Production Note

CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

FROM

Charles William Wason

THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY.

DEVOTED TO

Literature and National Policy.

VOL. II.

JULY-DECEMBER, 1862.

New York: JOHN F. TROW, 50 GREENE STREET.
(FOR THE PROPRIETORS).
1862.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by JOHN F. TROW, For the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

JOHN F. TROW,
Printer, Stereotyper and Electrotyper, 48 & 50 Greene Street, New York.

ENTERED, according to an Act of Congress, in the year 1882 by JAMES B. GILMORE, in the Clerk of the Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York.

JOHN A. GRAY PRINTER

INDEX TO VOLUME II.

CONTENTS.—No. VII.

INDEX TO VOLUME II.
WHAT SHALL BE THE END?
BONE ORNAMENTS.
THE MOLLY O'MOLLY PAPERS.  No. V.
GLANCES FROM THE SENATE-GALLERY.
MACCARONI AND CANVAS.  No. V.
FOR THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH.
IN TRANSITU.
AMONG THE PINES.
WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?
NEWBERN AS IT WAS AND IS.
OUR BRAVE TIMES.
THE CRISIS AND THE PARTIES.
TAKING THE CENSUS.
THE PELOPONNESUS IN MARCH.
ADONIUM.
POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTES.
SLAVERY AND NOBILITY vs. DEMOCRACY.
WATCHING THE STAG
LITERARY NOTICES.
EDITOR'S TABLE.

SLAVERY AND NOBILITY vs. DEMOCRACY.

This article, written by a gentleman who, for fifteen years, was one of the most prominent citizens of Texas, will be found worthy of most attentive perusal.

WATCHING THE STAG

An unfinished Poem by Fitz-James O'Brien, we give as it came wet from the pen of its lamented author.

the

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

devoted to

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.

Vol. II.—July, 1862.—No. 1.

WHAT SHALL BE THE END?

If we look to the development of slavery the past thirty years, we shall see that the ideas of Calhoun respecting State Sovereignty have had a mighty influence in gradually preparing the slave States for the course which they have taken. Slavery, in its political power, has steadily become more aggressive in its demands. A morbid jealousy of Northern enterprise and thrift, with the contrast more vivid from year to year, of the immeasurable superiority of free labor, has brought about a growing aversion, in the South, to the free States, until with every opportunity presented for pro-slavery extension, there has resulted the present organized combination of slave States that have seceded from the Union. When the mind goes back to the early formation of our Government and the adoption of the Constitution, it will be found that an entire revolution of opinion and feeling has taken place upon the subject of slavery. From being regarded, as formerly, an evil by the South, it is now proclaimed a blessing; from being viewed as opposed to the whole spirit and teachings of the Bible, it is now thought to be of divine sanction; from being regarded as opposed to political liberty, and the elevation of the masses, the popular doctrine now is, that slavery is the corner-stone of republican institutions, and essential for a manly development of character upon the part of the white population. Formerly slavery was looked upon as peculiarly pernicious to the diffusion of wealth and the progress of national greatness; now the South is intoxicated with ideas of the profitableness of slave labor, and the power of King Cotton in controlling the exchanges of the world. And the same change has taken place in relation to the African slave-trade. While the laws of the land brand as piracy the capture of negroes upon their native soil, and the transportation of them over the ocean, it is nevertheless true that a mighty change in Southern opinion has taken place in respect to the character of this business. It is not looked upon with the same horror as formerly. It is apologized for, and in some places openly defended as a measure indispensable to the prosperity of the cotton States. As a natural inference from the theory of those who hold to the views of Calhoun upon State sovereignty, the doctrine of coercion in any form by the Federal Union is denounced, and to attempt to put it in practice even so far as the protection of national property is concerned, is construed into a war upon the South. Thus, while it is perfectly proper for the slave States to steal, and plunder the nation of its property, to leave the Union at their pleasure, and to do every thing in their power to destroy the unity of the National Government, it is made out that to attempt to recover the property of the Federal Union is unjustifiable aggression upon the slave States. Thus we see eleven States in a confederate capacity openly making war upon the Federal Government, and compelling it either into a disgraceful surrender of its rights as guaranteed by the Constitution, or war for self-defense. Fort Sumter was not allowed to be provisioned, nor was there any disposition manifested to permit its possession in any manner honorable to the Government, although its exclusive property. It must be surrendered unconditionally, or be attacked.

The worst feature connected with the secession movement is the hot haste with which the most important questions connected with the interests of the people are hurried through. The ordinance of secession is not fairly submitted to the people, but a mere oligarchy of desperate men themselves assume to declare war, and exercise all the prerogatives of an independent and sovereign government. And yet the terms submitted in the Crittenden Resolutions as a peace-offering to the seceding States to win them back by concessions from the North, present a spectacle quite as mournful for the cause of national unity and dignity as the open rebellion of the seceding States. The professed aim of these States is either a reconstruction of the Constitution in a way that shall nationalize slavery and give it supreme control, or a forcible disruption of the Union. What are the terms proposed that alone appear to satisfy the South? They may be briefly comprehended in a short extract from a speech delivered by Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, February 21, 1861:

Here we have the true position in which the free States are placed toward the slaveholding States. Seven States openly throw off all allegiance to the Federal Union, do not even profess to be willing to come back upon any terms, and then such conditions are proposed by the other slaveholding States as leads to the repudiation of the Constitution in its whole spirit and import upon the subject of slavery. The alternative, in reality, is either civil war or the surrender of the Constitution into the hands of pro-slavery men to be molded just as it may suit their convenience. The price they ask for peace is simply the liberty to have their own way, and that the majority should be willing to submit to the minority. They aim for a reconstruction of the Union that shall incorporate the Dred Scott decision into the whole policy of the Government and make slavery the supreme power of the country, and all other interests subservient to it. The North has its choice of two evils—unconditional and unqualified submission to the demands of slavery, or civil war. It is expected, since the country has yielded step by step to the exactions of slavery ever since the Government was instituted, that the free States will keep on yielding until the South has nothing more to ask for, and the North has nothing more to give. With such a servile compliance, the free States are assured that they will have no difficulty in keeping the peace. But the question to be decided is: Is such a kind of peace worth the price demanded for it? May it not be true that great as is the evil of civil war, it is less an evil than an unresisting acquiescence to the exactions of slavery, and the admission that any State that pleases can leave the Union? The theory of secession involves, if admitted, a greater disaster to the Federal Union than even the slow eating at its vitals of the cancer of slavery. National unity, one country, the sovereignty of the Constitution, are all sacrificed by secession. It involves in it either the worst anarchy or the worst despotism. United, the States can stand, and command the respect of the world, but secession is an enemy to the country, the most cruel. Rev. Dr. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, most forcibly says:

Jefferson Davis, in his late message, says: 'Let us alone, let us go, and the sword drops from our hands.' But what does this involve? The admission of the right of secession, which, as has been proved, is fatal to all national unity and preservation. Even if this arrogant demand was complied with, would peace be thus possible? Would not the breaking up of the Union involve the people in calamities that no patience, or wisdom upon the part of the North could avert? Remember a long border in an open country, stretching from the Atlantic, possibly even to the Pacific, is to be defended. Will the bordering people sink down from war, and all its exasperations, and become as peaceful as lambs? Constituted as human nature now is, will the dissolution of the Union create with the great North and South the experience of millennium prediction, 'The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and fatling together; and a little child shall lead them'? Here is a line crossed by great rivers; we are to shut up the mouth of the Chesapeake bay, on Ohio and Western Virginia; we are to ask the Western States to give up the mouth of the Mississippi to a foreign power. Is it reasonable to suppose that no provocation will occur on this long frontier? Will no slaves run away? What is to be gained by a dissolution of the Union? Not peace; for if, when united, there exists such cause of dissension, the evil will be tenfold greater when separated. Not national aggrandizement, for division brings weakness, imbecility, and a loss of self-respect; it invites aggressions from foreign powers, and compels to submission to insults that otherwise would not be given. Not general competence, for the South is quite as dependent upon the North as the North upon the South.

Disunion is a violent disruption of great material interests that now are wedded together. The dream of separate State sovereignty, our great Union split into two or more confederacies, prosperous and peaceable, is Utopian. So far from the secession doctrine carried out leading to peace and prosperity, it can only lead to perpetual war and adversity. The request to be 'let alone,' is simply a request that the nation should consent to see the Constitution and Union overthrown, slavery triumphant, and the great problem that a free people can not choose its own rulers against the will of a minority prove a disgraceful failure. It is a request that a nation should purchase a temporary peace at the price of all that is dear to its liberty and self-respect. The arrogance of the demand 'to be let alone,' is only equaled by the iniquity of the means resorted to, to break up the best Government under the sun. The question of disunion, of separate State sovereignty, was fully discussed by our fathers. Thus Hamilton, whose foresight history has proved to be prophetic, says:

From a consideration of the true import of the Constitution, in relation to slavery and the fallacy and wickedness of the doctrine of Secession, we are now prepared to deduce, from what has been said, the following reflections: First, the war in which the nation is now plunged should have strictly for its great end, the restoration of the Constitution and the Union to its original integrity; all side issues, all mere party questions should be now merged in one mighty effort, one persevering and self-sacrificing aim to maintain the Constitution and the Union. As essential for this purpose, it is indispensable that all the rights guaranteed to loyal citizens in the slave States should be respected. The reason is two-fold. First, this war, upon the part of the North, is for the maintenance of the Constitution as our fathers gave it to us. Its object is not a crusade against slavery. What may be the results of the war in relation to slavery is one thing; what should be the simple purpose of the North is another. That this war, however it may turn, will be disastrous to slavery, is evident from a great variety of considerations. But that we should pretend to fight for the Constitution and the Union, and yet against its express provisions, in respect to those held in bondage by loyal citizens, is simply to act a part subversive of the true intent of the Constitution. To violate its provisions, in relation to loyal citizens South, is in the highest degree impolitic and suicidal. It is the constant aim of the enemies now in armed rebellion against the Union, to misrepresent the North upon this very point. By systematic lying, they have induced thousands South to believe that the election of Lincoln was designed as an act of war upon slave institutions, and to subvert the Constitution that protects them in all that they call their property.

There is nothing that the rebels South are more anxious to see than the Government adopting a policy that will give them a plausible pretense for continuing in rebellion. The Constitution places the local institution of slavery under the exclusive control of those States where it exists. Its language, faithfully interpreted, is simply this: Your own domestic affairs you have a right to manage as you please, so long as you do not trespass upon the Union, or seek its ruin. All loyal citizens should be encouraged to stand by the Union in every Southern State, with the unequivocal declaration that all their rights will be respected, and that their true safety, even as noblest interests, must lie in upholding the North in the effort made to put down the vilest rebellion under the sun. My second reflection is, that those South, who are in armed rebellion against the Constitution and the Union, must make up their minds to take what the fortune of war gives them. This rebellion should be bandied without gloves. The North should permit nothing to stand in the way of a complete and permanent triumph. As Northern property is all confiscated South; as Union men there are treated with the utmost barbarity; as nothing held by the lovers of the Union is respected, the greatest injury in the end to the Constitution and the Union is, an unwise clemency to armed rebellion. In this death-struggle to test the vital question, whether the majority shall rule, let there be no holding back of money or men. Dear as war may be, a dishonorable peace will prove much dearer. Great as may be the sufferings of the camp and the battle-field, yet the prolonged tortures of a murdered Union, a violated Constitution, and Secession rampant over the country, will be found to be greater. My third reflection is, that the main cause of our civil war is slavery. It has now assumed gigantic proportions of mischief, and with its hand upon the very throat of the Constitution and the Union, it seeks its death. The worst feature connected with it has ever been, that it is satisfied with no concession, and the more it has, the more it asks. By the very admission of the chiefs of this rebellion, it is confessedly got up for the sake of slavery, and to make it the corner-stone of the new Confederacy of States. The real issue involved by the rebellion is, complete independence of the North, the dissolution of the Union, and exclusive possession of all the territories south of Mason and Dixon's line; or reconstruction upon such conditions as would result in the repudiation of the old Constitution, the nationalization of slavery, and giving complete political control to a slaveholding minority of the country. This rebellion has placed the North where it must conquer, for its own best interests, and dignity, and the salvation of free institutions. It must conquer, to command future friendship and that respect without which Union itself is a mockery. Let the South see that the North can not be beaten, and the universal consciousness of this fact will command an esteem, and the useful fear of committing offense, that will do more to keep the peace than all the abject professions or humble submissions in the world. Having found out that the North not only is conscious of its rights, but has the willingness and the ability to defend them, it is certain that the country will yet have as much peace, general thrift, and noble enterprise with the onward march of virtue and intelligence, as may be reasonably expected of any community upon the face of the earth.

BONE ORNAMENTS.

Silent the lady sat alone:
In her ears were rings of dead men's bone;
The brooch on her breast shone white and fine,
'Twas the polished joint of a Yankee's spine;
And the well-carved handle of her fan,
Was the finger-bone of a Lincoln man.
She turned aside a flower to cull,
From a vase which was made of a human skull;
For to make her forget the loss of her slaves,
Her lovers had rifled dead men's graves.
Do you think I'm describing a witch or ghoul?
There are no such things—and I'm not a fool;
Nor did she reside in Ashantee;
No—the lady fair was an F.F.V.

THE MOLLY O'MOLLY PAPERS.

V.

'Hearts are trumps,' is a gambler's cant phrase. That depends on the game you are playing. In many of the games of life the true trump cards are Diamonds; which, according to the fortune-teller's lore, stand for wealth. Indeed, Hearts are by many considered so valueless that they are thrown away at the very outset; whereas they should, like trumps, only be played as a last resort. No trick that can be won with any other card, should be taken with a heart—the card will be gone and nothing to show for it. If you wish wealth, win it if you can—honestly, of course—but don't throw in the heart. Are you ambitious—would you win honor? Very well, if for political honor you can endure it to be spit upon by the crowd, to have all manner of abuse heaped on you and your forbears to the remotest generation—a ceremony that in Africa follows the election, but is 'preliminary to the crowning,' but in this country is preliminary to the election—but if you can make up your mind to pass through this ordeal, well and good—but don't throw in the heart.... Yet in games on which is staked all that is worth playing for, 'hearts are trumps;' and he who holds the lowest card, stands a better chance of winning than he who has none, though in his hand may be all the aces of the others, diamonds included. But, lest I go too far beyond the analogy—as I might ignorantly do, being unskilled in the many games of cards—I will drop the figurative.... Keep your heart for faith, love, friendship, for God, your country, and truth. And where the heart is given, it should be unreservedly. Its allegiance is too often withheld where it is due, yet this is better than a half-way loyalty; there should be no if, followed by self-interest.... The seal of confederate nobles, opposed to some measures of Peter IV. of Aragon, 'represents the king sitting on his throne, with the confederates kneeling in a suppliant attitude, around, to denote their loyalty and unwillingness to offend. But in the back-ground, tents and lines of spears are discovered, as a hint of their ability and resolution to defend themselves.' ... This kind of allegiance no true heart will ever give.

I take it for granted that you have a heart—not merely anatomically speaking, an organ to circulate the blood, but a something that prompts you to love, to self-sacrifice, to scorn of meanness, and, it may be, to good, honest hatred. All metals can be separated from their ores; but meanness is inseparable from some natures, so it is impossible to hate the sin without hating the sinner; we can't, indeed, conceive of it in the abstract. I don't mean hate in a malignant sense—here I may as well express my scorn of that sly hatred that is too cowardly to knock a man down, but quietly trips him up.

It is well enough for those who think that 'life is a jest,' (and a bitter, sarcastic one it must be to them,) to mock at all nobler feelings and sentiments of the heart. None do they more contemn than friendship. I would not 'sit in the seat' of these 'scornful,' however they may have found false friends. Yet every man capable of a genuine friendship himself, will in this world find at least one true friend. Oxygen, which comprises one fifth of the atmosphere, is said to be highly magnetic; and any ordinary, healthy soul can extract magnetism enough from the very air he breathes to draw at least one other soul. Some people have an amazing power of absorption and retention of this magnetism. You feel irresistibly drawn toward them—and it is all right, for they are noble, true souls. There is a great difference between their attractive force and that kind of 'power of charming' innocence that villainy often has—just as I once saw a cat charm a bird, which circled nearer and nearer till it almost brushed the cat's whiskers—and had he not been chased away, he would have that day daintily lunched—and there would have been one songster less to join in that evening's vespers.

False——s there are—I will not call them false friends—this noun should never follow that adjective. To what shall I liken them—to the young gorilla, that even while its master is feeding it, looks trustingly in his face and thrusts forth its paw to tear him? Who blames the gorilla? Torn from its dam, caged or chained, it owes its captor a grudge. To the serpent? The story of the warming of the serpent in the man's bosom, is a mere fable. No man was ever fool enough to warm a serpent in his bosom. And the serpent never crosses the path of man if he can help it. The most deadly is that which is too sluggish to get out of his way—therefore bites in self-defense. And the serpent generally gives some warning hiss, or a rattle. Indeed, almost every animal gives warning of its foul intent. The shark turns over before seizing its prey. But the false friend (I am obliged to couple these words) takes you in without changing his side.... In truth, a man, if he has a vice, be it treachery or any other, goes a little beyond the other animals, even those of which it is characteristic. We say, for instance, of a treacherous man, He is a serpent; but it would be hyperbole to call a serpent a treacherous man.

But these false friends, who deceive you out of pure malignity, who would rather injure you than not, who, perhaps, have an old, by you long-forgotten, grudge, and become your apparent friends to pay you back—these are few. Human nature, with all its depravity, is seldom so completely debased. But there are many who are only selfishly your friends. When you most need their friendship, where is it? When some great calamity sweeps over you, and, bowed and weakened, you would lean on this friendship, though it were but a 'broken reed,' you stretch forth your hand—feel but empty space.

Then there are some who let go the hand of a friend because they feel sure of him, to grasp the extended hand of a former enemy. Politicians, especially, do this. An enemy can not so easily be transformed into a friend. As in those paintings of George III., on tavern-signs, after the Revolution changed to George Washington, there will still be the same old features.... The opposite of this is what every generous nature has tried. To revive a dying friendship, this is impossible. If you find yourself losing your friendship for a person, there must be some reason for it. If the former dear name is becoming indistinct on the tablet of your heart, the attempt to re-write it will entirely obliterate it. It is said that a sure way to obliterate any writing, is to attempt to re-write it.... But it is not true that 'hot love soon cools.' With all my faults—and to say that I am an O'Molly is to admit that I have faults, and I am not sure that I would wish to be without them. To speak paradoxically, a fault in some cases does better than a virtue—as on some organs 'the wrong note in certain passages has a better effect than the right.' But, as I was saying, with all my faults, I have never yet changed toward a friend; I will not admit even to the ante-chamber of my heart a single thought untrue to my friend. Though it is true my friends are so few that I could more than count them on my fingers, had I but one hand.... And these few friends—what shall I say of them? They have become so a part of my constant thoughts and feelings, so a part of myself, that I can not project them—if I may so speak—from my own interior self, so as to portray them. Have you not such friends? Are there none whom to love has become so a habit of your life that you are almost unconscious of it—that you hardly think of it, any more than you think—'I breathe'?

There is probably no one who has not some time in his or her life felt the dreariness of fancied friendliness. I can recall in my own experience at least one time when this dreary feeling came over me. It was during a twilight walk home from a visit. I can convey to you no idea of the utter loneliness of the unloved feeling; it seemed that not even the love of God was mine, or if it was, there was not individuality enough in it; it was so diffused; this one, whom I disliked—that insignificant person, might share in it. I know not how long I indulged in these thoughts, with my eyes on the ground, or seeing all things 'as though I saw them not,' but when I did raise them to take cognizance of any thing, there was, a few degrees above the horizon, the evening star; it shone as entirely on me as though it shone on me exclusively. It is thus, I thought, with His love; thus it melts into each individual soul. Such gentle thoughts as these, long after the star had sunk behind the western mountains, were a calm light in my soul. And I awoke the next morning, the old cheerful

Molly O'Molly.

VI.

I have often thought what splendid members of the diplomatic corps women would make, especially married women. As much delicate management is required of them, they have as much financiering to do as any minister plenipotentiary of them all. Let a woman once have an object in view, and 'o'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense or rare; with head, hands, or feet, she pursues her way, and swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies;' but she attains her object.

You poor, hood-winked portion of humanity—man—you think you know woman; that she 'can't pull the wool over your eyes.' Just take a retrospective view. Did your wife ever want any thing that she didn't somehow get it? Whether a new dress, or the dearest secret of your soul, she either, Delilah-like, wheedled it out of you, or, in a passion, you almost flung it at her, as an enraged monkey flings cocoa-nuts at his tormentor.

And how she has changed your habits, has turned the course of your life, made it flow in the channel she wished, instead of, as heretofore, 'wandering at its own sweet will,' as the gently-winding but useless brook has been converted into a mill-race.

There is Mr. Jones. Before he married, as free and easy a man as ever smoked a meerschaum. Mrs. Jones is considered a pattern woman; but of that you can judge for yourself. Her first reformation was in regard to his club, from which he returned home late, redolent of brandy-punch, and lavish of my dears. All she could say to him had no effect, till, after the birth of little Nellie, she joined a Ladies' Reading Society, meeting on his club evening; he wouldn't leave the baby to the care of a servant, consequently staid at home himself.

He was also in the habit of resorting to the gymnasium, ostensibly for exercise, as he was dyspeptic; but his wife suspected it was more to meet his old cronies. Finding retrenchment necessary, and looking on gymnastics somewhat as a Yankee looks on a fine stream that turns no mill, she dismissed one of the servants, and so arranged it that the surplus strength that formerly so ran to waste should make the fires, rock the cradle, and split certain hickory logs. Very soon Mr. Jones, who is a lawyer, found his business so much increased that he was obliged to remain in his office all day, except at meal-time; after which, however heartily he might have eaten, he never complained of indigestion. With this, thrifty Mrs. Jones was delighted, till one day she surprised him in his office, enveloped in tobacco-smoke, with elevated feet, reading a nice new novel; you may be sure that after that, she insisted on the exercise. As their family increased, thinking still further retrenchment necessary, she gently broached the relinquishing of the meerschaum. Finding him obstinate in his opposition, she one day accidentally broke it. It was one that he had been coloring for years; he had devoted time and attention to it, that, if properly directed, might have made him a German philosopher, an antiquary, or a profound theologian; or, if devoted to his law studies, would have fitted him for Chief-Justice of the United States.

The countryman who mistook for a bell-rope the cord attached to a shower-bath, was not more astonished at the result of pulling it, than she was at the result of this trifling accident. Such an overwhelming torrent of abuse as was poured on her devoted head; such an array of offenses as was marshaled before her; Banquo's issue wasn't a circumstance to the shadowy throng. She had recourse to woman's only means of assuaging the angry passions of man—tears, (you know the region of constant precipitation is a perpetual calm;) but these, instead of operating like oil poured on the troubled waters, were rather like oil thrown on the fire. Pleading her delicate health, she hinted that his unkindness would kill her, and that, when she was gone, her sweet face would haunt him. Muttering something about one consolation, ghosts couldn't speak till spoken to, and he was sure he wouldn't break the spell of silence, he picked up his hat and strode out of the house, slamming the door after him. For a while, Mrs. Jones was struck with consternation; she felt somewhat as the woman must have felt who, in attempting to pull up a weed, overturned the monument that crushed her; and, though not quite crushed by the weight of Mr. Jones's indignation, she only resolved to give no more tugs at the weed that had taken such deep root in his heart; and that, if he brought home another meerschaum, (which he did that evening,) it was best to ignore its existence. Mrs. Jones says she believes that the meerschaum absorbs 'the disagreeable' of a man's temper, as it is said to absorb that of tobacco; at least, her husband is never so serene as when smoking one. Indeed, it is said that the fiercest birds of prey can be tamed by tobacco-smoke.

Don't think that after this little contretemps all Mrs. Jones's authority was at an end; no, indeed; though she had, by stroking the wrong way the docile, domestic animal, roused him into a tiger, she hastened to smooth him down; and time would fail me to give even a list of her reforms.

After having heard her story, as I did, chiefly from her own lips, my wonder at the immense Union army, raised on such short notice, was considerably diminished. 'Extremes meet.' Probably Union and disunion sentiments met in the mind of many a volunteer Jones. Then, too, I used to wonder at the ease with which men apparently forget their buried wives, and marry again; and, as I then had a great respect for the race, thought their hearts must be very rich, new affections spring up with such amazing rapidity; like the soil of the tropics, whose vegetation is hardly cut down before there is a new, luxuriant growth. I've, however, since come to the conclusion, that the poor man, somehow feeling that he must marry, chooses in a manner at random, having, the first time, taken the greatest care, and 'caught a Tartar,' in the same sense that the man had with whom the phrase originated, that is, the Tartar had caught him.

In my childhood I was particularly fond of the hoidenish amusement of jumping out of our high barn-window, and landing on the straw underneath. The first few times I went to the edge—then drew back—looked again—almost sprang—again stepped back—till finally I took the leap. Thus old bachelors take the matrimonial leap—not so widowers—how is it to be accounted for? Well, brother man, (for this is the nearest relationship to you that I can claim,) you do about as well in this way as in any other. You are destined to be taken in as effectually as was Jonah, when he made that 'exploration of the interior,' or, as was the fly, when Dame Spider's 'parlor' proved to be a dining-room.

Sam Slick says that 'man is common clay—woman porcelain.' Alas! there is but little genuine porcelain. It is a pity that you couldn't contrive to have a few jars before matrimony, to crack off some of the glazing, and show the true character of the ware.

And you, sister woman, learn a lesson from the 'tiny nautilus,' which, 'by yielding, can defy the most violent ragings of the sea.' And, though man is so nicely adapted to your management that it is obviously the end of his creation, remember Mrs. Jones's trifling miscalculation in regard to the meerschaum, and—'N'évéillez pas le chat qui dort.'

Abruptly yours,     Molly O'Molly.

GLANCES FROM THE SENATE-GALLERY.

The comparative excellence of different periods of eloquence and statesmanship affords a subject of curious and profitable contemplation. The action of different systems of government, encouraging or depressing intellectual effort, the birth of occasions which elicit the powers of great minds, and the peculiar characteristics of the manner of thinking and speaking in different countries, are observable in considering this topic. A pardonable curiosity has led the writer frequently to visit the United States Senate Chamber, and to place mentally the intellectual giants of that body in contrast with their predecessors on the same scene, and with the eminent orators and statesmen of other countries and other ages; and the result of such comparisons has always been to awaken national pride, and to convince that the polity bequeathed us by our fathers, no less than the distinctive genius of the race, have practically demonstrated that a free system is the most prolific in the production of animated oratory and vigorous statesmanship. Undoubtedly, the golden age of American eloquence must be fixed in the time of General Jackson, when Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Rives, Woodbury, and Hayne sat in the Upper House; and whatever may be our wonder, when we contemplate the brilliant orations of the British statesmen who shone toward the close of the last century, if we turn from Burke to Webster, from Pitt to Calhoun, from Fox to Clay, and from Sheridan to Randolph and to Rives, Americans can not be disappointed by the comparison. Since the death of the last of that illustrious trio, whose equality of powers made it futile to award by unanimity the superiority to either, and yet whose greatness of intellect placed them by common assent far above all others, the eloquence of the Senate has been less brilliant and less interesting. And yet it has not fallen below a standard of eloquence equal, if not superior, to that of any other nation. Unlike the English and the French, who have to go back more than half a century to deplore their greatest Senators and Ministers, the grave closed over the greatest American intellects within the memory of the present generation; and the contrast between the Senate of to-day and the Senate of a score of years ago, is too striking, perhaps, to give us an impartial idea of the abilities which now guide the nation.

The Senate which is at present deliberating on the gravest questions which our legislature has been called upon to consider since the establishment of the Constitution, is, without doubt, inferior in point of eminent talent, to the Senate of Webster's time, and even to the Senate which closed its labors on the day of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. In this latter body were three men, who, though far below the great trio preceding them, still occupied in a measure their commanding influence on the floor and before the country: one of whom now holds an Executive office, another sits in the Lower House, and the third has passed away from the scenes of his triumphs forever. Mr. Seward, whose keen logic, accurate statement of details, and imperturbable coolness, remind one of Pitt and Grey, was considered, while Senator from New-York, as the leading Statesman of the body, and was the nucleus around which concentrated the early adherents of the now dominant party. Mr. Crittenden's fervent and earnest declamation, wise experience, and good-nature, gave him a high rank in the respect and esteem of his colleagues, while his age and life-long devotion to the service of the state, endowed him with unusual authority. The lamented Douglas, who surpassed every other American statesman in casual discussion, and whose name will rank with that of Fox, in the art of extempore debate, could not fail to be the leader of a large party, and the popular idol of a large mass, by the manly energy of his character, his devotion to popular principles, and a rich and sonorous eloquence, which convinced while it delighted.

It must also in candor be admitted, that the secession of the Southern Senators from the floor, made a decided breach in the oratorical excellence of that body. However villainous their statesmanship, and to whatever traitorous purposes they lent the power of their eloquence, there were several from the disaffected States who were eminent in a skillful and brilliant use of speech. Probably the man who possessed the most art in eloquence, and who united a keen and plausible sophistry with great brilliancy of language and declamation with the highest skill, was Benjamin, of Louisiana. Born a Hebrew, and bearing in his countenance the unmistakable indications of Jewish birth, his person is small, thick, and ill-proportioned; his expression is far less intellectual than betokening cunning, while his whole manner fails to give the least idea, when he is not speaking, of the wonderful powers of his mind.

Shrewd and unprincipled, devoting himself earnestly and without the least scruple of conscience to two objects—the acquisition of money and the success of treason—he yet concealed the true character of his designs under an apparently ingenuous and fervent delivery, and in the garb of sentiments worthy a Milton or a Washington. His voice, deeply musical, and uncommonly sweet, enhanced the admiration with which one viewed his matchless delivery, in which was perfect grace, and entire harmony with the expressions which fell from his lips. How mournful a sight, to see one so nobly gifted, leading a life of baseness and vice, devoting his immortal qualities to the vilest selfishness, and to the betrayal of his country and of liberty! Should the descendant of an oppressed and persecuted race take part with oppressors? Senator Benjamin is a renegade to the spirit of freedom which animated his ancestors.

He who, among the Southern Senators, ranked as an orator next to Benjamin, now leads the rebellious hosts against the flag under which he was reared, and lends his unquestioned powers to the demolition of the great Republic of which he was once a brilliant ornament. Certainly endowed with more forethought and practical wisdom than any of his Democratic colleagues, well qualified by his calm survey of every question and every political movement, to lead a large party, and forcible and ironical in debate, Jefferson Davis stood at the head of the disaffected in the Senate, as he now does in the field. Cautious and deliberate in speech, he yet never failed to launch out in strong invective, and to make effective use of irony in his attacks. He is in personal appearance, rather small and thin, with a refined and decidedly intellectual countenance, and a not unamiable expression. His health alone prevented his rising to the first rank of American orators; and what of his statesmanship was not directed to the accomplishment of partisan purposes, gave him much consideration. He was incapable, from a weak constitution, of sustaining, at great length, the vivacity and energy with which he commenced his speeches; and therefore, their sharp sarcasm and great power, made them appear more considerable in print than in the delivery. Even after he had enlisted all his energies in the detestable scheme which he is now trying to fulfill, his prudence halted at the rash idea he had embraced; and he attempted for a moment to stem the torrent, by voting for the Crittenden propositions. His delivery was graceful and dignified, his manner sometimes courteous, often contemptuous, and always impressive. His eloquence consisted rather in the lucid logic and deliberate thought evinced than for rhetorical beauty or range of imagination; occasionally, however, he would diverge from the plain thread of argument, and rise to declamation of striking brilliancy and power. Over-quick, with all his natural phlegm, to discern and to resent personal affronts—oftentimes when there was no occasion therefor—he was a favorable exemplar of that peculiar, and to our mind, somewhat incomprehensible quality, which the Southern people glory in, and which they dignify by the stately epithet of 'chivalry.' On the whole, he must be regarded as the ablest, and therefore the most culpable and dangerous of the insurgent leaders; and he may, perhaps, be considered the first of Southern statesmen since the time of Calhoun.

Another Senator who occupied a high rank as a partisan and statesman among the Southern Democracy, was Hunter, of Virginia. He is a thickly-built person, with a countenance possessing but little expression, and far from intellectual; and would rather be noticed by one sitting in the gallery for the negligence of his dress, utter want of dignity, and exceedingly unsenatorial bearing, than for any other external qualities. But when he had spoken a few moments, a decided soundness of head, and shrewdness, appeared to enter into the composition of his mind. No man in the Senate had a juster idea of financial philosophy; and his services on the Committee devoted to that department, were highly appreciated by every one. He was, however, little trusted by loyal Senators, and his frequent professions of devotion to the Union, failed to conceal the bent of his mind toward those with whom he is now in intimate concert. Sincerity had least place of all the virtues in his breast; and his hypocrisy, somewhat hidden by the apparent ingenuousness and conciliatory address of his manner, became manifest in actions and votes, rather than in words. He was, so far as can now be ascertained, one of the prime movers of the Senatorial cabal, or caucus, which was devoted either to the complete dominance of the Southern element in the Union, or to their forcible secession from the Union; and was probably as active and earnest a traitor, long before the doctrine of secession was ventured upon, as the most fiery of South-Carolina fire-eaters. Mr. Hunter is, in private, courteous and affable, and, indeed, in the debates in which he took part, he never transgressed the rules of respect due to his colleagues, or violated the dicta of parliamentary etiquette.

His colleague, Mason, is an irritable, petulant, arrogant man, not without a certain ability in debate, but censorious, and unconfined by the restraints of decency in his tirades against the North. He was 'one of the finest-looking men,' if we speak phrenologically, in the last Senate; and would always be noticed for his dignified manner and fine head, by a stranger visiting the Chamber for the first time. We have briefly noticed him, rather on account of the notoriety recently attached to his name by the 'Trent' affair, than from his prominence among Southern orators and statesmen—his talent, being, in fact, of a decidedly mediocre description.

While speaking of Mason, it will be apropos to allude to his late companion in trouble, John Slidell, who was certainly the shrewdest politician and party tactician among his friends on the north side of the chamber; he is indeed the Nestor of intriguers. From the time when, early in life, he aspired to, and in a degree succeeded in controlling the politics of the Empire City, up to this hour, when he is with snake-like subtleness attempting to poison French honor, his career has been a series of successful intrigues. Utterly devoid of moral principle, he resembles his late colleague, Benjamin, in the immorality of his life, and the baseness of his ends, attained by as base means. He is rather a good-looking man, short, with snowy-white hair and red face, his countenance indicative of the secretiveness and cunning of his character. He was rather the caucus adviser and manager than one of the orators of his party; seldom speaking, and never except briefly and to the point. Imagination in him has been warped and made torpid by a life of dissipation, as well as by his practical tendencies. He is, like many other Southern statesmen, courteous and pleasing in social conversation; but is heartless, selfish, and malignant in his enmities.

Robert Toombs stood deservedly high in the traitorous cabal in the Senate; for, to a bold and energetic spirit, great arrogance of manner, and activity, he added a powerful mind and a clear head. In the street, he would strike you as a self-conceited, bullying, contemptuous person, with brains in the inverse proportion to his body, which was large and apparently strong. His manner, when addressing the Senators, had indeed much of an overbearing and insolent spirit; but the impression, in regard to his character, after hearing him speak, was much better than before. There was an indication of strength behind the bullying, blustering air which he put on, which raised one's respect for his attainments. One of the most rabid and uncompromising of secession leaders, and bigoted in his hatred of the North, he was yet, in private, a courteous and hospitable gentleman, and, apparently at least, frank in the expression of opinion. Probably he had as little principle in political and social life as most of his associates in treason; while his great self-reliance, activity, and mental ability gave him a very high position in their confidence. He was tall and stout, though not corpulent; and was very negligent of his toilet and dress. Self-conceit was written on his countenance, and displayed itself in his arrogant assumptions of superiority. But his method of dealing with his Northern opponents was open and bold, although insolent and overbearing, and not like Hunter, Davis, and Benjamin, using ingenious sophistry and hidden sarcasm, cautiously smoothing over their real purpose, by rhetoric and elegant sentiment. Mr. Toombs became early an object of peculiar dislike to Northern men, by the rude ingenuousness with which he announced the last conclusions of his political creed, and the intolerable insolence with which, not heeding the admonitions of his more cautious confederates, he thundered out his anathemas of hatred and vengeance on what he was pleased to call 'Northern tyranny.' It was only when the crisis came, that others unfolded together their base character and their hypocrisy. Davis, who had been fondled by New-Englanders but a year or two since, and Hunter, who had cried for peace and compromise, standing forth at last in the true light of traitors, and thereby proclaiming their past life a game of hypocrisy. Toombs, therefore, who was an original fire-eater, and hence could not be called a hypocrite, has become less an object of hatred to us of the loyal States, than those who, while they sat at the cabinet councils, or were admitted to the confidence of the Executive, or were sent to foreign courts, or presided over the Upper House, were using the power of such high trusts for the consummation of a conspiracy against their country, yet retaining the cant of patriotism and feigning a devotion to the Union. We have dwelt almost exclusively, in the present chapter, upon Senators whose highest honors have been tarnished or obliterated by the gravest of crimes, that of treason toward a vast community. But it has been with the idea that the least should be presented first, and that the greater should close the scene; as in royal processions, the monarch always brings up the rear. We conceive that the great talents which we have acknowledged, and which doubtless all will agree with us in acknowledging, the leaders of the Southern rebellion to possess, only enhance the magnitude of their offense, and serve to illustrate with greater force the enormity of their purposes. That a brainless fanatic like Lord George Gordon, or the Neapolitan fisherman, Massaniello, should stir up tremendous agitation, may be matter for critical study, but is hardly a subject of wonder. But that men gifted with exalted ability, undoubted caution, well-balanced intellect, and apparently refined reason, all of which have been appreciated and acknowledged, should propound an erroneous doctrine of a chaotic system, and proceed to the violence of civil war, on what they must know to be a false and heretical plea, can only remind us of those devils who have been pictured by the matchless art of Milton, of Dante, and of Goethe, as possessing stately intellects with perfectly vicious hearts. We propose, in a future number, if these remarks on public characters are acceptable, to continue our remarks, by introducing the loyal Senators of the last Congress, a band of men who will be found to equal in talent, and immeasurably to surpass in moral rectitude and earnest patriotism, the bad company from whom we now part.

MACCARONI AND CANVAS.

V.

THE GRECO.

The Café Greco, like the belle of many seasons, lights up best at night. In morning, in deshabille, not all the venerability of its age can make it respectable. Caper declares that on a fresh, sparkling day, in the merry spring-time, he once really enjoyed a very early breakfast there; and that, with the windows of the Omnibus-room open, the fresh air blowing in, and the sight of a pretty girl at the fourth-story window of a neighboring house, feeding a bird and tending a rose-bush, the old café was rose-colored.

This may be so; but seven o'clock in the evening was the time when the Greco was in its prime. Then the front-room was filled with Germans, the second room with Russians and English, the third room—the Omnibus—with Americans, English, and French, and the fourth, or back-room, was brown with Spaniards. The Italians were there, in one or two rooms, but in a minority; only those who affected the English showed themselves, and aired their knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon tongue and habits.

'I habituate myself,' said a red-haired Italian of the Greco to Caper, 'to the English customs. I myself lave with hot water from foot to head, one time in three weeks, like the English. It is an idea of the most superb, and they tell me I am truly English for so performing. I have not yet arrive to perfection in the lessons of box, but I have a smart cove of a bool-dog.'

Caper told him that his resemblance to an English 'gent' was perfect, at which the Italian, ignorant of the meaning of that fearful word, smiled assent.

The waiter has hardly brought you your small cup of caffe nero, and you are preparing to light a cigar, to smoke while you drink your coffee, when there comes before you a wandering bouquet-seller. It is, perhaps, the dead of winter; long icicles are hanging from fountains, over which hang frosted oranges, frozen myrtles, and frost-nipped olives, Alas! such things are seen in Rome; and yet, for a dime you are offered a bouquet of camellia japonicas. By the way, the name camellia is derived from Camellas, a learned Jesuit; probably La Dame aux Camélias had not a similar origin. You don't want the flowers.

'Signore,' says the man, 'behold a ruined flower-merchant!'

You are unmoved. Have you not seen or heard of, many a time, the heaviest kind of flour-merchants ruined by too heavy speculations, burst up so high the crows couldn't fly to them; and heard this without changing a muscle of your face?

'But, signore, do buy a bouquet to please your lady?'

'Haven't one.'

'Altro!' answers the man, triumphantly, 'whom did I see the other day, with these eyes, (pointing at his own,) in a magnificent carriage, beside the most beautiful Donna Inglesa in Rome? Iddio giusto!'.... At this period, he sees he has made a ten strike, and at once follows it up by knocking down the ten-pin boy, so as to clear the alley, thus: 'For her sake, signore.'

You pay a paul, (and give the bouquet to—your landlady's daughter,) while the departing mercante di fiori assures you that he never, no, never expects to make a fortune at flowers; but if he gains enough to pay for his wine, he will be very tipsy as long as he lives!

Then comes an old man, with a chessboard of inlaid stone, which he hasn't an idea of selling; but finds it excellent to 'move on,' without being checkmated as a beggar without visible means of s'port. The first time he brought it round, and held it out square to Caper, that cool young man, taking a handful of coppers from his pocket, arranged them as checkers on the board, without taking any notice of the man; and after he had placed them, began playing deliberately. He rested his chin on his hand, and with knitted brows, studied several intricate moves; he finally jumped the men, so as to leave a copper or two on the board; and bidding the old man good-night, continued a conversation with Rocjean, commenced previous to his game of draughts.

Next approaches a hardware—merchant, for, in Imperial Rome, the peddler of a colder clime is a merchant, the shoemaker an artist, the artist a professor. The hardware-man looks as if he might be 'touter' to a broken-down brigand. All the razors in his box couldn't keep the small part of his face that is shaved from wearing a look as if it had been blown up with gunpowder, while the grains had remained embedded there. He tempts you with a wicked-looking knife, the pattern for which must have come from the litreus of Etruria, the land called the mother of superstitions, and have been wielded for auguries amid the howls and groans of lucomones and priests. He tells you it is a Campagna-knife, and that you must have one if you go into that benighted region; he says this with a mysterious shake of his head, as if he had known Fra Diavolo in his childhood and Fra 'Tonelli in his riper years. The crescent-shaped handle is of black bone; the pointed blade long and tapering; the three notches in its back catch into the spring with a noise like the alarum of a rattle-snake. You conclude to buy one—for a curiosity. You ask why the blade at the point finishes off in a circle? He tells you the government forbids the sale of sharp-pointed knives; but, signore, if you wish to use it, break off the circle under your heel, and you have a point sharp enough to make any man have an accidente di freddo, (death from cold—steel.)

Victor Hugo might have taken his character of Quasimodo from the wild figure who now enters the Greco, with a pair of horns for sale; each horn is nearly a yard in length, black and white in color; they have been polished by the hunchback until they shine like glass. Now he approaches you, and with deep, rough voice, reminding you of the lowing of the large grey oxen they once belonged to, begs you to buy them. Then he facetiously raises one to each side of his head, and you have a figure that Jerome Bosch would have rejoiced to transfer to canvas. His portrait has been painted by more than one artist.

Caper, sitting in the Omnibus one evening with Rocjean, was accosted by a very seedy-looking man, with a very peculiar expression of face, wherein an awful struggle of humor to crowd down pinching poverty gleamed brightly. He offered for sale an odd volume of one of the early fathers of the Church. Its probable value was a dime, whereas he wanted two dollars for it.

'Why do you ask such a price?' asked Rocjean, 'you never can expect to sell it for a twentieth part of that.'

'The moral of which,' said the seedy man, no longer containing the struggling humor, but letting it out with a hearty laugh; 'the moral of which is—give me half a baioccho!'

Ever after that, Caper never saw the man, who henceforth went by the name of La Morale é un Mezzo Baioccho! without pointing the moral with a copper coin. Not content with this, he once took him round to the Lepre restaurant, and ordered a right good supper for him. Several other artists were with him, and all declared that no one could do better justice to food and wine. After he had eaten all he could hold, and drank a little more than he could carry, he arose from table, having during the entire meal sensibly kept silence, and wiping his mouth on his coat-sleeve, spoke:

'The moral this evening, signori, I shall carry home in my stomach.'

As he was going out of the restaurant, one of the artists asked him why he left two rolls of bread on the table; saying they were paid for, and belonged to him.

'I left them,' said he, 'out of regard for the correct usages of society; but, having shown this, I return to pocket them.'

This he did at once, and Caper stood astonished at the seedy-beggar's phraseology.

In addition to these characters, wandering musicians find their way into the café, jugglers, peddlers of Roman mosaics and jewelry, plaster-casts and sponges, perfumery and paint-brushes. Or a peripatetic shoemaker, with one pair of shoes, which he recklessly offers for sale to giant or dwarf. One morning he found a purchaser—a French artist—who put them on, and threw away his old shoes. Fatal mistake. Two hours afterward, the buyer was back in the Greco, with both big toes sticking out of the ends of his new shoes, looking for that cochon of a shoemaker.

To those who read men like books, the Greco offers a valuable circulating library. The advantage, too, of these artistical works is, that one needs not be a Mezzofanti to read the Russian, Spanish, German, French, Italian, English, and other faces that pass before one panoramically. There sits a relation of a hospodar, drinking Russian tea; he pours into a large cup a small glass of brandy, throws in a slice of lemon, fills up with hot tea. Do you think of the miles he has traveled, in a telega, over snow-covered steppes, and the smoking samovar of tea that awaited him, his journey for the day ended? Had he lived when painting and sculpture were in their ripe prime, what a fiery life he would have thrown into his works! As it is, he drinks cognac, hunts wild-boars in the Pontine marshes—and paints Samson and Delilah, after models.

The Spanish artist, over a cup of chocolate, has lovely dreams, of burnt umber hue, and despises the neglected treasures left him by the Moors, while he seeks gold in—castles in the air.

The German, with feet in Italy and head far away in the Fatherland, frequents the German-club in preference to the Greco; for at the club is there not lager beer?.... In imperial Rome, there are lager beer breweries! He has the profundities of the esthetical in art at his finger-ends; it is deep-sea fishing, and he occasionally lands a whale, as Kaulbach has done; or very nearly catches a mermaid with Cornelius. Let us respect the man—he works.

The French artist, over a cup of black coffee, with perhaps a small glass of cognac, is the lightning to the German thunder. If he were asked to paint the portrait of a potato, he would make eyes about it, and then give you a little picture fit to adorn a boudoir. He does every thing with a flourish. If he has never painted Nero performing that celebrated violin-solo over Rome, it is because he despaired of conveying an idea of the tremulous flourish of the fiddle-bow. He reads nature, and translates her, without understanding her. He will prove to you that the cattle of Rosa Bonheur are those of the fields, while he will object to Landseer that his beasts are those of the guinea cattle-show. He blows up grand facts in the science of art with gunpowder, while the English dig them out with a shovel, and the Germans bore for them. He finds Raphael, king of pastel artists, and never mentions his discovery to the English. He is more dangerous with the fleurette than many a trooper with broadsword. Every thing that he appropriates, he stamps with the character of his own nationality. The English race-horse at Chantilly has an air of curl-papers about his mane and tail.

The Italian artist—the night-season is for sleep.

The English artist—hearken to Ruskin on Turner! When one has hit the bull's-eye, there is nothing left but to lay down the gun, and go and have—a whitebait dinner.

The American artist—there is danger of the youthful giant kicking out the end of the Cradle of Art, and 'scatterlophisticating rampageously' over all the nursery.

'I'd jest give a hun-dred dol-lars t'morrow, ef I could find out a way to cut stat-tures by steam,' said Chapin, the sculptor.

'I can't see why a country with great rivers, great mountains, and great institutions generally, can not produce great sculptors and painters,' said Caper sharply, one day to Rocjean.

'It is this very greatness,' answered Rocjean, 'that prevents it. The aim of the people runs not in the narrow channel of mountain-stream, but with the broad tide of the ocean. In the hands of Providence, other lands in other times have taken up painting and sculpture with their whole might, and have wielded them to advance civilization. They have played—are playing their part, these civilizers; but they are no longer chief actors, least of all in America. Painting and sculpture may take the character of subjects there; but their rôle as king is—played out.'

'Much as you know about it,' answered Caper, 'you are all theory!'

'That maybe,' quoth Rocjean; 'you know what ΘΕΟΣ means in Greek, don't you?'

AMONG THE WILD BEASTS.

There came to Rome, in the autumn, along with the other travelers, a caravan of wild beasts, ostensibly under charge of Monsieur Charles, the celebrated Tamer, rendered illustrious and illustrated by Nadar and Gustave Doré, in the Journal pour Rire. They were exhibited under a canvas tent in the Piazza Popolo, and a very cold time they had of it during the winter. Evidently, Monsieur Charles believed the climate of Italy belonged to the temperance society of climates. He erred, and suffered with his 'superbe et manufique ÉLLLLLÉPHANT!' 'and when we reflec', ladies and gentlemen, that there are persons, forty and even fifty years old, who have never seen the Ellllephant!!!... and who DARE TO SAY so!!!...' Monsieur Charles made his explanations with teeth chattering.

Caper, anxious to make a sketch of a very fine Bengal tiger in the collection, easily purchased permission to make studies of the animals during the hours when the exhibition was closed to the public; and as he went at every thing vigorously, he was before long in possession of several fine sketches of the tiger and other beasts, besides several secrets only known to the initiated, who act as keepers.

The royal Bengal tiger was one of the finest beasts Caper had ever seen, and what he particularly admired was the jet-black lustre of the stripes on his tawny sides and the vivid lustre of his eyes. The lion curiously seemed laboring under a heavy sleep at the very time when he should have been awake; but then his mane was kept in admirable order. The hair round his face stood out like the bristles of a shoe-brush, and there was a curl in the knob of hair at the end of his tail that amply compensated for his inactivity. The hyenas looked sleek and happy, and their teeth were remarkably white; but the elephant was the constant wonder of all beholders. Instead of the tawny, blue-gray color of most of his species, he was black, and glistened like a patent-leather boot; while his tusks were as white as—ivory; yea, more so.

'I don't understand what makes your animals look so bright,' said Caper one day to one of the keepers.

'Come here to-morrow morning early, when we make their toilettes, and you'll see,' replied the man, laughing. 'Why, there's that old hog of a lion, he's as savage and snaptious before he has his medicine as a corporal; and looks as old as Methusaleh, until we arrange his beard and get him up for the day. As for the ellllephant ... ugh!'

Caper's curiosity was aroused, and the next morning, early, he was in the menagerie. The first sight that struck his eye was the elephant, keeled over on one side, and weaving his trunk about, evidently as a signal of distress; while his keeper and another man were—blacking-pot and shoe-brushes in hand—going all over him from stem to stern.

'Good day,' said the keeper to him, 'here's a pair of boots for you! put outside the door to be blacked every morning, for five francs a day. It's the dearest job I ever undertook...and the boots are ungrateful! Here, Pierre,' he continued to the man who helped him, 'he shines enough; take away the breshes, and bring me the sand-paper to rub up his tusks. Talk about polished beasts! I believe, myself, that we beat all other shows to pieces on this 'ere point. Some beasts are more knowing than others; for example, them monkeys in that cage there. Give that big fool of a shimpanzy that bresh, Pierre, and let the gentleman see him operate on tother monkeys.'

Pierre gave the large monkey a brush, and, to Caper's astonishment, he saw the animal seize it with one paw, then springing forward, catch a small monkey with the other paw, and holding him down, in spite of his struggles, administer so complete a brushing over his entire body that every hair received a touch. The other monkeys in the cage were in the wildest state of excitement, evidently knowing from experience that they would all have to pass under the large one's hands; and when he had given a final polish to the small one, he commenced a vigorous chase for his mate, an aged female, who, evidently disliking the ordeal, commenced a series of ground and lofty tumblings that would have made the fortune of even the distinguished—Léotard. In vain: after a prolonged chase, in which the inhabitants of the cage flew round so fast that it appeared to be full of flying legs, tails, and fur, the large monkey seized the female and, regardless of her attempts to liberate herself, he brushed her from head to foot, to the great delight of a Swiss soldier, an infantry corporal, who had entered the menagerie a few minutes before the grand hunt commenced.

'Ma voi!' said the Swiss, pronouncing French with a broad German accent, 'it would keef me krate bleshur to have dat pig monkey in my gombany. He would mak' virst rait brivate.'

The keeper, who was still polishing away with sand-paper at the elephant's tusks, and who evidently regarded the soldier with great contempt, said to him:

'He would have been there long since—only he knows too much.'

'Ma voi! that's the reason you're draining him vor a Vrench gavalry gombany. Vell, I likes dat.'

'Oh! no,' said the keeper, 'his principles an't going to allow him to enter our army.'

'Vell, what are his brincibles?'

'To serve those who pay best!' quoth the Frenchman, who, in the firm faith that he had said a good thing, called Pierre to help him adorn the lion, and turned his back on the Swiss, who, in revenge, amused himself feeding the monkeys with an old button, a stump of a cigar, and various wads of paper.

The keeper then gave the lion a narcotic, and after this medicine, combed out his mane and tail, waxed his mustache, and thus made his toilette for the day. The tiger and leopards had their stripes and spots touched up once a week with hair-dye, and as this was not the day appointed, Caper missed this part of the exhibition. The hyenas submitted to be brushed down; but showed strong symptoms of mutiny at having their teeth rubbed with a toothbrush and their nails pared.

In half an hour more, the keeper's labors were over, and Caper, giving him a present for his inviting him to assist as spectator at la toilette bien béte, or beastly dressing, walked off to breakfast, evidently thinking that Art was not dead in that menagerie, whatever Rocjean might say of its state of health in the world at large.

'To think,' soliloquized Caper, 'to think of what a bootless thing it is, to shoe-black o'er an elephant!'

ROMAN MODELS.

The traveler visiting Rome notices in the Piazza di Spagna, along the Spanish steps, and in the Condotti, Fratina and Sistina streets, either sunning themselves or slowly sauntering along, many picturesquely-dressed men, women, and children, who, as he soon learns, are the professional models of the artists. For a fee of from fifty cents to a dollar, they will give their professional services for a sitting four hours in length, and those of them who are most in demand find little difficulty during the 'business season,' say from the months of November to May, in earning from one and a half to two dollars, and even more, every day. Many of them, living frugally, manage to make what is considered a fortune among the contadini in a few years; and Hawks, the English artist, who spent a summer at Saracenesca, found, to his astonishment, that one of the leading men of the town, one who loaned money at very large interest, owned property, and who was numbered among the heavy wealthy, was no other than a certain Gaetano, he had more than once used as model, at the price of fifty cents a sitting.

The government prohibiting female models from posing nude in the different life-schools, it consequently follows that they pose in private studios, as they choose; this interdiction does not extend to the male models; and when Caper was in Rome, he had full opportunities offered him to draw from these in the English Academy, and in the private schools of Gigi and Giacinti. Supported by the British government, the English artist has, free of all expense, at this truly National Academy, opportunities to sketch from life, as well as from casts, and has, moreover, access to a well-chosen library of books. With a generosity worthy of all praise, American artists are admitted to the English Academy, with full permission to share with Englishmen the advantages of the life-school, free of all cost; a piece of liberality that well might be copied by the French Academy, without at all derogating from its high position—on the Pincian Hill.

If Gigi's school is still kept up, (it was in a small street near the Trevi fountain,) we would advise the traveler in search of the picturesque by all means to visit it, particularly if it is in the same location it was when Caper was there. It was over a stable, in the second story of a tumble-down old house, frequented by dogs, cats, fleas, and rats; in a room say fifty feet long by twenty wide. A semi-circle of desks and wooden benches went round the platform where stood the male models nude, or on other evenings, male and female models in costumes, Roman or Neapolitan. Oil lamps gave enough light to enable the artists who generally attended there to draw, and color in oils or water-colors, the costumes. The price of admittance for the costume class was one paul, (ten cents,) and as the model only posed about two hours, the artists had to work very fast to get even a rough sketch finished in that short time. Americans, Danes, Germans, Spaniards, French, Italians, English, Russians, were numbered among the attendants, and more than once, a sedate-looking English-woman or two would come in quietly, make a sketch, and go away unmolested and almost unnoticed.

More than three-quarters of the sketches made by Caper at Gigi's costume-class were taken from models in standing positions. At the end of the first hour, they had from ten to fifteen minutes allowed them to rest; but these minutes were seldom wasted by the artist, who improved them to finish the lines of his drawing, or dash in color. The powers of endurance of the female models were better than those of the men; and they would strike a position and keep it for an hour, almost immovable. Noticeable among these women, was one named Minacucci, who, though over seventy years old, had all the animation and spirit of one not half her age; and would keep her position with the steadiness of a statue. She had, in her younger days, been a model for Canova; had outlived two generations; and was now posing for a third. If you have ever seen many figure-paintings executed in Rome, your chance is good to have seen Minacucci's portrait over and over again. Caper affirms that of any painting made in Rome from the years 1856 to 1860, introducing an Italian head, whether a Madonna or sausage-seller, he can tell you the name of the model it was painted from nine times out of ten! The fact is, they do want a new model for the Madonna badly in Rome, for Giacinta is growing old and fat, and Stella, since she married that cobbler, has lost her angelic expression. The small boy who used to pose for angels has smoked himself too yellow, and the man who stood for Charity has gone out of business.

'I have,' said Caper to me the other day, 'too much respect for the public to tell them who the man with red hair and beard used to pose for; but he has taken to drinking, and it's all up with him.'

Spite of fleas, rats, squalling cats, dog-fights, squealing of horses, and braying of donkeys, lamp-smoke, and heat or cold, the hours passed by Caper in Gigi's old barracks were among the pleasantest of his Roman life. There was such novelty, variety, and brilliancy in the costumes to be sketched, that every evening was a surprise; save those nights when Stella posed, and these were known and looked forward to in advance. She always insured a full class, and when she first appeared, was the beauty of all the models.

Caper was sitting one afternoon in Rocjean's studio, when there was a tap at the door.

'Entrate!' shouted Rocjean, and in came a female model, called Rita. It was the month of May, business was dull; she wanted employment. Rocjean asked her to walk in and rest herself.

'Well, Rita, you haven't any thing to do, now that the English have all fled from Rome before the malaria?'

'Very little. Some of the Russians are left up there in the Fratina; but since the Signore Giovanni sold all his paintings to that rich Russian banker, diavolo! he has done nothing but drink champagne, and he don't want any more models.'

'What is the Signore Giovanni's last name?' asked Caper.

'Who knows, Signore Giacomo? I don't. We others (noi altri) never can pronounce your queer names, so we find out the Italian for your first names, and call you by that. Signore Arturo, the French artist, told me once that the English and Russians and Germans had such hard names they often broke their front-teeth out trying to speak them; but he was joking. I know the real, true reason for it.'

'Come, let us have it,' said Rocjean.

'Accidente! I won't tell you; you will be angry.'

'No we won't,' spoke Caper, 'and what is more, I will give you two pauls if you will tell us. I am very curious to know this reason.'

'Bene, now the prete came round to see me the other day; it was when he purified the house with holy water, and he asked me a great many questions, which I answered so artlessly, yes, so artlessly! whew! [here Miss Rita smiled artfully.] Then he asked me all about you heretics, and he told me you were all going to—be burned up, as soon as you died; for the Inquisition couldn't do it for you in these degenerate days. After a great deal more twaddle like this, I asked him why you heretics all had such hard names, that we others never could speak them? Then he looked mysterious, so! [here Miss Rita diabolically winked one eye,] and said he: 'I will tell you, per Bacco! hush, it's because they are so abominably wicked, never give any thing to OUR Church, never have no holy water in their houses, never go to no confession, and are such monsters generally, that their police are all the time busy trying to catch them; but their names are so hard to speak that when the police go and ask for them, nobody knows them, and so they get off; otherwise, their country would have jails in it as large as St. Peter's, and they would be full all the time!'

'H'm!' said Rocjean, 'I suppose you would be afraid to go to such horrible countries, among such people?'

'Not I,' spoke Rita,'didn't Ida go to Paris, and didn't she come back to Rome with such a magnificent silk dress, and gold watch, and such a bonnet! all full of flowers, and lace, and ribbons? Oh! they don't eat 'nothing but maccaroni' there! And they don't have priests all the time sneaking round to keep a poor girl from earning a little money honestly, and haul her up before the police if her carta di soggiorno [permit to remain in Rome] runs out. I wish [here Rita stamped her foot and her eyes flashed] Garibaldi would come here! Then you would see these black crows flying, Iddio giusto! Then we would have no more of these arciprete making us pay them for every mouthful of bread we eat, or wine we drink, or wood we burn.'

'Why,' said Caper, 'they don't keep the baker-shops, and wine-shops, and wood-yards, do they?'

'No,' answered Rita, 'but they speculate in them, and Fra 'Tonelli makes his cousins and so on inspectors; and they regulate the prices to suit themselves, and make oh! such tremen-di-ous fortunes. [Here Rita opened her eyes, and spread her hands, as if beholding the elephant.] Don't I remember, some time ago, how, when the Pope went out riding, he found both sides of the way from the Vatican to San Angelo crowded with people on their knees, groaning and calling to him. Said he to Fra 'Tonelli:

''What are these poor people about?'

''Praying for your blessed holiness,' said he, while his eyes sparkled.

''But,' said the Pope, 'they are moaning and groaning.'

''It's a way the poblaccio have,' answered 'Tonelli, 'when they pray.'

'The Pope knew he was lying, so, when he went home to the Vatican, he sent for one of his faithful servants, and said he:

''Santi, you run out and see what all this shindy is about?'

'So Santi came back and told him 'Tonelli had put up the price of bread, and the people were starving. So the Pope took out a big purse with a little money in it, and said he:

''Here, Santi, you go and buy me ten pounds of bread, and get a bill for it, and have it receipted!'

'So Santi came back with bread, and bill all receipted, and laid it down on a table, and threw a cloth over it. By and by, in comes 'Tonelli. Then the Pope says to him, kindly and smiling:

''I am confident I heard the people crying about bread to-day; now, tell me truly, what is it selling for?'

'Then 'Toneli told him such a lie. [Up went Rita's hands and eyes.]

'Then the Pope says, while he looked so [knitting her brows]:

''Oblige me, if you please, by lifting up that cloth.'

'And'Tonelli did.

'Bread went down six baiocchi next morning!'

'By the way, Rita,' asked Rocjean, 'where is your little brother, Beppo?'

'Oh! he's home,' she answered, 'but I wish you would ask your friend Enrico, the German sculptor, if he won't have him again, for his model.'

'Why, I thought he was using him for his new statue?'

'He was; but oh! so unfortunately, last Sunday, father went out to see his cousin John, who lives near Ponte Mole, and has a garden there, and Beppo went with him; but the dear little fellow is so fond of fruit, that he ate a pint of raw horse-beans!'

'Of all the fruit!' shouted Caper.

'Si, signore, it's splendid; but it gave Beppo the colic next day, and when he went to Signore Enrico's studio to pose for Cupid, he twisted and wrenched around so with pain, that Signore Enrico told him he looked more like a little devil than a small love; and when Beppo told him what fruit he had been eating, Signore Enrico bid him clear out for a savage that he was, and told him to go and learn to eat them boiled before he came back again.'

'I will speak to the Signore Enrico, and have him employ him again,' said Rocjean.

'Oh! I wish you would, for the Signore Enrico was very good to Beppo; besides, his studio is a perfect palace for cigar-stumps, which Beppo used to pick up and sell—that is, all those he and father didn't smoke in their pipes.'

'Make a sketch, Caper,' said Rocjean, 'of Cupid filling up his quiver with cigar-stumps, while he holds one between his teeth. There's a model love for you! Now, give Rita those two pauls you promised her, and let her go. Adio!'

GIULIA DI SEGNI.

(Lines found written on the back of a sketch in Caper's portfolio.)

By Roman watch-tower, on the mountaintop,
We stood, at sunset, gazing like the eagles
From their cloud-eyrie, o'er the broad Campagna,
To the Albanian hills, which boldly rose,
Bathed in a flood of red and pearly light.
Far off, and fading in the coming night,
Lay the Abruzzi, where the pale, white walls
Of towns gleamed faintly on their purple sides.

The evening air was tremulous with sounds:
The thrilling chirp of insects, twittering birds,
Barking of shepherds' fierce, white, Roman dogs;
While from the narrow path, far down below,
We heard a mournful rondinella ring,
Sung by a home-returning mountaineer.

Then, as the daylight slowly climbed the hills,
And the soft wind breathed music to their steps,
O'er the old Roman watch-tower marched the stars,
In their bright legions—conquerors of night—
Shedding from silver armor shining light;
As once the Roman legions, ages past,
Marched on to conquest o'er the Latin way,
Gleaming, white-stoned, so far beneath our gaze.

Giula di Segni, 'mid the Volscians born,
Streamed in thy veins that fiery, Roman blood,
Curled thy proud lip, and fired thy eagle eyes.
Faultless in beauty, as the noble forms
Painted on rare Etrurian vase of old;
How life, ennobled by thy love, swept on,
Serene, above the mean and pitiful!

Stars! that still sparkle o'er old Segni's walls,
Oh! mirror back to me one glance from eyes
That yet may watch you from that Roman tower.

MR. BROWN BUYS A PAINTING.

Caper's uncle, from St. Louis, Mr. William Browne, one day astonished several artists who were dining with him:

'My young men,' said he, 'there is one thing pleases me very much about you all, and that is, you never mention the word Art; don't seem to care any thing more about the old masters than I would about a lot of old worn-out broom-sticks; and if I didn't know I was with artists in Rome, the crib—no, what d' ye call it?'

'The manger?' suggested Rocjean.

'Yes,' continued Uncle Bill, 'the manger of art, I should think I was among a lot of smart merchants, who had gone into the painting business determined to do a right good trade.'

'Cash on delivery,' added Caper.

'Yes, be sure of that. Well, I like it; I feel at home with you; and as I always make it a point to encourage young business men, I am going to do my duty by one of you, at any rate. I shan't show favor to my nephew, Jim, any more than I do to the rest. And this is my plan: I want a painting five feet by two, to fill up a place in my house in St. Louis; it's an odd shape, and that is so much in my favor, because you haven't any of you a painting that size under way, and can all start even. I'll leave the subject to each one of you, and I'll pay five hundred dollars to the man who paints the best picture, who has his done within seven days, and puts the most work on it! Do you all understand?'

They replied affirmatively.

'But what the thunder,' asked Caper, 'are those of us who don't win the prize, going to do with paintings of such a size, left on our hands? Nobody, unless a steamboat captain, who wants to ornament his berths, just that size, and relieve the tedium of his passengers, would ever think of buying them.'

'Well,' replied Uncle Bill, 'I don't want smart young men like you all, to lose your time and money, so I'll buy the balance of the paintings for what the canvas and paints cost, and give two dollars a day for the seven days employed on each painting. Isn't that liberal?'

'Like Cosmo de Medici,' answered Rocjean; 'and I agree to the terms in every particular, especially as to putting the most work on it! There are four competitors—put down their names. Légume, you will come in, won't you?'

'Certainly I will, by Jing!' answered the French artist, who prided himself on his knowledge of English, especially the interjections.

'Then,' continued Rocjean, 'Caper, Bagswell, Légume, and I, will try for your five hundred dollar prize. When shall we commence?'

'To-day is Tuesday,' replied Uncle Bill; 'say next Monday—that will give you plenty of time to get your frames and canvases. So that ends all particulars. There are two friends of mine here from the United States, one, Mr. Van Brick, of New York, and the other, Mr. Pinchfip, of Philadelphia, whom I think you all met here last week.'

'The thin gentleman with hair very much brushed, be Gad?' asked Légume.

'I don't remember as to his hair,' answered Uncle Bill, 'but that's the man. Well, these two I know will act as vampires, and I am sure you will be pleased with their verdict. Monday after next, therefore, we will all call, so be ready.'

The four artists took the whole thing as a joke, but determined to paint the pictures; and at Caper's suggestion, each one agreed, as there was a play of words in the clause, 'most work on it,' to puzzle Uncle Bill, and have the laugh on him.

On the day appointed to decide the prize, Uncle Bill, accompanied by Messrs. Van Brick and Pinchfip, called first at Légume's studio; they found him in the Via Margutta, (in English, Malicious street,) in a light, airy room, furnished with a striking attention to effect. On his easel was a painting of the required size, representing Louis XV. at Versailles, surrounded by his lady friends. By making the figures of the ladies small, and crowding them, Légume managed to get a hundred or two on the canvas. A period in their history to which Frenchmen refer with so much pleasure, and with which they are so conversant, was treated by the artist with professional zeal. The merits of the painting were carefully canvassed by the two judges. Mr. Pinchfip found it exceedingly graceful, neat, and pretty. Mr. Van Brick admired the females, remarking that he should like to be in old Louis's place. To which Légume bowed, asserting that he was sure he was in every way qualified to fill it. Mr. Van Brick determined in his mind to give the artist a dinner, at Spillman's, for that speech.

Mr. Pinchfip took notes in a book; Mr. Van Brick asked for a light to a cigar. The former congratulated the artist; the latter at once asked him to come and dine with him. Mr. Pinchfip wished to know if he was related to the Count Légume whom he had met at Paris. Mr. Van Brick told him he would bring his friend Livingston round to buy a painting. Mr. Pinchfip said that it would afford him pleasure to call again. Mr. Van Brick gave the artist his card, and shook hands with him:...and the judges were passing out, when Légume asked them to take one final look at the painting to see if it had not the most work on it. Mr. Van Brick instantly turned toward it, and running over it with his eye, burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

'If the others beat that, I am mistaken,' said he. 'Look at there!' calling the attention of Uncle Bill and Mr. Pinchfip to a fold of a curtain on which was painted, in small letters,

'MOST WORK.'

'I say, Browne,' continued Mr. Van Brick, 'he is too many for you; and if the one who puts 'most work' on his painting is to win the five hundred dollars, Légume's chance is good.'

'Very ingenious,' said Mr. Pinchfip, 'very; it is a legitimate play upon words. But legally, I can not affirm that I am aware of any precedent for awarding Mr. Browne's money to Monsieur Légume on this score.'

'We will have to make a precedent, then,' spoke Van Brick, 'and do it illegally, if we find that he deserves the money. But time flies, and we have the other artists to visit.'

They next went to Bagswell's studio, in the Viccolo dei Greci, and found him in a large room, well furnished, and having a solidly comfortable look; the walls ornamented with paintings, sketches, costumes, armor; while in a good light under its one large window, was his painting. They found he had left his beaten track of historical subjects, and in the genre school had an interior of an Italian country inn—a kitchen-scene. It represented a stout, handsome country girl, in Ciociara costume, kneading a large trough of dough, while another girl was filling pans with that which was already kneaded, and two or three other females were carrying them to an oven, tended by a man who was piling brush-wood on the fire. The painting was very life-like, and for the short time employed on it, well finished. It wanted the fire and dash of Légume's painting, but its truthfulness to life evidently made a deep impression on Uncle Bill. Stuck on with a sketching-tack to one corner was a piece of paper, on which was marked the number of hours employed each day on the work; it summed up fifty-four hours, or an average each day of nearly eight hours' work on it.

Mr. Pinchfip's note-book was again called into play. Mr. Van Brick had another cigar to smoke, remarking that the artist had triple work in his picture—head, bread, and prize-work: his picture representing working in, over, and for bread!

They next went to see Rocjean, in the Corso; they found him in a bournouse, with a fez on his head, a long chibouk in his mouth, smoking away, extended at full length on a settee, which he insisted was a divan. There was a glass bottle holding half a gallon of red wine on a table near him, also a bottle of Marsala, and half a dozen glasses. There was a roaring wood-fire in his stove—for it was December, and the day was overcast and cool.

'This is the most out and out comfortable old nest I've seen in Rome,' said Mr. Van Brick, as they entered; 'and as for curiosities and plunder, you beat Barnum. Will I take a glass of wine? I am there!'

Rocjean filled up glasses. Mr. Pinchfip declining, as he never drank before dinner, neither did he smoke before dinner. He told them that the late Doctor Phyzgig, who had always been their (the Pinchfips') family physician, had absolutely forbidden it.

No one made any remark to this, unless Mr. Van Brick's expressive face could be translated as observing, in a quiet manner, that the late Doctor was possibly dyspeptic, and probably nervous.

Rocjean's painting represented a view of the Claudian aqueduct, mountains in the distance; bold foreground, shepherd with flocks, a wayside shrine, peasants kneeling in front of it. Over all, bold cloud effects. A very ponderous volume balanced on top of the picture, and leaning against the easel, invited Uncle Bill's attention, and he asked Rocjean why he had put it there? The artist answered that it was a folio copy of Josephus, his works, and, as he was anxious to comply with the terms of Mr. Browne, he had placed it there in order to put the most work on it.

Mr. Pinchfip having asked Rocjean why, in placing that book there, he was like a passenger paying his fare to the driver of an omnibus?

The latter at once answered:

'I give it up.'

'So you do,' replied Pinchfip. 'You are quick, sir, at answering conundrums.'

Mr. Brick saw it. Finally Uncle Bill was made to comprehend.

'Very excellent, sir; very ingenious! Philadelphians may well be proud of the high position they have as punsters, utterers of bon mots and conundrums,' said Rocjean; 'I have had the comfort of living in your city, and thoroughly appreciating your—markets.'

After Rocjean's the judges and Uncle Bill went to Caper's studio. As they entered his room they found that ingenious youth walking, in his shirt-sleeves, in as large a circle as the room would permit, bearing on his head a large canvas, while a quite pretty female model, named Stella, sat on a sofa, marking down something on a piece of paper, using the sole of her shoe for a writing-desk.

'We-ell!' said Uncle Bill.

'One more round,' quoth Caper, with unmoved countenance, 'and I will be with you. That will make four hundred and fifty, won't it, Stella?'

'Eh, Gia, one more is all you want.' And making an extra scratch with a pencil, the female model surveyed the new-comers with a triumphant air, plainly saying: 'See there! I can write, but I am not proud.'

'What are you about, Jim?'

'Look at that painting!' answered Caper. 'The Blessing of the Donkeys, Horses, etc.; it is one of the most imposing ceremonies of the Church. As my specialty is animal, I have chosen it for my painting; and not contented with laboring faithfully on it, I have determined, in order to put the thing beyond a doubt as to my gaining the prize, to put the most work on it of any of my rivals; so I have actually, as Stella will tell you, carried it bodily four hundred and fifty times round this studio.'

'Instead of a painting, I should think you would have made a panting of it,' spoke Mr. Van Brick.

'The idea seems to me artful,' added Mr. Pinchfip, 'but after all, this pedestrian work was not on the painting, but under it; therefore, according to Blackstone on contracts, this comes under the head of a consideration do, ut facias, see vol. ii. page 360. How far moral obligation is a legal consideration, see note, vol. iii. p. 249 Bossanquet and Puller's Reports. The principle servus facit, ut herus det, as laid down by....'

'Jove!' exclaimed Uncle Bill, 'couldn't you stop off the torrent for one minute? I'm drowning—I give up—do with me as you see fit.'

'And now,' said Mr. Van Brick, 'that we have seen the four paintings, let us, Mr. Pinchfip, proceed calmly to discover who has won the five hundred dollars. Duly, deliberately, and gravely, let us put the four names on four slips of paper, stir them up in a hat. Mr. Browne shall then draw out a name, the owner of that name shall be the winner.'

It was drawn, and by good fortune for him, Bagswell won the five hundred dollars. Thus Uncle Bill Browne bought one painting for a good round sum, and three others at the stipulated price. Which one of the four had the most work on it, is, however, an unsettled question among three of the artists, to this day.

FOR THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH

Victory comes with a palm in her hand,
With laurel upon her brow;
Cypress is clinging about her feet,
But its dark blossoms are red and sweet,
And the weeping mourners bow.

It is well. Through her tears, the widow smiles
To the child upon her knee;
'Thou'rt fatherless, darling; but he fell
Gallantly fighting, and long and well,
For the banner of the free!'

Then, weeping: 'Alas! for my lost, lost love;
Alas! for my own weak heart;
I know, when the storm shall pass away,
My boy, in manhood, would blush to say:
'My blood had therein no part."

The maiden her lover weeps, unconsoled,
So desolate is her gloom;
But a voice falls softly through the air,
Whispering comfort to her despair,
'Love here hath fadeless bloom.'

The father laments for his boy, who fell
By Cumberland's river-side;
The sister, her brother loved the best,
Whose blood, in the dark and troubled West,
The father of waters dyed.

The mother—oh! silence your Spartan tales—
Says bravely, hushing a moan:
'I have yet one left. My boy! go on;
Rear freedom's banner high in the sun!'
Then sits in the house alone.

To die for one's country is sweet, indeed!
To fight for the right is brave;
But there are brave hearts who vainly wait
Till triumph shall find them desolate,
Their hopes in a far-off grave.

O mourners! be patient; the end shall come;
The beautiful years of peace.
Remember! though hearts rebel the while
You hide your tears with a mournful smile,
That tyranny soon shall cease.

For victory comes, a palm in her hand,
Fresh garlands about her brow;
But the cypress trailing under her feet,
With crimson blossoms, by tears made sweet,
Shall wreathe with the laurel now.

IN TRANSITU

When the acid meets the alkali,
How they sputter, snap, and fly!
Such a crackling, such a pattering!
Such a hissing, such a spattering!

All in foaming discord tossed,
One would swear that all is lost.
Yet the equivalents soon blend,
All comes right at last i' the end.

Country mine!—'tis so with thee.
Wait—and all will quiet be!
Men, while working out a mission,
Must not fear the fierce transition.

AMONG THE PINES.

I sauntered out, after the events recorded in the last paper, to inhale the fresh air of the morning. A slight rain had fallen during the night, and it still moistened the dead leaves which carpeted the woods, making an extended walk out of the question; so, seating myself on the trunk of a fallen tree, in the vicinity of the house, I awaited the hour for breakfast. I had not remained there long before I heard the voices of my host and Madam P—— on the front piazza:

'I tell you, Alice, I can not—must not do it. If I overlook this, the discipline of the plantation is at an end.'

'Do what you please with him when you return,' replied the lady, 'but do not chain him up, and leave me, at such a time, alone. You know Jim is the only one I can depend on.'

'Well, have your own way. You know, my darling, I would not cause you a moment's uneasiness, but I must follow up this d——d Moye.'

I was seated where I could hear, though I could not see the speakers, but it was evident from the tone of the last remark, that an action accompanied it quite as tender as the words. Being unwilling to overhear more of a private conversation, I rose and approached them.

'Ah! my dear fellow,' said the Colonel, on perceiving me, 'are you stirring so early? I was about to send to your room to ask if you'll go with me up the country. My d——d overseer has got away, and I must follow him at once.'

'I'll go with pleasure,' I replied. 'Which way do you think Moye has gone?'

'The shortest cut to the railroad, probably; but old Cæsar will track him.'

A servant then announced breakfast—an early one having been prepared. We hurried through the meal with all speed, and the other preparations being soon over, were in twenty minutes in our saddles, and ready for the journey. The mulatto coachman, with a third horse, was at the door, ready to accompany us, and as we mounted, the Colonel said to him:

'Go and call Sam, the driver.'

The darky soon returned with the heavy, ugly-visaged black who had been whipped, by Madam P——'s order, the day before.

'Sam,' said his master, 'I shall be gone some days, and I leave the field-work in your hands. Let me have a good account of you when I return.'

'Yas, massa, you shill dat,' replied the negro.

'Put Jule—Sam's Jule—into the field, and see that she does full tasks,' continued the Colonel.

'Hain't she wanted 'mong de nusses, massa?'

'Put some one else there—give her field-work; she needs it.'

I will here explain that on large plantations the young children of the field-women are left with them only at night, being herded together during the day in a separate cabin, in charge of nurses. These nurses are feeble, sickly women, or recent mothers; and the fact of Jule's being employed in that capacity was evidence that she was unfit for out-door labor.

Madam P——, who was waiting on the piazza to see us off, seemed about to remonstrate against this arrangement, but she hesitated a moment, and in that moment we had bidden her 'Good-by,' and galloped away.

We were soon at the cabin of the negro-hunter, and the coachman dismounting, called him out.

'Hurry up, hurry up,' said the Colonel, as Sandy appeared, 'we haven't a moment to spare.'

'Jest so, jest so, Cunnel; I'll jine ye in a jiffin,' replied he of the reddish extremities.

Emerging from the shanty with provoking deliberation—the impatience of my host had infected me—the clay-eater slowly proceeded to mount the horse of the negro, his dirt-bedraggled wife, and clay-incrusted children, following close at his heels, and the younger ones huddling around for the tokens of paternal affection usual at parting. Whether it was the noise they made, or their frightful aspect, I know not, but the horse, a spirited animal, took fright on their appearance, and nearly broke away from the negro, who was holding him. Seeing this, the Colonel said:

'Clear out, you young scarecrows. Into the house with you.'

'They hain't no more scarecrows than yourn, Cunnel J——,' said the mother, in a decidedly belligerent tone. 'You may 'buse my old man—he kin stand it—but ye shan't blackguard my young 'uns!'

The Colonel laughed, and was about to make a good-natured reply, when Sandy yelled out:

'Gwo enter the house and shet up, ye —— ——.'

With this affectionate farewell, he turned his horse and led the way up the road.

The dog, who was a short distance in advance, soon gave a piercing howl, and started off at the speed of a reindeer. He had struck the trail, and urging our horses to their fastest speed, we followed.

We were all well mounted, but the mare the Colonel had given me was a magnificent animal, as fleet as the wind, and with a gait so easy that her back seemed a rocking-chair. Saddle-horses at the South are trained to the gallop—Southern riders deeming it unnecessary that one's breakfast should be churned into a Dutch cheese by a trotting nag, in order that one may pass for a good horseman.

We had ridden on at a perfect break-neck pace for half an hour, when the Colonel shouted to our companion:

'Sandy, call the dog in; the horses won't last ten miles at this gait—we've a long ride before us.'

The dirt-eater did as he was bidden, and we soon settled into a gentle gallop.

We had passed through a dense forest of pines, but were emerging into a 'bottom country,' where some of the finest deciduous trees, then brown and leafless, but bearing promise of the opening beauty of spring, reared, along with the unfading evergreen, their tall stems in the air. The live-oak, the sycamore, the Spanish mulberry, the mimosa, and the persimmon, gayly festooned with wreaths of the white and yellow jessamine, the woodbine and the cypress-moss, and bearing here and there a bouquet of the mistletoe, with its deep green and glossy leaves upturned to the sun—flung their broad arms over the road, forming an archway grander and more beautiful than any the hand of man ever wove for the greatest heroes the world has worshiped.

The woods were free from underbrush, but a coarse, wiry grass, unfit for fodder, and scattered through them in detached patches, was the only vegetation visible. The ground was mainly covered with the leaves and burs of the pine.

We passed great numbers of swine, feeding on these burs, and now and then a horned animal browsing on the cypress-moss where it hung low on the trees. I observed that nearly all the swine were marked, though they seemed too wild to have ever seen an owner, or a human habitation. They were a long, lean, slab-sided race, with legs and shoulders like a deer, and bearing no sort of resemblance to the ordinary hog except in the snout, and that feature was so much longer and sharper than the nose of the Northern swine, that I doubt if Agassiz would class the two as one species. However, they have their uses—they make excellent bacon, and are 'death on snakes;' Ireland itself is not more free from the serpentine race than are the districts frequented by these long-nosed quadrupeds.

'We call them Carolina race-horses,' said the Colonel, as he finished an account of their peculiarities.

'Race-horses! Why, are they fleet of foot?'

'Fleet as deer. I'd match one against an ordinary horse at any time.'

'Come, my friend, you're practicing on my ignorance of natural history.'

'Not a bit of it. See! there's a good specimen yonder. If we can get him into the road, and fairly started, I'll bet you a dollar he'll beat Sandy's mare on a half-mile stretch—Sandy to hold the stakes and have the winnings.'

'Well, agreed,' I said, laughing, 'and I'll give the pig ten rods the start.'

'No,' replied the Colonel, 'you can't afford it. He'll have to start ahead, but you'll need that in the count. Come, Sandy, will you go in for the pile?'

I'm not sure that the native would not have run a race with Old Nicholas himself, for the sake of so much money. To him it was a vast sum; and as he thought of it, his eyes struck small sparks, and his enormous beard and mustachio vibrated with something that faintly resembled a laugh. Replying to the question, he said:

'Kinder reckon I wull, Cunnel; howsomdever, I keeps the stakes, anyhow?'

'Of course,' said the planter, 'but be honest—win if you can.'

Sandy halted his horse in the road, while the planter and I took to the woods on either side of the way. The Colonel soon maneuvered to separate the selected animal from the rest of the herd, and, without much difficulty, got him into the road, where, by closing down on each flank, we kept him till he and Sandy were fairly under way.

'He'll keep to the road when once started,' said the Colonel, laughing, 'and he'll show you some of the tallest running you ever saw in your life.'

Away they went. At first the pig seemed not exactly to comprehend the programme, for he cantered off at a leisurely pace, though he held his own. Soon, however, he cast an eye behind him—halted a moment to collect his thoughts and reconnoiter—and then, lowering his head and elevating his tail, put forth all his speed. And such speed! Talk of a deer, the wind, or a steam-engine—their gait is not to be compared with it. Nothing in nature I have ever seen run—except, it may be, a Southern tornado, or a Sixth Ward politician—could hope to distance that pig. He gained on the horse at every pace, and I soon saw that my dollar was gone!

'In for a shilling in for a pound,' is the adage, so turning to the Colonel, I said, as intelligibly as my horse's rapid steps, and my own excited risibilities would allow:

'I see I've lost, but I'll go you another dollar that you can't beat the pig!'

'No—sir!' the Colonel got out in the breaks of his laughing explosions; 'you can't hedge on me in that manner. I'll go a dollar that you can't do it, and your mare is the fastest on the road. She won me a thousand not a month ago.'

'Well, I'll do it; Sandy to have the stakes.'

'Agreed,' said the Colonel, and away we went.

The swinish racer was about a hundred yards ahead when I gave the mare the reins, and told her to go. And she did go. She flew against the wind with a motion so rapid that my face, as it clove the air, felt as if cutting its way through a solid body, and the trees, as we passed, seemed taken with a panic, and running for dear life in the opposite direction.

For a few moments I thought the mare was gaining, and I turned to the Colonel with an exultant look.

'Don't shout till you win, my boy,' he called out from the distance where I was fast leaving him and Sandy.

I did not shout, for spite of all my efforts the space between me and the pig seemed to widen. Yet I kept on, determined to win, till, at the end of a short half-mile, we reached the Waccamaw—the swine still a hundred yards ahead! There his pig-ship halted, turned coolly around, eyed me for a moment, then quietly and deliberately trotted off into the woods.

A bend in the road kept my companions out of sight for a few moments, and when they came up I had somewhat recovered my breath, though the mare was blowing hard, and reeking with foam.

'Well,' said the Colonel, 'what do you think of our bacon 'as it runs'?'

'I think the Southern article can't be beat, whether raw or cooked, standing or running.'

At this moment the hound, who had been leisurely jogging along in the rear, disdaining to join in the race in which his dog of a master and I had engaged, came up, and dashing quickly on to the river's edge, set up a most dismal howling. The Colonel dismounted, and clambering down the bank, which was there twenty feet high, and very steep, shouted out:

'The d—d Yankee has swum the stream!'

'Why so?' Tasked.

'To cover his tracks and delay pursuit; but he has overshot the mark. There is no other road within ten miles, and he must have taken to this one again beyond here. He's lost twenty minutes by that maneuver. Come, Sandy, call on the dog, we'll push on a little faster.'

'But he tuk to t'other bank, Cunnel. Shan't we trail him thar?' asked Sandy.

'And suppose he found a boat here,' I suggested, 'and made the shore some ways down?'

'He couldn't get Firefly into a boat—we should only waste time in scouring the other bank. The swamp this side the next run has forced him into the road within five miles. The trick is transparent. He took me for a fool,' replied the Colonel, answering both questions at once.

I had reined my horse out of the road, and when my companions turned to go, was standing at the edge of the bank, overlooking the river. Suddenly I saw, on one of the abutments of the bridge, what seemed a long, black log—strange to say, in motion!

'Colonel,' I shouted, 'see there! a living log, as I'm a white man!'

'Lord bless you,' cried the planter, taking an observation, 'it's an alligator!'

I said no more, but pressing on after the hound, soon left my companions out of sight. For long afterward, the Colonel, in a doleful way, would allude to my lamentable deficiency in natural history—particularly in such branches as bacon and 'living logs.'

I had ridden about five miles, keeping well up with the hound, and had reached the edge of the swamp, when suddenly the dog darted to the side of the road, and began to yelp in the most frantic manner. Dismounting, and leading my horse to the spot, I made out plainly the print of Firefly's feet in the sand. There was no mistaking it—that round shoe on the off fore-foot. (The horse had, when a colt, a cracked hoof, and though the wound was outgrown, the foot was still tender.) These prints were dry, while the tracks we had seen at the river were filled with water, thus proving that the rain ceased while the overseer was passing between the two places. He was then not far off.

The Colonel and Sandy soon rode up.

'Caught a living log! eh, my good fellow?' asked my host, with a laugh.

'No; but here's the overseer as plain as daylight; and his tracks not wet!'

Quickly dismounting, he examined the ground, and then exclaimed:

'The d—l! it's a fact—here not four hours ago! He has doubled on his tracks since, I'll wager, and not made twenty miles—we'll have him before night, sure! Come, mount—quick.'

We sprang into our saddles, and again pressed rapidly on after the dog, who followed the scent at the top of his speed.

Some three miles more of wet, miry road took us to the run of which the Colonel had spoken. Arrived there, we found the hound standing on the bank, wet to the skin, and looking decidedly chop-fallen.

'Death and d—n!' shouted the Colonel; 'the dog has swum the run, and lost the trail on the other side! The d—d scoundrel has taken to the water, and balked us after all! Take up the dog, Sandy, and try him again over there.'

The native spoke to Cæsar, who bounded on to the horse's back in front of his master. They then crossed the stream, which there was about fifty yards wide, and so shallow that in the deepest part the water only touched the horse's breast, but it was so roiled by the recent rain that we could not distinguish the foot-prints of the horse beneath the surface.

The dog ranged up and down on the opposite bank, but all to no purpose: the overseer had not been there. He had gone either up or down the stream—in which direction, was now the question. Calling Sandy back to our side of the run, the Colonel proceeded to hold a 'council of war.' Each one gave his opinion, which was canvassed by the others, with as much solemnity as if the fate of the Union hung on the decision.

The native proposed we should separate—one go up, another down the stream, and the third, with the dog, follow the road; to which he thought Moye had finally returned. Those who should explore the run would easily detect the horse's tracks where he had left it, and then taking a straight course to the road, we could all meet some five miles further on, at a place indicated.

I gave in my adhesion to Sandy's plan, but the Colonel overruled it on the ground of the waste of time to be incurred in thus recovering the overseer's trail.

'Why not,' he said, 'strike at once for the end of his route? Why follow the slow steps he took in order to throw us off the track? He has not come back to this road. Six miles below there is another one leading also to the railway. He has taken that. We might as well send Sandy and the dog back at once, and go on by ourselves.'

'But if bound for the Station, why should he wade through the creek here, sis miles out of his way? Why not go straight on by the road?' I asked.

'Because he knew the dog would track him, and he hoped by taking to the run to make me think he had crossed the country instead of striking for the railroad.'

I felt sure the Colonel was wrong, but knowing him to be tenacious of his own opinions, I made no further objection.

Directing Sandy to call on Madam P—— and acquaint her with our progress, he then dismissed the negro-hunter, and we once more turned our horses up the road.

The next twenty miles, like our previous route, lay through an unbroken forest, but as we left the water-courses, we saw nothing but the gloomy pines, which there—the region being remote from the means of transportation—were seldom tapped, and presented few of the openings that invite the weary traveler to the dwelling of the hospitable planter.

After a time the sky, which had been bright and cloudless all the morning, grew overcast and gave out tokens of a coming storm. A black cloud gathered in the west, and random flashes darted from it far off in the distance; then gradually it neared us; low mutterings sounded in the air, and the tops of the tall pines a few miles away, were lit up now and then with a fitful blaze, all the brighter for the deeper gloom that succeeded. Then a terrific flash and peal broke directly over us, and a great tree, struck by a red-hot bolt, fell with a deafening crash, half-way across our path. Peal after peal followed, and then the rain—not filtered into drops as it falls from our colder sky, but in broad, blinding sheets, poured full and heavy on our shelterless heads.

'Ah! there it comes!' shouted the Colonel. 'God have mercy upon us!'

Suddenly a crashing, crackling, thundering roar rose above the storm, filling the air, and shaking the solid earth till it trembled beneath our horses' feet, as if upheaved by a volcano. Nearer and nearer the sound came, till it seemed that all the legions of darkness were unloosed in the forest, and were mowing down the great pines as the mower mows the grass with big scythe. Then an awful, sweeping crash thundered directly at our backs, and turning round, as if to face a foe, my horse, who had borne the roar and the blinding flash till then, unmoved, paralyzed with dread, and panting for breath, sunk to the ground; while close at my side the Colonel, standing erect in his stirrups, his head uncovered to the pouring sky, cried out:

'Thank God, we are saved!'

There—not three hundred yards in our rear, had passed the Tornado—uprooting trees, prostrating dwellings, and sending many a soul to its last account, but sparing us for another day! For thirty miles through the forest it had mowed a swath of two hundred feet, then moved on to stir the ocean to its briny depths.

With a full heart, I remounted, and turning my horse, pressed on in the rain. We said not a word till a friendly opening pointed the way to a planter's dwelling. Then calling to me to follow, the Colonel dashed up the by-path which led to the mansion, and in five minutes we were warming our chilled limbs before the cheerful fire that roared and crackled on its broad hearth-stone.

The house was a large, old-fashioned frame building, square as a packing-box, and surrounded, as all country dwellings at the South are, by a broad, open piazza. Our summons was answered by its owner, a well-to-do, substantial, middle-aged planter, wearing the ordinary homespun of the district, but evidently of a station in life much above the common 'corn-crackers' I had seen at the country meeting-house. The Colonel was an acquaintance, and greeting us with great cordiality, our host led the way directly to the sitting-room. There we found a bright, blazing fire, and a pair of bright, blazing eyes, the latter belonging to a blithesome young woman of about twenty, with a cheery face, and a half-rustic, half-cultivated air, whom our new friend introduced to us as his wife.

'I regret not having had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. S—— before, but am very happy to meet her now,' said the Colonel, with all the well-bred, gentlemanly ease that distinguished him.

'The pleasure is mutual, Colonel J——,' replied the lady, 'but thirty miles in this wild country should not have made a neighbor so distant as you have been.'

'Business, madam, is at fault, as your husband knows. I have much to do; and besides, all my connections are in the other direction—with Charleston.'

'It's a fact, Sally, the Colonel is the d——st busy man in these parts. Not content with a big plantation and three hundred niggers, he looks after all South-Carolina, and the rest of creation to boot,' said our host.

'Tom will have his joke, madam, but he's not far from the truth.'

Seeing we were dripping wet, the lady offered us a change of clothing, and retiring to a chamber, we each appropriated a suit belonging to our host, giving our own to a servant to be dried.

Arrayed in the fresh apparel, we soon rejoined our friends in the sitting-room. The new garments fitted the Colonel tolerably well, but though none too long, they were a world too wide for me, and, as my wet hair hung in smooth, flat folds down my cheeks, and my limp shirt-collar fell over my linsey coat, I looked for all the world like a cross between a theatrical Aminadab Sleek and Sir John Falstaff, with the stuffing omitted. When our hostess caught sight of me in this new garb, she rubbed her hands together in great glee, and, springing to her feet, gave vent to a perfect storm of laughter—jerking out between the explosions:

'Why—you—you—look jest like—a scare-crow.'

There was no mistaking that hearty, hoidenish manner; and seizing both of her hands in mine, I shouted: 'I've found you out—you're a 'country-woman' of mine—a clear-blooded Yankee!'

'What! you a Yankee!' she exclaimed, still laughing, 'and here with this horrid 'seceshener,' as they call him.'

'True as preachin', ma'am,' I replied, adopting the drawl—'all the way from Down East, and Union, tu, stiff as buckram.'

'Du tell!' she exclaimed, swinging my hands together as she held them in hers. 'If I warn't hitched to this ere feller, I'd give ye a smack right on the spot. I'm so glad to see ye.'

'Do it, Sally—never mind me,' cried her husband, joining heartily in the merriment.

Seizing the collar of my coat with both hands, she drew my face down till my lips almost touched hers, (I was preparing to blush, and the Colonel shouted, 'Come, come, I shall tell his wife,') but then, turning quickly on her heel, she threw herself into a chair, exclaiming, 'I wouldn't mind, but the old man would be jealous;' and adding to the Colonel, 'You needn't be troubled, sir; no Yankee girl will kiss you till you change your politics.'

'Give me that inducement, and I'll change them on the spot,' said the Colonel.

'No, no, Dave, 'twouldn't do,' replied the planter, 'the conversion wouldn't be genuwine—besides, such things arn't proper, except with blood-relations—and all the Yankees, you know, are first-cousins.'

The conversation then subsided into a more placid mood, but lost none of its genial good-humor. Refreshments were soon set before us, and while partaking of them I gathered from our hostess that she was a Vermont country-girl, who, some three years before, had been induced by liberal pay, to come South as a teacher. A sister accompanied her, who, about a year after their arrival, had married a neighboring planter. Wishing to be near the sister, our hostess had also married and settled down for life in that wild region. 'I like the country very well,' she added; 'it's a great sight easier living here than in Vermont; but I do hate these lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing niggers; they are so slow, and so careless, and so dirty, that I sometimes think they will worry the very life out of me. I du believe I'm the hardest mistress in all the district.'

I learned from her that a majority of the teachers at the South are from the North, and principally, too, from New-England. Teaching is a very laborious employment there, far more so than with us, for the Southerners have no methods like ours, and the same teacher usually has to hear lessons in branches all the way from Greek and Latin to the simple A B C. The South has no system of public instruction; no common schools; no means of placing within the reach of the sons and daughters of the poor even the elements of knowledge. While the children of the wealthy are most carefully educated, it is the policy of the ruling class to keep the great mass of the people in ignorance; and so long as this policy continues, so long will that section be as far behind the North as it now is in all that constitutes the elements of prosperity and true greatness.

The afternoon wore rapidly and pleasantly away in the genial society of our wayside friends. Politics were discussed, (our host was a Union man,) the prospects of the turpentine crop talked over, the recent news canvassed, the usual neighborly topics touched upon, and—I hesitate to confess it—a considerable quantity of corn-whisky disposed of, before the Colonel discovered, all at once, that it was six o'clock, and we were still seventeen miles from the railway station. Arraying ourselves again in our dried garments, we bade a hasty but regretful 'good-by' to our hospitable entertainers, and once more took to the road.

The storm had cleared away, but the ground was heavy with the recent rain, and our horses were sadly jaded with the ride of the morning. We therefore gave them the reins, and as they jogged on at their leisure, it was ten o'clock at night before we reached the little hamlet of W——Station, in the State of North-Carolina.

A large hotel, or station-house, and about a dozen log-shanties made up the village. Two of these structures were negro-cabins; two were small groceries, in which the vilest alcoholic compounds were sold at a bit (ten cents) a glass; one was a lawyer's office, in which was the post-office, and a justice's court, where, once a month, the small offenders of the vicinity 'settled up their accounts;' one was a tailoring and clothing establishment, where breeches were patched at a dime a stitch, and payment taken in tar and turpentine; and the rest were private dwellings of one apartment, occupied by the grocers, the tailor, the switch-tender, the post-master, and the negro attachés of the railroad. The church and the school-house—the first buildings to go up in a Northern village, I have omitted to enumerate, because—they were not there.

One of the natives told me that the lawyer was a 'stuck-up critter;' 'he don't live; he don't—he puts-up at th' hotel.' And the hotel! Would Shakspeare, had he known of it, have written of taking one's ease at his inn? It was a long, framed building, two stories in hight, with a piazza extending across its side, and a front door crowded as closely into one corner as the width of the joist would permit. Under the piazza, ranged along the wall, was a low bench, occupied by about forty tin wash-basins and water-pails, with coarse, dirty crash towels suspended on rollers above them. By the side of each of these towels hung a comb and a brush, to which a lock of every body's hair was clinging, forming in the total a stock sufficient to establish any barber in the wig business.

It was, as I have said, ten o'clock when we reached the station. Throwing the bridles of our horses over the hitching-posts at the door, we at once made our way to the bar-room. That apartment, which was in the rear of the building, and communicated with by a long, narrow passage, was filled almost to suffocation, when we entered, by a cloud of tobacco-smoke, the fumes of bad whisky, and a crowd of drunken chivalry, through whom the Colonel with great difficulty elbowed his way to the counter, where 'mine host' and two assistants were dispensing 'liquid death,' at the rate of ten cents a glass, and of ten glasses a minute.

'Hello, Colonel! how ar' ye?' cried the red-faced liquor-vender, as he caught sight of my companion, and—relinquishing his lucrative employment for a moment—took the Colonel's hand.

'Quite well, thank you, Miles,' said the Colonel, with a certain patronizing air, 'have you seen my man Moye?'

'Moye, no! What's up with him?'

'He's run away with my horse, Firefly—I thought he would have made for this station. At what time does the next train go up?'

'Wal, it's due half arter 'leven, but 'taint gin'rally 'long till nigh one.'

The Colonel was turning to join me at the door, when a well-dressed young man of very unsteady movements, who was filling a glass at the counter, and staring at him with a sort of dreamy amazement, stammered out: 'Moye—run—run a—way, zir! that—k—kant be—by G—d. I know—him, zir—he's a—a friend of mine, and—I'm—I'm d—d if he an't hon—honest.'

'About as honest as the Yankees run,' replied the Colonel: 'he's a d—d thief, sir!'

'Look here—here, zir—don't—don't you—you zay any—thing 'gainst—the Yankees. D—d if—if I an't—one of 'em mezelf—zir,' said the fellow staggering toward the Colonel.

'I don't care what, you are; you're drunk.'

'You lie—you—you d—d 'ris—'ristocrat—take that,' was the reply, and the inebriated gentleman aimed a blow, with all his unsteady might, at the Colonel's face.

The South-Carolinian stepped quickly aside, and dexterously threw his foot before the other, who—his blow not meeting the expected resistance—was unable to recover himself, and fell headlong to the floor. The Colonel turned on his heel, and was walking quietly away, when the sharp report of a pistol sounded through the apartment, and a ball tore through the top of his boot, and lodged in the wall within two feet of where I was standing. With a spring, quick and sure as the tiger's, the Colonel was on the drunken man. Wrenching away the weapon, he seized the fellow by the necktie, and drawing him up to nearly his full hight, dashed him at one throw to the other side of the room. Then raising the revolver he coolly leveled it to fire.

But a dozen strong men were on him. The pistol was out of his hand, and his arms were pinioned in an instant; while cries of 'Fair play, sir!' 'He's drunk!' 'Don't hit a man when he's down,' and other like exclamations, came from all sides.

'Give me fair play, you d—d North-Carolina hounds,' cried the Colonel, struggling violently to get away, 'and I'll fight the whole posse of you.'

'One's 'nuff for you, ye d—d fire-eatin' 'ristocrat,' said a long, lean, bushy-haired, be-whiskered individual who was standing near the counter: 'ef ye wan't ter fight, I'll 'tend to yer case to onst. Let him go, boys,' he continued as he stepped toward the Colonel, and parted the crowd that had gathered around him: 'give him the shootin'-iron, and let's see ef he'll take a man thet's sober.'

I saw serious trouble was impending, and stepping forward, I said to the last speaker: 'My friend, you have no quarrel with this gentleman. He has treated that man only as you would have done.'

'P'raps thet's so; but he's a d—d hound of a Seseshener thet's draggin' us all to h—l; it'll do th' cuntry good to git quit of one on 'em.'

'Whatever his politics are, he's a gentleman, sir, and has done you no harm—let me beg of you to let him alone.'

'Don't beg any thing for me, Mr. K——' growled the Colonel through his barred teeth, 'I'll fight the d—d corn-cracker, and his whole race, at once.'

'No you won't, my friend. For the sake of those at home you won't,' I said, as I took him by the arm, and partly led, partly forced, him toward the door.

'And who in h—l ar ye?' asked the 'corn-cracker,' planting himself squarely in my way.

'I'm on the same side of politics with you, Union to the core!' I replied.

'Ye ar! Union! Then giv us yer fist,' said he, grasping me by the hand, 'by——it does a feller good to see a man dressed in yer cloes thet haint 'fraid ter say he's Union, so close to South-Car'lina, tu, as this ar! Come, hev a drink: come, boys—all round—let's liquor!'

'Excuse me now, my dear fellow—some other time I'll be glad to join you.'

'Jest as ye say, but thar's my fist, enyhow.'

He gave me another hearty shake of the hand, and the crowd parting, I made my way with the Colonel out of the room. We were followed by Miles, the landlord, who, when we had reached the front of the entrance-way, said: 'I'm right sorry for this row, gentlemen; but th' boys will hev a time when they git together.'

'Oh! never mind,' said the Colonel, who had recovered his coolness; 'but why are all these people here?'

'Thar's a barbecue cumin' off to-morrer on the camp-ground, and the house is cram full.'

'Is that so?' said the Colonel, then turning to me he added, 'Moye has taken the railroad somewhere else; I must get to a telegraph-office at once, to head him off. The nearest one is Wilmington. With all these rowdies here, it will not do to leave the horses alone—will you stay and keep an eye on them over to-morrow?'

'Yes, I will, cheerfully.'

'Thar's a mighty hard set round har now, Cunnel,' said the landlord; 'and the most peaceable git inter scrapes ef they han't no friends. Hadn't ye better show the gentleman some of your'n, 'fore you go?'

'Yes, yes, I didn't think of that. Who is here?'

'Wal, thar's Cunnel Taylor, Bill Barnes, Sam Heddleson, Jo' Shackelford. Andy Jones, Rob Brown, and lots of others.'

'Where's Andy Jones?'

'Reckon he's turned in; I'll see.' As the landlord opened a door which led from the hall, the Colonel said to me: 'Andy is a Union man, but he'd fight to the death for me.'

'Sal!' called out the hotel-keeper.

'Yas, massa, I'se har,' was the answer from a slatternly woman, awfully black in the face, who soon thrust her head from the door.

'Is Andy Jones har?' asked Miles.

'Yas, massa, he'm turned in up thar on de table.'

We followed the landlord into the apartment. It was the dining-room of the hotel, and by the dim light which came from a smoky fire on the hearth, I saw it contained about a hundred people, who, wrapped in blankets, bed-quilts and traveling-shawls, and disposed in all conceivable attitudes, were scattered about on the hard floor and tables, sleeping soundly. The room was a long, low apartment—extending across the whole front of the house—and had a wretched, squalid look. The fire, which was tended by the negro-woman, (she had spread a blanket on the floor, and was keeping a drowsy watch over it for the night,) had been recently replenished with green wood, and was throwing out thick volumes of black smoke, which, mixing with the effluvia from the lungs of a hundred sleepers made up an atmosphere next to impossible to breathe. Not a window was open, and not an aperture for ventilation could be seen!

Carefully avoiding the arms and legs of the recumbent chivalry, we picked our way, guided by the negro-girl, to the corner of the room where the Unionist was sleeping. Shaking him briskly by the shoulder, the Colonel called out: 'Andy! Andy! wake up!'

'What—what the d——l is the matter?' stammered out the sleeper, gradually opening his eyes, and raising himself on one elbow, 'Lord bless you, Cunnel, is thet you? what in——brought you har?'

'Business, Andy. Come, get up, I want to see you, and I can't talk here.'

The North-Carolinian slowly rose, and throwing his blanket over his shoulders, followed us from the room. When we had reached the open air the Colonel introduced me to his friend, who expressed surprise, and a great deal of pleasure, at meeting a Northern Union man in the Colonel's company.

'Look after our horses, now, Miles; Andy and I want to talk,' said the planter to the landlord, with about as little ceremony as he would have shown to a negro.

I thought the white man did not exactly relish the Colonel's manner, but saying: 'All right, all right, sir,' he took himself away.

The night was raw and cold, but as all the rooms of the hotel were occupied, either by sleepers or carousers, we had no other alternative than to hold our conference in the open-air. Near the railway-track a light-wood fire was blazing, and, obeying the promptings of the frosty atmosphere, we made our way to it. Lying on the ground around it, divested of all clothing except a pair of linsey trowsers and a flannel shirt, and with their naked feet close to its blaze—roasting at one extremity, and freezing at the other—were several blacks, the switch-tenders and woodmen of the station—fast asleep. How human beings could sleep in such circumstances seemed a marvel, but further observation convinced me that the Southern negro has a natural aptitude for that exercise, and will, indeed, bear more exposure than any other living thing. Nature in giving him such powers of endurance, seems to have specially fitted him for the life of hardship and privation to which he is born.

The fire-light enabled me to scan the appearance of my new acquaintance. He was rather above the medium height, squarely and somewhat stoutly built, and had an easy and self-possessed, though rough and unpolished manner. His face, or so much of it as was visible from underneath a thick mass of reddish gray hair, denoted a firm, decided character; but there was a manly, open, honest expression about it that won your confidence in a moment. He wore a slouched hat and a suit of the ordinary 'sheep's-gray,' cut in the 'sack' fashion, and hanging loosely about him. He seemed a man who had made his own way in the world, and I subsequently learned that appearances did not belie him. The son of a 'poor white' man, with scarcely the first rudiments of book-education, he had, by sterling worth, natural ability, and great force of character, accumulated a handsome property, and acquired a leading position in his adopted district. Though on 'the wrong side of politics,' his personal popularity was so great that for several successive years he had been elected to represent his county in the State Legislature. The Colonel, though opposed to him in politics—and party feeling at the South runs so high that political opponents are seldom personal friends—had, in the early part of his career, aided him by his indorsements; and Andy had not forgotten the service. It was easy to see that while two men could not be more unlike in character and appearance than my host and the North-Carolinian, they were warm and intimate friends.

'So, Moye has been raisin h—l gin'rally, Cunnel,' said my new acquaintance after a time. 'I'm not surprised. I never did b'lieve in Yankee nigger-drivers—sumhow it's agin natur for a Northern man to go Southern principles quite so strong as Moye did.'

'Which route do you think he has taken?' asked the Colonel.

'Wal, I reckon arter he tuk to the run, he made fur the mountings. He know'd you'd head him on the traveled routes; so he's put, I think, fur the Missusippe, where he'll sell the horse and make North.'

'I'll follow him,' said the Colonel, 'to the ends of the earth. If it costs me five thousand dollars, I'll see him hung.'

'Wal,' replied Andy, laughing, 'if he's gone North, you'll need a extradition treaty to kotch him. South-Car'lina, I b'lieve, has set up fur a furrin country.'

'That's true,' said the Colonel, also laughing, 'she's 'furrin' to the Yankees, but not to the old North State.'

'D——d if she han't,' replied the North-Carolinian, 'and now she's got out on our company, I swear she must keep out. We'd as soon think of goin' to h—l in summer time, as of joining partnership with her. Cunnel, you're the only decent man in the State—d——d if you han't—and your politics are a'most bad 'nuff to spile a township. It allers seemed sort o' queer to me, thet a man with such a mighty good heart as your'n could be so short in the way of brains.'

'Well, you're complimentary,' replied the Colonel, with the utmost good nature, 'but let's drop politics; we never could agree, you know. What shall I do about Moye?'

'Go to Wilmington, and telegraph all creation: wait a day to har, then if you don't har, go home, hire a native overseer, and let Moye go to the d—-l. Ef it'll du you any good, I'll go to Wilmington with you, though I did mean to give you secesheners a little h—l here to-morrer.'

'No, Andy, I'll go alone. 'Twouldn't be patriotic to take you away from the barbecue. You'd 'spile' if you couldn't let off some gas soon.'

'I du b'lieve I shud. Howsumdever, thar's nary a thing I wouldn't do for you—you knows thet?'

'Yes, I do, and I wish you'd keep an eye on my Yankee friend here, and see he don't get into trouble with any of the boys—there'll be a hard set 'round, I reckon.'

'Wal, I will,' said Andy, 'but all he's to du is—keep mouth shet.'

'That seems easy enough,' I replied, laughing.

A desultory conversation followed for about an hour, when the steam-whistle sounded, and the up-train arrived. The Colonel got on board, and bidding us 'good-night,' went on to Wilmington. Andy then proposed we should look up sleeping accommodations. It was useless to seek quarters at the hotel, but an empty car was on the turn-out, and bribing one of the negroes, we got access to it, and were soon stretched at full length on two of its hard-bottomed seats.

The camp-ground was about a mile from the station, and pleasantly situated in a grove, near a stream of water. It was in frequent use by the camp-meetings of the Methodist denomination, which sect, at the South, is partial to these rural religious gatherings. Scattered over it, with an effort at regularity, were about forty small but neat log cottages, thatched with the long leaves of the turpentine-pine, and chinked with branches of the same tree. Each of these houses was floored with leaves or straw, and large enough to afford sleeping accommodations for about ten person, provided they spread their bedding on the ground, and lay tolerably close together. Interspersed among the cabins were about a dozen canvas tents, which evidently had been erected for this especial occasion.

Nearly in the centre of the group of huts, a rude sort of scaffold, four or five feet high, and surrounded by a rustic railing, served for the speaker's stand. It would seat about a dozen persons, and was protected by a roof of pine-boughs, interlaced together so as to keep off the sun, without affording protection from the rain. In the rear of this stand were two long tables, made of rough boards, and supported on stout joists, crossed on each other in the form of the letter X. A canopy of green boughs shaded the grounds, and the whole grove, which was perfectly free from underbrush, was carpeted with the soft, brown leaves of the pine.

Being fatigued with the ride of the previous day, I did not awake till the morning was well advanced, and it was nearly ten o'clock when Andy and I took our way to the camp-ground. Avoiding the usual route, we walked on through the forest. It was mid-winter, and vegetation lay dead all around us, awaiting the time when spring should breathe into it the breath of life and make it a living thing. There was silence and rest in the deep wood. The birds were away on their winter wanderings; the leaves hung motionless on the tall trees, and nature seemed resting from her ceaseless labor, and listening to the soft music of the little stream which sung a cheerful song as it rambled on over the roots and fallen branches that blocked its way. But soon a distant murmur arose, and we had not proceeded far before as many sounds as were heard at Babel made a strange concert about our ears. The lowing of the ox, the neighing of the horse, and the deep braying of another animal, mingled with a thousand human voices, came through the woods. But above and over all rose the stentorian tones of the stump speaker,

'As he trod the shaky platform,
With the sweat upon his brow.'

About a thousand persons were already assembled on the ground, and a more motley gathering I never beheld. All sorts of costumes and all classes of people were there; but the genuine back-woods corn-crackers composed the majority of the assemblage. As might be expected, much the larger portion of the audience were men; still I saw some women and not a few children, many of the country people having taken advantage of the occasion to give their families a holiday. Some occupied benches in front of the stand, though a larger number were seated around in groups, within hearing of the speaker, but paying very little attention to what he was saying. A few were whittling, a few pitching quoits, or playing leap-frog, and quite a number were having a quiet game of whist, euchre, or 'seven-up.'

The speaker was a well-dressed, gentlemanly-looking man, and a tolerably good orator. He seemed accustomed to addressing a jury, for he displayed all the adroitness in handling his subject, and in appealing to the prejudices of his hearers, that we see in successful special pleaders. But he overshot his mark. To nine out of ten of his audience, his words and similes, though correct and sometimes beautiful, were as unintelligible as the dead languages. He advocated immediate, unconditional secession; and I thought from the applause which met his remarks, whenever he seemed to make himself understood, that the large majority of those present were of the same way of thinking.

He was succeeded by a heavy-browed, middle-aged man, slightly bent, and with hair a little turned to gray, but still hale, athletic, and in the prime and vigor of manhood. His pantaloons and waistcoat were of the common home-spun, and he used, now and then, a word of the country dialect; but as a stump-speaker, he was infinitely superior to the more polished orator who had preceded him.

He, too, advocated secession as a right and a duty—separation, now and forever from the dirt-eating, money-loving Yankees, who, he was ashamed to say, had the same ancestry, and worshiped the same God as himself. He took the bold ground that slavery is a curse to both the black and the white, but that it was forced upon this generation before it was born, by these same greedy, grasping Yankees, who would sell not only the bones and sinews of their fellowmen, but—worse than that—their own souls, for gold. It was forced upon them without their consent, and now that it had become interwoven with all their social life, and was a necessity of their very existence, the hypocritical Yankees would take it from them, because, forsooth, it was a sin and a wrong—as if they had to bear its responsibility, or the South could not settle its own account with its Maker!

'Slavery is now,' he continued, 'indispensable to us. Without it, cotton, rice, and sugar will cease to grow, and the South will starve. What if it works abuses? What if the black, at times, is overburdened, and his wife and daughters debauched? Man is not perfect any where—there are wrongs in every society. It is for each one to give his account, in such matters, to his God. But in this are we worse than they? Are there not abuses in society at the North? Are not their laborers overworked? While sin here hides itself under cover of the night, does it not there stalk abroad at noonday? If the wives and daughters of blacks are debauched here, are not the wives and daughters of whites debauched there? and will not a Yankee barter away the chastity of his own mother for a dirty dollar? Who fill our brothels? Yankee women! Who load our penitentiaries, crowd our whipping-posts, debauch our slaves, and cheat and defraud us all? Yankee men! And I say unto you, fellow-citizens,' and here the speaker's form seemed to dilate with the wild enthusiasm which possessed him, ''come out from among them; be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing,' and thus saith the Lord God of hosts, who will guide you, and lead you, if need be, to battle and to victory!'

A perfect storm of applause followed. The assemblage rose, and one long wild shout rent the old woods, and made the great trees tremble. It was some minutes before the uproar subsided; when it did, a voice near the speaker's stand called out: 'Andy Jones!' The call was at once echoed by another voice, and soon a general shout for 'Andy!' 'Union Andy!' 'Bully Andy!' went up from the same crowd which a moment before had so wildly applauded the secession speaker.

Andy rose from where he was seated beside me, and quietly ascended the steps of the platform. Removing his hat, and passing to his mouth a huge quid of tobacco, from a tin box in his pantaloons-pocket, he made several rapid strides up and down the speaker's stand, and then turned squarely to the audience.

The reader has noticed a tiger pacing up and down in his cage, with his eyes riveted on the human faces before him. He has observed how he will single out some individual, and finally stopping short in his rounds, turn on him with a look of such intense ferocity as makes a man's blood stand still, and his very breath come thick and hard, as he momentarily expects the beast will tear away the bars of his cage and leap forth on the obnoxious person. Now, Andy's fine, open, manly face had nothing of the tiger in it, but for a moment, I could not divest myself of the impression, as he halted in his walk up and down the stage, and turned full and square on the previous speaker—who had taken a seat among the audience near me—that he was about to spring upon him. Riveting his eye on the man's face, he at last slowly said:

'A man stands har and quotes Scriptur agin his feller-man, and forgets thet 'God made of one blood all nations thet dwell on the face of the 'arth.' A man stands har and calls his brother a thief, and his mother a harlot, and axes us to go his doctrines! I don't mean his brother in the Scriptur' sense, nor his mother in a fig'rative sense, but I mean the brother of his own blood, and the mother that bore him; for HE, gentlemen, (and he pointed his finger directly at the recent speaker, while his words came slow and heavy with intense scorn,) HE is a Yankee! And now, I say, gentlemen, d—n sech doctrins; d—n sech principles; and d—n the man thet's got a soul so black as to utter 'em!'

A breathless silence fell on the assemblage, as the person alluded to sprang to his feet, his face on fire, and his voice thick and broken with intense rage, and yelled out: 'Andy Jones, by ——, you shall answer for this!'

'Sartin', said Andy, coolly inserting his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat; 'eny whar you likes—har—now—ef 'greeable to you.'

'I've no weapon here, sir, but I'll give you a chance mighty sudden,' was the fierce reply.

'Suit yourself' said Andy, with perfect imperturbability; 'but as you han't jest ready, s'pose you set down and har me tell 'bout your relation: they're a right decent set—them as I knows—and I'll swar they're 'shamed of you.'

A buzz went through the crowd, and a dozen voices called out, 'Be civil, Andy'—'Let him blow'—'Shet up'—'Go in, Jones'—with other like elegant exclamations.

A few of his friends took the aggrieved gentleman aside, and, soon quieting him, restored order.

'Wal, gentlemen,' resumed Andy, 'all on you know whar I was raised—over thar in South-Car'lina. I'm sorry to say it, but it's true. And you all know my father was a pore man, who couldn't give his boys no chance—and ef he could, thar warn't no schules in the district—so we couldn't hev got no book-larning ef we'd been a minded to. Wal, the next plantation to whar we lived was old Cunnel J——'s, the father of this Cunnel. He was a d—d old nullifier, jest like his son—but not half so decent a man. Wal, on his plantation was an old nigger called Uncle Pomp, who'd sumhow larned to read. He was a mighty good nigger, and he'd hev been in heaven long afore now ef the Lord hadn't a had sum good use for him down har—but he'll be thar yet a d—d sight sooner than sum on us white folks—that's sartin. Wal, as I was saying, Pomp could read, and when I was 'bout sixteen, and had never seed the inside of a book, the old darkey said to me one day—he was old then, and thet was thirty years ago—wal, he said to me: 'Andy, chile, ye orter larn to read—'twould be ob use to ye when you're grow'd up, and it moight make you a good and 'spected man. Now, come to ole Pomp's cabin, and he'll larn you, Andy, chile.' I reckon I went. He hadn't nothin' but a Bible and Watts' Hymns; yet we used to stay thar all the long winter evenings, and by the light of the fire—we war both so durned pore we couldn't raise a candle atween us—wal, by the light of the fire he larned me, and 'fore long I could spell right smart.

'Now, jest think on thet, gentlemen! I, a white boy, and, 'cordin' to the Declaration of Independence, jest as good blood as the old Cunnel, bein' larned to read by an old slave, and that old slave a'most worked to death, and takin' his nights, when he orter hev been a restin' his old bones, to larn me! I'm d—d if he don't get to heaven for that one thing, if for nothin' else.

'Wal, you all know the rest—how, when I'd grow'd up, I settled har, in the old North State, and how the young Cunnel backed my paper and set me a runnin' at turpentinin'. P'r'aps you don't think this has much to do with the Yankees, but it has a durned sight, as ye'll see raather sudden. Wal, arter a while, when I'd got a little 'forehanded, I begun shippin' my truck to York and Bosting; and at last my Yankee factor, he come out har, inter the backwoods, to see me, and says he: 'Jones, come North and take a look at us.' I'd sort o' took to him. I'd had lots to do with him afore ever I seed him, and I allers found him as straight as a shingle. Wal, I went North, and he took me round, and showed me how the Yankees does things. Afore I knowed him, I allers thought—as p'r'aps most on ye do—that the Yankee war a sort o' cross atween the devil and a Jew; but how do you s'pose I found 'em? I found that they sent the pore man's children to schule. free—and that the schulehouses war a d—d sight thicker than the bugs in Miles Privett's beds! and thet's saying a heap, for ef eny on you kin sleep in his house, excep' he takes to the soft side of the floor, I'm d—d. Yas, the pore man's children are larned thar free!—all on 'em—and they've jest so good a chance as the sons of the rich man! Now, arter that, do you think that I—as got all my schulin' from an old slave, by the light of a borrored pine-knot—der you think that I kin say any thing agin the Yankees? P'r'aps they do steal—though I don't know it—p'r'aps they do debauch thar wives and darters, and sell thar mothers' vartue for dollers—but ef they do, I'm d—d ef they don't send pore children ter schule—and that's more'n we do—and let me tell you, until we do, we must count on thar bein' cuter and smarter nor we are.

'This gentleman, too, my friends, who's been a givin' sech a hard settin' down ter his own relation, arter they've broughten him up and givin' him sech a good schulein' for nothin', he says the Yankees want to interfere with our niggers. Now, thet han't so, and they couldn't ef they would, 'cause it's agin the Constitution—and they stand on the Constitution a durned sight solider nor we do. Didn't thar big gun—Daniel Webster—didn't he make mince-meat o' South-Carolina Hayne on that ar subject? But I tell you they han't a mind to meddle with our niggers; they're a goin' ter let us go ter h—l our own way—and we're goin' thar mighty fast, or I hevn't read the last census.'

'P'r'aps you han't heerd on th' Ab'lisheners, Andy?' cried a voice from among the audience.

'Wal, I reckon I hev,' responded the orator. 'I've heerd on 'em, and seed 'em, too. When I was North I went ter one on thar conventions, and I'll tell you how they look. They've all long, wimmin's hair, and thin, shet lips, with big, bawlin' mouths, and long, lean, tommerhawk faces—'bout as white as vargin dip—and they all talk through the nose, [giving a specimen,] and they look for all the world jest like the South-Car'lina fire-eaters—and they are as near like 'em as two peas, excep' they don't swar quite so bad, but they make up for that in prayin'—and prayin' too much, I reckon, when a man's a d—d hippercrit, is 'bout as bad as swearin'. But I tell you, the decent folks up North han't ab'lisheners. They look on 'em jest as we do on mad dogs, the itch, or the nigger-traders.

'Now, 'bout this secession bis'ness—though tan't no use ter talk on thet, 'cause this State never'll secede—South-Car'lina has done it, and I'm raather glad she has, for though I was born thar, I say she orter hev gone to h—l long ago, and now she's got thar—let her stay! But, 'bout thet bis'ness, I'll tell you a story.

'I know'd an old gentleman once by the name o' Uncle Sam, and he'd a heap o' sons. They war all likely boys—and strange ter tell, though they'd all the same mother, and she a white woman, 'bout half on 'em war colored—not black, but sorter half-and-half. Now, the white sons war well-behaved, industrious, hard-workin' boys, who got 'long well, edicated that children, and allers treated the old man decently; but the mulatter fellers war a pesky set—though some on 'em war better nor others. They wouldn't work, but set up for airystocrocy—rode in kerriges, kept fast hosses, bet high, and chawed tobaccer like the devil. Wal, the result was, they got out at the elbows, and 'cause they warn't gettin' 'long quite so fast as the white 'uns—though that war all thar own fault—they got jealous, and one, on 'em, who was blacker nor all the rest—a little feller, but terrible big on braggin'—he packed up his truck one night, and left the old man's house, and swore he'd never come back. He tried ter make the other mulatters go 'long too, but they put thar fingers ter thar nose, and says they: 'No you don't!' I was in favor o' lettin' on him stay out in the cold, but the old man was a bernevolent old critter—so he says: 'Now, sonny, you jest come back and behave yourself, and I'll forgive you all on your old pranks, and treat you jest as I allers used ter; but, ef you won't, why, I'll make you—that's all!'

'Now, gentlemen, that querrelsome, oneasy, ongrateful, tobaccer-chawin', high-bettin', hoss-racin', big-braggin', nigger-stealin', wimmin-whippin', yaller son of the devil, is South-Car'lina; and ef she don't come back and behave herself in futur', I'm d—d ef she won't be ploughed with fire, and sowed with salt, and—Andy Jones will help ter do it.'

The speaker was frequently interrupted in the course of his remarks by uproarious applause—but as he closed and descended from the platform, the crowd sent up cheer after cheer, and a dozen strong men, making a seat of their arms, lifted him from the ground, and bore him to the head of the table, where dinner was in waiting.

The whole of the large assemblage then fell to eating. The dinner was made up of the barbecued beef and the usual mixture of viands found on a planter's table, with water from the little brook hard by, and a plentiful supply of corn-whisky. (The latter beverage, I thought, had been subjected to the rite of immersion, for it tasted wonderfully like water.)

Songs and speeches were intermingled with the masticating exercises, and the whole company were soon in the best of humor.

During the meal I was introduced by Andy to a large number of the 'natives,' he taking special pains to tell each one that I was a Yankee, and a Union man, but always adding, as if to conciliate all parties, that I was also a guest and a friend of his very particular friend, 'that d—d seceshener, Cunnel J——.'

Before we left the table, the secession orator happening near, Andy rose from his seat, and extended his hand to him, saying:

'Tom, you think I 'sulted you—p'r'aps I did—but you 'sulted my Yankee friend har, and your own relation, and I hed to take it up, jest for the looks o' the thing. Come, thar's my hand; I'll fight you ef you want ter, or we'll say no more 'bout it—jest as you like.'

'Say no more about it, Andy,' said the gentleman, very cordially; 'let's drink and be friends.'

They drank a glass of whisky together, and then leaving the table, proceeded to where the ox had been barbecued, to show me how cooking on a large scale is done at the South.

In a pit about eight feet deep, twenty feet long, and ten feet wide, laid up on the side with stones, a fire of hickory had been made, over which, after the wood had burned down to coals, a whole ox, divested of its hide and entrails, had been suspended on an enormous spit. Being turned often in the process of cooking, the beef had finally been 'done brown.' It was then cut up and served on the table, and I must say, for the credit of Southern cookery, that it made as delicious eating as any meat I ever tasted.

I had then been away from my charge—the Colonel's horses—as long as seemed to be prudent. I said as much to Andy, when he proposed to return with me, and turning good-humoredly to his reconciled friend, he said:

'Now, Tom, no secession talk while I'm off.'

'Nary a word,' said Tom, and we left.

The horses had been well fed by the negro who had them in charge, but had not been groomed. Andy, seeing that, stripped off his coat, and, setting the black at work on one, with a handful of straw and pine-leaves commenced operations on the other, and the horse's coat was soon as smooth and glossy as if recently rubbed by an English groom.

The remainder of the day passed without incident till eleven at night, when the Colonel returned from Wilmington.

Moye had not been seen or heard of, and the Colonel's trip was fruitless. While at Wilmington, he sent telegrams, directing the overseer's arrest, to the various large cities of the South, and then decided to return, make some arrangements preliminary to a protracted absence from the plantation, and proceed at once to Charleston, where he would await replies to his dispatches. Andy agreed with him in the opinion that Moye, in his weak state of health, would not undertake an overland journey to the free States, but would endeavor to reach some town on the Mississippi, where he could dispose of the horse, and secure a passage up the river.

As no time was to be lost, it was decided that we should return to the plantation on the following morning. Accordingly, with the first streak of day, we bade 'good-by' to our Union friend, and started homeward.

No incident worthy of mention occurred on the way, till about ten o'clock, when we arrived at the home of the Yankee schoolmistress, where we had been so hospitably entertained two days before. The lady received us with great cordiality, forced upon us a lunch to serve our hunger on the road, and when we parted, enjoined on me to leave the South at the earliest possible moment. She was satisfied it would not for a much longer time be safe quarters for a man professing Union sentiments. Notwithstanding the strong manifestations of loyalty I had observed among the people, I was convinced that the advice of my pretty 'countrywoman' was judicious, and I determined to be governed by it.

Our horses, unaccustomed to lengthy journeys, had not entirely recovered from the fatigues of their previous travel, and we did not reach our destination till an hour after dark. We were most cordially welcomed by Madam P——, who soon set before us a hot supper, which, as we were jaded by the long ride, and had fasted for twelve hours on bacon sandwiches and cold hoe-cake, was the one thing needful for us.

While seated at the table, the Colonel asked:

'Has every thing gone right, Alice, since we left home?'

'Every thing,' replied the lady, 'except,' and she hesitated as if she dreaded the effect of the news; 'except—that Juley and her child have gone.'

'Gone!' exclaimed my host, 'gone where?'

'I don't know. We have searched every where, but have found no clue to them. The morning you left, Sam set Juley at work among the pines; she tried hard, but could not do a full task, and at night was taken to the cabin to be whipped. I heard of it, and forbade Sam's doing it. It did not seem to me to be right to punish her for not doing what she had not strength to do. When she was released from the cabin, she came to thank me for having interfered for her, and talked with me awhile. She cried and took on fearfully about Sam, and was afraid you would punish her on your return. I promised you would not, and when she left me, she seemed more cheerful. I supposed she would go directly home, after getting her child from the nurse's quarters; but it appears she then went to Pompey's, where she staid till after ten o'clock. Neither she nor the child have since been seen.'

'Did you get no trace of her in the morning?'

'Yes, but soon lost it. When she did not appear at work, Sam went to her cabin to learn the cause, and found the door open, and her bed undisturbed. She had not slept there. Knowing that Sandy had returned, I sent for him, and with Jim and his dog, he commenced a search. The hound tracked her directly from Pompey's cabin to the run near the lower still. There all trace of her disappeared. We dragged the stream, but discovered nothing. Jim and Sandy then scoured the woods for miles in all directions, but the hound could not recover the trail. I hope otherwise, but I fear some evil has befallen her.'

'Oh! no, there's no fear of that,' said the Colonel; 'she is smart—she waded up the run far enough to baffle the dog, and then made for the swamp. That is why you lost her tracks at the stream. Rely upon it, I am right; but she shall not escape me.'

We shortly afterward adjourned to the library. After being seated there a while, the Colonel, rising quickly, as if a sudden thought had struck him, sent for the old preacher.

The old negro soon appeared, hat in hand, and taking a stand near the door, made a respectful bow to each one of us.

'Take a chair, Pompey,' said Madam P—— kindly.

The black meekly seated himself, when the Colonel asked: 'Well, Pomp, what do you know about Jule's going off?'

'Nuffin', massa; I 'shures you, nuffin'. De pore chile say nuffin' to ole Pomp 'bout dat.'

'What did she say?'

'Wal, you see, massa, de night arter you gwo 'way, and arter she'd worked hard in de brush all de day, and been a strung up in de ole cabin for to be whipped, she come to me wid her baby in her arms, all a-faint and a-tired, and her pore heart clean broke, and she say dat she'm jess ready to drop down and die. Den I tries to comfut her, massa; I takes her up from de floor, and I say to har dat de good Lord he pity her—dat he doan't bruise de broken reed, and woan't put no more on har dan she kin b'ar—dat he'd touch you' heart, massa—and I toled har you's a good, kine heart at de bottom—and I knows it, 'case I toted you 'fore you could gwo, and when you's a bery little chile, not no great sight bigger'n her'n, you'd put your little arms round ole Pomp's neck, and say dat when you war grow'd up, you'd be bery kine to de pore brack folks, and not leff 'em be 'bused like dey war in dem days.'

'Never mind what you said,' interrupted the Colonel, a little impatiently, but showing no displeasure; 'what did she say?'

'Wal, massa, she took on bery hard 'bout Sam, and axed me ef I raily reckoned de Lord had forgib'n him, and took'n him to heseff, and gib'n him one of dem hous'n up dar in de sky. I toled har dat I know'd it; but she say it didn't 'pear so to har, 'case Sam had a been wid har out dar in de woods, all fru de day; dat she'd a seed him, massa, and dough he hadn't a said nuffin', he'd looked at har wid sech a sorry, grebed look, dat it went clean fru har heart, till she'd no strength leff, and fell down on de ground a'most dead. Den she say big Sam come 'long and fine har dar, and struck har great, heaby blows wid de big whip!'

'The brute!' exclaimed the Colonel, rising from his chair, and pacing rapidly up and down the room.

'But p'raps he warn't so much ter blame, massa,' continued the old negro, in a deprecatory tone; 'may be he s'pose she war shirking de work. Wal, den she say, she know'd nuffin' more, till byme-by, when she come to, and fine big Sam dar, and he struck har agin, and make her gwo to de work; and she did gwo, but she feel like as ef she'd die. I toled her de good ma'am wudn't leff big Sam 'buse har no more 'fore you cum hum, and dat you'd hab 'passion on har, and not leff har out in de woods, but put har 'mong de nusses, like as she war afore.

'Den she say it 'twarn't de work dat trubble har—dat she orter work, and orter be 'bused, 'case she'd been bad, bery bad. All she axed was dat Sam would forgib har, and cum to har in de oder worle, and tell har so. Den she cried, and took on awful; but de good Lord, massa, dat am so bery kine to de bery wuss sinners, he put de words inter my mouf, and I tink dey gabe har comfut, fur she say it sort o' 'peared to har den dat Sam would forgib har, and take har inter his house up dar, and she warn't afeard ter die no more.

'Den she takes up de chile and gwoes 'way, 'pearin' sort o' happy, and more cheerful like dan I'd a seed har eber sense pore Sam war shot.'

My host was sensibly affected by the old man's simple tale, but continued pacing up and down the room, and said nothing.

'It's plain to me, Colonel,' I remarked, as Pompey concluded, 'she has drowned herself and the child—the dog lost the scent at the creek.'

'Oh! no,' he replied, 'I think not. I never heard of a negro committing suicide—they've not the courage to do it.'

'I fear she has, David,' said the lady. 'The thought of going to Sam has led her to it; yet we dragged the run, and found nothing. What do you think about it, Pompey?'

'I dunno, ma'am; but I'se afeard ob dat. And now dat I tinks on it, I'se afeard dat what I tole har put har up to it,' replied the old preacher, bursting into tears. 'She 'peared so happy like, when I say she'd be 'long wid Sam in de oder worle, dat I'se afeard she's a gone and done it wid har own hands. I tole har, too, dat de good Lord oberlooked many tings dat pore sinners does when dey can't help 'emseffs, and it make har do it, oh! it make har do it!' and the old black buried his face in his hands, and wept bitterly.

'Don't feel so, Pomp,' said his master very kindly. 'You did the best you could; no one blames you.'

'I knows you doan't, massa—I knows you doan't, and you's bery good notter; but oh!' and his body swayed to and fro with the great grief; 'I fears de Lord do, massa, for I'se sent har to him wid har own blood and de blood of dat pore, innercent chile on har hands. Oh! I fears de Lord neber'll forgib me—neber'll forgib me fur dat.'

'He will, my good Pomp, he will!' said the Colonel, laying his hand tenderly on the old man's shoulder. 'The Lord will forgive you, for the sake of the Christian example you've set your master, if for nothing else;' and then the proud, strong man's feelings overpowering him, his tears fell in great drops on the breast of the old slave, as they had fallen there when he was a child.

Such scenes are not for the eye of a stranger, and turning away, I left the room.

The family met at the breakfast-table at the customary hour on the following morning; but I noticed that Jim was not in his accustomed place behind the Colonel's chair. That gentleman exhibited his usual good spirits, but Madam P—— looked sad and anxious, and I had not forgotten the scene of the previous evening.

While we were seated at the meal, the negro Junius hastily entered the room, and in an excited manner exclaimed:

'O massa, massa! you muss cum ter de cabin—Jim hab draw'd his knife, and he swar he'll kill de fuss un dat touch him!'

'He does, does he!' said his master, springing from his seat, and abruptly leaving the apartment.

Remembering the fierce burst of passion I had seen in the negro, and fearing there was danger a-foot, I rose to follow, saying as I did so:

'Madam, can not you prevent this?'

'I can not, sir; I have already done all I can. Go and try to pacify the Colonel. Jim will die before he'll be whipped.'

Jim was standing at the farther end of the old cabin, with his back to the wall, and the large spring-knife in his hand. Some half-dozen negroes were in the centre of the room, apparently cowed by his fierce and desperate looks, and his master stood within a few feet of him.

'I tell you, Cunnel,' cried the negro, as I entered, 'you touch me at your peril.'

'You d—d nigger, do you dare to speak so to me?' said his master, taking a step toward him.

The knife rose in the air, and the black, in a cool, sneering tone, replied: 'Say your prayers 'fore you come ony nigher, for, so help me God, you're a dead man!'

I laid my hand on the Colonel's arm, to draw him back, saying as I did so: 'There's danger in him! I know it Let him go, and he shall ask your pardon.'

'I shan't ax his pardon,' cried the black, 'leff him and me be, sar; we'll fix dis ourselfs.'

'Don't interfere, Mr. K——,' said my host, with perfect coolness, but with a face pallid with rage. 'Let me govern my own plantation.'

'As you say, sir,' I replied, stepping back a few paces; 'but I warn you—there is danger in him!'

Taking no notice of my remark, the Colonel turned to the trembling negroes, and said: 'One of you go to the house and bring my pistols.'

'You kin shoot me, ef you likes,' said Jim, with a fierce, grim smile; 'but I'll take you to h—l wid me, shore. You knows WE won't stand a blow!'

The Colonel, at the allusion to their relationship, started as if shot, and turning furiously on the negro, yelled out: 'I'll shoot you for that, you d—d nigger, by——.'

'It 'pears ter me, Cunnel, ye've hed 'bout nuff shootin' 'round har, lately; better stop thet sort o' bis'ness; it moight give ye a sore throat,' said the long, lean, loose-jointed stump-speaker of the previous Sunday, as he entered the cabin and strode directly up to my host.

'What brought you here, you d—d insolent hound?' cried the Colonel, turning fiercely on the new-comer.

'Wal, I cum to du ye a naboorly turn—I've kotched two on yer niggers down ter my still, an' I want ye ter take 'em 'way,' returned the corn-cracker, with the utmost coolness.

'Two of my niggers!' exclaimed the Colonel, perceptibly moderating his tone, 'which ones?'

'A yaller gal, and a child.'

'I thank you, Barnes; excuse my hard words—I was excited.'

'All right, Cunnel; say no more 'bout thet. Will ye send fur 'em? I'd hev fotched 'em 'long, but my waggin's off jest now.'

'Yes, I'll send at once. Have you got them safe?'

'Safe? I reckon so! Kotched 'em las' night, arter dark, and they've kept right still ever sense, I 'sure ye—but th' gal holes on ter th' young 'un ter kill—we couldn't get it 'way no how.'

'How did you catch them?'

'The' got 'gainst my turpentime raft—th' current driv 'em down, I s'pose.'

'What! are they dead?' exclaimed the Colonel.

'Dead? Deader'n drownded rats!' was the native's reply.

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

CHAPTER III.

Hiram exhibited almost from his boyhood a fondness for female society. Even when at the district-school, he preferred spending 'noon-time' among the girls to racing around with the boys, pitching quoits, wrestling at 'arm's-end,' 'back-hold,' or playing base-ball and goal. His mother was careful to encourage Hiram's predilections. She remarked that nothing was so well calculated to keep a young man from going astray as for him to frequent the society of virtuous females.

Before Hiram had got into his teens, he appeared to be smitten with at least half a score of little girls of his own age. As he grew older, his fondness for the sex increased. I do not record this, as any thing extraordinary, except that in his case a characteristic selfishness seemed to be at the bottom even of these manifestations. Hiram was not influenced by those natural emotions and impulses which belong to youth, and which, unless kept under proper restraint, are apt frequently to lead to indiscretions. For there ran a vein of calculation through all he did, whose prudent office it was to minister to his safety.

After Hiram joined the church he was regular in his attendance on the evening meetings. He always went to these meetings with some young girl, whom, of course, he accompanied home after the services were over. As I have said, he was a handsome fellow, and bestowed particular care on his dress and his appearance generally. He was good-natured and obliging, and withal sensible, so that the young men who envied him and might be inclined to call him a fop or a dandy, could not prefix 'brainless' to these epithets and thus ridicule on him. The fact is, he was shrewder than any of them, and he knew it. They soon discovered it, and so did the girls, to the utter discomfiture of his rivals.

At all the village gatherings, including the sewing-societies, and the lectures, the prayer-meetings, and meetings of Sunday-school teachers, and so forth, Hiram was not only a favorite, but the favorite with the other sex. He had a winning, confidential manner, when addressing a young lady even for the first time, which said very plainly, 'We know all about and appreciate each other,' and which was very taking. He assumed various little privileges, such as calling the girls by their first name, giving notice that a curl was about to fall, and offering to fix it properly, picking up a bow which had been brushed off, and pinning it securely on again, holding the hand with a kind and amiable smile for a brief space after he had shaken it, and sometimes, when he had occasion to see one of his friends home, keeping her hand in his all the way after it was placed within his arm.

You may ask why such liberties were permitted. Simply because they were so very equally distributed they had come to be regarded as a matter of course. In fact, Hiram was a privileged person. He was so polite, so attentive, so considerate, what if he did have his peculiarities—how ridiculous to make a fuss about such trifles! So the 'trifles' were acquiesced in. Besides, I am inclined to think each fair one supposed she was the especial object of Hiram's regard, and that his attentions to others were mere civilities. I do not say Hiram so announced it. I know he did not; for he was not a person, even when a youth, to commit himself foolishly. Yet if they would mistake general politeness for particular attentions, surely it was not his fault—oh! no.

There were those who refused to give their adherence to Hiram's almost unlimited sway. And as parties generally proceed to extremes, the girls who formed the opposition generally declared him to be a pusillanimous, mean-spirited fellow; they detested the very sight of his smooth, hypocritical face; he had better not come fooling around them—no, indeed! Let him attempt it once, they would soon teach him manners. It is to be observed that these remarks did not emanate from the prettiest or most attractive girls of the village—all of whom were decidedly and emphatically on Hiram's side. They seemed to enjoy the excitement under which their adversaries were laboring, and retorted by exclaiming, 'Sour grapes!' asserting that those who so shamefully vilified Hiram, would be glad enough to accept his attentions if—they only had the opportunity.

Hiram, meantime, pursued the even tenor of his way, secure in his position, enjoying to the full extent of his selfish nature all his 'blessings and privileges,' for which he thanked God twice daily, wondering how men could be so blind and misguided as to turn their backs on religion when there was such happiness and peace in giving up all to God!

CHAPTER IV.

Mr. Bennett was correct in his surmise that there were two stores in the little village of Hampton. Of one of these Thaddeus Smith was proprietor. He was one of the solid men of the place, and had 'kept store' there for the last forty years, succeeding his father, who was one of the early settlers in the town. He had continued on with his customers in the good old fashion, extending liberal credits and charging a regular, undeviating profit of thirty-three and a third per cent. About five years previous to Hiram Meeker's leaving school, Mr. Smith's peace was greatly disturbed by the advent of a rival, in the person of Benjamin Jessup, who took possession of an advantageous locality, and after a week's bustle with teams and workmen transporting, unpacking, and arranging, displayed his name, one fine morning, in large gilt letters to the wondering inhabitants of Hampton, and under it the cabalistic words: 'CHEAP CASH STORE.' A large number of handbills were posted about the village, informing the good people of the opening of the aforesaid 'cash store,' and that the proprietor was prepared to sell every variety of goods and merchandise 'cheap for cash or ready pay,' by which last expression was meant acceptable barter. Of course, the whole town flocked to inspect Mr. Jessup's stock and price his goods. The cunning fellow had valued them only at about cost, while he declared he was making a living profit at the rates charged, and a living profit was all he wanted. Furthermore, he allowed the highest prices for the commodities brought in by the farmers, and gave them great bargains in return. He was especially accommodating to the ladies, permitting them to tumble his whole stock of dry goods for the sake of selecting a pretty pattern for an apron, or finding a remnant which they were 'welcome to.'

Mr. Smith was sadly grieved. Although some very old-fashioned people stuck sternly to him, refusing to be allured by the bait of great bargains, and so forth and so forth, yet his store was nearly deserted. Thaddeus Smith was a perfectly upright man. It is true, he charged a large profit on his goods—this was because it had always been his habit, and that of his father before him. But he was accommodating in his credit and lenient to debtors in default. His word could be relied on implicitly, and his dealings were marked by scrupulous honesty.

On this trying occasion he called his son, who was supposed to be his partner, into consultation, and asked him what he thought of the state of things.

'I think this, father,' was the reply, 'that we can not expect to go on longer in the old style. We must reduce our profits one half, and to do this, we must be more particular in our credits, and buy with more care and of different people. In this way I will engage—by pursuing a straightforward, energetic course, we shall hold our own against the cash-man over the way.'

It was some time before Mr. Smith, Senior, could be persuaded. It was not just the thing, taking advice from a 'boy,' although the boy was past thirty, and had a family of his own. He yielded, however, and Thaddeus, Junior, was permitted to carry out his plan. He made a trip to New-York and purchased goods, instead of sending an order for them as had been their habit, where he could find the best bargains at least ten per cent cheaper than his father was in the habit of buying, came home, got out handbills in his turn, requesting the people to call at the 'old stand,' look at the fresh stock, selected personally with great care, and bought cheap for cash, but which would be sold as usual on approved credit. This gave the tide a turn in the old direction, and Mr. Jessup had to set to work anew. He was not a bad man in his way, but neither was he a good one. He was not over-scrupulous nor severely honest. His prices varied, so the folks discovered, and he, or rather his clerks, sometimes made mistakes in the quality of articles sold. After a while the cash system sensibly relaxed, and at last both establishments settled down into a severe and uncompromising opposition. There was a pretty large back country which received its supplies from Hampton, and so both stores managed to do a thriving trade. The Smiths retaining as customers the large portion of the staid and respectable population, while Mr. Jessup's business depended more on his dealings with the people from the surrounding country. There was a very different atmosphere around the stores of these two village merchants. The Smiths were religious people, father and son, not merely so in name, but in reality. A child could have purchased half their stock on as favorable terms as the shrewdest man in the place. Mr. Jessup, on the contrary, varied as he could light of chaps, that is, according to circumstances. He was, however, an off-hand, free-and-easy fellow, with many generous qualities, which made him popular with most who knew him. He did not hesitate to declare that his views on religious subjects were liberal—a bold announcement for a man to make in Hampton. Indeed, his enemies put him down for a Universalist, or at best a Unitarian, for which they claimed to have some reason, since he seldom went to church, although his wife was a communicant, and very regular in her attendance.

I have been thus particular in describing the two rival establishments because Hiram Meeker is to enter one of them. The reader will naturally suppose there can be little doubt which, and he has a right to exhibit surprise on learning that Hiram decided in favor of Mr. Jessup. I say HIRAM decided. His father preferred that he should go with the Smiths. His mother was of the same opinion, but she permitted her son, who now was very capable of acting for himself, to persuade her that Jessup's was the place for him: 'More going on—greater variety of business—much more enterprise,' and consequently more to be learned. It would be difficult to follow closely the train of reasoning which led Hiram to insist so perseveringly in favor of Mr. Jessup. For the reasons he gave were on the surface, while those which really decided him were keen and subtle, based on a shrewd appreciation of the position of the two merchants, and his probable relation to one or the other. With the Smiths, Hiram saw no room for any fresh exhibition of talent or enterprise; in the other place he saw a great deal.

Once decided on, he was speedily settled in his new abode, where he formed a part of the household of the proprietor, together with the head-clerk, a 'cute fellow of five and twenty, who was reported to be as 'keen as a razor.' It was evident Mr. Jessup valued him highly, from the respect he always paid to his advice and from his giving up so much of the management of the business to him. Besides, it was rumored he was engaged to Mr. Jessup's oldest daughter, a handsome, black-eyed girl of eighteen, a little too old for the 'meridian' of Hiram; but who, with her mother, was on excellent terms with the Meeker family. The name of the head-clerk was Pease—Jonathan Pease; but he always wrote his name J. Pease. There was also a boy, fourteen years old, called Charley, who boarded at home. This, with Mr. Benjamin Jessup, constituted the force at the 'cash store.'

Hiram had taken the place of a pale, milk-and-water-looking youth, with weak lungs, who had been obliged to quit on account of poor health. This youth had been entirely under the control of Pease, so much so that he dared not venture an opinion about his own soul or body till he was satisfied Pease thought just so. All this helped add to the importance of the head-clerk, so that even Mr. Jessup unconsciously felt rather nervous about differing with him. Indeed, Pease was fast becoming master of the establishment. This Hiram Meeker knew perfectly well before he entered it.

When Pease ascertained that Hiram was about to come there as clerk, without his advice being asked, he regarded it as an invasion of his rights. He did not hesitate to speak his mind on the subject to Mr. Jessup. He tried strongly to dissuade him from taking a gentleman-clerk, and declared it would require an extra boy to wait on him and another to correct his blunders. It was of no use; Mr. Jessup had not the slightest idea of the peculiar qualities of Hiram, but he knew if he received him, it would be the means of making an inroad into the conservative quarter, and he should secure the trade and influence of the Meekers beside. He went so far as to explain this to Pease, in the most confidential and friendly manner; but the latter was not to be persuaded or mollified. As he could not prevent the advent of Hiram, he resolved to make his position just as uncomfortable as he possibly could. But he little knew the stuff he had to deal with.

The first morning after he had taken possession of his new quarters—his sleeping-room was over the store—Hiram rose early, and was looking carefully about the place, when Pease came in and asked him why he did not sweep out.

'I have not yet learned the regulations, Mr. Pease, but am ready to begin any time,' was Hiram's quiet reply.

Now, Pease had purposely sent Charley away on an early errand, so as to be able to put this work on the new-comer. He simply replied, in an arrogant tone, that it was his business every morning to sweep out the store, and then sand the floors, adding, in order to preserve a semblance of truth: 'When the boy happens to be here, he will help you.'

Pease was a little astonished to see how readily Hiram set to work. The store was not only carefully swept, and the floors sanded, but many articles which were scattered about were put in their place, and carefully arranged, so that after breakfast, when Mr. Jessup came in, he remarked on the neat appearance of the store, without knowing to what it was owing. Thus was the first attempt of J. Pease to annoy Hiram completely foiled. Furthermore, Hiram kept on sweeping and sanding, although Charley was present; indeed, he declined his assistance altogether, and once, when Mr. Jessup remarked (he had observed to whom the change in the appearance of the store was due) that it was quite unnecessary for him to do the boy's work, Hiram quietly answered, that he much preferred to do it to seeing the store look as it did when he first came there.

It took our hero but a short time to familiarize himself with the minutiæ of Mr. Jessup's business. It was not long before Pease began to feel that there was a person every way his superior who was fast acquiring a more thorough insight into affairs than he had himself. He began to fear that certain private transactions of his own would not escape Hiram's observation. He felt magnetically that instead of bullying and domineering over the new-comer, Hiram's eyes were on him whatever he did. This was insupportable; but how could he help it? The more work he imposed on Hiram, the better the latter seemed to like it, and the more he accomplished.

'Damn him!' said Pease between his teeth; but cursing did not help the matter, so Pease discovered.

By degrees, several young ladies who were not in the habit of calling at Jessup's began to drop in to look at the dry-goods. It was in vain Pease stepped briskly forward to wait on them, with his most fascinating smile; they wanted to see Mr. Meeker. Pease was bursting with rage, but he was forced to restrain his passion. On one occasion, on seeing two attractive-looking girls approaching, he sent Hiram to the cellar to draw a gallon of molasses, and as the weather was cold, he calculated he would have to wait at least a quarter of an hour for it to run. When the young ladies entered, they inquired for Hiram; Pease reported Mr. Meeker as particularly engaged, and offered his services in the most pathetic manner.

'Oh! we are in no hurry,' was the reply, 'we can wait.'

And they did wait, greatly to Pease's disgust, and to Mr. Jessup's delight, who happened to come in at that moment, for he knew Hiram would be sure to make some handsome sales to them. At length came poor Pease's crowning misfortune. Mary Jessup began to give token that she was not slow to discover Hiram's agreeable qualities, and his superiority in every respect over his rival. Now, if there is any one thing which the sex admire in a man more than another, it is real ability. Mary Jessup was a quick-witted girl herself, and she could not fail to perceive this quality in Hiram. She had heretofore regarded him as a boy; but the boy had grown up almost without her observing it, and now stood, with his full stature of medium hight, admirably proportioned. It was not long before she consented to accompany Hiram to the Thursday-evening lecture. What a pleasant walk they had each way, and how gracefully he placed her shawl across her shoulders. Pease was furious. 'How absurd you act,' that was all Mary Jessup said in reply to his violent demonstrations, and she laughed when she said it. What could Pease do for revenge? He thought, and cogitated, and dreamed over it; it was of no use. He began to feel himself under the fascination of Hiram's calm, persevering, determined manner, a manner distinguished by tokens of latent power. For no one in praising him ever made the ordinary exclamations, 'Such a smart, energetic fellow,' 'So active and efficient,' 'A driving business chap.' No; on the contrary, one would set him down as quite the reverse, for he was always very quiet, never in a hurry, and by no means rapid in his motions. Yet he impressed you with an idea of his superiority, which his peculiar repose of manner served to highten. It can easily be guessed that Mary Jessup and J. Pease quarreled, at last seriously, and the engagement, if there had been any, was broken. The next evening, on her return from the sewing-society with Hiram, he ventured to retain her hand in his, and from that time she felt that there was an 'understanding' between them. She would have found it difficult to say why, for Hiram had never spoken sentimentally to her. His conversation was on ordinary topics, yet always in a low, meaning, confidential tone.

[Has the reader any desire that I should lay bare the innermost thoughts and feelings of this youth not yet eighteen? Would you like to be told how curiously he smiled to himself as he continued to sweep out and sand that little village store? Would you care to know how he gloated over the discomfiture of his rival? Shall I endeavor to depict his feelings when he saw he had actually gained the affections of Mary Jessup, for whom, beyond a sensuous enjoyment of her presence and her society, he did not care a fig? Shall I explain how, while acting for his employer quite as a good, honest man would act, his motive was to serve self and self only? or shall I permit the reader gradually to acquire a knowledge of Hiram's characteristics as the narrative proceeds?]

This brings us to the end of Hiram's first year with Mr. Jessup. He had accomplished nothing rapidly, but he had kept on accomplishing something every day. He had not made a single false step. The consequence was, he had not a single step to retrace. The end of the year found him already very high in Mr. Jessup's esteem. Hiram had proved his value by increasing his employer's business at least ten per cent in the village, while he was daily becoming more popular with all who traded at the store. To Pease this was an enigma, for Hiram never volunteered to wait on a customer, when the former was present, and only stepped forward when specially sought. Even with the young ladies who came to the place, with whom he was on intimate terms of acquaintance, Hiram found no time to laugh and talk, although he always managed to say an agreeable word in a quiet, low tone. Toward Pease, Hiram's conduct was always the same, perfectly respectful; as if never losing sight of the situation of the one as head-clerk and of the other as subordinate. But by continually making himself so useful in the establishment, he was gradually undermining his comrade's position, and Pease felt his influence dissolving, he hardly knew how or why; but he felt it all the more forcibly for not knowing.

Thus the commencement of the new year found the occupants of the cash store. Hiram's situation had become very agreeable. He was putting into practice the theories of his education. He was high in favor with his employer, and whenever he entered the house, which was but a few steps from the store, he was greeted by Mary Jessup with that peculiar welcome so charming between those who love each other, yet which to him was pleasing only because it gratified his animal nature and his self-love.

Early in the second year, an incident occurred which served to bring out Hiram's character, and change decidedly the state of affairs. One morning, while he was engaged with a customer, Mrs. Esterbrook entered the store. Now, that lady was the wife of Deacon Esterbrook, one of the most substantial men of the town, and a strong supporter of the Smiths. In fact, she had never set foot in Mr. Jessup's place before that morning, but certain goods, lately ordered by the Smiths, were unaccountably delayed, while Mr. Jessup's were fresh from the city and just opened. The dress-maker had been engaged, and could not come again for she did not know how long, and Ellen must have a nice school-dress ready forthwith. So the lady determined for once to break over rule, and step into the opposition store. No doubt the fact that so respectable and pious a young man as Hiram was a clerk there had its influence in the decision; it made the place itself more reputable, many said. And now she came slowly in, a little distrustful, as if entering on forbidden ground, and expecting to see some extraordinary difference between the place of business of an ungodly person like Jessup and that of the honest-minded Smith. Thanks, however, to Hiram's persevering industry, it was a model of neatness and order, and Mrs. Esterbrook, who was herself a pattern in that way, found her harsh judgment insensibly relaxing, as she stepped to the counter where Pease stood, and asked quite amiably to see some of the best calicoes, just in from New-York. Pease, the narrow-minded idiot, thought this a good time to play off a smart trick on one of Smith's regular customers. So he paraded a large variety of goods before her, and took occasion to recommend a very pretty article, for which he charged a monstrous price, because he said it was a very scarce pattern, and it was with great difficulty they had secured a single piece. As the lady herself could perceive, it had not been opened before; not a soul in the village had even seen the outside of it. Now, it must not be supposed that Mrs. Esterbrook was different from the rest of her sex, and insensible to the pleasure of having the first dress cut from the piece. Indeed, she determined, on this occasion, to take two dresses instead of one; Emily was coming home, and would want it. Just as Pease was about to measure off the desired quantity, Mrs. Esterbrook exclaimed:

'You are sure those colors are fast?'

'Fast, ma'am! fast as the meeting-house round the corner. We will warrant them not to run nor change. Why, for color, we have nothing like it in the store.'

All this time, Hiram had been serving his customer; but with both ears and at least one eye attentive to what was going on near him.

Again Pease commenced to measure, when Hiram stepped deliberately forward and said:

'Mr. Pease is mistaken, Mrs. Esterbrook, those colors are not fast.'

'What the——' hell do you know about it? Pease was going to say; but he stopped short at the second word, utterly abashed and confounded at the extraordinary assumption of the junior clerk. Never before had Hiram made such a demonstration. Now he stood calm and composed, firmly fortified by the truth. He looked and acted precisely as if he were the principal, and the objurgation of Pease died on his lips. He attempted to cast on Hiram a contemptuous glance, as he managed to say:

'Perhaps you know more about it than I do,' and turned away to attend to a new-comer.

'I am much obliged to you, Mr. Meeker, I declare,' said Mrs. Esterbrook.

'On the contrary, it is I who should be obliged to you for looking in. You must excuse the mistake. Mr. Pease is not so familiar with calicoes as I am. But I will now wait on you myself. We have a box of goods in the back-store, not yet open, and I am sure I can find in it just what you want.'

Any one who had seen Hiram's air, and heard him speak, would have taken him for the proprietor. With what a low, respectful tone he addressed the lady. How pleasantly it fell on the ear. An immense box of merchandise to be opened and all the contents overhauled to please her! Charley was summoned, hammer and hatchet freely used, and the goods displayed. Hiram, who knew much better what Mrs. Esterbrook wanted than she knew herself, selected something very acceptable. The price he put at first cost. Not content with that, he actually sold the lady silk for a dress, putting it at cost also, and no human being could have been in better humor than she.

'I am very sorry, Mrs. Esterbrook, for your disappointment about the first calico you selected,' continued Hiram. 'I do hope you and other members of your family will look in often, even if you do not purchase; it sometimes helps one to form a judgment to look at different stocks. But I must be perfectly frank with you. We profess to sell cheap, very cheap, but I can never offer you similar articles at the price you have these; they are given you precisely at cost, as a slight compensation for your trouble in having to look a second time. Besides, it is a matter of mere justice to those worthy people, the Smiths, to say we do not sell our goods at these prices, and I beg you not to so report it.'

'What an excellent young man you are,' said good Mrs. Esterbrook, in the fullness of her heart.

'My dear madam, really I can not see any special excellence in simply doing my duty.'

Hiram smiled one of his amiable, winning smiles, and bowed his new customer politely out of the store.

By this time the dinner-hour had arrived. Not a word had been spoken by Pease to Hiram since the scene just recounted. Not a syllable did he utter at table. Hiram, on the contrary, entered into familiar conversation, placid as usual, and enjoyed his dinner quite as well as he ever had done. When the meal was over, Pease asked Mr. Jessup if he would step into the store a few minutes. Mr. Jessup accordingly walked over.

'I want to know, Mr. Jessup,' he demanded, when all were together, including Charley, 'whether you are the owner in here or Hiram Meeker?'

'Why do you put such a question, Pease?'

Thereupon Pease told the whole circumstances very much as they occurred. Mr. Jessup made no reply. He was taken aback himself. Hiram said not a word.

'It's so, an't it, Charley?' cried Pease.

'I've nothing to say about it,' answered the boy. He liked Hiram, and detested Pease, and was glad to see him humiliated.

'It is so,' observed Hiram.

Mr. Jessup was astounded.

'I shall think the matter over seriously, young men, and make up my mind about it this evening. Now let us attend to business.'

Mr. Jessup had decided in his own mind that Hiram's conduct was very reprehensible—not that he cared about Pease being snubbed, that he rather enjoyed than otherwise, but he thought what Hiram had done would serve to cast discredit on the establishment. Before, however, deciding to censure him in presence of his fellow-clerks, he determined to speak with him privately. He took occasion without the knowledge of Pease, to ask Hiram to step to the house, and once there, he requested him to give his version of the affair. Hiram replied that Pease had stated it very correctly.

'What could be your object,' asked Mr. Jessup, 'in doing what would throw disgrace on my store, for you know such an admission would disgrace us?'

'To serve your interests, as in duty bound,' replied Hiram.

Mr. Jessup could not so understand it, and Hiram undertook calmly to explain how dishonest it was for Pease to do as he did. It had very little effect on Mr. Jessup. His nerves were too strong to be unsettled by a moral appeal. He told Hiram he was to blame, and said he should be obliged to so express himself, when they all met, and he must add a caution for the future.

'Fool!' exclaimed Hiram, startled out of his usual calm propriety, 'do you not comprehend if that woman had gone out of your store with the calico, that she not only would never enter it again, but she would publish your name over town as a swindler and a cheat, and you never would hear the end of it. Pease had charged her double prices, and the goods would not stand a single washing. And you know whether or not you are ready to pay off the mortgage Deacon Esterbrook holds on this house.'

Mr. Jessup colored deeply. When he purchased his house he left a pretty large mortgage on it, which the owner had sold to Deacon Esterbrook, who was a moneyed man, and who now held it quite content with his yearly six per cent.

'You seem to interest yourself in my private affairs,' said Mr. Jessup in a sarcastic tone.

'Why shouldn't I, sir, so long as I am in your employ,' answered Hiram, without noticing the irony.

'You're a devilish strange fellow, any how,' said Mr. Jessup, musingly, 'but I confess I never had a person about me half so useful.'

'I could be of much more service to you if you would conduct your business on strict mercantile principles.'

'Why, what would you have me do different from what I am doing?'

'I would have every thing done straight and honest, Mr. Jessup,' said Hiram firmly.

'Do you mean to say I am not honest?'

'It is not necessary for me to say any thing on the subject. I am only talking about the management of your business. You censure me for not standing still and seeing one of your neighbors grossly cheated, by which you would have lost some of the best customers in town, to say the least. By taking the course I did, I saved the credit of the concern instead of injuring it, and I even spoke of it as a mistake of Pease, instead of a deception.'

Mr. Jessup was already convinced, as indeed, his petulance proved, that Hiram was right, but he had some pride in not appearing to yield too soon.

'I understand the matter better now, and really, Hiram, you did just about the right thing, that's a fact. Honesty is the best policy, after all. I shall tell Pease he did very wrong to attempt any of his tricks on such a person as Mrs. Esterbrook, and in future—'

'In future one of us must be an absentee from the premises,' said Hiram coolly.

'Why, what do you mean?'

'Just this. Pease's year is up next week, and then one of us must leave.'

Mr. Jessup fell into a brown study. He reflected on the admirable manner Hiram had performed his duties; he could not shut his eyes to the fact that several excellent customers had been secured through his influence; he considered the respectability of the Meeker family, and called to mind how indifferent Mary had become to Pease, while she seemed gratified when Hiram was near. Again, Pease, when measured by Hiram's more comprehensive tact and shrewdness, seemed a booby, a nobody, and Mr. Jessup wondered how he ever acquired such an influence over him, and he was the more disgusted with himself the more he thought about it.

'It is working right, after all,' he said to himself. 'I shall be well rid of Pease, and Hiram shall take his place.' Then rising from his seat, he observed: 'I will think the matter over carefully, and you shall have my decision on the day. Now set to work as if nothing had happened.'

Hiram went back to the store as certain of the fate of Pease as if he was himself to decide it. 'Check-mated'—something like that passed from his lips. His countenance, however, gave no sign of triumph, nor, indeed, of any feeling.

In the evening Mr. Jessup announced that, after due consideration, he was of opinion the conduct of Pease was so censurable that the interference of Hiram was very proper, if not, indeed, praiseworthy.

'Perhaps you would like to settle with me?' said Pease ferociously.

'Just as you please,' replied Mr. Jessup.

'Well, I guess I have staid about long enough in this place when I've lived to see you coming the honest dodge so strong as that—darned if I han't!'

Next week Pease had quit, and Hiram Meeker was head-clerk.

Great was the astonishment through the town when it was ascertained that Pease had been 'discharged from Jessup's store for cheating'—so the story went. Mr. Jessup was too shrewd not to make the most of the circumstance. He declared, in his off-hand manner, that he never professed to have the strait-laced habits of some people; he confessed he did not like a fellow the less for his being 'cute in a trade, and eyes open, but when it came to lying and cheating, then any of his folks must look out if he caught them at it, that's all.

With most of the people this frank, open avowal was very convincing; but there were certain obstinate persons such as are every where to be found, and who are fond of going against the general opinion, who did not hesitate to declare this was all gammon. They knew Jessup too well to 'allow' he cared any thing about it, not he. Nothing but the fear of that honest young Meeker led to the disgrace of Pease, who no doubt would now be made the scape-grace for all Jessup's shortcomings in the store-way. So it went. But in the balance of accounts Jessup was a great gainer. Of course, numerous were the questions put to Hiram. He preserved great discretion—would say little. It did not become him to speak of Mr. Jessup's private matters. Good Mrs. Esterbrook was not silent, however. The story was repeated and repeated. It reached the parsonage; it found its way among the customers of the Smiths. Mrs. Esterbrook felt herself a good deal raised in her own importance, that the head-clerk of a store she was never in before should be summarily dismissed for misconduct toward her. She began rather to like that Mr. Jessup, (the calicoes and silk proved such bargains, and just what she wanted,) a man to do as he did was not so very far out of the way, and as for his wife, she was a charming woman, she always said so. Mary, too, what a sweet girl! Well, she should at least divide her custom between the two stores if the Deacon was willing—and the Deacon was willing, for he wanted Jessup to do sufficiently well to keep up his interest money prompt. Not only did Mrs. Esterbrook call frequently, but so did many others of the Smith faction. I need not say that Hiram was indefatigable. He secured the services of a nice, active young fellow, whom he took great pains to teach, and every thing went on like clock-work. Mr. Jessup was content, for he saw he was constantly gaining custom, but, in fact, he was a good deal confused, and hardly felt at home in his own place, so completely did Hiram bring it under his own control.

The first thing he undertook was an entire overhauling of the stock, and a close examination of its value. Then he insisted, yes, insisted that the prices should be marked in plain figures on the goods, so every body could see for themselves.

Jessup remonstrated: 'Thunder! what will become of us at this rate? I tell you there are some it won't do to be frank with. Even old Smith never undertook to expose his marks!'

'The very reason why we should do so,' said Hiram. 'We are honest.'

I wish you could have heard the tone in which Hiram said that, and have seen the expression of his countenance. It made Jessup's flesh creep, he did not know why. So Hiram, as usual, had his own way, and overhauled every thing. Lots of old goods piled away out of sight, as unsalable, were brought forward, carefully examined, and marked down, on an average, to half cost. Then appeared hand-bills to the effect that Mr. Jessup had determined, prior to getting in a complete new, fresh, fashionable lot of dry goods, to dispose of the stock on hand at a tremendous sacrifice. These were sent all over the country into the adjoining villages, every where within twenty miles. How the people rushed to buy, and when they came, and found really that great bargains were to be had, they resolved to come again when the new goods should arrive.

Thus Hiram triumphed. In six months after J. Pease left, Benjamin Jessup's store was the store of Hampton, and Benjamin Jessup himself on the road to prosperity and wealth.

Hiram Meeker was sitting alone in his room over the store, late one evening. He had been with Mr. Jessup a year and eleven months. Another month, and the second year would be completed.

'I believe,' so ran the current of his thoughts, 'I have learned pretty much all there is to be found out here; have not done badly, either. Cousin Bennett's advice to mother was right. I am not ready to go to New-York yet. There is much country knowledge to be gained. Let me see, I will drive over to Burnsville next week. Joel Burns is carrying every thing before him, they say. All sorts of business. A first-class man; neither a Smith nor a Jessup. I met Sarah Burns last week at a party over at Croft's—lovely girl. I think Burnsville will suit me.'

Thereupon Hiram Meeker took up his Bible, which lay on the table near him, drew himself a little closer to the fire, moved the lamp into a convenient position, and read one chapter in course; it was in Deuteronomy. Then he kneeled in prayer for about five minutes. As soon as he had finished, he went to bed, equally satisfied with his labors and his devotions; complacently he laid his head on the pillow, and was soon asleep,

'I am sorry to go, Mr. Jessup, but I have my fortune to make yet, you know, and I must look a little to my own interests.'

'Yes, but confound it, Meeker, what is it you want? I expected to raise your salary; in fact, it's no account what you charge me, you mustn't go, that's settled.'

'Indeed I must.'

'Why, what is the matter? If you say so, I will take you into partnership, though you are not one and twenty. Really, Hiram, don't leave us in this way.'

'I repeat, I am sorry to do so, but as I have no intention of living in Hampton, it is now time I should quit.'

'But what on earth am I to do without you?'

'Persevere in the course you are now pursuing. Stick honestly to good principles, Mr. Jessup, and you will continue to prosper.'

'Damn it, I know better,' exclaimed Jessup pettishly; 'I mean—I swear I don't know what I mean, [Hiram's cold blue eye was fixed calmly on him,] cussed if I do; but I say 'tan't honesty which has done the thing for me. No; old Smith is honest—so is his son; I respect both of them for being so, yes I do. You are honest, too, Hiram; straight as a shingle—have always found you so; but I can't tell why, yours seems another sort of honesty from Smith's honesty, and that's a fact.'

Benjamin Jessup had a dim perception of the truth, but the more he tried to explain, the more he floundered, till Hiram came to his relief and to his own also, for he did not greatly enjoy the comparison Jessup was attempting to institute.

'I think I understand you. The fact is, in the management of your business, I have endeavored to combine what tact and shrewdness I am master of with scrupulous fair dealing and integrity.'

'That's it, Hiram, now you've hit it, but it's the shrewdness that's done the work. Oh! I shall never get a man who can fill your place.'

In due course, Hiram left for Burnsville. The prayers and good wishes of the village went with him. Mary Jessup was disconsolate; but why? Hiram had never committed himself. All the girls said: 'What a fool she is to think he was going to marry any body older than himself!' and they laughed about Mary Jessup.

NEWBERN AS IT WAS AND IS.

That part of North-Carolina borders on the Sound, has within the past six months became the theatre of events of the most exciting nature, in which Newbern, its principal town, has borne a prominent part.

It may be interesting to review its history. The earliest notice of it dates back to the explorations of Raleigh's colony in 1584, when they visited an Indian town named Newsiok, 'situated on a goodly river called the Neus,' but the adventurers did not examine the river, and more than a century elapsed before any further record of the visit of white men occurred. The north-eastern counties had, however, been partially settled by refugees from Virginia, where in the absence of law and gospel they became as degraded a community as there was on the continent. Their descendants have, to a considerable extent, overrun the South to the Mississippi and on to Texas.

But it was the good fortune of the counties on the Neuse to derive their immigrants from and to have their institutions formed by a better class than the inferior families of Virginia, further degraded by a residence in Eastern North-Carolina, at that period known as the harbor for rogues and pirates.

The earliest settlers on the Neuse were French Huguenots, who first located on the James River, in Virginia, but were afterwards induced by the proprietors of Carolina to accept grants of land in what is now known as Carteret County, to which place they removed in 1707. In 1710 a colony from Switzerland and Germany, under the management of Baron de Graffenreid and Louis Michell arrived, and were settled between the Neuse and the Trent, and in the triangle formed by these rivers, laid out a town with wide streets and convenient lots, which in remembrance of the capital in the Old World, was called New-Bern.

The settlers who already resided north of New-Bern soon rebelled against their local government, and by continued depredations on the Indian tribes in their vicinity at last brought on a fearful war, during which a large part of both the white and red men were exterminated, so that many of the poor Swiss and German Protestants found they had only escaped their vindictive persecutors at home to find a bloody grave in the forests of Carolina.

After the surrender of their grant to the crown by the lords proprietors of Carolina, in 1729, a better state of affairs succeeded, and a more energetic government, with its blessings and prosperity was the result. The country was then settled and Newbern gradually rose to be a place of importance, and subsequently the capital of the province.

The first printing-press in the province was established in 1764, and the first periodical, The North-Carolina Magazine, issued the same year, but it is doubtful if any book excepting the State laws was ever published there. A public school was incorporated the same year, and Newbern became the principal seat of education and social intelligence in the province. As the seat of government and the residence of the royal Governors, it attracted much wealth, and developed a degree of culture which it has retained to a later day.

Arthur Dobbs, for a long period the Colonial Governor, was at this time closely identified with the history of Newbern. He was 'by birth an Irishman, and by nature an aristocrat.' He died at an advanced age in 1764.

In 1765, William Tryon succeeded Dobbs as Governor of North-Carolina. He first resided at Brunswick, on the Cape Fear River, then a town of note, but now a complete ruin, and where among its remains are still seen the massive walls of St. Philip's Church, built by his request, at the expense of the British government.

As Newbern was a more central position, and possessed more social advantages, Tryon took up his abode there, not, however, till he had made himself odious by irritating the people of the western part of the province into a rebellion, and had butchered many who were contending only for justice and their rights.

Tryon was aristocratic, tyrannical, and vindictive. To gratify his pride he conceived the idea of erecting a magnificent palace, and to obtain an appropriation from the Provincial Assembly he exhausted all his promises and intrigues. In this effort on the legislators he was aided by the blandishments of his lady and her sister, Miss Wake, relatives of Lord Hillborough, and he was finally successful. The result was, that he erected in Newbern, in 1770, the most elegant and expensive building on the continent, the cost of which was far beyond the resources of the province. The plans of it, which are still preserved, show that the old descriptions of its splendor are not overwrought. Its foundations can still be traced, and a part of one of the wings, though in a dilapidated state, is yet in existence.

A Provincial Congress was held at Newbern, in August, 1774, of which John Harvey was President. In April, 1779, they elected delegates to the famous Continental Congress which met at Philadelphia, and Newbern was for some time the most important place in the province.

During the Revolution, the State was twice invaded by the British, and many towns suffered severely, but Newbern being remote from the seat of war, did not particularly feel its effects.

It is somewhat strange that in Newbern secession once found its strongest opposition, and finally its death-blow. It will be recollected that North-Carolina once extended to the Mississippi, and included all of what is now the State of Tennessee, the whole of which territory was ceded to the United States in 1784. It was then partially settled, and before the general Government had accepted the grant, the residents established a temporary government, and formally seceding from North-Carolina, formed 'the State of Franklin.'

On the 1st of June, 1785, the Legislature assembled at Newbern, when Governor Martin addressed them on this subject. Declaring that 'by such rash and irregular conduct a precedent is formed for every district and even for every county in the State, to claim the right of separation and independence for any supposed grievance as caprice, pride, and ambition may dictate, thereby exhibiting to the world a melancholy instance of a feeble or pusillanimous government, that is either unable or dares not restrain the lawless designs of its citizens,' he advocated putting down the movements by force if necessary. But the leaders were not to be dissuaded from their ambitious purpose, and being joined by a few adjoining counties in Virginia, they elected General Sevier, a hero of the Revolution, as Governor, and the insurrection assumed a formidable shape. But the old State met the trouble energetically, and after exhausting all proper conciliatory measures, Sevier, with several of the leaders, was arrested, their councils became divided, and the rebellion was crushed. The leaders asked and obtained pardon, and an act of amnesty was passed, so that in the subsequent political changes the matter was forgotten.

For a long period Newbern has been the residence of wealthy and influential families. George Pollock, a descendant of one of the original proprietors, who died some thirty years ago, dwelt there. He owned immense tracts of the best land in the State, and over a thousand slaves.

There, too, was the home of Judge Gaston, a learned lawyer and a most estimable man, who, though a Roman Catholic, was respected by all sects and conditions, even in those days of fierce sectaries. John Stanly for a long time gave celebrity to Newbern as a lawyer and legislator, his oratorical powers being second to those of no man in the State. He was the father of Edward Stanly, now appointed to act as military Governor of the State.

The country around Newbern was originally moderately fertile, but much of it has become exhausted by reason of improper tillage. The forests which were once a vast extent of stately pines, and from which great quantities of turpentine and tar were for a century and a half exported, are now little better than barren fields. Pine lumber and staves have long been a large article of export, which with corn and cotton make up nearly all the articles sent abroad. But the pines are now nearly exhausted, the trade in naval stores and lumber lessened, and in consequence a better state of agriculture has commenced. It is found that by the aid of fertilizers good crops of cotton can be raised on the pine lands and the fields kept in an improving condition. For the last thirty years it can hardly be said that the town has improved; indeed, as a whole it has hardly held its own. Still it is a place of wealth and comfort. There is an air of respectability in its ancient and stately buildings, its wide streets, and abundant shade-trees, and it is as healthy as any Southern town can be.

Some twenty years ago Newbern had what no other Southern town possessed, a commerce of its own, that is, vessels built, owned, and sailed by its own people. Many of these—then engaged in the West-India trade—were partly manned by slaves who belonged to the proprietors of the vessel or its captain, and at times, when other seamen could not be procured, these slaves were allowed to make a voyage to a Northern port, but as their value yearly augmented, and the risk of their suddenly disappearing, not again to visit 'Dixie,' increased in a corresponding ratio, they gradually retired to other duties where their services were less precarious.

And here I will relate an anecdote which an old salt once told me when I was strolling along the wharves of this ancient town in his company.

In consequence of a bar, or 'swash,' which stretches inside Ocracoke Inlet, (at that time the only passage to the sea,) the vessels take in but a part of their cargoes at Newbern, while lighters with the remainder accompany them across the 'swash,' where the lading is completed. Quite a number of small craft are thus constantly employed, and they are generally manned and commanded by slaves. In this trade was once engaged 'Jack Devereaux,' an intelligent black man who formerly belonged to the Devereaux family—one of the F.F.s of Newbern—but who had latterly become the property of H—— & C——, a mercantile firm then doing a flourishing business there. He was captain of a famous lighter, which for its enormous carrying capacity had received the cognomen of 'Hunger and Thirst.' In due time the firm of H—— & C——dissolved, and C—— 'moved West,' leaving an undivided half of Captain Jack in the hands of his attorney. Jack had sailed the craft 'on shares,' and compromised his services by monthly wages to his masters, and so had gradually accumulated some hundreds of dollars. Not fancying his new share-holder, he concluded to invest his hard-earned dollars in his own bone and muscle, or in other words, buy half of himself. After considerable higgling, he made the bargain, paying five hundred dollars for the share. On the next trip to the bar, as the entrance to the sea is usually called, there came up one of those sudden hurricanes known as a Southeaster, whose force nothing can withstand. The small craft was foundered, and Jack, after floating for a long time on a plank, finally drifted on to a sand-spit, and was saved.

Finding a passage home, he landed on the 'old County Wharf,' a melancholy, disheartened, and depressed individual, and without conferring with a single person, made his way to the attorney, from whom he had so lately purchased himself, and by dint of persuasion succeeded in having the trade canceled and his money returned. Jack was then himself again. He recounted over and over his adventures by flood and field to his wondering friends, and said no man, white or black, could imagine the trouble he felt when floating on that plank, the waves breaking over him every moment, when he considered he had just bought half of 'dat nigger' that was now going to destruction, and paid all the money he had for him. But he had 'traded back,' and then if he was drowned, 'he wouldn't lose a cent by it.' It was long after this event when he told me he would never again risk a cent in 'nigger' property, it was too 'onsartin' entirely. Jack was a good deal of a wag, and told this story with a gusto I can not describe.[A] But if Captain Jack is still on this 'side of Jordan,' he has doubtless ere this found 'nigger' property still more 'onsartin.'

Let us, however, turn from the past to the present condition of affairs in Newbern. Secession would never have originated there. When South-Carolina passed its act of folly and madness, it met with a firm opposition from the old Whig party, which still had here a vital existence. Every exertion was made throughout the State to repel the insidious influences of the demagogues of South-Carolina and Virginia, and but for the Jesuitical management of the politicians at Richmond, the 'Old North' would have remained loyal. But all the efforts of the true Union men could not avail in warding off the storm that swept over the South; and the Convention at Raleigh passed, or rather was forced to assent to, the Act of Secession, on the twentieth of May, 1861. In August the fortifications below Newbern were commenced, and continued for some months, and well garrisoned, till they were supposed capable of defending the town against any force that might be brought against it. General Burnside, however, attacked them on the fourteenth of March, 1862, and after a sharp battle the rebels fled, and he occupied the old place as a military conquest. All the wealthy and prominent citizens fled, and have not returned.

The present condition of things will not long continue; a more permanent government, either civil or military, will soon be established, and with it must come a new era which will settle for all time the destiny of Newbern.

Should the leading men of the town and all Eastern North-Carolina make an effort and throw off the incubus that slavery has for a century placed over it, a bright career of prosperity would open before them. A new emigration, bringing energy and industry, would restore their worn-out lands, drain their swamps, educate their youth, and make Newbern echo with the hum of manufactures and commerce. The enterprise of such a people would soon open a channel from the Neuse to Beaufort harbor, and so avoid the shoals and dangers of Ocracoke and Hatteras, and with the present railroads, make it the port of exchange for a wide extent of country. The times are propitious; already the true men of the State—and their name is legion—are anxiously awaiting the fall of Richmond, when they will decide for the old flag and the Union, never again to repudiate it.

OUR BRAVE TIMES.

I wonder if we, as a people, have any conception of the grandeur and glory of the Times in which we are living; if we at all appreciate the importance of the history which is being lived all around us; if we feel the colossal magnitude of the every-day events which so crowd upon us that we have hardly time to grasp them; if we are fully aware of the infinite possibilities of what has been so well called this 'fearfully glorious present'? I think not, and I do not know that it is possible for us to do so. Only when we look back upon it from the hight of the far-off future, shall we see the country through which we are journeying in all its grand, sweeping outlines, its majestic proportions, and its imperial tints of coloring. The days of peace and tranquillity in a nation as in a life are robed in colors sweet and grateful to the eye—softened hues of green and gold—but the days of war and tribulation are days of scarlet and crimson, and all that can be seen in heaven and earth is black and flame; but the days when Right achieves great triumphs, even through bloodshed and desolation, are days of imperial purple, hues royal in their magnificence. Thank Heaven that, through the days of blood and black, we have at last reached the purple days of life as a nation. A little more than a year of war, and now the skies are brightening. Thank God! for they have been black, black, black with horror and suffering and crime. And yet such a year as this, I am almost persuaded, is worth a score of years of peace. It certainly has achieved more for truth and humanity and God than the score of years which preceded it. As a nation, we had become almost despicable. Such supple, yielding slaves of 'Democratic' demagogues; such cringing, fawning, knee-bending, hand-kissing agents of the diabolical, traitorous Slave-Power; such apologists and supporters of Wrong; such pusillanimous, weak-hearted advocates of the unpopular Right; such slaves to Cotton and its threats, that we had almost lost the God-given independence of American freemen, and seemed—thank God! events have proved only seemed—to be entirely given up to money and mechanics, to have become, indeed, a nation of peddlers. So much so, indeed, that our prophets were stoned in their own lands, our apostles stricken down in the national councils, and the few voices that were raised for God and humanity, from out the miry slough of a trafficking age, were almost unheard in the general din which went up from all the nations, and the burden of whose song seemed to be: 'There is no God but Cotton, and we are all his prophets.' But the moment the first gun was fired, how all this changed! How regally the whole nation rose up! How magnificently she threw off the garment of rags and filth which had hidden her fair proportions, and donned the imperial toga of humanity, and wrapping the rich folds of the gorgeous mantle around her, stood out before the world in all the dignity of freedom and virtue—a form which made the whole earth glad and the heavens clap their hands in exultation. What giant leaps the nation made in manhood and heroism, strides following each other thick and fast, until the most cynical of the doubters of humanity began to open their eyes, and acknowledge that they would not have thought her capable of such unexampled deeds. The national heroism which the Northern people have displayed is indeed unparalleled. They have risen up as one man to the support of the Government. They have offered property and life and the most sacred treasures of the heart upon the shrine of constitutional liberty. At the sound of the drum, they have left the farm and the barn, the anvil and the mill, the church and the forum, and formed into the grand army of invincibles which, at the word of command, have marched forward, conquering and resistless. They have borne patiently with delay and defeat, with blunders and crimes, with humiliation and taxation, and have, in short, proved themselves Americans worthy of the name. Of course, national heroism has inspired individual heroism, and to-day the country blazes from frontier to metropolis with gallant records of daring deeds. Their number is infinite; they can not be individually remembered, but only massed together, one sublime mosaic by which the gallantry and heroism of the free, untrammeled North is proved. We doubt not there is a leaf for each hero in the heroic record of heaven, and the due share of hero-worship paid to each by those angels who love to pore over the chronicles of earth. And we mourn less over the coming of this war at the present time than we should, did we not perceive that sooner or later it was inevitable. It was written in the fate-book of God. Never before was war so emphatically a war of principle. It mitigates the suffering much to know this. It is something to know that all the brave men who have fallen have fallen for the right; and when we believe so, we do firmly believe that their death will give liberty and happiness to millions yet to be. We can not think but that their lives are well spent. There are some who are written upon God's muster-scroll as martyrs to liberty. Who would not esteem it a happiness and a glory to belong to this Old Guard, who from age to age have rallied and rallied and rallied to the support of liberty, to the rescue of this holy sepulchre from the hands of desolators and barbarians, who have ever fought where the fight was thickest, have ever been the advance-guard of the world in its onward progress, and been enshrined in the great heart of the world, there to glow like the stars forever and ever? Is it a hardship to die that one may live forever? Is it a hardship to die that millions who now live in wailing and woe, in chains and degradation, may live in happiness and freedom in all time to come? The voice of the great army of American freemen rolls back the answer, like the majestic anthem of the sea, No! a deep, continuous no, which echoes from the broad Atlantic to the sunset-dyed Pacific, from the summits of Nevada to the great lakes of the North. Yes, I tell you the whole people feel the depth and sacredness of this war; they feel it to be, as Carlyle said of the French Revolution, 'truth, though a truth clad in hell-fire.'

Then forward, noble army of the brave and true! Rally and forward, and forward again, until every Malakoff of Wrong is reduced, and every suffering Lucknow of our country hears the slogan of deliverance. You have glorious successes to cheer you now. You can think of Somerset and Donelson, and all the glorious battles of the war—of forts taken, of enemies driven, of towns evacuated, of the great cities of the enemy in our hands, of all the stirring, glorious successes of our army and our flag—and even had you none of these to think of, you could think of our cause, and this would be enough. Then let the bugles sound, the trumpets clang, the drums beat, the cannons roar, and we will march, and rally, and forward, and charge and charge and charge, until victory or death crown our labors; and if death to us, so let it be—it will be victory to our successors. This is the spirit of our Northern army. Sing plaudits to it, ye sons of song. Let your eloquence be inspired by it, ye golden-mouthed men—ye Everetts and Sumners. Write of them, ye gifted who would live in the coming time. Weave garlands for them, ye white-handed and lily-browed. Write anthems and oratorios for them, ye men of music. Pray for them, each and all of you, night and day, with heart and voice. But we can not, if we would, overlook the desolation which the war has brought and must bring upon our favored land. We can not conceal from ourselves the fact that, end when it will, or how it may, it must bring desolation to thousands of happy households, and inflict never-healing wounds upon thousands of happy hearts. For every man who falls in battle some one mourns. For every man who dies in hospital-wards, and of whom no note is made, some one mourns. For the humblest soldier shot on picket, and of whose humble exit from the stage of life little is thought, some one mourns. Nor this alone. For every soldier disabled; for every one who loses an arm or a leg, or who is wounded or languishes in protracted suffering; for every one who has 'only camp-fever,' some heart bleeds, some tears are shed. In far-off humble households, perhaps, sleepless nights and anxious days are passed, of which the world never knows; and every wounded and crippled soldier who returns to family and friends, brings a lasting pang with him. Oh! how the mothers feel this war! If ever God is sad in heaven, it seems to me it must be when he looks upon the hearts of mothers. We who are young, think little of it, know nothing of it; neither, I think, do the fathers or the brothers know much of it; but it is the poor mothers and wives of the soldiers. God help them! But the theme is too sad—let us leave it. And amid this wild rush of war, let us not forget our individual duties and responsibilities. Carlyle truly says: 'Each of us here, let the world go how it will, and be victorious or not victorious, has he not a little life of his own to lead? One life—a little gleam of life between two eternities—no second chance to us for evermore.' Let us not forget the loves, the amenities and charities of social life. Let us not forget that the education of the world must go on as ever, that the great virtues of charity and self-denial must more than ever be exercised, and that the discipline and perfection of our own characters is as ever our grand life-work. Then let the angry waves of tumult dash up and froth at our feet, let the skies blacken and the tempest roar, God is over all. This one thing we are to remember, and be cheerful. Browning says:

'God's in his heaven—
All's right with the world.'

THE CRISIS AND THE PARTIES.

From two points of view, the great and preëminently American nation vibrates at present in a crisis of immense historical significance. The first is, that of the war between the United and so-called Confederate States, which is virtually a strife between Free Labor seeking to enlarge its sphere and retain its power against agricultural aristocracy maintained by slave labor. All the energies and theories of industrial progress, of science, and of constant intellectual development; in a word, all that is most characteristic of 'the spirit of the Nineteenth Century,' is enlisted on the one side; all that is fading out and wearing away, with all that characterizes the unwisest conservatism has taken its last stand on the other. It is the old story of 'the generation which comes and of that which goes,' reduced to the intense form of a fierce fight. All of this—but little understood within a very few years—has been of late made generally intelligible on this side of the border, thanks, perhaps, as much to Mr. Hammond's word 'mudsill' as to any other cause. In the short sentence which declared that there should always exist, in every community, one ever-sunken and permanently degraded class, the great point of difference between the South and North was set forth in a form intelligible to the humblest capacity, and it was understood—how well has been shown in many a bloody field.

The other crisis in which we are at present involved is domestic and purely political. It is the growth of opposing political parties, and its existence is undoubtedly to be regretted, if we take only a superficial view of the causes of its birth. We could all wish for some time to come—perhaps forever—to see only a single Union-party, with all men, looking neither to the right nor the left, pushing steadily on to the great goal of unity, commercial development, and social progress. But we forget that so surely as night follows day, even so surely, in every community, will there be a conservative section and a progressive; the 'extreme right' of the former consisting of frozen conservatives, advocating the preservation of every antiquated evil, because it has acquired in their eyes a halo of 'respectability,' while on the 'extreme left' of their opponents will be found the radical innovators, for whom no extravagance of reform is too great; so that as each molecule or group of atoms has its positive and negative electrical point, and as each atom in turn obeys the same law, so we see the positive and negative poles of North and South again reflected in the rapidly increasing divisions among us of Conservatives, who, by a singular fatality, still indicate the plebeian origin which they would now so gladly disown by the term Democrats; and, on the other hand, of Republicans, nick-named at present Radicals—somewhat unjustly; since the term is strictly applicable only to a very limited portion of their number.

There were men of high intelligence among the founders of the old Democratic party; men who understood in many respects the true interests of humanity and its inevitable tendency, under the influences of free labor, free schools, and science. But with the masses, it owed its growth to the old assumed 'natural antagonism' of labor to capital, or of 'the poor against the rich.' It was essentially the same party as that which was played upon by low demagogues like Cleon in the old Greek day; by men who stirred up the poor and ignorant against the privileged and rich, for their own selfish advantage. Of late years, more enlightened and intelligent views have prevailed in all parties, and the Cleons of the present day have been compelled to adventure more and more among the lowest and most ignorant for dupes. For the workman is gradually learning with his employer that there is a harmony of interests and a gradual adjustment of the prices allotted to the relative values of time, labor, brains, and capital, and that the most serious obstacle to this adjustment is, the keeping up of a constant warfare between laborers and employers. It is the skilled employé who becomes himself the capitalist in due time, under a peaceable and well-organized system, as labor and brains rise in value, and the greatest impediment to his rise is a settled state of war between himself and the employer. Education and political equality, the competition of capital, and the ever-increasing appreciation of intelligence, are constantly promoting this harmony and enabling labor to secure its rights.

It is easy to see how the ancient Democracy, or rather its leaders, having for many years held political supremacy and shared the spoils, actually took the place of their opponents, and, in their decline, naturally enough, formed a coalition with the intensely aristocratic South. Meanwhile, what became of the once aristocratic Opposition, with its 'silk-stocking gentry,' as they were termed? Like the Democracy, it died a natural death, so far as the active enforcement of its principles was concerned, after those principles had no longer a foundation in the social developments of the age. Here and there, an old and incurable devotee to mere forms or party shibboleth, who could not comprehend the new order of thought, went over to the 'Democratic' conservatives. Of such were the old gentlemen who, in Philadelphia, voted for the white waistcoat and immaculate snowy neck-tie of James Buchanan. They fled to their ancient foes, that they might die happily in the holy odor of respectability, quite ignorant that a new gospel of what may be termed Respect Ability was being preached, and building up a higher and grander order of nobility than they had ever dreamed of.

Meanwhile, the arrogance of the South and its desperate struggle to secure political preponderance, by extending slavery to the territories, developed in the North a free-soil and free-labor party, which received, most appropriately, the name of Republican. The doctrine of free-labor being intimately allied to every other form of social freedom, and of active thought and social science, had a natural affinity for 'intellect.' The old Opposition, which had boasted, or been taunted with, possessing 'all the dignity,' including that of superior culture, swelled the ranks of this new party with writers and thinkers of eminence. So it grew in power, taking in, of course, many varied elements, both good and bad.

As might have been expected, the proper conduct of the war, and the disposal of the enemy in case of victory, soon led to decided differences between the Democracy, who could not—owing to ancient custom—throw aside their love for the name, or their antipathy to the new doctrines which threatened their power. The mass of them had grown up in firm alliance with the South, and duped and cat's-pawed as they had been—irritated as they were at the treachery of their old allies and despite the noble service which many of them rendered, in fighting the common foe—many have never been able to hate ab imo pectore the men of that false and foul feudal party which, when the rupture fairly came, expressed for their old allies a scorn and contempt deeper even than they felt for 'the Abolitionists.' In vain the South protested fiercely that it meant disunion and nothing but disunion, and made its words good by offering, both in Europe and in its own press, to sacrifice, if need be, even slavery, rather than be longer bound to the North; still, the remaining ultra Democracy could not, would not, even now will not believe that the South would or could be so unfriendly. It was this hope of compromise and conciliation which lost us forts, and ships, and millions of dollars in munitions of war; for it was said: 'The South is only boasting, and must not be driven to extremes.' With eyes wide open to the thefts, the Democratic leaders smiled a languid, cowardly assent, and let the enemy prepare for war. And war came. It might have been prevented; it might, beyond all doubt, have been limited and crushed; but the hand of the braggart South had been so long on the throat of the doughfaces, that they dared not move, and the doughfaces were in power. The country at large has had to pay dearly for that old doughface love for the South; it is paying every day in lives and money.

Even now, it is amazing to see how the leaders among the Democracy, while pecking the South with the bill, continue to fondle it with the wing. Again and again, since the war began, they have humiliated the North and encouraged the desperate foe by efforts at peace-parties, conciliations, outcries for amnesty, and entreaties not to 'exasperate' the enemy. They have urged and advocated the maintenance of slavery, the great cause of Southern arrogance and secession, with as much zeal as any Southron of them all, and fiercely deprecated any allusion to a subject which can no more he kept from consciousness than can a deadly and madly irritating cancer. Every suggestion, even the mildest and most equitable, for arranging this difficulty, has been stigmatized by them as out of place and time, while their press has, without exception, as we believe, given currency to statements denouncing directly as swindlers and prostitutes the innocent and well-meaning men and women who went South with the sole object of clothing, nursing, and teaching the disorganized masses of blacks set free by our army. In all of this, we have a melancholy illustration of the difficulty with which unthinking men of the blind mass which rolls itself away into 'parties,' and follows its leaders, embrace new truths or shake off old habits of slavery.

While the modern Democratic party firmly believed—as its majority still seems to—that all this trouble was caused solely by the Abolitionists, and simply for the sake of liberating some four millions of blacks, they had at least some color for their iron conservatism. European humanity did not agree with us; but we of America are more tropical in our feelings, and so we made up our minds that it was too bad to cut one another's throats for the sake of benefiting certain 'fat and lazy niggers,' who were probably rather better off as chattels than as free men. But it is not from this point of view that the world is now beginning to view the subject. Common-sense has ascertained clearly enough that without the agitation of Abolition, the South would have become intolerable and tyrannical—it was imperious, sectional, and arrogant in the days of its weakness, while the Abolitionists scarcely existed, and given to secession for any and every cause. The insolent, individual independence which prompted the wearing of weapons, wild law and wild life, free from mutual social obligations, contained within itself the germs of withdrawal from a civilized and superior people and a stable government. For such men, one pretense served as well as another. They of South-Carolina employed Nullification long before they dreamed of Anti-Abolition.

Still more absurd is the 'Democratic' opposition, since Abolition for the sake of the Negro has been changed into the cry of Emancipation for the sake of the White Man. Before this cry, before the inevitable and mighty demand of the free white labor of the future on the territories of the South, all protestations against 'meddling' with emancipation shrivel up into trifles and become contemptible. The prayer of the ant petitioning against the removal of a mountain, where a nation was to found its capital, was not more verily frivolous and inconsiderable than are these timid ones of 'let it alone!' And why let it alone? The Emancipation-for-the-sake-of-the-white-man party, as represented by President Lincoln's Message, commending remuneration, asks for no undue haste, no violent or sudden aggressive measures. It is satisfied to let the South free itself when it shall be disposed so to do; simply offering it a kindly aid when this measure shall become popular and expedient. More than this we have never asked for in these columns; yet it would be hard to imagine a term of 'newspaper abuse,' which has not been given us by the 'Democratic' press. Yes, at a time when ninety-nine men in a hundred in the free States avow that they would like to see slavery 'out of the way,' if only to avoid the endless war which its continuance must entail, all mention of it is tabooed by the men who claim to head the party of the virtual majority! No matter how far off the friends of Emancipation and of the Administration are willing to postpone the practical execution of the measure, 'it must not be mentioned.' For the greater part, these Northern friends of the South at present still earnestly desire the perpetual establishment of slavery 'on a constitutional basis.'

The contemptible efforts at Washington to build up a separate and distinct Democratic party, when no party save that of the Union existed, will condemn to everlasting opprobrium the Vallandighams, Carlisles, Garret Davises, and other false friends of freedom, who at such a time crowded together like hungry political cormorants, to hatch out the egg of faction, and secure a prospective share of the spoils. Have these 'Conservatives' reflected on the disgraceful show which their names will make in history, in after-years, when freedom shall have been proclaimed throughout the land, and when those who opposed its progress will appear like nothing else than traitors! Heaven help the men who, at a time when others were gathering in full measure of glory in a holy cause, were piling up naught but shame for their posterity. For it is not more certain that God is just, than that the full measure of iniquity will be heaped upon their names in the after-chronicles of freedom.

Even to the present moment, the 'Conservative' alias the 'Democratic'—or the Black, alias the White—party struggles with might and main to defend and protect its old Southern whippers-in, even at the risk of dividing and distracting the Union. To effect this, it has—almost successfully—insolently thrust the Commander-in-chief forward as its centre, and broadly slandered the Secretary of War and President in no measured terms, as having toiled to defeat McClellan and prolong the war. Through all the glossy web of lies, the light of truth shines or will shine to their disgrace.

Chiefly and most unwisely is the conservative hand shown at present in opposition to every proposition for confiscation or punishing the rebels. After having hurried us by their cowardice and Southern toad-eating into this war; after urging it by their contemptible procrastination to its present tremendous proportions, they cry out 'humanity!' for the men who have murdered our relatives, and shake the Constitution for protection over estates which have been directly used to contribute to Southern war! While every mail from the South gives fresh instances of desperation, and while we search in vain for a trace of proof that there is the slightest hope of reconciliation, we are still entreated to restore every thing in statu quo ante bellum, and bear all the results of the war ourselves, as if forsooth we had been after all in the wrong. And so the Vallandighams and Davises declare that we were. 'Abolitionism caused it all,' they say, 'nothing but Abolition.'

Meanwhile, the question urges itself on us every day with more pressing power, how we are really to settle the whole difficulty? We see but one course—the 'Northing' of the South. We are content to waive for the present all theory or project of confiscation, save so far as promoting the settlement of those soldiers and emigrants who may wish to settle in the South is concerned. This question demands consideration, and must have it. Whether the lands to be appropriated for this purpose come from rebel estates which have ministered to the war, or whether they are to be taken from State property, they must be had; for the settlement of the South and the proper rewarding of the army are matters of paramount importance. The South can no longer exist in its present social condition. People who believe, to use the language of their most respectable journal, the Richmond Whig, that:

People, we say, who believe this of us, must be taught to think differently and truthfully. If they lived in China, it would be otherwise; but linked to us as they are, we can no longer tolerate such outrageous superciliousness as they manifest. Those among them who will learn, may be taught; those who will not, must be supplanted by people who are not too proud to work, who do not 'abominate the system of free schools, because the schools are free,'[B] and revile free labor, because it consists of 'greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, and small-fisted farmers.' The task is great; but it must be accomplished. The war is drawing to an end; but a greater and nobler task lies before the soldiers and the free men of America—the extending of civilization into the South. Let us lift our minds above the narrow limits of 'party,' and realize the mighty work which we have in hand. Let the introduction of free labor to the South be in future the subject to which every thinking American mind shall be devoted. Let them stream in by millions!—the free laborers of all the world!—there is room for them all; and the right of man to work never yet had such fair and just opportunity to have justice done it. Agricultural aristocracy, supported by involuntary servitude and unsupported by manufactures, has been tried, and found worse than wanting. Let its place be filled as promptly as possible by that truly higher aristocracy of industry and of culture which is at present common to Europe and our own portion of America. The turn of the North to rule has at length come. Let its reign be inaugurated by great, noble, and philanthropic efforts to extend the blessings of true civilization to all the continent.

I WAIT.

I wait—watching and weary, I wait;
You wander from the way!
My heart lies open, however late,
However you delay!

I wait—watching and weary, I wait;
But day must dawn at last!
Together, beyond the reach of fate,
Love shall redeem my past.

I wait, ah! forever I can wait;
Forever? I am brave:
Time can not fathom a love so great—
It waits beyond the grave!

TAKING THE CENSUS.

Moses Grant sat in his vine-grown arbor one fine afternoon in August. A fine afternoon, I call it—a little sultry, to be sure, which made Moses Grant's eyes heavy; but the hum of the bees that played around the white clover-blossoms, and the sound of the leaves as they rustled in the warm wind, and the richly colored clouds that floated around in the deep, deep blue of the summer sky, and a thousand other things which I will not pause to note, but which every observing reader has noted on many an August day, made the afternoon I speak of as glorious as any afternoon could be in all our glorious summer.

Moses Grant's eyes were heavy—or eye-lids, if the reader should be a critic. He had brought a book from his daughter's book-case. He remembered the volume—it was called A Book of a Thousand Stories—as the one his daughter Mary read aloud one evening, when the witty turns of speech put all the company into the best of humor. But, somehow, the wit had now lost its point—the joke had lost its zest—and let him try as he would to collect his scattered thoughts, and let him set his eyes on his book never so firmly, his fancy would go on long journeys into the past, and come back again, wearied more and more with each journey, till at last it had sunk to rest, and Moses Grant's eyes were closed. The bees buzzed on, the leaves quivered as before, and the great world moved in its wonted way, yet our hero did not heed it; the world moved on just the same, O reader! as it will one day move—one long, long day—when you and I will not heed it.

Suddenly Moses Grant heard his name spoken. When aroused, he saw his neighbor, Johnson, seated in the rustic chair that mated the one in which he himself sat.

'Good-day, neighbor Johnson,' said Moses Grant. 'What in the world are you doing with that great book?'

'I am taking the census.' And he began turning the leaves as if searching for a lost place, remarking, laconically: 'Sultry.'

'Yes, a very close afternoon. But is it ten years since the census was taken? It seems but as many months. Oh! well, time flies!'

And he looked at the beautiful sky and at the beautiful landscape, and lingeringly at his own stately mansion, guarded by venerable trees that his own hand had transplanted from the forest—and the great truth, half-realized, yet almost as common as our daily life, that time was sweeping all things into the dead past, day by day and year by year, gave him a passing thought of how much he loved them.

The name of Moses Grant was duly inscribed in the book. Then the question was asked by neighbor Johnson:

'When were you born?'

'In the year 1800—sixty years ago the day before yesterday—though I declare I forgot all about my birthday.'

'Well, how much real estate shall I set down to you?'

'I have said that I owned about fifty thousand dollars in that kind of property, perhaps a little more, but not half as much as some persons estimate.'

'Well, how much personal property?'

'I guess about twenty thousand will not go far out of the way, reckoning mortgages and all.'

After a few minutes, which neighbor Johnson occupied by telling how Sime Jones tried to get the appointment of census-taker by wriggling about in an undignified way, and in talking about the prospects of his political party, the visitor left the old man, (such we have a right to call him since he has confessed his age,) and the old man (he would not thank us for using the term so often, for he tries to think he is still young—the old man, I must again repeat) fell a thinking. His eyes were no longer closed, although his book was; he leaned forward in his rustic chair, and commenced to talk aloud—which is said to be a growing habit with most old men:

'Sixty years of human life!' The words were uttered slowly, as though their full meaning were felt in the speaker's heart. After a little while they were repeated: 'Sixty years of human life!' There was a mournfulness in his voice now; it had sunk to the low, tender tones that, years before, when his faithful wife vanished from earth, revealed to all his friends that there was sadness in his heart, while there seemed cheerfulness in his words. 'Welladay!' he continued; 'I have, at any rate, been a successful man. My business has prospered beyond my expectations, and I am what people call a rich man. There was a time when I feared I should come to want; but now, if I could but think so, I have enough. And mine has been an industrious life. When I was elected to the State Senate wasn't my name held up in the newspapers as an example for young men? Wasn't my reputation admitted to be spotless? Yes, I have been a successful man—more successful than nearly all who started with me.'

And he began to look more cheerful and contented. He again looked at his mansion and broad fields, and again he opened his book. The jokes were better now than a little while before.

But the bees buzzed on; the trees sang their old soothing song; the air remained warm; and soon Moses Grant began to nod assent to his book, though the matters it contained were not of opinion, but of fancy. By which I mean that he grew sleepy.

Sudden darkness fell upon the earth. The sun, after sending its rays to glitter in the river so brightly that Moses Grant put his hand over his eyes as he looked from his arbor-door, went out, and the blackness of night wrapped itself about the world. The elms, that had rattled their deep green leaves in the wind, and the birch, that had so gracefully bowed its slender, yellowish head, were all colorless now. There was no storm-cloud to veil the heavens, and yet the sad-faced moon came not out to remind the world of their lost loves and deferred hopes—nor the stars, to twinkle in their silence, as though there were a great Soul in the skies that longed to speak to men, but had no utterance save a thousand love-lit eyes. All was darkness—dense, universal.

Yet Moses Grant had sat unmoved in his vine-grown arbor. His soul was passionless, his face was calm. His book had fallen to the ground, and his head rested on the back of his chair.

Suddenly there came a visitor to the arbor. Moses raised his head and saw a being—whether man or woman I can not tell—with a face, oh! so bright and calm, with eyes that looked from the deepest soul, and a pure forehead that spoke of unworldly rest—a face that shone in its own vista of light when all around was dark. The Presence bore an open book in its hands, and came and stood before Moses Grant and looked earnestly into his face.

'Who are you?' he cried, half in fear, before the calm look of his visitor, and half in confidence, because of the look of love.

'I am the census-taker.'

'No, no; it was he who came a little while ago.'

'He was one census-taker—he came to learn how much you seemed to possess; I come to learn your real possessions. I am the real census-taker.'

Moses Grant knew not what it meant; he sat speechless, in wonder. He would have fled, but he knew not where he could flee in the darkness; he must remain with his strange visitor, as all men must one day stand alone with an awakened Conscience.

'When were you born?' asked the Presence.

'Sixty years ago,' answered Moses.

'You understand me not. I do not ask for the time when you were born into your outward show of life, but when you commenced to live.'

'Still I do not know your meaning,' said Moses.

'Then you have not yet been born. You exist—you do not live. Say not again that you have lived sixty years, for your being has not yet expanded into life.'

Oh! what great thoughts and dark memories came into the mind of Moses Grant! Great thoughts of a nobler life of love than he had ever known—of realities to which he was fast approaching—and a thousand dark memories that he had often tried to obliterate from his mind. A little while before, he thought he possessed a spotless reputation—and so he did possess a spotless reputation when judged by human law. No man ever knew him to steal; no man ever knew him to transgress any important law. Nevertheless, he had had his own ends to gain, and he had gained them. Yes—we might as well confess it—Moses Grant had lived a selfish life. He knew how to take advantage of the technicalities of law, and he knew how to be severe and unmerciful toward the poor. He remembered how, years before, his son had longed for an education, and how the mother had pleaded that he might go to school and to college, and how sternly he said, 'No, I want him in my business;' and he remembered how he kept him slaving at his uncongenial tasks, how he scolded because he still pored over his books, until at last the mother had laid the poor boy in the grave before he had attained to manhood. He remembered how the mother grew paler day by day—she who had been such a help-meet in all his selfish schemes of hoarding and saving; how she had talked more and more about her 'dear lost boy,' till he, Moses Grant, commanded her never to utter that name again in his presence; how the mother still faded and faded, till at last she too, was laid in a quiet grave beside her boy. All this came into the mind of Moses Grant. And then he remembered how he had taken a poor widow's cottage, because his mortgage-deed gave him the privilege—he never thought the right—to take it; he remembered her sad face, that told of silent suffering, when she moved with her children from the cottage her husband had built. 'How,' he asked, in the silence of his own mind, 'oh! how could they say my reputation was unspotted?' Yet he had transgressed no outward law, had forged no mortgage-deed. He only acted like a man who thought that this world could only be enjoyed when he possessed a title-deed to it all; like one who thought that above and beyond this world there was nothing.

All this time has the Presence stood before Moses Grant, looking into his troubled face with its piercing eyes, and reading his every thought.

'Answer me now,' it said, 'have you yet begun to live?'

Then there was another and greater struggle in the mind of Moses. Pride said to him: 'Send this intrusive visitor away, or flee yourself.' But still the visitor stood there, waiting so calmly, and again Moses realized that the great world had faded from his vision; so he could neither send away the intruder, nor fly himself. Still those calm eyes looked into his inmost soul.

'Oh!' he cried at last, 'you have searched me through and through. No, I have not lived—I have not been born, I have no life for you to record in your book. Now, pray leave me—leave me in peace!'

'That were impossible,' said the Presence, 'you know not peace. You pride yourself on your possessions; but how can you have life or possessions, if they are not recorded in my book? The earth, that you love so well, has faded away. It will return to you for a brief moment, and then it will fade forever. What you now possess is but a shadow, like a sun-gilt cloud in a summer sky—changing and changing, and fading and fading, till at last it disappears. You have, if God wills, a few more years of mortal existence, and then, oh! then, you must exchange shadows for realities.'

'Leave me, oh! leave me!' cried Moses.

'Not yet; my mission is not fulfilled. Here in this book your name was written sixty years age, as one to be born. Here your ledger has been kept, though you knew it not. Read the pages with your soul, and see how your account stands.'

Oh! how dark the page. A line was drawn through the middle, from top to bottom, and the good deeds were recorded on one side, in letters of gold, and the bad deeds on the other side in letters of ink. As the pages were turned, Moses looked eagerly for the bright letters, but they were few—too few; while every page was almost filled with the black records of selfish and sinful deeds. Every page made Moses Grant sicker at heart, and he would gladly have withdrawn his eyes from the book, but they were riveted, and he could not.

'O poor man!' exclaimed the Presence, in pity; 'how poor do you find yourself, you who were a little while ago so rich! But you must read no more, lest you sink in despair.'

And the book was closed. Moses Grant said not a word; his heart was too full to speak—too full of grief—too empty of hope.

'Despair not,' continued the strange Presence. 'Your record is not yet completed. You may yet cancel all those black letters by writing golden ones over them—which is to pray with your remaining strength and days for forgiveness. You have been a hard, selfish man, for sixty years. Men, for their own interests, have called you respectable; but before God you have merited displeasure and disapprobation. In the little time you have left, perhaps you may not be able to leave the world as pure as you began it; but you may hope for wonderful mercy and forbearance from God our Father. Have courage, and faith, and hope, and you will yet be rich indeed—rich in love and joy and peace undefiled, that fadeth not away.'

Then the Presence vanished. Still Moses sat in his chair. But a hand was laid on his forehead, and he awoke as he heard Mary say: 'Father, supper is ready.' He drew his hand across his eyes, and arose from his chair. He looked from his arbor-door. The world was all bathed in the light of the declining sun. As he came out and looked on the landscape, he thought that never before had he seen it so dreamy—never before had he seen it so beautiful and so glorious, for never before had he so felt the use of this world as a place in which to attain to the good and to shun the evil, to overcome temptation and to aspire to life.

His daughter wondered what caused his tone to be so tender that night; the next day his neighbors wondered that he visited a certain poor, struggling widow, and gave her the house her husband once owned; and in the months that have since passed, many a poor family has wondered what has turned their former oppressor into such a provident friend.

I only wonder that so old and selfish a man could have had so bright and heavenly a dream.

A SENSIBLE EPITAPH.

'Reader, pass on: ne'er waste your time
On bad biography or bitter rhyme:
For what I am, this cumbrous clay insures,
And what I was, is no affair of yours.'

THE PELOPONNESUS IN MARCH.

'Fair clime I where every season smiles.

There, mildly dimpling, Ocean's check
Reflects the tints of many a peak
Caught by the laughing tides that lave
These Edens of the Eastern wave.
And if, at times, a transient breeze
Break the blue crystal of the seas,
Or sweep one blossom from the trees,
How welcome is each gentle air
That wakes and wafts the odors there!'

It was with thoughts like these running in our heads, that we found ourselves, at about half-past four o'clock, on a dark, cloudy, windy morning, March fifteenth, 18—, rolling slowly along the uneven road that leads from Athens to the Piraeus. Our guide was Dhemetri, of course—who ever heard of a guide that was not named Dhemetri? An excellent guide he was, too, never missing his way, answering correctly all our questions to which he knew the answers, and fabricating answers to the rest as near the truth as his moderate knowledge of antiquity would permit; providing us sedulously with creature comforts, and besieging our hearts daily with delicious omelettes and endless strings of figs. Arrived at the Piraeus, we were transferred, with beds, cooking apparatus, and baggage, to the Lloyd steamer, whose cloud of steam and smoke was seen dimly in the gray morning. At a reasonable time after the hour advertised, we sailed into the open bay, passed near enough the island of Ægina to see the ruined temple on one of its hights—almost to count its columns—then coasted along the rugged shores of Argolis, which we eagerly studied with the aid of a map. Here was the peninsula Methana, and half hiding it, the island Calauria, where Demosthenes put an end to his life, once the seat of a famous Amphictyony. Then the bold promontory which shuts in the fertile valley of Troezer, then the territory of Hermione, stretching between the mountains and the sea. We touched at Hydhra, famed in the history of the Greek Revolution, a strange, rambling town, picturesquely situated on a cleft in a bare island of gray rock, and shortly after at Spetzia, a town of much the same character; then toward night sailed into the beautiful bay of Napoli, or Nauplia, once the capital of Greece.

It had been our intention to procure horses that night, and ride as far as Mycenæ, but we were too late, so contented ourselves with a walk to Tiryus, and a rapid examination of its ruins. The massive walls of this venerable town—they were a wonder in the age of Pericles as in ours—still stand in their whole circuit, and here and there apparently in their whole hight. It is a small, steep, mound-like hill—you can walk around it in fifteen minutes—and within the walls the terraced slope, thickly sprinkled with fragments of ruins, is grown over with the tall purple flowers of the asphodel—a fit monument to the perished city. From the citadel of Tiryus the view over the wide plain of the Inachus, the broad bay beyond, covered with sails, the bold headland of Napoli crowned with the ruined castle, the noble citadel of Argos, and the mountain ranges on every side, made a picture beautiful even under the dull sky of that March evening. Our walk—quickened by the fear that the city gates would be found closed—gave us a hearty appetite, and a classic smack was imparted to our modest viands by the fact that Orestes himself waited on our table. We slept well, notwithstanding the uncomfortable reputation of the inn, and set off early the next morning upon our wanderings.

Traveling in Greece is no child's play. Roads there are none, except between some large towns; indeed, the nature of the country hardly allows of them, as it is made up chiefly of mountain ridges and ravines. Neither would the poverty-stricken inhabitants be able at present to make much use of them. When I expressed to Dhemetri the great benefits I conceived that roads would confer upon the community, he asked contemptuously: 'What good would roads be to them, when they have no carriages?' Inns, too, there are none, or almost none; after leaving Napoli we found none until we returned to Athens. In their stead, each village has its khan, a house rather larger than ordinary, and containing one large unfurnished room for guests. Here a fire is made on the hearth, (the smoke escaping, or intended to escape, through a hole in the roof, for chimneys do not exist,) and the traveler pitches his tent metaphorically in this apartment. The beds, which he carries with him, are spread on the floor, to do double duty as seats during the evening and beds by night. Thus the accommodations are reduced to their lowest terms—shelter and fire; to which add a lamb from the flock, eggs in abundance, or sometimes a chicken, loaf of bread, or string of figs. Wine, too, flavored with resin in true classic style, and tasting like weak spirits of turpentine, is to be had every where. But for any entertainment beyond this, the host is no-way responsible. If you do not choose to sleep on the bare floor, you must bring beds and bedding with you. If you wish the luxury of a knife and fork, you must furnish them yourself. Kettles, plates, saucepans, cups, coffee, sugar, salt, candles, all came from that mysterious basket which rode on the pack-horse with the baggage. Were I visiting Greece again, I would eschew all these vanities—carry nothing but a Reisesack, or travel-bag, as the Germans are wont to call every variety of knapsack—a shawl, and a copy of Pausanias, and live among the Greeks as the Greeks do; but I was inexperienced then.

So we set out with great pomp and circumstance, each on his beast—alogon, the Unreasonable Thing, is the word for horse—while a fifth, with two drivers, carried our goods. A ride of about three hours—passing the silent and deserted Tiryus—brought us to the village of Charváti, the modern representative of the 'rich Mycenae.' Here, while Dehmetri prepared our breakfast, we followed a villager, who led us by rapid strides up the rocky hill toward the angle formed by two mountains. As we rose over one elevation after another, he plucked his hands full of dry grass and brush, and then leading us into a hole in the side of the hill, informed us in good classic Greek that it was the tomb of Agamemnon. It is a large, round apartment, rising to the hight of forty-nine feet, and of about the same width, the layers of masonry gradually approaching one another until a single stone caps the whole; not conical in shape, however, but like a beehive. A single monstrous stone, twenty-seven feet long and twenty wide, is placed over the doorway. The whole is buried with earth, and covered with a growth of grass and shrubs, and a passage leads from it into a smaller chamber hewn in the solid rock, in which our guide lighted the fuel he had gathered. The gloomy walls were lighted up for a moment, then when the fire died away, we returned to the open air. A little further on is the famous gateway with two lionesses carved in relief above—the armorial bearings, we may call it, of the city—and in every direction are seen massive walls, foundation-stones, ruins of gates and of subterraneous chambers like the first we visited, conical hillocks, probably containing others in equally good preservation, and other marks of the busy hand of man—'Spuren ordnender Menschenhand unter dem Gesträuch.' Sidney Smith says: 'It is impossible to feel affection beyond seventy-eight degrees or below twenty degrees of Fahrenheit.... Man only lives to shiver or to perspire.' I think it is so with the sublime and beautiful, and deeply as I felt in the abstract the privilege I enjoyed in standing on the citadel of Agamemnon, and seeing the most venerable ruins that Europe can boast, that keen March wind was too much for me, and I was not sorry to return to the khan, where, sitting cross-legged on the floor, we ate with our fingers a roast chicken dissected with the one knife of the family, and drank a bumper of resinous wine.

After dinner we remounted and rode back through the broad plain to Argos, traversed its narrow, dirty streets, stared at by the Argive youth, examined its grass-grown theatre, cast wistful eyes at the lofty citadel of Larissa, which time forbade us to ascend, then wound along the foot of the mountain-range, saw at a distance on the seashore a spot of green, which we were told was Lerna, where Hercules slew the hydra, and near the road an old ruined pyramid, which we afterward examined more closely, then followed a mountain-path, catching now and then a glimpse of the bay, following the crest of the ridge into the valley beyond. On one of the undulations of the path we passed over the site of an ancient city, evidenced only by that most sure sign, a soil thickly covered with potsherds. No classic writer mentions it, no inscription gives it a name; perhaps the careless traveler would pass without a suspicion that he was treading on the street, or forum, or temple of a once thriving town. Striking soon into the carriage-road from Napoli to Tripolitza, and descending into a charming little valley with the euphonious name of Achladhókamvo, we were not sorry to find a khan, and take up our quarters for the night. We found the family sitting on the floor around a fire blazing on a hearth in the middle of a room, and here we placed ourselves, watching the women spinning and Dhemetri making his preparations for supper. Out of the afore-mentioned basket quickly came all the afore-mentioned articles. A lamb was killed, and shortly an excellent supper was served up to us. Soon the guest-chamber was announced to be ready for us, a large open room having a fire at one end, and containing our beds, spread on the floor, a cricket three inches high, that served as a table, two windows closed by shutters instead of glass, and a large quantity of smoke.

The next morning a steep and picturesque path over Mount Parthenion—the same path, I suppose, on which Phidippides had his well-known interview with the god Pan—brought us to Arcadia. And at the name of Arcadia let not the fond mind revert to scenes of pastoral innocence and enjoyment, such as poets and artists love to paint—a lawn of ever-fresh verdure shaded by the sturdy oak and wide-spreading beech, watered by never-failing springs, swains and maidens innocent as the sheep they tend, dancing on the green sward to the music of the pipe, and snowy mountains in the distance lending repose and majesty to the scene. Nothing of this picture is realized by the Arcadia of to-day, but the snowy mountains, and they, indeed, are all around and near. No, let your dream of Arcadia he something like this: A bare, open plain, three thousand feet above the level of the sea, fenced in on every side by snow-topped mountains, and swept incessantly by cold winds, the sky heavy with clouds, the ground sown with numberless stones, with here and there a bunch of hungry-looking grass pushing itself feebly up among them. Not a tree do you behold, hardly a shrub. You come to a river—it is a broad, waterless bed of cobble-stones and gravel, only differing from the dry land in being less mixed with dirt, and wholly, instead of partly, destitute of vegetation. But your eye falls at last on a sheet of water—there is surely a placid lake giving beauty and fertility to its neighborhood. No, it is a katavothron, or chasm, in which the accumulated waters of the plain disappear. For as these Arcadian valleys are so shut in by mountains as to leave no natural egress to the water, it gathers in the lowest spot it can reach, and there stagnates, unless it can wear a passage for itself, or find a subterraneous channel through the limestone mountain, and come to light again in a lower valley. Such a reäppearance we saw near Argos, a broad, swift stream—the Erasmus—rushing from under a mountain with such force as to turn mills; it is believed to come from a kalavothron in the northern part of Arcadia. And not far from thence a fountain of fresh water bubbles up in the sea a few yards from the shore; this is traced to a similar source. In some parts of Greece the remains may still be seen of the subterranean channels by which in ancient times the katavothra were kept clear, and thus prevented from overflowing. In this way much land was artificially redeemed to agriculture.

If, now, you seek for the dwellers in this paradise, behold them in yon shepherd and his faithful dog—Arcades ambo—the shepherd muffled against the searching wind in hood and cloak, under his arm a veritable crook, while his sheep and goats are browsing about wherever a blade of grass or a green leaf can be found. His invariable companion is—I was about to say a tamed wolf; but in reality, an untamed animal of wolfish aspect and disposition, always eager to make your acquaintance. These creatures are the torment of the traveler throughout Greece, and most of all in Arcadia. If on foot, he can pick up a stone, at sight of which the enemy will beat a hasty retreat. Greece seems to have been bountifully supplied with loose stones of the right size for this very purpose, just as the rattlesnake-plant is said to grow wherever the rattlesnake itself is found. If on horseback, he can easily escape, although the animal will not scruple to hang to the horse's tail or bite his heels. Such was Arcadia in March. No doubt, at another season it is a delightful retreat from the overpowering heat of the Greek summer. It may have a beauty of its own at that season; but there can be little of that quiet rural landscape which we call Arcadian.

After crossing this plain, visiting by the way the ruins of Tegea, which consisted of a potato-field, sprinkled with bits of brick and marble, and a medieval church, with some ancient marble built into its walls, we came to a broad river, the Alpheus, whose water, when it has any, empties in a katavothron which we left on our right; followed it up in a southerly direction until we came to a little water in its bed, then crossing over some rolling land which divides the water-courses of Arcadia from those of Laconia, we found ourselves in a country of a very different character. The land was better, and was covered with a low growth of wood; we could even see extensive forests on the sides of Parnon. The scenery became highly picturesque, and the weather, although still rigorous, was more comfortable than in the morning. Night came on us long before we reached our journey's end, the wayside khan of Krevatá. There was a little parleying at the door, and Dhemetri seemed dissatisfied with what he saw, and disposed to carry us on to another resting-place. But thoroughly benumbed as we were, the blaze of light that fell upon us from the half-open door quite won our hearts, and we felt willing to risk whatever discomforts the place might have rather than go further. As we entered the door, the scene was striking. A large fire was roaring in the middle of the room, filling it with smoke. On cushions and scraps of carpet, disposed about the fire, were crouched six or eight men and women, dressed in their national costume, very dirty and equally picturesque. Two or three children were among them, or lay stretched at random on the floor asleep. A large, swarthy man opposite us held a child of two or three years, now nestling in its father's arms, now climbing over to its mother, now gazing bashfully and curiously at the strangers. Basil, ever ready on occasion, seized his pencil and soon transferred the group to paper, to the admiration of them all. They moved to right and left as we came in, and made room for us on the side next the door, where our faces were scorched, Our backs shivering, and our eyes smarting with the smoke. An old woman who sat next me eyed us inquisitively, and would gladly have entered into conversation; but almost our sole Greek phrase, 'It is cold,' (eeny krió), we had exhausted immediately on entering the room. Basil essayed Italian, having a vague idea that it would pass any where in Greece, as French does in Italy, but with no success. Neither was our conversation among ourselves brilliant. We were tired, cold, sleepy, and hungry, and we thought despairingly on the long miles back that we had last seen our baggage. At length a shout at the door gladdened our hearts; our beds and that ever-welcome basket were handed in, and Dhemetri was soon deeply engaged in preparing supper. Meanwhile, a fire had been built in the upper room, and we went up by a ladder. But here we were worse off than below. Roof, floor, walls, and (wooden) windows, all were amply provided with cracks and knot-holes, through which the wind roved at its will. A wretched fire was smoldering on the hearth, and a candle was burning in a tin cup hanging by its handle on a nail in the wall, which, set it where we would, flickered in the wind. And when our supper came, fricassee, boiled chicken, roast hare, omelette, bread, cheese, figs, and wine—for such a bill of fare had Dhemetri made ready for us—we swallowed it hastily, huddled our beds about the fire, wrapped ourselves in our blankets, and lay down at once. The inquisitive old lady below, on seeing the extensive preparations for the supper of three fellow-mortals, was struck with reverence for us, and expressed her belief that those, who lived on such marvelous and unheard-of delicacies would never die. We, indeed, had requested Dhemetri to cater more simply for us; but his professional pride would not suffer it.

We were right glad when morning came, and after a mug of thick coffee, a bit of bread, and a handful of figs, we bid farewell to Krevatá with no regrets. A short ride brought us to the brow of the range on which we were traveling, and there lay the valley of Sparta at our feet, and beyond it the Taygetus, if not the highest, the boldest and sharpest mountain-range in Greece. Its white and jagged crest was still tipped with clouds, and it appeared to rise from the valley of Sparta in an almost unbroken ascent to its hight of seven thousand feet. This was the finest single prospect of our journey; but we gladly left it, after a short pause, to push on to the warmth and sunshine of the valley below. The precipitous descent was soon accomplished; we forded the Eurotas, a broad, clear, shallow stream, the only real river we saw in Greece, and stood in Sparta, its site marked by a group of low hills and a few unimportant ruins. The ground is good, and was then green with young wheat; the valley was sheltered from the winds which had persecuted us on the highlands, and for a few hours in the middle of the day, the clouds were scattered, and we basked in the sun's rays. It seemed an Elysium. A small and thrifty village has recently sprung up south of this group of hills, still within the limits of the ancient city, and here we dined in a café (kapheterion) kept by one Lycurgus, not on black broth, but on roast lamb, omelette, figs, oranges, and wine. Truly, if national character depended wholly on physical geography, we should be inclined to look in the valley of the Eurotas for the rich and luxurious Athens, and seek its stern and simple rival among the bleak hills and sterile plains of Attica. We had a short ride that afternoon up the valley of the Eurotas, with a keen north wind in our faces, and were not sorry to reach Kalyvia at an early hour.

Dhemetri had sent the pack-horse with our baggage across by a shorter path, and now announced that we were to sleep to-night in a house instead of a khan, that the mayor (demarchos) of Kalyvia had consented to receive us. Great was our exultation at the prospect of spending a night in this aristocratic mansion, and in truth we found the accommodations here much the most comfortable—nay, we reckoned them luxurious—which we had on our journey. We were first shown into a small room with one glass window, with tight walls, and a chimney. A fire was burning cheerfully on the hearth—that is to say, a stone platform slightly elevated above the floor. The floor around the fire was spread with mats, and in one corner the lady of the house was—what shall I say?—squatted upon the floor, engaged in domestic work. Her daughter, a pretty, blue-eyed maiden, of some fourteen years, named Athena, (Γλαυκώπις ‘Αθήνα,) was working by her side, and the demarch himself, with his stalwart son, were similarly seated on the opposite side of the hearth. Three rough, unpainted stools, an extra luxury for guests, were brought in for us, and we at once plunged into conversation.

'Εενυ κριό!' said we.

'Μάλιστα, μάλιστα, εενυ κριό!' was the prompt reply.

Stimulated by our success, we made another attempt, and were overwhelmed by a flood of Romaic, to which we could only nod our heads gratefully, with 'Málista, málista, charí, charí,' (certainly, certainly, thank you, thank you.) When we retired to our room, we found our beds laid on a sort of shelf along the wall, instead of on the floor, and our supper was served on a table instead of in our laps, as we were used. The family shook hands with us cordially when we took leave, in the morning, placing their hands on their hearts.

This day we rode through a rolling country, quite well watered and wooded, separating the waters of the Eurotas from those of the Alpheus, Laconia from Arcadia. As we reached the highest point, and were about to descend, Dhemetri pointed out a village, distinguished by a single tall, slender cypress, with the words; 'There is Megalopolis.' This is the city founded by Epaminondas, almost the only statesman of antiquity who seems to have had a dim conception of the modern policy of the balance of power, as a point of union for the jealous and disunited States of Arcadia, and as a sentinel stationed at a chief entrance to Laconia. The whole of his great project was not realized, and Megalopolis, instead of becoming 'the great city' of Arcadia, was only a mate to Tegea and Mantinea. Even thus, the work was by no means lost; a Spartan army, to reach Messenia, whose independence was to be secured, must pass through the territory of Megalopolis, and even a second-rate city would answer as a guard. But not even Epaminondas could make of Arcadia a first-class power, and a sufficient counterpoise to Sparta. Megalopolis is now wholly deserted, and represented only by the little village of Sinanu, half a mile distant, where we stopped at a khan kept by an old soldier of Colocotroni, and ran, while dinner was preparing, to examine the scanty ruins of the great city—interesting only from their association with a great name.

Reluctantly, we now turned our backs upon Messene, with its renowned fortress of Ithome, the sacred Olympia, and the beautiful temple of Phigalia, and began our homeward journey. Passing over a mountain from which we had a wide and beautiful view, we rode through a barren and uninteresting plain to the lonely khan of Frankovrysi, and early the next day arrived at Tripolitza. We had had a clear sky at Megalopolis and Frankovrysi, but here, in the high table-land of Arcadia, we found the self-same leaden sky and bleak winds we left three days before. This valley or table-land stretches from north to south, nearly divided in two by the approach of the mountains from east and west. Thus the valley takes the shape rudely of the figure eight; the southern part, through one corner of which we had passed before, being occupied by Tegea, the northern by Mantinea. Tripolitza, to the northwest of Tegea, represents the ancient Pallantium, the birthplace of Evander. Here Dhemetri brought us bad news. We had intended to go to Mantinea, thence north through Orchomenus, Stymphalus, and Sicyon, to Corinth; but the passes, we learned, were impracticable for the snow, and we must recross Mount Parthenion, and revisit Achladhokamvo and Argos. First, however, we took a rapid ride to Mantinea, about eight miles through a level, tolerably well-cultivated country. At the narrow passage between the mountains, there stood in ancient times a grove of cork-trees, called 'Pelagus,' the sea. Epaminondas, warned by an oracle to beware of the 'Pelagus,' had carefully avoided the sea. But it was just in this spot that he drew up his troops for the great battle which cost him his life. When mortally wounded, he was carried to a high place called 'Skope'—identified with the sharp spur of Mount Mænalus, which projects just here into the plain, and from this he watched the battle, and here he died, like Wolfe, at the moment of victory. The well-built walls of Mantinea still stand in nearly their entire circuit, built in the fourth century before Christ, after Agesipolis of Sparta had captured the city, by washing away its walls of sun-burnt brick, and had dispersed the inhabitants among the neighboring villages. The restoration of the city was a part of the great system of humbling Sparta, set on foot by Epaminondas after the battle of Leuctra.

After spending the night at Achladhokamvo, where we visited the ruins of Hysiæ close by, we went next day through Argos, passing within sight of Mycenæ, to Nemea, where, in a beautiful little valley, three Doric columns, still standing, testify to the former sanctity of the spot. Then to Kurtissa, the ancient Cleonæ, to pass the night. When Dhemetri pointed it out to us from the hill above, it looked like a New-England farm-house, a neat white cottage peeping out from among the trees, and we rejoiced at the prospect. But lo! the neat white cottage was a guardhouse, and our khan was the rude, unpainted, windowless barn. It was, nevertheless, very comfortable. There was a ceiling to the room, and the board windows were tight. The floor, to be sure, gaped in wide cracks; but as there was a blazing fire in the room beneath, the cracks let in no cold air, nothing but smoke, a sort of compensation, as it seemed, for our having a chimney, lest we should be puffed up with pride and luxury. For we not only had a chimney, but a table and two stools, one sitting on an inverted barrel spread with a horse-blanket. Here Dhemetri concocted for our supper an Hellenic soup, of royal flavor, the recollection of which is still grateful to my palate. And here a youth, named Agamemnon, son of George, came and displayed to us his school-books, a geography, beginning with Greece and ending with America, where Βοσθονια as put down as capital of Μασσαχοντια. Longing to hear a Greek war-song, we requested him to sing, at which he warbled Δεντε παιδες τον Ελλενον to a tune which we strongly suspected he composed for the occasion, following it up with others, with such delight that we were fain at last to plead sleepiness and let him depart.

We were up betimes the following morning, for we had a long day's work before us. We were approaching Corinth, and knew that from the Acrocorinthus, a very high and steep hill over-hanging it, a prospect was to be had inferior to none in Greece. The morning, though not actually unpleasant, was chill and hazy, and Dhemetri tried to dissuade us from wasting the time. But we were determined to see what there was to be seen, and after a ride of two or three hours over a rough country, we entered the fortifications of this chief citadel of Greece. It is now guarded by a handful of soldiers, two or three neglected cannons thrust their muzzles idly over the rampart, and shepherds with their flocks roam at will within. A sharp wind was sweeping over the summit, and the mountains and islands—Parnassus, Cyllene, Helicon, Pentclicon, Salamis, Ægina—were veiled with a dull, opaque haze. While Basil, with stiff fingers, was sketching the view from the top, I wandered about with my other companion, picking spring flowers, reading the descriptions of Pausanias, and studying the distant landscape. There is a thriving town at the bottom of the hill, and hither we descended, asking for the inn (Xenodhekeon) where Dhemetri had told us to meet him. But alas! modern Corinth can not sustain an inn; and we were obliged to eat our dinner in a grocery, stared at by all the youth of Corinth. Half a dozen Doric columns, belonging to a very old temple, are the only considerable relics of ancient Corinth. And as we had a long afternoon's work before us, we set off before twelve. We galloped at good speed across the Isthmus, about an hour's ride; Dhemetri, who understood the management of Greek horses, driving us before him like a flock of sheep. We paused a moment at the Isthmic sanctuary of Poseidon, passed through the village of Kalamáki, whence steamers run to Athens, then continued along the shore between Mount Geroneia and the sea, through a low, uneven country, well grown with pine, heather, arbute, gorse in the full splendor of its yellow blossoms, and sweet-smelling thyme. The afternoon was warm and bright. Here and there were flocks of long-haired sheep and sturdy black goats, cropping the grass and the shrubs, and it was well in keeping with the scene when we passed a shepherd, with his cloak thrown carelessly aside, leaning on his crook, and playing a few simple notes—not a tune—on his flageolet to while away the time. We delayed half an hour at the miserable hamlet of Kineta, to rest one of the horses, exhausted with our fast riding, then began the ascent of our last mountain-pass. A spur of Mount Geroneia runs boldly into the sea, forming a wall between the territories of Corinth and Megara. It is called 'Kake-Scala,' 'Bad Ladder,' an odd mixture of Greek and Italian. Here, as the ancients fabled, dwelt the robber Skiron, plundering and mutilating all wayfarers, and throwing them into the sea; but Theseus subdued him and subjected him to a like treatment, and thereafter traveling was secure. No doubt Theseus crowned his labors by building a road, as we know one existed here in antiquity, but it has long since disappeared, and King Otho was then imitating him, as we found, presently, to our cost. The sun had already set, when the road became impassable, and shouts from two men some distance above, informed us that the building of the new road had rendered the old bridle-path impracticable. We had to urge our horses down a steep, narrow path to the water's edge, then as the beach was blocked up with huge rocks, to ride a rod or two through the water, then climb up the steep rocks on the other side, where one horse slipped and came near tumbling with his rider into the sea below. Ten minutes later, and we must have returned to Kineta, or waited an hour or two for the moon, for as soon as we were over this dangerous spot it became quite dark; but the path was now safe and easy to find. The full moon was up when we reached the top of the cliff, and the valley of Megara, the mountains, the bay, and the islands of Ægina and Salamis lay distinctly before us. We made all speed to Megara, cheered by the fame of its khan as one of the best in Greece, and by the certainty that there was now a good road all the way to Athens.

It was suggested that we should take a carriage the rest of the way, but as our horses were hired to Athens, we decided not to incur the extra expense. Soon after arriving, however, while Dhemetri was making us a soup, and Diomedes was taking care of our horses, and Epaminondas was roasting us a joint of lamb, while we were squatting half-asleep on bolsters on the floor, hugging our knees, looking dreamily at the fire, and longing for supper and bed, the driver of the carriage came in, and addressed us in recommendation of his establishment in his choicest Frank, "Carrozza-very good-ye-e-e-s!' then squatted down on the hearth beside us, hugged his knees, and looked at the fire with infinite self-satisfaction. Whether it was his eloquence that prevailed on our attendants, I know not, but it was determined to provide us with a carriage the next day, at no extra expense. The day was perfect, and the luxury of an easy drive of four hours was very grateful to us after our uncomfortable ride in the Peloponnesus. We dined at Eleusis, and reached Athens early in the afternoon.

ADONIUM.

Far dimly back in distant days of eld,
There lived a pretty boy, as parchments tell,
As formed for love and life in lonely dell,
With mien as fair as never eyes beheld;
Because who saw, to love him was compelled
Straightway, so wizardly he wielded Beauty's spell.

His name Adonis—sad of memory!
Whose life, though fair, his death was fairer still,
In dying for a cause, or good or ill;
For he heart-crazed the daughter of the sea,
Who loved him well, though wisely loved not she:
True hearts are never wise, as worldlings selfish will.

Him Venus loved—Love's cherished creatures they!
And Venus wooed with perseverance sore,
Till weary was the lad, the wooing o'er;
And while he, hiding in the forest lay,
O'ershaded from the sun's unfriendly ray,
Ah me! there came to kill a maddened, foaming boar!

Oh! see! from limbs too fair for touch of earth,
As tusk and tusk is savage through them drove,
While rain their dainty power 'fending strove,
The pure red liquid life all wasting forth!
All wasted, lost? Nay! thence, thence took its birth
Adonium, eternal bloom of martyred Love!

Love's martyr is a-bleeding now again;
Sweet Liberty, beloved of earth, doth bleed:
The maddened, foaming boar hath come indeed,
And tears our life on many a gory plain;
But we—as bled the boy—bleed not in vain:
Our blood-drops—our sons—will be Adonium seed!

Who die for Liberty—they never die!
Adonis, dead for Love, doth live anew!
They bloom blood-flowers in the tearful dew,
Forever falling on their memory!
In veins that are and veins that are not to be,
They ever coursing live, the right, the good, the true!

Where sinks the martyr's blood within the sod,
A spirit-plant of universal root,
Divinely radiant, doth upward shoot,
Appealing from a wicked world to God!
And seen for once, down drops the tyrant's rod;
For men at last have tasted of a heavenly fruit.

All good and beautiful of soul thus sprung
From blood, e'en as the Adonium I sing;
And where the blood is purest, thence doth spring
Such flowers as by heavenly bards are sung;
For since from Christ the fierce blood-sweat was wrung,
Have growths of nobler fruit on earth been ripening!

POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTES.

There is positively no class of writers entitled to higher praise, or actuated by nobler motives, than those who are now distinguishing themselves by their labors for Education. They have laid their hands on what is to be the great social motive power of the future—the great subject of the politics of days to come—and are working bravely in the sacred cause.

Yet it can hardly be denied that amid the vast mass of every practical observation and suggestion contained in the educational works with which we are familiar, or even among the really scientific contributors to it, there is very little founded on the great social wants and tendencies of the age. Education is, at present, merely an art; it has a right, in common with every conceivable department of knowledge, to be raised to the rank of a science. This can only be done by putting it on a progressive basis, and placing it in such a position as to aid in supplying some great demand of the age.

The great fact of the time is, the advance from mere art upward to science, from the blossom to the fruit. Practical wants, 'the greatest good for the greatest number,' the fullest development of free labor, the increase of capital, the diminution of suffering, the harmony of interests between capital and labor—all of these are the children of Science and Facts. During the feudal age, nearly all the resources of genius—all the capital of the day—was devoted to mere Art, for the sake of setting off social position and 'idealisms.' As with the nobility and royalty of England at the present day, society enormously overpaid what is, or was, really the police—whose mission it was to keep it in order. But from Friar Bacon to Lord Bacon, a movement was silently progressing, which the present century has just begun to realize. This movement was that of the development of all human ability and natural resources, guided by science. It was a tendency toward the practical, the positive, which is destined in time to bring forth its own new art and literature, is breaking away from the trammels of the old literary or imaginative sway.

At the present day, up to the present hour, Education—especially the higher education, destined to fit men for leading positions—is still under the old literary regime. We laugh when we read of the two first years of medical study at the school of Salerno being devoted to dry logic, yet the four years' course at nearly all our modern Universities, or, in fact, the course of almost any 'high-school,' is as little adapted to the real wants of the practical leading men of this age as a study of the Schoolmen would be. The 'literature' of the past still rules the practical wants of the present. It is not that the study of the thought of the past is not noble, nay, essential, to the highly cultivated man; but it should be pursued on a large, scientific scale. The study of Greek and Latin, as languages, is not so disciplining nor so valuable as that of the science of language, as taught by Max Müller; and if these languages must be learned, (and we do not deny that they should,) they can better be studied in their relations to all languages than simply by themselves. And as if to make bad worse, the genial and strictly scientific use of literal translations, advocated by Milton and Locke, and generally employed at the Revival of Letters, and during the days when Europe boasted its greatest classic scholars, is prohibited. 'A college education' suggests the employment of the best years of life in studies of little practical use in themselves, and seldom revived, save for pleasure, after graduation. And even where such studies are exceptionally practical; nay, where science and a free choice of languages and literature are left to the somewhat advanced student, we still find the shadow of the past—of the old, formal, and rapidly growing obsolete literature—overawing the more enlightened effort. Deny it as we may, the University is still a feudal institution. Within the memory of man, there existed in England positively no school where the would-be engineer or manufacturer could be fitted for his career and at the same time be 'well educated.' George Stephenson was obliged to send his son to an 'University,' where some scraps of practical science—scanty scraps they were—most insufficiently repaid the expense of education.

The great want of the age is the Polytechnic School, or more correctly speaking, of the Technological Institute, in which the labors of the Society of Arts, aided by the Museum and Library, may serve the two-fold object of informing the public on all matters of science and industry and of aiding the School of Industrial Science. Developed on its largest scale, such an institute should be devoted to the acquisition and dissemination of all knowledge, but under strictly scientific guidance and influences. Literature should there be taught historically, in close connection with mental philosophy, a system which, it may be observed, results in interesting the pupil more in details than the old plan devoted to a few mere details ever did. Art should there be taught, not in rhapsodies over Raphael, Turner, and the favorite fancies of an individual, but according to its unfoldings in human culture, based on architecture as an illustrative medium. 'The lines of connection' between these and the exact sciences should be ever kept in sight, so that the student may never forget 'the countless connecting threads woven into one indissoluble texture, forming that ever-enlarging web which is the blended product of the world's scientific and industrial activity.'

The great aim of such an institute should be the aiding of industrial progress, and the application of generous, intelligent culture to practical pursuits—the whole to be based on exact science. When we look into this community, and see the vast demand for talent in its manufactures, and see how many thousands there are who would gladly be 'liberally educated' men, if the education could only be allied to practically useful knowledge, we at once feel that the time has come for the establishment of such institutes. The demand exists on every side; the supply must come, and that speedily. England, France, and Germany are rapidly improving their manufactures by scientifically educating their master-workmen—the Conservatoire des Arts, and Ecole Centrale, of Paris, the art-schools of the British capital and provinces, the many museums devoted to scientic collection, are all keeping up their factories—shall we be behind them? Let Capital consult its interests, and answer.

We have been induced to put the query, from a perusal of two pamphlets, both directly bearing on this subject. The first is the Ninth Annual Announcement of the Polytechnic College of the State of Pennsylvania, Session 1861-1862, and Catalogue of the Officers and Students; while the second sets forth the Objects and Plan of an Institute of Technology, including a Society of Arts, a Museum of Arts, and a School of Industrial Science, proposed to be established in Boston.'[C] This latter, it may be added, was prepared by direction of the Committee of Associated Institutions of Science and Arts, and is addressed to 'manufacturers, merchants, agriculturists, and other friends of enlightened industry in the commonwealth.'

The Polytechnic College of Philadelphia, now in its ninth year, is a truly excellent institution, the practical results of which are shown in the fact that its students, immediately on graduating, have generally received appointments as civil and mechanical engineers, or otherwise stepped at once into active and remunerative employment. Its object, as we are told, is to afford to the young civil, mining, or mechanical engineer, chemist, architect, metallurgist, or student of applied science, every facility whereby he may perfect himself in his destined calling. It is, in fact, a collection of technical schools, or schools of instruction in the several departments of learned industry. It comprises the school of mines, for professional training in mine-engineering, in the best methods of determining the value of mineral lands and of analyzing and manufacturing mine products. Also the schools of civil engineering, of practical chemistry, of mechanical engineering, architecture, general science, and agriculture. To these is added a military department, now under superintendence of a former instructor in West-Point, with the use of the State armory near the college, generously granted by the State, with a supply of arms. We are glad to say that in all these schools the instruction is thorough, not only in theory but in actual practice. The course of the school of chemistry, for instance, comprehends the principles of the science and their actual application to agriculture, to the arts, and to analysis; to the examination and smelting of ores; to the alloying, refining, and working of metals; to the arts of dyeing and pottery; to the starch, lime, and glass manufacture; to the preparation and durability of mortars and cements; to means of disinfecting, ventilating, heating, and lighting. Its students are also practiced in manipulations, testing in the arts qualitative and quantitative; in analysis of minerals and soils, and in many other important practical matters.

The students of geology and mining, of machinery and metallurgy, make, with their professors, frequent visits to the many interesting localities in Pennsylvania or New-Jersey, to the many large machine-shops with which Philadelphia abounds, visit mines and furnaces, and are in every way practically familiarized with their future callings. Instruction in languages and literature, in drawing and in the elements of practical law is, we believe, given in common to all. It is the first, we may say, unavoidable, characteristic of a scientific school, that its work is always well done. Other schools may or may not be specious contrivances, well or ill managed; but the very nature of science is to clear itself in whatever it touches, and be honest and practical. Its tendency is to classify and select, to cast away the obsolete and test and adopt the new and true. Such is by no means an exaggerated statement of the real condition of the excellent college to which we refer, which testifies, by its success, to the excellence of its plan and the competency of its teachers, especially to the administrative ability of its worthy President, Dr. Alfred L. Kennedy.

It can not be denied, that for many years, radicals have inveighed against 'Greek and Universities,' but it has been in a narrow, vulgar, and simply destructive manner, with no provision to substitute any thing better in their place. The growth of science, of the knowledge of history, of culture in every branch, has, however, of late, so vastly increased, that the proposition to reform the old system of study is really one not to tear it down, but to build it up, to extend it and develop it on a grand scale. Since, for example, the influence of science has been felt in philology, how inconsiderable do the Bruncks and Porsons of the old school, appear before the Bopps, Schlegels, Burnoufs, and Müllers of the new! For as yet, even where here and there in colleges a liberal and enlightened method is partially attempted, still the old monkish spirit appears, driving away with something like a 'mystery' or 'guild' feeling the merely practical man, and interposing a mass of 'dead vocables,' which must be learned by years of labor, between him and the realization of an education. The young man who is to be a miner, a cotton-spinner, an architect, or a merchant, may possibly find here and there, at this or that college, lectures and instruction which may aid him directly in his future career, but he soon realizes that the general tendency and tone of the college is entirely in favor of abstract studies quite useless out in the world, and apart from preparation for one of 'the three professions.' He himself is as a 'marine' among the regular sailors, a surgeon among 'regular doctors,' or as a dentist among surgeons. And this in an age when we may say that what is not to be studied scientifically is not worth studying. As our principal object in writing these remarks has been to assert that the Polytechnic Institute, in its either partial or entire form, should exist entirely independent of all other influences, we might be held excused from any mention of such scientific schools as are attached to our Universities. That of Cambridge, Massachusetts, would, however, deserve special mention, from the celebrity of its teachers. In this institute, which has between seventy and eighty students, we have a single school divided into the following departments: that of Chemistry, under supervision of Professor Horseford, in which instruction is both theoretical and practical; that of Zoölogy and Geology, in which the teaching consists alternately of a course of lectures by Professor Agassiz, on Zoology, embracing the fundamental principles of the classification of animals as founded upon structure and embryonic development, and illustrating their natural affinities, habits, distribution, and the relations which exist between the living and extinct races, and a course of geology, both theoretical and practical. To this are added the departments of Engineering under Professor Eustis, that of Botany, under Professor Gray, that of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, under Professor J. Wyman, that of Mathematics, under Professor Peirce, and that of Mineralogy, under Professor Cooke. It is needless to speak in praise of a school boasting men of such world-wide names as teachers, or to commend it as affording facilities for bestowing a sound education. We do it no injustice, however, in asserting that its tendency is to develop students of abstract science and teachers, while the aim of the Polytechnic school proper is, in addition to this, to supply the manufactures of the country with working men, and the country at large, including those already engaged in labor, with technological information of every kind. It should be a vast reservoir of practical knowledge, where the man of the 'print-works,' in search of a certain dye or of a new form of machinery, may apply, certain that all the latest discoveries will be found registered there. It should be a place where capitalists may go as to an intelligence-office, confident of finding there the assistants which they may need. It should be, in fact, in every respect, an institute simply and solely for the people, and for the development of manufacturing industry. If, as we have urged, it should embrace eventually thorough instruction in every branch of knowledge, this should be because experience shows that the most commonplace branches require the stimulus of genius, which can only be fairly developed by universal facilities. No young man, however practical, could have his Thätigkeit or 'available energy' other than stimulated by even an extensive familiarity with every detail of philosophy, literature, and art, provided that these were properly scienced, or taught strictly according to their historical development.

It is, therefore, needless to say that we welcome with pleasure the plan of An Institute of Technology, which it is proposed to establish in Boston, and which, to judge from its excellently well prepared prospectus, will fully meet, in every particular, all the requirements which we have laid down as essential to a perfect Polytechnic Institute. Indeed, the wide scope of this plan, its capacity for embracing every subject in the range of science, and of communicating it to the public either by publication, by free lectures, by a museum of reference, or by collegiate instruction, leaves but little to be desired. That there is great need of such an institution in this State is apparent from many causes. In the words of the prospectus, we feel that in New-England, and especially in our own Commonwealth, the time has arrived when, as we believe, the interests of Commerce and Arts, as well as General Education, call for the most earnest cooperation of intelligent culture with industrial pursuits. It is no exaggeration to state that probably no project was ever before presented to the wealthy men of Massachusetts which appealed so earnestly to their aid or gave such fair promise of doing good. The institute in question is one which will in every respect, socially and mentally, elevate the business man or practical man to a level with the college graduate or the practitioner in the three learned professions. It will stimulate progress by still further refining industry, and ally the action of capital to the advance of intellect. It will perform a noble and distinguished part in the great mission of the age and of future ages—that of vindicating the dignity of free labor and showing that the humblest work may be rendered high-toned and raised to a level with the calling of scholar or diplomatist through the influence of science. If we were called on to set forth the noble spirit of the North with all its free labor and all its glorious tendencies, we should, with whole heart and soul, choose this magnificent conception of an institute whose aim is to confer dignity on what the wretched and ignorant slaveocracy believe is cursed into everlasting vulgarity. It is fitting that this practical and eminently intelligent and progressive community should build up, on a grand scale, an institution which will be not only eminently useful and profitable, but serve as a culminating exponent of the great and liberal ideas for which the North has already made in every form the most remarkable sacrifices.

As we have stated, the plan proposed is to establish an Institution to be devoted to the practical arts and sciences, to be called the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, having the triple organization of a Society of Arts, a Museum or Conservatory of Arts, and a School of Industrial Science and Art. Under the first of these three divisions—that of the Society of Arts—the Institute of Technology would form itself into a department of investigation and publication—devoting itself in every manner to collecting and rendering readily available to the public all such information as can in any way aid the interests of art and industry. If our manufacturers will reflect an instant on the vast amount of knowledge relative to their specialties extant in the world, which they have as individuals great difficulty in procuring, and which would be useful, but which an Institute devoted to the purpose could furnish without difficulty, they will at once appreciate the good which may be done by it. For many years the only comprehensive summaries of American Manufactures were a German work by Fleischmann, On the Branches of American Industry, to which was subsequently added Whitworth and Wallis's Report—drawn up for the British government, and Freedley's Philadelphia Manufactures—to which we should in justice add the invaluable series of Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, and the Patent Office Reports. The community needs more, however, than books can furnish. It requires the constant accumulation and dissemination of technological knowledge of every kind. It is proposed in the new Institute to effect this partly by publication and in a great measure by the labor of committees, devoted to the following subjects:

1. Mineral Materials—having charge of all relating to the mineral substances used in building and sculpture, ores, metals, coal, and in fact, all mineral substances employed in the useful arts, as well as what pertains to mining, quarrying, and smelting.

2. Organic Materials—embracing whatever is practically interesting in all vegetable and animal substances used in manufacturing, having in view their sources, culture, collection, commercial importance and qualities as connected with manufacturing. This department presents a vast field of immense importance to every merchant and importer of raw material.

3. On Tools and Instruments—devoted to all the implements and apparatus needed in all processes of manufacture.

4. On Machinery and Motive Powers.

5. On Textile Manufactures.

6. On Manufactures of Wood, Leather, Paper, India-Rubber, etc.

7. On Pottery, Glass, and Precious Metals.

8. On Chemical Products and Processes.

9. On Household Economy. This department would embrace attention to whatever relates to warming, illumination, water-supply, ventilation, and the preparation and preservation of food, as well as the protection of the public health.

10. On Engineering and Architecture.

11. On Commerce, Navigation, and Inland Transport. This department alone, developed in detail, and on the scale proposed, would of itself amply repay any amount of encouragement and investment. To collect and classify for the use of the public all available information on the subject of shipping, the improvement of harbors, the construction of docks, the location and efficiency of railroads, and other channels of inland intercourse; 'keeping chiefly in view the economical questions of trade and exchange, which give these works of mechanical and engineering skill their high commercial value,' is a project as grand as it is useful.

12. On the Graphic and Fine Arts.

Of the importance of the proposed Museum of Industrial Science and Art, it is needless to speak. It would be for the public the central feature of the Institute, and of incalculable value not only to it, but to all engaged in all active industry whatever.

As regards the School of Industrial Science and Art, with its divisions, we see no occasion for material cause of difference between its constitution and that of the excellent Polytechnic College in Philadelphia. New departments of instruction could be added as the means and power of the Institute increased, until it would ultimately form what the world needs but has never yet seen—a thoroughly scientific University, in which every branch of human knowledge should be clearly taught on a positive basis—a school where literature and art would be ennobled and refined by elevation from mysticism, 'rhapsody,' and obscurity, to their true position as historical developments and indices of human progress. We are pleased to see that in the plan proposed, provision would be made for two classes of persons—those who enter the school with the view of a progressive scientific training in applied science, and the far more numerous class who may be expected to resort to its lecture-rooms for such useful knowledge of scientific principles as they can acquire without continually devoted study, and in hours not occupied by active labor.

This whole plan, though in the highest degree practical, has, it will be observed, 'no affinity with that instruction in mere empirical routine which has sometimes been vaunted as the proper education for the industrial classes'—an absurd and shallow system which has been urged by quacks and dabblers in world-bettering, and which has been exhausted without avail in England—the system dear to single-sided Gradgrinds and illiterate men who grasp a twig here and there without knowing of the existence of the trunk and roots. It lays down a perfectly scientific and universal basis, believing that the most insignificant industry, to be perfectly understood and pursued, must proceed from a knowledge of the great principles of science and of all truth.

Under the charge of Professor W.B. Rogers, Messrs. Charles H. Dalton, E.B. Bigelow, James M. Beebee, and other members of a committee embracing some of the most public-spirited men of Boston, this plan has been thus far matured, and now awaits the sympathy, aid, and counsel of the friends of industrial art and general education throughout the community. We have gladly set forth its objects and claims, trusting that it may be fully successful here, and serve as an exemplar for the establishment of similar institutions in every other State.

SLAVERY AND NOBILITY vs. DEMOCRACY.

Few political convulsions have hitherto transpired, which have so much puzzled the world to get at the entire motives of the revolt, as the present insurrection in this country. Were public opinion to be made up from the political literature of Great Britain, or its leading journals, very little certainty would be arrived at as to the merits or demerits of the attempted revolution. The articles of De Bow's Review smack little more of a secession origin than the late dissertations on American politics appearing in the British periodicals. The statements of most of the leading English journals are quite in keeping. Any one accustomed to the 'ear-marks' of secession phraseology and declamation would be at little loss to identify the Southern emissary in connection with the periodicals and press of the British islands. Hence the hypocrisy and studied concealment of those hidden motives necessary to be made apparent, in order to judge of the merits of secession.

The world has known that for thirty years past there has been a feverish and jealous discontent expressed in the cotton States. It had its first ebullition in 1832, when South-Carolina assumed the right to nullify the revenue laws of Congress. Since that time the North has continually been accused of an aggressive policy. Various extravagant pretenses have from time to time been raised up by the South, and urged as causes for dissolving the Union. They have always, until recently, been met by forbearance and compromise.

The extension and perpetuation of slavery has been prominent as the open motive for Southern political activity; and equally prominent as one of the motives for dismembering the Union. There has been another project, however, in connection with the attempted dissolution of the Union, of a most alarming nature: that project was the intended prostration of the democratic principle in Southern politics. While a privileged order in government was made the basis of political ambition by the aspirants or leading spirits, it was also to be made the means of perpetuating the institution of slavery. Whether these adjuncts, slavery perpetuation, and government through a privileged class, were twins of the same birth, is not very material; but whether they existed together as the joint motive to overthrow the national jurisdiction, involves very deeply the present and continuing questions in American politics.

To many gentlemen of intelligence and high standing in the South, the intended establishment of a different order of government, based on privilege of class, has appeared to be the ruling motive. They have set down the expressed apprehension as to the insecurity of slavery as a hypocritical pretext for revolution; believing that the more absorbing motive was to establish an order of nobility, either with or without monarchy. There is some plausibility for giving the ambitious motive the greater prominence; but a more severe analysis of the whole question will, it is believed, place slavery perpetuation in the foreground as the origin of all other motives for the conspiracy.

In classifying slaveholders, it is undoubtedly true that a small portion of them were Democrats in principle, and ardently attached to the National Government—perhaps would have preferred the abolition of slavery to the subversion of its jurisdiction. Another class, composing a majority, though distrusting the National Government, connected as it was and must be with a voting power representing twenty-six or seven millions of free labor, yet more distrusted the attempt at revolution. This class saw more danger in the proposed revolt than from continuing in the Union. Another class were politically ambitious; had ventured upon the revilement of the Democratic principle; had become secessionists per se, and were the instruments and plotters of the treason. This was substantially the condition of public opinion among slaveholders at the time of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency. These three classes, embracing the slaveholders and their families, composed about one million five hundred thousand of the white population of the South.

Of the seven millions non-slaveholding population South, a small portion was engaged in trade and commerce, and naturally inclined to oppose secession; but timid in its apprehensions as to protection, was ready to acquiesce in the most extravagant opinions; in other words, like trade and commerce every where, too much disposed to make merchandise of its politics. The balance of the non-slaveholding population, if we except a venal pulpit and press, had not even a specious motive, pecuniary or political, moral or social, that should have drawn it into rebellion. It was a part and portion of the great brother-hood of free labor, and could not by any possibility raise up a plausible pretense of jealousy against its natural ally—free labor in the North.

In estimating the strength of a cause, we are obliged to take into account the actually existing reasons in favor of its support. Delusion, founded on a fictitious cause of complaint, is but a weak basis for revolution. It may have an apparent strength to precipitate revolt, but has no power of endurance. There is a reflection that comes through calamity and suffering that rises superior to sophistry in the most common minds. If not already, this will soon be the case with the whole Southern population. The slaveholder and the man of trade and commerce who feared the tumult, and would have avoided it, will have seen their apprehensions turned into the fulfillment of prophecy. The non-slave-holding farmer, mechanic, or laborer, will be made to see clearly that his interest did not lie on the side of treason. The political adventurer who planned the conspiracy, is already brought to see the fallacy of his dream. He may now consider the incongruous materials of Southern population. He may view that population in classes. He may contemplate it through the medium of its natural motives of fidelity to the Government on the one hand, and of its artificial delusion on the other. He may now go to the bottom of Southern society, and find in its conflicting elements the antagonistic motives that render the plans of treason abortive. These will be sure to continue, and sure to strengthen on the side of fidelity to the National Government. When the South is made a solid, compact unit in political motive, it will become so, disarmed of all purposes of treason.

It has been repeatedly asserted that the South was a political unit on the question of the attempted revolution. This declaration has been reïterated by the Southern press, by travelers, and by all the influences connected with the rebellion. It is not now necessary to delineate the quasi military organization of the Knights of the Golden Circle, or their operations in cajoling and terrorizing the Southern population into acquiescence. Much unanimity through this process was made to appear on the surface; but it is more palpable to the analytic mind acquainted with Southern society, that the very means employed to enforce acquiescence afforded also the evidence that there was a strong under-current of aversion. Willing apostasy from allegiance to the Union needed no terrorizing from mobs or murders. The ruffianism of the South had been fully armed in advance of the full disclosure of the plot to secede. Loyalty had been as carefully disarmed by the same active influences. It had nothing to oppose to arms but its unprotected sentiments. As soon as the law of force was invoked by the conspirators, the day of reasoning was wholly past. Flight or conformity became the condition precedent of safety, even for life. The bulk of the Southern population was as much conspired against as the Government at Washington; and force against the same population was rigorously called into requisition to consummate what fraud and political crime had concocted. This was the boasted unity of the South.

The inquiry is often made: 'How was it possible to have inaugurated the rebellion, without the bulk of the slaveholders, at least, acting in concert?' This inquiry is not easily answered, unless its solution is found in the fact that slaveholders, through jealousy, had parted with their active loyalty to the National Government. This was generally the case. Whilst the bulk of them hesitated for a little to take the fearful step of revolt, their hesitation was more connected with apprehension of its consequences than with any attachment to the Government. The deceptive idea of peaceable secession first drew them within the lines of the open traitor. The supposed probability of success made them allies in rebellion. As a general sentiment, they made their imaginary adieux to the Government of their fathers without apparent regret.

There has been much misapprehension as to the process of reasoning that brought slaveholders in the main to repudiate their Government. They were influenced by no apprehension of present danger to the institution of slavery. It was something far beyond the power of any party to stipulate against. Their apprehensions were connected with the laws of population and subsistence and the certain motive to political affiliation that underlies the platform of free-labor society. When indulging in the belief of peaceable secession, they expressed their sentiments truly in the declaration that 'they would not remain in the Union, were a blank sheet of paper presented, and they permitted to write their own terms.' This declaration merely characterized the foregone conclusion. It was the evidence of a previous determination, merely withheld for a season, in order to gain time.

But to come to a more definite delineation of the reasons that operated to raise up the conspiracy. There was a partial feud that had long existed in the mutual jealousies between the slaveholders and non-slaveholding population. Nothing very remarkable, however, had transpired to indicate an outbreak. Southern white labor was continually annoyed with the appellation of 'white trash,' and other contemptuous epithets; but still was obliged to toil on under the continuous insult. The habits and usages of slaveholders and their families, indicated by manners toward white labor, that white labor did not command their respect. Too many of the accidental droppings of foolish and stupid arrogance were let fall within the hearing of white labor to make it fully reconciled to the pretended monopoly of respectability by slaveholders. Under this corroded feeling, much of the white labor of the South had emigrated to the free States. In 1850, seven hundred and thirty-two thousand of these emigrants were living. Their communications and intercourse showed to their old friends, relatives, and acquaintances, that they had found homes and friendly treatment on Northern soil; and in addition thereto, a much better and more encouraging condition of society for the industrious white man. The feeling reflected back from the free to the slave States was analogous to that thrown back from the United States to Ireland. Its effect was also the same. Under its influence, nearly two millions are now living in the free States, who are the offshoot and increase of a Southern extraction. Slaveholders merely complained of this flow of population, on the ground that it contributed to overthrow the balance of political power. It would not, perhaps, be amiss to conclude that they saw with equal clearness the incentives that induced the emigration—a silent logic of facts against slavery.

The census statistics, commencing with 1840, have contributed much to play the mischief with the equanimity of slaveholders. They have always known that thorough education in the South was mainly confined to their own families. When, however, the discovery was made public that only one in seven of the aggregate white population of the South was receiving instruction during the year, the disclosure became alarming.[D] It stood little better than the educational progress of the British Islands, which had crept up, under the fight with Toryism, to the alarming extent of one in eight. That one in four and a half of the aggregate population of the free States was receiving school instruction, made the contrast unpleasant to the mind of the slaveholder. He knew that the fact was 'world—wide,' that slaveholders had always controlled the policy of Southern legislation. He was aware that slaveholders had made themselves responsible for this neglect of the children of the South; and knew also that public opinion would visit the blame where it legitimately belonged. Pro-slavery sagacity was quick-sighted in its apprehensions that it could not dodge the inquiry, 'Whence comes this disparity?'

The statistics of the two sections presented a still more obnoxious comparison to the pro-slavery sensibilities, as it respects the physical condition of the respective populations. The cotton States have mostly been the advocates of 'free trade,' some of them tenaciously so. They deemed it impossible to introduce manufacturing, to much extent, into sections where the yearly surpluses in production were wholly absorbed by investment in land and negroes. The consequence has been, want of diversified industry and want of profitable occupation for the poorer classes. In the Northern and in some of the Border States, a different industrial policy has been pursued. Diversified occupation has raised up skilled labor in nearly every branch of industry. Notwithstanding the greater rigor of climate, adult labor on the average, under full and compensated employment, performs nearly three hundred solid days' work in the year. The eight millions of white population in the South, in consequence of this want of profitable occupation, perform much less, perhaps not one hundred and fifty days' work on the average. The following table, published in 1856-1857, by Mr. Guthrie, then Secretary of the Treasury, discloses a condition of things very remarkable; but no wise astonishing to those who have investigated the causes of the disparity. The ratio of annual per capita production to each man, woman, and child, white and black, in the respective States, exclusive of the gains or earnings of commerce, stood as follows:

It is seen by this table that the income, or product of the non-slaveholding population South, mainly disconnected as it is with mechanical industry, is reduced to the extreme level of bare subsistence, while the population of the States which have introduced diversified industry stand on a high scale of production. Contrast Massachusetts and South-Carolina, the two leading States in the promulgation of opposite theories. These two States have often been censured for the contumelious manner in which they have sometimes sought to repel each other's arguments. The one is in favor of 'free trade.' The other says: 'No State can flourish to much extent without diversified industry.' The one says: 'Open every thing to free competition.' The other replies: 'Are you aware that the interest on manufacturing capital in Europe is much lower; that skilled labor there is more abundant; and that it would dash to the ground most of the manufacturing we have started into growth under protection through our revenue laws?' 'Let it be so,' says Carolina; 'what right exists to adopt a national policy that does not equally benefit all sections?' 'The very object of the policy,' replies Massachusetts, 'is, that it should benefit all sections; and the most desirable object of all, in the eye of beneficence, would be, that it should benefit the laboring white population of the cotton States, as well as others.' 'But,' says Carolina, 'this diversified industry can not be introduced, to much extent, where slavery exists.' 'That is an argument by implication,' says Massachusetts, 'that you more prize slavery than you do the interests and welfare of the bulk of your white population.' 'Who set you up to be a judge on the question of the welfare of any part of the population South?' says Carolina. 'I assume to judge for myself,' replies Massachusetts, 'as to that national policy which is designed to affect beneficially the twenty-seven millions of people who are obliged to obtain subsistence through personal industry; theirs is the great cause of white humanity in its shirt-sleeves; and it behooves the National Government to take care of that cause, and to foster it; and not to submit to the narrow selfishness of a few slaveholders.'

It may readily be seen that this controversy, growing out of the opposite theories of selfish slaveholders on the one hand, and a spirit of beneficence, blended with the idea of a wide-spread advantage on the other, not only involves directly the demerits of slavery, in its prejudicial effect on the non-slaveholding population South, but also the great question of raising up skilled labor in all the States. It is thus clearly demonstrated that our national policy should be exempt from the control of an arrogant and selfish class. Slaveholders have had little sympathy with the great bulk of the white people in the Union; at most, they have never manifested it. Few of them can be trusted politically, where a broad industrial policy is concerned. No one is better aware than the political slaveholder of the crushing effect of slavery on the interests of the non-slaveholding population in the slave States: hence their jealousy of this population as a voting, governing power. The Southern political mind, connected with slaveholding, is astute when sharpened by jealousy. There is no phase in political economy, bearing on the disparity of classes in the South, that has not been taken into the account and analyzed. The fear with slaveholders has been, that the great majority, composed of the white laboring population South, would become able to subject matters to the same scrutinizing analysis.

It would be difficult to convince the American people that slavery is not 'the skeleton in their closet.' Any one who has encountered for years the pro-slavery spirit; who has watched it through its unscrupulous deviations from rectitude, morally, socially, and politically, will have been dull of comprehension not to have appreciated its atrocious disposition. Its great instrumentality in the management of Southern masses, consists not only of a disregard, but of a positive interdict of the principles of civil liberty, in all matters wherein the prejudicial effects of slavery might directly, or by implication, be disclosed. It is true, people are permitted to adulate slavery—so they are allowed to adulate kings, where kings reign. No one in recent years has been allowed the open expression of opinion or argument as to the bad effect of a pro-slavery policy on the great majority of Southern white population. This would bring the offender within the Southern definition of an 'incendiary,' and the offense would be heinous. The pro-slavery spirit has always demanded sycophancy where its strength was great enough to enforce it, and has ever been ready to invoke the law of force where its theories were contradicted. Even the fundamental law of the South, contained in Southern State Constitutions in favor of the 'freedom of speech, and freedom of the press,' is mere rhetorical flourish, where slavery is concerned. It means that you must adulate slavery if you speak of it; and woe to the man that gives this fundamental law any broader interpretation. In its amiable moods, the pro-slavery spirit is often made to appear the gentleman. In its angry, jealous moods, it is both a ruffian and an assassin. Mr. Sumner, of the Senate, once sat for its picture—twice in his turn he drew it—each portrait was a faithful resemblance.

Had we been exempt from slavery and its influences, it is difficult to conceive what possible pretense could have been raised up for revolution. What position could have been taken showing the necessity of disenthrallment from oppressive government? There would have existed no element of political discontent that could by any possibility have culminated in rebellion, aside from the active, jealous, and unscrupulous influence of slaveholders. Rebellion and treason required the lead and direction of an ambitious and reckless class; a class actuated by gross and selfish passions, in disconnection with sympathy for the masses. It required a class stripped and bereft by habits of thinking of the spirit of political beneficence, devoid of national honor, national pride, and national fidelity. Nothing less unscrupulous would have answered to plot, to carry forward, and to manage the incidents of the attempted dismemberment of the Union. It required something worse in its nature than Benedict Arnold susceptibility. His might have been crime, springing from sudden resentment or imaginary wrong. The other is the result of thirty years' concoction under adroit, hypocritical, and unscrupulous leaders. The slaveholders' rebellion has assumed a magnitude commensurate only with long contemplation of the subject. Making all due allowance for the honorable exceptions, this is substantially the phase of pro-slavery infidelity to the Union.

Were further argument needed to establish this position, it is found in the fact that the seeds of rebellion are wanting in proportion to the absence of slavery. There is no reason to believe that Kentucky or Maryland, without slavery, would have been less loyal than Ohio. In Eastern Kentucky, Western Virginia, Eastern Tennessee, Western North-Carolina, a small portion of Georgia, and Northern Alabama, the Union cause finds a friend's country. These sections, in the main, contain a population dependent upon its own labor for subsistence. Schooled by diligent industry to habits of perseverance, and learning independence and manhood by relying on itself, it has preserved its patriotism and attachment to the Government under which it was born. It saw no cause of complaint, imaginary or real. Six or seven per cent of slave population has not proved sufficient as a slave interest, to prostrate or corrupt its national fidelity, nor to undermine its national pride. It still retains its representation in Congress against the influences of surrounding treason. There is a cheering satisfaction in the belief that this plateau of civil liberty and freedom, even unassisted, could not have been permanently held in subjection by the myrmidons of rebellion. The secessionists themselves bestow a high compliment to the patriotism of this people, when they complain of its 'idolatrous attachment to the old Government.'

The time has come when the American people, from necessity, must analyze to their root the whole aptitudes and incidents of slavery. They are now obliged to deal with it, unbridled by the check-rein of its apologists. Under the best behavior of slaveholders, the institution could not rise above the point of bare toleration. There is so much inherent in the system that will not bear analysis, so much of collateral mischief, so much tending to overturn and discourage the principles of justice that ought to be interwoven into the relationships of society, that it is impossible for the ingenuous mind to advocate slavery per se. It is not, however, to the bare dominion itself, that the objection is exclusively raised up. It is the inevitable result of that dominion, in connection with the worst cultivated passions of human nature, that the exception is more broadly taken. The dominion of the master over the slave involves in a great measure the necessary dominion over the persons and interests of the balance of society where it exists. The lust of power on the part of slaveholders, and on the part of the privileged classes in Europe, in nature, is the same. The determination through the artificial arrangements of power, to subsist on the toil of others, is the same. The arrogant assumption of the right to maintain as privilege what originated in atrocious wrong, is the same. The disposition to crush by force any attempt to vindicate natural rights, or to modify the status of society under the severity of oppression, is the same; and no tyranny has yet been found so tenacious or objectionable as the tyranny of a class held together by the 'bond of iniquity.' Our forefathers had a just conception of the nature of the case, on one hand, when they interdicted by fundamental law the establishment of any order of nobility. Many of them were sorely distressed at the contemplation of slavery on the other hand, in connection with its probable results upon the national welfare. Our calamity is but the fulfillment of their prophecies. They well knew the nature of the evil we have to deal with.

It is matter of astonishment to most minds that slaveholders should have contemplated the bold venture of subordinating the Democratic principle in government. It will be less astonishing, however, when it is duly considered that it is utterly impossible for Democracy and Slavery to abide long together. The one or the other must ere long have been prostrated under the laws of population, and it is not very likely that the twenty-seven millions and their increase would consent to be subordinated to the policy of three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders. Slavery must exist as the ruling political power, or it can not long exist at all. This the slaveholders well knew; hence the necessity of fortifying itself through some political arrangement against the Democratic power of the masses.

The South-Carolina platform for a new government had close resemblance to the ancient Roman—a patrician order of nobility, founded on the interested motive to uphold slavery; but allowing plebeian representation, to some extent, to the non-slaveholding classes. Others in the South had preference for constitutional monarchy, with a class of privileged legislators, and House of Commons, composing a government of checks and balances, analogous to the English government. Whatever the plan adopted, the leading idea was to institute a government that should be impervious, through one branch, to the future influence of the non-slaveholding majority.

It is difficult to make entirely clear the ambitious motives and mixed apprehensions that have combined to precipitate the Southern slaveholders into rebellion. The defectiveness of the educational system of the South, and the known responsibility of slaveholders for such defect and its consequences; the defect in the industrial policy, and the responsibility of slavery itself for the depressing consequences to the non-slaveholding population, were fearful charges. A knowledge that the causes of depression must soon be brought to the examination of Southern masses, in contrast with a better state of things in the North, filled the minds of slaveholders with jealous and fearful apprehensions toward the non-slaveholding population. They knew that its interests were identified with the Northern educational and industrial policy. They appreciated fully that through these interests, free labor in the South had every motive to affinity with the North, educationally, politically, and industrially. They were astute in the discovery that under the operation of the Democratic principle, free discussion, and fair play of reason, the pro-slavery prestige must soon go down in the South before the greater numerical force of Southern masses. It was, therefore, not only necessary, as supposed, to overturn the power of the masses in the South, but also to make them the instruments of their own overthrow as to political power.

The measurable acquiescence of the non-slaveholding population was indispensable to the revolutionary project. Without it, there was but little numerical force. It was, therefore, of entire consequence to make this population hate the North—to hate the National Government, and to train it for the purposes of rebellion. The press was suborned wherever it could be. The pulpit manifested equal alacrity, in order to keep pace with the workings of the virus of treason. Leading men, assuming to be statesmen and political economists, taxed their ingenuity in the invention of falsehood. The effort of the press and politicians was directed to misrepresenting and disparaging the condition of free labor in the North; whilst the Southern pulpit was religiously engaged in establishing the divinity of slavery. It would require a volume to delineate the arts and hypocrisy resorted to, and the false reasoning employed, to impose upon the masses of white labor South, and to make them contented with their disparaged condition. It is needless to say, the work of imposition was too effectually accomplished. It must be confessed that too much of the non-slaveholding population had been induced to follow the political Iagos of the South, and thus to assist the first act in the plan for its own subversion—separation from the North. The next step in the plan of subversion, the 'abrogation of a government of majorities,' was carefully kept from the public view.

The inquiry naturally arises, as to how or why this design for the arrangement of political power in the Southern Confederacy has been confined within such narrow degrees of disclosure. The answer is plain. A bold proposition to change the principles of their government would have alarmed the people of the South into an intensified opposition. The politicians of South-Carolina, more open and frank in the exposition of their views than other leaders in the South, have been obliged to submit the control of their discretion to the more crafty and subtle influences of other States. Policy required that the contemplated new form of government should be confined to the knowledge of the leading spirits only. It would not bear the hazards of submission to the people as a basis of revolution. Its success depended upon secresy and coupling the adoption of the plan with a sudden denouement after revolution. Any one conversant with the pages of De Bow's Review for the last ten years, and who has watched the drift of argument in reviling the masses, and contemning their connection with government; and accustomed also to the 'accidental droppings' from secessionists in their cups, has had little difficulty in determining the ultimatum in the designs of treason. He will have become convinced that it is nothing less than a warfare against the continuation of Democratic government in the South—that this warfare is stimulated by the fixed belief that a government of majorities must be superseded, in order to perpetuate the institution of slavery.

Were argument wanting to force this conclusion on the mind, it would be supplied in the established affinity between the emissaries of secession in Europe and the virulent haters of Democratic government there found. The liberalists of England and elsewhere have been sedulously avoided; not so those who would connive to bring Democratic government into disrepute. With these last-mentioned classes, the secessionists have met with a ready sympathy and encouragement, almost as much so, as if treason in America involved directly the stability of privileged power on that continent. The Tories of England, the Legitimists of France, the nauseous ingredients of the House of Hapsburg, the degenerate nobility of Spain, and from that down to the 'German Prince of a five-acre patch,' have been the congenial allies of secession emissaries in Europe. It mattered not to these haters of enfranchised masses how much misery might be inflicted on the American people. They cared little for the anguish of mind that was being every where felt by the supporters of liberalized opinions. They rejoiced at the supposed calamities of that government whose beneficent policy had always been to keep the peace, to avoid the necessity of standing armies, to foster industry and education, and in addition thereto, to encourage the depressed of Europe to come and accept homes and hospitable treatment on the soil of the country. These revilers of Democracy in Europe were long advised with, were consulted beforehand, and knew the plottings of the pro-slavery spirit, in its preparation for rebellion. They were indifferent as to the character or hateful deformity of the agency to be employed, provided it could be made instrumental in breaking the jurisdiction of a government, heretofore more esteemed by the enlightened liberalists of the world than any other that ever existed. Neither the secessionists nor their co-plotters in Europe required seducing or proselyting. They stood on the same level of affinity, the moment the secessionists proposed the overthrow of the Democratic principle. This was the promise, the condition precedent, and this the basis of alliance between the plotters of treason in free America and their coädjutors abroad. It would be both shallow and useless to charge the origin of sympathy with rebellion projects, expressed by political circles in Europe, to the mercenary motives of commerce, trade, or manufactures. Those were standing on a broad foundation of contented reciprocity, and were the first to dread the tumult that could not fail to prove prejudicial. We shall hunt in vain to find the motive for European sympathy in rebellion, elsewhere than in hatred of Democracy. We shall also search in vain to find the motive for the wide-spread sympathy expressed by the liberalists of Europe in the Union cause, elsewhere than in their attachment to liberalized institutions.

Having glanced at the compound motive for establishing the Southern Confederacy, that is, slavery perpetuation through prostration of the Democratic principle, it may not be amiss to refer to the contemplated management of its politico-economic interests. These were to be built up, of course; but not through a system of diversified industry; for free trade, as is well known, would have the effect to prostrate what little manufacturing had been commenced in the South, and afford a perpetual bar to the success of future undertakings. It was believed that the foul elements North and South, and the illicit traders of the world beside, could be brought together in the business of free trade and smuggling. The immense frontier would render it impossible for the Northern States to protect themselves to much extent from illicit trade, through any preventive service possible to be adopted. The Mexican frontier would be entirely helpless. Thus reasoned Secesh. This was to have been the basis of competition with Northern mechanism. The reasonings of the conspirators were consistent with the merits and morals of the conspiracy. They calculated upon the active coöperation of the mercenary in the North, and actually believed that the temptation to gain would prove predominant over any efforts the Northern Government could make to protect its revenue policy. They boldly ventured upon the assumption that the influences of illicit traffic would soon become too strong to be resisted, and that in this manner, in conjunction with the agency of 'King Cotton,' the commerce of the North would be transferred to the South.

Another item in Southern political economy was the project of reöpening the African slave-trade. The leaders of the secession programme had made this a prominent feature in starting the rebellion into growth. The various phases which this branch of the question afterward underwent, was owing to the opposition of the Border States. So much were the people of the Border States averse to being brought into competition with slave-breeding in Dahomey, that the original conspirators were obliged to forego, for a time at least, this incident in the motives of the earlier revolutionists.

A government founded on the supremacy of a class, and that class to be composed of slaveholders; a political economy founded on slave labor, free trade, illicit trade, and African kidnapping, were associations that would require great strength and influence to sustain them. The strongest military organization was therefore contemplated. In this, much employment could be given to the non-slaveholding masses, while military qualities of supposed superiority would enable the Southern Confederacy to enter into a successful contest with the North for empire. The potency of 'King Cotton' was to be made the powerful agency with which the rest of the civilized world was to be dragooned into acquiescence. On this delusive dream was built the fabric of that mighty empire, whose history, from its origin to its subversion, is nearly ready to be written.

It must be acknowledged that the leading influences of the rebellion were as sharp-sighted as political vice, or political immorality is ever capable of becoming. Like all other vice, however, it based its reasonings and supposititious strength exclusively on its powers of deception, in conjunction with the iniquitous aptitudes of itself and its coadjutors. It found co-plotters in Mozart Hall, in the stockholders of the African Slave-trade Association, scattered from Maine to Texas, and in its suborned press in New-York, Baltimore, Charleston, and New-Orleans. It had bargained with the politically vitiated portion of the Northern Democracy for assistance, and had received a wicked though fallacious assurance from the Northern kidnappers, to the effect, that the Democracy of the North would neutralize any attempt to oppose secession by force. They had arranged for their diplomatic influence on the other side of the Atlantic, and bargained for the subversion of Democracy in the South. It planned beforehand for arming treason and disarming the Union, and most adroitly were its plans in this respect carried into effect. It had gained over to its side most of the Southern material in the little army and navy of the country, and prepared it for perfidy, in committing devastation or theft on the public property. Thus allied and thus equipped, in the confidence of its pernicious strength, it commenced its warfare on society.

'How much injury can we inflict upon the North? How much of the debts owing to Northern citizens can we confiscate? How much property in the South owned by Northern men can we appropriate? How much can we make Northern commerce suffer by depression of business, privateering, or otherwise? To what extent can we paralyze Northern mechanical industry, subvert Northern trade, and lay it under disabilities? How much can we distress the laboring classes in England, in France, in other countries in Europe, whereby we may compel them to clamor for the intervention of their respective governments against the North, and against its attempts to uphold the Union?' The whole reasoning of the conspirators was based on the supposed power, coupled with the intent and effort to inflict wide-spread and common injury. The scheme and all its contemplated and attempted incidents of management were such as the pro-slavery spirit in politics only could engender.

It required many years of gradual development, in connection with the ultimate culmination of treason, to shake the confidence of the North in the disposition of the people of the South. There was, and could be, no possible intelligent motive for the masses of the South to change their form of government, or to enter into rebellion against it. The arguments of the plotters of treason against a 'government of majorities'—the doctrine of 'State rights,' with the right to secede at the option of a State—the quasi repudiation of the 'white trash,' so called, as an element of political equality, were regarded as the ebullitions of a politically vitiated class who would be willing to overthrow the National Government, but who were supposed to be too few in numbers to taint with poisonous fatality the political mind of the South. It is not established as yet that the Southern political mind in the main has become depraved. It is, however, established, that the leading political influences South have cajoled and terrorized the bulk of the Southern population into apparent acquiescence in treason. It yet remains to be seen what disposition will be disclosed by the Southern people, as soon as protection is guaranteed to them against the tyranny and usurpations of the rebel influence. It is prophesied that there will be found a heart in the bulk of the Southern population; that it will still cling with affection and pride to that government which was their guarantee, and which no power now on earth is competent to shake. It is not against the deluded, the timid, or the helpless of the South that we would make the indictment for political crime. It is the perfidious pro-slavery spirit in politics that we seek to arraign.

The analysis of developed motives in which the slaveholders' rebellion had its origin, must naturally excite the inquiry in the American mind, as to how far the slaveholding element can be trusted. As a political force, we find it sowing the seeds of political discontent. As an anti-democratic element, we find it plotting the overthrow of democratic government. In its efforts to denationalize republican government in America, it has not scrupled to seek aid from, and alliance with, the haters of republican institutions every where. Under such calamitous teachings as it has inflicted, can we longer conclude that it can, from its aptitudes and nature, be converted into an element of national strength? There is a South, and a great South, and would continue to be, were there not a negro or slaveholder sojourning there. The seven millions non-slaveholding population in the Southern States have rights, social and political, based on the motive to maintain republican government. The Constitution of the Union, as the highest principle of fundamental law, guarantees in express terms, to every State, the form of a republican government; and not less by implication, the essential qualities of an actual one. It matters not how much the non-slaveholding population of the South may have been deluded, nor how much it may have been incited, under that delusion, to act as the instrument of its own overthrow. This population is not less the object of just political solicitude than any equal number of people North. That its general education has not been advanced to the appreciative point, is its misfortune. That it has been surrounded by a pro-slavery influence, selfish, arrogant, and contemptuous of the interest of the masses, is equally so. That it has been less favored than its brother-hood of free labor in the North—that it has been placed under disabilities in the comparison, are only additional reasons for increased solicitude for the welfare and future advancement of this portion of Southern population. While it has been imposed upon, and much of it deluded in its motives to action, its actual condition is in reality coupled with every natural incentive to alliance and adhesion to the National Government. It has drunk the bitter cup of calamity in rebellion. It has tasted the dregs of treason that lie at the bottom of political vice, and been victimized by destitution, by the diseases of camp-life, by the casualties of the battle-field, and by the widowhood and orphanage that have followed the train of rebellion. This population is a natural element of national strength, having the same incentives as its brotherhood in the North. Arms will soon remove the blockade to its intercourse with the North, and civil liberty once established, will most likely secure it to the side of national patriotism.

There is a question of equal magnitude respecting the colored population, not only of the South, but of the whole country. It is involved in the inquiry: Can the colored population be converted into an element of national strength? Physiologically and mentally, the native negro race stands as the middle-man in the five races—the Caucasian and Malay being above, and the American aborigines and the Alforian below. The mixture of blood with the Caucasian in America, places the negro element of the United States at least upon a level with the Malay race in natural powers, and from association, much the superior in practical intelligence. Notwithstanding the crushing laws designed by slaveholders to perpetuate the ignorance and helplessness of the negro, he would improve. Notwithstanding the brutal and studied policy of slaveholders to slander and disparage the negro capacity for improvement, all the arts of lying hypocrisy have occasionally been set at naught by some convincing exhibition of truth, springing from a fair experiment on the colored man's susceptibilities. The white man's dishonoring inclination to strike the helpless—made helpless by brutal laws—has occasionally recoiled in an exposure of the atrocious practice. The late attempt to introduce a bill into the South-Carolina Legislature, providing for the sale of the free negroes of the State into slavery, led to a disclosure worthy of contemplation. The Committee to whom the bill was referred stated that—

This slight exhibition in the Carolina Legislature presents an epitome of the whole argument of cultivated brutality on the one hand, and of humane sense and rationality on the other. What were the protection and sense of justice here spoken of; and what the sequences flowing from such protection and justice? The whole question is answered in three words: Improvement, following encouragement. What was the 'robbery' proposed by the bill, other than the concomitants of slavery, that have robbed the colored man from generation to generation, not only of his toil, but of every practical motive To Be a Man? It would be needless, however, to discuss the question of the colored man's capacity to improve, were it not for considerations that now make it necessary, under national calamity, to take it into truthful account. The white man's cultivation of barbarity under the teachings of slaveholders has hitherto proved an overmatch for the colored man's claims in the abstract. Things and conditions are now changed. The slaveholders' rebellion has softened the obduracy of manufactured prejudice, and necessity has become allied with humanity. Tho pro-slavery spirit in politics is now discovered to be little short of a demon—a snake's egg that hatches treason. The American mind is nearly forced to the conclusion, that as long as colored women are compelled to breed slaves, their white mistresses will continue to breed rebels. Slavery, of course, must yield to the necessity of national security. A remnant may exist for a while, and linger through modifications of a broken and hopeless pro-slavery prestige, the duration depending entirely upon the disposition of slaveholders to become subordinated to law. Perpetuation, however, has become a word that has no meaning in connection with the duration of slavery. The word in that sense has become obsolete; and what shall become of the colored man, and how shall he be treated, is, and is to be, the sequence of the conspiracy to overthrow the jurisdiction of the Government. It being established that the pro-slavery spirit, by nature, is the antagonist of the democratic principle—the antagonist of the interests of the masses, the hot-bed for the cultivation of brutality, devoid of fidelity, and a rebel by practice, it has become an intolerable element of national weakness. We can not avoid the inquiry, now to be made on the basis of humanity: Can the colored man, by proper and just encouragement, be converted into an element of patriotism and national strength?

What is the solution of the riddle as it respects the strength of democratic government? It has heretofore been said by the revilers of the masses in America, that 'for two hundred years the scum, the crime, and poverty of Europe have been cast upon the shores of the Atlantic.' It is immaterial to the question of humanity, whether such has been the seed from which a new nation has been raised up in the wilderness. A few months since, 'Democracy on its trial,' was the favorite theme of democracy-haters in Europe. The indictment against our free institutions was freighted with fearful charges. The government of the Union was a 'delusive Utopia.' 'The people of the North had degenerated into a mob.' 'Society was drifting into the maelstrom of anarchy, and law and order becoming extinct.' A little time, and an apparently unwarlike people had changed into an astonishing organization, disciplined for warfare. Seven hundred thousand bayonets, as if by enchantment, bristled in menace to the slaveholders' rebellion. The navy-yards and arsenals resounded with the clang of hammers, and soon the suddenly created armaments appeared on the waters. Power in finance exhibited by the Government, based on the confidence and patriotism of the people, was no less astonishing. New inventions of warfare changed the scoffings in Europe into alarm for their own security. The trans-Atlantic revilers of republicanism in America have discovered a people who had a heart in them. Patriotism in America is reassured of success by the exhibition of a deep-seated attachment on the part of the Northman to his Government. Seven words suffice to solve the riddle of free democratic strength—the masses converted into beings of power. This is the theory, the basis, the strength of free institutions in America. They have no other foundation. They have nothing else to rely on for enduring support.

Let the Southern rebel attempt to disguise it as he may, the colored man of the South is already a patriot on the side of the Union. He has heard of a people in the North who believed that every human being, by nature, was entitled 'to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' He knows that his oppressor hates this people of the North, and for the sole reason that they entertain this generous sentiment. While the Pharisaic theologian of the Southern pulpit is expounding his Bible-doctrine in justification of kidnapping, and appealing to Heaven for assistance, the colored man turns in disgust at the impiety, and turns into secret places to beseech Omnipotence to favor the success of the national arms. Perhaps there is an interfering Providence already manifest in results. If the plagues of Egypt had been visited on the rebellious States by an overruling Power, they would scarcely have afforded a parallel to the calamity which rebel slaveholders have inflicted on their country. They have exhausted and destroyed much of what the long toil of the colored man South had assisted to raise up. Devastation has followed the train of rebellion. The blood of the first and of the second-born has been the sacrifice on the altar of slavery. The brutal ruffianism of the pro-slavery spirit has far enough disclosed its natural aptitudes to have become disgustingly odious in comparison with the positively better characteristics of the colored man. The rebel himself has taught a lesson to the world, which he can never unteach. The twenty-seven millions of free labor in the Union have learned a lesson through the teachings of slaveholders in rebellion, which they can not forget. This teaching is nothing less than that the colored man is capable, by protection and encouragement, of being converted into a better element of national strength and national prosperity than slaveholders, as such, would ever become.

Could any contemplative mind doubt for a moment the ability of the white population of the Union, if justly disposed, to raise the colored population of the country, in a short time, to the platform of a decent respectability? With unjust prejudice laid aside, and the work of beneficence acquiesced in, no one could reasonably doubt it. Who deserves best at the hands of the nation's power, the oppressor or the oppressed? The one that grasps at the throat of the nation and attempts its overthrow merely to perpetuate his power of oppression, or the other who is crying to humanity for protection? The voice of nature, if undefiled, will answer this question on the side of humanity—if not, necessity will.

The democratic theory which seeks to absolve humanity from oppression, is not confined to the resistance of a single despot. It goes in the same degree to a privileged class that arrogates to itself the right to oppress; nor does it stop at the half-way house of mere negative protection. It allows in its onward course the full fruition of 'equality before the law.' In theory, the law is the sovereign, and we seek to attach such qualities to that sovereign as are compatible with the general good of society. That theory places no man above the law, nor any man below its protection. As soon as the individual in society is raised to the point of negative protection, he is in a measure converted into a being of power. He can then appeal to his sovereign, the law, for the vindication of his rights. Experience is continually demonstrating that men are respected in proportion to their power to command respect. The very existence of slavery requires and demands the brutalization of the governing power that upholds it. Were society absolved from this tyranny, matters would begin to mend. Equalized protection would be the consequence. Protection, not only to the colored man, but protection in an almost equal degree to the non-slaveholding white population, hitherto brought under the ban of disability by a depressing pro-slavery policy.

Until recently, when the colored race in the United States was spoken of in connection with the subject of its release from oppression, it was subjected to the same arguments that kept the white men in slavery in olden times. The arguments of slaveholders were never truthful, and only convenient for themselves. They damaged the slave; they damaged every collateral interest; they damaged the strength of nationality; and more than all, they damaged every humane principle of civilization. The whole reasoning in favor of slaveholding has been a vicious fallacy; and perhaps the time has come, attended by sufficient calamity, to set the American population to thinking and acting in the right direction.

The colored people South are better fitted for freedom than is commonly imagined. They are quite well skilled in practical industry, more especially in agricultural pursuits. There are many of them qualified in skilled labor in the coarser mechanic arts. The whole of this population has been trained to diligent labor, under habits of continuous toil. It has acquired patience in performing labor, by the discipline which unremitting labor gives. The colored man South has not been brought up in idleness, or with habits calculated to make him a renegade. Were he permitted to enjoy the fruits of his industry, there can be no doubt of his disposition and patience to toil on. In case his rebel master would not hire him for wages, there would be enough amongst the non-slaveholding population who would. Production in the South, under emancipation of the slaves of rebel masters, would not materially fall off. Give to colored men the fruits of their industry, and many of them would soon set up for themselves. Perhaps in connection with the soil of the South, that yields most abundantly in annual value of product, the rest of the colored population would soon get to emulate the free colored people of Charleston. The law of subsistence would as much compel the South to go on without compulsory labor as it does the North, and there are just as many reasons for it in one section as in the other; that is, just none at all. Under emancipation, there is little doubt that actual production could and would soon be put on the increase, with better distribution of wealth, more widely diffused comforts, and a broader and better public policy. The only things that would be curtailed in their proportions would be slave-breeding, rebel-breeding, and ruffian cultivation.

It may, perhaps, continue to be easier for a time to strike the colored man than to strike off his shackles. There is a mean and low side of humanity, a sort of defiled infirmity, that runs into a disposition to strike the helpless. This is the bravery of ruffianism. There is apt to be a shrinking away from duty, when the contest involves a conflict with arrogant power. This is the cowardice of pusillanimity. The American citizen has been noted for his superior bravery. He has certainly shown himself brave in the battle-field, and more brave and determined than any other nation in the vindication and maintenance of the natural rights of the white man; but he is not done with the business of disenthrallment. His language is the language of liberty. It must not, it will not long continue to be spoken by slaves. This was the meaning of Jefferson, when he penned the text-words of disenthrallment: 'All men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Where is to be found the evidence that these rights have been forfeited? Who dare deny the right of the colored man morally, religiously, or politically, to assert them? It is true, we have hitherto acted in defiance of these acknowledged rights. We have outraged them. We have waged a shameful and shameless warfare against them. The sequences of that warfare are now upon us. The sin is now being atoned for in blood. It has not yet been ordained that the principles of injustice should have permanent duration. If not restrained by humane rationality, they will culminate in convulsion. The light is now breaking upon the heretofore obscured vision of the American people. We can now begin to see with clearness that the colored man's disenthrallment is to become the white man's future security. This would almost seem to be the harmony of divine justice in the affairs of men.

No substantial amelioration in the depressed condition of race or class has yet been brought about in disconnection with the powerful agency of such race or class. Human nature forbids it. The selfish tenacity of advantage, resting on what is misnamed 'vested rights,' but having its foundation in vested wrongs, yields only on compulsion. It is only when the depressed race or class, acting in somewhat intelligent concert, exhibits the disposition to aid in the purposes of protection, that the mercenary power succumbs to necessity. History furnishes no examples to the contrary. It may not be impossible that our own times may make history to corroborate the truth of these premises.

When it is asserted that the colored man is wanting in bravery, and is not endowed with the natural courage to assert and maintain his rights, we are apt to forget that physical bravery is a thing of cultivation. There is not the least evidence that, with military discipline and something to fight for, the colored population of the United States would not prove as brave as the black regiment of the Revolution. With such bravery as that regiment exhibited, the four millions and their prospective increase would require a gigantic force to make profitable slaves of them. Again, there is something beyond the protection from domestic violence that demands consideration, in connection with the military discipline of the colored man. We may reasonably expect that a large colonization in some quarter will soon take place, and be carried forward. Education and military discipline, in addition to knowledge in practical industry, are necessary concomitants to successful colonization. With these qualities, the colored man will cease to feel helpless, and be fitted for enterprise, he will have the confidence to go forward, and the aspirations to impel him. It may be the lot of the colored man to encounter in some foreign land powers and influences quite as barbarous as those he has hitherto encountered in the white man's prejudices. If he is armed for the encounter, he will have little inclination to shrink from it. Every humane consideration clusters to the policy of disenthralling the colored man, and of making him a being of power. Nothing can oppose it but the pro-slavery spirit that seeks to enslave the American mind to barbarism and the colored millions and their increase to perpetual bondage.

WATCHING THE STAG

[an unfinished poem, by fitz-james o'brien.]

Hela and I lie watching here,
Above us the sky and below the mere.
long
Through distant gorges the blue moors loom
Till the heath looks blue in the endless gloom.

The eagle screams from the misty cliff,
With a quivering lamb in his taloned griff.
And the echoes leap over hill and hollow,
As the old stag bells to the herd to follow.

The purpled heather is wet with mist,
Till it shines like a drownèd amethyst,
And the old, old rocks with furrowed faces
Start up like ghosts in the lonely places.

With forefeet crossed, stanch Hela lies
Watching my face through her half-closed eyes,
us
Between—is—is—stretched                   deer
While ^{^} I pillow my head on the stiffening stag

LITERARY NOTICES.

This work deservedly ranks as among the best, if not the best, by Bayard Taylor. The East, as we feel in his poems, was full of the scenes of his widely varied travels, that which most aroused his sympathy and stirred his artistic creative powers, and it is of the East that he speaks most freely and brilliantly. It was in Central Africa that he encountered his most thrilling adventures, and forgot, as we can there only do, the civilization of the Western World. Something we would say of the beautiful typography and paper of this series. If the term mise en scène were as applicable to books as to dramas, it might be truely said of Mr. Putnam's that they appear as well between boards as other works do upon them.

Possibly some twenty years hence 'El Dorado' will be regarded as by far the best of Bayard Taylor's works—certain it is that in it he is among the pioneer describers of a land the early accounts of which will be carefully investigated and duly honored. In picturing lands, where others have been noting and sketching before, he is strong indeed who is not driven into mannerism; but in fresh fields and pastures new there is less danger of seeing through thrice-used spectacles. It is this consciousness of being the first that ever burst into their silent seas that made Herodotus and Tudela and Rubriquis and Mandeville so fresh and vigorous—and there is much of the same peculiar inspiration due to first-ness perceptible in this volume, which we cordially commend to all who would be California-learned or simply entertained. Somewhat we must say however of the fine paper, exquisite typography, and two neat steel engravings with which this 'Caxton' edition is made beautiful and most suitable either for a lady's étagere-book-shelf or the most elegant library.

A novel written twenty-five years ago by Victor Hugo is a curiosity. The present was kept in reserve because the sordid publisher, who had a contract for all of Hugo's works, would not give the sum demanded—the author kept raising his price—it was like Nero and the Sybil, or the converse of the conduct of the damsel who annually reduced her terms to Martial:

'Millia viginti quondam me Galla poposcit;
Annus abit: bis quina dabis sestertia? dixit.'

Finally the publisher died, the work was printed, and its first section now appears in 'Fantine'—a capital picture of life, manners, customs, in fact of almost every thing in France in 1817. It deals with much suffering, many sorrows, as its title indicates—for it is easier to make sensations out of pains than pleasures, and M. Hugo is preëminently and proverbially 'sensational.' Still it is deeply interesting, extremely well managed in all art-details, and above all things, is extremely humane—as a book by Victor Hugo could hardly fail to be. And as every page bears the impress of a certain characteristic originality of thought and of observation, we may safely predict that 'Fantine' will deservedly prove a success. We like the manner in which Mr. Wilbour has translated it—neither too slavishly nor too freely, but in one word, 'admirably.'

Once in five or six years we have a new humorist—at one time a Jack Downing, then a Doesticks, then again a Phoenix-Derby. Last on the list we have 'Artemus Ward,' as set forth in letters to the Cleveland Plaindealer and Vanity Fair, purporting to come from the proprietor of a 'side-show,' as cheaper, or less than twenty-five cent exhibitions, are called in this country. To say that they are excellent, spirited, and racy—full of strong idioms of language and character, and abounding in novelties in type which are no novelties to those familiar with popular life—would be doing them faint justice. They embody a new and perfectly truthful conception of one of the multitude, and have nothing that is hackneyed in them.

It is a great test of real stuff in a writer when he dashes off, or picks up, phrases which are at once taken up by the people. 'Artemus Ward' has originated many of these, and is perhaps at the present day as much quoted 'in the broad and long' as any man in the country. It is needless to say that all who relish broad eccentric humor will find his Book very well worth reading. We regret that it does not embrace certain other excellent sketches which we know he has written, but trust that these will appear in due time in a second part or in a new edition. The volume before us is very neatly got up, well illustrated, and tastefully bound.

At a regular meeting of the 'Continental Club,' held at their rooms in New-York, it was resolved and carried that a volume of poems written by certain of the younger members be published 'under its auspices.' As a noted Democratic sheet, the Boston Courier, has declined to notice the volume on the plea that the name of the society from which it sprung suggested too forcibly the CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, possibly a favorable mention by us of our young New-York brother-in-literature may seem partial and too en-famille-iar to be fair. Be this as it may, we can not resist the expression of the honest conviction, for which we have many a good indorser, that while it would be a matter of some difficulty to compile a better collection of lyrics from the vast number which the war has thus far called forth, its production by a limited number of a single association is indeed remarkable. There is the right ring and the true feeling perceptible in all of them; earnest enthusiasm flowing bravely on the tide of musical words, and a clear conviction of the justice of our cause springing from liberal and progressive political views. It is enough indeed to say of most of the lyrics that they are written from a principle, and with faith in the necessity of Emancipation, and are not mere war-songs, full of commonplace, as applicable to one cause as another. They are songs of the American war of freedom in 1861, and as such will rank high in our literary history.

We are as gratified at the reappearance of this glorious work as we are astonished to learn that it has only reached a second edition. As it is beyond comparison the most remarkable literary result thus far of the war, as it has made a strong sensation in very varied circles, as it is a book which has given rise to anecdotes, and as its wild eloquence, bizarre humor and intense earnestness, have caused it to be read with a relish even by many who dissent from its politics, we had supposed that ere this its sale had reached at least its tenth edition. Meanwhile we commend it to all, assuring them that as a fearless, outspoken work, grasping boldly at the exciting questions of the day, it has not its equal. We should mention that in the present edition we find given the name of its author, the well-known and eloquent Rev. Moncure D. Conway, formerly of Virginia, now of Cincinnati.

During the past year Mr. Underwood has published several poems of remarkable merit, referring to the war. In the present we have a work of higher ambition, and one which is truly well done. In it the horrors of slavery, the iniquitous abuses to which it so often gives rise—the tortures, vengeances, murders, and fiendish punishments, which in their turn follow the crime—are portrayed with striking truthfulness and real power. The author is evidently no Abolitionist on hear-say—the whole poem gives evidence of practical familiarity with 'the institution,' and the sense of truth has inspired his pen in many passages with wonderful power. The terrible sufferings of an almost white man and slave as here portrayed, his revenge and punishment at the stake, are as moving as they are manifestly true to life. We commend this little pamphlet-poem to every friend of freedom, and sincerely trust that it will attain the large circulation which it deserves.

A decided character this 'Parson Brownlow,' and a representative man; truly and bravely American, very Western in his traits; a man fond of fierce argument and tough antagonisms, and not fearing the death either by halter or revolver, which he will probably meet some day, for the sake of Jehovah and his own stern convictions. Not exactly a man of salons and elegant réunions—yet full of real courtesies and gifted with the kind heart of a true hater of wickedness, which flashes into fury at witnessing deeds of cruelty and shame. And he has seen many such—seen what few have done and lived—he has passed through a life's warfare with men of his own grim obstinacy without his own honesty and stern Puritan-like morality. We have followed his course for years—we have met him 'afore-time,' when quite other subjects of quarrel engaged him, and could have prophesied then with tolerable accuracy what part he would play when it came to a question between bayonets and prisons for the truth.

As we have hinted, he is a splendid hater, and a ferocious antagonist, a prince of vituperators and a very vitriol-thrower of savage sarcasms at his enemies and those of humanity. And why should he not be all of this, when we consider that in the stage whereon his part of life is played a more delicate student of all the proprieties would have about the same chances of success as attended the unfortunate cat which ventured without claws among panthers. Measure such men by their moral worth and by the good they do, and do not require of the hard-shell Methodist preacher and tough polemical grappler with Satan in his most bristly and thick-skinned Western incarnations that he display too much delicacy. Those who will read his book may gather from it, beyond the interesting personal and political narrative of which it consists, many useful and curious hints as to the social development of America and of what men the country is truly made. It is a real work—one of value—interesting to all, and very truly one of the monuments of this war and of the scenes which preceded it in Tennessee.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

The proclamation of President Lincoln in reference to General Hunter, and the bold measures of the latter calling forth Executive interference, form one of the most interesting episodes of the war of Freedom. Regarded from the high standpoint whence acts are seen as controlled by circumstances and formed by events, the conduct of the one public functionary, as of the other, will appear to the future historian in a very different light from that in which it has been presented by either the radical or democratic journals of the day. He will speak of the one as a military chieftain under the influence of worthy motives, cutting a Gordian knot which the higher and controlling diplomatic and executive superior wished should be cautiously untied. The one has acted with a view to promptly settling a great trouble within his own sphere—the other wisely comprehending that the action was premature, has decisively countered it. By attempting to free the slaves, General Hunter has shown himself a friend of freedom and a man of bold measures; by annulling his acts Mr. Lincoln has availed himself of an excellent opportunity of proving to the South and to the world that he is not, as was said, a sectional or an Abolition President, and that with the strongest sympathies for freedom, he is determined to respect the rights even of enemies, and leave behind him a clear record, as one who did nothing wrongly, and who with keen and wide comprehending glance took in the times as they were, and acted accordingly.

Meanwhile to the most prejudiced vision it is apparent that the great cause of Emancipation has gained vastly by this little struggle between the shepherd and that unruly member of the flock who would dash a little too impetuously ahead of his fellows. The proclamation of President Lincoln contains but cold comfort for the pro-slavery democracy, although they affect to rejoice over it. In vain may they declare, as they did of the celebrated 'remunerating message,' that it is very palatable, and vow that it 'creates fresh hope and gives a new and needed assurance to the conservative men of the nation.' The sour faces of their pro-slavery, Southern-adoring, English-ruled, traitorous friends is an effectual answer to their hypocrisy. We have not forgotten how warmly the Democratic press indorsed the message of January 6th, or how the Democratic multitude kicked against it in public meetings.

Let the Democratic tories of the day who find this message so consolatory, duly weigh the following extract from it:

If any one can see in this aught save the clearest sympathy with the gradual advance of Emancipation, he must be indeed gifted with a strange faculty of perversion. If, however, the Democrats indorse the President's recommendation and approve the Executive policy of gradual emancipation for the sake of the white man, why do they continue to abuse so fiercely presses which agree exactly with the Administration, and ask for nothing more than a recognition of the great principle and its realization according to circumstance?

A more contemptible and pitiable political spectacle was never yet presented than that which may now be witnessed in the actions and words of the 'Conservative' Democracy. Driven day by day nearer into their true light of sympathizers at heart with the enemy—upholding the institution for which it fights—obliged to bear the odium of its ancient opposition to protection, disgraced by its enmity to American manufacturing interests—apologizing in a thousand shuffling, petty ways for English arrogance—this wretched fragment of a faction, after assuring the South that the North would not fight, and persuading the North that the South was quite in the right in every thing, now appears as constant meddler and mischief-maker in the great struggle going on, giving to it those elements of darkness, disgrace, and treason which, unfortunately, are always to be found in the greatest struggles for freedom and right, and which, when history is written, give such grounds to the carper, the sophist, and skeptic to ridicule the noblest efforts of humanity. Such are the self-called Conservatives in this great battle—men hindering and impeding the great cause, eagerly grasping at every little premature advance—as in the case of General Hunter's action, to scream out that all will be lost, and exult over its correction by the leading power as though they had gained a victory!

Meanwhile it is a matter of no small import to observe that there has been a vast increase in the mass of indorsement of General Hunter's conduct compared to what there would have been a few months ago. However it interfered with the general policy of the Executive, no one doubts that as a military and local measure it was eminently wise. Sooner or later it will be adopted—meanwhile what has been done has been productive of results which can not be undone. The great cause is the cause of God—and every struggle only aids it onward.

The London Times of May 10th contained a long editorial leader on American affairs, beginning in the following manner:

The rest of the article, as the reader may recall, was devoted to sneering at the North and in commending intervention; the whole being characterized by an underhand, venomous, and latent treacherous tone, much more becoming a vindictive and vulgar Oriental than a civilized and Christian European.

A little while before the Times leader appeared, the London Morning Herald had informed the world that

It is singular that the great majority of the British press and people should dare to talk so glibly of intervention in this our civil war, when we consider what their intermeddling may cost them. Cotton they may or may not get, but no intervention can compel us to buy their goods, and, as we have already pointed out in our columns, the entire loss of the free States market involves a disaster which will be permanent and terrible. Apart from the danger attendant upon insolently threatening a nation amply capable of mustering an army of a million on its own soil—two thirds of them practiced in war—there remains to be considered the utter loss of all American custom. We buy much more than any other nation whatever. Worse than this, for Europe, there would follow Such a development of our home-manufactures as would seriously threaten to drive England and France from a hundred markets. Let them think twice ere they intervene. But the people, it is said, are starving; and it may be, for this is one of the occasional and unavoidable results of England's endeavoring to become the workshop of the world. By over-manufacturing, she has brought it to such a pitch that one fourth of her population live on imported food—such as do not starve outright—for be it remembered that in Great Britain one person in eight is buried at the public expense, while one in every twelve or fourteen is a constant pauper. They are starving at present more than usual, simply because the North is buying less; but to turn away any popular opposition to government, and suppress riots, they and the world are told that the trouble all comes from the closing of Southern ports and the want of cotton! This, too, when published facts show that the stock of goods and cotton on hand far exceeds the demand, and is likely to exceed it for a long time to come. It is not cotton that England or France want, but customers. How are they to obtain these? By exasperating their best buyers beyond all reconciliation? The day that witnesses British or French meddling in our war, sees the inauguration of such hostility to their manufactures as they little dream of. There will be leagues formed to enforce this to the letter. It will be treason to wear an inch of English cloth or of French silk, and what lie will they say to their starving operatives then?

Already within the past year, great advances have been made in manufacturing, especially in silks. A little closing of us up would be the worst experiment for England that she ever yet tried. She may possibly get cotton from the South, but not a customer from the North. You may lead a horse to water, but it is another affair to make him drink. And no one who can recall the prompt resolve not to use English goods, and the beginning of leagues to that effect, of which we lately heard so much, can doubt that in case we hear much more of this impertinence of intervention, the American market would immediately be lost to the insolent meddlers. It is only of late that the free States have shaken off their Democratic, pro-slavery, anti-tariff tyrants, and learned to be free. England has groaned and howled at our freedom; now she goes so far as to threaten; but unless she soon stop that, we shall promptly show her where the strength lies. While we were under a half-Southern, half-British tyranny, we could do nothing. And be it remembered that from the days of the New-York Plebeian, when British gold was spent literally by the million in this country, to strengthen the Democratic party and build up free trade, slavery and English interests always went hand in hand to oppress the interests of American free labor. But we shall soon change all that. It is in our power to chastise British impudence most effectually, and we shall probably soon be called upon to do it, by buying nothing from abroad.

The inhuman, inconsistent, and cynically selfish conduct of England toward the North in this war, whenever we have been threatened by reverses, should not be forgotten. It has been literally devilish in its grossness and meanness. Whatever wickedness the South has been guilty of was at least barefaced and bold. The South had not for years labored to build up an Abolition party in the North, as England did. For well nigh half a century has England howled, wailed, whined, and canted over slavery; but at the first pinch of the pocket, away goes the previous philanthropy, and John Bull stands revealed, the brutal, cruel, treacherous, lying savage that he is at heart, under all his aristocratic feudal trash and gilding. Well, we know him at last, and will remember him. His conduct toward us has put hay on his horns—foenum habet in cornu—and we shall avoid him. Let the manufacturers of America watch this intolerably insolent intervention closely, and lose no opportunity to turn it to their own advantage, that is to say, to the advantage of the whole nation. Let them, by means of journal and pamphlet, profusely scattered, explain to the people the enormous wrong which England is seeking to do us, and the deliberate, we may truthfully say, the official falsehood on which it is based. They have it in their power to make our country literally free—will they hesitate to use that power?

The reliance of England is, by returning to her sweet, stale flatteries, after the establishment of the Confederacy, to be friends as of old with the North. It is, she thinks, easily done. Our servants abroad and their friends are to be a little more favored with levee tickets and access to noble society; a few dozen more of the rank and file will be marched along or 'presented' before her Majesty, and thereby sworn in to endless admiration of all that is Anglican; venerable gentlemen in white waistcoats will make sweet speeches, after public dinners, of the beauty of Union, just as they made them here a year ago, in reference to the South, when the tiger was on the spring. The old see-saw of 'nations united in language and customs—brothers at heart,' will be set to vibrating, and all, as they believe, must jog along merrily as of old. For it is with a very little regularly organized stuff of this kind, turned on or off as from a hydrant, and always in dribbling drops at that, that England has, when necessary, pacified and delighted a great number of Americans, semi-insane to be received on terms of equality by the 'higher classes,' whom they worshiped at heart, while they affected all manner of bold Americanisms to hide the truth. It is time to end all this. We have come to serious and terrible days, and must be free from all such flunkeyism. In our hour of trouble, the English press boldly proclaimed that its sympathy was with the South. Let it be remembered!

In our June number we gave the Kansas John Brown song, for the benefit of those who collect the more curious ballads of the war. We are indebted to Clark's School-Visitor for the following song of the Contrabands, which originated among the latter, and was first sung by them in the hearing of white people at Fortress Monroe, where it was noted down by their chaplain, Rev. L.C. Lockwood. It is to a plaintive and peculiar air, and we may add has been published with it in 'sheet-music style,' with piano-forte accompaniment, by Horace Waters, New-York:

OH! LET MY PEOPLE GO.

the song of the contrabands.

The Lord, by Moses, to Pharaoh said: Oh! let my people go;
If not, I'll smite your first-born dead—Oh! let my people go.
Oh! go down, Moses,
Away down to Egypt's land,
And tell King Pharaoh
To let my people go.

No more shall they in bondage toil—Oh! let my people go;
Let them come out with Egypt's spoil—Oh! let my people go.

Haste, Moses, till the sea you've crossed—Oh! let my people go;
Pharaoh shall in the deep be lost—Oh! let my people go.

The sea before you shall divide—Oh! let my people go;
You'll cross dry-shod to the other aide—Oh! let my people go.

Fear not King Pharaoh or his host—Oh! let my people go;
For they shall in the sea be lost—Oh! let my people go.

They'll sink like lead, to rise no more—Oh! let my people go;
An' you'll hear a shout on the other shore—Oh! let my people go.

The fiery cloud shall lead the way—Oh! let my people go;
A light by night and a shade by day—Oh! let my people go.

Jordan shall stand up like a wall—Oh! let my people go;
And the wails of Jericho shall fall—Oh! let my people go.

Your foes shall not before you stand—Oh! let my people go;
And you'll possess fair Canaan's land—Oh! let my people go.

Oh! let us all from bondage flee—Oh! let my people go;
And let us all in Christ be free—Oh! let my people go.

This world's a wilderness of woe—Oh! let my people go;
Oh! let us all to glory go—Oh! let my people go.
Oh! go down, Moses,
Away down to Egypt's land,
And tell King Pharaoh
To let my people go.

Speaking of the interview some weeks since between M. le Comte Henri de Mercier with the extremely 'honorable' J.P. Benjamin, the secession Secretary of State, the Petersburg (Virginia) Express uses the following elegantly accurate language:

What, to begin with, is the French dialect? The Provencal, the Gascon, the Norman, are tolerably prominent French dialects, but which of them is preëminently the dialect we will not decide—nor why the diplomatic gentlemen selected a dialect instead of French itself as a medium of conversation. It is, however, possible that Comte de Mercier having heard of little Benjamin's antecedents, talked to him in argôt or thieves' slang. It may be that in the school of Floyd and Benjamin argôt is the dialect.

Again, we learn that the gallant Frenchman spoke 'the French dialect' because he has not as yet mastered 'the good old Anglo-Saxon idiom.' This is even more puzzling than the dialect-question. Why the Anglo-Saxon idiom? Suppose Count Mercier wished to say that he was sorry that his tobacco had been captured by the foe, why should he couch it in such language as, 'Thá mee ongan hréowan thaet mín tobacco on feónda geweald feran sceolde'—which is the good old Anglo-Saxon idiom.' We can imagine that thieves' slang would have the place of honor in Secessia, but why the old Anglo-Saxon idiom should be so esteemed, puzzled us for a longtime. At last we hit it. The Southrons have long been told—or told themselves—that they are Normans, while we of the North are Saxon—and hoping to acquire a little Anglo-Saxon intelligence, prudently begin by studying the language which they believe is in common use among our literati.

Seriously, it is not merely to stoop to such small game as the grammar of a secession newspaper that we notice these amusing mistakes. There are many persons-we are sorry to say many clergymen among others—here, even in the free States, who, in attempting to write elegantly, use words very ridiculously. They say 'dialect' and 'idiom' when they mean 'language;' they use 'donate' for 'give;' 'transpired' for 'happened;' 'paper' for 'newspaper,' and describe various events as taking place in 'our midst'—all because they think that these vulgarisms are really more correct than the words or terms in common use.

We wish, however, that Anglo-Saxon—joking apart—were more generally studied. When we remember that the very great majority of good words in English are of Saxon origin, and with them all that is characteristic either in our grammar or modes of expression, it becomes evident that the most certain and shortest method of arriving at a thorough and correct comprehension of English is by the study of its most important element—one which, as a writer has well said, bears the same relation to our mother-tongue as oxygen does to water. It is not fair to speak as some do of the Latin and Saxon wings of the English bird—the bird itself is Saxon—head and tail included. English has been but little benefited by its Latin and Greek additions—the old tongue had excellent synonyms or creative capacity like German—to fully equal every new need of thought.

The reader who has time for study, would do well to obtain the Anglo-Saxon Grammar of Louis Klipstein, published by G.P. Putnam, New-York, which is by far the most practical and easiest work of the kind with which we are acquainted. A few days' study in it will be time well invested by any one desirous of really understanding English. When we reflect that many boys study Latin for years 'because it enables them to understand the structure and derivation of their own language,' while the extremely easy Anglo-Saxon is almost entirely neglected, we smile at the ignorance of the first principles of education which prevails. But we advise the reader who may have a few shillings and a few hours to spare to invest them in a 'KLIPSTEIN,' and know—what very few writers do—something of the roots of English. Our word for it, he will not regret following the advice.

We are indebted to a Dawfuskie Island correspondent for the following details relative to

THE FALL OF PULASKI.

Those persons who 'collect' street literature (there be such) may be pleased with the following:

PORTENTOUS PLACARDS.

New-York, May, 1862.

Since the publication of the 'Bill-Poster's Dream,' and of the extracts from Richmond papers containing the prophecies of the handwriting on the wall relative to the accomplice States of America, few things have so generally attracted pedestrian attention in our down-town streets as two enormous placards. The first bore the following legend:

there's
A TEMPEST
BREWING.

Persons given to cryptical studies were inclined to consider this an esoteric form of advertisement, intended to convey to the initiated the information that A. STORM had gone into the beer business. But conjecture was set at naught by its fellow which appeared at its side on the day after its posting, in this shape:

VIDELICIT
Θε Προφεσσορ.

Nay—we know not.   'The Professor' at the Breakfast-Table we do indeed know, and it is no unwonted thing for us to meet him in Tremont street, merry and wise as ever. But we have never seen him or any other Professor 'driven to the wall' in any way whatever; and albeit we suspect him of a knowledge of whist, we have beheld him pla-carded. We pass.

Do we say too much when we call the following poem truly beautiful?

WITH FLOWERS.

may morning, 1862.

Reject them not! they come to plead for me;
When you are cold, 'tis winter in my heart;
Till you are kind, 'sweet May' 'twill never be,
And if you smile, summer will ne'er depart!

'My heart is weary,—waiting for the May,'
So sad and weary; will you give it rest?
Not love, but rest: it is not much to say:
'Poor, tired child! once more be thou my guest.'

Forgive my wild and wayward words, forgive!
"We are dying of our thirst—'my heart and I!'
Without love's sunshine, who can care to live?
And when love shines, oh I who can bear to die?

'Ah! this love!' 'There is not much of it in life,' says Heine; but that little alone makes life tolerable. Rest, perturbed spirit, rest! In another land, there is love enough for all.

CHIVALRY

by r. wolcott; tenth regiment

Not long ago I happened to be one of a number of fair ladies and brave men assembled at what is called a 'surprise-party.' It was my fortune to be the attendant cavalier, for the time, of a damsel of romantic disposition, and, I fear, of somewhat impaired digestive powers. And she was lamenting, not boisterously, but in a subdued, conversational manner, that the good old days were gone, 'the days of Chivalry,' when my lady had her nice little boo-dwah (for the life of me, I didn't know whether that was something nice to eat or to wear; but I have since learned that it is something French, and spelt, b-o-u-d-o-i-r,) and was waited upon by handsome pages, and took her airing on a dappled-gray palfrey, attended by trusty and obsequious grooms; when Sir Knight, followed by his sturdy henchmen, rode forth in gay and gaudy attire, with glittering helmet and cuirass, and entered the lists, and bravely fought for his fair lady's fame. She spoke with fervid eloquence, and with a glibness that betrayed a very recent perusal of the tournament-scene in Ivanhoe. I was about to reply, and say something in behalf of modern chivalry; but just then a gentleman claimed her hand for a quadrille that was forming, and my remarks were cut short.

If my readers will bear with me, I will attempt to tell them what I was going to say to my romantic young friend. The days of chivalry are not gone. Let me remark that this assertion does not apply to the blatant, nigger-driving article that whilom flourished in Dixie, for that is about 'played out,' though they still rant and prate about the 'flower of chivalry.' At Fort Lafayette, there is an herbarium of choice specimens (rather faded and seedy) of that curious 'yarb;' and at the old Alton Penitentiary, and at Camp Douglas, Chicago, there are collections, not so choice and a great deal more seedy. Though Simon—not he of other notoriety, but another man—Simon Bolivar Buckner, a sweet-scented pink of Southern chivalry; though he must have his little fling at us, and call General Grant 'ungenerous and unchivalrous,' it does not strike me with stunning force that he, ingrate that he is, and traitor to the government that educated him, is exactly the one to teach us what chivalry is, or how it ought to treat vanquished rebels. No, the days of chivalry are not gone. While the base counterfeit that has so often been thrust upon us by Southern braggadocios, and indorsed by Northern sneaks and doughfaces, has been detected, and, thank God! is being thrown out as fast as shot and shell can knock it out, there never was a greater abundance of the genuine metal than there is now and here in this land of ours.

Not alone in war and warlike deeds does modern chivalry show itself. There is a chivalry in religion, that, in spite of the howlings of creed-worshipers, dares to throw off the shackles of antiquated and intolerant dogmas, and believe and teach the religion of humanity, of 'peace on earth and good-will to men.' It is the chivalry in religion that has smitten and is daily smiting with its gleaming lance the host of old prejudices, letting in upon us the glorious golden sunshine, allowing us to revel in it and to see this world as it is, joyous and beautiful. True, some of the old superstitions that burned the witches linger in the path, like grim dragons, to frighten us. But they are weak and toothless, and are fast losing their terrors; and the spirit of chivalry in religion is marching on, and smiting them one by one, and one by one they fall. But while men are emancipating themselves from the ancient errors, it is sad to see that the same bugbears that infested the path of our great grandparents in the pinafore period of their existence, are brought to bear upon our children. Especially in Sabbath-school literature is this manifest. Impossible patterns of piety and propriety are set before a stout, healthy boy, and he, in the flush of his lusty life, is taught to believe that the only road to paradise lies through some pulmonary affection. For the sake of all these dear little ones, and for the sake of the Master who loved them so well, do let them have some more natural and healthy mental and moral food!

And this leads me to speak of literature in general. And have we not a chivalry here that is working a revolution? And who is the bravest knight in the field? Who but our own genial Meister Karl-Mace Sloper? Isn't it glorious though, the way he rides into the lists, and with his diamond-pointed lance pricks the tender skins of the lackadaisical poetasters and lachrymose prosy-scribblers of our day! Again, O gallant leader! smite them again. And fall in, ye who wield the pen! Let the bugles sound the charge, and let our literature be cleared of Laura Matildas and Martin Firecracker Splutters forever!

We approach now a topic that was once nauseating in the extreme, but which is now robbed of many of its disagreeable features—medicine. Let it be understood in the beginning, disciple of Hahnemann, I am not upholding you and your pellets of sugar; by no means. But there have been some knights of the pill-box who, without rushing into folly, have leaped the barriers of ignorance and ancient custom that kept them in an atmosphere odorous of villainous drugs and combinations of drugs, and, untrammeled by old traditions, have sought and are seeking milder means of mitigating our bodily ills. All honor to them. They have driven away the old doctor of our childhood, whose most pleasant smile resembled the amiable leer that a cannibal might be supposed to bestow upon a plump missionary. The old curmudgeon, with his huge bottles of mixtures and his immense boulders—I beg pardon, I should say, boluses of nastiness—has vanished like a surly ghost at the approach of daylight, and in his stead we have a gentleman, placid and self-poised, with a velvet touch and a face beaming with cheerful smiles. And if they have not made the measles a luxury, they have given us a syrup that children are said to cry for.

In the industrial arts, too, there is a spirit of chivalry that is marching bravely on, overthrowing old notions. What knight of the olden time ever did as much for his ladye fayre as he did for all womanity who wrought out the problem of the sewing-machine? How many aching hands and eyes and hearts has that little instrument, with its musical click-click, click-click, relieved! No more songs of the shirt, no more wearying of hands and curving of spines over the inner vestments of mankind. We have changed all that. And every stroke of the pioneer's ax, as he fells the mighty forest-trees, is a blow struck by the honest and earnest chivalry of labor, battling with wild nature, carving a way for civilization's triumphal march. And the cheery whistle of the plowboy, as he drives his team a-field; the ring of the hammer on the anvil; the clatter of the busy loom; the scream of the locomotive, as it sweeps over the land, plunging through the mountains and dashing out across the prairies—all these are the clarion-notes of modern chivalry's bugles, ringing through the world in joyous and triumphant tones.

And this war—who shall tell; what historic pen can record its grand and glorious chivalry? Is not every one, from the pale young student, fresh from the breast of Alma Mater, to the large-handed and larger-hearted rustic, with the hay-seed yet in his hair, and the rugged bod-carrier, redolent of sweat and brick-dust—are not all these, who have come forth from the field and the workshop, the office and the lecture-room, to defend the dear old flag, true and gallant knights? There is a boy out there in the woods, on picket, slowly pacing his lonely beat, with the tender-eyed stars for company. And as the silent hours pass by, slowly he turns the leaves of memory's record, lingering over its cherished pictures, the home-scenes, the fond father and mother, the dear sister, and the dearer some-one-else's sister. The snapping of a twig startles him, and hastily brushing away a tear—fond memory's tribute—he instantly closes the book, and stands, with every sense on the alert, unflinching, though he knows that each moment may be his last, only remembering that it is his duty to be faithful, watch well, and fire low. And though this boy, fair-haired and beardless, may not have passed the stern ordeal of the battle's fierce shock, though his heart softens at the thought of his far-off home in the North, yet his young soul is that of a hero, brave and chivalrous, and in due time his spurs will be nobly won. Yes, this war is bringing out the grand, heroic traits of our American character, traits that years of rapid, busy, money-getting life have thrown into the background, till it really did seem that we were altogether sordid and selfish.

In the year that I have been in the service, I have seen and heard of more individual chivalrous deeds than my romantic and dyspeptic young friend will find in all the books, from Amadis de Gaul down. Every day witnesses them. Private letters speak of them as ordinary incidents; a few get before the public, enjoy a brief newspaper notoriety, and are forgotten—no, not forgotten entirely; for every brave action lives somewhere, though it may not be in an official report. A mother's or a sister's memory cherishes it, and it is handed down to other generations, an example and an incentive to other brave deeds.

Then let us have no more sentimental lamentation over the decadence of chivalry. There is a broad field open to us, for deeds of chivalrous daring, now, upon the battle-field, amid the fierce clashing of arms.

'And many a darkness into the light shall leap,
And shine with the sudden making of splendid names.'

Afterward, when holy peace shall smile again, there are the pulpit and the rostrum, the workshop and the forest; and whether we wield the pen, or the hammer, or the ax, according as we strive to make ourselves and the world better, so shall we bear the palm of chivalry.

The Democratic press made itself convulsively merry over Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, for having called out the militia promptly in the flurry of May 26th. After fairly exhausting its jeering and sneering on this subject, that portion of the Northern Fourth Estate which would be termed Satanic and traitorous were it not too utterly white-livered and cowardly to be complimented with such forcible indices of even bad character, had a cruel extinguisher clapped upon it on May 29th, by a letter to the Boston Journal from Lieutenant-Colonel Harrison Kitchie, A.D.C., in which Governor Andrew is most effectually vindicated by the simple publication of four telegrams received from Secretary Stanton—the first two of which were as follows:

[telegram i.-copy]

'Washington, May 25th, 1862.

'ToGovernor Andrew: Send all the troops forward that you can immediately. Banks is completely routed. The enemy are in large force advancing upon Harper's Ferry.

Edwin M. Stanton,
       'Secretary of War.'

[telegram ii.—copy]

'Washington, May 25th, 1862.

'To the Governor of Massachusetts: Intelligence from various quarters leaves no doubt that the enemy in great force are advancing on Washington. You will please organise and forward immediately all the volunteer and militia force in your State.

Edwin M. Stanton,
       'Secretary of War.'

How Governor Andrew could have been true to his duty and have acted otherwise than he did after receiving such commands, must be settled by those 'gossips of the mob' who, incapable of appreciating the nobility of a prompt fulfillment of duty, measure every thing military by the amount of melo-dramatic denouement to which it leads. We trust that after this effectual 'counter' we may hear a little less carping at Governor Andrew, who has shown from the beginning an energy and perseverance, a promptness in emergency, and a patriotism which, when the history of this war comes to be written, will reflect the highest honor upon his name.

He who sends us the following, is worthy to bear a crow-sier as one of the Faithful:

BOTH BARRELS INTO 'EM:

If old Squire Price had any one bump of phrenology developed more than another, it was corvicide, or, kill-crowativeness. From corn-planting to husking-time, from dewy morn until evening more than due, he might be seen dodging behind fences, crawling around barns, stalking along in the high grass, with a long single-barreled old gun, trying to get a shot at the black thieves of crows that were forever at work on his old, sandy farm.

'What cause have you, my aged friend,' Brother Hornblower once said to him, 'What cause have you to molest these birds, as 'toil not, neither do they spin'?'

'I tell yer what,' answered the Squire, shaking his head with savage jerks, 'come down to my house ary moruin' airly, you'll hear caws!'

Brother Hornblower smiled grimly and walked gently away, after that, to get the evening paper at the grocery-post-office. He set his face against jokes—unless they were serious ones.

Whether it was Brother Hornblower's words, or more crows than usual, the neighbors around Squire Price's farm were regaled for two days after the above talk, with such constant explosions of gunpowder that it was surmised the Squire must have bought 'a hull kag o' powder, and got some feller to help him shoot.' The consequence of this energy was, that the persecuted devil's-canaries flew away to other farms where powder was scarce-first and foremost descending in flocks on Brother Hornblower's lands, and digging up his young corn—it was in the month of May—until even he found cause to go at these birds as don't spin; for he found out that they toiled most laboriously. Being a man of peaceful disposition, and opposed to the use of fire-arms, he thought over a plan by which fire-logs might be used with great advantage to his own benefit, by destroying a large number of crows at one fell blow. How he succeeded in this fell-blow, was told a few evenings afterward in the grocery-post-office, by young Tyler, a promising youth who had not, as they say of other sad dogs, 'quite got his set yet,' that is, attained completion in figure and carriage. Seated on the edge of a barrel half-filled with corn, and cutting a piece of pine-wood to one sharp point only to be followed by another sharp point, he was talking to another youth in a desultory manner, about his intentions 'to go by water,' in old Bizzle's schooner, next trip she took, when Squire Price came in to get his daily newspaper, The Beantown Democrat.

'You bin givin' them crows partikler hail, hain't you, Squire?' asked Tyler the youthful.

'Wal, about as much as they kin kerry,' answered the Squire. 'They hain't bin squawkin' round my prem'ses none to speak of lately.'

'They bin roond Brother Horublower's, thick as pison, though,' said Tyler. 'He counted on killin' 'bout a milyon on 'em yesserday—on-ly he didn't quite come it.'

'Thought he wouldn't never fire no guns at 'em!'

'Put a couple o' barrils into 'em yesserday.'

'Why, how you talk! You don't mean it?'

'Honor bright! He got a big travers on 'em—leastwise, thought he had. His brindle kaow, she got pizened night afore last, down there in the woods; couldn't do nuthin with her, and she died same night. So he goes and skins her, and throws her out into that gully down there, back o' Bizzle's wood, and says he to me—for I was over there workin' for him—says he, 'There'll be a power o'crows onto her t'morrer, and I calc'late I'll fix a few on 'em—I will!' So next mornin'-that was yesserdoy-we went out bright and airly, and rigged up a kind o' blind at the side of the gully, right over the old carcass, Then we got our amminishun all ready—both barrils all loadid.'

'By jing!' said the Squire, rubbing his hands, 'I wish I'd bin there.'

'Got all ready. Purty soon up comes one crow, sails round and round, then two or three more, then a few more; they begun to smell meat. Then they flew lower and lower; bime by one settles onto an old dead cedar and begins cawin' for dear life. Then down he comes, then more and more of 'em. Round they come, cawin' and flappin' their wings, clouds of 'em. Guess there was 'bout two hundred settled onto that old kaow.'

'Wish I'd bin there with my gun!' spoke the Squire, intensely excited. 'A feller could have made the most biggest kind of a shot.'

'Wal, we waited, and waited, till the old kaow was black as pitch with 'em. Then Hornblower he nudges me. We got both barrils all ready—big loads in 'em. 'Fire!' says he. I braced my leg up agin my barril; he braced his leg up agin his barril—'

'W-w-what?' said the Squire.

'We give the most all-firedest shove—and over we went, barrels, stones, dirt, and gravil, head-fo'most, spang into them crows and dead kaow! I tell you, for about five minutes I calc'late I never seed sitch fuss, feathers, dirt, and gravil, and kaow-beef flyin' as I did then. Things was mixed up most promiscussedly, you can bet yer life on it! Bime by I sort o' come to, and when I raised up I found I was sittin' onto four dead, crushed crows, Brother Hornblower, and kaow-meat gin'rally. So I dug out and lifted up the game—Brother Hornblower first off. When he cum round a little, says he:

"T-T-Tyler, I con-ceive somethin's give way 'bout these parts!'

"You air about right in your suppostishuns,' says I; 'the gravil bank's busted, and it's a marcy we an't in kingdom kum!'

"Don't talk that way,' says he; 'let's go up and fire a cupple barrels more into the blastid rebbils, fur vengenz.'

"No yer don't, this mornin', as I knows on,' said I; 'I've got enough shootin craws your fashun. Next time I go shootin' crows 'long any boddy, I'm goin' to do it Christian-fashun, with gun-barrils, and not blastid old flour-barrils filled with gravil. That kind o' shootin' don't suit my style o' bones—'speehally head-fo'most inter a dead kaow!"

'On-ly four crows killt!' said the Squire, with a groan. 'To think what a feller might have done, if he had only have spread his-self judishuslously as he came tumblin' onto 'em spang! Wal!' (looking cheeringly to young Tyler,) 'you couldn't do more'n fire both barrils into 'em, ef they was flour-barrils, could you?'

THE LEGEND OF JESUS AND THE MOSS.

In the desert of Engedi
Lies a valley deep and lone;
Softly there the mild air slumbered,
Lovely there the sunlight shone.
In the bosom of this valley,
By the path that leads across,
Lay a modest velvet carpet
Of the finest, softest moss.

But the careless traveler, passing,
Heedless of it went his way;
Thus this miracle of beauty
Lone in hidden glory lay.
Bloom and sunshine, sweeter, brighter,
Him from distant mountains greet;
On to that the stranger hurries,
Past the moss-bed at his feet.

Then the moss-bed sighed, complaining
To the evening dew that fell;
And its tufted bosom heaving,
Thus its 'plains began to tell:
'Ah! men love you, bloom and sunshine,
Long its rosy glow to see,
Feed their eyes on luring flowers
Whilst their feet tread rude on me!'

Now, when mellow rays of sunset
Lingered golden on the trees,
Came a weary pilgrim slowly
From the bordering forest leas.
This was Jesus, just returning
From his fast of forty days;
Worn by Satan's fierce temptations,
He for rest and comfort prays.

Sore his sacred feet are blistered,
Wandering o'er the desert-sands;
Torn and bleeding from the briers,
Sufferings which the curse demands.
When he came upon the moss-bed,
Soon he felt how cool and sweet
Lay the soft and velvet carpet
'Neath his wounded, bleeding feet.

'Then he paused and spake this blessing:
'Gift of my kind Father's love!
Fret not, little plant, thy record
Shineth in the book above.
By the careless eye unheeded,
Bear thy lowly, humble lot;
Thou hast eased my weary walking,
Thou art ne'er in heaven forgot.'

Scarcely had he breathed this blessing
On the moss that soothed his woes,
When upon its bosom gathered,
Budded, bloomed, a lovely rose!
And its petals glowed with crimson
Like the clouds at close of day;
And a glory on the mosses
Like the smile of cherubs lay.

Then said Jesus to the flower:
'Moss-rose—this thy name shall be—
Spread thou o'er all lands, the sweetest
Emblem of humility.
Out of lowly mosses budding,
Which have soothed a pilgrim's pain,
Thou shalt tell the world what honor
All the lowly, lovely gain.'

Hear his words, ye lonely children,
By the world unseen, unknown;
Wait ye for the suffering pilgrim,
Coming weary, faint, and lone.
Keep your hearts still soft and tender,
Like the velvet bed of moss;
God will bless the love you render,
To some bearer of the cross.

In our May number we spoke old Englishly of the Boston demoiselle. In the present number we have:

YE PHILADELPHIA YOUNGE LADYE.

Ye Philadelphia young ladye 1s not evir of ruddie milke and blonde hew, like unto hir cosyn of Boston, natheless is shee not browne as a chinkapinn or persymon like unto ye damosylles of Baltimore. Even and clere is hir complexioun, seldom paling, and not often bloshing, whyeh is a good thynge for those who bee fonde of kissing, sith that if ther mothers come in sodanely ther checkes wyll not be sinful tell-tayles of swete and secrete deeds. Of whych matter of blushing itt is gretely to the credyt of the Philadelphienne that shee blosheth not muche, sith that Aldrovandus, and as methynketh also, Mizaldus in his Mirabile Centuries, doe affirme thatt not to bloshe is a sign of noble bloods and gentyl lineage—for itt may bee planely seene that every base-borne churle's daughter blosheth, if thatt yee give hir a poke under ye chinn, whereas ye countesse of highe degre only smileth sweetlie and sayth merily, 'Aha! messire—tu voys que mon joly couer est endormy!' for shee well knoweth that a gentyllman, like ye kynge, can doe noe wronge.

The Philadelphienne dressyth not in garments like unto Joseph, his cote of manie colors, nethir dothe shee put on clothes whych look from afar off like geographie-mapps, where the hues are as well assortyd as iff a paint-mill had bursten and scattered the piggments all pele-mele into everlastynge miscellayneous scatteratioun. For shee doth greately go inn for subdued ratt-color, milde mouse-tints, temperate tea-caddy tones, moderate mode—dyes, gentyll gray—shades, tranquill drabb—tinges, temperate tawny, calm graye, sober ashie, pacifyed slate, mitigated dun, lenientlie dingie, and blandlie cinereous chromattics, since shee hadd a Quakir grandmother on the one syde, ande is too superblie proude on the other, 'to make a pecocke of hirselfe,' as shee wyll telle you whann thatt yee be spattered with the water whych is jetted from hose over ye pavementes. Hee thatt woulde see manye of these swete beeings, shoulde walke in Chestnutt strete whyles thatt shee goeth to shopp, or promenade in Walnutt strete, on Sundaye. And if he can telle mee of a citie on earthe where one can see more prettye, tiny feete, in neater shoos or gaytered bootes, thann hee may then beholde, I wolde fayne knowe where itt is, thatt I maye go there too.

Muche loveth shee little tea-parties where onlie girles bee; and to have ye gentylmen come, aske: 'Damsylle, wherefore walke ye nott in gayer garmentes?' Soe thatt itt often comes to passe thatt whenn walkyng in ye Broade Waye of New-Yorke, yee can tell a Philadelphienne by hir sober yet rich garbe, so that ye Cosmopolite sayth: 'Per ma fe! thatt is a ladye, I know shee is, by the waye shee lookes.' And trulie, as Dan Chaucer sayeth, shee is one:

'Well seemed by her apparaile,
She is not wont to great travaile,
And whan she kempt is fetously,
And well arraied and richely.
Then hath shee done all her journée,
Gentyll and faire indede is shee!'

Ye Philadelphia younge ladye loveth to ryde of pleasaunte afternoones out untoe Pointe Breeze, adown ye Necke, in ye Parke, or along ye wynding Wissahickon. Peradventure shee goeth whyles with a beau who speaketh unto hir of love, to whych shee listeneth wyth tendir grace, and replyeth with art, untill thatt they have builded upp betwene them a flirtacioun. From tyme to tyme hee makyth a punn, and shee cryeth, 'Shame!' but itt shames him never a whitt or jott—nay, hee goeth on and maketh yett anothir—ofttimes untill ye horse takyth frighte and runneth awaie. Yett for all this she liketh hym still, so grete is ye love of woman and so enduring hir constancye.

Att other tymes shee ridoth farr and wyde in ye hors-carrs, since in her natyve towne shee can go manye miles for five cents, and two pence whenn shee takes ye other carr. Specially doth shee do this on Saturday forenoons, else weare her neat clothes all in ye evenyng. Then they speke of the newes of ye daye, and praise General! Mac Lellan, and gossipp of ye laste greate partie, where Dorsey dyd serve so well ye terrapines and steamed oysters, and howe thatt itt is verament and trewe thatt Miss Porridge is to live, after hir marriage, in a howse in Locust strete, or peradventure in Spruce, or in Pyne, for in this towne all the stretes are of woode, albeit ye houses are all of bricke.

Ye Philadelphienne spekythe more slowlie in hir speeche than dothe ye New-Yorkere, and ever callyth a calf a cäff, and a laugh a läff, which soundeth far more sweetlie, even like the lingua Toscana in bocca Romana. Shee loveth ye opera even as shee loveth ye ice-creme, whych shee buyeth at Mrs. Burns's, or old Auntie Jackson's, where shee often goeth of warm sumer-nightes. Shee is graceful in hir miene, and gracious in hir manner—trulie, in all ye worlde I know of none sweeter in this laste itemm. And thatt shee may ever keepe up hir pleasante fame for beinge ladyly, gentyll, and fayre, is the herte's prayere of

Clerke Nicholas.

Galli Van T is again active in setting forth the rural trials and troubles of artists—which it seems are many. Listen!

Dear Continental: 'Twas in the merry summer-tide, some seven years since, when I went with a friend catching trout and sketching scenery in the valley of the Connecticut.

We thought we knew the value of a lovely view.

We didn't.

True, we could appreciate it to a dollar, when transferred to canvas. Otherwise we had much to learn.

C. Pia, Esq., and myself were hard at it one morning—making such beautiful sketches, and doing it all with nothing but just a lead-pencil and some paper—as a young admirer of our works was wont to assure her friends. Suddenly appeared a man of great muscle, with pie dish shirt-collar, and a canister-shot-eyed bull-terrier, gifted with seven-tiger power of biting.

'Stop that are!' was his courteous salutation.

'Stop what?'

'Stop making them are d—d picters. I don't have no such doings reound here!'

I looked at C. Pia—he was venomous and unterrified, and I felt encouraged. So I firmly asked the intruder what he meant.

'I mean what I say. There's property there that I'm a goin' to buy. I know what you're arter. You're makin picters of the place for that are in-fernal Kernal Smith who owns the land, so's he can show 'em round and pint out the buildin' lots. And I'll jest lick you like —— if you dror another line!'

'See here, young man,' quoth I, 'I've something to say to you. In the first place you're a scamp who would keep a gentleman from getting a fair price for his own property. Secondly, you're an ignorant fellow and don't know what you're talking about. I never heard of your Colonel Smith—I'm not drawing up real estate lots or plots of any kind. Thirdly, I solemnly swear by Minos, Alianthus, Rhododendron, Nebuchadnezzar, and all the infernal gods, that if you touch a hair of our heads I'll see Colonel Smith—I'll map the whole property and advertise it in every newspaper in New-York and Boston till it brings ten thousand dollars an acre. Now sail in—dog or no dog—we'll settle you, any how.'

The glare of fury in our visitor's eyes died away as he listened to this oration.

'Thunder!' he exclaimed; 'what a lot you city fellers with l'arnin' into you do know! Ten thousand dollars an acre! Ad-ver-ti-sin'! What an idee! I guess I'll buy the land on a morgidge right away. Hee, hee, hee—it's a first-rate notion—and I a-dopt it. Mister, if you want a drink o' cider, you can get it at that are red house you see down yander. Good-mornin'!'

And off he went.

'You've made that fellow's fortune—when you ought to have caved his head in,' remarked C. Pia as the two brutes disappeared.

'It is the mission of the artist to benefit every body except himself,' I rejoined. And refilling my pipe I went on with my 'picter.'

Yours truly,
Galli Van T.

Truly 'Art is—well—a—it's a great thing, and hath its many lights and shadows,' as Phoenix or some body once ascertained. And we trust that Galli Van T. will continue to depict the same in his peculiarly affecting style.

Among the curiosities of literature which the war has brought forth, one of the most piquant is a little pamphlet entitled, Southern Hatred of the American Government, the People of the North, and Free Institutions, recently published by R.F. Wallcut, of Number 221 Washington street, Boston. It consists entirely of selections from the columns of Southern newspapers—all of them rabid, and we may very truly add, ridiculous; especially since the fortunes of war have made so much of their Bobadil bluster appear like the veriest folly. Many of them are old acquaintances—who, for instance, can have forgotten the following, from the Richmond Whig?

As regards those who go so far, it may be remarked that by this time they have illustrated Father O'Leary's remark of the people who, not 'belaving in Purgathory, wint further and fared worse.' But there is more of this 'chivalric' spirit in the same article. For instance, it doubts 'whether any society since that of Sodom and Gomorrah' [Paris is entirely too mild an example] 'has been more thoroughly steeped in every species of vice than that of the Yankees.' Infanticide is hinted at as prevailing as extensively as in China. The Yankees 'pursue with envy and malignity every excellence that shows itself among them unconnected with money; and a gentleman there stands no more chance of existence than a dog does in the Grotto del Cano!'

The elegance and refinement of the same editorial from the Whig, appears from the following. A portion, which we omit, is too foully indecent for republication:

These extracts are from the Richmond Whig—a paper beyond all comparison the most respectable and moderate in the whole South, and by no means of so little weight or character that its remarks can be passed by as mere Southern vaunt and idle bluster signifying nothing. It speaks the deep-seated belief and heartfelt conviction of even the most intelligent secessionists—for the editor of the Whig is not only one of these, but one of the most honest and upright men to be found in Dixie.

'But,' the reader may ask, 'if the man really believes that Yankees are serfs, slaves, vassals of the South, where are his eyes, ears, and common-sense?' Gently, dear reader. When we reflect on the toadying to the South by Northern doughface Democrats in by-gone years—when we recall the abominable and incredible servility with which every thing Southern has been hymned, homaged and exalted—when we remember how vulgar, arrogant, ignorant Southrons have been adored in doughface society where gentlemen whom they were not worthy of waiting on were of but secondary account—when we think of the shallow, pitiful meanness which induces Northern men to rant in favor of that 'institution' which they, at least, know is a curse to the whole country—when we see even now, how, with a baseness and vileness beyond belief, 'democratic' editors continue to lick the hands which smite them, we do not wonder that the Southerner, taking the doughface for a type of the whole North, characterizes all Yankees as serf-like, servile cap-in-hand crawlers and beggars for patronage. For if we were all of the pro-slavery Democracy, and especially of those who even now continue to yelp for Southern rights and grinningly assure patriots that 'under the Constitution they can do nothing to the South,' we should richly deserve all the scorn heaped on us by the 'chivalry.'

We doubt not that, during this bitter war, many incidents have occurred, or will occur, quite like that described in the following simple but life-true ballad:

FRANK WILSON.

'Twas night at the farm-house. The fallen sun
Shot his last red arrow up in the west;
Shadows came wolfishly stealing forth,
And chased the flush from the mountain's crest.

Night at the farm-house. The hickory fire
Laughed and leaped in the chimney's hold,
And baffled, with its warm mirth, the frost,
As he pried at the panes with his fingers cold.

The chores were finished; and farmer West,
As he slowly sipped from his foaming mug,
Toasted his feet in calm content,
And rejoiced that the barns were warm and snug.

Washing the tea-things, with bared white arms,
And softly humming a love refrain;
With smooth brown braids, and cheeks of rose,
Washed and warbled his daughter Jane.

She was the gift that his dear wife left,
When she died, some nineteen Mays before;
The light and the warmth of the old farm-home,
And cherished by him to his great heart's core.

A sweet, fair girl; yet 'twas not so much
The fashion of feature that made her so;
'Twas love's own tenderness in her eyes,
And on her cheeks love's sunrise glow.

Done were the tea-things; the rounded arms
Again were covered, the wide hearth brushed;
Then from the mantle she took some work,
'Twas a soldier's sock, and her song was hushed.

Her song was hushed; for tenderer thoughts
Than ever were bodied in word or sound,
Trembled like stars in her downcast eyes,
As she knit in the dark yarn round and round.

A neighbor's rap at the outer door
Was answered at once by a bluff 'Come in!'
And he came, with stamping of heavy boots,
Frost-wreathed brow and muffled chin.

Come up to the fire! Pretty cold to-night.
What news do you get from the village to-day?
Did you call for our papers? Ah! yes, much obliged.
What news do you get from our Company K?'

'Bad news!—bad news!' He slowly unwinds
His muffler, and wipes his frost-fringed eyes.
'Frank Wilson was out on the picket last night,
And was killed by some cursed rebel spies.'

O God! give strength to that writhing heart!
Fling the life back to that whitening cheek!
Let not the pent breath forever stay
From the lips, too white and dumb to speak!

'Frank Wilson killed? ah! too bad—too bad,
The finest young man, by far, in this town;
Such are the offerings we give to war,
Jane, draw a fresh mug for our neighbor Brown.'

Neither did notice her faltering step;
Neither gave heed to her quivering hand,
That awkwardly fumbled the cellar-door,
And spilled the cider upon the stand.

But the father dreamed, as he slept that night,
That his darling had met some fearful woe;
And he dreamed of hearing her stifled moans,
And her slow steps pacing to and fro.

II.

'Twas an April day, in the balmy spring,
The farmhouse fires had gone to sleep,
The windows were open to sun and breeze,
The hills were dotted with snowy sheep.

The great elms rustled their new-lifed leaves
Softly over the old brown roof,
And the sunshine, red with savory smoke,
Fell graciously through their emerald woof.

Sounds—spring sounds—which the country yields:
Voices of laborers, lowing of herds,
The caw of the crow, the swollen brook's roar,
The sportsman's gun, and the twitter of birds,

Melted like dim dreams into the air;
'Twas the azure shadow of summer,
Which fell so sweetly on plain and wood,
And brought new gladness to eye and ear.

But a face looks out to the purple hills,
A wasted face that is full of woe,
Wan yet calm, like a summer moon
That has lost the round of its fullest glow.

The smooth brown braids still wreathe her head;
Her simple garments are full of grace,
As if, with color and taste, she fain
Would ward off eyes from her paling face.

'Tis a morning hour, but the work is done;
The house so peacefully bright within,
And the wild-wood leaves on the mantel-shelf
Tell how busy her feet have been.

She sits by the window and watches a cloud
Fading away in the hazy sky;
And 'Like that cloud,' she says in heart,
'When summer is over, I too shall die.'

The door-yard gate swings to with a clang,
She must not sadden her father so;
She springs to her feet with a merrier air,
And pinches her face to make it glow.

But ah! no need; for a ruddier red
Than pinches can bring floods brow and cheek;
She stands transfixed by a mighty joy;
For millions of worlds she can not speak.

Frank Wilson gathers her close to his heart,
With brightening glance, he reads that glow,
And draws from the wells of her joy-lit eyes
The secret he long has yearned to know.

'Frank Wilson! living and strong and well;
Were you not killed by the rebels? say!'
'Thank God! I was not. 'Twas another man—
There were two Frank Wilsons in Company K.'

The one church-bell in the distant town
Chimes softly forth for twelve o'clock;
Another clang of the door-yard gate,
A sudden hush in the tender talk.

She flies to meet him—the transformed child!—
Her heart keeps time to her ringing tread;
'O father! he's come!' and she needs no more
To pinch her cheeks to make them red.

Marie Mignonette.

A friend who doth such things has kindly jotted down for us the following 'authentics':

The Southern press has proposed that, even in case of defeat, the wealthy class shall retire to their plantations, 'live comfortably' on what they can raise, let cotton go for two years, and thereby starve Europe and the North into a conviction that Cotton is King.

But how will the poor whites of the South like this? What is to become of them? Or what, indeed, is to become of us, if no cotton be forthcoming? The truth is, and every day makes it more apparent, the raising of cotton must pass into other hands. The army has its rights—the right to land-grants—and the only effectual means of putting an end to our dependence on the South will be found in settling soldiers in the cotton country. Texas would be, perhaps, best suited for the purpose, and other regions may be selected as opportunity may suggest. With this course fully determined on, it would hardly be necessary to further agitate Emancipation, it would come of itself, and slave-labor would yield to the energy of the free Northern farmer.

Very little has been said as yet on this subject of properly rewarding our troops. But it is destined to rise into becoming the great question of the day; and if the Democratic pro-slavery party sets itself in opposition to it, it will be ground to powder. Events are tending to this issue with irresistible and tremendous power, and the days of planterdom are numbered.

FOOTNOTES

It may be seen, by the foregoing table, that a thorough system of education for the masses requires that one third of the aggregate population should be kept at school for a goodly portion of the year. This is essential, under Democratic Government, in order to bring each generation up to the appreciative point.

DESTINED TO BE THE BOOK OF THE SEASON

As published in the pages of THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, it has been pronounced by the Press to be

"SUPERIOR TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN."

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WILL SHORTLY BE PUBLISHED,

In a handsome 12mo vol. of 330 pages, cloth, $1,

AMONG THE PINES,

BY EDMUND KIRKE.

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It is the best and most truthful sketch of Southern Life and Character we have ever read."—R. SURLTON MACKENZIE, in the Press, Philadelphia.

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"The author is one of the finest descriptive writers in the country."—Journal, Boston, Mass.

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"A most powerful production, which can not be read without exciting great and continued interest"—Palladium, New Haven.

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THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY has passed its experimental ordeal, and stands firmly established in popular regard. It was started at a period when any new literary enterprise was deemed almost foolhardy, but the publisher believed that the time had arrived for just such a Magazine. Fearlessly advocating the doctrine of ultimate and gradual Emancipation, for the sake of the UNION and the WHITE MAN, it has found favor in quarters where censure was expected, and patronage where opposition only was looked for. While holding firmly to its own opinions, it has opened its pages to POLITICAL WRITERS of widely different views, and has made a feature of employing the literary labors of the younger race of American writers. How much has been gained by thus giving, practically, the fullest freedom to the expression of opinion, and by the infusion of fresh blood into literature, has been felt from month to month in its constantly increasing circulation.

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Three copies for one year,....................................Six dollars.
Six copies for one year,.........................................Eleven dollars.
Eleven copies for one year,..................................Twenty dollars.
Twenty copies for one year,.................................Thirty-six dollars.

PAID IN ADVANCE
Postage, Thirty-six Cents a year, TO BE PAID BY THE SUBSCRIBER.

SINGLE COPIES.
Three Dollars a year, IN ADVANCE.—Postage paid by the Publisher.

J.R. GILMORE, 532 Broadway, New-York,
and 110 Tremont Street, Boston.

CHARLES T. EVANS, 532 Broadway, New-York,

GENERAL AGENT.

CONTENTS.—No. VIII.

A MERCHANT'S STORY,

By the author of 'Among the Pines,' which is begun in this number, will be continued in each issue of THE CONTINENTAL until it is completed. It will depict Southern White Society, and be a truthful history of some eminent Northern Merchants, who are largely in 'the cotton trade and sugar line.'

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by JAMES H. GILMORE, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York.

JOHN A. GRAY, PRINTER.