Hobbes; which 'recommend' in some degree superseded the formalities of courtship in those primitive days. Miss Hobbes was no Hebe, if we may judge from this sketch of her person and features, taken as she turned round, while drawing water at a well, to reconnoitre the new comer: 'She squinted in the peculiar mode described by the poet, 'when one eye looked up, the other looked down;' and was terribly deformed in her person. Nature, in elaborating this rare article, seemed to have been trying an optical experiment; as if to show, by adapting her crooked figure to a parabolical reflector, how symmetry may be produced from the most hideous and uncouth distortion. Her head, shaped like a broad-axe, was garnished with a tuft of red wool, which 'streamed like a meteor to the troubled air,' and would, if transplanted, like the locks of Berenice, have affrighted the nations, threatening pestilence and war. Her green eyes were set deep in her head, and seemed affected, like the grass, by the hot weather. A huge hawked nose covered half her face. Her ears were set like a dog's in the back of her head; and her broad concave cheeks were rivelled with seams, stigmatized with scars, and riddled with the small-pox. Thin skinny lips, and a Bavarian poke of the chin, completed the nomenclature of her charms; and the rest of her person tallied with her face. Such was the dragon that answered in a shrill voice to the parson's inquiries, 'Yes, Deliverance Hobbes lives here; and I am her daughter Beautiful!' This was confirmed by the apparition of the matron herself; who was the exemplar of her daughter's attractions, except that her own charms had become mellowed by age, and contrary to the usual course of nature, matured into something rather less ghastly and horrible. She seemed to be informed of the purport of her visiter's mission; for her first inquiry was: 'Be you the minister that's got a recommend from Hugh Peters?' Faithful groaned in the spirit, as he replied, he was; and as he entered the house, could not repress an inward ejaculation: 'Hugh Peters had not ought to have did this! The Lord deliver me from Deliverance Hobbes, and the Gorgon, her beautiful daughter!' Deliverance expresses[70] her willingness that the preacher should 'keep company with her daughter Beautiful,' in which the latter acquiesces, with a supernatural leer; whereat the preacher is greatly perturbed. 'She is too bitter ornary!' he exclaims, mentally; and even a plentiful repast of bread, butter, milk, hominy, pork, sweet-meats, pumpkin-pie, and onions, cannot blind him to that fact; hence he makes an excuse to depart for a brief season, to visit his friend Goody Mercy Peabody, who lives hard by, promising soon to return:
'Goody Peabody was very glad to see Faithful, whom she had not beheld before since he was a child; and he was much pleased with her daughter Patience, who was the very reverse of Beautiful Hobbes; being a healthy, clean-limbed, tidy, good-natured looking housewife. He now learned that Beautiful was as ugly as she was bitter; being a vast virago, and an intolerable slut. In short, it was soon settled that he should keep company with Patience, and let Beautiful shift for herself. As soon as Faithful had left the mansion of Goody Hobbes, which he did as fast as fear and his horse could carry him, the damsel whom he thus uncourteously shunned, having devoured him and his charger with her eyes, till they were out of the sphere of their vision, incontinently swallowed the remaining segment of the pumpkin-pie to which he had paid his most earnest devoirs, and waddled off to her dressing-room, to adorn her person for his expected return. In about half an hour she made her reäppearance in the parlor, which had been in the mean while swept and garnished. But not as she went out did Beautiful now return. She had exchanged the dishabille in which she was accustomed to perform her domestic duties for the whole paraphernalia of her toilet; and she now appeared arrayed in shreds and patches of as many different colors as are found in the neck of a turkey-cock, and loaded with every article of her wardrobe, which she imagined could give zest to her appearance, or add intensity to her charms. Her fiery locks, condensed to a focus, and curiously entwined with a green riband, much resembled a bunch of carrots dextrously garnished with grass. Her crooked carcase had been, in some measure, straightened by a pair of tight stays, which, reaching to her hips, prevented her, as she sat in a high-backed chair, from making any other than gyral contortions. Goody Hobbes, who had also paid some attention to her charms, sat opposite her daughter, admiring the second edition of her own perfections. Admiration of themselves, and of each other, for a while kept the two paragons silent. The elder at length broke forth: 'I guess it's high time for Faithful to be back.' To which the younger replied, 'I guess so too.' Then says the elder Hobbes, 'I guess there an't no witches and spectres at Punkapog-pond.' 'I guess there an't,' rejoined Beautiful. A long pause now ensued, which was broken by the matron's observing, 'I admire what keeps Faithful so long at Goody Peabody's.' 'I admire so too,' says Beautiful, who, from the bottom of her stays, spoke like one from the tomb. 'I admire how ornary Patience Peabody is,' quoth Deliverance. 'I admire at her too,' quoth Beautiful; 'how bitter she is! They say she has seen the black man.' Another long pause ensued, during which the impatience of the couple manifested itself by agitations, and writhings of their heads and extremities. Faithful not making his appearance, these spasmodic affections increased to universal and horrible convulsions of their whole frames; and they sat like two Pythonesses on their sacred stools, pregnant with inspiration, and looking unutterable things. At length, in the midst of her paroxysm, Deliverance bounced from her seat, exclaiming with vehemence, 'I notion to send Remarkable to see where the minister stays!'
Remarkable Short, a woman six feet in her stockings, and quite 'in keeping' with the Hobbes family, is despatched after Faithful by Deliverance, in these dulcet-words: 'Remarky, I wish you'd go down to Goody Peabody's and look after the minister that ate supper here. I notion that he's forgot that it's time for him to come back and pray, before we go to bed.' Remarkable and her errand were not very courteously received. Goody Peabody said 'she admired what business such a long-shanked, ill-conditioned, bitter-looking body as she, had to be snooping about other people's houses at that time of night; that Faithful was going to keep company with her daughter Patience; that Remarkable had better return to her employer; adding, that if she didn't troop in less than no time, she would see if her help, Preserved Perkins, couldn't help her.' Remarkable, after a series of adventures, arrives at home, and reports progress. Deliverance and her daughter Beautiful receive the intelligence of the defection of the minister in a paroxysm of anger and mortification; which ends in Beautiful's falling back in violent contortions, exclaiming that she is 'bewitched by Patience Peabody!' The village of Salem, it should be premised, was at this period in a woful state of perturbation, if we may believe Cotton Mather, who tells us that 'the devils were walking about the streets with lengthened chains, making a dreadful noise in our ears; and brimstone, even without a metaphor, was making a horrid and an horrible stench in our nostrils. And whoever,' he adds, 'questions any of these things, I hold to be a person of peculiar dirtiness.' If we may believe Mather, therefore, the 'Prince of the Air' and his imps, with an innumerable host of spectres, phantoms, apparitions, and hobgoblins, were let loose upon this devoted place, and at the instigation of old women, potent in witchcraft,[71] were playing their damned pranks upon the inhabitants. Some delighted to stick pins and forks in the tender flesh of innocent babes. Others would grievously torment poor damsels, buffeting and tossing them about in a most lamentable manner. Sometimes they would cause the most serious and sober-minded persons to babble forth unutterable nonsense in all the known languages of the earth, except the Iroquois, in the which, it is said, the devil himself hath no skill. At others, they would excite the worthy townsmen, yea, even the selectmen themselves, to cut the most strange and fantastic capers; performing those evolutions which the Greeks call [Greek: kuzisan] and [Greek: ekkuzisan], now upon their heads they would dance aërial hornpipes and fandangos; and anon going upon all fours, they would bark like a pack of hounds, or bray like a troop of jack-asses. Beside this, brutes, and even inanimate matter, were the subjects of wicked sorcery: gridirons, shovels, and frying-pans, clattered and rang, though touched by no mortal hand; spits before the fire would fly up the chimney in the twinkling of an eye, and anon coming down again, stick in the back-log in a spiteful and portentous manner; and three-legged stools, slipping on one side, would laugh to see the matron whom they had eluded, lie sprawling on the ground. Naughty children would feign themselves bewitched by some person against whom they had taken an antipathy, and would kick, sprawl, and bellow, with wonderful agility, until they had succeeded in moving the tender hearts of judge and jury, and had the satisfaction of seeing poor Irishwomen hanged, whom their brogue convicted of infernal colloquies, or some poor old lady ducked and drowned, whom an unlucky squint showed to be possessed of an evil eye. In short, the whole country was in an eminently distressed and bedevilled predicament; and Beautiful Hobbes was a decided victim. A universal twitching assailed her joints; a sheeted paleness usurped her smoke-dried cheeks; the purple faded from the tip of her nose, and the color of her eyes became a dingy yellow; and she exclaimed, amid sobs and hiccups, 'Mother, there is a ball in my throat, and Patience Peabody hurts me!' And she continued to roar lustily, and pray for deliverance from her tormentor. Early next morning the Justice of the County Court is informed that there is a decided case of malignant witchcraft at Goody Hobbes's, where he is wanted immediately, in his judicial capacity. Accompanied therefore by the sheriff, and Cotton Mather and his son, he straitway repairs to the scene of bewitchment: 'When they arrived there, the room was full of people. Deliverance and Remarkable were keeping guard on each side of the bed in which lay Beautiful, who, as soon as the Justice entered, uttered a terrible screech, and fell into hysterics. Mr. Mather junior then walked up to the bed, and passed his hand over the coverlid. They asked him what he felt? He said there was something supernatural there, resembling a rat, and quickly withdrew his fingers, having received a scratch quite across his hand. The mob were now, by command of the Justice, turned out of the room, and Mr. Mather senior made a prayer of half an hour's length; Deliverance every now and then giving her daughter a spoonful of brandy, to keep her quiet. When the prayer was concluded, Beautiful was told to say Amen; but she only made a muttering sort of noise, which sounded more like an imprecation than any thing else. After many ineffectual attempts, they gave over asking her to repeat the word; and the Justice asked her, 'Who hurt her?' She then answered, glibly enough, 'Patience Peabody; she sticks pins in me; and there is her spectre!' This was enough for the Justice, who ordered the sheriff, in a magisterial tone, to seize and hold the body of Patience Peabody until farther notice, at the same time calling out of the window to one of the crowd around the house, to go down to Dr. Drybones, and request his immediate presence. The messenger found that worthy functionary taking his morning walk in the grave-yard which adjoined his dwelling. 'He was a lank, long-visaged figure, skinny and withered up in his person, and who bore a considerable resemblance to one of his own dried preparations. One would imagine from his appearance that he had become assimilated to the spot where he usually perambulated; and where it was said he had sent the greater number of his patients, as if to have them under his more immediate charge.' Dr. Drybones repairs forthwith to[72] the possessed mansion, in a parlor of which the Squire and the two Mathers are awaiting him. After the first salutations, they all repair in a body to the chamber where Beautiful was lying, engaged in her gymnastic exhibitions:
'The Doctor, at the head of the 'posse comitatus,' advanced solemnly up to the bed-side, and protruding his long skinny hand, took hold of the maiden's wrist between the fore-finger and thumb, with the true Esculapian gripe. Then closing his eyes, and holding in his breath, as if to condense all his sensibilities to the ends of his fingers, he began counting the pulsations. In about half a minute he pronounced, in a solemn, sepulchral tone, at each pause pouting out his lips, and smacking them in a curious manner: 'Pulse slow, and frequent; indicating a congestion of the cerebrum, and general plethora, together with a phlogistic diathesis; you understand me, Squire.' 'Oh, perfectly, perfectly; exactly so, Doctor,' replied the Justice, putting on one of his wisest looks; who, though he knew no more than a brewer's horse how a pulse could be slow and at the same time frequent, and also how this indicated a congestion of the cerebrum, yet did not like to confess his ignorance. 'And observe, Squire,' continued the Doctor, who had been lately reading a work on Nosology, and wished to show off a little before the Justice, 'observe, I say, the dilatation of the pupils, and the twitchings of the muscles, and the tossing of the extremities, and the spasmodic affection of the diaphragm, and the tetanic symptoms; you understand me, Squire; a very curious and complicated case, Squire.' The Justice, who at each stop in the Doctor's speech, had put in his usual 'Just so; exactly so; satanic symptoms, no doubt, Doctor;' coincided in this opinion. He also added that he had discovered the witch, and issued a warrant for her apprehension. Mr. Mather senior now came forward, and with a sneering and sarcastic expression of countenance, proposed, that as the Doctor understood the symptoms so well, he should exert himself a little to relieve them; at the same time insinuating that drugs and doctors were mere flea-bites, when opposed to witchcraft. 'Certainly,' replied the Doctor, in his deliberate tones, 'certainly, friend Mather, I shall do to the utmost of my poor abilities to fulfil the nineteen indications which offer. Of which the first is phlebotomy; the second a cleansing emetic; the third a saline cathartic; the fourth a potent anti-spasmodic; the fifth a relaxing sodorifie; the sixth——' 'Now may Satan take both you and your nineteen indications!' interrupted Mather senior, who was much offended by this pedantic and conceited speech; and whose indignation was vehemently aroused by his being called 'friend Mather,' which he considered a downright insult, he having a most horrible antipathy to Quakerism. 'I tell you what, Drybones,' continued he, 'you are a person of a shallow wit, and small capacity for understanding these things; and touching the wonders of the invisible world, I hold you to be little better than an ass. Here Mather junior put in his oar, saying that Drybones was a quack, and an ignoramus, and that he would not trust him to bleed his cow. Drybones, however, who possessed a happy share of equanimity, and who prided himself upon his imperturbable countenance, paid no manner of regard to these discourses; but pulling out an enormous fleam-lancet, and turning to the Justice, exclaimed: 'Now by the blessing of God, will I open the jugular of this damsel!' Then calling for three small porringers, and setting the spring of his lancet, the edge of which he tried upon his thumb-nail, he advanced boldly up to the bed.'
The Mathers interposed, however, and 'prevented the effusion of blood;' it being considered by the strict Puritans as much a matter of heresy for a doctor to interfere with a case of witchcraft, as it is for a physician at the present day to treat one of canine rabies by what is called 'regular practice.' The Justice and the Mathers, after the doctor had left the house, departed together, discussing on their way many serious topics and profound questions concerning witchcraft, sorcery, enchantments, good and bad spirits, apparitions, and such grave matters; in which the elder Mather displayed so much and such various learning upon his general theme, that it quite overpowered the Justice; who at last interposed, saying, petulantly: 'Well, for my part I don't know nothing about these things, and always did. A little law is all that I know.' The Squire having arrived at home, is informed by the sheriff that he has Patience in custody; when, accompanied by his 'divine friends,' the man of law proceeds with magisterial dignity to his hall of justice, where he finds a great mob of people, and hears the dolorous shrieks of sundry frantic-looking women, which he finds on inquiry to proceed 'from Abigail Williams and her gossips, who are roaring out because Patience hurts them.' 'Ha!' said the Justice, 'I begin to smell a rat. That Abigail Williams has borne testimony in every case of witchcraft that has occurred in this town since the beginning of the troubles thereof; and if she had been pinched, and pricked, and bruised, half so much as she says she has, she must have been a corpse long ago.' 'Pray, young woman,' said he, addressing himself to Patience; 'what is the matter with Beautiful Hobbes?' 'I do not know,' said Patience; 'I reckon she is crazy.' 'But why does she cry out against you, for putting the black man upon her?' 'I do not desire to spend my judgment thereon,' answered she. The worthy magistrate seemed puzzled what to say next, and turning to Doctor[73] Mather, inquired, 'what was his judgment touching the question, whether the devil could torment in the shape of a virtuous person?' Mather made answer, 'that he should be proud to communicate his poor opinion thereof at a more seeming time; but held it best, under correction, to proceed with the business in hand.' 'Well,' said the Squire, 'I believe there is no more to be said. I must make out this young woman's mittimus, and have her confined until the grand jury sit.' Faithful interposes for his lady-love, remonstrates against her imprisonment, and offers to undertake to make Beautiful repent her accusations before night, if he might be allowed a private interview with her; at which proposition Mather expressed himself shocked, and severely reproved Faithful for desiring to have infernal communication with a woman accused of witchcraft. When the Justice and his reverend guests had gone back to discuss the question, whether the devil could torment in the shape of a good man, the crowd proceeded to the sheriff's house, the women ranting, roaring, and screaming; the bedevilled Abigail Williams, among the rest, walking as if afflicted by Saint Vitus, screeching in the most painfully distressing tone, and ever and anon falling into apparent convulsions; the mob the while mingling their groans and dolorous wailings, as if Pandemonium had broken loose in good earnest, and Satan had come again upon the earth like a roaring lion. Meantime Faithful bends his way to Dame Hobbes's, to remonstrate with the possessed Beautiful. He reaches the mansion:
'With a trembling hand he ventured to open the door, after he had knocked several times in vain. Through the smoke which filled the apartment, he saw the elder female seated by the fireside, with her chin resting on her palms, and a stump of a pipe in her mouth. Remarkable was lying, seemingly dead drunk, upon the floor, and snoring like fifty bull-frogs; and Beautiful, in a short gown and petticoat, was sitting on the side of the bed, discussing a large bowl of bean-soup. The old woman took no notice of Faithful, but continued smoking her pipe with great sang-froid; but the eyes of Beautiful twinkled with emotion at his appearance. With a mixed expression of countenance, where pleasure and surprise at beholding the preacher curiously blended with the bitter twist given her visage by the hot soup, she motioned him to sit down beside her. He obeyed with the dubious air of one who seats himself with a half-formed resolution of suffering the extraction of a grinder. She edged up to him, and asked him if he would have some soup; but he declined the offer with a graceful wave of the hand, telling her that he came to have a little private conversation with her. At this, Beautiful told him to say what he had to say, as Remarkable was too drunk, and her mother too sleepy, to overhear him. The preacher now commenced a long and animated expostulation with the damsel, on her conduct, in which he mingled threats and promises, reproofs and entreaties, in a subtle and orator-like manner. Beautiful at first heard him with great impatience, and seemed convulsed with inward emotion; now stifling a rising sob, and now gulping down a spoonful of the soup. He at last seemed to hit upon an argument that fixed her attention; for all at once she became quite calm, and as soon as he had finished, wonderful to relate, promised to behave herself, and not be bewitched any more. Upon this he departed, telling her that the Justice was coming in the evening to see how she did, and bidding her be careful, and mind what he had told her.'
Accordingly, when evening arrives, Faithful accompanies the Justice and the sheriff to Goody Hobbes's mansion, which the 'visiting party' enter with faces as long and serious as if they had come to a funeral. The Justice breaks silence, by asking Beautiful how she finds herself, to which she responds, 'I notion I feel better this evening, and am not bewitched any more.' 'Then,' quoth the Justice, 'I guess you was crazy this morning.' 'I guess I was,' answers Beautiful. The final result is, that Patience Peabody is liberated, and Remarkable Short and Preserved Perkins, who have 'conspired against the general peace,' cut a remarkable figure in the stocks; where, being obliged to endure each other's company for two hours side by side, they contracted an affection for that position; 'their passions vacillated from the extreme of hate to that of love; a sneaking partiality arose between them; Preserved afterward married Remarkable, and a curious couple they were.' Faithful carried back his blooming bride, with whom he lived a long life of peace and innocence. 'They had thirteen children; the first was called Welcome, and the last Content; and their posterity inherit the land to this day.'
Many of our readers, who never had the good fortune to hear the elder Kean, will thank us for the annexed striking picture by Sands, of his personation of Shylock, in[74] 'The Merchant of Venice.' It was written for the 'Literary Journal,' a thin monthly pamphlet, which closed its very brief existence some twenty-five years ago:
'Kean's manner in the first part is that of the miserly, calculating Jew; and it is not until the entrance of Antonio, that we suspect him of aught worse than usury. The sight of Antonio kindles his hatred, and he exclaims, 'Cursed be my tribe, if I forgive him!' We tremble for the merchant, and shudder, as with a sudden change of countenance he smooths the wrinkle of hate from his brow, and turns to his victim with, 'Rest you fair, good Signior.' The speech in which he recounts the bitter scorn, the personal indignities he has received from Antonio, was finely given. It was not said entirely in anger; beneath his indignation could be discerned a malignant pleasure; and when he said, 'Well, then, it now appears you need my help,' his eyes seemed to flash with ferocious joy. The conciliating and jesting manner he assumed while settling the terms of the contract, was admirable, and the performance of the whole scene was without a fault. The passage most deserving praise, in the next act in which he appears, is the trembling eagerness with which he receives the news of Antonio's loss, as he exclaims, almost breathless: 'What, what, what! Ill luck, ill luck?' And even, while in his impious rapture, he thanks God, he still doubtingly asks, 'Is it true; is it true?' But it is in the trial scene that this gifted actor puts forth his strength. With what an unmoved air he listened to the Duke's exhortation to be merciful! His reply was not spoken with violence, in the loudness of anger, but with a horrid calmness in a subdued but chilling manner; and he asked, 'Are you answered?' in a tone of bitter irony. So fiendish a countenance we wish never to look upon, except when we know it is assumed, as when he sharpened the ready knife, and cried with a serpent hiss, 'To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there!' We almost quaked before the glance of his demon eye, as he seemed to gloat upon his victim. As he gazed on Antonio, his lips were slightly curled by the bitter smile of satisfied malice; his eyes were bright and distended with the joy of his revengeful anticipations; yet he neither spoke nor moved. We pass over many points, to notice his answer to Portia's suggestion, of sending for a surgeon, lest Antonio bleed to death. 'Is it so nominated in the bond?' And the expression with which he raises his eyes from the paper, and says, with a smile which a devil might own, 'I cannot find it—'tis not in the bond.' As the court proceeds to award the sentence in his favor, his face becomes lighted by exultation; his whole form seems to throb with joy; he bares his hands, and grasps the knife, with convulsive eagerness. But who can do justice to the sudden transition of his manner, the horror-struck, doubting air, the fixed rigid countenance, with which he hears the forbidding clause? When he finds utterance, it is but a sentence of four words which he pronounces. But how are they pronounced! The fingers which had clenched the knife gradually unloose their grasp, and fall nerveless and slowly by his side; the disappointed, dejected, almost exhausted tone, in which he with difficulty articulates 'Is that the law?' Surely this was the perfection of acting. We have beheld Cooke's representation of this character with delight, and have dwelt upon it with pleasure. But, great as it was, compared to Kean's, it appears a cold performance. Indeed, Mr. Kean approaches nearer to Garrick than any actor since his time. Kemble has more majesty; Cooke possesses more physical power, and though not a good, yet a finely-modulated voice. Cooper has great advantages both of person and voice; but they are all deficient in that astonishing variety of expression, that power of reaching men's hearts, and causing them to tremble, which distinguishes Mr. Kean.'
Kean's power over the feelings of his audiences seems scarcely to have been surpassed by any actor that ever trod the stage. Hosts of admirers speak of him even now with unabated enthusiasm.
The subjoined beautiful reflections and yet more admirable poetry are from an essay based oddly enough upon a version of one of the monosyllabic poems of Ausonius; a string of verses, in which the last monosyllable of each line forms the first of the next, and the first is the same as the last; so that they may be read over and over again without end. 'We take it,' writes Sands, 'as a good motto for a paper which we mean to write, without having any precise notion on what subject we shall descant. We mean to make, on something or other, 'a few plain and practical remarks,' as the Rev. Mr. —— says, when he means to preach a sermon five quarters of an hour long.' The paper thus lightly commenced, closes as follows:
'A MAN who lives out his threescore and ten years, or lingers beyond that period, must, in the common course of events, see the ordinary revolutions affected by time and death. At the middle of his career, he sees a flourishing family around him; friends and connections formed in his advancing course; attachments begun in sympathy, and cemented by interest. He lives on; and his children are scattered by the accidents of mortality, and their graves are in different countries. His friends have vanished from their former haunts, and the places that knew them, now know them no more for ever. 'He asks of the solitudes, where are they? and the hollow echo answers, Where?' There is no one to sympathize with his remembrances of the past; his infirmities become a grievance, or he thinks them so, to those around him; and he still feels that lingering attachment to life, which answers the philosopher's question, an mors malum sit, with the powerful evidence of consciousness. Hope and Memory delude the pilgrim in his journey, by the false colors with which they paint the scene before and behind him. 'Man never is, but always to be blest;' and as the future, depicted by the fancy only, presents unmingled visions of delight, the past, mellowed by time, loses the little inconveniences which jarred discordantly with the passing[75] music of pleasure; and its remembrance makes us regret what when present we neglected. It was under the influence of such reflections, that the following lines were composed. They were written in a prophetic hour by one who died young, and willing to depart:
Although we find ourselves 'at the end of the tether,' we cannot resist the inclination to present the following forceful lines. Possibly the sentiment may be deemed heretical by the very imaginative and the young; but even such, if tasteful and discriminating persons, cannot choose but admire the melody of the verse, and the beauty of the imagery:
We have not exhausted the stores which our obliging friend of 'the Confederacy' has placed at our disposal. When we have more space, we shall resume the desultory series which we are compelled to bring abruptly to a present conclusion.
Gossip from an American Lady in Paris.—We derive the subjoined pleasant gossip from a young and gifted American lady, at present resident in the French metropolis. We hope to be similarly favored, whenever our fair correspondent shall find leisure from the demands of society to transcribe her fresh 'jottings-down' for our pages: 'We went to the Hotel des Invalides this morning to see the plans in relief of the fortified towns of France. They are exhibited to the public only during one month in the year. The plans of those cities I have visited interested me particularly. They are so minute that Miss L——, who accompanied us, had no difficulty in finding the country-house near Toulon where she spent some months last year. I was much struck by the plan of Embrun, in Dauphiny, that little town celebrated in both history and romance by the pilgrimages so frequently made to it by devout Catholics. It is strongly fortified and built on a rock of semi-circular form, which rises so perpendicularly on one side from the meadows which lie below, that one would suppose it must have been hewn away by the hand of man. I was much interested, too, by the plan of Mont St. Michel, in Normandy, the celebrated prison, built on a rock, which the tide separates twice a day from the main land, and where the political prisoners condemned after the émeuté, in May, 1839, are confined. We were looking at the plan of a fort, on the pedestal of which the name had not been labelled as on the others, when a soldier standing near informed us it was that of Ham, where the nephew of Napoleon is now a prisoner. It is in Picardy, which I am told is the most arid and unfruitful province in France. It is built around a quadrangular court, or I should rather say there are three buildings and a terrace which form a hollow square. The prince, who is said to be a remarkably good horseman, is allowed to ride on this terrace, which is not shaded by trees; indeed, if this plan be correct, which I suppose it must be, as it has just been made, there is but one tree within the precincts of the fortress.... In the evening, my friend, Madame D—— took me to the house of the Polish Princess Czartoryski. Prince Adam Czartoryski is from his birth, his wealth, and his character, one of the most illustrious of the Polish refugees. His life has been checkered by every extreme of good or ill. In early youth, he served in the army of the republic of Poland. He was at one time the captive of Catherine II., and in 1831 was at the head of the provisional government of Poland. After the total defeat of the Polish army, Prince and Princess Czartoryski with some difficulty made their escape, with their three children, the youngest of whom was not a year old. The Princess had not even a change of linen with her, and no time to collect her jewels, which were brought to her after she had reached the Austrian frontier, by a soldier, whom she had never seen before, and who refused to tell his name. It is impossible to imagine a greater contrast than that offered by the present mode of life of the Prince and Princess, and the splendor by which they were formerly surrounded. Prince Adam was one of the richest proprietors, and possessed not one, but several, of the most magnificent palaces in Poland, and was accustomed from childhood to every comfort and luxury which wealth could devise. The house he now inhabits is as simple as possible; but he remains at home every Monday evening for the purpose of seeing his friends and countrymen; and his salon is always crowded with the most learned men and most fashionable women in Paris. These weekly receptions are attended with but very little expense here, as tea and lemonade are the only refreshments it is the custom to offer. Prince Czartoryski is a most venerable-looking man of about seventy. The expression of his face is habitually melancholy, but at times he is[77] very animated in conversation. Like most Poles, he speaks low and very slowly. I remarked that he was particularly polite and attentive to young people, which in a man, who, from his various misfortunes and trials, can take but little interest in general society, is, I think, very striking. The Princess, who must be almost thirty years younger than the Prince, is very lady-like and prepossessing in her manners. She is much beloved by her compatriotes: her efforts to relieve those who are in distressed circumstances being unceasing. She employs all her leisure hours in embroidering; and her embroidery, which is more beautiful than any thing of the kind I have ever seen, is sold at a bazar, which is opened during the last week of every year; new-year's day being the time when the French make those presents to their friends which in England and in our country are made on Christmas day. All the ladies of the Princess's acquaintance of course contribute to her bazar; and those who are remarkable for their beauty or their talents, are invited by her to keep the stalls. * * * Mrs. B——, whose son, a lad of about sixteen, is now engaged in attending the cours de religion, or religious lectures of M. Coquerel, one of the clergymen of the Reformed Church of Paris, took me this morning to hear one of the lectures. M. Coquerel is the nephew of the celebrated Helen Maria Williams, by whom he was educated. He is the most eloquent, and I believe the most learned, clergyman in Paris. I had been much pleased with his sermons, and was therefore very glad to have an opportunity of hearing one of his lectures. His class was composed of about thirty young men, of different ages, from sixteen to twenty-five. He has written a little book called 'Cours de Religion,' which he makes use of in his lectures. The method he adopts is this: He reads a paragraph from this little volume, and then comments upon it, and explains or developes it, often relating interesting anecdotes suggested to him by the subject, or asking questions which the foregoing lectures enable the scholars to reply to. The young men take notes, write them out at home, and bring these papers to Mr. Coquerel at the next lesson. The lectures for young men take place twice a week, from October to May, and those for young ladies at different hours during the same period. The scholars are admitted to take the sacrament at Pentecost. M. Coquerel is a most active and industrious man. Beside several volumes of sermons, and innumerable papers for different religious journals, he has published a very useful work, called 'Biographie Sacrée,' in which every name mentioned in the Bible is to be found. His manner is very animated; and as each lecture lasts but an hour, it is impossible that the attention of the young hearers should become weary.... 'April 19th. Went to the exhibition of paintings by living artists, which is now open at the Louvre. The most beautiful picture there, is one by M. Cogniet; 'Tintoretto painting his dead Daughter.' The biographers of the great master inform us, that he had a daughter who evinced great talent for painting, to whom he was devotedly attached, but who died when young. M. Cogniet has chosen the moment when Tintoretto, rising from his easel, on which rests the unfinished portrait, stands gazing on his beloved daughter, who is lying on a bed in the fore-ground of the picture. The father is almost de face, but the lower part of his figure is concealed by the bed. A crimson curtain falls behind him, and forms a rich but not gaudy back-ground to the picture and, by throwing a slight reflection on the daughter's face, relieves the whole from that disagreeable effect, which, with less judgment and good taste on the part of the artist, it must have produced, without taking from it the solemnity which the subject required. This is, on the whole, almost the only picture of the modern French school which pleases me entirely; in which there is no exaggeration of expression or gesture, and which deserves to be compared to those of the modern school of painting in Germany. I have no doubt that the circumstance of an exhibition taking place every year is a great disadvantage to young artists, who hurry to finish a picture for that occasion, in order that their names may be mentioned in the journals, and that they may obtain a celebrity which lasts but a few weeks. If the exhibition took place but once in five years, I am convinced we should see more fine pictures at the Louvre. Among the portraits I remarked one of[78] Major Poussin, who resided for so many years in the United States. It is painted by Mademoiselle Godefroid, a pupil of Gerard, and is a very good likeness. I was struck by a portrait of M'lle de Fauveau. This lady is of a noble family of Brittany, and is well known for her devotion to the cause of the Duchess de Berri, and for the talent she has displayed in the art of sculpture. She is neither young nor handsome; she is dressed in the costume of a peasant of Brittany, a sort of blouse or loose frock, with her hair cut short in a strait line across her forehead, as we sometimes see it in the portraits of the early French kings. There is a portrait of the Duke of Orleans at the Louvre. It was painted from memory by Scheffer, a very clever artist. Some of the fruit-pieces and portraits, au pastel, in colored chalks, are very beautiful. Indeed, the French excel in this style of drawing. Among the paintings on porcelain we particularly admired a Holy Family, copied from one of the old masters. It is a perfect bijou. The day after our visit to the Louvre, Mrs. R—— took me to the atelier of Mr. Healy, the young American artist. His portrait of Washington, copied from one by Stuart, gave great satisfaction to Louis Philippe, and has been placed in one of the historical galleries at Versailles. Mr. Healy has now a beautiful picture of two of Colonel Thorne's daughters, which he is retouching, at his room. The attitudes, particularly that of the eldest of the young ladies, are very graceful, and the whole picture in very good taste.'
The Irish Sketch-Book.—This capital work by 'Mr. M. A. Titmarsh,' otherwise W. M. Thackeray, Esq., author of 'The Yellowplush Correspondence,' has just been published by Mr. Winchester, at the 'New World' office, in a very neat little pamphlet-volume, illustrated with numerous engravings, from the pencil of the author. Our readers have had repeated evidences of the high estimation in which we hold the writings of Mr. Thackeray; and they may trust our judgment in this, that they will find the volume before us to be second to no previous work of the writer. It is, in fact, Ireland on canvass; its various cities and towns; its ludicrous modes of travel, and more ludicrous travellers; its wretched poverty, its generous hospitality; its suffering, and its indomitable good-humor. We were not until now aware that Mr. Titmarsh was 'given to song' as well as to romance and painting; but his 'Peg of Limavaddy,' a handsome kettle-scrubber, who handed him his 'rummer' of ale, and laughed so joyously at an accident which befel it, establishes the 'soft impeachment:'
We repeat, the 'Irish Sketch-Book' is a capital work, and cannot fail of very general popularity. The author possesses a delicate appreciation of the beautiful, as well as a lively perception of the ridiculous; a felicitous combination of faculties, since the union of fine taste and strong humor seldom takes place in the same individual.
'Miseries of Human Life.'—Some twenty-five years ago, a work in two or three volumes, under this title, was republished in this city from an English edition. One of these volumes lies before us; and if it be a fair representative of its companions, an American publisher would not find it amiss to put forth a new issue of the book; for it abounds in keen satire, playful wit, and pleasant humor. We have segregated from its numerous divisions a few passages for the entertainment of our readers. A good deal of what is termed 'criticism' upon works of art has lately been expended in this meridian upon an undiscerning and unheeding public; yet we propose to add to the amount, by copying the remarks of one Mr. Ned Testy upon an exhibition of paintings and statuary, similar, we may suppose, to the annual collections of our 'National Academy of Design;' similar, certainly, in many of the points touched upon by the critic. After a consideration of the Landscapes, 'with their meagre subjects, lying perspective, and timid handling; their frittered lights, lumpy shadows, indigo skies, and saffron sands; their forward back-grounds, and backward fore-grounds; with trees and meadows carefully colored from an emerald, and water of such an hue and surface, that forgetting for a moment the season represented, one looks narrowly after the skaters!'—after a discussion of these, en masse, we are favored with the subjoined 'hits' at a particular 'Family Piece:'
A Young man who 'wants encouragement,' had immortalized family affection, by representing papa standing up at one end of the picture, ('his lips glued to each other, and his bullet eyes wide open, though evidently seeing nothing,) and mamma at the other; the peace being kept between them without the loss of an inch of space, by their endless progeny, whose heights and ages the artist has most accurately registered, by stringing them strait out, closely linked together in a descending series, like the reeds of Pan's pipe, which they farther resemble in the lank uprightness of their figures, and the billious deadness of their complexions. The next of these Domestic Scenes reproaches the idleness so remarkable in the foregoing, by the great variety of employment which it exhibits, with the additional advantage of allowing more elbow-room to the fancy of the painter; who in the first place has contrived to record, in the mother of the family, a truly exemplary instance of notability, combined with maternal tenderness; for she is seen, at the same point of time, engaged in nursing one child in her lap, rocking with her foot the cradle of another, hearing the task of a third, and eyeing the frolics of a fourth; and all this without seeming at all distracted from her needle, which she has just drawn out at the utmost stretch of her arm. The remaining children are all liberally supplied with such occupations or amusements as, when followed at proper times and places, must be allowed to become their sexes and ages, but which we are not exactly prepared to see going on as here, all at once in the same parlor. The young ladies of this extraordinary family can study their maps and globes, pore over their books, and even practice their music-lessons, without appearing once to know that those boisterous and unruly little dogs, their brothers, are cracking their whips, beating their drums, scampering about the room with their wagons, etc.; the very baby in the cradle, instead of being frightened out of its wits, as might reasonably be expected, only appearing to be lulled into a still sounder sleep, by the riotous gambols going on.'
Outraging nature is as common in art now as it was in the era of Ned Testy. Here you may see the picture of 'a lady in full length, gayly and archly tripping out in a hurricane by herself, in thin fluttering muslin, without cap, hat, or bonnet, by the side of a raging sea; where, if one may judge by the disposition of her limbs, and the archness of her countenance, she is practising an allemande to the music of the thunder-claps which seem bursting over her in all directions; yet without the slightest mark of concern in her looks, or apparent apprehension of taking cold, after dancing under such discouraging circumstances of dress and weather; there stares a young miss strait out of the picture, with one hand grown to her side, and the other to the monstrous head of a Newfoundland dog, sitting up exactly as high as she stands; and near by, in another frame, a parcel of Months or Hours, in petticoats, are smiling and dancing jigs round an emblem, in the shape of a good-looking woman in green, who is supposed to be Spring.' The critic wonders 'why they haven't got to changing the Minutes, Seconds, and other inferior parts of clock-work into little fluttering urchins.' But pause for a moment, reader, with hushed respiration, while we set before you a specimen of the Awful! There is an appropriate 'power of words' in the description of the 'grouping,' and doubtless the coloring was 'in keeping;' as much so, perhaps, as in Dickens's picture of the Wise Men[80] of the East worshipping in a pink manger, or the Prodigal Son coming home in red rags to a purple father and a sea-green calf, waiting to be roasted:
'Here is a piece equally stupendous in size and subject, bearing the semblance of having been furiously thrown upon the canvass in the dark, from the disordered pallets of all the painters in the Universe; a sort of maniac's vision, embodied into a rolling chaos, turbulently brewed up out of the warring rudiments of smoke! blood! fire! night! whirlwind! earth! and water; a ruinous huddle of every thing spiritual and material, real and conjectural, within and without the precincts of possible Nature; and of every mingling shape, shade, color, quality, and consistence; the whole congregated mass of discordances tumultuously wheeling, dashing, boiling, and thundering together, in one giddy storm of—Nothing!' The figures of this landscape are entirely in keeping with it; 'ambiguous and reserved innuendos of beings, fluctuating somewhere among the shadowy and unsettled nomenclatures of incantation; demon, wizzard, griffin, goblin, demi-gorgon,' etc.
After a few more examples of 'single criticism' in this kind, we are favored with a 'running commentary' upon the ostracised paintings which adorn the upper tiers, and spaces over the doors: 'An upward glance of your eye introduces you to those poor creatures in reduced sizes, who are sent to Coventry at the top of the room, and strung along, by way of cornice, close under the ceiling; figures! but what language can adequately report them!—their wooden features, their mortified complexions; their sneaking, disconsolate, condemned looks; their quizzical head-dresses, and paste-board draperies; their brick-dust curtains, increasing by contrast the chalkiness of their cheeks; and that general and inveterate hardness of manner which instantly chases away all idea of the elasticity of the flesh, and the flexibility of cloth or linen. Hard!—adamant is pap to it!' The Crayons 'afforded striking examples of worse styles, by the help of worse materials;' there were still-born efforts in black-lead pencil, from the hands of academical tyros; wan historical sketches in water-color, by young ladies; imaginary elevations of bridges that will never be built; naked fronts of huge white houses, that sicken all eyes but those of the architect and the owner; and chuckle-headed busts in plaster, of obscure, pudding-faced moderns; likenesses in India-ink, 'done in this manner' for almost nothing; etc., etc. An exhibition of this sort is certainly proved to be one of the miseries of human life, 'by good witness.' But other miseries are enumerated; and chief among them, the humbugeousness of quack advertisers, and the gullibility of the public; and a medical sample is cited, which would do honor to any 'pill' or 'sarsaparilla' puff, of the present day:
'I should be the most ungrateful of mankind, were I to delay for a moment to return my heart-felt acknowledgments for the blessings I have derived from your inestimable pill. Before I was so happy as to hear of its miraculous effects, life had long been a burden to me. I was an object no less horrible than piteous to behold, being so entirely covered, or rather crusted, from head to foot, with the most virulent blotches and humors, that I ought rather to have been called an Ulcer than a man. I was at the same time so miserably emaciated, that my bones rattled audibly as I moved, and my head itself seemed to hang to my shoulders by a thread. In short, to such a condition was I reduced, that, on being carried to my own door upon a litter, on my return home after a short absence in the vain search after ease, my wife, who chanced to meet me in the passage, insisted that they had brought me to the wrong house, for that she had never seen me before! The sound of my voice, however, but too cruelly undeceived her; and I was then conveyed to the bed on which I continued to lie, without stirring hand or foot, for more than thirty years. During this awful period matters were constantly and rapidly going on with me from bad to worse; scarcely an hour passed but some new and still more deplorable disease was added to the complicated list of maladies which were devouring me up piece-meal, in a manner; and it was a lucky day when I could say that one or more of my bones had not dropped clean out of the socket! Sleep at one time, I had none, for sixty-nine successive nights, unless I may call by that name a series of swoons, brought on by my agonies, and the weakness consequent upon my reduced condition. About this period, the flesh began to drop in large collops from my back and shoulders; and from one hollow which formed exactly beneath my left pap, my heart was absolutely naked and visible, by which my inquisitive surgeon was gratified, at my expense, with a living display of the whole process of systole and diastole, as I think he called it. In this state of things, my case having been pronounced absolutely hopeless by every physician in the land, my friends began to think it was high time to call your invaluable remedy to my aid: and invaluable indeed it proved to me! No sooner had I begun to use it, than the most surprising alteration came on: while I was swallowing the first pill, I could plainly feel, to my inexpressible astonishment and delight, that a new and perfect growth of healthy flesh was rapidly forming in every part of the skeleton to which I was now wasted down; and before I had taken the third, I had reason to suspect, from certain strange and indescribable sensations, as if of some hard substance pushing or shooting forth in different places, that the numerous cavities left by the bones I had lost, were about to be filled up by a new process of ossification; which, sure enough, was presently found to be vigorously and prosperously[81] going on. My appetite, too, very shortly became so dangerously keen, that it was reckoned prudent to refuse me a third fowl at my dinner. But not to trouble you with too many particulars, (which to you, indeed, must be mere shadows of a thousand still more extraordinary cases,) I will simply say, that by persevering in the course for one week more, I felt not only that every symptom of disease had absolutely vanished as if by magic, but that I was suddenly able, (which I had never been in the best days of my youth and strength,) to perform the most athletic feats in leaping, wrestling, boxing, etc., without the slightest sensation of fatigue. To express the full extent of my gratitude to you, my dear Sir, for this almost incredible restoration, is a task which I must give up in despair; suffice it to say, that to Providence (under your pill) I shall ever acknowledge myself indebted for the felicity I now enjoy.' 'P. S. Please send me without delay, by the next coach, six dozen of the largest boxes of your Scorbutic Pills; though, indeed, I have not the smallest apprehension of ever having occasion to use them again.'
It would puzzle few of our readers, in town or country, to make a familiar application of this satire upon the prevailing style of quack advertisements.
Gossip with Readers and Correspondents.—In an admirable paper upon 'The Poetry of the Bible,' written for the Knickerbocker some years since by Rev. William T. Brantley, President of the 'College of South Carolina,' there was an incidental allusion to the proofs of the authenticity of the Sacred Word, as contained in the fulfilment of the 'prophecies concerning the nations.' A dilapidated book-stall volume before us, with the title-page gone, and the author's name nowhere to be met with, (facts in themselves noteworthy in this connection,) thus illustrates the position of our valued correspondent: 'The primitive Christians regarded the Scriptures as their chief and dearest treasure; and often laid down their lives rather than deliver the sacred records to their enemies, who used every art of terror to seize and destroy them. Then, as now, different parties and sects existed, who all appealed to the Scriptures for proof of their several opinions; and these must have been so many checks upon each other, to the general exclusion of mistake and fraud. But aside from this, look at their predictions, in the case of the 'chosen and peculiar people.' The separation of the Israelites from the rest of mankind, not for their own sakes but for the sake of all, and their preservation amidst their enemies, what a display is it of the divine power! This great scheme of wisdom and goodness was carried on by its omnipotent Author 'with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.' 'He sent a man before his people, even Joseph, who was sold to be a bond-servant. He increased his people exceedingly, and made them stronger than their enemies. He sent Moses his servant, and Aaron; and these showed his tokens among them, and wonders in the land of Ham. He sent darkness, and it was dark, and turned their waters into blood. Their land brought forth frogs, yea, even in their king's chambers. He gave them hail-stones for rain, and flames of fire in their land. He spake the word, and locusts came innumerable, and devoured the fruit of their ground. He smote all the first-born in their land, even the chief of all their strength. He brought forth his people from among them. He spread out a cloud to be a covering, and fire to give them light in the night season. He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it was dried up: so he led them through the deep as through a wilderness. At their desire he brought quails, and filled them with the bread of heaven. He opened the rock of stone, so that rivers ran in dry places. Yet within a while they forgot his works, and tempted God in the desert. Then the earth opened and swallowed up Dathan, and covered the congregation of Abiram. The plague also was great among them. Then, being chastised, they turned to their God. He led them over Jordan: the waters divided to let them pass. He discomfited their enemies. At His word the sun abode in the midst of Heaven; and the moon stood still, and hasted not to go down for a whole day; so He gave the kingdoms of Canaan to be an heritage unto his people; that all the nations of the world might know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, and that they might fear the Lord continually.' Such was the result of a scheme determined by divine goodness, planned by divine wisdom, foretold by divine knowledge, accomplished by divine power. 'The things of the earth were changed into things of the water, and the thing that did swim went upon the ground. The fire had power in the water contrary to his own virtue, and the water forgat his own kind to quench. Thus the elements were changed among themselves by a kind of harmony, as when one tune is changed upon an instrument of music, and the melody still remaineth.' How graphic also is the description of the 'gift of tongues,' conferred upon the Apostles! 'And they were all amazed, and marvelled, saying one to another: 'Behold, are not all these which speak, Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, the dwellers[82] in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia in Egypt, and in the parts of Lybia about Cyrene. And strangers of Rome; Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians; we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God!' * * * Most likely many of our readers will remember this 'vexed question' in logic: 'It either rains or it does not rain: but it does not rain; therefore it rains.' This used to puzzle us hugely; as did also the mathematical problem, in simple equations, which ensues: 'A cat has one more tail than no cat; no cat has two tails; ergo, a cat has three tails!' The conclusion is irresistible. Here is something, however, which is of deeper import: 'Johnson studied law with Dobson, under the agreement that he should pay Dobson, when he (Johnson) gained his first cause. After a time Dobson got tired of waiting for the conditions of the contract, and sued Johnson for his pay. He reasoned thus: 'If I sue him I shall get paid at any rate, because if I gain the cause, I shall be paid by the decision of the court; if I lose it, I shall be paid by the conditions of the contract, for then Johnson will have gained his first cause; therefore I am safe.' Johnson, on the other hand, being prodigiously frightened, sought counsel, and was told to reason thus: 'Dobson reasons well, but there must be a flaw in his argument; because I and not he will gain the victory. If the suit goes in my favor, I shall gain it by the decision of the court; if it goes against me, I shall gain it by the terms of the contract, not having yet won my first cause. Of course I shall not have to pay him!' Vive la Logique! * * * This fine picture of the Arabian Desert is from the pen of the late lamented N. H. Carter, Esq., formerly editor of the New-York Statesman, a daily journal long since discontinued. We thank 'C. P. D.' for his offer, which is gladly accepted:
A correspondent, well known to our readers, in a note to the Editor, remarks as follows, upon the passage of our May 'Gossip' which touched upon Coleridge and his conversations: 'I am glad of your remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth. I have been for years sick of the interminable cant about those two men. Their admirers have too long exalted them above all that is human. And would you know the reason? In discovering more depth, and pure humanity, and high inspiration, in their school of the prophets than the rest of the world have seen, they think the world will give them credit for deep penetration, high and refined sense, and a large share of the same or a kindred humanity and inspiration. Witness a sixty pages' laudation of Wordsworth, opening a number of the 'New-York Review,' by a writer who doubtless thought his own fame was thereby planted like an eternal light-house on the rock of his idol. Now I hope I am Christian enough to admire greatly the genius of Coleridge; and I am yet to find any thing in English or elsewhere more movingly and musically beautiful than 'Genevieve,' or more wizard-like and solemn than the 'Rime of the Antient Mariner.' I also plead not guilty to a contempt of 'Christabel' and 'Wallenstein.' Nor am I such a rebel to reason, or heretic in taste, as not to see surpassing beauty in many of Wordsworth's minor poems, and lofty grandeur in his 'Ode to Childhood,' and 'Stanzas on the Power of Sound,' and a high, philosophical, and musing mind in his great 'Excursion.' I have read him twice in the last two years, and my admiration has not at all diminished. But I choose to deny that he or Coleridge invented poetry, or carried it farther, or as far, as some others before and with them. I choose to deny that they have struck the great chord of humanity, unstruck before, or have sympathized more deeply or more sweetly with the joys and sorrows of the lowly million, than the great poets before them have done. I choose to assert, what has been abundantly proven, that they were both great egotists, eaten up by self, which the great poets have rarely been; and that Coleridge in particular often knew not what[83] he meant himself, but between opium and metaphysics, frequently tied the tail of one idea to the head of another, and called the monstrous and unintelligible coalition a theory; a mixture of Platonism, Spinozaism, and the d——l knows what 'ism. And for believing this, the Coleridgeites and Wordsworthites, who are the most intolerant of bigots, would call me an earthy blockhead, and for expressing this, an ignorant, blaspheming fool. Why, I once had almost broken with a friend, because I would not admit that Wordsworth was superior to Byron, and that Byron stole almost all his beauties from him! And the secret was, that the poor fellow thought he had the Wordsworthian gift, and undeifying Wordsworth was undeifying him!' * * * Are not the circumstances narrated in the following communication from a truly veracious correspondent, 'very remarkable,' to say the least? Can their truth be doubted for a moment, however, by any intelligent reader? Yet 'it's curious, isn't it?' In a note to the Editor, our friend writes: 'I have an uncle 'down East,' a retired sea-captain, who having nothing else to do, frequently writes me long gossipping letters. Sometimes they are very amusing: an extract from one of them I now send you. The story appears almost incredible; but knowing my correspondent to be a strictly conscientious man, who would scorn to draw the long-bow on any occasion, I have no hesitation in believing every word of it, whether others are willing to credit it or not. I give it to you in his own language, for there is a strait-forward simplicity about it, that should command belief:'
* * * 'All these things, dear S——, happened in my younger days, of course. As I have still a white page before me, I will detail to you one of my youthful adventures. I had one night been to a convivial party, which did not break up until nearly morning, when, on arriving at my boarding-house, I found the doors closed. Not wishing to disturb the inmates at that unseasonable hour, I proceeded in search of temporary lodgings, not doubting but that I should get accommodated at some one of the numerous hotels. In this however I was disappointed; every place was shut as tight as an oyster. It happened to be a wet, drizzly night; and after wandering about the streets for some time, and getting pretty well soaked, I began to feel rather disagreeable. What added not a little to my discomfort, was the fact that within a few nights there had been committed several daring highway robberies, in the very heart of the city, in one of which the victim was murdered; and as a natural consequence, no watchman dared to venture out from his hiding-place; thus making my situation doubly lonesome. In this dilemma, finding all legitimate places closed against me, I began to consider the expediency of seeking shelter at least, if not sleep, in any place that might seem to offer it. While in this mood, I found myself abreast of the —— church; and leaning against the lightning-rod a moment, the query occurred to me: 'Why not 'shin up' this rod into the belfry? I have slept in worse places than that, no doubt, and can do so again.' Now I had been a great climber in my boyish days; and feats which to others seemed difficult, if not absolutely impossible, were to me often matters of mere pastime. I therefore hesitated but a moment in such an emergency, but slipping off my boots and swinging them round my neck, I commenced the ascent; and in less than five minutes I had mounted a hundred feet or more, and got safely into the belfry. My accommodations here were much better than I could have anticipated. Some carpenters had been to work a few days previously, repairing the railings on the outside of the tower, and had left a quantity of shavings, which lay scattered on the floor. Placing these together in a heap, I threw my weary limbs down upon them, and was soon in a deep slumber, but not a quiet one. My horizontal position enabled the fumes of wine to reach my head, which before they had been unable to do, in consequence of my extreme height, for you know I am six feet three, and I soon began to have all sorts of fantastic dreams. Strange wild shapes flitted around me, and loud unearthly sounds filled my ears. But prominent over all, was an incessant ding-dong of apparently distant bells, which reached me in every variety of volume and tone; now low and sweet, and anon loud, startling, and many-toned, as if the thousand steeples of Moscow were again pouring forth lamentations over the ruins of their beautiful city. Suddenly, a single stroke, that sent its vibrations through every limb, startled me from sleep; and lifting my head slightly, I at the instant received a blow upon the back of it that sent me quivering against the frame of the belfry. I lay stunned for some moments; and on recovering my consciousness, the bell of the steeple was just closing, with a strange jangle, the peal for seven o'clock in the morning!
'I now comprehended the whole. The edge of the bell, on its return revolution, had come in contact with my head at the instant I had lifted it, on being roused by the first stroke. I placed my hand upon the back of my scull, and the proof of that fact lay there too prominent to be denied. A bump had been raised as big as a hen's egg. I paid but little attention to it, however, as the pain was but slight, and I was moreover exceedingly anxious about the mode of extrication from my present unenviable predicament. Sliding down the lightning-rod of a meeting-house, in broad day-light, was not quite so pleasant a performance as 'shinning up' one at midnight. While considering this matter, in a sort of a 'quandary way,' as brother Jonas used to say, the scuttle-door slowly opened, and the sexton of the church made his appearance. He did not observe me, but went immediately to the bell, which he began to walk round, and to inspect very minutely. At last he stopped: 'It's just as I expected,' said he to himself: 'the bell's cracked! Now what upon airth could ha' done it? I am sure I felt it hit something hard.' Here I mechanically placed my hand to the back of my head, and coughed slightly. The man turned, and observing me, started back with affright. I immediately stepped forward, and told him my story in a few words, taking care to make it as lucid as possible by the aid of a little silver, and saying nothing, of course, about the bump on my head. The man appeared satisfied, and told me I could go down with him. Before starting, however, I bestowed a hasty glance upon the bell, and perceived that it was indeed cracked, longitudinally, from the flange to the crown, and that a lock of my hair[84] was firmly inclosed in the crevice, just on the outer edge. This of course was enough to remove from my mind all doubt, had I had any, as to the cause of the mischief; but I said nothing, and followed the sexton down the scuttle. In a few moments I was once more in the streets, with my hat under my arm, for I found it impossible to place it any where near its true position on my head, in consequence of the new phrenological development already mentioned. But now, dear S——, comes the most wonderful part of my narrative. This little incident happened twenty years ago; and to my certain knowledge, since that date, the bell in that steeple has been replaced four times; and yet to this very day, whenever I pass within hearing of its tones, my ears begin to ring, my head violently to oscillate, and straitway I am seized with a stupor and dizziness that continue until I can get beyond the reach of its sound. You will recollect you once asked me why old Major N—— called me sometimes 'Captain Hardhead,' and sometimes 'Captain Waghead?' You have now the answer.'
The water stood in our eyes, reader, (and it will stand in yours if you have a heart to feel,) as we perused the subjoined eloquent passage of a letter from a friend to whom our readers have often been indebted for amusement, entertainment, and instruction. What a startling picture it presents of the first approaches of that 'hectic,' 'phthisic,' 'consumption,' or whatever be the favorite title of that most wily and fatal foe, who in one hand presents the insidious olive-branch, and in the other conceals his inevitable sword, cutting down youth in its blossom and manhood in its fruit! 'For very many years, from twelve to two have been my hours of retiring, and my exercise has been nothing, or nearly so, during the day. One result has been, that I have read one half of the Greek and Roman classics, and feasted largely in modern literature. A parallel result has been, that owing to corporeal sluggishness and nervousness, the curse of the sedentary, I have no doubt reaped less pleasure and profit than I might have done from half that assiduity coupled with a due regard to the wants of the body. The final result is, that an iron constitution is now largely disorganized; and from the constant presence of a dull, deep, stationary pain in my left side beneath the ribs, and fixed I fear upon the lungs, I begin to indulge in sad and deep forebodings. Often, when wakened by its painful urgency, I lie in the silence of the night, listening to my heart's deep beatings, and recall my early and yet unfulfilled dreams—dreams oh! how glorious!—and array before my unsated eyes this world, with all its lovely learning, and sweet poetry, and burning passion; and reflect how unfit I am to die, and try the conditions of a new existence, before I have fulfilled the duties and perused the mysteries of this, and then think of the wormy bed, and anticipate the hour when I shall lie there, closing my eyes to coloring and my ears to sound; the impatient longing I have sometimes felt for death is repaid by an indefinable horror; and between the tenderness of natural regret and the shudderings of unconquerable awe, passion masters pride, and both sink to meekness and humility in a flood of gushing tears!' * * * 'The Warning,' in its spirit at least, is borrowed. We are sorry to intimate this, but it is a fact, friend 'P.' You could not say that you have not read the poem which commences as follows, (if we rightly remember,) 'could you, now?' Guess not:
We gave on one occasion an extract from one of the 'Short Patent Sermons' of 'Dow, Jr.,' illustrating the endless extent of for ever. The same sublimity of conception is apparent in the subjoined glance at the magnitude of the planets, and the unsocial 'distance' they keep up between one another: 'If a person were sufficiently long-legged to step from star to star, and were to go at a decent dog-trot, he might as soon think of travelling from everlasting to everlasting and back again in a day, as to undertake to find an end to the planets which roll round their respective suns, as far beyond this insignificant solar system of ours as the farthest flight of imagination is beyond the jump of a ham-stringed grasshopper!' By the by, 'speaking of Dow,' here is a capital anecdote of the veritable Lorenzo, which is worthy of record. 'It appears' that Dow, in one of his odd, quaint sermons, declared that he 'had known sinners so very wicked that they actually bu'st!' This statement threw an old, ignorant, and fat impenitent present into a state of alarm and perspiration; and home he waddled, in mortal terror. At night, in the horror of his anticipated explosion, he rolled about until he could no longer bear it. He fancied he was already swelling. He rose and attempted to dress himself, in order to go out 'al fresco.' Who can paint his consternation, when he found he could but just strain the garments over his limbs, and even then they would not meet! He was suffering a rapid sin-dropsy; his iniquities were coming to light! He screamed in the agony of his fear; and a lamp being brought in, he found that in his haste he had put on his brother's clothes. 'The impression, however, says our informant, a clergyman of[85] the Church of England, 'was a salutary one, for he became a pious man.' * * * The 'Knickerbocker'-Steamer, that floating palace of the Hudson, must not pass unnoticed by 'the editor hereof.' To describe her, however, and her superb 'belongings,' her Dutch paintings and quaint adornments, is quite another thing. We have no space for an essay in this department of Maga. It shall suffice to say, therefore, that this truly magnificent vessel is in all respects worthy the honored name she bears. Could we say more? Appropos of this: It was not until the first volume of the Knickerbocker appeared, (this is our TWENTY-SECOND, reader; and, non-reader, an excellent opportunity for you to commence your subscription,) that one met our noble potronymic 'about town.' How is it now? Let the Knickerbocker steamers, bathing-houses, omnibii, restaurants, clubs—aquatic, literary, social, military, scientific, and artistic—and eke the Temperance-halls and root-beer perambulatories, make answer! Their reply is triumphant; and yet 'our' children play with the neighbor's children, just the same as if these were not 'parlous facts!' This, however, is one of the tendencies of that republican form of government under which it is our happiness to reside! * * * Are not these lines of Motherwell very beautiful? Such thoughts have we had a thousand times; and we desire to thank the writer for expressing them for us so well:
Small game, Mein Herr, of Albany—small game! A 'two-penny dip' would be wasted on it. Our correspondent's critique reminds us of the tailor in Laputa, who being employed in making a suit for the facetious Gulliver, disdained the vulgar measures of his profession, and took that gentleman's altitude by the help of a quadrant! We can pounce upon fair game, but we cannot 'like French falcons, fly at any thing we see.' Beside, if the satire was 'caviare to the General' of the 'New-Mirror,' how should it find a place in these pages? Our friend 'the Brigadier' is a fastidious and a prudent person. Did he not alter a quotation from Byron, in one of our friend Graham's 'Sketches by a Briefless Lawyer,' wherein 'waistcoat-pocket' was substituted for that startling indelicacy, 'breeches-pocket?' Verily, he did! * * * The following reflections upon the death of friends, and the memories of the departed, which we transcribe from a private letter to the Editor, are too beautiful and true to be confined to one or two readers only: 'I have read the exhortations of Plutarch, and Seneca, and Jeremy Taylor, and others, all hinging upon the idea that pain and bereavement are natural, necessary, inevitable, in this world of successive bloom and desolation. But pain is to me none the less painful because natural, nor separation less overwhelming for its necessity; nor yet is the blasting of cherished hopes less withering to my heart because the same blight has fallen on the verdure of other hearts, and kindred tears are falling from a world of mourners in a wide companionship of grief. 'The head may reason, but the heart will feel.' Time, however, is a great and effectual healer. Though a tree be lopped to the very root, the maimed giant will send up a new creation of vegetable strength. So the human soul, like some evergreen creeper, if you cut off or tear away its branches of affection with the object round which they entwined themselves, will send forth other tendrils, and wind its clinging arms around some other idol, embalming it with fragrance and clothing it in verdure. The sweet lines of Wordsworth are most practical and true, as well as poetical:
'And while there is one, and more than one, whose redemption from their iron sleep I would gladly purchase by a subtraction from the remnant of my own dismembered life, and principally that visible gushing tears, and the test of so great a sacrifice, might be some atonement for causeless misconceptions, and some proof of warm love beneath the outward shows of an inflexible hardness; yet I know that Time in his weary revolutions will soon bring us all together in a world of infinite knowledge, and liberal forgiveness, and uncircumscribed affection; a world where we shall 'see face to face,' and feel heart to heart; 'where no grief makes the heart heavy and the[86] eye-lids red.' * * * Standing with a friend the other day by the river-side, to take in the noble coup d'œil of the new steamer Knickerbocker, we overheard a little anecdote connected with water-craft, which made our companion merry all the way home; which we shall here transcribe; 'and which it is hoped may please.' 'It seems there was' (nay, we know not seems, there was) a verdant youth from the interior of Connecticut, for the first time on board a steam-boat. His curiosity was unbounded. He examined here, and he scrutinized there; he wormed from the engineer a compulsory lecture on the steam-engine and mechanics in general, and from the fireman an essay on the power of white heat, and the 'average consumption of pine cord-'ood.' At length his inquiring mind was checked in its investigations, and 'the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties' made at once apparent. He had mounted to the wheel-house, and was asking the pilot: 'What you doin' that for, Mister?—what good does't do?' when he was observed by the captain, who said, in a gruff voice: 'Go away from there! Don't you see the sign, 'No talkin' to the man at the hellum? Go 'way!' 'Oh! certing—yäes; I only wanted to know ——' 'Well you do know now that you can't talk to him; so go 'way!' With unwilling willingness, the verdant youth came down; and, as it was soon dark, he presently went below; but four or five times before he 'turned in,' he was on deck, and near the wheel-house, eyeing it with a thoughtful curiosity; but with the captain's public rebuff still in his ears, venturing to ask no questions. In the first gray of the dawn, he was up, and on deck; and after some hesitation, perceiving nobody near but the pilot, who was turning the wheel, as when he had last seen him, he preferred his 'suppressed question' in the oblique style peculiar to his region: 'Wal, goin' it yit ha?—been at it all night?—screëwin on her up?—eh?' What vague conjectures must have bothered the poor querist's brain, during the night, may be partly inferred from the absurd but 'settled conviction' to which he had at length arrived! * * * What a mingling of the dead Past with the busy, bustling Present pervades the mind of the thoughtful observer, as he looks down from the rising tower of the New Trinity Church upon tens of thousands of the dead whose bones crowd the grave-yard below; bones, and dust and ashes, over which are thrown in wild confusion huge blocks from the quarry, and piles of uprooted grave-stones, and slabs and urns of marble! As you have marked an elaborately-carved stone sink slowly from its ponderous 'drop' to its place in an edifice which is to stand for ages, did you never scan closely its grained streaks, its delicate chissellings, with the thought that when you were senseless clay, that very stone might arrest the eye of another, gazing upon it with sensations like your own? So at least have we thought, concerning those who have gone before us, as we have looked at the ornamental marbles of our older public buildings, erected in another age. But from the countless Dead, who slumber below, how solemnly comes up toward this rising tower the voice of warning and monition! Each 'storied urn' takes the form of the Departed whom it commemorates, and seems to say:
Mr. Wallace, the great musical Wonder, is not now in town, but, reader, should he return among us, be sure to neglect no opportunity to hear him. In his hands, the piano seems like an instrument hitherto unknown. It has the chant of woodland birds, the silver sound of dropping waters, and 'all voices of nature and of art.' We have heard no resemblance to Mr. Wallace, as a pianist. But it is his violin which speaks to us; and on this instrument no approach to Mr. Wallace has been met with in this country. How exquisite the notes, pathetic, joyful, or in 'linked sweetness long drawn out' which he conjures from that most facile of all instruments! We would travel ten miles to hear him play, in his style, that ravishing melody, 'The Last Rose of Summer.' We shall have occasion, we hope, again to advert to the performances of Mr. Wallace. He is yet a young man, and possesses the characteristic modesty of true genius; and has hardly yet learned that 'the world meets nobody half way;' in his case, however, not a necessary lesson. * * * If any of our town readers are fond, by way of literary variety and contrast, of disinterring the intellectual treasures of the buried Past, they will find 'pleasant employment and liberal wages' in glancing over the antique stores of Messrs. Bartlett and Welford, under the Astor House. We have been indebted to the courtesy of these gentlemen for sundry communings with authors who have been in their graves for five or six centuries. Every ancient book is an argument in favor of the immortality of the soul. 'Fancy a deep-buried Mastodon, some fossil Megatherion, Icthyosaurus, were to begin to speak from amid its rock-swathings, never so indistinctly! Yet the most extinct fossils of Men can do, and does, this miracle—thanks to the[87] letters of the alphabet!' * * * The friend who sends us, for 'a fragment of Gossip,' the anecdote of the verdant field-preacher who spoke of Saint Paul's having 'sat at the foot of Gammel-Hill,' is informed that it has already appeared in the Knickerbocker. The following specimen of kindred ignorance, however, is quite new to us, and worthy of repetition. It is a precious bit of ignorant bathos, which occurred in a discourse upon the sufferings of Christ: 'The blessed Saviour, my hearers, was dreadfully persecuted. Once, when going to Jerusalem, the Jews put him on a wild young jack-ass, and scattered branches in the road, and put clothes onto 'em, in order for to scare the little colt, and make him break the blessed Redeemer's neck!' The speaker actually preached this three times, till one of his congregation corrected him!' * * * The articles in the Edinburgh Review, and other eminent European periodicals, against the custom of the duello, would seem to be but the echoes of a prevalent public opinion. We perceive by late English journals that an Anti-Duelling Association has recently been formed in London. 'It consists of three hundred and twenty-six members, including twenty-one noblemen, thirteen sons of noblemen, sixteen members of Parliament, fifteen baronets, thirty admirals and generals, forty-four captains R. N., twenty-three colonels and lieutenant-colonels, seventeen majors, twenty-six captains in the army, twenty lieutenants R. N., and twenty-four barristers. They denounce duelling as 'sinful, irrational, and contrary to the laws of God and man;' and pledge themselves to 'discountenance the practice, both by example and influence.' The association includes, says a London journal, many members who have been successful heretofore in 'killing their man.' * * * One of the most delightful as well as most accessible places of summer resort in the vicinity of New-York, is the 'Hamilton House,' a spacious and elegant palace of an edifice, situated on the south-westernmost extremity of Long-Island, on the picturesque bluff at the ocean-entrance to the Narrows, commanding a wide view of the sea, the lower bay, Staten-Island, and the rich and cultivated fields of Long-Island; a combination of scenery unsurpassed on the Atlantic sea-board. Here, amidst healthful and invigorating sea-airs, and charming views; with spacious and well-ventilated apartments, public and private; 'tables richly spread;' wines of the best, and the means of recreation, natural and artificial, in abundance; what could one want more?—save perhaps the ready attention and courtesy of the proprietor, Mr. J. R. Curtis, and these are 'matters of course.' Go to the 'Hamilton House,' ye invalids and pining wights 'in populous city pent.' * * * We find the annexed charming translation in the hand-writing of Mr. Longfellow, among the papers of the late lamented Willis Gaylord Clark:
SUMMER TIME IN GERMANY.
FROM JEAN PAUL.
The summer alone might elevate us! Heaven! what a season! In sooth, I often know not whether to stay in the city, or go forth into the fields, so alike is it every where, and beautiful. If we go outside the city gate, the very beggars gladden our hearts, for they are no longer a-cold; and the post-boys can pass the whole night merrily on horse-back; and the shepherds lie asleep in the open air. We want no gloomy house. We make a chamber of every bush; and so have my good industrious bees before us, and the most gorgeous butterflies. In gardens on the hills sit school-boys, and in the open air look out words in the dictionary. On account of the game-laws there is no shooting now; and every living thing in bush and furrow and on the green branches, can enjoy itself right heartily and safely.
In all directions come travellers along the roads. They have their carriages, for the most part, thrown back. The horses have branches stuck in their saddles, and the drivers roses in their mouths. The shadows of the clouds go trailing along, and the birds fly between them up and down. Even when it rains do we love to stand out of doors, and inhale the quickening influence; and the wet does the herdsman harm no more!
And is it night, so sit we only in a cooler shadow, from which we plainly discern the day-light on the northern horizon, and on the sweet, warm stars of heaven. Whithersoever I look, there do I find my beloved blue; on the flax in blossom, on the corn-flowers, and the godlike, endless heaven, into which I would fain plunge as into a river!
And now if we turn homeward again, we find only fresh delight. The whole street is one great nursery; for in the evening after supper, the little ones, though they have but few clothes upon them, are again let out into the open air, and not driven to bed as in winter. We sup by day-light, and hardly know where the candle-sticks are. In the bed-chambers the windows are[88] open day and night, and likewise most of the doors, without danger. The oldest women stand by the window without a chill, and sew. Flowers lie about every where; by the ink-stand, on the lawyer's papers, on the judge's desk, and the tradesman's counter. The children make a great noise, and one hears the rolling of nine-pin alleys. Half the night through, one walks up and down the street, and talks loud, and sees the stars shoot in the high heaven. The foreign musicians, who wend their way homeward toward midnight, go fiddling along the street, and the whole neighborhood runs to the window. The extra posts arrive late, and the horses neigh. One sits in the noise by the window, and drops asleep, and the post-horns awake him; and the whole starry heaven hath spread itself open. Oh, God! what a joyous life, on this little earth!
Cambridge, July 20.
Longfellow.
The following we derive from the same source with the above. It is placed in type from the MS. of Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler:
THE PARTING PLEDGE.
I.
II.
III.
'What is more ridiculous to a dandy than a philosopher, or to a philosopher than a dandy?' We thought of this query, while reading a description, in a communication before us, of a knot of fourth-rate dandies, the 'apes of apes,' which the writer encountered in the bar-room of an inn, in one of the fourth-rate towns of Maryland. Doubtless these artificial 'humans' looked upon our friend as quite to be pitied that he was not 'one of us:' 'In their ultra dress, affected manners, drawling tones, and whey-faces, you might read the foolish inanity of an existence parallel in every respect to that of Beau Brummel, except that his was original absurdity, and theirs was folly on loan. It was Parisianism adulterated in London, qualified in Broadway, weakened in Chestnut-street, reduced in Baltimore, and at last in these provincial decoctions diluted to the lowest possible degree of insipidity, with scarce a perceptible tincture of the original liquid. These had no souls by nature; and the only idea they could inspire was one of humiliation, that apes were permitted to wear the likeness of God's image.' * * * We annex below a few random comments from an old and favorite contributor, (a 'scholar ripe and good,' who holds a felicitous pen,) upon three or four papers in our May number: 'John Quod is beyond all praise. I read the May chapters throughout with unqualified delight. The passage describing the old lawyer's affixing his own name, in his confusion, to the blind man's will, aroused me to unseemly, uproarious laughter; and the painting of Kornicker's manner, particularly his laugh, is scarcely inferior to Cooper's account of Leatherstocking's noiseless, inward laugh, the impression of which could not fade from my fancy in a thousand years. I'll wager my head that the May number of no Magazine in the world contains a sketch of more power and humor. As for the 'Lay of Ancient Rome,' I cannot praise it too highly. The imitations of ancient manners, and the keeping with ancient ideas, is excellent, excellent indeed; far better than the efforts of Bulwer, in his 'Last Days of Pompeii,' or than any other late imitations which I just now remember to have seen. Fresh from the perusal of Anthon's 'Horace,' (Anthon's classics are entirely unequalled,) and with Livy in my reach, the verisimilitude strikes me as almost perfect. You cannot fail either, to observe that, as in the 'Three Passages in the History of a Poet,' there is a great deal of sweet poetry scattered about among the jewels of delicate criticism and mirthful wit. I believe my love for the old Greeks and Romans is a little unreasonable; but it is my first love. I often woo other mistresses, but I always return to my 'prima donna.' Twelve or fourteen years ago I ingorged all of Smollet, Fielding, Richardson, Scott, and Cooper, at one intemperate meal, and then lay some[89] months inert and drowsy, like a huge boa-constrictor after swallowing a bullock. Then again for several years I dieted on Greek and Roman and early English literature. Once more I devoured all then published of Edgeworth, Bulwer, James, Marryat, and I know not how many others, rolled up in one monstrous mass. I wonder it had n't killed me; but the process of digestion brought me again to a state of healthful depletion, and my natural appetite revived. So, although I am delighted with genius, or talent, or wit, or mere taste, no matter when or where I encounter it, yet I cannot forget my youthful worship, or forego my early gods. The death-scene in 'The Young Englishman,' I do declare, went to my very heart. I have had since continually before my eyes the poor youth, flying from his destroyer, whose unerring dart was already in his bosom. What a mournful comment on that most affecting passage of Virgil, where the wounded deer flies from the pursuer, (who is in truth her companion,) with the arrow for ever in her side—hæret lateri lethalis arundo—flies through the summer forests, all heedless of their greenness, and lies down by some blue streamlet, helpless and hopeless to die! Seeing the other day a number of 'Graham's Magazine,' I read in it an article by E. A. Poe, who comes down on your old correspondent 'Flaccus' like a mountain of lead! It is clear that 'Flaccus' has in many places exposed himself to the charge of unmelodious rhymes, incongruous figures, and occasionally faulty taste. But there is a difference between a Pope that sometimes nods, and a Cibber that never wakes! I am not easily moved, in the matter of poetry; I think, at least, that it must have merit to please me; and I well remember that Flaccus's metrical love-tale in your pages seemed to me very sweet and original, and strongly redolent of the early English odor. His 'Epistle from my Arm-chair' was in good hexameters, and his 'Address to the President of the New-England Temperance Society' had a Tom Moore-ish spice of elegant wit about it, and might have been written by Mr. Poe in about a century of leap-years.' * * * The venerable Noah Webster, full of years and full of honors, has gone down to his grave, 'like a shock of corn fully ripe in its season.' Our very earliest associations, like those of millions of others, are associated with his name. That blue-covered spelling-book of his, with its progressive lessons of learning and morality; its pleasant fables and pretty pictures; its large type and dingy paper—the very smell of that spelling-book—all are as vivid in our mind as when we first took it to bed with us, in an ecstacy of enjoyment, some score and a half of years agone. And then his great philological work, which is now so well known in both hemispheres, what a monument it is of careful research, discriminating judgment, laborious industry! It will die only with the 'land's language.' Mr. Webster has been a frequent and always a welcome contributor to these pages; and we have even now in our possession late communications from his pen, of which our readers will know more hereafter. Noah Webster was an honor to his country. He was a scholar; a 'gentleman of the old school,' who lived a life void of offence toward God and toward man; and he died in the full assurance of a blessed immortality. May he rest in peace! * * * 'Poetry run Mad' is inadmissible, on two accounts. In the first place, it strikes us we have met parts of it at least before; and in the second, the style has 'outlived our liking.' Nobody but Hood manages well this ragged species of verse; a very clever specimen of which is contained in his 'Custom-House Breeze,' the story of a lady-smuggler who would not go ashore at Dover, because there was 'a searching wind' blowing, which might expose the lace-swathings of her person:
We have given no notice of Carlyle's 'Past and Present,' for the reason, let us inform the publishers, that we received no copy of the work. We have perused the book, however; and are compelled to say that in its style it exhibits no improvement upon the previous writings of its distinguished author. It is even less clear, to our comprehension, (or perhaps from the lack of it,) than any of his former productions. We are sorry to see, moreover, that he is obliged to repeat himself so frequently. Yet is there much matter for deep thought in his pages, and sometimes a whole[90] sermon in a single sentence. His heart bleeds for his suffering fellow-men in England, Ireland, and Scotland; 'twelve hundred thousand workers, their cunning right hand lamed, lying idle in their sorrowful bosoms; asking only for work, and such return for it in food, clothes, and fuel, as shall enable them to live, that they may still work on;' yet we do not see that Mr. Carlyle points out any means by which these many 'workers' may obtain redress of the 'crowned, coronetted, shovel-hatted, quack-heads' whose rule he stigmatizes so severely. Here is a fine passage illustrating the fact that he only is successful who is 'fortunate for good:' 'Success! If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded, no, not though bonfires blazed from north to south, and bells rang, and editors wrote leading articles, and the just thing lay trampled out of sight, to all mortal eyes an abolished and annihilated thing. Success! In a few years thou wilt be dead and dark; all cold, eyeless, deaf; no blaze of bonfires, ding-dong of bells, or leading articles, visible or audible to thee again for ever! What kind of success is that?' It is not possible for Mr. Carlyle to write a stupid or an unreadable volume; and it can only be affirmed, in dispraise of the present work, that it is less forceful and attractive than one or two of its immediate predecessors. * * * You are wrong, Sir 'P. F.,' altogether wrong. The 'competence' of the tiller of the soil, the 'abundance' of the successful mechanic, and the 'sufficiency' of the tradesman, we conceive to be better calculated to promote happiness than 'great wealth,' even when unencumbered. We are not insensible to the value of money. Our remark was pointed as to the wants that wealth brings; but the cares of it are not less exacting. 'Don't you know me?' said a western millionaire, soon after 'the crisis,' to a friend of ours, with whom he had formerly been intimately acquainted; 'don't you remember me? My name is ——.' 'Good heavens! it can't be possible!' exclaimed our friend; 'why, what has wrought such a change in your appearance? Where's your flourishing head of hair? where's your flesh gone? what's put that bend in your back?' 'The times! the times!' replied the 'poor rich man;' as for my back, I broke that last year, lifting notes; some of them were very heavy.' A grievous and unnecessary burden no doubt they were; and how much better was the rich man's 'wealth,' with its carking cares, than the 'abundance' of the contented mechanic?' * * * A MOST forcible warning to 'nations that know not God' is contained in the following passage from a recent discourse by Rev. Geo. B. Cheever:
'This world has been the theatre of a mighty experiment—whether nations could be prosperous and permanent in pride and sin. The result has been overwhelming. Empire after empire has fallen to the ground. I have passed over the ruins of dead and buried kingdoms; have seen the shades of departed monarchies, and conversed with them, haunting the spots of their former glory; and the hollow voice, as if the wind were moaning from earth's central sepulchres, has spoken in the words of Scripture, deep unto deep, in my hearing, The nation and kingdom that will not serve Thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted! It is a solemn thing to stand in the Colosseum at Rome, beneath the shadow of the Parthenon at Athens, within the crumbling shrine of the temple of Karnak in Egypt, and to listen to the echo of those awful words. These historical materials and monuments are so many intelligent chords, which men's iniquities have wrought for that great harp of the past, across which God's Spirit sweeps with its majestic, awful utterance! God grant that the history of our nation may not add another tone of wailing to the melancholy voices of dead empires!'
We are glad to perceive that the 'American Book Circular,' recently put forth by Mr. Geo. P. Putnam, of the Anglo-American house of Wiley and Putnam, London, has been received with a becoming spirit by the English press. It has been most favorably noticed in the 'London Review,' 'Examiner,' 'Athenæum,' 'Literary Gazette,' and other influential journals; and its publication has secured to the writer the attention and friendship of several of the most distinguished literary and scientific gentlemen of the British metropolis. This timely pamphlet, in fact, has opened the eyes of the English people to the progress of science and belles-lettres in America, and has served to enlighten them as to the extent of their literary obligations to this country. Widely noticed by the press, and stitched in all the principal reviews and periodicals of England, the 'American Book-Circular' has already been productive of great good to the reputation of our vigorous but infant 'republic of letters.' * * * 'Flaneur,' whom we welcome, has made sundry inquiries in preceding pages concerning certain terms and sayings which have long and generally obtained among pen-and-ink writers of romances and novels, native and foreign. There are other common sayings and comparative-adages, toward one or two of which we should be glad to direct the researches of the reader, 'on the present occasion.' 'Poor as Job's turkey,' has always puzzled us. Is there any authentic record of the personal condition of that afflicted bird, or of the causes which threw it into a decline? Why has it been handed down to us as the very Calvin Edson of its tribe? 'Not worth a Tinker's d—n' is another adage, whose origin is involved in mystery. When was the standard of value established for that intangible commodity of this particular artizan? Was there ever a 'sliding scale' for it, or such a[91] thing as a 'first-quality' article in its kind, before it became a synonym for nothing? We have already asked who that 'Dick' was, who wore such an 'odd hat-band' that its memorial has been perpetuated even unto this day? 'We shall resume this important subject in our next discourse.' * * * The sudden death of William Abbott, Esq., of the Park Theatre, has been announced in nearly all the public journals of the United States. We had the pleasure to know Mr. Abbott well. He was first introduced to us, on his arrival in America, by a private letter from Miss Landon, who spoke of his literary and social qualities in terms of cordial admiration and praise, which subsequent acquaintance convinced us were well deserved. To marked amenity and cheerfulness of manner, Mr. Abbott united literary acquirements of great extent and variety; a thorough knowledge of society; and a frankness of deportment which won, and a sincerity which retained, many friends. He was a most gentleman-like actor; and will be missed and mourned not less by his professional brethren than by those whose acquaintance with his talents and many good qualities was unconnected with his dramatic career. * * * How very prettily this little Love-passage is rendered! Our correspondent lets us hear from him quite too seldom:
TO ALMEDA: FROM THE SPANISH.
Boston, June, 1843.
J. T. F.
The appearance on our table of an exquisitely beautiful card of invitation to the great Dinner at Faneuil Hall on the Seventeenth of June (a kindness of the 'Committee of Arrangements,' for which, although unfortunately adscititious, we desire to render our cordial acknowledgments) reminds us to speak of another species of card, from the same press, which we must believe is little known, but which only requires to be known, to be found in the possession of every tasteful lover of the Beautiful. Mr. Dickinson, of Boston, has recently completed a variety of ornamental cards, of various sizes, large, medium, and petite, one use of which we desire to indicate to our metropolitan readers; not without the hope also that the information will not come amiss to our readers every where; for the cards are 'awaiting' as well as 'under orders.' As frames for medium and small engravings, we certainly know of nothing so tasteful and so appropriate. In color various; of tints inconceivably delicate; and with borderings of the most chaste yet elaborate and distinct bas-relief; they are 'just the thing' for the purpose we have indicated. We shall be happy to afford 'the ocular proof' to any one who may doubt the justice, or impugn the good taste, which we conceive to characterize as well the cards as our encomiums! These admirable specimens of American taste and skill may be found at the establishment of the Messrs. Woodworth's (late Bonfanti's) and at Nesbitt's in this city. * * * The interest still excited by the slightest object connected with the name of Napoleon has recently been curiously illustrated by the opening of a 'Napoleon Museum' in London, consisting of a vast collection of mementos of the great hero and his associates, from the day of his birth to the time of his burial. Among them is a morceau of his penmanship in his latter days, on the back of a card, the ominous nine of diamonds, which has caused a good deal of merriment to the cockneys, although it strikes us they should 'laugh on the wrong side of the mouth.' The imperial prisoner appears to have been making an attempt to commit some English words to memory, and to have noted down the difference between hungry and angry—words which must have sounded marvellously similar in his ears, from the mouths of his English visitors: 'Are you 'ungry?—are you angry?' We do not wonder at his perplexity. His memorandum runs thus upon the card: 'Are you 'ungry?'—'Avez vous faim?' 'Are you angry?—'Etes vous en colere?' * * * 'Polemics' is an article catholic and cogent in spirit and argument, but it is TOO LONG for an essay. (We wish we could impress upon our didactic correspondents the necessity of at least comparative brevity!) Rev. Theodore Parker, in the following, has expressed every fact and argument which our correspondent has expanded over eight letter-sheet pages! Indeed, himself shall be the judge:
'Who shall tell us that another age will not smile at our doctrines, disputes, and unchristian quarrels about Christianity? Who shall tell us they will not weep at the folly of all such as fancied[92] Truth shone only in the contracted nook of their school, or sect, or coterie? Men of other times may look down equally on the heresy-hunters and men hunted for heresy, and wonder at both. The men of all ages before us were quite as confident as we, that their opinion was truth; that their notion was Christianity, and the whole thereof. The men who lit the fires of persecution, from the first martyr to Christian bigotry down to the last-murder of the innocents, had no doubt their opinion was divine. No doubt an age shall come, in which ours shall be reckoned a period of darkness, like the sixth century, when men groped for the wall, but stumbled and fell, because they trusted a transient notion, not an eternal truth. But while this change goes on; while one generation of opinions passes away and another rises up; Christianity itself, that pure religion, which exists eternal in the constitution of the soul and the mind of God, is always the same.'
'Fancy's Vision,' says a correspondent, in a running commentary upon the poetry of our May number, 'is very well done for a Scotch song; although I think Burns and others have too well occupied that field, for foreign imitators to expect to glean much. It seems a little unnatural for Americans to compose in the Scottish dialect, however simple and well-adapted to love-lyrics that English-Doric may be thought. Some Scotticisms, such as 'bonnie,' 'burnie,' 'wimplin,' etc., are very sweet; but others, in my view, such as 'hame,' 'drap,' etc., are inferior to the English. Perhaps, however, the writer is a Caledonian.' To be sure she is; and 'that makes a difference;' yet we do not disagree in the main with our correspondent. By the by, speaking of Scottish poetry, here is a specimen of the true thing. It is from the pen of an esteemed friend and contributor, and has been widely circulated, and as widely admired, both at home and abroad:
THE WEE VOYAGER.
WRITTEN ON SEEING IN A GLASGOW NEWSPAPER THAT THE CREW OF A VESSEL DISCOVERED A HARE FLOATING IN THE FRITH OF FORTH UPON A SHEET OF ICE TO THE OCEAN.
BY JAMES LAWSON.
This would be 'ower Scotch,' perhaps, for an English ear, but that the very sound of the doubtful words is expressive of their meaning. * * * The 'Reminiscence of Little Burke' is not to our taste. He was an extraordinary urchin, certainly; but like all very precocious children, he grew to—nothing. We have always utterly detested infant theatricals. We know of no more ridiculous a sight than one of these dramatic juveniles 'strutting like a Lilliputian grenadier; trying to knit its brow, and flourish its little falchion at an over-grown victim of its vengeance,' who is bending half way down, to hear more distinctly the penny-trumpet tones in which he is threatened. 'Little Burke's' father had no very exalted opinion of his son's genius! 'Oh, no! by no means! oh, certainly not!' * * * We cannot resist the employment of a line or two, though sadly pressed for space, to commend to citizens and strangers the establishment of the American Museum, as conducted by its present indefatigable proprietor. It was our intention to have particularized some of the numerous attractions of this very popular resort; but as these are constantly changing, our intelligence would be likely to prove 'Johnny Thompson's news' at the end of the month in which we write. The corps of gentlemen-singers, for example, who adopted the 'Ethiopian' garb, were alone worth a walk of miles to hear. Think of a charming duet, in the most perfect time and harmony, on a pair of tongs and an accordion! * * * We derive from a lady-friend, to whose kindness our readers have heretofore been indebted, the stanzas translated from the German by Fitz Greene Halleck, Esq., in preceding pages. They were withheld originally from publication; the fastidious taste of the writer suggesting infelicities, which we are[93] certain will escape the scrutiny of less refined critics of 'the gentle art of song.' * * * Some newspaper 'down east' has been instigated to hint that the lively and gossipping New-York correspondence of the Washington 'National Intelligencer' is written by John Neal! As if it were possible to mistake the pleasant style of Mr. Willis, for the labored yet slovenly no-style of 'Omnium Scriblerius!' One might as well attribute the authorship of 'Thanatopsis' to 'Sir William Marsh, of Apple Island, Boston Harbor!' * * * The paper elicited by the article upon 'Forensic Eloquence' in our last number, is somewhat too kindred in character with that excellent performance, to be at present admissible. As the MS. is left to our option, however, with permission to 'add, clip, or destroy,' we annex a passage which will be new to many of our readers:
'Cæsar, who was himself an accomplished orator, and knew all the windings of the art, was so shaken on the occasion of Tully's oration, that he trembled, dropped his papers, and acquitted the prisoner. Many attributed this to the force of Tully's elocution; but it seems rather to have been the effect of Cæsar's art. He played back the orator's art upon himself. His concern was feigned, and his mercy artificial; as he knew that nothing could so effectually win Tully to his party, as giving him the pride of having conquered Cæsar.' In relation to the different styles of eloquence, the same writer observes: 'The pathetic orator who throws a congregation of enthusiasts into tears and groanings, would raise affections of a very different nature, should he attempt to proselyte an American congress; and on the other hand, the finest speaker that ever commanded the House, would in vain point the thunder of his eloquence on a Quaker meeting. Voltaire tells us, that 'in France a sermon is a long declamation, spoken with rapture and enthusiasm; in Italy, it is a kind of devotional comedy; in England, it is a solid dissertation, sometimes a dry one, which is read to the congregation without action or elocution.' A discourse which would raise a French audience to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, would throw an English one into a fit of laughter.'
D.'s story of 'The Whistling Bridegroom' is very good, but 'drawn too fine' for the strength of the fabric. Briefly, it is this: A clergyman is uniting two persons in marriage; and when he arrives at the point in the service where he directs the bridegroom to 'take the bride by the hand,' the former pays no attention to him, but looks steadfastly upon the floor, and indulges in a subdued whistle. The direction is repeated, but again the only notice taken of it is a continuation of the whistling, sotto voce. A third time the command is given, and the only response is the unique musical accompaniment aforesaid. The clergyman pauses, thinking himself intentionally insulted, when the blushing bride, who had doubtless been thinking of other things, raised her eyes, saying: 'He's deaf, Sir; and it's his way to whistle to himself, when he's any thing on his mind!' The explanation was satisfactory; and 'the deaf was made to hear' the next repetition of the important direction. * * * 'Pretty good,' but not quite probable, we think, the wonderful 'Lusus Naturæ' described by our Kentucky correspondent! Did he really think we should nibble at that hook? There is a wind-mill, we are informed, on the coast of Holland, which lays eggs and breeds young ones; but its family is not near so remarkable as the Kentucky wonder of our new contributor! Would he have the goodness to 'try again?' We fancy it must have been with him that the western story of the 'Prock' originated; a singular animal, with its legs, on one side of its body, very short, to enable it to 'graze on the inclined planes of nature!' It was caught, we remember, by 'heading it,' which reversed the animal, and rendered his legs useless, by changing their position! Vive la Bagatelle! * * * The recent death of Hon. Hugh S. Legare is an event which deserves a particular record in these pages. He was one of the ripest scholars of whom the Union could boast; and in all regards reflected high honor upon our literature. He always wrote from a full mind. Let any one turn to the papers which he furnished for the 'Southern Review' and our own New-York Quarterly, and it will be seen how forcibly they illustrate the justice of this encomium. Had Mr. Legare lived, our readers would soon have had an opportunity of admiring his literary performances in the pages of the Knickerbocker. In a late letter to the Editor, written only a few days previous to his leaving Washington for the last time, Mr. Legare incidentally exhibits the patient research of which he was about to reap an adequate reward, in the new and high career of public service upon which he had entered. 'My studies,' he writes, 'have for many years been of a very severe and serious cast, looking all of them, more or less, to useful results in active life, and most of them connected with political economy and jurisprudence.' Works of recondite research and striking views, such as those of Niebur, Savigny, and others of that illustrious German line, had richly furnished his adversaria and port-folios; and it was from these that he was to have enriched and diversified our pages. The death of such a man, in the prime of life and in the midst of his usefulness, is a public loss, which cannot fail to be widely and deeply felt. Honorable and high-minded in all the relations of life, Mr. Legare met his last hour with perfect composure. In dying as in living, he was the admiration of his friends. * * * We saw the other day what its possessor termed a 'Dogberry-o'-type likeness' of Miller, the Prophet—a counterfeit presentment of a cunning old humbug, 'on[94] its very face.' Its exhibition led to a story of one of Miller's converts, which we thought worth remembering. A matter-of-fact old gentleman in New England, whose wife was a thoroughgoing 'Destructionist,' was awakened out of his sleep by his 'possessed' rib, one cold and stormy March night, with: 'Husband! did you hear that noise? It's Gabriel a-comin'! It's the sound of his chariot-wheels!' 'Oh, psha! you old fool!' replied the gude man; 'do you s'pose Gabriel is such an ass as to come on wheels, in such good sleighing as this? I tell you it's the wind; turn over, and go to sleep!' We believe she did. * * * The 'Confessions of a Belle' is not a new title, and it strikes us that we have encountered some of its incidents before. The lesson, howbeit, is an excellent one. Theodore Hook speaks forcibly to this point, in a portrait of one of his female characters: 'With all this blaze of notoriety, did any body esteem her particularly? Was there any one man upon earth who on his pillow could say, 'My God! what an angel is Fanny Wilding!' Had she ever refused an offer of marriage? No! for nobody ever had made her one. She was like a fine fire-work, entertaining to look at, but dangerous to come near to; her bouncing and cracking in the open air gave a lustre to surrounding objects, but there was not a human being who could be tempted to take the exhibition into his own house.' * * * If 'J. P. S.' will look once more at our remarks, touching which he 'begs leave to demur,' he will find that we differ very little from himself. His pride of opinion runs to a point, and reminds us of a reply we once heard a quaint old Friend make to the eager question of a group around him, touching the relative speed of two steam-boats which were running a race, and a very even one, through Long Island Sound. 'Don't you think we've gained on her, in coming the last forty miles?' 'Yes,' replied the Quaker, with great gravity; 'I should say we had.' 'Well, how much, should you think?' 'I maybe mistaken,' responded our Friend, 'but, I should say, about an inch!' We believe this 'close observer' was not again appealed to for his judgment in the premises. * * * We do not much affect parodies, generally, but the following, from the London 'Charivari,' is too good to be lost. It is entitled 'The Macadamized,' and is set to the air of 'The Monks of Old:'
'The Croton Fever,' by 'Straws, Jr.' has good points. Some of its humor is 'rather fine,' certainly, but only because it is strained. The satire, however, is in one instance just. A friend in a sister city, recently returned home from a visit to New-York, writes us that he is henceforth a Baptist, greatly preferring immersion to sprinkling, of which latter practice of ours, he entertains a vivid recollection. 'In short,' he writes, 'I never saw such a set of incorrigible squirts as you have in Gotham. Morning and evening, every householder, who can afford it, stands before his door, playing with his machine; now deluging the walk, now the pavement, and anon flooding his doors, windows, and blinds with hissing streams of Croton. When you write Dickens next, just tell him that the application of the douche to the pigs, from hundreds of Croton-pipers, has well-nigh driven those quadrupedal republicans from the thoroughfares. That's one comfort!' Ah! yes; and clean streets, and murmuring fountains, and cool side-walks, are 'comforts' also, 'which they of the adverse faction want.' The grapes are not sweet, and 'that's the humor on't!' * * * The Idleberg 'chronicle' will be concluded in our next. The loss of a sheet of the copy (which has now been re-supplied by the author) is the cause of the delay. The fourth number of 'Meadow Farm' will also appear in our August number. The following papers are filed for insertion, or awaiting adequate consideration: 'Greek Epitaphs and Inscriptions;' 'The Doomed Ship;' 'Thales of Paris;' 'Chronicles by an Antiquary;' 'My Leg, a Sketch;' 'A Defence of the Pythagorean System;' 'The Novel-Reader;' 'Disguised Derivative Words in English;' 'Mary May, the Newfoundland Indian;' 'An Old Man's Reminiscence;' 'Polygon Papers,' Number Ten; 'The Birth-Day,' by 'W. C.;' 'New Version of an Old Fable;' 'The Count of Paris;' 'The Painted Rock;' 'The Hour of Rest;' 'Sing,' by Lady Alicia Jane Sparrow, Ireland; 'Orators and Bells;' 'The Maiden's Burial,' etc. 'The Consumptive' is both labored and common-place. 'Neanias' of Kentucky is not deemed admissible. * * * Several publications, among them a Lecture by Eugenius A. Nisbet, delivered before the Georgia Historical Society at Savannah, in March last; 'A Voice from the Vintage,' by Mrs. Ellis, etc., will receive attention in our next. Our Philadelphia Friend, in reply to 'N. S. D.,' shall have a place in the August number.
Late Publications of the Brothers Harper.—Independent of the serial works of the Harper's, their Alison, Brande's Encyclopedia, etc., which they continue to publish with their wonted regularity, and in their accustomed style of excellence, we have before us, in a large and well-executed volume, 'A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,' illustrated by numerous engravings on wood, and containing numerous additional articles relative to the botany, mineralogy, and zoology of the ancients; by Charles Anthon, Esq., the American editor; a work of too comprehensive a scope and of too great value to be despatched in so brief a notice as the present; and M'Culloch's 'Universal Gazetteer, or Dictionary,' geographical, statistical, and historical, of the various countries, places, and principal natural objects in the world, illustrated by seven extensive and complete maps on steel.' Each article is written with fulness; the arrangement is concise and clear; and the work may be referred to on the instant for any subject embraced in its pages. We should be more indebted to the editor of the American department if he would give us his valuable facts unconnected with his opinions. His sneer at the voyages of discovery in the north-west, in connection with his reference to a ship-canal across the isthmus of Darien, is in bad taste, to say the least of it. Narrow views in relation to great public enterprises which may chance to be unsuccessful, are out of place in a noble work like this of M'Culloch, even though they appear in the 'questionable shape' of acknowledged annotation.
Cobb's Juvenile Readers.—Mr. Lyman Cobb deserves well of his country, and especially of its juvenile citizens, for the several excellent school-books for the young which he has prepared with great industry and tact, and from time to time put forth. We find on our table his three progressive 'Juvenile Readers;' and judging from the necessarily cursory examination which we have been enabled to give them, we have no hesitation in pronouncing them the best works of their class we have ever encountered. The author has taken great pains so to arrange the different lessons as to lead the child by a regular gradation from easy to difficult reading; to adapt the subjects to his advancement; and to place before him such matter, and such only, as shall convey to the juvenile mind correct views, and just principles of morality. All words of variable or doubtful orthography are also carefully exhibited. There are numerous other important merits, and improvements upon kindred works, to which we have neither time nor space at present to allude, but which we hope our readers will take occasion to find and admire in the works themselves. Mr. Caleb Bartlett, corner of Platt and Pearl-streets, is the New-York publisher of Mr. Cobb's series.
New Music: 'The Forsaken.'—Mr. J. L. Hewitt, 239 Broadway, has sent us 'The Forsaken,' a song sung with effect by Mr. Sinclair, and written and composed by James Lawson, Esq. The 'words' were originally furnished to the Knickerbocker by their author, and were thence transferred to many American journals with cordial commendations. The music is, we think, of a highly pleasing character; and we are not surprised to learn that the 'Song' is in very general request. It is not given to every clever man, we can tell our friend and correspondent, to excel both in poetical and musical composition, as himself has done in the instance before us. We know, for example, a poet 'of the first water' who failed, on a memorable evening not long ago, in improvising a solo for a jews'-harp, 'then and there being' in the hands of a legal friend, who was making the little instrument 'discourse most eloquent music' It was rather a rich scene than otherwise.
Agricultural Prize Essays.—A well-printed pamphlet of an hundred and forty pages lies before us, containing an 'Essay on the Preparation and Use of Manures,' and on 'Farm Management,' by Willis Gaylord, Esq., editor of 'The Cultivator,' one of the most widely circulated journals in the United States. The first essay is an elaborate consideration of the laws of nutrition; the preparation and distribution of animal, vegetable, and mineral manures; and the second is a well-digested compend of all the various kinds of information and directions necessary to the successful management of a farm. The useful pamphlet concludes with essays upon plans for farm-houses and out-buildings, (illustrated by several clearly-engraved wood-cuts,) by Mr. John J. Thomas, Macedon, New-York, Mr. G. D. Mitchell, Salem, Conn., and Mr. T. M. Niven, Newburgh.
Battle of Bunker-Hill.—The small but very comprehensive volume recently put forth by Mr. C. P. Emmons, of Charlestown, (Mass.,) containing 'Sketches of Bunker-Hill Battle and Monument, with Illustrative Documents,' should be in the hands of every American, who desires a record of this most important battle of the Revolution. In the preliminary remarks on the opening of the struggle, and the description of the great battle itself, there is nothing included that is irrelevant, while every thing is embraced that could add to the truth or force of the picture. The illustrative documents are of very great interest. On the English side, we have extracts from General Howe's orderly-book, letters from Generals Gage and Burgoyne, and several other British officers, together with divers grumbling extracts from the English newspapers, touching the result of the 'victory.' On the American side, we have the proceedings of the Committee of Safety, the accounts sent to England and to Congress, with descriptive letters from Colonel Stark, Mr. Isaac Lothrop, and Rev. Dr. Elliot. An account of the inception, progress, and final completion of the Monument, accompanied by a sectional engraving of the structure, appropriately closes the volume.
Froissart's Chronicles.—Who that has ever read the stirring Chronicles of Sir John Froissart, but will rejoice to learn that an excellent edition of them, upon a new and clear type, and with all the original engravings, is being issued in numbers from the office of the New World? We have never found such a historian as Sir John. Give him a battle to describe, a hero worthy of his pen to hand down to posterity, and what a love of his theme, what personal enthusiasm, does he throw into his glowing records! We have sometimes thought that our worthy and world-renowned progenitor, Diedrich Knickerbocker, of blessed memory, derived no small portion of his fervent historical style from a familiar study of his great predecessor. Be that, however, (and every thing else,) as it may, here are the glorious 'Chronicles' of Sir John Froissart, accessible to all, for a comparative trifle; and the more who embrace this occasion to read them, the fewer stupid people will there be in the country—in our humble opinion.
Port-Chester Seminary.—This boarding school for young ladies and gentlemen is in Westchester county, in a beautiful situation, and of easy access from the city. It has now for its Principal, Rufus H. Bacon, A. B., a fine scholar, and well skilled in the discharge of his important trusts. The design of the Principal and his subordinate teachers is, to impart a full and thorough knowledge of the branches of a good English education; to fit young men for college and the counting-room; and to prepare the pupils for honor and usefulness, by softening their manners and improving their moral perceptions. Kindness and attention to their neatness, health, and comfort, are not lost sight of. The terms are low, though the references are very high, being all 'O. F. M.'—'our first men.'
The Boston 'Christian World.'—We have looked through several numbers of this very various and well-supplied weekly journal, with invariable and increasing interest. It is edited, as we learn, by George G. Channing, a brother of the late lamented Dr. Channing, assisted by a number of Unitarian clergymen, and is widely sustained throughout the United States by the patronage and contributions of the members of that religious denomination. It is beautifully printed with a large, clear type, upon paper of a fine color and texture. The mechanical department is in the hands of an artist in his profession, to whose good taste and careful supervision this Magazine has heretofore been much indebted, and for which it here renders its acknowledgments.
'New Pictorial Bible.'—The Messrs. Harper may well pronounce this 'the most splendid and richly-illustrated Bible ever published in the world.' It is to be issued on the cheap plan, in numbers, on foolscap folio sized paper, and will be embellished with sixteen hundred historical engravings, more than fourteen hundred of which are from original designs by Chapman, made expressly for the work, and executed in the most finished manner, at an expense of over twenty-five thousand dollars! Those who subscribe early will have the advantage of proof impressions.
☞ A notice of 'Classical Studies, or Essays on Ancient Literature,' 'The Karen Apostle,' and 'The New Purchase,' were in type for the present number, and will appear in our issue for August.
[A] See New-York Police Reports.
[B] Moss. We had always taken this word, so common in New-York, to be pure and choice Manhattanese, and thought our cockney friend was at fault: but on looking up the authorities, we find that one Shakspere, a person of quondam reputation, has used the same word in the same way.
Ed. Knickerbocker.
[C] 'Or fu mai Gente si vana come la Sanese?'—Dante.
[D] A modest line borrowed from Doctor Johnson's 'Irene.'
Minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.
Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed.
The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.