The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by Ticknor and Fields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.

RHODA.

Uncle Bradburn took down a volume of the new Cyclopædia, and placed it on the stand beside him. He did not, however, open it immediately, but sat absorbed in thought. At length he spoke:—"Don't you think a young girl in the kitchen, to help Dorothy, would save a good many steps?"

"I don't know," replied Aunt Janet, slowly. "Dorothy has a great deal to do already. Hepsy is as good and considerate as possible, but Dorothy won't let her do anything hardly. Hepsy says herself that within doors she has only dusted furniture and mended stockings ever since she came."

"Very true; but then this girl,—she will have to go to the poor-house if we don't take her. She has been living with Mrs. Kittredge at the Hollow; but Mrs. Kittredge has made up her mind not to keep her any longer. The fact is, nobody will keep her unless we do; and she is terribly set against going back to the poor-house."

"If I were you, Oliver," said grandmother, who sat in her rocking-chair knitting, "I would have two or three new rooms finished off over the wood-shed, and then you could accommodate a few more of that sort. Just like you!"

And she took a pinch of snuff from a little silver-lidded box made of a sea-shell. She took it precipitately,—a sign that she was slightly disturbed. This snuff-box, however, was a safety-valve.

"We will leave it to Dorothy," said Aunt Janet. "It is only fair, for she will have all the trouble."

Uncle Bradburn regarded the point as gained: he was sure of Dorothy. But he added by way of clincher, "Probably the girl never knew a month of kind treatment in her life, and one would like her to have a chance of [Pg 522]seeing what it is. Just imagine a child of fifteen subjected to the veriest vixen in the country. There is some excuse for old Mrs. Kittredge, too, exasperated as she is by disease. No wonder if she is not very amiable; but that makes it none the less hard for the child."

So the upshot of the matter was, that Rhoda Breck was installed nominal aid to Dorothy.

Uncle brought her the next day in his sulky,—a slight little creature, with a bundle as large as herself.

Presently she appeared at the sitting-room door. She was scarcely taller than a well-grown ten-years child. She wore a dress of gay-hued print, a bright shawl whose fringe reached lower than the edge of her skirt, and on her head an old-world straw bonnet decorated with a mat of crushed artificial flowers, and a faded, crumpled green veil. The small head had a way of moving in quick little jerks, like a chicken's; and it was odd to see how the enormous bonnet moved and jerked in unison. The face and features were small, except the eyes, which were large and wide open, and blue as turquoise.

She took time to look well around the room before she spoke:—"Well, I'm come; I suppose you've been expecting of me. See here, be I going to sleep with that colored woman?"

It was not possible to know from her manner to whom the query was addressed; but Aunt Janet replied, "No, Rhoda, there is a room for you. We never ask Dorothy to share her room with any one." Then, turning to me, "Go and show Rhoda her room, my dear."

I rose to obey. Rhoda surveyed me, as if taking an inventory of the particulars which made up my exterior; and when I in turn felt my eyes attracted by her somewhat singular aspect, she remarked, in an indescribably authoritative tone, "Don't gawp! I hate to be gawped at."

"See what a pretty room Dorothy has got ready for you," said I,—"a chest of drawers in it, too; and there's a little closet. I am sure you will like your room."

"No, you ain't sure neither," she replied. "Nobody can't tell till they've tried. Likely yourn has got a carpet all over it. Hain't it, now?"

"Yes, I've heard tell about her," said Rhoda. "Well, you see you and her ain't town-poor. If you was town-poor you'd have to put up with everything,—little room, and straw bed, and old clothes, and everything. I expect I'll have to take your old gowns; hain't you got any? Say, now."

"Well, that's because I picked berries enough to buy it with. My bundle there's all old duds, though. It takes me half my time to patch 'em. You'd pitch 'em into the rag-bag. Wouldn't you, now?"

"More you hain't, nor you ain't agoing to. I hate folks peeking over my things."

"Well," said I, "you may be sure I shall never do it. I must go back to my work now."

"O, you feel above looking at town-poor's things, don't you? Wait till I've showed you my new apron. I didn't ride in it for fear I'd dust it. It's real gay, ain't it, now?"

"Yes," said I; "it looks like a piece of a tulip-bed. But I must really go. I hope you will like your room."

When I went back into the sitting-room, grandmother was wiping her eyes. She had been laughing till she cried at the new help Uncle Oliver had brought into the house.

"No matter, though," she was saying; "let him call them help if he likes. If Dorothy will put up with it, I am sure we ourselves may. He says Hepsy more than pays her way in eggs and chickens. Just as if he thought[Pg 523] about the eggs and chickens! Of course, if persons are really in need, it always pays to help them; and I guess Oliver has about as much capital invested that way as any one I know of, and I'm glad of it. But it's his funny way of doing it; it's all help, you see." And she laughed again till the tears came.

In half an hour, during which time grandmother had a nap in her chair and Aunt Janet read, the little apparition stood in the doorway again. She had doffed the huge bonnet; and in her lint-white locks, drawn back from her forehead so straight and tight that it seemed as if that were what made her eyes open so round, she wore a tall horn comb. Around her neck, and standing well out, was a broad frill of the same material as her dress, highly suggestive of Queen Elizabeth.

"You hain't got any old things, coats and trousers and such, all worn out, have you? 'Cause if you have, I guess I'll begin a braided rug. When folks are poor, they've got to work, if they know what's good for 'em."

"They'd better work, if they know what's good for 'em, whether they're poor or not," said grandmother.

"There's a pedler going to bring me a diamond ring when I get a dollar to pay him for it."

Meantime Aunt Janet had experienced a sense of relief at Rhoda's suggestion, by reason of finding herself really at a loss how to employ her. So they twain proceeded at once to the garret; whence they presently returned, Rhoda bearing her arms full of worn-out garments which had been accumulating in view of the possible beggar whose visits in that part of New England are inconveniently rare.

"Those braided rugs are very comfortable things under one's feet in winter," said grandmother. "They're homely as a stump fence, but that is no matter."

"I hardly knew what you would do with her while we were away," said Aunt Janet. "But it would kill the child to sit steadily at that. There's one thing, though,—strawberries will soon be ripe, and she can go and pick them. You may tell her, Kate, that I will pay her for them by the quart, just as any one else does. That will please and encourage her, I think."

"No, you don't," was her answer. "Nobody don't pay me twice over. I ain't an old skinflint, if I be town-poor. But I'll keep you in strawberries, though. Never you fear."

I quite liked that of her, and so did grandmother and Aunt Janet when I told them.

Uncle and Aunt Bradburn were going to make their yearly visit at Exeter, where uncle's relatives live. The very day of their departure brought a letter announcing a visit from one of Aunt Janet's cousins, a Miss Lucretia Stackpole. She was a lady who avowed herself fortunate in having escaped all those trammels which hinder people from following their own bent. One of her fancies was for a nomadic life; and in pursuance of this, she bestowed on Aunt Janet occasional visits, varying in duration from two or three days to as many weeks. The letter implied that she might arrive in the evening train, and we waited tea for her.

She did not disappoint us; and during the tea-drinking she gave us sketches, not only of all the little celebrities she had met at Saratoga, but of all the new fashions in dresses, bonnets, and jewelry, besides many of her own plans.

It was impossible for her to remain beyond the week, she said, because she had promised to meet her friends General and Mrs. Perkinpine in Burlington in time to accompany them to Montreal and Quebec, whence they must hurry back to Saratoga for a week, and go thence to Baltimore;[Pg 524] then, after returning for a few days to New York, they were to go to Europe.

"O, of course, Aunt Margaret," for so she called her,—"of course I intend to go. We mean to be gone a year, and half the time we shall spend in Paris. We shall go to Rome, and we shall spend a few weeks in England."

"I cannot imagine what you will do with six months in Paris,—you who don't know five words of French."

"I studied it, however, at boarding-school," said Miss Stackpole; "I read both Télémaque and the New Testament in French."

"One picks up the language," said Miss Stackpole; "and certainly nothing is more improving than travel."

"If improvement is your motive, it is certainly a very laudable one," said grandmother. "But I should suppose that at your age you would begin to prefer a little quiet to all this rushing about. But every one to his liking."

Now it is undeniable that grandmother and Miss Stackpole never did get on very well together; so it was rather a relief to Louise and myself when Miss Stackpole, pleading fatigue from her ride, expressed a wish to go to bed early, and get a good long, refreshing night's sleep, the facilities for which, she averred, were the only compensating circumstance of country life.

Immediately afterwards, grandmother called Louise and myself into her room, to say what a pity it was that this visit had not occurred either a few weeks earlier or a few weeks later, when uncle and aunt would have been at home; but that, as it was, we must make the best of it, and do all in our power to make things go pleasantly for Miss Stackpole. It was true, she said, that Lucretia was not so very many years younger than herself, and, for her part, she thought pearl-powder and rouge and dyed hair, and all such trash, made people look old and silly, instead of young and handsome. It did sometimes try her patience a little; but she hoped she should remember, and so must we, that it was a Christian duty to treat people hospitably in one's own home, and that it was enjoined upon us to live peaceably, if possible, with all men, as much as lieth in us. Lucretia's being a goose made no difference in the principle.

So we planned that we would take her up to Haverhill, and down to Cornish, and over to Woodstock,—all places to which she liked to go. And Dorothy came in to ask if she had better broil or fricassee the chickens for breakfast, and to say that there was a whole basketful of Guinea-hens' eggs, and that she had just set some waffles and sally-lunns a-sponging. She was determined to do her part, she said: she should be mighty glad to help get that skinchy-scrimpy look out of Miss Lucretia's face, just like a sour raisin.

There was one topic which Miss Stackpole could never let alone, and which always led to a little sparring between herself and grandmother. So the next morning, directly after breakfast, she began,—"Aunt Margaret, I never see that ring on your finger without wanting it."

"I know it," grandmother responded; "and you're likely to want it. It's little like you'll ever get it."

"Now, Aunt Margaret! you always could say the drollest things. But, upon my word, I should prize it above everything. What in all the world makes you care to wear such a ring as that, at your age, is more than I can imagine. If you gave it to me, I promise you I would never part with it as long as I live."

"And I promise you, Lucretia, that I never will. And let me tell you, that, old as I am, you are the only one who has ever seemed in a hurry for me to have done with my possessions. If it[Pg 525] will ease your mind any, I can assure you, once for all, that this ring will never come into your hands as long as you live. It has been in the family five generations, and has always gone to the eldest daughter; and, depend upon it, I shall not be the first to infringe the custom. So now I hope you will leave me in peace."

Miss Stackpole held up her hands, and exclaimed and protested. When she was alone with Louise and me, she said she could plainly see that grandmother grew broken and childish.

When we saw grandmother alone, she said she was sorry she had been so warm with Lucretia; she feared it was not quite Christian; besides, though you brayed a fool in a mortar with a pestle, yet would not his foolishness depart from him.

The visiting career, so desirable for various reasons, was entered upon immediately. To Bethel, being rather too far for going and returning the same day, only Miss Stackpole and Louise went. They rode in the carryall, Louise driving. Though quite needlessly, Miss Stackpole was a little afraid of trusting herself to Louise's skill, and begged Will Bright, uncle's gardener, to leave his work, just for a day, and go with them. But there were a dozen things, said Will, which needed immediate doing, so that was out of the question. Then it came out that a run-away horse was not the only danger. In the country there are so many lurking-places, particularly in going through woods, whence a robber might pounce upon you all of a sudden and demand your life, or your portemonnaie, or your watch, or your rings, or something, that Miss Stackpole thought unprotected women, out on a drive, were on the whole forlorn creatures. But in our neighborhood a highwayman was a myth,—we had hardly ever even heard of one; and so, after no end of misgivings lest one or another lion in the way should after all compel the relinquishment of the excursion, literally at the eleventh hour they were fairly on their way.

A room with a low, pleasant window looking out on the garden was the one assigned to Rhoda. In the garret she had discovered a little old rocking-chair, and this, transferred to her room, and placed near the window, was her favorite seat. Here, whenever one walked in the back garden, which was pretty much thickets of lilacs, great white rose-bushes, beds of pinks and southern-wood, and rows of currant-bushes, might be heard Rhoda's voice crooning an old song. It was rather a sweet voice, too. I wondered where she could have collected so many old airs. She said she supposed she caught them of Miss Reeney, out at the poor-house.

When one saw Rhoda working away with unremitting assiduity, day after day, it was difficult to yield credence to all the stories that had been current in regard to her violence of temper and general viciousness. That was hard work, too, which she was doing; at least it looked hard for such little bits of hands. First, cutting with those great heavy shears through the thick, stiff cloth; next, the braiding; and finally, the sewing together with the huge needle, and coarse, waxed thread.

One afternoon I had been looking at her a little while, and, as what uncle said about her having never had fair play came into my mind, I felt a strong compulsion to do her some kindness, however trifling; so I gathered a few flowers, fragrant and bright, and took them to her window.

"Rhoda," said I, "shouldn't you like these on your bureau? They will look pretty there; and only smell how sweet they are. You may have the vase for your own, if you like."

She took it without a word, looked at it a moment, glancing at me to make sure she understood, and then rose and placed it on the bureau, where it showed double, reflected from the looking-glass. She did not again turn her face towards me till she had spent a brief space in close communion with a minute handkerchief which she had drawn from her pocket. Clearly, here[Pg 526] was one not much wonted to little kindnesses, and not insensible to them either.

The visit to Bethel had resulted so well, that Woodstock and Cornish were unhesitatingly undertaken. Nor was it misplaced confidence on Miss Stackpole's part. With the slight drawback of having forgotten the whip on the return from Woodstock, not the shadow of an accident occurred. Nor was this oversight of much account, only that Tim Linkinwater, the horse, whose self-will had increased with his years, soon made the discovery that he for the nonce held the reins of power; and when they reached Roaring Brook, instead of proceeding decorously across the bridge, he persisted in descending a somewhat steep bank and fording the stream. Half-way across, he found the coolness of the water so agreeable that he decided to enjoy it ad libitum. No expostulations nor chirrupings nor cluckings availed aught. He felt himself master of the occasion, and would not budge an inch. He looked up stream and down stream, and now and then sent a sly glance back at Miss Stackpole and Louise, and now and then splashed the water with his hoofs against the pebbles. Miss Stackpole's distress became intense. It began to be a moot point whether they might not be forced to pass the night there, in the middle of Roaring Brook. By great good fortune, at this juncture came along in his sulky Dr. Butterfield of Meriden. To him Louise appealed for aid, and he gave her his own whip, reaching it down to her from the bridge. Tim Linkinwater, perfectly comprehending the drift of events, did not wait for the logic of the lash, which, nevertheless, Miss Stackpole declared that he richly deserved, and which she would fain have seen administered, only for the probability that his homeward pace might be thereby perilously accelerated.

That night we all went unusually early to bed and to sleep. I remember looking from the window after the light was out, and seeing, through a rift in the clouds, the new moon just touching the peak of the opposite mountain. A whippoorwill sang in the great chestnut-tree at the farther corner of the yard; tree-toads trilled, and frogs peeped, and through all could just be heard the rapids up the river.

We were wakened at midnight by very different sounds,—a clattering, crushing noise, like something failing down stairs, with outcries fit to waken the seven sleepers. You would believe it impossible that they all proceeded from one voice; but they did, and that Rhoda's. We were wide awake and up immediately; and as the screams ceased, we distinctly heard some one running rapidly down the walk. As soon as we could get lights, we found ourselves congregated in the upper front hall; and Rhoda, when she had recovered breath to speak, told her story.

She did not know what awoke her; but she heard what sounded like carefully raising a window, and some one stepping softly around the house. At first she supposed it might be one of the family; but, the sounds continuing, it came into her head to get up and see what they were. So she came, barefooted as she was, up the back way, and was just going down the front stairs, when a gleam of light shone on the ceiling above her. She moved to a position whence she could look over the balusters, and saw that the light came from a shaded lantern, carried by a man who moved so stealthily that only the creaking of the boards betrayed his footsteps. At the foot of the stairs he paused a moment, looking around, apparently hesitating which way to go. He decided to ascend; and then Rhoda, bravely determined to do battle, seized a rocking-chair which stood near, and threw it downward with all her force, lifting up her voice at the same time to give the alarm.

Whether the man were hurt or not, it is certain that he was not so disabled as to impede his flight, and that he had lost his lantern, for that lay on the[Pg 527] floor at the foot of the staircase; so did the rocking-chair, broken all to pieces.

When we came to go over the house, it had been thoroughly ransacked. Every bit of silver, from the old-fashioned tea-pot and coffee-pot and the great flat porringer which Grandmother Graham's mother had brought over from Scotland to the cup which had belonged to the baby that died twenty years ago, and which Aunt Janet loved for his sake, the spoons, forks, all were collected in a large basket, with a quantity of linen and some articles of clothing.

If the thief had been content with these, he might probably have secured them, for he had already placed them on a table just beneath an open window; but, hoping to gain additional booty, he lost and we saved it all,—-or rather Rhoda saved it for us. We were extremely glad, for it would have been a great mischance losing those things, apart from the shame, as grandmother said, of keeping house so poorly while uncle and aunt were away.

Will Bright thought, from Rhoda's account, that the man might be Luke Potter; for Luke lived nobody knew how, and he had recently returned from a two years' absence, strongly suspected to have been a resident in a New York State-prison. His family occupied a little brown house, half a mile up the road to uncle's wood-lot.

So Will went up there the next day, pretending he wanted Luke to come and help about some mowing that was in hand. Luke's wife said that her husband had not been out of bed for two days, with a hurt he got on the cars the Saturday before. Then Will offered to go in and see if he could not do something for him; but Mrs. Potter said that he was asleep, and, having had a wakeful night, she guessed he had better not be disturbed.

Will felt sure of his man, and, knowing Potter's reckless audacity, made extensive preparations for defence. He brought down from the garret a rusty old gun and a powder-horn, hunted up the bullet-moulds, and run ever so many little leaden balls before he discovered that they did not fit the gun; but that, as he said, was of no consequence, because there would be just as much noise, and it was not likely that any thief would stay to be shot at twice.

So, notwithstanding our great fright, we grew to feel tolerably secure; but we took good care to fasten the windows, and to set in a safer place the articles which had so nearly been lost. Moreover, Will Bright was moved into a little room at the head of the back stairs.

It was to be thought that Miss Stackpole would be completely overcome by this midnight adventure; but she averred that, contrariwise, it had the effect to rouse every atom of energy and spirit which she possessed. She had waited only to slip on a double-gown, and, seizing the first article fit for offensive service, which proved to be a feather duster, she hurried to the scene of action. She said afterwards, that she had felt equal to knocking down ten men, if they had come within her range. I remember myself that she did look rather formidable. Her double-gown was red and yellow; and her hair, wound up in little horn-shaped papillotes, imparted to her face quite a bristly and fierce expression.

Evidently, Rhoda was much exalted in Will Bright's esteem from that eventful night.

"She's clear grit," said Will. "Who 'd have thought the little thing had so much spunk in her? I declare I don't believe there's another one in the house that would have done what she did."

The next forenoon, while Louise and I were sewing in grandmother's room, Miss Stackpole came hurriedly in, looking quite excited.

"Aunt Margaret,—girls," said she, "do you know that, after all, you've got a thief in the house? for you certainly have."

"Why, I mean exactly what I said; there's no doubt that somebody in the house is dishonest. I know it; I've lost a valuable pin."

"You need not laugh, Aunt Margaret; it is one of these new pink coral pins, and very expensive indeed. I shall make a stir about it, I can tell you. A pity if I can't come here for a few days without having half my things stolen!"

"How do I know? I don't think Dorothy would touch anything that was not her own."

"You don't?" said grandmother, firing up. "I am glad you see fit to make one exception in the charge you bring against the household."

"O, very well. I suppose you think I ought to let it all go, and never open my lips about it. But that is not my way."

"If it were my own pin, I shouldn't care so much; but it is not. It belongs to Mrs. Perkinpine."

"And you borrowed it? borrowed jewelry? Well done, Lucretia! I would not have believed it of you. I call that folly and meanness."

"No," said Miss Stackpole, "I shall certainly replace it; I shall have to, if I don't find it. But I will find it. I'll tell you: that girl that dusts my room, Hepsy you call her, I'll be bound that she has it. Not that she would know its value; but she would think it a pretty thing to wear. Now, Aunt Margaret, don't you really think yourself it looks—"

"Lucretia Stackpole," interrupted grandmother, "if you care to know what I really think myself, I will tell you. Since you have lost the pin, and care so much about it, I am sorry. You can well enough afford to replace it, though. But if you want to make everybody in the neighborhood dislike and despise you, just accuse Hepsy of taking your trinkets. She was born and bred here, close by us, and we think we know her. For my part, I would trust her with gold uncounted. Everybody will think, and I think too, that it is far more likely you have lost or mislaid it than that any one here has stolen it."

Miss Stackpole had already opened her lips to reply; but what she would have said will never be known, for she was interrupted again,—this time by a terrible noise, as if half the house had fallen, and then piteous cries. The sounds came from the wood-shed, and thither we all hastened, fully expecting to find some one buried under a fallen wood-pile. It was not quite that, but there lay Rhoda, with her foot bent under her, writhing and moaning in extreme pain.

We were every one assembled there, grandmother, Miss Stackpole, Louise, and I, and Hepsy, Dorothy, and Will Bright. Dorothy would have lifted and carried her in, but Rhoda would not allow it. Will Bright did not wait to be allowed, but took her up at once, more gently and carefully than one would have thought, and deposited her in her own room. Then, at grandmother's suggestion, he set off directly on horseback for Dr. Butterfield, whom fortunately he encountered on the way.

The doctor soon satisfied himself that the extent of the poor girl's injuries was a bad sprain,—enough, certainly, but less than we had feared.

It would be weeks before she would be able to walk, and meantime perfect quiet was strictly enforced. Hepsy volunteered her services as nurse, and discharged faithfully her assumed duties. But Rhoda grew restless and feverish, and finally became so much worse that we began seriously to fear lest she had received some internal injury.

One afternoon I was sitting with her when the doctor came. He spoke cheeringly, as usual; but when I went to the door with him, he said the child had some mental trouble, the disposal of which would be more effective than all his medicines, and that I must endeavor to ascertain and remove it.[Pg 529]

Without much difficulty I succeeded. She was haunted with the fear, that, in her present useless condition, she would be sent away. I convinced her that no one would do this during the absence of Uncle and Aunt Bradburn, and that before their return she would probably be able to resume her work.

"I know I'll sleep real good to-night," said Rhoda. "You see I'm awful tired of going round so from one place to another. It's just been from pillar to post ever since I can remember."

"Well," said I, "you may be sure that you will never be sent away from this house for sickness nor for accident. So now set your poor little heart at rest about it."

The blue eyes looked at me with an expression different from any I had seen in them before. They were soft, pretty eyes, too, now that the hair was suffered to lie around the face, instead of being stretched back as tightly as possible. One good result had come from the wood-shed catastrophe: the high comb had been shattered into irretrievable fragments. I inly determined that none like it should ever take its place.

Since Miss Stackpole said it was impossible for her to remain till the return of Uncle and Aunt Bradburn, I cannot say that, under the circumstances, we particularly desired her to prolong her visit. It may be that grandmother had too little patience with her; certainly they two were not congenial spirits. However, by means of taking her to see every relative we had in the vicinity, we disposed of the time very satisfactorily. She remained a few days longer than she had intended, so that Dorothy, who is unapproachable in ironing, might do up her muslin dresses.

"I have changed my mind about Hepsy," said she the night before she left. "I think now it is Rhoda."

"Miss Stackpole," said I, "it is true that Rhoda has not been here long; still, I have a perfect conviction of her honesty."

"Very amiable and generous of you to feel so, Kate," said Miss Stackpole; "perhaps a few years ago, when I was of your age, I should have thought just the same."

"Kate is twenty next September," said grandmother, who could refrain no longer. "I never forget anybody's age. It is quite possible that she will change in the course of twenty-five or thirty years."

We all knew this to be throwing down the gauntlet. Miss Stackpole did not, however, take it up. She said she intended to lay the circumstances, exactly as they were, before Mrs. Perkinpine; and if that lady would allow her, she should pay for the pin. She thought, though, it might be her duty to talk with Rhoda; perhaps, even at the eleventh hour, the girl might be induced to give it up.

"I will take it upon me, Lucretia," said grandmother, "to object to your talking with Rhoda. Even if we have not among us penetration enough to see that she is honest as daylight, it does not follow that we should be excusable in doing anything to make that forlorn orphan child less happy than she is now. You visit about a great deal, Lucretia. I hope, for the sake of all your friends, that you don't everywhere scatter your suspicions broadcast as you have done here. I am older than you, as you will admit, and I have never known any good come of unjust accusations."

After Miss Stackpole went up stairs that night, she folded the black silk dress she had been wearing to lay it in her trunk; and in doing that, she found the missing pin on the inside of the waist-lining, just where she had put it herself. Then she remembered having stuck it there one morning in a hurry, to prevent any one being tempted with seeing it lie around.[Pg 530]

"I do wish there was something for me to do," said Rhoda; "I never was used to lying abed doing nothing. It most tuckers me out."

"Yes, but that need not prevent your learning to read. I can teach you myself; I will, if you like."

"I guess your aunt won't calculate to get me to work for her, and then have me spend my time learning to read. First you know, she'll send me off."

"She will like it perfectly well. Grandmother is in authority here now; I will go and ask her." This I knew would seem to her decisive.

"She says yes, by all means; and that if you learn to read before aunt comes home, you shall have a new dress, and I may choose it for you."

Now it was no sinecure, teaching Rhoda, but she won the dress,—a lilac print, delicate and pretty enough for any one. I undertook to make the dress, but she accomplished a good part of it herself. She said Miss Reeny used to show her about sewing. Whatever was to be done with hands she learned with surprising quickness. Grandmother suggested that the reading lessons should be followed by a course in writing. Before the lameness was well over, Rhoda could write, slowly indeed, yet legibly.

I carried her some roses one evening. While putting them in water, I asked what flowers she liked best.

"I like sweetbriers best," said she. "I think sweetbriers are handsome in the graveyard. I set out one over Jinny Collins's grave. For what I know, it is growing now."

"A girl that used to live over at the poor-house when I did. She was bound out to the Widow Whitmarsh, the spring that I went to live with Mrs. Amos Kemp. Jinny used to have sick spells, and Mrs. Whitmarsh wanted to send her back to the poor-house, but folks said she couldn't, because she'd had her bound. She and Mrs. Kemp was neighbors; and after Jinny got so as to need somebody with her nights, Mrs. Kemp used to let me go and sleep with her, and then she could wake me up if she wanted anything. I wanted to go, and Jinny wanted to have me come; she used to say it did her lots of good. Sometimes we'd pretend we was rich, and was in a great big room with curtains to the windows. We didn't have any candle burning,—Mrs. Whitmarsh said there wa'n't no need of one, and more there wa'n't. One night we said we'd take a ride to-morrow or next day. We pretended we'd got a father, and he was real rich, and had got a horse and wagon. Jinny said we'd go to the store and buy us a new white gown,—she always wanted a white gown. By and by she said she was real sleepy; she didn't have no bad coughing-spell that night, such as she most always did. She asked me if I didn't smell the clover-blows, how sweet they was; and then she talked about white lilies, and how she liked 'em most of anything, without it was sweetbriers. Then she asked me if I knew what palms was; and she said when she was dead she wanted me to have her little pink chany box that Miss Maria Elliot give her once, when she bought some blueberries of her. So then she dozed a little while; and I don't know why, but I couldn't get asleep for a good while, for all I'd worked real hard that day. I guess 'twas as much as an hour she laid kind of still; she never did sleep real sound, so but what she moaned and talked broken now and then. So by and by she give a start, and says she, 'I'm all ready.' 'Ready for what, Jinny,' says I. But she didn't seem to know as I was talking to her. Says[Pg 531] she, 'I'm all ready. I've got on a white gown and a palm in my hand.' So then I knew she was wandering like, as I'd heard say folks did when they was very sick; for she hadn't any gown at all on, without you might call Mrs. Whitmarsh's old faded calico sack one, nor nothing in her hand neither. So pretty soon she dropped to sleep again, and I did too. And I slept later 'n common. The sun was shining right into my eyes when I opened 'em. I thought 't would trouble Jinny, and I was just going to pin her skirt up to the window, and I see that she looked awful white. I put my hand on her forehead, and it was just as cold as a stone. So then I knew she was dead. I never see her look so happy like. She had the pleasantest smile on her lips ever you see. I didn't know as Mrs. Kemp'd like to have me stay, but I just brushed her hair,—'t was real pretty hair, just a little mite curly,—and then I run home and told Mrs. Kemp. She said she'd just as lives I'd stay over to Mrs. Whitmarsh's as not that day, 'cause she was going over to Woodstock shopping. So I went back again, and Mrs. Whitmarsh she sent me to one of the selectmen to see if she'd got to be to the expense of the funeral, 'cause she said it didn't seem right, seeing she never got much work out of Jinny, she was always so weakly. And Mr. Robbins he said the town would pay for the coffin and digging the grave. That made her real pleasant; and I don't know what put me up to it, but I was real set on it that Jinny should have on a white gown in the coffin. And I asked Mrs. Whitmarsh if I mightn't go over to Miss Bradford's; and she let me, and Miss Bradford give me an old white gown, if I'd iron it; and Polly Wheelock, she was Miss Bradford's girl, she helped me put it on to Jinny. And then Polly got some white lilies, and I got some sweetbrier sprigs, and laid round her in the coffin. I've seen prettier coffins, but I never see no face look so pretty as Jinny's. Mrs. Whitmarsh had the funeral next morning. She said she wanted to that night, so she could put the room airing, but she supposed folks would talk, and, besides, they didn't get the grave dug quick enough neither. Mrs. Kemp let me go to the funeral. I thought they was going to carry her over to the poor-house burying-ground, but they didn't, 'cause 't would cost so much for a horse and wagon. The right minister was gone away, and the one that was there was going off in the cars, so he had to hurry. There wa'n't hardly anybody there, only some men to let the coffin down, and the sexton, and Mrs. Whitmarsh and Polly Wheelock and I. The minister prayed a little speck of a prayer and went right away. I heard Mrs. Whitmarsh telling Mrs. Kemp she thought she'd got out of it pretty well, seeing she didn't expect nothing but what she'd got to buy the coffin, and get the grave dug, and be to all the expense. She said she guessed nobody'd catch her having another girl bound out to her. Mrs. Kemp said she always knew 't was a great risk, and that was why she didn't have me bound.

"That summer, when berries was ripe, Mrs. Kemp let me go and pick 'em and carry 'em round to sell; and she said I might have a cent for every quart I sold. I got over three dollars that summer for myself."

"I bought some shoes, and some yarn to knit me some stockings. I can knit real good."

"Partly 't was 'cause she didn't like my not buying her old green shawl with my share of the money for the berries; and partly 'cause I got cold, and it settled in my feet so's I couldn't hardly go round. So she told me she'd concluded to have me go back to the poor-house. If she kept a girl, she said, she wanted one to wait on her, and not to be waited on. She waited two or three days to see if I didn't get better, so as I could walk over there; but I didn't. And one[Pg 532] day it had been raining, but it held up awhile, and she see a neighbor riding by, and she run out and asked him if he couldn't carry me over to the poor-house. He said he could if she wanted him to; so I went. I had on my cape, and it wa'n't very warm. She asked me when I come away, if I wa'n't sorry I hadn't a shawl. I expect I did catch cold. I couldn't set up nor do nothing for more 'n three weeks. When I got so I could knit, my yarn was gone. I never knew what become of it; and one of the women used to borrow my shoes for her little girl, and she wore 'em out So, come spring, I was just where I was the year before, only lonesomer, cause Jinny was gone."

"To the poor-house? No; Betty Crosfield wanted a girl to come and help her. She took in washing for Mr. Furniss's hands. She said I wa'n't strong enough to earn much, but she would pay me in clothes. She give me a Shaker bonnet and an old gown that the soap had took the color out of, and she made a tack in it, so's it did. And I had my cape. When strawberries come, the hands was most all gone, and she let me sleep there, and go day-times after berries, and she to have half the pay. That's how I got my red calico and my shawl."

"Miss Reeny, I carried it over to see if she'd cut it out, and she said she'd make it if they'd let her, and they did. And I got her some green tea. She used to say sometimes, she'd give anything for a cup of green tea, such as her mother used to have."

"A woman that lives over there. Her father used to be a doctor; but he died, and she was sickly and didn't know as she had any relations, and by and by she had to go there. They say over there she ain't in her right mind, but I don't know. She was always good to me. There was an old chair with a cushion in it, and Miss Reeny wanted it to sit in, 'cause her back was lame; but old Mrs. Fitts wanted it too, and they used to spat it. So Miss Holbrook come there one day to see the place, and somebody told her about the cushioned chair, and, if you'll believe it, the very next day there was one come over as good again, with arms to it, and a cushion, and all. Miss Holbrook sent it over to Miss Reeny. None of 'em couldn't take it away."

"Yes, she can't go nowhere else. One night Betty Crosfield said I needn't come there no more; she was going to take a boarder. Berry-time was most over, so then I got a place to Miss Stoney's, the milliner. She agreed to give me twenty-five cents a week, and I thought to be sure I should get back my shoes and yarn now. But one morning the teapot was cracked, and she asked me, and I said I didn't do it,—and I didn't; but she said she knew I did, because there wasn't nobody but her and me that touched it, and she should keep my wages till they come to a dollar and a half, because that was what a new one would cost. Before the teapot was paid for I did break a glass dish. I didn't know 't would hurt it to put it in hot water; and everything else that was broke, she thought I broke it, and she kept it out of my wages. I told her I didn't see as she ought to; and in the fall she said she couldn't put up with my sauce and my breaking no longer. Mrs. Kittredge wanted a girl, and I went there."

"I think it was about the hardest place of all. I'd as lives go back to the poor-house as to stay there. Sally Kittredge used to tell things that wa'n't true about me. She told one day that I pushed her down. I never touched my hand to her. But Mrs. Kittredge got a raw hide up stairs and give it to me awful. I shouldn't wonder if it showed now; just look."

She undid the fastening of her dress and slipped off the waist for me to see. The little back—she was very small—was all discolored with stripes, purple, green, and yellow. After showing me[Pg 533] these bruises, she quietly fastened her dress again.

Now there was that in Rhoda's manner during this narration which wrought in my mind entire conviction of its verity. By the time of Uncle and Aunt Bradburn's return, she was growing in favor with every one in the house. She was gentle, patient, and grateful.

The deftness with which she used those small fingers suggested to me the idea of teaching her some of the more delicate kinds of fancy-work. But it seemed that she required no teaching. An opportunity given of looking on while one was embroidering, crocheting, or making tatting, and the process was her own. Native tact imparted to her at once the skill which others attain only by long practice. As for her fine sewing, it was exquisite; and in looking at it, one half regretted the advent of the sewing-machine.

The fall days grew short; the winter came and went; and in the course of it, besides doing everything that was required of her in the household, keeping up the reading and writing, and satisfactory progress in arithmetic, Rhoda had completed, at my suggestion, ten of those little tatting collars, made of fine thread, and rivalling in delicate beauty the loveliest fabrics of lace.

Because a project was on foot for Rhoda. A friend of mine going to Boston took charge of the little package of collars, and the result was that the proprietor of a fancy-store there engaged to receive all of them that might be manufactured, at the price of three dollars each. When my friend returned, she brought me, as the avails of her commission, the sum of thirty dollars.

But here arose an unexpected obstacle. It was difficult to convince Rhoda that the amount, which seemed to her immense, was of right her own. She comprehended it, however, at last; and thenceforth her skill in this and other departments of fancy-work obtained for her constant and remunerative employment.

It was now a year since Rhoda came to us, and during this time her improvement had been steady and rapid. And since she had come to dress like other girls, no one could say that she was ill-looking; but, as I claimed the merit of effecting this change in her exterior, it may be that I observed it more than any one else. Still, I fancy that some others were not blind.

"Where did you get those swamp-pinks, Rhoda?" for I detected the fine azalia odor before I saw them.

A bright color suffused the childlike face, quite to the roots of the hair. "Will Bright got them when he went after the cows. You may have some if you want them."

"No, thank you; it is a pity to disturb them, they look so pretty just as they are."

Troubles come to everybody. Even Will Bright, though no one had ever known him to be without cheerfulness enough for half a dozen, was not wholly exempt from ills. With all his good sense, which was not a little, Will was severely incredulous of the reputed effects of poison-ivy; and one day, by way of maintaining his position, gathered a spray of it and applied it to his face. He was not long in finding the vine in question an ugly customer. His face assumed the aspect of a horrible mask, and the dimensions of a good-sized water-pail, with nothing left of the eyes but two short, straight marks. For once, Will had to succumb and be well cared for.

In this state of things a letter came to him with a foreign postmark. "I will lay it away in your desk, Will," said uncle, "till you can read it yourself; that will be in a day or two."

"If you don't mind the trouble, sir, I should thank you to open and read it for me. I get no letters that I am unwilling you should see."

It was to the effect that a relative in England had left him a bequest of five hundred pounds, and that the amount would be made payable to his order wherever he should direct.[Pg 534]

"You will oblige me, sir, if you will say nothing about this for the present," said Will, when uncle had congratulated him.

"I hope we shall not lose sight of you, Will," said uncle, who really felt a strong liking for the young man, who had served him faithfully three years.

"I hope not, sir," replied Will. "I shall be glad to consult you before I decide what use to make of this windfall. At all events, I don't want to change my quarters for the present."

About the same time, brother Ned, in Oregon, sent me a letter which contained this passage:—

"We are partly indebted for this splendid stroke of business to the help of a townsman of our own; his name is Joseph Breck. He says he ran away from Deacon Handy's, at fifteen years old, because the Deacon would not send him to school as he had agreed. Ask uncle if he remembers Ira Breck, who lived over at Ash Swamp, near the old Ingersol place. He was drowned saving timber in a freshet. He left two children, and this Joseph is the elder. The other was a girl, her name Rhoda, six or eight years younger than Joseph; she must be now, he says, not far from sixteen or seventeen. Joe has had a hard row to hoe, but now that he begins to see daylight he wants to do something for his sister. He is a thoroughly honest and competent fellow, and we are glad enough to get hold of him. He told me the other night such a story as would make your heart ache: at all events it would make you try to ascertain something about his sister before you write next."

"Yes," said she, in reply to my inquiries, "I did have a brother once. He went off and was lost. I can just remember him. I don't suppose I shall ever see him again. Folks said likely he was drowned."

"I'm most afraid it's a dream," said Rhoda after a brief silence. "Over at the poor-house I used to have such good dreams, and then I'd wake up out of them. After I came here I used to be afraid it was a dream; but I didn't wake out of that. Perhaps I shall see Joe again; who knows?"

From this time a change came over Rhoda. She begged as a privilege to learn to do everything that a woman can do about a house.

"I do declare, Miss Kate," said Dorothy one day, after displaying a grand array of freshly baked loaves, wearing the golden-brown tint that hints at such savory sweetness, "that girl, for a white girl, is going to make a most a splendid cook. I never touched this bread, and just you see! ain't it perfindiculur wonderful?"

Soon after, I found Rhoda, with her dress tidily pinned out of harm's way, standing at a barrel, and poking vigorously with a stick longer than herself.

"Come here and look at the soap, Miss Kate. I made it every bit myself; ain't it going to be beautiful?"

"I'll tell you," in a low voice; "perhaps when Joe comes home, some time he'll buy himself a little place and let me keep house for him; then I shall want to know how to do everything."

"No, I can't wring," looking piteously from one little hand to the other. "I can iron cute, but I can't wring. Dorothy says that is one thing I shall have to give up, unless I can make my hands grow. Do you suppose I could?"

"O yes, when the churning isn't large. Likely Joe won't keep more than one cow."

I looked at the eager little thing,[Pg 535] wondering if her hope would ever be realized. She divined my thought, and glanced at me wistfully. "You think this is a dream; you think I shall wake up.

"No, no," I answered; "I wonder what Joe will think when he sees what a mite of a sister he has. He'll make you stand round, Rhoda, you may be sure of that."

"May be he isn't any larger himself," she responded, with a ready, bright smile.

Brother Ned's next letter brought the welcome tidings that he hoped to come home the ensuing August, and that Joseph Breck would probably come at the same time.

June went, and July. Rhoda grew restless; she was no longer constantly at work; she began to listen nervously for every train of cars. I was glad to believe that the brother for whom she held in readiness such lavish love was deserving of it. She grew prettier every day. The uncouth dress was gone forever, the hideous bonnet burned up, and the gay shawl made over to Miss Reeny, who admired and coveted it. Hepsy herself was not more faultlessly quiet and tasteful in her attire. I was sure that Joe, if he had eyes at all, must be convinced that his sister was worth coming all the way from Oregon to see.

At last, one pleasant afternoon, there was a step in the hall that I recognized; it was Ned's! I reached him first, and felt his dear old arms close fast about me; and then, for Louise's right was stronger than mine, I gave him over to her and the rest. My happiness, though it half blinded me, did not prevent my seeing a pallid little face looking earnestly in from the back hall door. Then Joe had not come! I felt a keen pang for Rhoda.

"Ned," said I, as soon as I could get a word with him, "there is Joe Breck's sister; where is Joe?"

Sure enough, there above Rhoda's—a good way above—was a dark, fine, manly face, all sun-browned and bearded.—"Rhoda!"—He had stolen a march upon her. She turned and saw him. A swift look of glad surprise, and the brother and sister so long separated had recognized each other. He drew her to him and held her there tenderly as if she were a little child.

So Joe bought "a little place," and I believe he would fain have had his sister Rhoda for its mistress. But then it came out that Will Bright, that sly fellow had been using every bit of persuasion in his power to make her promise that she would keep house for him. Nay, he had won already a conditional promise, the proviso being, of course, Joe's approval. Will's is not a little place, either. With his relative's legacy he purchased the great Wellwood nursery; and so skilled is he in its management that uncle says there is not a more thriving man in the neighborhood. And Rhoda, of whom he is wonderfully proud, is as content a little woman as any in the land. Whenever I go to Uncle Bradburn's,—and few summers pass that I do not,—I make a point of reserving time for a visit to Rhoda. The last time I went, I encountered Will bringing her down stairs in his arms; and she held in her arms, as something too precious to be yielded to another, what proved on inspection to be a tiny, blue-eyed baby. It was comical to see her ready, matronly ways; and it was touching, when you thought of the past, to witness her quiet yet perfect enjoyment.

And I really know of no one in the world more heartily benevolent than she. "You see," she says, "I knew once what it is to need kindness; and now I should be worse than a heathen if I did not help other people when I have a chance."

I suppose Hepsy pitied Joe for his disappointment. In any case, she has done what she could to console him for it. On the whole, it would be difficult to say which is the happier wife, Hepsy or Rhoda.

PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.

XI.

Concord, 1843.—To sit at the gate of Heaven, and watch persons as they apply for admittance, some gaining it, others being thrust away.

The streak of sunshine journeying through the prisoner's cell,—it may be considered as something sent from Heaven to keep the soul alive and glad within him. And there is something equivalent to this sunbeam in the darkest circumstances; as flowers, which figuratively grew in Paradise, in the dusky room of a poor maiden in a great city; the child, with its sunny smile, is a cherub. God does not let us live anywhere or anyhow on earth without placing something of Heaven close at hand, by rightly using and considering which, the earthly darkness or trouble will vanish, and all be Heaven.

When the reformation of the world is complete, a fire shall be made of the gallows; and the hangman shall come and sit down by it in solitude and despair. To him shall come the last thief, the last drunkard, and other representatives of past crime and vice; and they shall hold a dismal merrymaking, quaffing the contents of the last brandy-bottle.

The human heart to be allegorized as a cavern. At the entrance there is sunshine, and flowers growing about it. You step within but a short distance, and begin to find yourself surrounded with a terrible gloom and monsters of divers kinds; it seems like hell itself. You are bewildered, and wander long without hope. At last a light strikes upon you. You pass towards it, and find yourself in a region that seems, in some sort, to reproduce the flowers and sunny beauty of the entrance, but all perfect. These are the depths of the heart, or of human nature, bright and peaceful. The gloom and terror may lie deep, but deeper still this eternal beauty.

A man in his progress through life may pick up various matters,—sin, care, habit, riches,—until at last he staggers along under a heavy burden.

To have a lifelong desire for a certain object, which shall appear to be the one thing essential to happiness. At last that object is attained, but proves to be merely incidental to a more important affair, and that affair is the greatest evil fortune that can occur. For instance, all through the winter I had wished to sit in the dusk of evening, by the flickering firelight, with my wife, instead of beside a dismal stove. At last this has come to pass; but it was owing to her illness.

Madame Calderon de la Barca (in "Life in Mexico") speaks of persons who have been inoculated with the venom of rattlesnakes, by pricking them in various places with the tooth. These persons are thus secured forever after against the bite of any venomous reptile. They have the power of calling snakes, and feel great pleasure in playing with and handling them. Their own bite becomes poisonous to people not inoculated in the same manner. Thus a part of the serpent's nature appears to be transfused into them.

An auction (perhaps in Vanity Fair) of offices, honors, and all sorts of things considered desirable by mankind, together with things eternally valuable,[Pg 537] which shall be considered by most people as worthless lumber.

An examination of wits and poets at a police court, and they to be sentenced by the judge to various penalties or fines,—the house of correction, whipping, etc.,—according to the moral offences of which they are guilty.

A volume bound in cowhide. It should treat of breeding cattle, or some other coarse subject.

A young girl inhabits a family graveyard, that being all that remains of rich hereditary possessions.

An interview between General Charles Lee, of the Revolution, and his sister, the foundress and mother of the sect of Shakers.

For a sketch for a child:—the life of a city dove, or perhaps of a flock of doves, flying about the streets, and sometimes alighting on church steeples, on the eaves of lofty houses, etc.

The greater picturesqueness and reality of back courts, and everything appertaining to the rear of a house, as compared with the front, which is fitted up for the public eye. There is much to be learned always, by getting a glimpse at rears. Where the direction of a road has been altered, so as to pass the rear of farm-houses instead of the front, a very noticeable aspect is presented.

A sketch:—the devouring of old country residences by the overgrown monster of a city. For instance, Mr. Beekman's ancestral residence was originally several miles from the city of New York; but the pavements kept creeping nearer and nearer, till now the house is removed, and a street runs directly through what was once its hall.

An essay on various kinds of death, together with the just before and just after.

The majesty of death to be exemplified in a beggar, who, after being seen, humble and cringing, in the streets of a city for many years, at length, by some means or other, gets admittance into a rich man's mansion, and there dies, assuming state and striking awe into the breasts of those who had looked down on him.

To write a dream, which shall resemble the real course of a dream, with all its inconsistency, its strange transformations, which are all taken as a matter of course, its eccentricities and aimlessness, with nevertheless a leading idea running through the whole. Up to this old age of the world, no such thing ever has been written.

To allegorize life with a masquerade, and represent mankind generally as masquers. Here and there a natural face may appear.

With an emblematical divining-rod, to seek for emblematic gold,—that is, for truth,—for what of Heaven is left on earth.

A task for a subjugated fiend:—to gather up all the fallen autumnal leaves of a forest, assort them, and affix each one to the twig where it originally grew.

The emerging from their lurking-places of evil characters on some occasion suited to their action, they having been quite unknown to the world hitherto. For instance, the French Revolution brought out such wretches.

The advantage of a longer life than is now allotted to mortals,—the many things that might then be accomplished, to which one lifetime is inadequate, and for which the time spent seems therefore lost, a successor being unable to take up the task where we drop it.

George I. had promised the Duchess[Pg 538] of Kendall, his mistress, that, if possible, he would pay her a visit after death. Accordingly, a large raven flew into the window of her villa at Isleworth. She believed it to be his soul, and treated it ever after with all respect and tenderness, till either she or the bird died.

The history of an almshouse in a country village, from the era of its foundation downward,—a record of the remarkable occupants of it, and extracts from interesting portions of its annals. The rich of one generation might, in the next, seek for a house there, either in their own persons or in those of their representatives. Perhaps the son and heir of the founder might have no better refuge. There should be occasional sunshine let into the story; for instance, the good fortune of some nameless infant, educated there, and discovered finally to be the child of wealthy parents.

The conversation of the steeples of a city, when their bells are ringing on Sunday,—Calvinist, Episcopalian, Unitarian, etc.

Allston's picture of "Belshazzar's Feast,"—with reference to the advantages or otherwise of having life assured to us till we could finish important tasks on which we might be engaged.

Visits to castles in the air,—Chateaux en Espagne, etc.,—with remarks on that sort of architecture.

To consider a piece of gold as a sort of talisman, or as containing within itself all the forms of enjoyment that it can purchase, so that they might appear, by some fantastical chemic process, as visions.

A man seeks for something excellent, but seeks it in the wrong spirit and in a wrong way, and finds something horrible; as, for instance, he seeks for treasure, and finds a dead body; for the gold that somebody has hidden, and brings to light his accumulated sins.

An auction of second-hands,—thus moralizing how the fashion of this world passeth away.

Noted people in a town,—as the town-crier, the old fruit-man, the constable, the oyster-seller, the fish-man, the scissors-grinder, etc.

The magic ray of sunshine for a child's story,—the sunshine circling round through a prisoner's cell, from his high and narrow window. He keeps his soul alive and cheerful by means of it, it typifying cheerfulness; and when he is released, he takes up the ray of sunshine, and carries it away with him, and it enables him to discover treasures all over the world, in places where nobody else would think of looking for them.

A young man finds a portion of the skeleton of a mammoth; he begins by degrees to become interested in completing it; searches round the world for the means of doing so; spends youth and manhood in the pursuit; and in old age has nothing to show for his life but this skeleton of a mammoth.

For a child's sketch:—a meeting with all the personages mentioned in Mother Goose's Melodies, and other juvenile stories.

Great expectation to be entertained in the allegorical Grub Street of the great American writer. Or a search-warrant to be sent thither to catch a poet. On the former supposition, he shall be discovered under some most unlikely form, or shall be supposed to have lived and died unrecognized.

An old man to promise a youth a treasure of gold, and to keep his promise[Pg 539] by teaching him practically a golden rule.

A valuable jewel to be buried in the grave of a beloved person, or thrown over with a corpse at sea, or deposited under the foundation-stone of an edifice,—and to be afterwards met with by the former owner, in some one's possession.

A noted gambler had acquired such self-command that, in the most desperate circumstances of his game, no change of feature ever betrayed him; only there was a slight scar upon his forehead, which at such moments assumed a deep blood-red hue. Thus, in playing at brag, for instance, his antagonist could judge from this index when he had a bad hand. At last, discovering what it was that betrayed him, he covered the scar with a green silk shade.

A dream the other night, that the world had become dissatisfied with the inaccurate manner in which facts are reported, and had employed me, with a salary of a thousand dollars, to relate things of public importance exactly as they happen.

A person who has all the qualities of a friend, except that he invariably fails you at the pinch.

Concord, July 27, 1844.—To sit down in a solitary place or a busy and bustling one, if you please, and await such little events as may happen, or observe such noticeable points as the eyes fall upon around you. For instance, I sat down to-day, at about ten o'clock in the forenoon, in Sleepy Hollow, a shallow space scooped out among the woods, which surround it on all sides, it being pretty nearly circular or oval, and perhaps four or five hundred yards in diameter. At the present season, a thriving field of Indian corn, now in its most perfect growth and tasselled out, occupies nearly half of the hollow; and it is like the lap of bounteous Nature, filled with breadstuff. On one verge of this hollow, skirting it, is a terraced pathway, broad enough for a wheel-track, overshadowed with oaks, stretching their long, knotted, rude, rough arms between earth and sky; the gray skeletons, as you look upward, are strikingly prominent amid the green foliage. Likewise, there are chestnuts, growing up in a more regular and pyramidal shape; white pines, also; and a shrubbery composed of the shoots of all these trees, overspreading and softening the bank on which the parent stems are growing, these latter being intermingled with coarse grass. Observe the pathway; it is strewn over with little bits of dry twigs and decayed branches, and the sear and brown oak-leaves of last year, that have been moistened by snow and rain, and whirled about by harsh and gentle winds, since their verdure has departed. The needle-like leaves of the pine that are never noticed in falling—that fall, yet never leave the tree bare—are likewise on the path; and with these are pebbles, the remains of what was once a gravelled surface, but which the soil accumulating from the decay of leaves, and washing down from the bank, has now almost covered. The sunshine comes down on the pathway, with the bright glow of noon, at certain points; in other places, there is a shadow as deep as the glow; but along the greater portion sunshine glimmers through shadow, and shadow effaces sunshine, imaging that pleasant mood of mind when gayety and pensiveness intermingle. A bird is chirping overhead among the branches, but exactly whereabout you seek in vain to determine; indeed, you hear the rustle of the leaves, as he continually changes his position. A little sparrow, however, hops into view, alighting on the slenderest twigs, and seemingly delighting in the swinging and heaving motion which his slight substance communicates to them; but he is not the loquacious bird, whose voice still comes, eager and busy, from his hidden whereabout. Insects are fluttering around.[Pg 540] The cheerful, sunny hum of the flies is altogether summer-like, and so gladsome that you pardon them their intrusiveness and impertinence, which continually impel them to fly against your face, to alight upon your hands, and to buzz in your very ear, as if they wished to get into your head, among your most secret thoughts. In truth, a fly is the most impertinent and indelicate thing in creation,—the very type and moral of human spirits with whom one occasionally meets, and who, perhaps, after an existence troublesome and vexatious to all with whom they come in contact, have been doomed to reappear in this congenial shape. Here is one intent upon alighting on my nose. In a room, now,—in a human habitation,—I could find in my conscience to put him to death; but here we have intruded upon his own domain, which he holds in common with all other children of earth and air; and we have no right to slay him on his own ground. Now we look about us more minutely, and observe that the acorn-cups of last year are strewn plentifully on the bank and on the path. There is always pleasure in examining an acorn-cup,—perhaps associated with fairy banquets, where they were said to compose the table-service. Here, too, are those balls which grow as excrescences on the leaves of the oak, and which young kittens love so well to play with, rolling them over the carpet. We see mosses, likewise, growing on the banks, in as great variety as the trees of the wood. And how strange is the gradual process with which we detect objects that are right before the eyes! Here now are whortleberries, ripe and black, growing actually within reach of my hand, yet unseen till this moment. Were we to sit here all day,—a week, a month, and doubtless a lifetime,—objects would thus still be presenting themselves as new, though there would seem to be no reason why we should not have detected them all at the first moment.

Now a cat-bird is mewing at no great distance. Then the shadow of a bird flits across a sunny spot. There is a peculiar impressiveness in this mode of being made acquainted with the flight of a bird; it impresses the mind more than if the eye had actually seen it. As we look round to catch a glimpse of the winged creature, we behold the living blue of the sky, and the brilliant disk of the sun, broken and made tolerable to the eye by the intervening foliage. Now, when you are not thinking of it, the fragrance of the white pines is suddenly wafted to you by a slight, almost imperceptible breeze, which has begun to stir. Now the breeze is the softest sigh imaginable, yet with a spiritual potency, insomuch that it seems to penetrate, with its mild, ethereal coolness, through the outward clay, and breathe upon the spirit itself, which shivers with gentle delight. Now the breeze strengthens so much as to shake all the leaves, making them rustle sharply; but it has lost its most ethereal power. And now, again, the shadows of the boughs lie as motionless as if they were painted on the pathway. Now, in the stillness, is heard the long, melancholy note of a bird, complaining above of some wrong or sorrow that man, or her own kind, or the immitigable doom of mortal affairs, has inflicted upon her, the complaining, but unresisting sufferer. And now, all of a sudden, we hear the sharp, shrill chirrup of a red squirrel, angry, it seems, with somebody—perhaps with ourselves—for having intruded into what he is pleased to consider his own domain. And hark! terrible to the ear, here is the minute but intense hum of a mosquito. Instinct prevails over all sentiment; we crush him at once, and there is his grim and grisly corpse, the ugliest object in nature. This incident has disturbed our tranquillity. In truth, the whole insect tribe, so far as we can judge, are made more for themselves, and less for man, than any other portion of creation. With such reflections, we look at a swarm of them, peopling, indeed, the whole air, but only visible when they flash into[Pg 541] the sunshine, and annihilated out of visible existence when they dart into a region of shadow, to be again reproduced as suddenly. Now we hear the striking of the village clock, distant, but yet so near that each stroke is distinctly impressed upon the air. This is a sound that does not disturb the repose of the scene; it does not break our Sabbath,—for like a Sabbath seems this place,—and the more so, on account of the cornfield rustling at our feet. It tells of human labor; but being so solitary now, it seems as if it were so on account of the sacredness of the Sabbath. Yet it is not; for we hear at a distance mowers whetting their scythes; but these sounds of labor, when at a proper remoteness, do but increase the quiet of one who lies at his ease, all in a mist of his own musings. There is the tinkling of a cowbell,—a noise how peevishly discordant were it close at hand, but even musical now. But hark! there is the whistle of the locomotive,—the long shriek, heard above all other harshness; for the space of a mile cannot mollify it into harmony. It tells a story of busy men, citizens from the hot street, who have come to spend a day in a country village,—men of business,—in short, of all unquietness; and no wonder that it gives such a startling scream, since it brings the noisy world into the midst of our slumberous peace. As our thoughts repose again after this interruption, we find ourselves gazing up at the leaves, and comparing their different aspects,—the beautiful diversity of green, as the sun is diffused through them as a medium, or reflected from their glossy surface. We see, too, here and there, dead, leafless branches, which we had no more been aware of before than if they had assumed this old and dry decay since we sat down upon the bank. Look at our feet; and here, likewise, are objects as good as new. There are two little round, white fungi, which probably sprung from the ground in the course of last night,—curious productions, of the mushroom tribe, and which by and by will be those small things with smoke in them which children call puff-balls. Is there nothing else? Yes; here is a whole colony of little ant-hills,—a real village of them. They are round hillocks, formed of minute particles of gravel, with an entrance in the centre, and through some of them blades of grass or small shrubs have sprouted up, producing an effect not unlike trees that overshadow a homestead. Here is a type of domestic industry,—perhaps, too, something of municipal institutions,—perhaps likewise—who knows?—the very model of a community, which Fourierites and others are stumbling in pursuit of. Possibly the student of such philosophies should go to the ant, and find that Nature has given him his lesson there. Meantime, like a malevolent genius, I drop a few grains of sand into the entrance of one of these dwellings, and thus quite obliterate it. And behold, here comes one of the inhabitants, who has been abroad upon some public or private business, or perhaps to enjoy a fantastic walk, and cannot any longer find his own door. What surprise, what hurry, what confusion of mind are expressed in all his movements! How inexplicable to him must be the agency that has effected this mischief! The incident will probably be long remembered in the annals of the ant-colony, and be talked of in the winter days, when they are making merry over their hoarded provisions. But now it is time to move. The sun has shifted his position, and has found a vacant space through the branches, by means of which he levels his rays full upon my head. Yet now, as I arise, a cloud has come across him, and makes everything gently sombre in an instant. Many clouds, voluminous and heavy, are scattered about the sky, like the shattered ruins of a dreamer's Utopia; but I will not send my thoughts thitherward now, nor take one of them into my present observations.

And now how narrow, scanty, and meagre is the record of observations,[Pg 542] compared with the immensity that was to be observed within the bounds which I prescribed to myself! How shallow and thin a stream of thought, too,—of distinct and expressed thought,—compared with the broad tide of dim emotions, ideas, associations, which were flowing through the haunted regions of imagination, intellect, and sentiment,—sometimes excited by what was around me, sometimes with no perceptible connection with them! When we see how little we can express, it is a wonder that any man ever takes up a pen a second time.

To find all sorts of ridiculous employments for people that have nothing better to do;—as to comb out the cows' tails, shave goats, hoard up seeds of weeds, etc., etc.

The baby, the other day, tried to grasp a handful of sunshine. She also grasps at the shadows of things in candle-light.

To typify our mature review of our early projects and delusions, by representing a person as wandering, in manhood, through and among the various castles in the air that he had reared in his youth, and describing how they look to him,—their dilapidation, etc. Possibly some small portion of these structures may have a certain reality, and suffice him to build a humble dwelling in which to pass his life.

The search of an investigator for the unpardonable sin: he at last finds it in his own heart and practice.

The trees reflected in the river;—they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near them. So are we.

The unpardonable sin might consist in a want of love and reverence for the human soul; in consequence of which, the investigator pried into its dark depths,—not with a hope or purpose of making it better, but from a cold, philosophical curiosity,—content that it should be wicked in whatever kind and degree, and only desiring to study it out. Would not this, in other words, be the separation of the intellect from the heart?

There are some faces that have no more expression in them than any other part of the body. The hand of one person may express more than the face of another.

An ugly person with tact may make a bad face and figure pass very tolerably, and more than tolerably. Ugliness without tact is horrible. It ought to be lawful to extirpate such wretches.

To represent the influence which dead men have among living affairs. For instance, a dead man controls the disposition of wealth; a dead man sits on the judgment-seat, and the living judges do but repeat his decisions; dead men's opinions in all things control the living truth; we believe in dead men's religions; we laugh at dead men's jokes; we cry at dead men's pathos; everywhere, and in all matters, dead men tyrannize inexorably over us.

When the heart is full of care, or the mind much occupied, the summer and the sunshine and the moonlight are but a gleam and glimmer,—a vague dream, which does not come within us, but only makes itself imperfectly perceptible on the outside of us.

Biographies of eminent American merchants,—it would be a work likely to have a great circulation in our commercial country. If successful, there might be a second volume of eminent foreign merchants. Perhaps it had better be adapted to the capacity of young clerks and apprentices.

For the virtuoso's collection:—Alexander's copy of the Iliad, enclosed in the jewelled casket of Darius, still fragrant with the perfumes Darius kept in it. Also the pen with which Faust[Pg 543] signed away his salvation, with the drop of blood dried in it.

October 13, 1844.—This morning, after a heavy hoar-frost, the leaves, at sunrise, were falling from the trees in our avenue without a breath of wind, quietly descending by their own weight. In an hour or two after, the ground was strewn with them; and the trees are almost bare, with the exception of two or three poplars, which are still green. The apple and pear trees are still green; so is the willow. The first severe frosts came at least a fortnight ago,—more, if I mistake not.

Sketch of a person, who, by strength of character or assistant circumstances, has reduced another to absolute slavery and dependence on him. Then show that the person who appeared to be the master must inevitably be at least as much a slave as the other, if not more so. All slavery is reciprocal, on the supposition most favorable to the masters.

Persons who write about themselves and their feelings, as Byron did, may be said to serve up their own hearts, duly spiced, and with brain-sauce out of their own heads, as a repast for the public.

To represent a man in the midst of all sorts of cares and annoyances, with impossibilities to perform, and driven almost distracted by his inadequacy. Then quietly comes Death, and releases him from all his troubles; and he smiles, and congratulates himself on escaping so easily.

What if it should be discovered to be all a mistake, that people, who were supposed to have died long ago, are really dead? Byron to be still living, a man of sixty; Burns, too, in extreme old age; Bonaparte likewise; and many other distinguished men, whose lives might have extended to these limits. Then the private acquaintances, friends, enemies, wives, taken to be dead, to be all really living in this world. The machinery might be a person's being persuaded to believe that he had been mad; or having dwelt many years on a desolate island; or having been in the heart of Africa or China; and a friend amuses himself with giving this account. Or some traveller from Europe shall thus correct popular errors.

The life of a woman, who, by the old Colony law, was condemned to wear always the letter A sewed on her garment in token of her sin.

To make literal pictures of figurative expressions. For instance, he burst into tears,—a man suddenly turned into a shower of briny drops. An explosion of laughter,—a man blowing up, and his fragments flying about on all sides. He cast his eyes upon the ground,—a man standing eyeless, with his eyes thrown down, and staring up at him in wonderment, etc., etc., etc.

An uneducated countryman, supposing he had a live frog in his stomach, applied himself to the study of medicine, in order to find a cure, and so became a profound physician. Thus some misfortune, physical or moral, may be the means of educating and elevating us.

Concord, March 12, 1845.—Last night was very cold, and bright starlight; yet there was a mist or fog diffused all over the landscape, lying close to the ground, and extending upwards, probably not much above the tops of the trees. This fog was crystallized by the severe frost; and its little feathery crystals covered all the branches and smallest twigs of trees and shrubs; so that, this morning, at first sight, it appeared as if they were covered with snow. On closer examination, however, these most delicate feathers appeared shooting out in all directions from the branches,—above as well as beneath,—and looking, not as if they had been attached, but had been[Pg 544] put forth by the plant,—a new kind of foliage. It is impossible to describe the exquisite beauty of the effect, when close to the eye; and even at a distance this delicate appearance was not lost, but imparted a graceful, evanescent aspect to great trees, perhaps a quarter of a mile off, making them look like immense plumes, or something that would vanish at a breath. The so-much admired sight of icy trees cannot compare with it in point of grace, delicacy, and beauty; and, moreover, there is a life and animation in this, not to be found in the other. It was to be seen in its greatest perfection at sunrise, or shortly after; for the slightest warmth impaired the minute beauty of the frost-feathers, and the general effect. But in the first sunshine, and while there was still a partial mist hovering around the hill and along the river, while some of the trees were lit up with an illumination that did not shine,—that is to say, glitter,—but was not less bright than if it had glittered, while other portions of the scene were partly obscured, but not gloomy,—on the contrary, very cheerful,—it was a picture that never can be painted nor described, nor, I fear, remembered with any accuracy, so magical was its light and shade, while at the same time the earth and everything upon it were white; for the ground is entirely covered by yesterday's snow-storm.

Already, before eleven o'clock, these feathery crystals have vanished, partly through the warmth of the sun, and partly by gentle breaths of wind; for so slight was their hold upon the twigs that the least motion, or thought almost, sufficed to bring them floating down, like a little snow-storm, to the ground. In fact, the fog, I suppose, was a cloud of snow, and would have scattered down upon us, had it been at the usual height above the earth.

ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.

FOURTH SONNET.

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

We who enjoy the fruits of civil and religious liberty as our daily food, reaping the harvest we did not sow, seldom give a thought to those who in the dim past prepared the ground and scattered the seed that has yielded such plenteous return. If occasionally we peer into the gloom of by-gone centuries, some stalwart form, like that of Luther, arrests our backward glance, and all beyond is dark and void. But generations before Martin Luther the work for the harvest of coming ages was begun. Humble but earnest men, with such rude aids as they possessed, were toiling to clear away the dense underbrush of ignorance and superstition, and let the light of the sun in on the stagnant swamp; struggling to plough up the stony soil that centuries of oppression had made hard and barren; scattering seed that the sun would scorch and the birds of the air devour; and dying without seeing a green blade to reward them with the hope that their toils were not in vain.

But their labors were not lost. The soil thus prepared by the painful and unrequited toil of those who had gone down to obscure graves, sorrowing and hopeless, offered less obstruction to the strong arms and better appliances of the reformers of a later day. Of the seed scattered by the early sowers, a grain found here and there a sheltering crevice, and struggled into life, bearing fruit that in the succession of years increased and multiplied until thousands were fed and strengthened by its harvest.

The military history of the reign of the third Edward of England is illuminated with such a blaze of glory, that the dazzled eye can with difficulty distinguish the dark background of its domestic life. Cressy and Poitiers carried the military fame of England throughout the world, and struck terror into her enemies; but at home dwelt turbulence, corruption, rapine, and misery. The barons quarrelled and fought among themselves. The clergy wallowed in a sty of corruption and debauchery. The laboring classes were sunk in ignorance and hopeless misery. It was the dark hour that precedes the first glimmer of dawn.

Poitiers was won in 1356. Four years the French king remained in honorable captivity in England. Then came the treaty of Bretigny, which released King John and terminated the war. The great nobles, with their armies of lesser knights and swarms of men-at-arms, returned to England, viewed with secret and well-founded distrust by the industrious and laboring classes along their homeward route. The nobles established themselves in their castles, immediately surrounded by swarms of reckless men, habituated by years of war to deeds of lawlessness and violence, and having subject to their summons feudatory knights, each of whom had his own band of turbulent retainers. With such elements of discord, it was impossible for good order long to be maintained. The nobles quarrelled, and their retainers were not backward in taking up the quarrel. The feudatory knights had disagreements among themselves, and carried on petty war against each other. Confederated bands of lawless men traversed the country, seizing property wherever it could be found, outraging women, taking prisoners and ransoming them, and making war against all who opposed their progress or were personally obnoxious to them. Castles and estates were seized and held on some imaginary claim. It was in vain to appeal to the laws. Justice was powerless to correct abuses or aid the oppressed. Powerful barons gave countenance to the marauders, that their services might be secured in the event of a quarrel with their neighbors; nor did they hesitate to share in the booty. Might everywhere triumphed over right, and the "law of the[Pg 546] strong arm" superseded the ordinances of the civil power.

The condition of the Church was no better than that of the State. Fraud, corruption, and oppression sat in high places in both. The prelates had their swarms of armed retainers, and ruled their flocks with the sword as well as the crosier. The monasteries, with but few exceptions, were the haunts of extravagance and sensuality, instead of the abodes of self-denying virtue and learning. The portly abbot, his black robe edged with costly fur and clasped with a silver girdle, his peaked shoes in the height of the fashion, and wearing a handsomely ornamented dagger or hunting-knife, rode out accompanied by a pack of trained hunting-dogs, the golden bells on his bridle

The monks who were unable to indulge their taste for the chase sought recompense in unrestrained indulgence at the table. The land was overspread with an innumerable swarm of begging friars, who fawned on the great, flattered the wealthy, and despoiled the poor. Another class traversed the country, selling pardons "come from Rome all hot," and extolling the virtues of their relics and the power of their indulgences with the eloquence of a quack vending his nostrums. Bishops held civil offices under the king, and priests acted as stewards in great men's houses. Simony possessed the Church, and the ministers of religion again sold their Master for silver.

The domestic and social life of the higher classes of society in the last half of the fourteenth century can be delineated, with a fair approach to exactness, from the detached hints scattered through such old romances and poems of that period as the diligent labors of zealous antiquaries have brought to light.

The residences of all the great and wealthy possessed one general character. The central point and most important feature was the great hall, adjoining which in most houses a "parlour," or talking-room, had recently been built. A principal chamber for the ladies of the household was generally placed on the ground-floor, with an upper chamber, or "soler," over it. In the larger establishments additional chambers had been clustered around the main building, increasing in number with the wants of the household. The castles and fortified buildings varied a little in outward construction from the ordinary manorial residences, but the same general arrangement of the interior existed. A few of the stronger and more important buildings were of stone; but the larger proportion were of timber, or timber and stone combined.

The great hall was the most important part of the establishment. Here the general business of the household was transacted, the meals served, strangers received, audiences granted, and what may be termed the public life of the family carried on. It was also the general rendezvous of the servants and retainers, who lounged about it when duty or pleasure did not call them to the other offices or to the field. In the evening they gathered around the fire, built in an iron grate standing in the middle of the room; for as yet chimneys were a luxury confined to the principal chamber. The few remaining halls of this period that have not been remodelled in succeeding ages present no trace of a fireplace or chimney. At night the male servants and men-at-arms stretched themselves to sleep on the benches along its sides, or on the rush-covered floor.

The floor at the upper end was raised, forming the dais, or place of honor. On this, stretching nearly from side to side, was the "table dormant," or fixed table, with a "settle," or bench with a back, between it and the wall. On the lower floor, and extending lengthwise on each side down the hall, stood long benches for the use of the servants and retainers. At meal-times, in front of these were placed the temporary tables of loose boards supported on trestles. At the upper end was the cupboard, or "dresser," for the plate and furniture[Pg 547] of the table. In the halls of the greater nobles, on important occasions, tapestry or curtains were hung on the walls, or at least on that portion of the wall next the dais, and still more rarely a carpet was used for that part of the floor,—rushes or bare tiles being more general. A perch for hawks, and the grate of burning wood, sending its smoke up to the blackened open roof, completed the picture of the hall of a large establishment in the fourteenth century.

The "parlour," or talking-room, as its name imports, was used chiefly for conferences, and for such business as required more privacy than was attainable in the hall, but was unsuited to the domestic character of the chamber.

After the hall, the most important feature of the building was the principal chamber. Here the domestic life of the family was carried on. Here the ladies of the household spent their time when not at meals or engaged in out-door sports and pastimes. The furniture of this room was more complete than that of the other parts of the building, but was still rude and scanty when judged by modern wants. The bed was of massive proportions and frequently of ornamental character. A truckle-bed for the children or chamber servants was pushed under the principal bed by day. At the foot of the latter stood the huge "hutch," or chest, in which were deposited for safety the family plate and valuables. Two or three stools and large chairs, with a perch or bar on which to hang garments, completed the usual furniture of the chamber.

In this room was one important feature not found in the others, and which accounted for the increasing attachment manifested towards it. The fire, instead of being placed in an iron grate or brazier in the middle of the room, burned merrily on the hearth; and the smoke, instead of seeking its exit by the window, was carried up a chimney of generous proportions.

The household day commenced early. The members of the family arose from the beds where they had slept in the garments worn by our first parents before the fall; for the effeminacy of sleeping in night-dresses had not yet been introduced, and it was only the excessively poor that made the clothes worn during the day serve in lieu of blankets and coverlets.

Breakfast was served about six o'clock. It is difficult to get an exact description of the customs of the breakfast-table, or the nature of the meal, as the contemporary writers make little allusion to it. Probably it was but a slight repast, to allay the cravings of appetite until the great meal of the day was served. Until within a few years of the period of which we write, the dinner-hour was so early that but little food was taken before that time.

Dinner was then, as now, the principal meal of the English day. In the houses of the great it was conducted with much ceremony; and among the richer classes certain well-established rules of courtesy in relation to the meal were observed. The family and their guests entered the great hall about ten o'clock. They were met by a domestic, bearing a pitcher and basin, and his assistant, with a towel. Water was poured on the hands of each person, and the ablutions carefully performed; scrupulous cleanliness in this respect being required, from the fact that forks were as yet things undreamed of. The principal guests took their seats at the "table dormant," on the dais, the person of highest rank having the middle seat,—which was consequently at the head of the hall,—and the others being arranged according to their respective rank.

At the side-tables, below the dais, sat the inferior members of the household, with the guests of lesser note,—these also arranged with careful regard to[Pg 548] rank and position. The beggar or poor wayfarer who was admitted to a humble share of the feast crouched on the rushes among the dogs who lay awaiting the bones and relics of the repast, and thankfully fed, like Lazarus, on "the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table."

The guests being seated, the busy servitors hastened to cover the table with a "fair white linen cloth," of unsullied purity; and on it were placed the salt-cellars of massive silver, the spoons and knives; next the bread, and then the wine, poured with great ceremony into the drinking-cups by the cupbearer. The silver vessels were brought from the "dresser," and arranged on the table, the display being proportioned to the wealth and condition of the host and the consideration to be paid to the guests. The head cook and his assistants entered in procession, bearing the dishes in regular order, and deposited them on the table with due solemnity. The pottage was first served, and when this course was eaten, the vessels and spoons were removed. The carver performed his office on the meats, holding the joint, according to the traditions of his order, carefully with the thumb and first two fingers of his left hand, whilst he carved. The pieces were placed on "trenchers" or slices of bread, and handed to the guests, who made no scruple of freely using their fingers. The bones and refuse of the food were placed on the table, or thrown to the dogs.

The people of that day were not insensible to the pleasures of the table; and, unless urgent matters called them to the field or the council, dinner was enjoyed with leisurely deliberation. In great houses of hospitable reputation, the great hall at the hour of meals was open to all comers. The traveller who found himself at its door was admitted, and received position and food according to his condition. The minstrels that wandered over the country in great numbers were always welcome, and were well supplied with food and drink, and received liberal gifts for their songs and the long romances of love and chivalry which they recited to music. Not unfrequently satirical songs were sung, or the minstrel narrated stories in which the humor was of a coarser nature than would now be tolerated in the presence of ladies, but which in that day were listened to without a blush.

Dinner ended, the vessels and unconsumed meats were removed, the tablecloths gathered up, and the relics of the feast thrown on the floor for the dogs to devour. The side-tables were removed from their trestles and piled in a corner, and the hall cleared for the entertainments that frequently followed the dinner. These consisted of feats of conjuring by the "joculators," balancing and tumbling by the women who wandered about seeking a livelihood by such means, or dancing by the ladies of the household and their guests.

The feast and its succeeding amusements disposed of, the ladies either shared in the out-door sports and games, of which there were many in which women could take part, or they retired to the chamber, where, seated in low chairs or in the recessed windows, they engaged in making the needle-work pictures that adorned the tapestry, listening the while to the love-romances narrated by the minstrel who had been invited for the purpose, or gave willing ear to the flattery of some "virelay" or love-song, sung by gay canon, gentle page, or courtly knight.

About six o'clock, the household once more assembled in the hall for supper; and then the orders for the ensuing day were given to the servants and retainers. Soon after dark the members of the family and their guests sought their respective sleeping-places, as contrivances for lighting were rude, and had to be economized. Such of the servants as had special chambers or sleeping-places retired to them, whilst a large proportion of the male servants and such of the retainers as belonged immediately to the household[Pg 549] stretched themselves on the benches or floor of the hall, and were soon fast asleep. Such is a sketch of the ordinary course of domestic life among the higher classes of English society in the fourteenth century.

Among the greater nobles, the details of the daily life were sometimes on a more magnificent scale; but the leading features were as we have described them. Rude pomp and barbaric splendor marked the establishments of some of the powerful barons and ecclesiastical dignitaries. At tilt and tournament, the contending knights strove to outshine each other in gorgeousness of equipment, as well as in deeds of arms. Nor were the ladies averse to richness of attire in their own persons. Costly robes and dainty furs were worn, and jewels and gems of price sparkled when the dames and demoiselles appeared at great gatherings, or on occasions of state and ceremony. The extravagance of dress in both sexes had grown to be so great an evil, that stringent sumptuary laws were passed, but without producing any effect.

The moral state of even the highest classes of society was not of a flattering character. Europe was one huge camp and battle-field, in which all the chivalry of the day had been educated,—no good school for purity of life and delicacy of language. The literature of the time, at least that portion of it which penetrated to ladies' chambers, was of an amorous, and too frequently of an indelicate character. A debased and sensual clergy swarmed over the land, finding their way into every household, and gradually corrupting those with whom their sacred office brought them into contact. The manners and habits of the time afforded every facility for the gratification of debased passions and indulgence in immoral practices.

Whilst the barons feasted and fought, the ladies intrigued, and the clergy violated every principle of the religion they professed, the great mass of the population lived on, with scarcely a thought bestowed on them by their social superiors. Between the Anglo-Norman baron and the Anglo-Saxon laborer, or "villain," there was a great gulf fixed. The antipathy of an antagonistic and conquered race to its conquerors was intensified by years of oppression and wrong, and the laborer cherished a burning desire to break the bonds of thraldom in which most of the poor were held.

By the laws of the feudal system, the tenants and laborers on the property of a baron were his "villains," or slaves. They were divided into two classes;—the "villains regardant," who were permitted to occupy and cultivate small portions of land, on condition of rendering certain stipulated services to their lord, and were therefore considered in the light of slaves to the land; and the "villains in gross," who were the personal slaves of the landowner, and were compelled to do the work they were set to perform in consideration of their food and clothing. Besides these two classes a third had recently come into existence, and, owing to various causes, was fast increasing in extent and importance,—that of free laborers, who worked for hire. This class was recruited in various ways from the ranks of the "villains in gross." Some were manumitted by their dying masters, as an act of piety in atonement for the deeds of violence done during life; but by far the greater number effected their freedom by escaping to distant parts of the country, where but little search would be made for them, or by seeking the refuge of the walled towns and cities, where a residence of a year and a day would give them freedom by law. The citizens were always ready to give asylum to those fugitives, for they supplied the growing need for laborers, and enabled the cities, by the increase of population, to maintain their independence against the pretensions of the barons.

The condition of the "villain" was bad at the best; and numerous petty acts of oppression in most instances increased the bitterness of his lot.[Pg 550] Himself the property of another, he could not legally hold possessions of any kind. Not only the land he tilled, and the rude implements of husbandry with which he painfully cultivated the soil, but the cattle with which he worked, the house in which he lived, the few chattels he gathered around him, and the scanty store of money earned by hard labor, all belonged to his master, who could at any time dispossess him of them. The "villain" who obtained a livelihood by working the few acres of land which had been held from father to son, on condition of performing personal labor or other services on the estate of the landowner, was subject not only to the demands of his master, but to the tithing of the Church; to the doles exacted by the swarms of begging friars, who, like Irish beggars of the present day, invoked cheap blessings on the cheerful giver, and launched bitter curses at the heads of those who refused alms; to the impositions of the wandering "pardoners," with their charms and relics; and to the tyrannical exactions of the "summoners," who, under pretence of writs from ecclesiastical courts, robbed all who were not in position to resist their fraudulent demands. What these spared was frequently swept away by the visits of the king's purveyors and the officers of others in power, who, not content with robbing the poor husbandman of the proceeds of his toil, treated the men with violence and the women with outrage. Complaint was useless. The "churl" had no rights which those in office were bound to respect.

Ignorant, superstitious, and condemned to a life of unrequited toil and unredressed wrongs, the mental and moral condition of the agricultural poor was wretchedly low. Huddled together in mud cottages, through the rotten thatches of which the rain penetrated; clothed with rough garments that were seldom changed night or day; feeding on coarse food, and that in insufficient quantities,—their physical condition was one of extreme misery. The usual daily allowance of food to the bond laborer of either class, when working for the owner of the land, was two herrings, milk for cheese, and a loaf of bread, with the addition in harvest of a small allowance of beer. Occasionally, salted meats or stockfish were substituted for the herrings.

The condition of the free laborer was measurably better; but even he was condemned to a life of privation and wretchedness, relieved only by the knowledge that his scanty earnings were his own, and that he could change the scene of his labors if he saw fit. The ordinary agricultural laborer, at the wages usually given, would have to work more than a week for a bushel of wheat. At harvest-time and other periods when the demand for labor was unusually great, as it was after the pestilences that swept the land about the time of which we write, the free laborers demanded higher wages; and although laws were passed to prevent their obtaining more than the usual rates, necessity frequently compelled their employment at the advanced prices. The receipt of higher wages only temporarily bettered their condition. Accustomed to griping hunger and short allowances of food, when better days came, they thought only of enjoying the present, and took no heed of the future. After harvest, with its high wages and cheapness of provision, the laborer frequently became wasteful and improvident. Instead of the stinted allowance of salted meat or fish, with the pinched loaf of bean-flour, and an occasional draught of weak beer, his fastidious appetite demanded fresh meat or fish, white bread, vegetables freshly gathered, and ale of the best. As long as his store lasted, he worked as little as possible, and grumbled at the fortune that made him a laborer. But these halcyon days were few, and soon passed away, to be followed by decreasing allowances of the commonest food, fierce pangs of hunger, and miserable destitution. A bad harvest inflicted untold wretchedness on the poor. Ill[Pg 551] lodged, ill fed, and scantily clothed, disease cut them down like grass before the scythe. A deadly pestilence swept over the land in 1348, carrying off about two thirds of the people; and nearly all the victims were from among the poorest classes. In 1361, another pestilence carried off thousands, again spreading terror and dismay through the country. Seven years later a third visitation desolated England. Here and there one of the better class fell a victim to the destroyer; but the great mass were from the ranks of the half-starved and poorly lodged laborers.

The morality of the poor was, as might be expected, at a low ebb. Modesty, chastity, and temperance could scarcely be looked for in wretched mud huts, where all ages and sexes herded together like swine. Men and women alike fled from their miserable homes to the ale-house, where they drank long draughts of cheap ale, and, in imitation of their superiors in station, listened to a low class of "japers" who recited "rhymes of Robin Hood," or told coarse and obscene stories for the sake of a share of the ale, or such few small coins as could be drawn from the ragged pouches of the bacchanals.

Between proud wealth and abject poverty there can be no friendly feeling. Stolid, brutish ignorance can alone render the bonds of the slave endurable. As his eyes are slowly opened by increasing knowledge, and he can compare his condition with that of the freeman, his fetters gall him, he becomes restive in his bonds, and at length turns in blind fury on his oppressors, striking mad blows with his manacled hands. Trodden into the dust by the iron heel of a tyrannical feudal power, the peasantry of France had turned on their oppressors, and wreaked a brief but savage vengeance for ages of wrong. The atrocious cruelties and mad excesses of the revolted Jacquerie could only have been committed by those who had been so long treated as brutes that they had acquired brutish passions and instincts. The English peasantry had not yet followed the example of their French compeers; but the gathering storm already darkened the sky, and the mutterings of the thunder were heard. Superstitiously religious, they hated the ministers of religion who violated its principles. Born slaves and hopelessly debased and ignorant, they began to ask the question,—

Occasionally a rude ballad found its way among the people fiercely expressive of their scorn of the clergy and their hatred of the rich. One that was very popular, and has been transmitted to our day, asked,—

But no leader had as yet arisen to give proper voice to the desire for reformation that burned in the hearts of the common people. The writers of that age were breathing the intoxicating air of court favor, and heeded not the sufferings of the common rabble. Froissart, the courtly canon and chronicler of deeds of chivalry, was writing French madrigals and amorous ditties for the ear of Queen Philippa, and loved too well gay society, luxurious feasts, and dainty attire, not to shrink with disgust from thought of the dirty, uncouth, and miserable herd of "greasy caps." Gower was inditing fashionable love-songs. Chaucer, who years after was to direct such telling blows in his Canterbury Tales at the vices and corruptness of the clergy, was a favorite member of the retinue of the powerful "John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster," and had as yet only written long and stately poems on the history of Troilus and Cressida, the Parliament[Pg 552] of Birds, and the Court of Love. Wycliffe, the great English reformer of the Church, was quietly living at his rectory of Fylingham, and preparing his first essays against the mendicant orders. John Ball, the "crazy priest of Kent," as Froissart calls him, was brooding over the miseries of his poor parishioners, and nursing in his mind that enmity to all social distinctions with which he afterwards inflamed the minds of the peasantry, and incited them to open rebellion.

But in the quarter least expected the oppressed people found an advocate. An unobtrusive monk, whose name is almost a doubtful tradition, stole out from his quiet cell in Malvern Abbey, and, whilst his brethren feasted, climbed the gentle slope of the Worcestershire hills, and drank in the beauties of the varied landscape at his feet. There, on a May morning, as he rested under a bank by the side of a brooklet, and was lulled to sleep by the murmuring of the water, he dreamed those dreams that set waking people to thinking, and gave a powerful impetus to the moral and social revolution that was just commencing.

The "Vision of Piers Plowman" is every way a singular production. Clothed in the then almost obsolete verse of a past age, it breathes wholly the spirit of the time in which it was written. The work of a monk, it is unsparing in its attacks on the monastic orders. Intended for the reading or hearing of the middle and lower classes, it gives more frequent glimpses of the social condition of all ranks of people than any other work of that age. As a philological monument, it is of great value; as a poem, it contains many passages of merit; and as a storehouse of allusions to the social life of the people in the fourteenth century, it is invaluable.

The poem consists of a series of visions or dreams, of an allegorical character, in which the dreamer seeks to find Truth and Righteousness on earth, meeting with but little success. The allegorical idea cannot be followed without weariness, and, in fact, the intentions of the writer are by no means clear, the allegory being frequently involved and contradictory. The beauty of the poem lies in its detached passages, its occasional poetic touches, its graphic pictures, biting satire, and withering denunciation of fraud, corruption, and tyranny. The measure adopted is the unrhymed alliterative, characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon literature, and which had long been disused, but which retained its hold on the affections of the common people, who were of Anglo-Saxon stock. In the extracts we give from the poem, the measure is retained, but the words modernized, so far as can be done without injuring the sense or metre.

The opening passage of the "Vision" has been so frequently reproduced, as a specimen of the poet's style, that it is probably familiar to many readers, but its exquisite naturalness and simplicity tempt us to quote it here.

The first scene in the visions that visited the sleep of the dreaming monk gives a view of the social classes of that time, beginning with the humblest, whose condition was uppermost in his mind. The picture is not only painted with vigorous touches, but affords a better idea of society in the fourteenth century than can be elsewhere[Pg 553] obtained. There is the toiling ploughman, who "plays full seldom," winning by hard labor what wasteful men destroy; the mediæval dandy, whose only employment is to exhibit his attire; the hermit, who seeks by solitude and penitential life to win "heaven's rich bliss"; the merchant, who has wisely chosen his trade,—

There are minstrels, who earn rich rewards by their singing; jesters and idle gossips; "sturdy beggars," wandering with full bags; pilgrims and palmers, who

counterfeit hermits, who assumed the cloak and hooked staff in order to live in idleness and sensuality; avaricious friars, selling their religion for money; cheating pardoners; covetous priests; ambitious bishops; lawyers who loved gain better than justice; "barons and burgesses, and bondmen also," with

To plead the cause of the poor and weak against their powerful oppressors, and to protest in the name of religion against the pride and corrupt life of its ministers, was the object of the monk of Malvern Abbey; and he did his work well. The blows he dealt were fierce and strong, and told home. Burgher and baron, monk and cardinal, alike felt the fury of his attacks. He was no respecter of persons. A monk himself, he had no scruples in tearing off the priestly robe that covered lust and rapine. Wrong in high places gained no respect from him. His invectives against a haughty and oppressive nobility and a corrupt and arrogant clergy are unsurpassed in power, and it is easy to understand the hold the poem at once acquired on the attention of the lower classes, and its influence in directing and hastening the attempt of the oppressed people to break their galling bonds.

What we have before said in reference to the wretched condition of the peasantry, as shown by contemporary evidence, is confirmed by the writer of the "Vision." The peasant was a born thrall to the owner of the land, and could

Misery and he were lifelong companions, and pinching want his daily portion. The wretched poor

A graphic picture of a poor ploughman and his family is given in the "Creed" of Piers Plowman, supposed to have been written by the author of the "Vision," but a few years later.

The tenant of land, or small farmer, was in a better condition, and when not cozened of his stores by the monks, or robbed of them by the ruffians in office or out of office, managed to live with some kind of rude comfort. What the ordinary condition of his larder and the extent of his farming stock were, may be learned from a passage in the "Vision."

We have already described the tenure by which the tenant held his lands, and the protection the knightly landowner was bound to give his tenant. Thus Piers Plowman, when his honest labors are broken in upon by ruffians,

At times this was but a wolf's protection, or a stronger power broke through all guards. The "king's purveyor," or some other licensed despoiler, came in, and the victim was left to make fruitless complaints of his injuries. The women were subjected to gross outrages, and the property stolen or destroyed.

Then, as now, there were complaints that the privations of the poor were increased by the covetousness of the hucksters, and "regraters" (retailers), who came between the producer and the consumer, and grew rich on the profits made from both.

Stringent laws were made against[Pg 555] huckstering and regrating, and officers were appointed to punish offenders in this respect, "with pillories and pining-stools." But officers, then as now, were not proof against temptation, and were often disposed

Nor had the rogues of the fourteenth century much to learn in the way of turning a dishonest penny. The merchant commended his bad wares for good, and knew how to adulterate and how to give short measure. The spinners of wool were paid by a heavy pound, and the article resold by a light pound. Laws were made against such frauds, but laws were little regarded when they conflicted with self-interest. The crime of clipping and "sweating" coin was frequently practised. Pawn-brokers, money-lenders, and sellers of exchange thrived and flourished.

The rich find but little consideration at the hands of the plain-spoken dreamer. Their extravagance is commented on; their growing pride, which prompted them to abandon the great hall and take their meals in a private room, and their uncharitableness to the poor. They practise the saying, that "to him that hath shall be given."

But when, hungered, athirst, and shivering with cold, the poor man comes to the rich man's gate, there is none to help, but he is

But it is on the vices and corruptions of the clergy that the monk pours the vials of his wrath. He cloaks nothing, and spares neither rank nor condition. The avarice of the clergy, their want of religion, and the prostitution of their sacred office for the sake of gain, are sternly denounced in frequently-recurring passages. The facility with which debaucheries and crimes of all kinds could be compounded for with the priests by presents of gold and silver, the neglect of their flocks whilst seeking gain in the service of the rich and powerful, their ignorance, pride, extravagance, and licentiousness, are painted in strong colors. The immense throng of friars and monks, who "waxen out of number," meet with small mercy from their fellow-monk. Falsehood and fraud are described as dwelling ever with them. Their unholy life and unseemly quarrels are held up for reprobation. Nor do the nuns escape the imputation of unchastity. The quackery of pardoners, with their pardons and indulgences from pope and bishop, is treated with contempt and scorn. Bishops are criticised for their undivided attention to worldly matters; and even the Pope himself does not escape censure.

The cardinals come in for a share of the censure, and here occurs a passage, curiously suggestive of the celebrated line,—

Years afterwards, Wycliffe dealt mighty blows at the corrupt and debased clergy, and Chaucer pierced them with his sharp satire, but neither surpassed their predecessor in the vigor[Pg 556] and spirit of his onslaughts. One passage, which we quote, had evidently been acted on by Chaucer's "poor parson," and can be studied even at this late day.

It would be hardly proper to leave this portion of the subject without alluding to the remarkable passage which has been held by many as a prophecy of the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII., nearly two centuries later. After denouncing the corruptions of the clergy, he says:—

A distinctive and charming feature of the English landscape is the hedgerow that divides the fields and marks the course of the roadways. Nowhere but in England does the landscape present such a charming picture of "meadows trim with daisies pied," "russet lawns and fallows gray," spread out like a map, divided with irregular lines of green. Nowhere else is the traveller's path guarded on either hand with a rampart of delicate primroses, sweet-breathed violets, golden buttercups fit for fairy revels, honeysuckles in whose bells the bee rings a delighted peal, and luscious-fruited blackberry-bushes. Nowhere else is such a rampart crowned with the sweet-scented hawthorn, robed in snowy blossoms, or beaded over with scarlet berries, and with the hazel, with its gracefully pendent catkins, or nuts dear to the school-boy. It scarcely seems possible to imagine an English landscape without its flower-scented hedge-rows, and yet, when the armed knights of Edward the Third's reign rode abroad from their castles, few lofty hedges barred their progress across the country; no hazel-crowned rampart stopped the way of the Malvern monk as he took his way to the "bourne's side"; and when the ploughman "whistled o'er the furrowed land," the line of division at which he turned his back on his neighbor's acres was generally but a narrow trench instead of a ditch and hedge. Thus the covetous man confesses,

As might have been expected, the monkish dreamer, unusually liberal as he was in his views, had but a slighting opinion of women. Rarely does he refer to them except to rate them for their extravagance in dress and love of finery. The humbler class of women, he shrewdly insinuates, were fond of drink, and the husbands of such were advised to cudgel them home to their domestic duties. He credited the long-standing slander about woman's inability to keep a secret:—

His opinion of the proper sphere of women in that time, and some knowledge of their ordinary feminine occupations, can be acquired from the answer[Pg 557] made to the question of a lady as to what her sex should do:—

Marriage is an honorable estate, and should be entered into with proper motives, and in a decent and regular manner. It is desirable that most men should marry, for

This is the essentially worldly way of making marriage arrangements yet practised in some aristocratic circles, but the more democratic and natural way is to reverse the process, and commence with the agreement between the two persons most concerned. Such unequal matches as age and wealth on one side, and youth and desire of wealth on the other, bring about, are sternly reprobated.

Such marriages lead to jealousy, bickerings, and open rupture, disgraceful to husband and wife, and annoying to others. Therefore Piers counsels

The touch of shrewd humor in the last line finds its counterpart in many other passages. Thus, when the dreamer sits down to rest by the wayside, his iteration of the prescribed prayers makes him drowsy:—

The Franciscan friars, his especial aversion, get a sly thrust when he says of Charity that

When Covetousness has confessed his numerous misdeeds, and is asked if he ever repented and made restitution, he replies,

and on being told that this was no restitution, but another robbery, he replies, with assumed innocence of manner,

The prejudice against doctors and lawyers was as strong five hundred years ago as now, judging from Piers Plowman, who says, that

No class of people suffered more in the Middle Ages than the Jews. They were abhorred by the poor, despised by the wealthy, and cruelly oppressed by the powerful. But through all their sufferings and trials they were true to each other; and the monk holds up their fraternal charity as an example to shame Christians into similar virtues. He says:—

With one more curious passage, giving a glimpse of the belief of that age concerning the future state, we will close our extracts from "Piers Plowman." Discussing the condition of the thief upon the cross who was promised a seat in heaven, the dreamer says:—

"Piers Plowman" is supposed to have been written in 1362. It became instantly popular, and manuscript copies were rapidly distributed over England. Imitations preserving the peculiar form, and aiming at the same objects as the "Vision," though without the genius exhibited in that work, appeared in quick succession. The hatred of the oppressed people for their oppressors was intensified by the inflammatory harangues of John Ball, the deposed priest. The preaching of Wycliffe probed still deeper the festering corruption of the dominant Church. At last, in 1381, a popular rising, under Wat Tyler, attempted to right the wrongs of generations at the sword's point. The result of that attempt is well known,—its temporary success, sudden overthrow, and the terrible revenge taken by the ruling power in the enactment of laws that made the burden of the people still more intolerable.

But the seed of political and religious freedom had been sown. It had been watered with the blood of martyrs; and, although the tender shoots had been trodden down with an iron heel as soon as they appeared, they gathered additional strength and vigor from the repression, and soon sprang up with a vitality that defied all efforts to crush them.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Garment.

[2] Vagabond.

[3] Clothes.

[4] Shepherd.

[5] Vision.

[6] Brook.

[7] Pigs.

[8] A kind of very coarse cloth.

[9] Buttoned.

[10] Pushed.

[11] Mud.

[12] Worn out.

[13] Oxen.

[14] Meagre.

[15] Kneading-trough.

[16] Oat cake.

[17] Children.

[18] A lean hen.

[19] Parley and leeks.

[20] Cabbages.

[21] Vagabonds.

[22] Workingmen.

[23] Market.

[24] Piecemeal.

[25] Belly.

[26] Built.

[27] Lands or tenements in towns.

[28] Commanded.

[29] Remain.

[30] Unlearned.

[31] Dressing.

[32] Went.

[33] Rob him.

[34] Teach.

[35] Take.

[36] Afterwards.

[37] Pedlers.

[38] Boxes.

[39] Thought.

[40] Complaining.

[41] Goods.

[42] Earth.

[43] Teachers.

[44] One left alone.

KATHARINE MORNE.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

One day, near the middle of a June about twenty years ago, my landlady met me at the door of my boarding-house, and began with me the following dialogue.

"Well, someb'dy's been in here to pay ye a call, afore twelve o'clock, in a tearin' hurry. Says I, 'Ye've got afore yer story this time, I guess,' says I. Says he, 'I guess I'll call again,' says he. He's left ye them pinies an' snowballs in the pitcher."

"He kind o' seemed as if he might ha' got somethin' sort o' special on his mind to say to ye. My! how he colored up at somethin' I said!"

I walked by, and away from her, into the house, but answered that I should be happy to see Jim if he came back. Well I might. Through all the months of school-keeping that followed my mother's death,—in the little country village of Greenville, so full of homesickness for me,—he had been my kindest friend. My old schoolmate, Emma Holly, from whose native town he came, assured me beforehand that he would be so. She wrote to me that he was the best, most upright, well-principled, kind-hearted fellow in the world. He was almost like a brother to her, (this surprised me a little, because I had never heard her speak of him before,) and so he would be to me, if I would only let him. She had told him all about me and our troubles and plans,—how I winced at that when I read it!—and he was very much interested, and would shovel a path for me when it snowed, or go to the post-office for me, or do anything in the world for me that he could. And so he had done.

He had little chance, indeed, to devote himself to me abroad; for I seldom went out, except now and then, when I could not refuse without giving offence, to drink tea with the family of some pupil. But when I did that, he always found it out through Mrs. Johnson, whose nephew he was, and came to see me home. He usually brought some additional wrappings or thick shoes for me; and even if they were too warm, or otherwise in my way, I could be, and was, grateful for his kindness in thinking of them. He was very attentive to his aunt also, and came to read aloud to her, while she napped, almost every evening. At every meal which he took with us, he was constantly suggesting to her little comforts and luxuries for me, till I was afraid she would really be annoyed. She took his hints, however, in wonderfully good part, sometimes acted upon them, and often said to me, "How improvin' it was for young men to have somebody to kind o' think for! It made 'em so kind o' thoughtful!" Many a flower, fruit, and borrowed book he brought me. He tried to make me walk with him; and, whenever he could, he made me talk with him. But for him, I should have studied almost all the time that I was not teaching or sleeping; for when I began to teach, I first discovered how little I had learned. Thus nearly all the indulgences and recreations of the rather grave, lonely, and hard-working little life I was leading at that time were associated with him and his kind care; and so I really think it was no great wonder if his peonies and snowballs that day made the bare little parlor, with the row of[Pg 560] staring, uncouth daguerreotypes on the mantel-piece, look very pretty to me, or that to know that he had been there, and was coming back again, made it a very happy place.

I walked across it, took off my hot black bonnet, threw up the western window, and sat down beside it in the rocking-chair. The cool breeze struggled through the tree that nestled sociably up to it, and made the little knobs of cherries nod at me, as if saying, "You would not like us now, but you will by and by." The oriole gurgled and giggled from among them, "Wait! Come again! Come again! Ha, ha!" The noise of the greedy canker-worms, mincing the poor young green leaves over my head, seemed a soothing sound; and even the sharp headache I had brought with me from the school-room, only a sort of sauce piquante to my delicious rest. I did not ask myself what Jim would say. I scarcely longed to hear him come. I did not know how anything to follow could surpass that perfect luxury of waiting peace.

He did come soon. I heard a stealthy step, not on the gravel-walk, but on the rustling hay that lay upon the turf beside it. He looked, and then sprang, in at the window. He was out of breath. He caught my hand, and looked into my face, and asked me to go out and walk with him. Before I had time to answer, he snatched up my bonnet, and almost pressed it down upon my head. As I tied it, he hurried out and looked back at me eagerly from the road. I followed, though more slowly than he wished. The sun was bright and hot, and almost made me faint; but everything was very beautiful.

He wrenched out the topmost bar of a fence, jumped me over it into a meadow, led me by a forced march into the middle of the field, seated me on a haycock, and once more stood before me, looking me in the face with his own all aglow.

Then he told me that he had been longing for weeks, as I must have seen, to open his mind to me; but, till that day, he had not been at liberty. He had regarded me, from almost the very beginning of our acquaintance, as his best and trustiest friend,—in short, as just what dear Emma had told him he should find me. My friendship had been a blessing to him in every way; and now my sympathy, or participation, was all he wanted to render his happiness complete. He had just been admitted as a partner in the store of the village, in which he had hitherto been only a salesman; and now, therefore, he was at last free to offer himself, before all the world, to the girl he loved best; and that was—I must guess who. He called me "dearest Katy," and asked me if he might not "to-day, at last."

I bowed, but did not utter my guess. He seemed to think I had done so, notwithstanding; for he hurried on, delighted. "Of course it is, 'Katy darling,' as we always call you! I never knew your penetration out of the way. It is Emma Holly! It couldn't be anybody but Emma Holly!"

Then he told me that she had begged hard for leave to tell me outright, what she thought she had hinted plainly enough, about their hopes; but her father was afraid that to have them get abroad would hurt her prospects in other quarters, and made silence towards all others a condition of her correspondence with Jim. Mr. Holly was "aristocratic," and in hopes Emma would change her mind, Jim supposed; but all danger was over now. He could maintain her like the lady she was; and their long year's probation was ended. Then he told me in what agonies he had passed several evenings a fortnight before, (when I must have wondered why he did not come and read,) from hearing of her illness. The doctors were right for once, to be sure, as it proved, in thinking it only the measles; but it might just as well have been spotted fever, or small-pox, or anything fatal, for all they knew.

And then I rather think there must have been a pause, which I did not fill[Pg 561] properly, because my head was aching with a peculiar sensation which I had never known before, though I have sometimes since.—It is like the very hand of Death, laid with a strong grasp on the joint and meeting-point of soul and body, and makes one feel, for the time being, as Dr. Livingstone says he did when the lion shook him,—a merciful indifference as to anything to come after.—And Jim was asking me, in a disappointed tone, what the matter was, and if I did not feel interested.

"Mr. Johnson!" interrupted he, "How cold! I thought it would be Jim at least, to-day, if you can't say dear Jim."

"Yes, 'dear Jim,'" I repeated; and my voice sounded so strangely quiet in my own ears, that I did not wonder that he called me cold. "Indeed, I am interested. I don't know when I have heard anything that has interested me so much. I pray God to bless you and Emma. But the reason I came from school so early to-day was, that I had a headache; and now I think perhaps the sun is not good for it, and I had better go in."

I stood up; but I suspect I must have had something like a sunstroke, sitting there in the meadow so long with no shade, in the full blaze of June. I was almost too dizzy to stand, and could hardly have reached the house, if I had not accepted Jim's arm. He offered, in the joy of his heart, to change head-dresses with me,—which luckily made me laugh,—declaring that mine must be a perfect portable stove for the brains. Thus we reached the door cheerfully, and there shook hands cordially; while I bade him take my kindest love and congratulations to Emma,—to whom he was going on a three days' visit, as fast as the cars could carry him,—and charged him to tell her I should write as soon as I recovered the use of my head.

He looked concerned on being reminded of it, and shouted for Mrs. Johnson to bring me some lavender-water to bathe it with. I had told him, on a former occasion, that the smell of lavender always made it worse; but it was natural that, when he was so happy, he should forget. Whistling louder than the orioles, whose songs rang wildly through and through my brain, he hastened down the road, and was gone.

CHAPTER II.

Jim was gone; but I was left. I could have spared him better if I could only have got rid of myself.

However, for that afternoon the blessed pain took such good care of me that I lay upon my bed still and stunned, and could only somewhat dimly perceive, not how unhappy I was, but how unhappy I was going to be. It quieted Mrs. Johnson, too. She had seen me suffering from headache before, and knew that I could never talk much while it lasted. Her curiosity was at once satisfied and gratified by hearing what Jim had left me at liberty to tell her,—the news of his partnership in the firm. The engagement was not to be announced in form till the next week; though I, as the common friend of both parties, had been made an exceptional confidante; and Jim, afraid of betraying himself, had not trusted himself to take leave of his aunt, but left his love for her, and his apologies for outstaying his time so far in the meadow as to leave himself none for the farm-house.

Thus I had a reprieve. When towards midnight my head grew easier, I was worn out and slept; so that it was not till the birds began to rehearse for their concert at sunrise the next morning, that I came to myself and looked things in the face in the clear light of the awful dawn.

If you can imagine a very heavy weight let somewhat gradually, but irresistibly, down upon young and tender shoulders, then gently lifted again, little by little, by a sympathizing and unlooked-for[Pg 562] helper, and lastly tossed by him unexpectedly into the air, only to fall back with redoubled weight, and crush the frame that was but bowed before, you can form some idea of what had just happened to me. My mother's death, our embarrassments, my loneliness, the hard and to me uncongenial work I had to do, all came upon me together more heavily than at any time since the first fortnight that I spent at Greenville.

But that was not all. Disappointment is hardly the right word to use; for I can truly say that I never made any calculations for the future upon Jim's attentions to me. They were offered so honestly and respectfully that I instinctively felt I could accept them with perfect propriety, and perhaps could scarcely with propriety refuse. I had never once asked myself what they meant, nor whither they tended. But yet I was used to them now, and had learned to prize them far more than I knew; and they must be given up. My heart-strings had unconsciously grown to him, and ought to be torn away. And I think that, beyond grief, beyond the prospect of lonely toil and poverty henceforth, beyond all the rest, was the horror of an idea which came upon me, that I had lost the control of my own mind,—that my peace had passed out of my keeping into the power of another, who, though friendly to me, neither would nor could preserve it for me,—that I was doomed to be henceforward the prey of feelings which I must try to conceal, and perhaps could not for any length of time, which lowered me in my own eyes, and would do so in those of others if they were seen by them, which were wrong, and which I could not help.

These thoughts struck and stung me like so many hornets. Crying, "Mother! mother!" I sprang from my bed, and fell on my knees beside it. I did not suppose it would do much good for me to pray; but I said over and over, if only to stop myself from thinking, "O God, help me! God have mercy on me!" as fast as I could, till the town clock struck five, and I knew that I must begin to dress, and compose myself, if I would appear as usual at six o'clock at the breakfast-table.

My French grammar, was, as usual, set up beside my looking-glass. As usual, I examined myself aloud in one of the exercises, while I went through my toilet. If I did make some mistakes it was no matter. I made so much haste, that I had time before breakfast to correct some of the compositions which I had brought with me from school. The rest, as I often did when hurried, I turned over while I tried to eat my bread and milk. This did not encourage conversation. During the meal, I was only asked how my head was, and answered only that it was better. I had taken care not to shed a tear, so that my eyes were not swollen; and as I had eaten nothing since the morning of the day before, nobody could be surprised to see me pale.

Mrs. Johnson left her seat, too, almost as soon as I took mine. She was in a great bustle, getting her covered wagon under way, and stocked with eggs, butter, cheese, and green vegetables for her weekly trip to the nearest market-town. She was, however, sufficiently mindful of her nephew's lessons to regret that she must leave me poorly when he would not be there to cheer me up, and to tell me to choose what I liked best for my dinner while she was gone.

I chose a boiled chicken and rice. It was what my mother used to like best to have me eat when I was not well. I often rebelled against it when a child; but now I sought by means of it to soothe myself with the fancy that I was still under her direction.

Mrs. Johnson also offered to do for me what I forgot to ask of her,—to look in at the post-office and see if there was not a letter there for me from my only sister. Fanny, for once, had sent me none the week before. Mrs. Johnson went to town, and I to school.

I worked and worried through the lessons,—how, I never knew; but I dare say the children were forbearing;[Pg 563] children are apt to be when one is not well. I came home and looked at the chicken and rice. But that would not do. They would have made me cry. So I hurried out again, away from them, and away from the meadow, and walked in the woods all that Saturday afternoon, thinking to and fro,—not so violently as in the morning, for I was weaker, but very confusedly and in endless perplexity. How could I stay in Greenville? I should have to be with Jim! But how could I go? What reason had I to give? and what would people think was my reason? But would it not be wrong to stay and see Jim? But it would be wrong to break my engagement to the school committee!

At length again the clock struck five, which was supper-time, and I saw myself no nearer the end of my difficulties; and I had to say once again, "God help me! God have mercy on me!" and so went home.

Mrs. Johnson was awaiting me, with this letter for me in her pocket. It is not in Fanny's handwriting, however, but in that of a friend of ours with whom she was staying, Mrs. Physick, the wife of the most eminent of the younger physicians in Beverly, our native town. I opened it hastily and read:—

was prefaced with a scratched-out involuntary "℞," and looked like a prescription.

I might be as sad as I would now; and who could wonder? I sat down where I was standing on the door-step, and held the letter helplessly up to Mrs. Johnson. It did seem to me now as if Fate was going to empty its whole quiver of arrows at once upon me, and meant to kill me, body and soul. But I have since thought sometimes, when I have heard people say, Misfortunes never came single, and How mysterious it was! that God only dealt with us, in that respect somewhat as some surgeons think it best to do with wounded men,—perform whatever operations are necessary, immediately after the first injury, so as to make one and the same "shock" take the place of more. In this way of Providence, I am sure I have repeatedly seen accumulated sorrows, which, if distributed through longer intervals, might have darkened a[Pg 564] lifetime, lived through, and in a considerable degree recovered from, even in a very few years.

Mrs. Johnson's spectacles, meantime, were with eager curiosity peering over the letter. "Dear heart!" cried she. "Do tell! My! What a providence! There's Sister Nancy Newcome's Elviry jest got home this arternoon from her situation to the South, scairt off with the insurrections as unexpected as anything. She's as smart a teacher as ever was; an' the committee'd ha' gin her the school in a minute, an' thank you, too; but she wuz alwuz a kind o' lookin' up'ards; an' I s'pose she cal'lated it might for'ard her prospects to go down an' show herself among the plantations. There's better opportoonities, they say, sometimes for young ladies to git settled in life down there, owin' to the scurcity on 'em. She'll be glad enough to fill your place, I guess, till somethin' else turns up, for a fortni't or a month, or a term. It'll give her a chance to see her folks, an' fix up her cloes, an' look round her a spell. An' you can step into the cars o' Monday mornin' an' go right off an' close that poor young creator's eyes, an' take your time for 't. Seems as if I hearn tell your ma went off in a kind of a gallopin' decline, didn't she?"

"No, she did not!" cried I, springing up with a renewal of energy that must have surprised Mrs. Johnson. "Nothing of the kind! I will take my letter again, if you please. My sister has a cold,—only a cold. But where can I see Miss Newcome?"

"To home; but I declare, you can't feel hardly fit to start off ag'in. Jest you step in an' sup your tea afore it's any colder, I've had mine; an' I'll step right back over there, an' see about it for ye."

Mrs. Johnson, if coarse, was kind; and that time it would be hard to say whether her kindness or her coarseness did me the most good; for the latter roused me, between indignation and horror, to a strong reaction.

Mrs. Johnson, I said to myself, knew no more of the matter than I. Nobody said a word, in the letter, of Fanny's being very ill; and there had been, as I now considered, to the best of my recollection and information, no consumption in our family. My father died when I was five years old, as I had always heard of chronic bronchitis and nervous dyspepsia, or, in other words, of over-work and under-pay. An early marriage to a clergyman, who had no means of support but a salary of five hundred dollars dependent on his own health and the tastes of a parish, early widowhood, two helpless little girls to rear, years of hard work, anxieties, and embarrassments, a typhoid fever, with no physician during the precious first few days, during which, if she had sent for him, Dr. Physick always believed he might have saved her, a sudden sinking and no rallying,—it took all that to kill poor, dear, sweet mamma! She had a magnificent constitution, and bequeathed much of it to me.

Else I do not think I could have borne, and recovered from, those three days even as well as I did. The cars did not run on Sunday. That was so dreadful! But there was no other hindrance in my way. Everybody was very kind. The school committee could not meet in form "on the Sabbath"; but the chairman, who was Miss Elvira Newcome's brother-in-law, "sounded the other members arter meetin', jest as he fell in with 'em, casooally as it were," and ascertained that they would offer no objection to my exchange. He advanced my pay himself, and brought it to me soon after sunrise Monday morning; so that I was more than sufficiently provided with funds for my journey.

Mrs. Johnson forced upon me a suspicious-looking corked bottle of innocent tea,—one of the most sensible travelling companions, as I found before the day was over, that a wayfarer can possibly have,—and a large paper of doughnuts. Feverish as I was, I would right willingly have given her back, not only the doughnuts, but the tea, to bribe her not to persecute me[Pg 565] as she did for a message for Jim. But I could leave my thanks for all his kindness, and my regrets—sincere, though repented of—that I could not see him again, before I went, to say good-by; and, already in part effaced by the impression of the last blow that had fallen upon me, that scene in the dreadful meadow seemed months and miles away. The engine shrieked. The cars started. My hopes and spirits rose; and I was glad, because I was going home,—that is, where, when I had a home, it used to be.

CHAPTER III.

The rapid motion gratified my restlessness, and, together with the noise, soothed me homœopathically. I slept a great deal. The midsummer day was far shorter than I feared it would be; and I found myself rather refreshed than fatigued when the conductor roused me finally by shouting names more and more familiar, as we stopped at way-stations. I sat upright, and strained my cinderful eyes, long surfeited with undiluted green, for the first far blue and silver glimpses of my precious sea. Then well-known rocks and cedars came hurrying forward, as if to meet me half-way.

As the cars stopped for the last time with me, I caught sight of a horse and chaise approaching at a rapid rate down the main street of the town. The driver sprang out and threw the reins to a boy. He turned his face—a grave face—up, and looked searchingly along the row of car-windows. It was Dr. Physick. I darted out at the nearest door. He saw me, smiled, and was at it in an instant, catching both my hands in his to shake them and help me down by them at the same time.

"Little Katy!"—he always would call me so, though, as I sometimes took the liberty to tell him, I was very sure I had long left off being that, even if I was not yet quite the size of some giants I had seen,—"Little Katy! How jolly! 'Fanny?' O, Fanny's pretty comfortable,—looking out for you and putting her head out of the window, I dare say, the minute my back's turned. I look to you now to keep her in order. Baggage? Only bag? Give it to me. Foot,—now hand,—there you are!"

And there I was,—where I was most glad to be once more,—in his gig, and driving, in the cool, moist twilight, down the dear old street, shaded with dear old elms, with the golden and amber sunset still glowing between their dark boughs; where every quiet, snug, old wooden house, with its gables and old-fashioned green or white front-door with a brass or bronze knocker, and almost every shop and sign even, seemed an old friend.

The lingering glow still lay full on the front of our old home, which now had "Philemon Physick, M. D." on the corner. As we stopped before it, I thought I spied a sweet little watching face, for one moment, behind a pane of one of the second-story windows. But if I did, it was gone before I was sure.

"Here she is!" called out the Doctor. "Julia!—Wait a minute, Kate, my dear,—no hurry. Julia!" Up he ran, while "Julia" ran down, said something, in passing, to him on the stairs, kissed me at the foot three times over,—affectionately, but as if to gain time, I thought,—led me into the parlor to take off my bonnet, and told me Fanny was not quite ready to see me just then, but would be, most likely, in two or three minutes. The Doctor had gone up to see about it, and would let me know.

"Yes, dear, you did; and that was just the trouble. She saw you were there; and she was so pleased, it made her a little faint. The Doctor will give her something to take; and as soon as she is a little used to your being here, of course you can be with her all the time."

The Doctor came down, speaking cheerily. "She is all right now. Run[Pg 566] up, as fast as you like, and kiss her, Kate, my child; but tell her I forbid your talking till to-morrow. In five minutes, by my watch, I shall call you down to tea; and when you are called, you come. That will give her time to think about it and compose herself. Julia's help shall stay with her in the mean while. Afterwards, you shall share your own old chamber with her. Julia has it, as usual, all ready for you."

Fanny had sunk back on her white pillows, upon the little couch before the window from which she watched for me. How inspired and beautiful she looked!—she who was never thought of as beautiful before,—the very transfigured likeness of herself, as I hope one day to behold her in glory,—and so like our mother, too! She lay still, as she had been ordered, lest she should faint again; but by the cheerful lamp that stood on the stand beside her, I saw her smile as she had never used to smile. The eyes, that I left swollen and downcast, were raised large and bright. But as she slowly opened her arms and clasped me to her, I felt tears on my cheek; and her voice was broken as she said, "Katy, Katy! O, thank God! I was afraid I never should see you again. Now I have everything that I want in the world!"

It was hard to leave her when I was called so soon; but she knew that it was right, and made me go; and when I was allowed to return to her, she lay in obedient but most happy silence for all the rest of the evening, with those new splendid eyes fixed on my face, her dim complexion glowing, and her hands clasping mine. After I had put her to bed, and laid myself down in my own beside her, I felt her reach out of hers and touch me with a little pat two or three times, as a child will a new doll, to make sure that it has not been merely dreaming of it. At first, I asked her if she wanted anything; but she said, "Only to feel that you are really there"; and when, after a very sound and long rest, I awoke, there was her solemn, peaceful gaze still watching me, like that of an unsleeping guardian angel. She had slept too, however, remarkably long and well, whether for joy, as she thought, or from the opium which I had been startled to see given her the night before. She said she had had many scruples about taking it; but the Doctor insisted; and she did not think it her duty on the whole to make him any trouble by opposing his prescriptions, when we owed him so much. Poor Fanny! How hard it was for her to owe any one "anything, but to love one another."

The Doctor's bulletin that morning was, "Remarkably comfortable." But in the forenoon, while Fanny after breakfast took a nap, I snatched an opportunity to cross-question Mrs. Physick, from whom I knew I could sooner or later obtain all she knew,—the sooner it would be, if she had anything good to tell; as, in my inexperience, I was almost sure she must have.

Fanny's "influenza," I now discovered, dated back to May. She kept her room a few days, did not seem so ill as many fellow-patients who were now quite well again, and soon resumed her usual habits, but was never quite rid of her cough. Two or three weeks after, there was a Sunday-school festival in the parish to which we belonged. She was called upon to sing and assist in various ways, over-tasked her strength, was caught in a shower, looked very sick, and being, on the strength of Mrs. Physick's representations, formally escorted into the office, was found to have a quick pulse and sharp pain in one side. This led to a careful examination of the chest, and the discovery not only of "acute pleurisy," but of "some mischief probably of longer standing in the lungs," yet "no more," the Doctor said, "than many people carried about with them all their lives without knowing it, nor than others, if circumstances brought it to light, recovered from by means of good care and good spirits, and lived to a good old age."[Pg 567]

"The pleurisy? About the beginning of June. The Doctor said last week he 'could scarcely discover a vestige of it.' And now, Katy," continued kind, cheery Mrs. Physick, "you see, your coming back has put her in the best of spirits; and you and the Doctor and I are all going to take the best of care of her; and so we may all hope the best."

"The best of care"? Ah, there was little doubt of that! But even "good spirits"! who could hope to see Fanny enjoying them for any length of time, till she had done with time? Good, uncomplaining, patient, I had always seen her,—happy, how seldom!—when, indeed, till now? There was not enough of earth about her for her to thrive and bloom.

My mother, I believe, used to attribute in part to Fanny's early training her early joylessness. In her early days,—so at least I have understood,—it was thought right even by some good people of our "persuasion," to lose no opportunity of treating the little natural waywardnesses of children with a severity which would now be called ferocity. Mamma could never have practised this herself; but perhaps she suffered it to be practised to a greater extent than she would have consented to endure, had she foreseen the consequences. My poor father must have been inexperienced, too; and I suppose his nerves, between sickness and poverty, might at times be in such a state that he scarcely knew what he did.

I was four years younger than Fanny, and know nothing about it, except a very little at second-hand. But at any rate I have often heard my mother say, with a glance at her, and a gravity as if some sad association enforced the lesson on her mind, that it was one of the first duties of those who undertook the charge of children to watch over their cheerfulness, and a most important rule, never, if it was possible to put it off, so much as to reprimand them when one's own balance was at all disturbed. This was a rule that she never to my knowledge broke; though she was naturally rather a high-strung person, as I think the pleasantest and most generous people one meets with generally are.

From whatever cause or causes,—to return to Fanny,—she grew up, not fierce, sullen, nor yet hypocritical, but timid and distrustful, miserably sensitive and anxious, and morbidly conscientious.

There was another pleasure in store for her, however; for, the afternoon following that of my return, Mrs. Julia, looking out as usual for her husband,—with messages from four different alarmingly or alarmed sick persons, requesting him to proceed without delay in four different directions,—saw him at length driving down the road with such unprofessional slowness that she feared some accident to himself or his harness. When he came before the door, the cause appeared. It was a handsome Bath chair, with a basket of strawberries on the floor and a large nosegay on the seat, fastened to the back of his gig, and safely towed by it.

"Fanny's coach," said he, looking up. "Miss Dudley has sent it to be taken care of for her. She does not want it herself for the present; and you can draw your dolly out in it every fine day."

"O," cried Fanny, sitting upright on the couch by the window,—where she spent the greater part of the day,—to see for herself, with the tears in her eyes. "O, how lovely! That is the very kindest thing she has done yet;—and you don't know how she keeps sending me everything, Katy!"

"O, don't you know? The great naturalist's sister. He lives in that beautiful place, on the shore, in the large stone cottage. The ground was broken for it before you went to Greenville. She is very sick, I am afraid,—very kind, I am sure. I never saw her. She has heard about me. I am afraid[Pg 568] the Doctor told her. I hope she does not think I meant he should."

"Why,—I know I should not like being begged of in that underhand way myself; and if I did not like it, I might send something once, but after that I should never keep on sending."

"I am very glad you think so; for I like her kindness, though I scarcely like to have her show it in this way, because I am afraid I can never do anything for her. But I hope she does like to send; for Dr. Physick says she always asks after me, almost before he can after her, and looks very much pleased if she hears that I have been so. I suppose the Doctor will think it is too late to take me down to-night. Katy, don't you want to go and see the wagon, and tell me about it, and pour the strawberries into a great dish on the tea-table, and all of you have some, and bring up the flowers when you come back after tea?"

When I came back with the flowers, Fanny smiled rather pensively, and did not ask me about the chair.

"Fanny," said I, "the Doctor says you may go out to-morrow forenoon, and stay as long as you like, if it is fair; and the sun is going down as red as a Baldwin apple. The chair is contrived so, with springs and the cushions, that you can lie down in it, as flat as you do on your sofa, when you are tired of sitting up."

"O Katy," cried she, with a little quiver in her voice, for she was too weak to bear anything, "I have been seeing how inconsiderate I was! To think of letting you exert and strain yourself in that way!"

In came the Doctor, looking saucy. "Fanny won't go, I suppose? I thought so. I said so to De Quincey [his horse], as I drove him down the street at a creep, sawing his mouth to keep him from running away, till he foamed at it epileptically, while all the sick people were sending north, south, east, and west after all the other doctors. I hope you won't mention it, said I to the horse; but Fanny is always getting up some kind of a row. But there is Katy now,—Katy is a meek person, and always does as she is bid. She has been cooped up too much, and bleached her own roses with teaching the Greenville misses to sickly o'er with the pale cast of thought. Katy needs gentle exercise. So does Deacon Lardner." Deacon Lardner was the fat inhabitant of the town, and ill of the dropsy. "I will send Katy out a-walking, with Deacon Lardner in Miss Dudley's chair."

I laughed. Fanny smiled. The Doctor saw his advantage, and followed it up. "Julia, my dear, get my apothecary's scales out of the office. Put an ounce weight into one, and Fanny into the other. Then put the ounce weight into the chair. If Katy can draw that, she can draw Fanny."

The next day, the Doctor carried her down stairs, as soon as she could bear it after her breakfast, and left her on a sofa, in the little parlor, to rest. About ten o'clock, he came back from his early rounds. I was dressed and waiting for him, with Fanny's bonnet and shawl ready. I put them on her, while he drew out the chair from its safe stable in the hall. Once again he took her up; and thus by easy stages we got her into "her coach." I pulled, and he pushed it, "to give me a start." How easy and light and strong it was! How delighted were both she and I!

Fanny was too easily alarmed to enjoy driving much, even when she was well; and she had not walked out for weeks. During that time, the slow, late spring had turned into midsummer; and the mere change from a sick-room to the fresh, outer world is always so very great! For me, it was the first going abroad since my return to Beverly. We went in the sun till my charge's little snowdrop hands were warm, and then drew up under the shade of an elm, on a little airy knoll that commanded[Pg 569] a distant view of the sea, and was fanned by a soft air, which helped poor Fanny's breathing. She now insisted on my resting myself; and I turned the springs back and arranged the cushions so that she could lie down, took a new handkerchief of my guardian's from my pocket, and hemmed it, as I sat at her side on a stone, while she mused and dozed. When she awoke, I gave her her luncheon from a convenient little box in the chair, and drew her home by dinner-time.

In this way we spent much of the month of July—shall I say it?—agreeably. Nobody will believe it, who has not felt or seen the marvellous relief afforded by an entire change of scene and occupation to a person tried as I had been. If I had but "one idea," that idea was now Fanny. Instinctively in part, and partly of set purpose, I postponed to her every other consideration and thought. It was delightful to me to be able, in my turn, to take her to one after another of the dear old haunts, in wood or on beach, where she had often led me, when a child, to play. I always did love to have something to take care of; and the care of Fanny wore upon me little. She was the most considerate of invalids.

Besides, she was better, or at any rate I thought so, after she began to go out in Miss Dudley's chair. Her appetite improved; her nerves grew more firm; and her cough was sometimes so quiet at night that her laudanum would stand on her little table in the morning, just as it was dropped for her the evening before.

Not only were my spirits amended by the fresh air in which, by Dr. Physick's strict orders, I lived with her through the twenty-four hours, but my health too. He had declared her illness to be "probably owing in great part to the foul atmosphere in which," he found, "she slept"; and now she added that, since she had known the comfort of fresh air at night, she should be very sorry ever to give it up. In windy weather she had a large folding-screen, and in raw, more blankets and a little fire.

Besides the chair, another thing came in our way which gave pleasure to both of us, though it was not very pleasantly ushered in, as its pioneer was a long visit from Fanny's old "Sabbath school-ma'am," Miss Mehitable Truman, who would come up stairs. Towards the close of this visit her errand came out. It was to inquire whether "Fanny wouldn't esteem it a privilege to knit one or two of her sets of toilet napkins for Miss Mehitable's table at the Orphans' Fair, jest by little and little, as she could gether up her failin' strength." Fanny could not promise the napkins, since, luckily for her, she was past speech from exhaustion, as I was with indignation; and Miss Truman, hearing the Doctor's boots creak below, showed the better part of valor, and departed.

The next day, it rained. We were kept in-doors; and Fanny could not be easy till I had looked up her cotton and knitting-needles. She could not be easy afterwards, either; for they made her side ache; and when Dr. Physick paid his morning visit, he took them away.

I knew she would be sorry to have nothing to give to that fair. It was one of the few rules of life which my mother had recommended us to follow, never from false shame either to give or to withhold. "If you are asked to give," she would say, "to any object, and are not satisfied that it is a good one, but give to it for fear that somebody will think you stingy, that is not being faithful stewards. But when you do meet with a worthy object, always give, if you honestly can. Even if you have no more than a cent to give, then give a cent; and do not care if the Pharisees see you. That is more than the poor widow in the Gospels gave";—how fond she always was of that story!—"and you remember who, besides the Pharisees, saw her, and what he said? His objects would not have to go begging so long as they do now, if every one would follow her example."[Pg 570] From pride often, and sometimes from indolence, I am afraid I had broken that rule; but Fanny, I rather think, never had; and now I would try to help her to keep it.

My mother's paint-box was on a shelf in our closet, with three sheets of her drawing-paper still in it. Painting flowers was one of her chief opiates to lull the cares of her careful life. I think a person can scarcely have too many such, provided they are kept in their proper place, I have often seen her, when sadly tired or tried, sit down, with a moisture that was more like rain than dew in her eyes, and paint it all away, till she seemed to be looking sunshine over her lifelike blossoms. Then she would pin them up against the wall, for a week or two, for us to enjoy them with her; and, afterwards, she would give them away to any one who had done her any favor. Her spirit was in that like Fanny's,—she shrank so painfully from the weight of any obligation! She wished to teach me to paint, when I was a child. I wished to learn; and many of her directions were still fresh in my memory. But the inexperienced eye and uncertain hand of thirteen disheartened me. I thought I had no talent. My mother was not accustomed to force any task upon me in my play-hours. The undertaking was given up.

But I suppose many persons, like me not precocious in the nursery or the school-room, but naturally fond, as I was passionately, of beautiful forms and colors, would be surprised, if they would try their baffled skill again in aftertimes, to find how much the years had been unwittingly preparing for them, in the way of facility and accuracy of outline and tint, while they supposed themselves to be exclusively occupied with other matters. What the physiologists call "unconscious cerebration" has been at work. Scatter the seeds of any accomplishment in the mind of a little man or woman, and, even if you leave them quite untended, you may in some after summer or autumn find the fruit growing wild. Accordingly, when, within the last twelvemonth, I had been called upon to teach the elements of drawing in my school, it astonished me to discover the ease with which I could either sketch or copy. And now it occurred to me that perhaps, if I would take enough time and pains, I could paint something worthy of a place on Miss Mehitable's table.

Fanny's gladness at the plan, and interest in watching the work, in her own enforced inaction, were at once reward and stimulus. I succeeded, better than we either of us expected, in copying the frontispiece of a "picture-book," as Dr. Physick called it, which he had brought up from his office to amuse her. It was a scientific volume, sent him by the author,—an old fellow-student,—from the other side of the world. Lovely ferns, flowers, shells, birds, butterflies, and insects, that surrounded him there, were treated further on separately, in rigid sequence; but as if to make himself amends by a little play for so much work, he had not been able to resist the temptation of grouping them all together on one glowing and fascinating page. I framed my copy as tastefully as I could, in a simple but harmonious passe-partout, and sent it to Miss Mehitable, with Fanny's love. Fanny's gratitude was touching; and as for me, I felt quite as if I had found a free ticket to an indefinitely long private picture-gallery.

Fanny's satisfaction was still more complete after the fair, when Miss Mehitable reported that the painting had brought in what we both thought quite a handsome sum. "It was a dreadful shame," she added, "you hadn't sent two of 'em; for at noon, while I was home, jest takin' a bite, my niece, Letishy, from Noo York, had another grand nibble for that one after 'twas purchased. Letishy said a kind o' poor, pale-lookin', queer-lookin' lady, who she never saw before, in an elegint camel's-hair,"—("Poor-lookin', in a camel's-hair shawl!" was my inward ejaculation; "don't I wish, ma'am, I could catch you and 'Letishy' in my[Pg 571] composition class, once!")—"she come up to the table an' saw that, an' seemed to feel quite taken aback to find she'd lost her chance at it. Letishy showed her some elegint shell-vases with artificial roses; but that wouldn't do. I told Letishy," continued Miss Mehitable, "that she'd ought to ha' been smart an' taken down the lady's name; an' then I could ha' got Kathryne to paint her another. But you mu't do it now, Kathryne, an' put it up in the bookseller's winder; an' then, if she's anybody that belongs hereabouts, she'll be likely to snap at it, an' the money can go right into the orphans' fund all the same."

"Much obliged," thought I, "for the hint as to the bookseller's shop-window; but I rather think that, if the money comes, the orphan's fund that it ought to 'go right into' this time is Fanny's."

For my orphan's fund from my months of school-keeping, not ample when I first came back, was smaller now. Fanny's illness was necessarily, in some respects, an expensive one. I believed, indeed, and do believe, that it was a gratification to Dr. Physick to lavish upon her, to the utmost of his ability, everything that could do her good, as freely as if she had been his own child or sister. But it could not be agreeable to her, while we had a brother, to be a burden to a man unconnected with us by blood, young in his profession, though rising, and still probably earning not very much more than his wife's and his own daily bread from day to day, and owing us nothing but a debt of gratitude for another's kindnesses, which another man in his place would probably have said that "he paid as he went."

In plain English, the tie between us arose simply from the fact that he boarded with my mother, when he was a poor and unformed medical student. He always said that she was the best friend he had in his solitary youth, and that no one could tell how different all his after-life might have been but for her. She was naturally generous; yet she was a just woman; and I know that, while we were unprovided for, she could not have given, as the world appraises giving, much to him. Still "she did what she could." He paid her his board; but she gave him a home. After she found that his lodgings were unwarmed, she invited him to share her fireside of a winter evening; and, though she would not deprive us of our chat with one another and with her, she taught us to speak in low tones, and never to him, when we saw him at his studies. When they were over, and he was tired and in want of some amusement, she afforded him one at once cheap, innocent, and inexhaustible, and sang to him as she still toiled on at her unresting needle, night after night, ballad after ballad, in her wild, sweet, rich voice. He was very fond of music, though, as he said, he "could only whistle for it." It was the custom then among our neighbors to keep Saturday evening strictly as a part of "the Sabbath." It was her half-holiday, however, for works of charity and mercy; and she would often bid him bring her any failing articles of his scanty wardrobe then, and say that she would mend them for him if he would read to her. Her taste was naturally fine, and trained by regular and well-chosen Sunday reading; and she had the tact to select for these occasions books that won the mind of the intellectual though uncultivated youth by their eloquence, until they won his heart by their holiness. Moreover, she had been gently bred, and could give good advice, in manners as well as morals, when it was asked for, and withhold it when it was not.

The upshot of it all was, that he loved her like a mother; and now the sentiment was deepened by a shade of filial remorse, which I could never quite dispel, though, as often as he gave me any chance, I tried. The last year of my mother's life was the first of his married life. His father-in-law hired, at the end of the town opposite to ours, a furnished house for him and his wife. My mother called upon[Pg 572] her by the Doctor's particular invitation. The visit was sweetly received, and promptly returned by the bride; but she was pretty and popular, and had many other visits to pay, especially when she could catch her husband at leisure to help her. He was seldom at leisure at all, but, as he self-reproachfully said, "too busy to think except of his patients and his wife"; and poor mamma, with all her real dignity, had caught something of the shy, retiring ways of a reduced gentlewoman, and was, besides, too literally straining every nerve to pay off the mortgage on her half-earned house, so that, if anything happened, she might "not leave her girls without a home." Therefore he saw her seldom.

After he heard she was ill, he was with her daily, and often three or four times a day; and his wife came too, and made the nicest broths and gruels with her own hands, and begged Fanny not to cry, and cried herself. He promised my mother that we should never want, if he could help it, and that he would be a brother to us both, and my guardian. She told him that, if she died, this promise would be the greatest earthly comfort to her in her death; and he answered, "So it will to me!"

Then after she was gone, when the lease of his house was up, as no other tenant offered for ours, he hired it, furniture and all, and offered Fanny and me both a home in it for an indefinite time; but our affairs were all unsettled. We knew the rent, as rents were then, would not pay our expenses and leave us anything to put by for the future, which my mother had taught us always to think of. Therefore I thought I had better take care of myself, as I was much the strongest, and perfectly able to do so. "And a very pretty business you made of it, didn't you, miss?" reflected and queried I, parenthetically, as I afterwards reviewed these circumstances in my own mind.

The best we had to hope from my older and our only brother George was, that he should join us in paying the interest on the mortgage till real estate should rise,—as everybody said it soon must,—and then the rise in rents should enable us to let the house on better terms, and thus, by degrees, clear it of all encumbrances, and have it quite for our own, to let, sell, or live in. The worst we had to fear was, that he would insist on forcing it at once into the market, at what would be a great loss to us, and leave us almost destitute. He was going to be married, and getting into business, and wanted beyond anything else a little ready money.

He scarcely knew us even by sight. He had been a sprightly, pretty boy; and my mother's aunt's husband, having no children of his own, offered to adopt him. Poor mamma's heart was almost broken; but I suppose George's noise must have been very trying to my father's nerves; and then he had no way to provide for him. After she objected, I have always understood that my father appeared to take a morbid aversion to the child, and could scarcely bear him in his sight. So George seemed likely to be still more unhappy, and ruined beside, if she kept him at home. He was a little fellow then, not more than five years old; but he cried for her so long that my great-uncle-in-law was very careful how he let him have anything to do with her again, till he had forgotten her; and little things taken so early must be expected to fall, sooner or later, more or less under the influence of those who have them in charge.

Poor mamma died without making a regular will. It was not the custom at that time for women to be taught so much about business even as they are now. She thought, if she did make a will before she could pay off the debt on the house, she should have to make another afterwards, and that then there would be double lawyers' fees to deduct from the little she would have to leave us. After she found out that she was dangerously sick, she was very anxious to make her will, whenever she was in[Pg 573] her right mind; but that went and came so, that the Doctor, and a lawyer whom he brought to see her, said that no disposition she might make could stand in court, if any effort were made to break it. All that could be done was to take down, as she was able to dictate it, an affectionate and touching letter to George.

In this she begged him to remember how much greater his advantages, and his opportunities of making a living, were than ours, and besought him to do his best to keep and increase for us the pittance she had toiled so hard to earn, and to take nothing from it unless a time should come when he was as helpless as we.

Two copies of this letter were made, signed, sealed, and witnessed. One I sent to George, enclosed with an earnest entreaty from Fanny and myself, that he would come and let mamma see him once again, before she died, if, as we feared, she must die. We had asked him to come before. He answered our letter—not our mother's—rather kindly, but very vaguely, putting off his visit, and saying, that he could not for a moment suffer himself to believe that she would not do perfectly well, if we did not alarm her about herself, nor worry her with business when she was not in a state for it. His reply was handed me before her, unluckily. She wished to hear it read, and seemed to lose heart and grow worse from that time.

Thus then matters stood with us that July. The sale of our house was pending—over our kind host's head too! It was plain to me that George would not, and that Dr. Physick should not, bear the charge of Fanny's maintenance. So far and so long as I could, I would.

In the mean time, no further examination was made of her lungs. The Doctor's report was often "Remarkably comfortable," and never anything worse than, "Well, on the whole, taking one time with another, I don't see but she's about as comfortable as she has been." I was, of course, inexperienced. I was afraid that, if she improved no faster, I should be obliged to leave her, when I went away to work for her again at the end of the summer vacation, still very feeble, a care to others, and pining for my care. That was my nearest and clearest fear.

But what did Fanny think? I hope, the truth; and on one incident, in chief, I ground my hope. One beautiful day—the last one in July—she asked me if I should be willing to draw her to our mother's grave. There could be but one answer; though I had not seen the spot since the funeral. Fanny looked at it with more than calmness,—with the solemn irradiation of countenance which had during her illness become her most characteristic expression. She desired me to help her from her chair. She lay at her length upon the turf, still and observant, as if calculating. Then she spoke.

"Katy, dear," said she, very tenderly and softly, as if she feared to give me pain, "I have been thinking sometimes lately, that, if anything should ever happen to either of us, the other might be glad to know what would be exactly the wishes of the one that was gone—about our graves. Suppose we choose them now, while we are here together. Here, by mamma, is where I should like to lie. See, I will lay two red clovers for the head, and a white one for the foot. And there, on her other side, is just such a place for you. Should you like it?—and—shall you remember?"

"And then," added she, after a short, deliberating pause, during which she, with my assistance, raised herself to sit on the side of the chair with her feet still resting on the turf, "while we are upon the subject,—one thing more. If I should be the first to go,—nobody knows whose turn may come the first,—then I should like to have you do—just what would make you happiest; but I don't like mourning. I shouldn't wish to have it worn for me. My feelings about it have all changed since[Pg 574] we made it for mamma. It seemed as if we were only working at a great black wall, for our minds to have to break through, every time they yearned to go back into the past and sit with her. It was as if the things she chose for us, and loved to see us in, were part of her and of her life with us,—as if she would be able still to think of us in them, and know just how we looked. And it seemed so strange and unsympathizing in us, that, when we loved her so, we should go about all muffled up in darkness, because our God was clothing her in light!"

I answered,—rather slowly and tremulously this time, I fear,—that I had felt so too.

"Then, Katy," resumed she, pleadingly, as she leaned back in her usual attitude in the chair, and made a sign that I might draw her home, "we will not either of us wear it for the other,—without nor within either, will we?—any more than we can help. Don't you remember what dear mamma said once, when you had made two mistakes in your lessons at school, and lost a prize, and took it hard, and somebody was teasing you, with making very light of it, and telling you to think no more about it? You were very sorry and a little offended, and said, you always chose not to be hoodwinked, but to look at things on all sides and in the face. Mamma smiled, and said, 'It is good and brave to look all trials in the face; but among the sides, never forget the bright side, little Katy.' If I had my life to live over again, I would try to mind her more in that. She always said, there lay my greatest fault. I hope and think God has forgiven me, because he makes it so easy for me to be cheerful now."

"Fanny," said I, as we drew near the house, "things in this world are strangely jumbled. Here are you, with your character, to wit, that of a little saint, if you will have the goodness to overlook my saying so, and somebody else's conscience. I have no doubt that, while you are reproaching yourself first for this, then for that and the other, the said somebody else is sinning away merrily, somewhere among the antipodes or nearer, without so much as a single twinge."

Smiling, she shook her head at me; and that was all that passed. She was as cheerful as I tried to be. With regard to the other world, she seemed to have attained unto the perfect love that casteth out fear; and I believe her only regret in leaving this lower one for it was that she could not take me with her. In fact, throughout her illness, her freedom from anxiety about its symptoms—not absolute, but still in strong contrast with her previous tendencies—appeared to her physician, as he acknowledged to me afterwards, even when he considered the frequent flattering illusions of the disease, a most discouraging indication as to the case. But to her it was an infinite mercy; and to me, to have such glimpses to remember of her already in possession of so much of that peace which remaineth unto the people of God.

As the dog-days drew on, a change came, though at first a very gentle one to her, if not to me. She slept more, ate less, grew so thin that she could no more bear the motion of her little wagon, and begged that it might be returned, because it tired her so to think of it.

Then word came that our house was advertised to be sold, unconditionally, at an early day. To move her in that state,—how dreadful it would be! I did not mean to let her know anything about it until I must; but Miss Mehitable, always less remarkable for tact than for good-will, blurted it out before her.

Her brows contracted with a moment's look of pain. "O Katy," she whispered, "I am sorry! That must make you very anxious";—and then she went to sleep.

Evidently it did not make her very anxious, as I knew that it would have done as lately even as two or three months before. What was the remedy? Approaching death. Well, death[Pg 575] was approaching me also, as steadily, if not so nearly; and, after her example, my thoughts took such a foretaste of that anodyne that, as I sat and gazed on her unconscious, placid face, all terrors left me, and I was strengthened to pray, and to determine to look to the morrow with only so much thought as should enable me to bring up all my resources of body and mind to meet it as I ought, and to leave the result, unquestioned, quite in God's hand.

The result was an entire relief to her last earthly care. The appointed day came. The matter took wind. None of our townspeople appeared, to bid against my guardian; but enough of them were on the spot "to see fair play," or, in other words, to advance for him whatever sum he might stand in need of; and the house was knocked down to him at a price even below its market value. He paid the mortgagee and George their due by the next mail, but left my title and Fanny's as it was, not to be settled till I came of age.

These details would only have worried and wearied her; but the auctioneer's loud voice had hardly died away, or the gathered footsteps scattered from the door, when the Doctor came to her chamber, flushed with triumph, to tell us that "Nobody now could turn us out; and everything was arranged for us to stay." Fanny looked brightly up to him, and answered: "Now I shall scarcely know what more to pray for, but God's reward for you." And most of all I thank Him for that news, because her last day on this earth was such a happy one.

The next morning, just at dawn, she waked me, saying, "O Katy, tell the Doctor I can't breathe!"

She stretched out her hand to him, and gasped, "O Doctor, I can't breathe! Can't you do anything to help me?"

He felt her pulse quickly, looking at her, and said, very tenderly, "Have some ether, Fanny. I will run and bring it." Throwing wider open every window that he passed, he hurried down to the office and back with the ether.

Eagerly, though with difficulty, she inhaled it; and it relieved her. I sat and watched her, silent, with her hand in mine.

Presently the door behind me opened softly, as if somebody was looking in. "My dear," said the Doctor, turning his head, and speaking very earnestly, though in a low voice, "I wouldn't come here. You can do no good." But presently his wife came in, in her dressing-gown, very pale, and sat by me and held the hand that was not holding Fanny's.

And next I knew they thought she would not wake; and then the short breath stopped. And now it was my turn to stretch out my hands to him for help; but, looking at me, he burst into tears, as he had not when he looked at Fanny; and I knew there was no breath more for her, nor any ether for me. I did not want to go to sleep, because I should have to wake again; but his wife was sobbing aloud. I knew how dreadful such excitement was for her; and so I had to do just as they wished me to, and let them lead me out and lock the door, and lay down on a bed and shut my eyes.

PROTONEIRON.

DECEMBER 9, 1864.

The unresting lines, where oceans end,
Are traced by shifting surf and sand;
As pallid, moonlit fingers blend
The dreamlight of the ghostly land.

No eye can tell where Love's last ray
Fades to the sky of colder light;
No ear, when sounds that vexed the day
Cease mingling with the holier night.

As bells, which long have failed to swing
In lonely towers of crumbling stone,
Through far eternal spaces ring,
With semblance of their ancient tone.

The lightning, quivering through the cloud,
Weaves warp and woof from sky to earth,
In mist that seems a mortal's shroud,
In light that hails an angel's birth.

Thought vainly strives, with life's dull load,
To mount through ether rare and thin;
Fond eyes pursue the spirit's road
To heaven, and dimly gaze therein.

In battle's travail-hour, a host
Writhes in the throes of deadly strife.
One flash! One groan! A startled ghost
Is born into the eternal life.

Dear wife and children! Now I fly
Forth from my soldier camp to you!
Blue ridge and river hurry by
My weary eyes, in quick review.

Long have I waited. How and when
My furlough came is mystery.
I dreamed of charging with my men,—
A dream of glorious history!

To you I fly on Love's strong wing;
My courser needs no armed heel:
And yet anew the bugles ring,
And wake me to the crash of steel.[Pg 577]

In fiercer rush of hosts again
My dripping sabre seeks the front.
Spur your mad horses! Forward, men!
Meet with your hearts the battle's brunt.

Tricolor, flaunt! And trumpet-blare,
Scream louder than the bursting shell,
And thundering hoofs, that shake the air,
Trembling above that surging hell!

In carbine smoke and cannon flash,
Like avalanches twain, we meet;
One gasp! we spur; one stab! we crash
And trample with the iron feet.

I dream! My tiercepoint smote them through,
My sabre buried to my hand!
And yet unchecked those horsemen flew,
And still I grasp my phantom brand!

Our chargers, which like whirlwinds bore
Us onward, lie all stiff and stark!
Black Midnight's feet wait on the shore,
To bear me—where? Where all is dark.

And still I hear the faint recall!
My senses,—have they dropped asleep?
I see a soldier's funeral pall,
And there my wife and children weep!

Sobs break the air, below the cloud;
And one pure soul, of love and truth,
Is folding in a mortal shroud
Her quivering wings of Hope and Youth.

Ye of the sacred red right hand,
Who count, around our camp-fire light,
Dear names within the shadowy land,
Why do ye whisper mine to-night?

Where am I? Am I? Trumpet notes
Still mingle with a dreamy doubt
Of Where? and Whither? Music floats,
As when camp-lights are going out.

Like saintly eyes resigned to Death,
Like spirit whispers from afar,
The sighing bugle yields its breath,
As if it wooed a dying star.[Pg 578]

Draped in dark shadows, widowed Night
Weeps, on new graves, with chilly tears;
Beyond strange mountain-tops, the light
Is breaking from the immortal years.

A rhythm, from the unfathomed deep
Of God's eternal stillness, sings
My wondering, trembling soul to sleep,
While angels lift it on their wings.

THE PROGRESS OF PRUSSIA.

The changes that have taken place in Europe in the last twenty years are of a most comprehensive character, and as strange as comprehensive; and their consequences are likely to be as remarkable as the changes themselves. In 1846 Russia was the first power of Europe, and at a great distance ahead of all other members of the Pentarchy. She retained the hegemony which she had acquired by the events of 1812-1814, and by the great display of military force she had made in 1815, when 160,000 of her troops were reviewed near Paris by the sovereigns and other leaders of the Grand Alliance there assembled after the second and final fall of the first Napoleon. Had Alexander I. reigned long, it is probable that his eccentricities—to call them by no harder name—would have operated to deprive Russia of her supremacy; but Nicholas, though he might never have raised his country so high as it was carried by his brother, was exactly the man to keep the power he had inherited,—and to keep it in the only way in which it was to be kept, namely, by increasing it. This he had done, and great success had waited on most of his undertakings, while in none had he encountered failure calculated to attract the world's attention. England had in some sense shared men's notice with Russia immediately after the settlement of Europe. The "crowning carnage, Waterloo," was considered her work; and, as the most decisive battle since Philippi, it gave to the victor in it an amount of consideration that was equal to that which Napoleon himself had possessed in 1812. But this consideration rapidly passed away, as England did nothing to maintain her influence on the Continent, while Russia was constantly busy there, and really governed it down to the French Revolution of 1830; and her power was not much weakened even by the fall of the elder Bourbons, with whom the Czar had entered into a treaty that had for one of its ends the cession to France of those very Rhenish provinces of which so much has been said in the course of the present year. Russia was victorious in her conflicts with the Persians and the Turks, and the battle of Navarino really had been fought in her interest,—blindly by the English, but intelligently by the French, who were willing that she should plant the double-headed eagle on the Bosporus, provided the lilies should be planted on the Rhine. If the fall of the Bourbons in France, and the fall of the Tories in England, weakened Russia's influence in Western Europe, those events had the effect of drawing Austria and Prussia nearer to her, and of reviving something of the spirit of the Holy Alliance, which had lost much of its strength from the early death of[Pg 579] Alexander. Russia had her own way in almost every respect; and in 1846 Nicholas was almost as powerful a ruler as Napoleon had been a generation earlier, with the additional advantage of being a legitimate sovereign, who could not be destroyed through the efforts of any coalition. Three years later he saved Austria from destruction by his invasion of Hungary,—an act of hard insolence, which quite reconciles one to the humiliation that overtook him five years later. He was then so powerful that the reactionists of the West cried for Russian cannon, to be used against the Reds. There was no nation to dispute the palm with Russia. England was supposed to be devoted to the conversion of cotton into calico, and to be ruled in the spirit of the Manchester school. She had retired into her shell, and could not be got out of it. Austria was thinking chiefly of Italy, and of becoming a naval power by incorporating that Peninsula into her empire. Prussia was looked upon as nothing but a Russian outpost to the west, and waiting only to be used by her master. France had not recovered from her humiliation of 1814-15, and never would recover from it so long as she warred only at barricades or in Barbary. Russia was supreme, and most men thought that supreme she would remain.

Thus stood matters down to 1853. Early in that year the Czar entered on his last quarrel with the Turks, whose cause was espoused by England, partly for the reason that Russian aggrandizement in the East would be dangerous to her interests, but more on the ground that she had become weary of submission to that arrogant sovereign who was in the habit of giving law to the Old World. Russia's ascendency, though chiefly the work of England, was more distasteful to the English than it was to any other European people,—more than it was to the French, at whose expense it had been founded; and had Nicholas made overtures to the latter, instead of making them to England, it is very probable he would have accomplished his purpose. But he detested Napoleon III., and he was at no pains to conceal his sentiments. This was the one great error of his life. The French Emperor had two great ends in view: first, to get into respectable company; and, secondly, to make himself powerful at home, by obtaining power and influence for France abroad. Unaided, he could accomplish neither end; and Nicholas and Victoria were the only two sovereigns who could be of much use to him in accomplishing one or both. Had Nicholas been gracious to him, had he, in particular, made overtures to him, he might have had the Emperor almost on his own terms; for the French disliked the English, and they did not dislike the Russians. Everything pointed to renewal of that "cordial understanding" between Russia and France which had existed twenty-five years earlier, when Charles X. was king of France, and which, had there been no Revolution of July, would have given to Russia possession of Constantinople, and to the French that roc's egg of theirs, the left bank of the Rhine. But prosperity had been fatal to the Czar. He could not see what was palpable to everybody else. He allowed his feelings to get the better of his judgment. He treated Napoleon III. with less consideration than he treated the Turkish Sultan; and Napoleon actually was forced to teach him that a French ruler was a powerful personage, and that the days of Louis Philippe were over forever. If not good enough to help Russia spoil Turkey, the Czar must be taught he was good enough to help England prevent the spoliating scheme. France and England united their forces to those of Turkey, and were joined by Sardinia. Russia was beaten in the war, on almost all its scenes. The world ascribed the result to Napoleon III. France carried off the honors of the war, and of spoil there was none. The Peace of Paris, which terminated the contest, was the work of Napoleon. He dictated its terms,[Pg 580] forcing them less on his enemy than on his allies.

As Russia's leadership of Europe had come from success in war, and had been maintained by subsequent successes of the Russian armies,—in Persia, in Turkey, in Poland, and elsewhere,—it followed that that leadership was lost when the fortune of war changed, and those armies were beaten on every occasion where they met the Allies. No military country could stand up erect under such crushing blows as had been delivered at the Alma, at Inkermann, at the Tchernaya, and at Sebastopol, not to name lesser Allied successes, or to count the victories of the Turks. Nicholas died in the course of the war, falling only before the universal conqueror. His successor submitted to the decision of the sword, and in fact performed an act of abdication inferior only to that executed by Napoleon. France stepped into the vacant leadership, and held it for ten years. Subsequent events confirmed and strengthened the French hegemony. The Italian war, waged by the Emperor in person, had lasted only about as many months as the Russian war did years, and yet it had proved far more damaging to Austria than the other had proved to Russia. The mere loss of territory experienced by Austria, though not small, was the least of the adverse results to her. Her whole Italian scheme was cut through and utterly ruined; and it was well understood that the days of her rule over Venetia were destined to be as few as they were evil. For what she then did, France received Savoy and Nice, which formed by no means a great price for her all but inestimable services,—services by no means to be ascertained, if we would know their true value, by what was done in 1859. France created the Kingdom of Italy. After making the amplest allowance for what was effected by Cavour, by Garibaldi, by Victor Emanuel, and by the Italian people, it must be clear to every one that nothing could have been effected toward the overthrow of Austrian domination in Italy but for the action of French armies in that country. That the Emperor meant what he wrought is very unlikely; but after the events of 1859 it was impossible to prevent the construction of the kingdom of Italy; and the Frenchman had to consent to the completion of his own work, though he did so on some occasions with extreme reluctance,—not so much from the dictation of his own feelings, as from the aversion which the French feel for the Italian cause, and which is so strong, and so deeply shared by the military, that it was with difficulty the soldiers in the camp of Châlons were prevented getting up an illumination when news reached them of the battle of Custozza, the event of which was so disastrous to Italy, and would have been fatal to her cause, had not that been vindicated and established by Prussian genius and valor on the remote fields of Germany and Bohemia. The descendants of men who fought under Arminius saved the descendants of the countrymen of Varus. Those persons who have condemned the Frenchman's apparently singular course toward Italy on some occasions, have not made sufficient allowance for the dislike of almost all classes of his subjects for the Italians. The Italian war was unpopular, and the Russian war was not popular. While the French have been pleased by the military occurrences that make up the histories of those wars, they were by no means pleased by the wars themselves, and they do not approve them even at this day; and the extraordinary events of the current year are not at all calculated to make them popular in France: for it is not difficult to see that there is a close connection between the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy and the elevation of Prussia to the first place in Europe; and Prussia is the power most abhorred by the French. So intense is French hatred of Prussia, that it is not too much to say that, last summer, the French would almost as lief have seen the Russians in Paris as the Prussians in Vienna.[Pg 581]

At the middle of last June the leadership of Europe—Frenchmen said of the world—was in the hands of France; and that such was France's place was the work of Napoleon III. The Emperor had been successful in all his undertakings, with one exception. His Mexican business had proved a total failure; but this had not injured him. Americans thought differently, some of us going so far as to suppose the fall of Maximilian's shaky throne would involve that of the solid throne of Napoleon. No such thing. The great majority of Frenchmen know little and care less about the Mexican business. Intelligent Frenchmen regret the Emperor's having taken it up; but they do so because of the expenditure it has involved, and because they have learnt from their country's history that it is best for her to keep out of that colonizing pursuit which has so many charms for the Emperor,—perhaps because of his Dutch origin. There is something eminently ridiculous about French colonization, which contrasts strangely with the robust action of the English. The Emperor seems to believe in it,—an instance of weakness that places him, on one point at least, below common men, most of whom laugh at his doings in regard to Mexico. If report does him no injustice, he thinks his Mexican undertaking the greatest thing of his reign. What, then, is the smallest thing of that reign? It is somewhat strange that this immense undertaking should not have been practicable till some time after the United States had become involved in civil war, that tasked all American energies, and did not permit any attention to be paid to Napoleon's action in Mexico.

Whether wise or foolish, Napoleon's interference in Mexican affairs had not weakened his power or lessened his influence in the estimation of Europe. Five months ago he was at the head of the European world. His position was quite equal to that which Nicholas held thirteen years earlier. If any change in his condition was looked for, it was sought in the advance of his greatness, not in the chance of his fall. The general, the all but universal sentiment was, that during Napoleon III.'s life France's lead must be accepted; and that, if that life should be much extended, France's power would be greatly increased, and that Belgium and the Rhine country might become hers at no distant day. It is true that, long before the middle of June, the course of events indicated the near approach of war; but it was commonly supposed that the chief result of such war would be to add to the greatness and glory of France. That was about the only point on which men were agreed with respect to the threatened conflict. Prussia and Italy might overthrow the Austrian empire; but most probably Austria, aided by most of Germany, would defeat them both, her armies rendezvousing at Berlin and Milan; and then would Napoleon III., bearing "the sword of Brennus," come in, and save the Allies from destruction, who would gratefully reward him,—the one by ceding the Rhenish provinces, and the other the island of Sardinia, to France. Such was the programme laid out by most persons in Europe and America, and probably not one person in a hundred thought it possible for Prussia to succeed. Even most of those persons who were not overcrowed by Austria's partisans and admirers did not dream that she would be conquered in a week, but thought it would be a more difficult matter for General Benedek to march from Prague to Berlin than was generally supposed, and that such march would not exactly be of the nature of a military promenade. That the French Emperor shared the popular belief, is evident from his conduct. He never would have allowed war to break out, if he had supposed it would lead to the elevation of Prussia to the first place in Europe,—a position held by himself, and which he had no desire to vacate. It was in his power to prevent the occurrence of war down almost to the very hour when[Pg 582] the Diet of the Germanic Confederation afforded to Prussia so plausible a ground for setting her armies in motion, by adopting a course that bore some resemblance to the old process of putting a disobedient member under the ban of the Empire. Prussia would not have gone to war with Austria, had she not been assured of the Italian alliance,—an alliance that would not only be useful in keeping a large portion of Austria's force in the south, but would prevent that power from purchasing Italian aid by the cession of Venetia; for so angry were the Austrians with Prussia, that it was quite on the cards that they might become the friends of Italy, if she would but help them against that nation whose exertions in 1859 had prevented Venetia from following the fate of Lombardy.

As Prussia would not have made war in 1866 without having secured the assistance of Italy, so was it impossible for Italy to form an alliance with Prussia without the consent of France being first had and obtained. Napoleon III. possessed an absolute veto on the action of the Italian government, and had he signified to that government that an alliance with Prussia could not meet with his countenance and approval, no such alliance ever would have been formed, or even the proposition to form it have been taken into serious consideration by the Cabinet of Florence. Victor Emanuel II. would have dared no more to attack Francis Joseph, without the consent of Napoleon III., than Carthage durst have attacked Masinissa without the consent of Rome. Prussia was not under the supervision of France, and was and is the only great European nation which had not then, as she has not since, been made to feel the weight of his power; but it may be doubted, without the slightest intention to impeach her courage, if she would have resolved upon war had she been convinced that France was utterly opposed to such resolution, and was prepared to show that the Empire was for peace by making war to preserve it. The opinion was quite common, as matters became more and more warlike with each succeeding day, that the course of Prussia had been fixed upon and mapped out by Count Bismark and Napoleon III., and that the former had received positive assurances that his country should not undergo any reduction of territory should the fortune of war go against her; in return for which he had agreed to such a "rectification of the French frontier" as should be highly pleasing to the pride of Frenchmen, and add greatly to the glory and the dignity of their Emperor. When news came that Napoleon III., after peace had been resolved upon, had asked for the cession of certain Rhenish territory,[45] the demand was supposed to have been made in consequence of an understanding entered into before the war by the courts of Paris and Berlin. There was nothing unreasonable in this supposition; for Napoleon III. was so bent upon extending[Pg 583] the boundaries of France, and was so entirely master of the situation, and his friendship was so necessary to Prussia, that it was reasonable to suppose he had made a good bargain with that power. Probably, when the secret history of the war shall be published, it will be seen that an understanding did exist between Prussia and France, and that Napoleon III., in August, asked for no more than it had been agreed he should have, in June, or May, or even earlier. Why, then, did Prussia give so firm but civil a negative in answer to his demand? and how was it that he submitted with so much of meekness to her refusal, even attributing his demand to the pressure of French public opinion, which is no more strongly expressed in 1866 in favor of the acquisition of the Rhine country, than it has been in almost any year since that country was lost, more than half a century since? The answer is easy. Prussia, no matter what her arrangement with France before the war, durst not pass over to the latter a solitary league of German territory. Her victories had so exalted German sentiment that she could not have her own way in all things. She was, on one side, paralyzed by the unexpected completeness of her military successes, which had brought very near all Germany under her eagles; for all Germans saw at once that she had obtained that commanding position from which the dictation of the unity of their country was not only a possibility, but something that could be accomplished without much difficulty. What Victor Emanuel II. and Count Cavour had been to Italy, William I. and Count Bismark could be to Austria, with this vast difference in favor of the Prussian sovereign and statesman,—that their policy could not be dictated, nor their action hampered, by a great foreign sovereign, who ruled a people hostile to the unity of every European race but themselves. It was impossible even to take into consideration any project that looked to the dismemberment of Germany, at a time when even Southern Germans were ready to unite with Prussia, because she was the champion of German unity, and was in condition to make her championship effectual. Napoleon III. saw how matters were, and, being a statesman, he did not hesitate, at the risk of much loss of influence, to admit a fact the existence of which could not be denied, and which operated with overwhelming force against his interests both as an emperor and as a man. That he may have only deferred a rupture with Prussia is probable enough, for it is not to be assumed that he is ready to cede the first place in Europe to the country most disliked by his subjects, and which refuses to cede anything to him. But he must have time in which to rearm his infantry, and to place in their hands a weapon that shall be to the needle-gun what the needle-gun [46] is to the Austrian muzzle-loader. He has postponed action; but that he has definitely abandoned the French claim to the left bank of the Rhine it would be hazardous to assert. There are reports that a conference of the chief European powers will be held soon, and that by that body something will be done with respect to the French claim that will prove satisfactory to all parties. It would be a marvellous body, should it accomplish so miraculous a piece of business. The matter is in fair way to disturb the peace of Europe before Sadowa shall have become[Pg 584] as old a battle as we now rate Solferino.

We do not assert that there was an understanding between France and Prussia last spring, and that Prussia went to war because that arrangement assured her against loss; but we think there is nothing irrational in the popular belief in the existence of such an understanding, and that nothing has occurred since the middle of June that renders that belief absurd. The contrary belief makes a fool of Napoleon III.,—a character which not even the Emperor's enemies have attributed to him since he became a successful man.

War began on the 15th of June, the day after that on which that bungling body, the Bund, under Austrian influence, had resort to overt measures against Prussia, which had suffered for some time from its covert measures. The Germanic Confederation ceased to exist on the 14th of June, having completed its half-century, with a little time to spare. The declarations of war that appeared on the 18th of June,—the anniversary of Fehrbellin, Kolin, and Waterloo, all great and decisive Prussian battles, and two of them Prussian victories, or victories which Prussians aided in winning,—the declarations of war, we say, were mere formalities, and as such they were regarded. Prussia's first open operation was taken three days before, when she invaded Saxony,—a country in which the Austrians, had they been wise, would have had at least a hundred thousand men within twenty-four hours after the action of the Diet. Prussia had been prepared for war for some weeks, perhaps months, while we are assured that Austria's preparations were far from complete; from which, supposing the statement correct, the inference is drawn that she did not expect Prussia to push matters to extremity. It is more likely that she fell into the usual error of all proud egotists,—that of estimating the capacity of a foe by her own. We cannot think so poorly of Austrian statesmen and generals as to conclude that they did not see war was inevitable in the latter part of May, which gave them three weeks to mass their troops so near the Saxon frontier as would have enabled them to cross it in a few hours after the Diet had given itself up to their direction, before the world. As the Diet never durst have acted thus without Austria's direct sanction, Austria must have known that war was at hand, and she should have prepared for its coming. Probably she did make all the preparation she thought necessary, she supposing that Prussia would be as slow as herself, because believing that her best was the best thing in the world. This error was the source of all her misfortunes. She applied to the military art, in this age of railways and electric telegraphs, principles and practices that were not even of the first merit in much earlier and very different times. She was not aware that the world had changed. Prussia was thoroughly aware of it, and acted accordingly. She was all vivacity and alertness, and hence her success. In nineteen days, counting from the morning of June 15th, she had accomplished that which almost all men in other countries had deemed impossible. While foreigners were speculating as to the number of days Benedek would require to reach Berlin, and wondering whether he would proceed by the Silesian or the Saxon route, the Prussians were routing him, taking Prague, and marching swiftly toward Vienna. The contending armies first "felt" one another on the 26th of June, in a small affair at Liebenau, in which the Prussians were victorious. The next day there was another "affair," of larger proportions, at Podal, with the same result; and two more actions, one at Nachod and at Skalitz, in which Fortune was consistent, adhering to the single-headed eagle, and the other at Trautenau, which was of the nature of a drawn battle. On the 28th there was another fight at Trautenau, the Prussians remaining masters of the field; while the Austrians were beaten at other points, and fell back to Gitschin, once the capital of Wallenstein's Duchy of Friedland, and where[Pg 585] the Friedlander was to receive ample vengeance just seven generations after his assassination by contrivance and order of the head of the German branch of the house of Austria, Ferdinand II. Could Wallenstein have "revisited the glimpses of the moon" on the night of the 28th of last June, he might have cast terror into the soul of Francis Joseph, as the Bodach Glas did into that of Vich-Ian-Vohr, by appearing to him, and bidding him beware of the morrow; for it was at Gitschin, on the 29th of June, and not at Sadowa, on the 3d of July, that the event of the war was decided. Had the battle then and there fought been fortunate for the Austrians, the name of Sadowa would have remained unknown to the world; for then the battle of the 3d of July could not have been fought, or it would have had a different scene, and most probably a different result. Austrian defeat at Gitschin made the battle of Sadowa a necessity, and made it so under conditions highly favorable to the Prussians. The ghost of Wallenstein might have returned to its rest with entire complacency, and with the firm resolution to trouble this sublunary world no more, had it witnessed the flight of the Austrians through Gitschin. By a "curious coincidence," it happens that a large number of the vanquished were Saxons, descendants, it may be, of men who had acted with Gustavus Adolphus against Wallenstein in 1632.

The battle of Sadowa was fought on the 3d of July, the third anniversary of the decisive day of our battle of Gettysburg. At a moderate estimate, four hundred and twenty thousand men took part in it, of whom one hundred and ninety-five thousand were Austrians and Saxons, and two hundred and twenty-five thousand Prussians. This makes the action rank almost with the battle of Leipzig, the greatest of all battles.[47] It is satisfactory evidence of the real greatness of Prussian generalship, that it had succeeded in massing much the larger force on the final field, though at a distance from the Prussian frontier and far within the enemy's territory; and also that while the invaders of Austria were opposed by equal forces on the left and centre of the Austrian line, they were in excessive strength on that line's right, the very point at which their presence was most required. Yet further: these great masses of men were all employed, and admirably handled, while almost a fourth part of the Austrian army remained idle, or was not employed till the issue of the battle had been decided. The Austrian position was strong, or it would have been so in the hands of an able commander; but Benedek was unequal to his work, and totally unfit to command a larger army than even Napoleon I. ever led in any battle. There seldom has lived a general capable of handling an army two hundred thousand strong. The Prussians, to be sure, were stronger, and they were splendidly handled; but it must be observed that they were divided into two armies, and that those armies, though having a common object, operated apart. In this respect, though in no other, Sadowa bears a resemblance to Waterloo, the armies of the Crown Prince and of Prince Frederick Charles answering to those of Blücher and Wellington. The Prussian force engaged far exceeded that of all the armies that fought at Waterloo, and the Austrian army exceeded[Pg 586] them by some five or six thousand men. War has very rarely been conducted on the scale that is known in 1866. Even the greatest of the engagements in our civil contest seem to shrink to small proportions when compared with what took place last summer in Bohemia. The armies of Grant and Lee, in May, 1864, probably were not larger than the Prussian army at Sadowa. At the same time, Austria had a great force in Venetia, and large bodies of men in other parts of her empire, and some in the territory of the Germanic Confederation; and the Prussians were carrying on vigorous warfare in various parts of Germany.

After their grand victory, the Prussians pushed rapidly forward toward Vienna; and names that are common in the history of Napoleon's Austrian campaigns began to appear in the daily journals,—Olmütz, Brünn, Znaym, Austerlitz, and others. Nothing occurred to stay their march, and they were in the very act of winning another battle which would have cut the Austrians off from Hungary, when an armistice was agreed upon. It was so in 1809, when the officers had to separate the soldiers to announce the armistice of Znaym. It came out soon after that the cessation of warlike operations took place not a day too soon for the Austrians, whose army was in a fearfully demoralized condition. Vienna would have been occupied in a week by the Prussians, had they been disposed to push matters to extremities, and that without a battle; or, if a battle had been fought, the Austrian force must have been destroyed, or would have been literally cut off from any safe line of retreat. Probably the house of Austria would have been struck out of the list of ruling families, had the Austrians not submitted to the invaders. Count Bismark is a man who would have had no hesitation in reviving the Bohemian and Hungarian monarchies, had further resistance been made to his will. The armistice was quickly followed by negotiations, and those were completed on the 23d of August, exactly seventy days after the Diet, at the dictation of Austria, had given up Prussia to punishment, to be inflicted by the Austrian sword.

The terms of the treaty of peace are moderate; but it should be understood that what Austria loses is very inadequately expressed by these terms, and what Prussia gains not at all; and what Prussia gains at the expense of Austria, important as it is, is less important than what she has gained from France. From Austria she has taken the first place in Germany; from France, the first place in Europe, which is the same thing as the first place in Christendom, or the world,—meaning by the world that portion of mankind which has power and influence and leadership, because of its knowledge, culture, and wealth. The moral blow falls with greater severity on France than on Austria. Austria had no right whatever to the first place in Germany. There was something monstrous, something highly offensive, in the Germanic primacy of an empire made up of Magyars, Poles, Bohemians, Italians, Slavonians, Croats, Illyrians, and other races, and not above a fourth of whose inhabitants were Germans. Prussia had in June last twice as many Germans as Austria, though her entire population was not much more than half as large as that of her rival;[48][Pg 587] and when she turned Austria out of Germany at the point of the needle-gun, she simply asserted her own right to the leadership of Germany. But no one will say that there can be anything offensive in a French primacy of Christendom. Objection may be made to any primacy; but if primacy there must be, as mostly there has been, France has the best claim to it of any country. England might dispute the post with her, and England alone; for they are the two nations of modern times to which the world is most indebted. But England has, all but in direct terms, resigned all pretensions to it. Prussia, therefore, by conquering for herself the first place in the estimation of mankind, who always respect the longest and sharpest sword, unhorsed France. Napoleon III. lost more at Sadowa than was lost by Francis Joseph; and we cannot see how he will be able to recover his loss, should Prussia succeed in her purpose to create a powerful Germanic empire,—and all things point to her success. A new force would be introduced into the European system, of which we can only say, that, if its mere anticipation has been sufficient to curb France on the side of the Rhine, its realization ought to be sufficient to prevent France from extending her dominion in any direction—say over Belgium—which such extension is inclined to take.

Thus has a great revolution been effected, and effected, too with something of the speed of light. On the 14th of June, France, in the estimation of the civilized world, was the first of nations, the head of the Pentarchy. On the 4th of July, she had already been deposed, though the change was not immediately recognizable. On the 14th of June, Prussia's place, though respectable, was not to be named with that of France; it was at the tail of the Pentarchy. On the 4th of July she had conquered for herself the headship of that powerful brotherhood. It was the prize of her sword, and it is on the sword that the French Emperor's power mainly rests. He obtained his place by a free use of the military arm, in December, 1851; he confirmed it by the use of the sword in the Russian and Italian wars; and he purposed making a yet further use of the weapon, had circumstances favored his plans, at the time he allowed the Germano-Italian war to begin. Is he who took the sword to perish by it? Is the Prussian sovereign that stronger man of whose coming Crœsus, that type of all prosperous sovereigns, was warned? Who shall say? But as Napoleon's ascendency rested, the sword apart, upon opinion, and not upon prescription, it is difficult to see how he can submit to a surrender of that ascendency, and make way for one who but yesterday was his inferior, and who, in all probability, was then ready to buy his aid at a high price. The Emperor is old and sickly. His life seems to have been in danger at the very time he was making his demand for an increase of imperial territory. Years and infirmities may indispose him to enter on a mighty war; but he thinks more of his dynasty than of himself, his ambition being to found a reigning house. This must lead him to respect French opinion, on his son's account; and opinion in France is anything but friendly to Prussia. Almost all Frenchmen, from Reds to Whites,—Republicans, Imperialists, Orleanists, and Legitimists,—seem to be of one mind on this point. They all agree that Prussian supremacy is unendurable. They could have seen their country make way for England, or Russia, or even Austria, without losing their temper altogether; but for France to be displaced by Prussia is something that it is beyond their philosophy to contemplate with patience. The very successes of the Emperor tell against him under existing circumstances. He has raised France so high, from a low condition, that a fall is unbearable to his subjects. He has triumphed, in various ways, over nations that appeared to be so much greater than Prussia, that to surrender the golden palm to her is the very nadir of degradation. His loss of moral power is as great at home as his loss of material power abroad. He has become[Pg 588] ridiculous, as having been outwitted by Germans, whom the French have ever been disposed to look upon as the dullest of mankind. Ridicule may not be so powerful an agency in France to-day as it was in former times, but still it has there a sharp sting. The Emperor may be led into war by the force of French opinion; and he would have all Germany to contend against, with the exception of that portion of it which belongs to the house of Austria. The Austrians would gladly renew the war, with France for their ally. They would forgive Solferino, to obtain vengeance for Sadowa. What occurred among the Austrians when they heard of the French demand for a rectification of their frontier shows how readily they would come into any project for the humiliation of Prussia that France might form. They supposed the French demand would be pushed, and they evinced the utmost willingness to support it,—a fact that proves how little they care for Germany, and also how deeply they feel their own fall. They would have renewed the war immediately, had France given the word. But the Emperor did not give the word. He may have hesitated because he preferred to have Italy as an ally, or to see her occupy the position of a neutral; whereas, had he attacked Prussia before the conclusion of the late war, she must have adhered to the Prussian alliance, which would have led to the deduction of a large force from the armies of Austria and France that he would desire to have concentrated in Germany. Or he may have been fearful of even one of the consequences of victory; for would it not be a source of danger to him and his family were one of his marshals so to distinguish himself in a great war as to become the first man in France? The general of a legitimate sovereign can never aspire to his master's throne; but the French throne is fair prize for any man who should be able to conquer the conquerors of Sadowa. The Emperor's health would not permit him to lead his army in person, as he did in the Italian campaign; and that one of his lieutenants who should, by a repetition of the Jena business, avenge Waterloo, and regain for France, with additions, the rank she held five months ago, would probably prove a greater enemy to the house of Bonaparte than he had been to the house of Hohenzollern. The part of Hazael is always abhorred in advance as much as Hazael himself abhorred it; but Benhadad is sure to perish, and Hazael reigns in his stead.

The nation by which this great change has been wrought in Europe—a change as extraordinary in itself as it is wonderful in its modes, and likely to lead to something far more important—is one of the most respectable members of the European commonwealth, though standing somewhat below the first rank, even while acting on terms of apparent equality with the other great powers. The kingdom of Prussia is of origin so comparatively recent, that there are those now living who can remember others who were old enough to note its creation, in 1700. The arrangements for the conversion of the electorate of Brandenburg into the kingdom of Prussia were completed on the 16th of November, 1700, and the coronation of Frederick I. took place on the 18th of January, 1701, two hundred and eighty-four years less three months after his family's connection with the country began; for it was on the 18th of April, 1417, that the Emperor Sigismund, last member of the Luxemburg family, made Frederick, Burgrave of Nürnberg, Elector of Brandenburg,—the investiture taking place in the marketplace of Constance. The transaction was in the nature of a job, as Frederick was a relative of the Emperor, to whom he had advanced money, besides rendering him assistance in other ways. Frederick was of a very old family, and in this respect, as in some others, the house destined to become so great in the North bore a close resemblance to that other house destined to reign in the South, that of Savoy, which became regal not long after the elevation of descendants of the Burgrave of Nürnberg to royal rank. He was a man[Pg 589] adapted to the place he received; and the family has seldom failed to produce able men and women in every generation, some of them being of the highest intellectual force, while others have been remarkable for eccentricities that at times bore considerable resemblance to insanity. Yet there was not much in the history of the new electoral house that promised its future greatness, for more than two centuries.

It is surprising to look back over the history of Germany, and note how differently matters have turned out, in respect to families and countries, from what observers of old times would have predicted. When Charles V. fled before Maurice of Saxony, he may have thought, considering the great part Saxony had had in the Reformation, that from that country danger might come to the house of Austria in yet greater measure; but he would have smiled at the prophet who should have told him not only that no such danger would come, but that Saxony would be ruined because of its adherence to the house of Austria, when assailed by a descendant of the then insignificant Elector of Brandenburg. Yet the prophet would have been right, for Saxony suffered so much from her connection with the Austrians in Frederick the Great's time that she never recovered therefrom; and in the late contest she was lost before a shot was fired, and her troops, after fighting valiantly in Bohemia, shared the disasters of the power upon which she had relied for protection. Bavaria was another German country that seemed more likely to rise to greatness than Brandenburg; but, though her progress has been respectable, it must be pronounced insignificant if compared with that of Prussia. The house of Wittelsbach was great before that of Hohenzollern had risen to general fame; but the latter has passed it, as if Fortune had taken the Hohenzollerns under its special protection, and we should not be in the least surprised were they to take all its territory ere the twentieth century shall have fairly dawned upon the world.

The first of the great Prussian rulers was the Elector Frederick William, who reigned from 1640 to 1688, and who is known as the Great Elector,—a title of which he was every way worthy, and not the less that there was just a suspicion of the tyrant in his composition. He had not a little of that "justness of insight, toughness of character, and general strength of bridle-hand," which Mr. Carlyle attributes to Rudolph of Hapsburg. He was a man of the times, and a man for the times. He came to the throne just as the Thirty Years' War was well advanced in its last decade, and he had a ruined country for his inheritance; but he raised that country to a high place in Europe, and was connected with many of the principal events of the age of Louis XIV. He freed Prussia from her connection with Poland. He created that Prussian army which has done such wonderful things in the greatest of wars in the last two centuries. He it was who won the battle of Fehrbellin, June 18, 1675, at the expense of the Swedes, who were still living on the mighty reputation won under Gustavus Adolphus, almost half a century earlier, and maintained by the splendid soldiers trained in his school. The calm and philosophic Rankè warms into something like eloquence when summing up the work of the Great Elector. "Frederick William," he says, "cannot be placed in the same category with those few great men who have discovered new conditions for the development of the human race; but he may unhesitatingly be ranked with those famous princes who have saved their countries in the hour of danger, and have succeeded in re-establishing order,—with an Alfred, a Charles VII., a Gustavus Vasa. He followed the path trodden by the German territorial princes of old; but among them all there was not one who, finding his state reduced to such a miserable condition, so successfully raised it to independence and power. He instilled into his subjects a spirit of enterprise,—the mainspring of a state. He took measures which[Pg 590] secured to his country an increase of power and prosperity. What the world most admired, and indeed what he himself most valued, was the condition of his army. It contained at the time of his death one hundred and seventy-five companies of foot, and seventy-six of cavalry; the artillery had recently been increased in proportion, and the Elector's attention had been constantly directed to its improvement. The whole strength of the army was about twenty-eight thousand men. There was nothing that he recommended so earnestly to his successor as the preservation of this instrument of power. By this it was that he had made room for himself among his neighbors, and had won for the Protestant cause of North Germany the respect that was its due."[49]

Nor did he neglect that naval arm which has been of so great service to many countries. Prussia's desire to have a navy has raised many smiles, and caused much laughter, in this century, as if it were something new; whereas it is an ancient aspiration, and one which all Prussian sovereigns and statesmen have experienced for two hundred years, though not strongly. The Great Czar, who came upon the stage just after the Great Elector left it, did not long more for a good sea-coast than that Elector had longed for it. Frederick William could not effect so much as Peter effected, but he did something toward the creation of a navy for Prussia. His reluctance in parting with a portion of Pomerania was owing to his commercial and maritime aspirations. "Of all the princes of the house of Brandenburg," says Rankè, "he is the only one who ever showed a strong predilection for maritime life and maritime power. It was the dream of his youth that he would one day sail along shores obedient to his will, all the way from Custrin, out by the mouths of the Oder, across to the coast of Prussia. His sojourn in the Netherlands had strengthened, though it had not inspired, his love of the sea. The best proof how painful this cession was to the Elector is the fact that he shortly afterward offered to the crown of Sweden, not alone the three sees of Halberstadt, Minden, and Magdeburg, but a sum of two millions of thalers in addition, for the possession of Pomerania." The same writer says of the Great Elector elsewhere, that "his mind had a wide grasp; to us it may seem almost too wide, when we call to mind that he brought the coast of Guinea into direct communication with Brandenburg, and ventured to compete with Spain on the ocean." When he died, the population of his dominions amounted to one million five hundred thousand.

His successor was his son Frederick, who added to the territory of Prussia, and who, as before stated, became king in November, 1700, a few days after the extinction, in the person of Charles II., of the Spanish branch of the house of Austria. One royal house had gone out, and another came in. Prince Eugene of Savoy, the ablest man that ever served the house of Austria, plainly told the German Emperor that his ministers deserved the gallows for advising him to consent to the creation of the new kingdom, and all subsequent German history seems to show that he was right. But that house needed all the aid it could beg, buy, or borrow, to press its claim to the Spanish crowns; and, thanks to the exertions of the Great Elector, Brandenburg had an army, the aid of which was well worth purchasing at what Leopold may have thought to be a nominal price, after all. So well balanced were the parties to the war of the Spanish Succession, at least in its earlier years, that the mere absence of the Prussian contingent from the armies of the Grand Alliance might have thrown victory into the French scale. What would have been the effect had the army and the influence of Brandenburg been placed at the disposal of Louis XIV.? What would have been the fate of the house of Austria, had the Elector been actively employed on the French side, like[Pg 591] the Elector of Bavaria, in the campaign of Blenheim, instead of being one of the stoutest supporters of the Austrians? Even Eugene himself might never have won most of those victories which have made his name immortal, had his policy prevailed at Vienna in 1700, and the Emperor refused to convert the Elector of Brandenburg into King of Prussia. At Blenheim, the Prussians behaved in the noblest manner, and won the highest praise from Eugene, who commanded in that part of the field where they were stationed; and he spoke particularly of their "undaunted resolution" in withstanding the enemy's attacks, and of their activity at a later period of the battle. It is curious to observe that he notes the steadiness and strength of their fire,—a peculiarity that has distinguished the Prussian infantry from the beginning of its existence, and which, from the introduction of the iron ramrod into the service, had much to do with the successes of Frederick the Great, and, from the use of the needle-gun, quite as much with the successes of Prince Frederick Charles and the Crown Prince. In the time of Frederick I., the Prussian troops were employed in Germany and Italy, in France and Flanders. They also served against the Turks. It may be said, that, if the Great Elector created the Prussian army, it received the baptism of fire in full from his son, Frederick I., the first Prussian king.

Frederick I. died in 1713. If it be true—as we think it is—that the great enterprise of William of Orange for the deliverance of England could not have been undertaken but for the aid he gave that prince, Englishmen and Americans ought to hold his name in especial remembrance. He was succeeded by his son Frederick William I., who is counted a brute by most persons, but whom Mr. Carlyle would have us believe to have been a man of remarkable worth. He had talents, and he increased the territory of his kingdom. When he died, in 1740, he left to his son a kingdom containing 2,500,000 souls, a treasury containing $6,000,000, and an army more than thirty thousand strong, and which was the first force in Europe because of its high state of discipline and of the superiority of its infantry weapon. The introduction of the iron ramrod was a greater improvement, relatively, in 1740, than was the introduction of the needle-gun in the present generation. Nothing but the use of that ramrod saved the Prussians from destruction in the first of Frederick II.'s wars. That gave them superiority, which they well knew how to keep. "The main thing," as Rankè observes, "was a regular step and rapid firing; or, as the king once expressed it, 'Load quickly, advance in close column, present well, take aim well,—all in profound silence.'" The whole business of infantry in the field is summed up in the royal sentence, though some may think that line would be a better word than column; and the Prussian system did favor the linear rather than the columnar arrangement of troops, as it "presented a wide front, less exposed to the fire of the artillery, and more efficient from the force of its musketry."

Frederick William I. died in 1740. His successor was Frederick II., commonly called the Great. His history has been so much discussed of late years that it would be useless to mention its details. He raised Prussia to the first rank in Europe. Russia was coming in as a European power, and Spain was then as great as France or England, partly because of her former greatness, but as much from the sagacity of her sovereign and the talents of her statesmen. Louis XV. had lessened the weight of France, and George III. had degraded England. The Austrian house had suffered from its failure before Frederick. All things combined to make of Prussia the most formidable of European nations during the last half of Frederick's reign. When he died, in 1786, the Prussian population amounted to six millions,—the increase being chiefly due to the acquisition of Silesia, which was taken[Pg 592] from Austria, and to Frederick's share in the first partition of Poland. He left $50,000,000, and his army contained 220,000 men.

Frederick William II., a weak sovereign, reigned till 1797. He took part in the first coalition against revolutionary France, and in the second and third partitions of Poland. Frederick William III. reigned from 1797 to 1840, during which time Prussia experienced every vicissitude of fortune. The first war with imperial France, in 1806-7, led to the reduction of her territory and population one half; and what was left of country and people was most mercilessly treated by Napoleon I., who should either have restored her altogether, or have annihilated her. But the great Emperor was partial to half-measures,—a folly that had much to do with his fall. The misery that Prussia then experienced was the cause of her subsequent greatness; and if she has wrested European supremacy from Napoleon III., she should thank Napoleon I. for enabling her to accomplish so great a feat of arms. The Prussian government had to undertake the task of reform, to save itself and the country from perishing. The chief man in this great work was the celebrated Baron von Stein, whose name is of infrequent mention in popular histories of the Napoleonic age, but who had more to do with the overthrow of the Man of Destiny than any other person. It is one of those strange facts which are so constantly meeting us in history, that it was by Napoleon's advice that Stein was employed by the Prussian king. "Take the Baron von Stein," said the Emperor, when the king at Tilsit spoke of the misery of his situation; "he is a man of sense." Eighteen months later, Napoleon actually outlawed Stein, the decree of outlawry dating from Madrid. The language of the decree was of the most insulting character. "One Stein" (le nommé Stein), it was said, was endeavoring to create troubles in Germany, and therefore he was denounced as an enemy of France and of the Rhenish Confederacy. The property he held in French or confederate territory was confiscated, and the troops of France and her allies were ordered to arrest him, wherever he could be found. Had he been taken, quite likely he would have been as summarily dealt with as Palm had been.

Stein fled into Bohemia, where he resided three years, when Alexander I. invited him to Russia, and employed him in the most important affairs. He kept up Alexander's courage during the darkest days of 1812, and advised, with success, against yielding to the French, though it is probable the Czar might have had his own terms from Napoleon, after the latter had reached Moscow. It is said that the American Minister in Russia, the late Mr. J. Q. Adams, was not less energetic than Stein on the same side. It may well be doubted if their advice was such as a Russian sovereign should have followed, though it was excellent for Germany and for all nations that feared Napoleon. If the American Minister did what was attributed to him, he actually acted in behalf of the very nation against which his own country had just declared war! The war between the United States and England began at the same time that active operations against Russia were entered upon by the French; and England was the only powerful nation upon which Russia could rely for assistance.

Stein had done his work before he was made to leave Prussia. He was the creator of the Prussian people. His reforms would be pronounced agrarian measures in England or America. An imitation of them in England might not be amiss; but in America, where land is a drug, and where possession of it does not give half the consideration that proceeds from the ownership of "stocks" or funds, it would be as much out of place as a mixture for blackening negroes, or a machine for converting New England soil into rocks. "Stein's main idea," says Vehse, "was, 'the burgher must become noble.' With this view, he tried to call[Pg 593] forth a strong feeling of nationality and a new spirit in the people. His first step in introducing his new system of administration was the abolition of vassalage, and the change of the titles of seignorial property. This was done by the edict dated Memel, October 9, 1807, which did away with the monopoly until then claimed by the nobles holding such estates, which were now allowed to be acquired also by burghers and peasants. It moreover abolished all the feudal burdens of tenure. In this great law, Frederick William III. laid down the principle: 'After St. Martin's day, 1810, there will be throughout my dominions none but free people.' This edict first created in Prussia a free peasantry. Free burghers, on the other hand, were created by the municipal law from Königsberg, November 19, 1808, which restored to the burgesses their ancient municipal rights of freely electing their magistrates and deputies, and of self-government within their own civic sphere.... Stein tried in every way to secure to the burgher his independence, and to protect him against the despotism of the men in office. With equal energy he tried to develop the spirit of the people."[50] For five years most of the Prussian ministers labored in the same spirit. A military force was created, chiefly by the labors of Scharnhorst, and the limitation of the Prussian army by Napoleon was in great part evaded. Everything was done to create a people, and to have ready the moral and material means from which to create an army, should circumstances arise under which Prussia might think it safe for her to act. Hardenberg did not go so far as Stein would have gone, but it is probable that he acted wisely; for very strong measures might have brought Napoleon's hand upon him. As it was, the Emperor could not complain of measures that breathed the very spirit of the French Revolution, of which he was the impersonation and the champion,—or claimed to be.

But all the labors of Stein, and those other Prussian patriots who acted with him or followed in his footsteps, would have been of no avail, had not Napoleon afforded them an opportunity to turn their labors to account. They might have elevated the people, have accumulated money, have massed munitions, and have drilled the entire male population to the business and work of war, till they should have surpassed all that is told of Roman discipline and efficiency; but all such exertions would have been utterly thrown away had the French Emperor behaved like a rational being, and not sought to illustrate his famous dogma, that the impossible has no existence, by seeking to achieve impossibilities. At the[Pg 594] beginning of 1812, Napoleon was literally invincible. He was master of all Continental Europe, from the Atlantic to the Niemen, and from Cape North to Reggio. There was not a sovereign in that part of the world, from the kings of Sweden and Denmark to the Emperor of Austria and the Turkish Sultan, who did not wear crowns and wield sceptres only because the sometime General Bonaparte was willing they should wear and wield the emblems of imperial or royal power. He was at war only with Great Britain, and Spain, Portugal, and Sicily; and Great Britain was the sole enemy he was bound to respect. All the more enlightened Spaniards were all but ready to acknowledge the rule of his brother Joseph, and would have done so but for French failure in the Russian war. England's army could have been driven from the Peninsula with ease, had a third of the men who were worse than wasted in Russia been directed thither in the early spring of 1812. The Bourbons of Sicily hated their English protectors so bitterly, that they were ready to unite with the French to get up a modern imitation of the Sicilian Vespers at their expense. The war might soon have been confined to the ocean, and there it would have been fought for France principally by Americans, as the United States were soon to declare war against England. Never before was man so strong as Napoleon on New-Year's day, 1812; and in less than four years he was living in lodgings, and bad lodgings too, in St. Helena! What hope could the Prussians have, a month before the march to Moscow was resolved upon? None that could encourage them. Some of the more sanguine spirits, supported by general sentiment, were still of opinion that something could be effected; but the larger number of intelligent men were very despondent, and not a few of them began to think of the world beyond the Atlantic, as English patriots had thought almost two centuries earlier, when, that "blood and iron man," Wentworth (Strafford), was developing his system of Thorough with a precision and an energy that even Count Bismark has never surpassed. The bolder Prussians, when their country had to choose between resistance to Napoleon and an alliance with him against Russia, were for resistance, and would have placed their country right across the Emperor's path, and fought out the battle with him, and abided the consequences, which would have been the annihilation of Prussia in a sixth part of the time that Mr. Seward allotted for the duration of the Secession war. The Prussian war party would have had the Russians advance into their country, and thus have staked the issue on just such a contest as occurred in 1806-7. Napoleon, it is at least believed, was desirous that Prussia should join Russia, as that would have enabled him to defeat his enemies without crossing the Russian frontier, and have afforded him an excuse for destroying Prussia. To prevent so untimely a display of resistance to French ascendency was the aim of a few Prussians, headed by the king himself, who became very unpopular in consequence. Fortunately for Prussia, they were successful, and the means employed deceived not only the patriotic party, but even Napoleon, who was completely imposed upon by the report of the Baron von dem Knesebeck against a war between Russia and France. The story belongs to the romance of history; but it is too long, because involving many facts, to be told here.

Prussia was prevented from "throwing herself into the arms of Russia," much to the disgust of Scharnhorst and his friends. She even assisted Napoleon in his war against Alexander, and sent a contingent to the Grand Army, which formed the tenth corps of that memorable force, and was commanded by Marshal Macdonald. It consisted of twenty-six thousand men, including one French infantry division,—the Prussians being generally estimated at twenty thousand men. This corps[Pg 595] did very little during the campaign, and soon after the failure of the French it went over to the Russians, taking the first step in that course which made Prussia so formidable a member of the Grand Alliance of 1813-15. But even so late as the close of May, 1813, Prussia was in danger of annihilation, and would have been annihilated had not Napoleon proffered an armistice, which was accepted,—the greatest blunder of his career, according to some eminent critics, as well political as military.

The leading part which Prussia had in the Liberation War and in the first overthrow of Napoleon caused her to be reconstructed by the Congress of Vienna; and her part in the war of 1815 confirmed the impression she had made on the world. Waterloo was as much a Prussian as an English victory,—the loss of the Prussians in that action being about as great as the purely English loss.[51] She became one of the Five Powers which by common consent were rulers of Europe. Down to 1830 she had more influence than France, and from 1830 to the re-establishment of the Napoleonic dynasty, she was France's equal; and even after Napoleon III. had replaced France at the head of Europe, Prussia was the only member of the Pentarchy which had not been humiliated by his blows, or yet more by his assistance. England has suffered from her connection with him,—a connection difficult on many occasions to distinguish from inferiority and subserviency; and in war the old superiority of the French armies to those of Russia and Austria has been asserted in the Crimea and in Italy. Prussia alone has not stooped before the avenger of the man whom she had so vindictive a part in overthrowing, and whom her military chief purposed having slain on the very spot where the Duc d'Enghien had been put to death by his (Napoleon's) orders. Of all the enemies of Napoleon and France in 1815, Prussia was the most malignant, or rather she was the only member of the Alliance which exhibited malignity.[52] She would have had[Pg 596] France partitioned; and failed in her design only because openly opposed by Russia and England, while Austria, fearing to offend German opinion, secretly supported the Czar and Wellington. Blücher, an earnest man, was never more in earnest than when he purposed to shoot Napoleon in the ditch of Vincennes; and it required all Wellington's influence to dissuade him from so barbarous a proceeding. Yet Napoleon III. has never been able to avenge these injuries and insults,—to say nothing of Waterloo, and of the massacre of the flying French in the night after the battle, or of the shocking conduct of the Prussians in France in 1815; and the events of the current year would seem to favor, and that strongly, the opinion of those persons who say that France never will be able to obtain her long-thought-of revenge. Certainly, if Prussia was safe, Prussia with most of Germany to back her cannot be in any serious danger of being forced to drink of that cup of humiliation which Napoleon III. has commended to so many countries.

After the settlement of Europe, in 1815, Prussia did not show much of that encroaching character which is attributed to her, but was one of the most quiet of nations. This was in great measure due to the character of the king. He was of the class of heavy men, and the first part of his reign had been marked by the occurrence of troubles so numerous and so great that his original dislike of change increased to fanaticism. He was one of the framers of the Holy Alliance, which grew out of the thorough fright which he and his friend the Czar felt during the saddest days of 1813. Alexander told a Prussian clergyman, named Egbert, in 1818, that, during one of their flights before Napoleon,—probably on that doleful day when they had to retreat from Dresden, amid wind and rain, and before the French reverse at Kulm had put a good face on the affairs of the Alliance,—Frederick William III. said to him: "Things cannot go on so! we are in the direction of the east, and it is toward the west that we ought to march, that we must march. We shall, God willing, arrive there. And if, as I trust, he should bless our united efforts, we will proclaim in the face of Heaven our conviction that to Him alone belongs the honor." Thereupon, continued the Czar, "We promised, and exchanged a pressure of hands upon it with sincerity." Both monarchs evidently thought they had succeeded in bribing Heaven; for Alexander told his reverend hearer that great victories soon[Pg 597] came; "and," said he, "when we had arrived in Paris, we had reached the end of our painful course. The king of Prussia reminded me of the holy resolution of which he had entertained the first idea; and Francis II., who had shared our views, our opinions, and our tendencies, entered willingly into the association." Such was Alexander's account of the origin of that famous league which so perplexed and alarmed our fathers. It differs from the commonly received belief as to its origin, which is, that it was the work of Alexander himself, who was inspired by Madame de Krudener, who, having "played the devil and written a novel,"—she was unfaithful to her marriage vow, and wrote "Valerio,"—naturally became devout as old age approached. It makes somewhat against the Czar's story, that the Holy Alliance was not formed till the autumn of 1815, and that he and Frederick William arrived at Paris in the spring of 1814; and that in the interval he and Francis II. came very near going to war on the Polish question. Alexander was crack-brained, and a mystic, and it is far more likely that he should have originated the Holy Alliance than that the idea should have proceeded from so wooden-headed a personage as the Prussian king, who had about as much sentiment as a Memel log. Alexander was always haunted by the thought that he had consented to the death of his father,—that, as a Greek would have said, he was pursued by the Furies; and he was constantly thinking of expiation, and seeking to propitiate the Deity, and that by means not much different in spirit from those to which savages have resort. There was much of that Tartar in him which, according to Napoleon, you will always find when you scratch a Russian.

Whether Frederick William III. suggested the Holy Alliance may be doubted; but there can be no doubt that he lived thoroughly up to its spirit, which was the spirit of intense absolutism. He broke every promise he had made to his people when he needed their aid to keep his kingdom out of the grasp of Napoleon. He became the vindictive persecutor of the men who had led his subjects in the war to rush to arms, without counting the odds they had to encounter at first. He was a despot of the old pattern, as far as a sovereign of the nineteenth century could be one. It does not appear that he acted thus from love of power for its own sake, to which so much of tyrannical action is due. In most respects he was rather a favorable specimen of the despot. His action was the consequence of circumstances, the effect of experience. He had had two or three thorough frights, and twice he had been in danger of losing his crown, and of seeing the extinction of that nation which his ancestors had been at such pains to create. If exertions of his could prevent the recurrence of such evils, they should not be wanting. As Charles II., after the Restoration of 1660, had firmly resolved on one thing, namely, that, come what would, he would not again go upon his travels, so had Frederick William III., after the restoration of his kingdom, firmly resolved that, happen what might, he would have no more wars, and that, if he could, he would keep out of politics. So he maintained peace, and kept down the politicians. Prussia flourished marvellously during the last twenty-five years of his reign; and, judging from results, his government could not have been a bad one. Under it was created that people whose recent action has astonished the world, and produced for it a new sensation. A comprehensive system of education opened the paths to knowledge to every one; and a not less comprehensive military system made every healthy man's services available to the state. There never before took the field so highly educated a force as that which has just reduced Count Bismark's policy to practice,—not even in America. There may have been as intelligent armies in the Union's service during our civil conflict as those which obeyed Prince Frederick Charles and the Crown[Pg 598] Prince of Prussia, but as highly educated most certainly they were not.

When Friedrich von Raumer was in England, in 1835, he, at an English dinner, gave this toast: "The King of Prussia, the greatest and best reformer in Europe." That he was the "best reformer in Europe," we will not insist upon,—but that he was the greatest reformer there, we have no doubt whatever. That he was a reformer at heart, originally, no one would pretend who knows his history. He was made one by stress of circumstances. But having become a reformer, he did a great work, as contemporary history shows. He would have been content to live, and reign, and die, sovereign of just such a Prussia as he found in 1797; but, in spite of himself, he was made to effect a mightier revolution than even a French revolutionist of 1793 would have deemed it possible to accomplish. His career is the liveliest illustration that we know of the doctrine that men are the sport of circumstances.

Frederick William III. died in 1840. His son and successor, Frederick William IV., was a man of considerable ability and a rare scholar; but he was not up to his work, the more so that the age of revolutions appeared again early in his reign. He might have made himself master of all Germany in 1848, but had not the courage to act as a Prussian sovereign should have acted. He was elected Emperor by the revolutionary Diet at Frankfort, but refused the crown. A little later, under the inspiration of General Radowitz, he took up such a position as we have seen his successor fill so effectively. War with Austria seemed close at hand, and the unity of Germany might have been brought about sixteen years since had the Prussian monarch been equal to the crisis. As it was, he "backed down," and Radowitz, who was a too-early Bismark, left his place, and died at the close of 1853. The king lost his mind in 1857; and his brother William became Regent, and succeeded to the throne in 1861, on the death of Frederick William IV.

The reign of William I. will be regarded as one of the most remarkable in Prussian history. Though an old man when he took the crown, William I. has advanced the greatness of Prussia even more than it was advanced by Frederick II. His course with regard to the Danish Duchies has called forth many indignant remarks; but it is no worse than that of most other sovereigns, and stones cannot fairly be cast at him by many ruling hands. Count Bismark has been the chief minister of Prussia under William I., and to him must be attributed that policy which has carried his country, per saltum, to the highest place among the nations. He long since came to the conclusion that nothing could be done for Germany, by Germany and in Germany, till Austria should be thrust out of Germany. He was right; and he has labored to accomplish the dismissal of Austria, with a perseverance and a persistency that it would be difficult to parallel. He alone has done the deed. Had he died last May, there would have been no war in Europe this year; for nothing less than his redoubtable courage and iron will could have overcome the obstacles that existed to the commencement of the conflict.

FOOTNOTES:

[45] Exactly what it was Napoleon III. asked of Prussia we never have seen stated by any authority that we can quite trust. The London Times, which is likely to be well informed on the subject, assumes, in its issue of August 11th, that the Emperor asked of Prussia the restoration of the French frontier of 1814,—meaning the French frontier as it was fixed by the Treaty of Paris, on the 30th of May, immediately after the fall of Napoleon I. If this is the correct interpretation of Napoleon's demand, he asked for very little. The Treaty of Paris took from France nearly all the conquests made by the Republic and the Empire, leaving her only a few places on the side of Germany, a little territory near Geneva, portions of Savoy, and the Venaissin. After the second conquest of France, most of these remnants of her conquests were taken from her. Napoleon III. has regained what was then lost of Savoy, and he seems to have sought from Prussia the restoration of that which was lost on the side of Germany, most of which was given to Bavaria and Belgium, and the remainder to Prussia herself. What Prussia holds, he supposed she could cede to France; and as to Bavaria, he may have argued that Prussia was in such position with regard to that kingdom as to make her will law to its government. But how could she get possession of what Belgium holds? Since the failure of his attempt, the French Emperor has been at peculiar pains to assure the King of the Belgians that he has no designs on his territory; and therefore we must suppose he had none when he propounded his demand to Prussia. It may be added, that the cession of the Prussian portion of the spoil of 1815 had been a subject of speculation, and of something like negotiation, long before war between Prussia and Austria was supposed to be possible.

[46] There has been as much noise made over the needle-gun as by that famous and fascinating slaughter weapon; yet it is by no means an arm of tender years. It had been known thirty years when the recent war began, and it had been amply tested in action seventeen years before it was first directed against the Austrians, not to mention the free use that had been made of it in the Danish war. Much that has been said of its character and capabilities since last June was said in 1849, and can be found in publications of that year. The world had forgotten it, and also that Prussia could fight. Nicholas von Dreyse, inventor of the needle-gun, is now living, at the age of seventy-eight. The thought of the invention occurred to him the day after the battle of Jena, in 1806. Some six or seven years since, we read, in an English work, an elaborate argument to show that, in a great war, Prussia must be beaten, because she had no experienced commanders!—like Benedek and Clam-Gallas, for example.

[47] The entire force of the Allies at Leipzig is generally stated to have been 290,000 men; that of the French at 175,000,—making a total of 465,000, or about 45,000 more than were present at Sadowa. So the excess at Leipzig was not so very great. At Leipzig the Allies alone had more guns than both armies had at Sadowa,—but what were the cannon of those days compared to those of these times? The great force assembled in and around Leipzig was taken from almost all Europe, as there were Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Hungarians, Bohemians, Italians, Poles, Swedes, Dutchmen, and even Englishmen, present in the two armies; whereas at Sadowa the armies were drawn only from Austria, Prussia, and Saxony. The battle of Sadowa lasted only one day; that of Leipzig four days, a large part of the Allied armies taking part only in the fighting of the third and fourth days. The French lost 68,000 men at Leipzig, the Allies, 42,640,—total, 110,640. But 30,000 of the French were prisoners, reducing the number of killed and wounded to 80,640,—which was even a good four days' work. Probably a third of these were killed or mortally wounded, as artillery was freely used in the battle. War is a great manufacturer of pabulum Acheruntis,—grave-meat, that is to say.

[48] It is impossible to speak with precision of the number of the population of Prussia. The highest number mentioned by a respectable authority is 19,000,000; but that is given in "round numbers," and is not meant to be taken literally. But if it be 19,000,000, but little more than half as large as that of Austria as it was when the war began, not much above a fourth as large as that of Russia, many millions below that of the British Islands, a few million less than that of Italy as it stood before the cession of Venetia by Austria, and a few millions more than that of Spain. The populations of Prussia and Italy when the war began were a little above 40,000,000. The populations of Austria and the German states that sided with her may have been about 50,000,000; and Austria had as much assistance from her German allies as Prussia had from the Italians,—the Saxons helping her much, showing the highest military qualities in the brief but bloody war. Had all the lesser German states preserved a strict neutrality, so that the entire Prussian force could have been directed against Austria, the Prussians would have been before Vienna, and probably in that city, in ten days from the date of Sadowa. Prussia brought out 730,000 men, or about one twenty-sixth part of her entire population.

[49] Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg, and History of Prussia during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Vol. I. pp. 91, 92.

[50] Stein was one of those eminent men who have acted as if they thought coarseness bordering upon brutality an evidence of independence of spirit and greatness of soul. He was uncivil to those beneath him, not civil to those above him, and insulting to his equals. He addressed the King of Prussia in language that no gentleman ever employs, and he berated his underlings in a style that even President Johnson might despair of equalling. He hated the Duke of Dalberg, on both public and private accounts; and when the Duke was one of the French Ambassadors at Vienna, in time of the Congress, he offered to call on the Baron. "Tell him," said Stein, "that, if he visits me as French Ambassador, he shall be well received; but if he comes as a private person, he shall be kicked down stairs." Niebuhr, the historian, once told him that he (Stein) hated a certain personage. "Hate him? No," said Stein; "but I would spit in his face were I to meet him on the street." This readiness to convert the human face into a spittoon shows that he was qualified to represent a Southern district in our Congress; for what Stein said he would do was done by Mr. Plummer of Mississippi, who spat in the face of Mr. Slade of Vermont,—the American democrat, who probably never had heard of his grandfather, getting a little beyond the German aristocrat, who could trace his ancestors back through six or seven centuries. Thus do extremes meet. In talents, in energy, in audacity, in arrogance, in firmness of will, and in unbending devotion to one great and leading purpose, Count von Bismark bears a strong resemblance to Baron von Stein, upon whom he seems to have modelled himself,—while Austrian ascendency in Germany was to him what French ascendency in that country was to his prototype, only not so productive of furious hatred, because the supremacy of Austria was offensive politically, and not personally annoying, like that of France; but Bismark, though sufficiently demonstrative in the expression of his sentiments, has never outraged propriety to the extent that it was outraged by Stein. Stein died in 1831, having lived long enough to see the in French Revolution of 1830 that a portion of his work had been done in vain. His Prussian work will endure forever, and be felt throughout the world.

[51] The Prussian loss in the battle of Waterloo was 6,998; the British loss, 6,935;—but this does not include the Germans, Dutch, and Belgians who fell on the field or were put down among the missing. Wellington's total loss was about 16,000. The number of Prussians present in the battle was much more than twice the number of Britons. The number of the latter was 23,991, with 78 guns; of the former, 51,944, with 104 guns. Almost 16,000 of the Prussians were engaged some hours before the event of the battle was decided; almost 30,000 two hours before that decision; and the remainder an hour before the Allied victory was secured. It shows how seriously the French were damaged by Prussian intervention, that Napoleon had to detach, from the army that he had intended to employ against Wellington only, 27 battalions of infantry (including 11 battalions of the Guard), 18 squadrons of cavalry, and 66 guns, making a total of about 18,000 men, or about a fourth part of his force and almost a third of his artillery. This subtraction from the army that ought to have been used in fighting Wellington would alone have suffered gravely to compromise the French; and it is well known that Napoleon felt the want of men to send against the English long before the conflict was over; and this want was the consequence of the pressure of the Prussians on his right flank, threatening to establish themselves in his rear. But this was not all the aid derived by Wellington from the Prussian advance. It was the arrival of a portion of Zieten's corps on the field of Waterloo that enabled the British commander to withdraw from his left the comparatively untouched cavalry brigades of Vivian and Vandeleur, and to station them in or near the centre of his line, where they were of the greatest use at the very "crisis" of the battle,—Vivian, in particular, doing as much as was done by any one of Wellington's officers to secure victory for his commander. The Prussians followed the flying French for hours, and had the satisfaction of giving the final blow to Napoleonism for that time. It has risen again.

[52] No one who is not familiar with the correspondence of the Allied commanders in 1815 can form an adequate idea of the ferocity which then characterized the Prussian officers. On the 27th of June General von Gneisenau, writing for Blücher, declared that Napoleon must be delivered over to the Prussians, "with a view to his execution." That, he argued, was what eternal justice demanded, and what the Declaration of March 13th decided,—alluding to the Declaration against Napoleon published by the Congress of Vienna, which, he said, and fairly enough too, put him under outlawry by the Allied powers. Doing the Duke of Wellington the justice to suppose he would be averse to hangman's work, Gneisenau, who stood next to Blücher in the Prussian service as well as in Prussian estimation, expressed his leader's readiness to free him from all responsibility in the matter by taking possession of Napoleon's person himself, and detailing the intended assassins from his own army. Wellington was astonished at such language from gentlemen, and so exerted himself that Blücher changed his mind; whereupon Gneisenau wrote that it had been Blücher's "intention to execute [murder?] Bonaparte on the spot where the Duc d'Enghien was shot; that out of deference, however, to the Duke's wishes, he will abstain from this measure; but that the Duke must take on himself the responsibility of its non-enforcement." In another letter he wrote: "When the Duke of Wellington declares himself against the execution of Bonaparte, he thinks and acts in the matter as a Briton. Great Britain is under weightier obligations to no mortal man than to this very villain; for, by the occurrences whereof he is the author, her greatness, prosperity, and wealth have attained their present elevation. The English are the masters of the seas, and have no longer to fear any rivalry, either in this dominion or the commerce of the world. It is quite otherwise with us Prussians. We have been impoverished by him. Our nobility will never be able to right itself again." There is much of the perfide Albion nonsense in this. In a letter which Gneisenau, in 1817, wrote to Sir Hudson Lowe, then Governor of St. Helena, he said: "Mille et mille fois j'ai porté mes souvenirs dans cette vaste solitude de l'océan, et sur ce rocher interessant sur lequel vous êtes le gardien du repos public de l'Europe. De votre vigilance et de votre force de caractère dépend notre salut; dès que vous vous relâchez de vos mesures de rigueur contre le plus rusé scélérat du monde, dès que vous permettriez à vos subalternes de lui accorder par une pitié mal entendue des faveurs, notre repos serait compromis, et les honnêtes gens en Europe s'abandonneraient à leurs anciennes inquiétudes." An amusing instance of his prejudice occurs in another part of the same letter, where he says: "Le fameux manuscrit de Ste. Hélène a fait une sensation scandaleuse et dangereuse en Europe, surtout en France, où, quóiqu'il ait été supprimé, il a été lu dans toutes les coteries de Paris, et où même les femmes, au lieu nuits à le copier." Gneisenau was in this country in his youth,—one of those Hessians who were bought by George III. to murder Americans who would not submit to his crazy tyranny. That was an excellent school in which to learn the creed of assassins; for there was not a Hessian in the British service who was not as much a bravo as any ruffian in Italy who ever sold his stiletto's service to some cowardly vengeance-seeker. It ought, in justice, to be added, that Sir Walter Scott states that in 1816 "there existed a considerable party in Britain who were of opinion that the British government would best have discharged their duty to France and Europe by delivering up Napoleon to Louis XVIII.'s government, to be treated as he himself had treated the Duc d'Enghien." So that the Continent did not monopolize the assassins of that time.

THE SONG SPARROW.

INVALIDISM.

One of the first tendencies of sickness is to centralization. Every invalid at least begins by being pivotal in the household. But with the earliest hint that the case is chronic, things recoil to their own centres again; people begin to come and go in the gayest way; they laugh and eat immensely, and fly through the halls asking if one couldn't take a bit of stuffed veal. And while one still sinks lower, failing down to the verge of the grave, it is only to hear of the most cherished friends in another town leading the whirl with tableaux and private theatricals. Finally is realized the dire denouément, that, though one lay with breath flickering away, the daily grocer would come driving up without any velvet on his wheels or any softness in his voice, and that the whole routine of affairs is to proceed, whoever goes or stays. This cold-heartedness it seems will kill one at any rate. Rather the universe should sigh and be darkened. To pass unheeded is worse than to die. Just now it is impossible to compass even the satirical mood of Pope, who declared himself not at all uneasy that many men for whom he never had any esteem were likely to enjoy the world after him. But before one has time to die, the absent friends write such a kind, sorry letter, in which they do not say anything about private theatricals, and, as Thad Stevens said of that speech, one knows of course that it was all a hoax! Then the people who eat stuffed veal repent themselves, and send in a delicate broth or a bit of tenderloin, hovering softly in a sudden regard, and at length a healthier thought is born. It is to arise with desperate will, put a fresh rose in the bonnet and a delusive veil over the face, creeping down to the street with[Pg 600] what steadiness can be summoned. There one meets friends, and is pretty well, with thanks, and is congratulated. Affairs grow brilliant, but the veil never comes up; underneath there is some one forty years old and an invalid. Having thus moved against the enemy's works, it is best to retire upon what spirit there is left. It is after this sally that, when the landlady hears a hammering of a Sunday, she comes directly to the room of this robust person, who is obliged to confess that, even if so inclined, she has not strength enough to break the Sabbath.

But the anxiety of every one to show some friendliness to a sufferer is only equalled by the usual inability. We all read of that Union soldier in the hospital visited by an elderly woman bound to do something when there was nothing to be done, and who finally succeeded in bathing the patient's face, while he, poor fellow, still struggling in the folds of the towel, was heard to exclaim, "That's the fourteenth time I've had my face washed to-day!"

Far more unobtrusive is the benevolence which goes into one's kitchen, sending thence to the sick-room those dainties which, after all, are so much too good to be eaten. It seems to be taken for granted that sick persons eat a great deal, and that most of them might share the experiment of Matthews, who began the diary of an invalid and ended with that of a gourmand. I fear that these kindly geniuses would sometimes feel a twinge of chagrin at seeing their elaborate delicacies in process of being devoured by the most rubicund people in the house. But it matters not; it is the sending and getting that are the dainties. Amid all these niceties, however, the office of nurse might certainly be made a sinecure; and just at this point her labors are really quite arduous; for any invalid blessed with many favoring friends soon would sink under the care of crockery and baskets to be properly delivered, while to attend to the accompanying napkins is little less than to preside over a small laundry. And then, as every one tastefully sends her choicest wares to enhance their contents, the invalid also finds that she is the keeper of all the best dishes of the best families.

There is nothing like a well-fought resistance in the early stages of invalidism. Keep up the will, and if need be the temper. There are times when to grow heavenly is fatal,—when one is to let the soul run loose, and to gather up the gritty determination of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who, when told that she must be blistered or die, exclaimed, "I won't be blistered, and I won't die!" Indeed, it is often necessary to reverse the decision of the doctor who gives one up, and simply end by giving him up. The numbers are untold who have died solely from being given up,—I do not mean of the doctors. Poor, timid mortals! they only heard the words, and meekly folded their hands and went. On the other side, there is no end to the people who have been given up all through their lives, and who have utterly refused to depart. They have a kind of useless toughness which prevents them from dying, without endowing them to live. These animated relics often show no special fitness for either world, and they are not even ornamental.

I have somewhere seen the invalid enjoined to talk as if well, but treat himself as if ill. And to certain temperaments a little of this diplomacy, or secretiveness, is often very important. Once an admitted invalid, and the dikes are down. Then begin to pour in all sorts of worthy, but alarming and indiscreet persons,—they who accost one in the street declaring one is so changed, and doesn't look fit to be out,—they who invidiously inquire if you take any solid food, as if one walked the world on water-gruel,—they who come to try to make you comfortable while you do live. All these are very kind, but to a sanguine person they are crushing.

We are all aware that there is no surer way to produce a given state of mind or body, than to constantly address[Pg 601] the victim as if he were in that state. It is a familiar fact that a stout yeoman once went home pale and discomfited from a little conspiracy of several wags remarking how very ill he looked; and that another, who was blindfolded, having water poured over his arm as if being bled, finally died from loss of blood without losing a drop; and Sir Humphrey Davy mentions one wishing to take nitrous oxide gas, to whom common atmospheric air was given, with the result of syncope. And if the well can be thus wrought on, what can be expected of the weak? This habit of depressing remark comes possibly from the feeling that invalids like to magnify their woes, ailments being regarded as their "sensation," or stock in trade. True, there is now and then one made happier by hearing that he seems exceedingly miserable; but it is more natural to brighten with pleasant words, and a morning compliment of good looks will often set one up for the day. Indeed, we fancy that most persons, knowing their disease, in their own minds, prefer that it should chiefly rest there. To discuss seems only to define it more sharply, and to be greatly condoled is only debilitating. Montaigne, to avoid death-bed sympathies, desired to die on horseback; while against the eternal repeating of these ills for pity, he says that "the man who makes himself dead when living is likely to be held as though alive when he is dying."

Likewise the friendliness which keeps reminding one of the fatal end serves none. It is both impolitic and impolite; as if there were an unsightly mole upon the face, and every visitor remarked, as he entered, "Ah, I see you still have that ugly mole!" With all these comforters it is finally better to do without their devotions than to be subjected to their discouragements. How much Pope resented this rude style of criticism may be seen from his tart exclamation, "They all say 't is pity I am so sickly, and I think 't is pity they are so healthy."

Yet that incurable sufferer, Harriet Martineau, testifies that when a friend said to her, with the face of an angel, "Why should we be bent upon your being better, and make up a bright prospect for you? I see no brightness in it; and the time seems past for expecting you ever to be well,"—her spirits rose at once with the sturdy recognition of the truth. And Dr. Henry, with the same directness, wrote to his friend, "Come out to me next week; I have got something important to do,—I have got to die."

This must surely be called the heroic treatment; but for those who are not equal to such, it is good to have a physician of tact, who shall not doom them regularly every day. Plato said that physicians were the only men who might lie at pleasure, since our health depends upon the vanity and falsity of their promises. And yet one is not usually deceived by this flattery; but it is vastly more comfortable to hear pleasant things instead of gloomy, and the sick would rather prefer a dance to a dirge. Of this amiable sort must have been the attendant who caused Pope to say, "Ah, my dear friend, I am dying every day of a hundred good symptoms"; and still more charming the adviser chosen by Molière, who, when asked by Louis XIV., himself a slave to medicine, what he did about a doctor, said, "O sire, when I am ill, I send for him. He comes; we have a chat and enjoy ourselves. He prescribes; I don't take it,—I am cured."

Perhaps few are aware of the various heroisms of the chronic patient. It must have been prophetic that the Mexicans of olden time thus saluted their new-born babes: "Child, thou art come into the world to endure, suffer, and say nothing." It is grand to be upborne by a spirit unperturbed, although flesh and nerve may strike through the best soul for a moment; even as the great and equable Longinus, on his way to execution, is said to have turned pale and halted for an instant; while we all know, that, after the Stuart rebellion, the rough old Duke[Pg 602] Balmoral, a lesser man, never faltered, but, with boisterous courage, cried out for the fatal axe to be carried by his side.

We had been used to think Andrew Jackson an iron-built conqueror, who never knew a pain, until Parton told of the violent cramp which would seize him while marching at the head of his army, when he simply threw himself over a bent sapling in the forest till the spasm subsided, and marched on. The same endurance nerved him to the end. For many of his last years not free for one hour from pain, he still sat at the White House, never intermitting any duty, although the mere signing of his name drew its witness of suffering from every pore. It is with sorrow, too, that we have lately read that the beloved Florence Nightingale has been held by disease, not only to her room, but to a single position in it, for a whole year. And one of our own poets, even dearer to his friends for the sainthood of suffering, still ever is pressing on with tuneful courage. Hear him singing,

Named among the valiant, yet more sad than heroic, was poor Heine on his "mattress-grave." Most pathetically did he lay himself down, this "soldier in the war for the liberation of humanity." Of the last time that Heine left the house before yielding to disease, he says: "With difficulty I dragged myself to the Louvre, and almost sank down as I entered the magnificent hall where the ever-blessed goddess of beauty, our beloved Lady of Milo, stands on her pedestal. At her feet I lay long, and wept so bitterly that a stone must have pitied me. The goddess looked compassionately on me, but at the same time disconsolately, as if she would say, 'Dost thou not see that I have no arms, and thus cannot help thee?'"

Not less touching was the pathos of Tom Hood, in his long years of consumption; but the tone was gayer than the gayest. See him write to a friend: "My dear Johnny, aren't you glad to hear now that I've only been ill and spitting blood three times since I left you, instead of being very dead indeed?" To this he adds: "But wasn't I in luck, after spitting blood and being bled, to catch the rheumatism in going down stairs!"

One long struggle was his against prostration and over-work; but always the same buoyant wit,—writing the cheeriest things with an ebbing life; the hero fighting against fatal odds, but always under a light mask,—and ridiculing himself most of all;—

And others there be, not heroes, who yet have simulated heroism in their blithe indifference to fate;—Lord Buckhurst, who is said to have "stuttered more wit in dying than most people have in their best health"; Wycherley, who took a young bride just before death, and was "neither afraid of dying nor ashamed of marrying"; Chesterfield, who in his last days, when going out for a London drive, used smilingly to say, "I must go and rehearse my funeral"; Pope, who was the victim of incessant disease, which yet never subdued his rhetoric; Scarron, a paralytic and a monstrosity, the merriest man in France, for whom the nation never gave any tears but those of laughter;—all these, down to the easy-minded old Dr. Garth, who died simply because he was tired of life,—"tired of having his shoes pulled on and off."

Strong persons go swinging securely up and down; they are the people of affairs, their nerves are not shaken by anything less than cholera reports; saving these, they should belong to the Great Unterrified of the earth. To them it is hardly given to understand those minute annoyances that beset nerves which are in an abnormal state, especially when one is the prisoner of[Pg 603] a single room. Then one is eternally busy with the dust and small disorders around,—the film on the mirror, the lint-drifts under the stove, the huge cobwebs flying from the corners, the knickknacks awry on the mantel-piece; then one finds the wall-paper is not hung true, and gazes at flaws in the ceiling till they grow into dancing-jacks, and hears the doors that slam, like the shock of a cannon. These are torments so minute that there seems no virtue even in bearing them. Ah! to mount to execution for an idea,—that were glorious and sustaining; but to endure the daily burden of these petty tortures,—one never hears the music play then.

Among the articles to be desired of science is a false hand, or a spectral arm, that shall reach miraculously about,—not a fruit-picker or a carpet-sweeper, but something working with the fineness of an elephant's trunk,—thus to end the discomfort of those orange-seeds spilled on the far side of the room, while, lying inactive, one reaches, reaches, with a patient power which, if transformed into the practical, would push an army through Austria.

Another thing that the invalid has to endure is from the thoughtlessness of visitors. How often, when summoned from the sick-room for any purpose, do they briskly remark, in Tom Thumb style, "I'll be back in a very few minutes!" Hence one lies awake by force, keeping several errands to be despatched on the return, changing variously all the little plans for the next hour or two, and waits. My experience generally is that they have not come back yet.

But the commonest experience is when life itself seems to hang on the arrival of the doctor. Indeed, it is safe to say that never have lovers been so waited for as the doctor. Wasn't that his carriage at the door? Medicine is out! new symptoms appear! it is only an hour to bedtime! and, oh! will the doctor come, do you think? One listens more intently; but now there are no carriages. There are express-wagons, late ice-carts, out-of-town stages, or here and there a light rolling buggy, that seems running on to the end of the world. There are but few foot-passengers either, and they all go by without halting, and there is no indication in the steps of any man of them that he would be the doctor if he could. Thus one wears through the night uncomforted, yet one does not usually die. I have also seen the doctors sitting in their offices expectant, and probably quite as much distressed that everyone went by without stopping. So the balances are kept.

The foregoing grievances are often put among the foolish humors of invalids, but they are quite reasonable compared with many of the droll fancies on record. Take the instance of the elderly man who had been dying suddenly for twenty years; whose last moments would probably amount to a calendar month, and his farewell words to an octavo volume. His physician he pronounced a clever man, but added, pitifully, "I only wish he would agree to my going suddenly; I should not die a bit sooner for his giving me over." It is evident the physician had not the shrewdest insight, or he would have granted this heady maniac his way. "Ah!" would exclaim the constantly departing patient, "all one's nourishment goes for nothing if once sudden death has got insidiously into the system!" More famous were Johnson with his inevitable dried orange-peel, and Byron with his salts. Goethe, too, after renouncing his Lotte, coquetted with the idea of death, every night placing a very handsome dagger by his bed and making sundry attempts to push the point a couple of inches into his breast. Not being able to do this comfortably, he concluded to live. Years after, when he sat assured on his grand poet throne, he must have smiled at it, as with Karl August he "talked of lovely things that conquer death." And still more refined and genuine was the vapor of the imaginative young girl who died of love for the Apollo Belvedere.[Pg 604]

Yet it is but fair to mention that the laugh is not all on this side. It is an historical fact that the public has its medical freaks, without being called an invalid, and that whole nations "go daft" on the shallowest impositions. At one time the English were made to believe that all diseases were caused by the contraction of one small muscle of the body; at another, Parliament itself helped make up the five thousand pounds given by the aristocracy to one Joanna Stephens for an omnipotent powder, decoction, and pills, composed chiefly of egg-shells and snail-shells; at another time every one drank snail-water for everything, or to prevent it, and then tar-water became the rage. In Paris the Royal Academy once procured the prohibition of the sale of antimony, on penalty of death, and in a year or two prescribed it as the great panacea. Pliny reports that the Arcadians cured all manner of ills with the milk of a cow (one would like to see them manage the bilious colic).

Mesmer, who was luminous for a while, did not fail to dupe the people. When asked why he ordered bathing in river instead of spring water, he said, "Because it is warmed by the sun."

Not posed in the least, Mesmer replied, "The reason why the water which is exposed to the rays of the sun is superior to all other water is because it is magnetized. I myself magnetized the sun some twenty years ago!"

Yet the name of Mesmer has founded a system, while that of Dumoulin, who, with simple wisdom, observed, on dying, that he left behind him two great physicians, Regimen and River-water, has gained but a scanty fame.

Says Boswell, "At least be well if you are not ill"; but the dear public is always ill. In our own country, with an apparently healthy pulse, it has drank the worth of a marble palace in sarsaparilla, and has built a hotel out of Brandreth's pills. It has fairly reeled on Schiedam Schnapps; and even the infant has his little popularities, having passed from catnip and caraway to Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup. There is never a time when the public will not declare upon any well-advertised remedy its belief in the motto of the German doctors, "We do cure everything but death."

It is often interesting to note the various phases which invalidism takes on. Sometimes one seems folded in a dense dream,—has gone away almost beyond one's own pity, and has not been heard from for months. It is to be hoped that friends who hunt "the greyhound and turtle-dove" will meet the missing, and duly report. Meantime one resides in a mummified state,—a dim thinkingness that may be discovered when another coming in says with vigor the thing one had long thought without quite knowing it; in this demi-semi-consciousness it had never pecked through the shell. This looks very imbecile, and is charitably treated to be only called invalid.

Is it mere helplessness that one lies so remote from all but surface sensation, day after day gazing at the address of letters that come, with a passive wonder of how soon she is to vacate her name? Also a friend calls to say that to-morrow he travels afar. It seems then that he will be too much missed, and the parting has its share of unutterable longing. But by the morrow it is not the one left who is sorry. The new sun shines on an earth miles off from yesterday. The night has given many windings more in the folds of this resigned mummy, that now lies securely as an insect in a leaf. Given the beloved hand, and all things may go as they will.

And sometimes one bounds to the other side of sensation,—has a terrible rubbed-the-wrong-wayedness, and is as much alive as Mimosa herself. This is often on those easterly days which all well-regulated invalids[Pg 605] shudder at, when the very marrow congeals and the nerves are sharp-whetted. Then, Prometheus-like, one "gnaws the heart with meditation"; then, too, always fall out various domestic disasters, and it is not easy to see why the curtain-string should be tied in a hard knot that must be cut at night, or why the servants can't be thorough, deft-handed, and immaculate. One has indigestion, scowls fiercely, tries to swallow large lumps of inamiability, and fears she is not sublime.

It is a saying of Jean Paul, that "the most painful part of corporeal pain is the uncorporeal, namely, our impatience and disappointment that it continues." Whether this be true or not, what with the worry and constant pressure, these physical disabilities often appear to sink into the deepest centre of the being. Hence, if one have had a cough for a very long time, it would seem that the soul must keep on coughing in the next world. If so, this gives a subtile sense to the despatches of departed spiritualists, who telegraph back in a few weeks that their pain is nearly gone,—as if the soul were not immediately rid of the bad habits of the body.

But most demoralized in æsthetic sense must be that invalid who does not constantly look to the splendid robustness of health. Sickness has been termed an early old age; far worse, it is often a tossing nightmare in which the noble ideal of fairer days is only recalled with reproachful pain. Towards this vision of vigor the victim seems to move and move, but never draw near. Well might Heine weep, even before the stricken Lady of Milo. An old proverb says, that "the gods have health in essence, sickness only in intelligence." Blessed are the gods! One can quite understand the reckless exulting of some wild character, who, baffled with this miserable mendicancy everywhere, at length discovered the idea that God was not an invalid. He was probably too much excited to perfect his rhyme, and so tore out these ragged lines:—

Therefore make a valiant stand against that ugly thing, disease. By all Nature's remedies, hasten to be out of it. Fight it off as long as possible, defy it when you can, and refuse "to hang up your hat on the everlasting peg." Be reinforced in all honorable ways. If not too ill, read the dailies; know the last measure of Congress, the price of gold, and the news by the foreign steamer. Disabuse the world for once of its traditional invalid, who sits mewed up in blankets, and never goes where other people go, because it might hurt him. Be out among the activities; don't let the world get ahead, but keep along with the life of things. Then, if invalidism is to be accepted, meet it bravely and serenely as may be; and if death, then approach it loftily, for no one dies with his work undone, and no just-minded person can wish to survive his service. None should aspire to say, with the antiquated Chesterfield, "Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have it known."

But happy they on whom the deep blight has not fallen, and who day by day restore themselves to the grand perfection of manly and womanly estate; happy again to "feel one's self alive" and

happy again to "excel in animation and relish of existence"; happy to have gathered so much strength and hope, that, when begins the melody of the morning birds, again shall the joy of the new dawn, with all the possible adventure and enterprise of the coming day, thrill through the heart.

GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.

CHAPTER XLII.

"Be seated, mistress, if you please," said Mrs. Gaunt, with icy civility, "and let me know to what I owe this extraordinary visit."

"I thank you, dame," said Mercy, "for indeed I am sore fatigued." She sat quietly down. "Why I have come to you? It was to serve you, and to keep my word with George Neville."

"Will you be kind enough to explain?" said Mrs. Gaunt, in a freezing tone, and with a look of her calm gray eye to match.

Mercy felt chilled, and was too frank to disguise it. "Alas!" said she, softly, "'t is hard to be received so, and me come all the way from Lancashire, with a heart like lead, to do my duty, God willing."

The gentle remonstrance was not quite without effect. Mrs. Gaunt colored a little; she said, stiffly: "Excuse me if I seem discourteous, but you and I ought not to be in one room a moment. You do not see this, apparently. But at least I have a right to insist that such an interview shall be very brief, and to the purpose. Oblige me, then, by telling me in plain terms why you have come hither."

"Why not? If I can clear you? What, would you rather be condemned for murder, than let me show them you are innocent? Alas! how you hate me!"

"Hate you, child? of course I hate you. We are both of us flesh and blood, and hate one another. And one of us is honest enough, and uncivil enough, to say so."

"Speak for yourself, dame," replied Mercy, quietly, "for I hate you not; and I thank God for it. To hate is to be miserable. I'd liever be hated than to hate."

Mrs. Gaunt looked at her. "Your words are goodly and wise," said she; "your face is honest, and your eyes are like a very dove's. But, for all that, you hate me quietly, with all your heart. Human nature is human nature."

"'T is so. But grace is grace." She was silent a moment, then resumed: "I'll not deny I did hate you for a time, when first I learned the man I had married had a wife, and you were she. We that be women are too unjust to each other, and too indulgent to a man. But I have worn out my hate. I wrestled in prayer, and the God of Love, he did quench my most unreasonable hate. For 'twas the man betrayed me; you never wronged me, nor I you. But you are right, madam; 't is true that nature without grace is black as pitch. The Devil, he was busy at my ear, and whispered me, 'If the fools in Cumberland hang her, what fault o' thine? Thou wilt be his lawful wife, and thy poor, innocent child will be a child of shame no more.' But, by God's grace, I did defy him. And I do defy him." She rose swiftly from her chair, and her dove's eyes gleamed with celestial light. "Get thee behind me, Satan. I tell thee the hangman shall never have her innocent body, nor thou my soul."

The movement was so unexpected, the words and the look so simply noble, that Mrs. Gaunt rose too, and gazed upon her visitor with astonishment and respect; yet still with a dash of doubt.

She thought to herself, "If this creature is not sincere, what a mistress of deceit she must be."

But Mercy Vint soon returned to her quiet self. She sat down, and said, gravely, and for the first time a little coldly, as one who had deserved well, and been received ill: "Mistress Gaunt, you are accused of murdering your husband.[Pg 607] 'T is false; for two days ago I saw him alive."

"Be brave, madam. You have borne great trouble: do not give way under joy. He who has wronged us both—he who wedded you under his own name of Griffith Gaunt, and me under the false name of Thomas Leicester—is no more dead than we are; I saw him two days ago, and spoke to him, and persuaded him to come to Carlisle town, and do you justice."

Mrs. Gaunt fell on her knees. "He is alive; he is alive. Thank God! O, thank God! He is alive; and God bless the tongue that tells me so. God bless you eternally, Mercy Vint."

The tears of joy streamed down her face, and then Mercy's flowed too. She uttered a little pathetic cry of joy. "Ah," she sobbed, "the bit of comfort I needed so has come to my heavy heart. She has blessed me."

But she said this very softly, and Mrs. Gaunt was in a rapture, and did not hear her.

"Is it a dream? My husband alive? and you the one to come and tell me so? How unjust I have been to you. Forgive me. Why does he not come himself?"

"Well, dame," said she, "for one thing, he has been on the fuddle for the last two months."

"Ay; he owns he has never been sober a whole day. And that takes the heart out of a man, as well as the brains. And then he has got it into his head that you will never forgive him, and that he shall be cast in prison if he shows his face in Cumberland."

Mercy blushed faintly. She replied with some delicacy, but did not altogether mince the matter.

"Worse, madam; worse. He has robbed me of my good name. You are still his lawful wife, and none can point the finger at you. But look at me. I was an honest girl, respected by all the parish. What has he made of me? The man that lay a dying in my house, and I saved his life, and so my heart did warm to him,—he blasphemed God's altar, to deceive and betray me; and here I am, a poor forlorn creature, neither maid, wife, nor widow; with a child on my arms that I do nothing but cry over. Ay, my poor innocent, I left thee down below, because I was ashamed she should see thee; ah me! ah me!" She lifted up her voice, and wept.

Mrs. Gaunt looked at her wistfully, and, like Mercy before her, had a bitter struggle with human nature,—a struggle so sharp that, in the midst of it, she burst out crying with great violence; but, with that burst, her great soul conquered.

Mercy was patiently drying her eyes, when the door opened, and judge her surprise when she saw Mrs. Gaunt glide into the room with her little boy asleep in her arms, and an expression upon her face more sublime than anything Mercy Vint had ever yet seen on earth. She kissed the babe softly, and, becoming infantine as well as angelic by this contact, sat herself down in a moment on the floor with him, and held out her hand to Mercy. "There," said she, "come, sit beside us, and see how I hate him,—no more than you do; sweet innocent."

They looked him all over, discussed his every feature learnedly, kissed his limbs and extremities after the manner of their sex, and, comprehending at last that to have been both of them wronged by one man was a bond of sympathy, not hate, the two wives of Griffith Gaunt[Pg 608] laid his child across their two laps, and wept over him together.

Mercy Vint took herself to task. "I am but a selfish woman," said she, "to talk or think of anything but that I came here for." She then proceeded to show Mrs. Gaunt by what means she proposed to secure her acquittal, without getting Griffith Gaunt into trouble.

Mrs. Gaunt listened with keen and grateful attention, until she came to that part; then she interrupted her eagerly. "Don't spare him for me. In your place I'd trounce the villain finely."

"Ay," said Mercy, "and then forgive him; but I am different. I shall never forgive him; but I am a poor hand at punishing and revenging. I always was. My name is Mercy, you know. To tell the truth, I was to have been called Prudence, after my good aunt; but she said, nay; she had lived to hear Greed, and Selfishness, and a heap of faults, named Prudence. 'Call the child something that means what it does mean, and not after me,' quoth she. So with me hearing 'Mercy, Mercy,' called out after me so many years, I do think the quality hath somehow got under my skin; for I cannot abide to see folk smart, let alone to strike the blow. What, shall I take the place of God, and punish the evil-doers, because 't is me they wrong? Nay, dame, I will never punish him, though he hath wronged me cruelly. All I shall do is to think very ill of him, and shun him, and tear his memory out of my heart. You look at me: do you think I cannot? You don't know me; I am very resolute when I see clear. Of course I loved him,—loved him dearly. He was like a husband to me, and a kind one. But the moment I knew how basely he had deceived us both, my heart began to turn against the man, and now 't is ice to him. Heaven knows what I am made of; for, believe me, I'd liever ten times be beside you than beside him. My heart it lay like a lump of lead till I heard your story, and found I could do you a good turn,—you that he had wronged, as well as me. I read your beautiful eyes; but nay, fear me not; I'm not the woman to pine for the fruit that is my neighbor's. All I ask for on earth is a few kind words and looks from you. You are gentle, and I am simple; but we are both one flesh and blood, and your lovely wet eyes do prove it this moment. Dame Gaunt—Kate—I ne'er was ten miles from home afore, and I am come all this weary way to serve thee. O, give me the one thing that can do me good in this world,—the one thing I pine for,—a little of your love."

The words were scarce out of her lips, when Mrs. Gaunt caught her impetuously round the neck with both hands, and laid her on that erring but noble heart of hers, and kissed her eagerly.

And now Mrs. Gaunt, who did nothing by halves, could not make enough of Mercy Vint. She ordered supper, and ate with her, to make her eat. Mrs. Menteith offered Mercy a bed; but Mrs. Gaunt said she must lie with her, she and her child.

"What," said she, "think you I'll let you out of my sight? Alas! who knows when you and I shall ever be together again?"

They slept in one bed, and held each other by the hand all night, and talked to one another, and in the morning knew each the other's story, and each the other's mind and character, better than their oldest acquaintances knew either the one or the other.

CHAPTER XLIII.

The trial began again; and the court was crowded to suffocation. All eyes were bent on the prisoner. She rose, calm and quiet, and begged leave to say a few words to the court.

Mr. Whitworth objected to that. She had concluded her address yesterday, and called a witness.[Pg 609]

Judge. You come somewhat out of time, madam; but, if you will be brief, we will hear you.

Prisoner. I thank you, my lord. It was only to withdraw an error. The cry for help that was heard by the side of Hernshaw Mere, I said, yesterday, that cry was uttered by Thomas Leicester. Well, I find I was mistaken: the cry for help was uttered by my husband,—by that Griffith Gaunt I am accused of assassinating.

This extraordinary admission caused a great sensation in court. The judge looked very grave and sad; and Sergeant Wiltshire, who came into court just then, whispered his junior, "She has put the rope round her own neck. The jury would never have believed our witness."

Prisoner. I will only add, that a person came into the town last night, who knows a great deal more about this mysterious business than I do. I purpose, therefore, to alter the plan of my defence; and to save your time, my lord, who have dealt so courteously with me, I shall call but a single witness.

Ere the astonishment caused by this sudden collapse of the defence was in any degree abated, she called "Mercy Vint."

There was the usual stir and struggle; and then the calm, self-possessed face and figure of a comely young woman confronted the court. She was sworn; and examined by the prisoner after this fashion.

Mercy. Yes, madam, on the thirteenth of October. On that day he left for Cumberland.

Mercy. A pedler called at our house on the eleventh of October, and he said his name was Thomas Leicester.

At this the people burst out into a loud, agitated murmur, and their heads went to and fro all the time. In vain the crier cried and threatened. The noise rose and surged, and took its course. It went down gradually, as amazement gave way to curiosity; and then there was a remarkable silence; and then the silvery voice of the prisoner, and the mellow tones of the witness, appeared to penetrate the very walls of the building, each syllable of those two beautiful speakers was heard so distinctly.

Prisoner. Be so good as to tell the court what passed on Wednesday last between Griffith Gaunt and you, relative to this charge of murder.

Mercy. I let him know one George Neville had come from Cumberland in search of him, and had told me you lay in Carlisle jail charged with his murder. I did urge him to ride at once to Carlisle, and show himself; but he refused. He made light of the matter. Then I told him not so; the circumstances looked ugly, and your life was in peril. Then he said, nay, 'twas in no peril; for if you were to be found guilty, then he would show himself on the instant. Then I told him he was not worthy the name of a man, and if he would not go, I would. "Go you, by all means," said he, "and I'll give[Pg 610] you a writing that will clear her. Jack Houseman will be there, that knows my hand; and so does the sheriff, and half the grand jury at the least."

It was handed up to him; and he showed it to the sheriff, who said he thought it was Griffith Gaunt's writing.

It was a day of surprises. This tribute from the murdered man to his assassin was one of them. People looked in one another's faces open-eyed.

The prisoner looked in the judge's, and acted on what she saw there. "That is my defence," said she, quietly, and sat down.

If a show of hands had been called at that moment, she would have been acquitted by acclamation.

But Mr. Whitworth was a zealous young barrister, burning for distinction. He stuck to his case, and cross-examined Mercy Vint with severity; indeed, with asperity.

Whitworth. O, you know what I[Pg 611] mean. Are you not to be paid for telling us this romance?

Mercy. Well, sir, for that matter, I told her that her man was alive, and I did offer to be her witness.

Mercy. For no money or reward, if 't is that you mean. Why, 't is a joy beyond money to clear an innocent body, and save her life; and that satisfaction is mine this day.

Whitworth (sarcastically). These are very fine sentiments for a person in your condition. Confess that Mrs. Gaunt primed you with all that.

Mercy. Nay, sir, I left home in that mind; else I had not come at all. Bethink you; 't is a long journey for one in my way of life; and this dear child on my arm all the way.

Mrs. Gaunt sat boiling with indignation. But Mercy's good temper and meekness parried the attack that time. Mr. Whitworth changed his line.

Whitworth. You ask the jury to believe that Griffith Gaunt, Esquire, a gentleman, and a man of spirit and honor, is alive, yet skulks and sends you hither, when by showing his face in this court he could clear his wife without a single word spoken?

Mercy. Yes, sir; I do hope to be believed, for I speak the naked truth. But, with due respect to you, Mr. Gaunt did not send me hither against my will. I could not bide in Lancashire, and let an innocent woman be murdered in Cumberland.

Whitworth. Murdered, quotha. That is a good jest. I'd have you to know we punish murders here, not do them.

Whitworth. Come, come. You pretend you discovered this Griffith Gaunt alive, by means of an advertisement. If so, produce the advertisement.

"Nay, do not look to the culprit for orders," said he. "Produce it, or confess the truth. Come, you never advertised for him."

Mercy. My lord, the truth is I have it in my bosom. But, if I show it, it will not make this matter one whit clearer, and 't will open the wounds of two poor women. 'T is not for myself. But, O my lord, look at her. Hath she not gone through grief enow?

The appeal was made with a quiet, touching earnestness, that affected every hearer. But the judge had a duty to perform. "Witness," said he, "you mean well; but indeed you do the prisoner an injury by withholding this paper. Be good enough to produce it at once."

Mercy (with a patient sigh). There, sir, may the Lord forgive you the useless mischief you are doing.

Whitworth. I am doing my duty, young woman. And yours is to tell the whole truth, and not a part only.

Whitworth. Why, what is this? 'T is not Mr. Gaunt you advertise for in these papers. 'T is Thomas Leicester.

Whitworth. And you mean to swear that Griffith Gaunt answered an advertisement inviting Thomas Leicester?

Mercy. Is this a place or a time for jesting? I say he called himself Thomas Leicester.

Here the business was interrupted again by a multitudinous murmur of excited voices. Everybody was whispering astonishment to his neighbor. And the whisper of a great crowd has the effect of a loud murmur.

Whitworth. O, he called himself Thomas Leicester, did he? Then what makes you think he is Griffith Gaunt?

Mercy. Well, sir, the pedler, whose real name was Thomas Leicester, came to our house one day, and saw his picture, and knew it; and said something to a neighbor that raised my suspicions. When he came home, I took this shirt out of a drawer; 't was the shirt he wore when he first came to us. 'T is marked "G. G." (The shirt was examined.) Said I, "For God's sake speak the truth: what does G. G. stand for?" Then he told me his real name was Griffith Gaunt, and he had a wife in Cumberland. "Go back to her," said I, "and ask her to forgive you." Then he rode north, and I never saw him again till last Wednesday.

Whitworth (satirically). You seem to have been mighty intimate with this Thomas Leicester, whom you now call Griffith Gaunt. May I ask what was, or is, the nature of your connection with him?

Whitworth. I must press for a reply, that we may know what value to attach to your most extraordinary evidence. Were you his wife,—or his mistress?

She hesitated, and cast a piteous look at Mrs. Gaunt, who sat boiling with indignation.

At this look, the prisoner, who had long contained herself with difficulty, rose, with scarlet cheeks and flashing eyes, in defence of her witness, and flung her prudence to the wind.

"Fie, sir," she cried. "The woman you insult is as pure as your own mother, or mine. She deserves the pity, the respect, the veneration of all good men. Know, my lord, that my miserable husband deceived and married her under the false name he had taken. She has the marriage-certificate in her bosom. Pray make her show it, whether she will or not. My lord, this Mercy Vint is more an angel than a woman. I am her rival, after a manner. Yet, out of the goodness and greatness of her noble heart, she came all that way to save me from an unjust death. And is such a woman to be insulted? I blush for the hired advocate who cannot see his superior in an incorruptible witness, a creature all truth, piety, purity, unselfishness, and goodness. Yes, sir, you began by insinuating that she was as venal as yourself; for you are one that can be bought by the first-comer; and now you would cast a slur on her chastity. For shame! for shame! This is one of those rare women that adorn our whole sex, and embellish human nature; and, so long as you have the privilege of exchanging words with her, I shall stand here on the watch, to see that you treat her with due respect: ay, sir, with reverence; for I have measured you both, and she is as much your superior as she is mine."

This amazing burst was delivered with such prodigious fire and rapidity that nobody was self-possessed enough to stop it in time. It was like a furious gust of words sweeping over the court.

Mr. Whitworth, pale with anger, merely said: "Madam, the good taste[Pg 613] of these remarks I leave the court to decide upon. But you cannot be allowed to give evidence in your own defence."

Mercy. Yes, my lord; and, besides, he wrote me two letters signed Thomas Leicester. Here they are, and I desire they may be compared with the paper he wrote last Wednesday, and signed Griffith Gaunt. And more than that, whilst we lived together as man and wife, one Hamilton, a travelling painter, took our portraits, his and mine. I have brought his with me. Let his friends and neighbors look on this portrait, and say whose likeness it is. What I say and swear is, that on Wednesday last I saw and spoke with that Thomas Leicester, or Griffith Gaunt, whose likeness I now show you.

It was one of those hard daubs that are nevertheless so monstrously like the originals.

Judge (to Mr. Whitworth). Young gentleman, we are all greatly obliged to you. You have made the prisoner's case. There was but one weak point in it; I mean the prolonged absence of Griffith Gaunt. You have now accounted for that. You have forced a very truthful witness to depose that this Gaunt is himself a criminal, and is hiding from fear of the law. The case for the crown is a mere tissue of conjectures, on which no jury could safely convict, even if there was no defence at all. Under other circumstances I might decline to receive evidence at second-hand that Griffith Gaunt is alive. But here such evidence is sufficient, for it lies on the crown to prove the man dead; but you have only proved that he was alive on the fifteenth of October, and that since then somebody is dead with shoes on. This somebody appears on the balance of proof to be Thomas Leicester, the pedler; and he has never been heard of since, and Griffith Gaunt has. Then I say you cannot carry the case further. You have not a leg to stand on. What say you, Brother Wiltshire?

Wiltshire. My lord, I think there is no case against the prisoner, and am thankful to your lordship for relieving me of a very unpleasant task.

The question of guilty or not guilty was then put to the jury, who instantly brought the prisoner in not guilty.

Judge. Catharine Gaunt, you leave this court without a stain, and with our sincere respect and sympathy. I much regret the fear and pain you have been put to: you have been terribly punished for a hasty word. Profit now by this bitter lesson; and may Heaven enable you to add a well-governed spirit to your many virtues and graces.

He half rose from his seat, and bowed courteously to her. She courtesied reverently, and retired.

"Young woman, I have no words to praise you as you deserve. You have shown us the beauty of the female character, and, let me add, the beauty of the Christian religion. You have come a long way to clear the innocent. I hope you will not stop there; but also punish the guilty person, on whom we have wasted so much pity."

"Me, my lord?" said Mercy. "I would not harm a hair of his head for as many guineas as there be hairs in mine."

"Child," said my lord, "thou art too good for this world; but go thy ways, and God bless thee."[Pg 614]

Thus abruptly ended a trial that, at first, had looked so formidable for the accused.

The judge now retired for some refreshment, and while he was gone Sir George Neville dashed up to the Town Hall, four in hand, and rushed in by the magistrate's door, with a pedler's pack, which he had discovered in the mere, a few yards from the spot where the mutilated body was found.

He learned the prisoner was already acquitted. He left the pack with the sheriff, and begged him to show it to the judge; and went in search of Mrs. Gaunt.

He found her in the jailer's house. She and Mercy Vint were seated hand in hand.

He started at first sight of the latter. Then there was a universal shaking of hands, and glistening of eyes. And, when this was over, Mrs. Gaunt turned to him, and said, piteously: "She will go back to Lancashire to-morrow; nothing I can say will turn her."

"No, dame," said Mercy, quietly; "Cumberland is no place for me. My work is done here. Our paths in this world do lie apart. George Neville, persuade her to go home at once, and not trouble about me."

"Indeed, madam," said Sir George, "she speaks wisely: she always does. My carriage is at the door, and the people waiting by thousands in the street to welcome your deliverance."

"Are they so?" said she, grimly. "Then I'll balk them. I'll steal away in the dead of night. No, miserable populace, that howls and hisses with the strong against the weak, you shall have no part in my triumph; 't is sacred to my friends. You honored me with your hootings, you shall not disgrace me with your acclamations. Here I stay till Mercy Vint, my guardian angel, leaves me forever."

She then requested Sir George to order his horses back to the inn, and the coachman was to hold himself in readiness to start when the whole town should be asleep.

Meantime, a courier was despatched to Hernshaw Castle, to prepare for Mrs. Gaunt's reception.

Mrs. Menteith made a bed up for Mercy Vint, and at midnight, when the coast was clear, came the parting.

To apply the sweet and touching words of Scripture, "They sorrowed most of all for this, that they should see each other's face no more."

She drew back into her corner of the carriage, and was very silent and distraite.

After one or two attempts at conversation, he judged it wisest, and even most polite, to respect her mood.

"What is amiss? Why, 't is all amiss. 'T is so heartless, so ungrateful, to let that poor angel go home to Lancashire all alone, now she has served my turn. Sir George, do not think I undervalue your company: but if you would but take her home, instead of taking me! Poor thing, she is brave; but when the excitement of her good action is over, and she goes back the weary road all alone, what desolation it will be! My heart bleeds for her. I know I am an unconscionable woman, to ask such a thing; but then you are a true chevalier; you always were, and you saw her merit directly. O, do pray leave me to slip unnoticed into Hernshaw Castle, and do you accompany my benefactress to her humble home. Will you, dear Sir George? 'T would be such a load off my heart."

To this appeal, uttered with trembling lip and moist eyes, Sir George replied in character. He declined to desert Mrs. Gaunt, until he had seen her safe home; but, that done, he would[Pg 615] ride back to Carlisle and escort Mercy home.

Mrs. Gaunt sighed, and said she was abusing his friendship, and should kill him with fatigue, and he was a good creature. "If anything could make me easy, this would," said she. "You know how to talk to a woman, and comfort her. I wish I was a man: I'd cure her of Griffith before we reached the 'Packhorse.' And, now I think of it, you are a very happy man to travel eighty miles with an angel, a dove-eyed angel."

"I am a happy man to have an opportunity of complying with your desires, madam," was the demure reply. "'T is not often you do me the honor to lay your orders on me."

After this, nothing of any moment passed until they reached Hernshaw Castle; and then, as they drove up to the door, and saw the hall blazing with lights, Mrs. Gaunt laid her hand softly on Sir George, and whispered, "You were right. I thank you for not leaving me."

The servants were all in the hall, to receive their mistress; and amongst them were those who had given honest but unfavorable testimony at the trial, being called by the crown. These had consulted together, and, after many pros and cons, had decided that they had better not follow their natural impulse, and hide from her face, since that might be a fresh offence. Accordingly, these witnesses, dressed in their best, stood with the others in the hall, and made their obeisances, quaking inwardly.

Mrs. Gaunt entered the hall leaning on Sir George's arm. She scarcely bestowed a look upon any of her servants, but made them one sweeping courtesy in return, and passed on; only Sir George felt her taper fingers just nip his arm.

She made him partake of some supper, and then this chevalier des dames rode home, snatched a few hours' sleep, put on the yeoman's suit in which he had first visited the "Packhorse," and, arriving at Carlisle, engaged the whole inside of the coach; for his orders were to console, and he did not see his way clear to do that with two or three strangers listening to every word.

CHAPTER XLIV.

A great change was observable in Mrs. Gaunt after this fiery and chastening ordeal. In a short time she had been taught many lessons. She had learned that the law will not allow even a woman to say anything and everything with impunity. She had been in a court of justice, and seen how gravely, soberly, and fairly an accusation is sifted there; and, if false, annihilated; which, elsewhere, it never is. Member of a sex that could never have invented a court of justice, she had found something to revere and bless in that other sex to which her erring husband belonged. Finally, she had encountered in Mercy Vint a woman whom she recognized at once as her moral superior. The contact of that pure and well-governed spirit told wonderfully upon her. She began to watch her tongue and to bridle her high spirit. She became slower to give offence, and slower to take it. She took herself to task, and made some little excuses even for Griffith. She was resolved to retire from the world altogether; but, meantime, she bowed her head to the lessons of adversity. Her features, always lovely, but somewhat too haughty, were now softened and embellished beyond description by a mingled expression of grief, humility, and resignation.

She never mentioned her husband; but it is not to be supposed she never thought of him. She waited the course of events in dignified and patient silence.

As for Griffith Gaunt, he was in the hands of two lawyers, Atkins and Houseman. He waited on the first, and made a friend of him. "I am at your service," said he; "but not if I am to be indicted for bigamy, and burned in the hand."[Pg 616]

"These fears are idle," said Atkins. "Mercy Vint declared in open court she will not proceed against you."

"O, he will not move, unless he is driven. We must use a little influence. Mr. Houseman is of my mind, and he has the ear of the county."

To be brief, it was represented in high quarters that to indict Mr. Gaunt would only open Mrs. Gaunt's wounds afresh, and do no good; and so Houseman found means to muzzle the Attorney-General.

Just three weeks after the trial, Griffith Gaunt, Esq. reappeared publicly. The place of his reappearance was Coggleswade. He came and set about finishing his new mansion with feverish rapidity. He engaged an army of carpenters and painters, and spent thousands of pounds on the decorating and furnishing of the mansion, and laying out the grounds.

But at last one day came a letter to Mrs. Gaunt, in Griffith's well-known handwriting.

With all her acquired self-possession, her hand trembled as she broke open the seal.

This letter disturbed Mrs. Gaunt's sorrowful tranquillity at once. She was much agitated, and so undecided that she sent the messenger away, and told him to call next day.

But her courier returned, late at night, to say Father Francis was away from home.

Then she took Rose, and said to her, "My darling, papa wants us to go to his new house, and leave dear old Hernshaw; I know not what to say about that. What do you say?"

"Tell him to come to us," said Rose, dictatorially. "Only," (lowering her little voice very suddenly,) "if he is naughty and won't, why then we had better go to him; for he amuses me."

At the appointed day, a carriage and four came wheeling up to the door. The vehicle was gorgeously emblazoned, and the servants in rich liveries; all which finery glittering in the sun, and the glossy coats of the horses, did mightily please Mistress Rose. She stood on the stone steps, and clapped her hands with delight. Her mother just sighed, and said, "Ay, 'tis in pomp and show we must seek our happiness now."

She leaned back in the carriage, and closed her eyes, yet not so close but now and then a tear would steal out, as she thought of the past.

They drove up under an avenue to a noble mansion, and landed at the foot of some marble steps, low and narrow, but of vast breadth.

As they mounted these, a hall door,[Pg 617] through which the carriage could have passed, was flung open, and discovered the servants all drawn up to do honor to their mistress.

She entered the hall, leading Rose by the hand; the servants bowed and courtesied down to the ground.

She received this homage with dignified courtesy, and her eye stole round to see if the master of the house was coming to receive her.

"Welcome, madam, a thousand times welcome to your new home," said he, in a stentorian voice, with a double infusion of geniality. "I claim the honor of showing you your part of the house, though 'tis all yours for that matter." And he led the way.

Now this cheerful stentorian voice was just a little shaky for once, and his eyes were moist.

Mrs. Gaunt noticed, but said nothing before the people. She smiled graciously, and accompanied him.

He took her to her apartments. They consisted of a salle-à-manger, three delightful bedrooms, a boudoir, and a magnificent drawing-room, fifty feet long, with two fireplaces, and a bay-window thirty feet wide, filled with the choicest flowers.

An exclamation of delight escaped Mrs. Gaunt. Then she said, "One would think I was a queen." Then she sighed, "Ah," said she, "'tis a fine thing to be rich." Then, despondently, "Tell him I think it very beautiful."

Mrs. Gaunt made no reply to that. She added: "And it was kind of him to have you here the first day: I do not feel so lonely as I should without you."

"You need not run away from me," said she: "I did not come into your house to quarrel with you. Let us be friends,"—and she gave him her hand sweetly enough, but O so coldly!

"I hope for nothing more," said Griffith. "If you ever have a wish, give me the pleasure of gratifying it,—that is all."

By degrees they saw a little more of one another; they even dined together now and then. But it brought them no nearer. There was no anger, with its loving reaction. They were friendly enough, but an icy barrier stood between them.

One person set himself quietly to sap this barrier. Father Francis was often at the Castle, and played the peacemaker very adroitly.

The line he took might be called the innocent Jesuitical. He saw that it would be useless to exhort these two persons to ignore the terrible things that had happened, and to make it up as if it was only a squabble. What he did was to repeat to the husband every gracious word the wife let fall, and vice versâ, and to suppress all either said that might tend to estrange them.

In short, he acted the part of Mr. Harmony in the play, and acted it to perfection.

Though no perceptible effect followed his efforts, yet there is no doubt that he got rid of some of the bitterness. But the coldness remained.

The cause came out directly. Griffith had observed, at last, what all the females in the house had seen two months ago, that Mrs. Gaunt was in the family way.

He now communicated this to Father[Pg 618] Francis, with a voice of agony, and looks to match.

"All the better, my son," said the genial priest: "'twill be another tie between you. I hope it will be a fine boy to inherit your estates." Then, observing a certain hideous expression distorting Griffith's face, he fixed his eyes full on him, and said, sternly, "Are you not cured yet of that madness of yours?"

"Not I. She will remind me I am nothing to her now. And, though 'tis so, yet I would not hear it from her lips."

In spite of this wise resolution, the torture he was in drove him to remonstrate with her on her silence.

"I should have told you as soon as I knew it myself. But you were not with me. I was all by myself—in Carlisle jail."

This reply, uttered with hypocritical meekness, went through Griffith like a knife. He turned white, and gasped for breath, but said nothing. He left her, with a deep groan, and never ventured to mention the matter again.

All he did in that direction was to redouble his attentions and solicitude for her health.

Even Father Francis, who had seen strange things in families, used to watch Mrs. Gaunt rise from the table and walk heavily to the door, and her husband dart to it and open it obsequiously, and receive only a very formal reverence in return,—and wonder how all this was to end.

However, under this icy surface, a change was gradually going on; and one afternoon, to his great surprise, Mrs. Gaunt's maid came to ask Griffith if he would come to Mrs. Gaunt's apartment.

He found her seated in her bay-window, among her flowers. She seemed another woman all of a sudden, and smiled on him her exquisite smile of days gone by.

"Come, sit beside me," said she, "in this beautiful window that you have given me."

"Sit beside you, Kate?" said Griffith. "Nay, let me kneel at your knees: that is my place."

"As you will," said she, softly; and continued, in the same tone: "Now listen to me. You and I are two fools. We have been very happy together in days gone by; and we should both of us like to try again; but we neither of us know how to begin. You are afraid to tell me you love me, and I am ashamed to own to you or anybody else that I love you, in spite of it all;—I do, though."

"Child," said Mrs. Gaunt, "love is not reason; love is not common sense. 'T is a passion; like your jealousy, poor fool. I love you, as a mother loves her child, all the more for all you have made me suffer. I might not say as much, if I thought we should be long together. But something tells me I shall die this time: I never felt so before. Bury me at Hernshaw. After all, I spent more happy years there than most wives ever know. I see you are very sorry for what you have done. How could I die and leave thee in doubt of my forgiveness, and my love? Kiss me, poor jealous fool; for I do forgive thee, and love thee with all my sorrowful heart." And even with the words she bowed herself and sank quietly into his arms, and he kissed her and cried bitterly over her: bitterly. But she was comparatively calm. For she said to herself, "The end is at hand."

Griffith, instead of pooh-poohing his wife's forebodings, set himself to baffle them.

He used his wealth freely, and, besides the county doctor, had two very[Pg 619] eminent practitioners from London, one of whom was a gray-headed man, the other singularly young for the fame he had obtained. But then he was a genuine enthusiast in his art.

CHAPTER XLV.

Griffith, white as a ghost, and unable to shake off the forebodings Catharine had communicated to him, walked incessantly up and down the room; and, at his earnest request, one or other of the four doctors in attendance was constantly coming to him with information.

The case proceeded favorably, and, to Griffith's surprise and joy, a healthy boy was born about two o'clock in the morning. The mother was reported rather feverish, but nothing to cause alarm.

Towards morning he found himself shaken, and there was Ashley, the young doctor, standing beside him with a very grave face. Griffith started up, and cried, "What is wrong, in God's name?"

"I am sorry to say there has been a sudden hemorrhage, and the patient is much exhausted."

"Not dying. But she will infallibly sink, unless some unusual circumstance occur to sustain vitality."

Griffith laid hold of him. "O sir, take my whole fortune, but save her! save her! save her!"

"Mr. Gaunt," said the young doctor, "be calm, or you will make matters worse. There is one chance to save her; but my professional brethren are prejudiced against it. However, they have consented, at my earnest request, to refer my proposal to you. She is sinking for want of blood; if you consent to my opening a vein and transfusing healthy blood from a living subject into hers, I will undertake the operation. You had better come and see her; you will be more able to judge."

"Let me lean on you," said Griffith. And the strong wrestler went tottering up the stairs. There they showed him poor Kate, white as the bed-clothes, breathing hard, and with a pulse that hardly moved.

"Death has got hold of my darling," he screamed. "Snatch her away! for God's sake, snatch her from him!"

"There," he cried, "Mr. Gaunt consents. Now, Corrie, be quick with the lancet, and hold this tube as I tell you; warm it first in that water."

Here came an interruption. Griffith Gaunt griped the young doctor's arm, and, with an agonized and ugly expression of countenance, cried out, "What, your blood! What right have you to lose blood for her?"

"The right of a man who loves his art better than his blood," cried Ashley, with enthusiasm.

Griffith tore off his coat and waistcoat, and bared his arm to the elbow. "Take every drop I have. No man's blood shall enter her veins but mine." And the creature seemed to swell to double his size, as, with flushed cheek and sparkling eyes, he held out a bare arm corded like a blacksmith's, and white as a duchess's.

The young doctor eyed the magnificent limb a moment with rapture; then fixed his apparatus and performed an operation which then, as now, was impossible in theory; only he did it. He sent some of Griffith Gaunt's bright red blood smoking hot into Kate Gaunt's veins.

This done, he watched his patient closely, and administered stimulants from time to time.

She hung between life and death for hours. But at noon next day she spoke, and, seeing Griffith sitting beside her, pale with anxiety and loss of blood, she said: "My dear, do not thou fret. I died last night. I knew I should.[Pg 620] But they gave me another life; and now I shall live to a hundred."

They showed her the little boy; and, at sight of him, the whole woman made up her mind to live.

And live she did. And, what is very remarkable, her convalescence was more rapid than on any former occasion.

It was from a talkative nurse she first learned that Griffith had given his blood for her. She said nothing at the time, but lay, with an angelic, happy smile, thinking of it.

The first time she saw him after that, she laid her hand on his arm, and, looking Heaven itself into his eyes, she said, "My life is very dear to me now. 'T is a present from thee."

She only wanted a good excuse for loving him as frankly as before, and now he had given her one. She used to throw it in his teeth in the prettiest way. Whenever she confessed a fault, she was sure to turn slyly round and say, "But what could one expect of me? I have his blood in my veins."

But once she told Father Francis, quite seriously, that she had never been quite the same woman since she lived by Griffith's blood; she was turned jealous; and moreover it had given him a fascinating power over her, and she could tell blindfold when he was in the room. Which last fact, indeed, she once proved by actual experiment. But all this I leave to such as study the occult sciences in this profound age of ours.

Starting with this advantage, Time, the great curer, gradually healed a wound that looked incurable.

Mrs. Gaunt became a better wife than she had ever been before. She studied her husband, and found he was not hard to please. She made his home bright and genial; and so he never went abroad for the sunshine he could have at home.

And he studied her. He added a chapel to the house, and easily persuaded Francis to become the chaplain. Thus they had a peacemaker, and a friend, in the house, and a man severe in morals, but candid in religion, and an inexhaustible companion to them and their children.

And so, after that terrible storm, this pair pursued the even tenor of a peaceful united life, till the olive-branches rising around them, and the happy years gliding on, almost obliterated that one dark passage, and made it seem a mere fantastical, incredible dream.

Mercy Vint and her child went home in the coach. It was empty at starting, and, as Mrs. Gaunt had foretold, a great sense of desolation fell upon her.

At the first stage a passenger got down from the outside, and entered the coach.

Sir George observed her eyes were red, and, to divert her mind and keep up her spirits, launched into a flow of small talk.

In the midst of it, Mercy leaned back in the coach, and began to cry bitterly. So much for that mode of consolation.

Upon this he faced the situation, and begged her not to grieve. He praised the good action she had done, and told her how everybody admired her for it, especially himself.

At that she gave him her hand in silence, and turned away her pretty head. He carried her hand respectfully to his lips; and his manly heart began to yearn over this suffering virtue,—so grave, so dignified, so meek. He was no longer a young man; he began to talk to her like a friend. This tone, and the soft, sympathetic voice in which a gentleman speaks to a woman in[Pg 621] trouble, unlocked her heart; and for the first time in her life she was led to talk about herself.

She opened her heart to him. She told him she was not the woman to pine for any man. Her youth, her health, and love of occupation, would carry her through. What she mourned was the loss of esteem, and the blot upon her child. At that she drew the baby with inexpressible tenderness, and yet with a half-defiant air, closer to her bosom.

Sir George assured her she would lose the esteem of none but fools. "As for me," said he, "I always respected you, but now I revere you. You are a martyr and an angel."

Sir George took the hint, given, as it was, very gravely and decidedly; and henceforth showed her his respect by his acts; he paid her as much attention as if she had been a princess. He handed her out, and handed her in; and coaxed her to eat here, and to drink there; and at the inn where the passengers slept for the night, he showed his long purse, and secured her superior comforts. Console her he could not; but he broke the sense of utter desolation and loneliness with which she started from Carlisle. She told him so in the inn, and descanted on the goodness of God, who had sent her a friend in that bitter hour.

"You have been very kind to me, George," said she. "Now Heaven bless you for it, and give you many happy days, and well spent."

This, from one who never said a word she did not mean, sank deep into Sir George's heart, and he went to sleep thinking of her, and asking himself was there nothing he could do for her.

Next morning Sir George handed Mercy and her babe into the coach; and the villain tried an experiment to see what value she set on him. He did not get in, so Mercy thought she had seen the last of him.

"Farewell, good, kind George," said she. "Alas! there's naught but meeting and parting in this weary world."

The tears stood in her sweet eyes, and she thanked him, not with words only, but with the soft pressure of her womanly hand.

He slipped up behind the coach, and was ashamed of himself, and his heart warmed to her more and more.

As soon as the coach stopped, my lord opened the door for Mercy to alight. Her eyes were very red; he saw that. She started, and beamed with surprise and pleasure.

"Why, I thought I had lost you for good," said she. "Whither are you going? to Lancaster?"

Mercy opened her eyes, and blushed high. Sir George saw, and, to divert her suspicions, told her merrily to beware of making objections. "I am only a sort of servant in the matter. 'T was Mrs. Gaunt ordered me."

"I might have guessed it," said Mercy. "Bless her; she knew I should be lonely."

"She was not easy till she had got rid of me, I assure you," said Sir George. "So let us make the best on 't, for she is a lady that likes to have her own way."

"She is a noble creature. George, I shall never regret anything I have done for her. And she will not be ungrateful. O, the sting of ingratitude! I have felt that. Have you?"

She now looked upon Sir George as Mrs. Gaunt's representative, and prattled freely to him. Only now and then her trouble came over her, and then she took a quiet cry without ceremony.

Never in his life had he met such a woman as this, who was as candid with him as if he had been a woman. She seemed to have a window in her bosom, through which he looked, and saw the pure and lovely soul within.

In the afternoon they reached a little town, whence a cart conveyed them to the "Packhorse."

But instead of that, he stayed, and followed her about, and began to court her downright.

But the warmer he got, the cooler she. And at last she said, mighty dryly, "This is a very dull place for the likes of you."

"'T is the sweetest place in England," said he; "at least to me; for it contains—the woman I love."

"I loved you the first day I saw you, and heard your voice. And now I love you ten times more. Let me dry thy tears forever, sweet Mercy. Be my wife."

"You are mad," said Mercy. "What, would you wed a woman in my condition? I am more your friend than to take you at your word. And what must you think I am made of, to go from one man to another, like that?"

"George," said Mercy, very gravely, "I am beholden to you; but my duty it lies another way. There is a young man in these parts" (Sir George groaned) "that was my follower for two years and better. I wronged him for one I never name now. I must marry that poor lad, and make him happy, or else live and die as I am."

Sir George bowed, and retired sick at heart, and deeply mortified. Mercy looked after him and sighed.

Next day, as he walked disconsolate up and down, she came to him and gave him her hand. "You were a good friend to me that bitter day," said she. "Now let me be yours. Do not bide here: 'twill but vex you."

"I am going, madam," said Sir George, stiffly. "I but wait to see the man you prefer to me. If he is not too unworthy of you, I'll go, and trouble you no more. I have learned his name."

Mercy blushed; for she knew Paul Carrick would bear no comparison with George Neville.

The next day Sir George took leave to observe that this Paul Carrick did not seem to appreciate her preference so highly as he ought. "I understand he has never been here."

Mercy colored, but made no reply; and Sir George was sorry he had taunted her. He followed her about, and showed her great attention, but not a word of love.

There were fine trout streams in the neighborhood, and he busied himself fishing, and in the evening read aloud to Mercy, and waited to see Paul Carrick.

Paul never came; and from a word Mercy let drop, he saw that she was mortified. Then, being no tyro in love, he told her he had business in Lancaster, and must leave her for a few days. But he would return, and by that time perhaps Paul Carrick would be visible.

Paul Carrick, who, in absenting himself for a time, had acted upon his sister's advice, rather than his own natural impulse, learned that Mercy received a letter every day. This was a thing unheard of in that parish.[Pg 623]

So then Paul defied his sister's advice, and presented himself to Mercy; when the following dialogue took place.

Paul blushed up to the eyes. "Well," said he, "I'll tell you the truth. 'T was our Jess advised me to leave you quiet just at first."

"Ay, ay. I was to be humbled, and made to smart for my fault; and then I should be thankful to take you. My lad, if ever you should be really in love, take a friend's advice; listen to your own heart, and not to shallow advisers. You have mortified a poor sorrowful creature, who was going to make a sacrifice for you; and you have lost her forever."

"Say no more than you know. If you were the only man on earth, I would not wed you, Paul Carrick."

Paul Carrick retired home, and blew up his sister, and told her that she had "gotten him the sack again."

The next day Sir George came back from Lancaster, and Mercy lowered her lashes for once at sight of him.

She then, with her usual frankness, told him what had passed. "And," said she, with a smile, "you are partly to blame; for how could I help comparing your behavior to me with his? You came to my side when I was in trouble, and showed me respect when I expected scorn from all the world. A friend in need is a friend indeed."

She snubbed, and evaded, and parried, and liked him all the better for his pestering her.

At last, one day, she said: "If Mrs. Gaunt thinks it will be for your happiness, I will—in six months' time; but you shall not marry in haste to repent at leisure. And I must have time to learn two things,—whether you can be constant to a simple woman like me, and whether I can love again, as tenderly as you deserve to be loved."

All his endeavors to shake this determination were vain. Mercy Vint had a terrible deal of quiet resolution.

She replied characteristically. She began very soberly to say that she should be the last to advise a marriage between persons of different conditions in life. "But then," said she, "this Mercy is altogether an exception. If a flower grows on a dunghill, 't is still a flower, and not a part of the dunghill. She has the essence of gentility, and indeed her manners are better bred than most of our ladies. There is too much affectation abroad, and that is your true vulgarity. Tack 'my lady' on to 'Mercy Vint,' and that dignified and quiet simplicity of hers will carry her with credit through every court in Europe. Then think of her virtues,"—(here the writer began to lose her temper,)—"where can you hope to find such another? She is a moral genius, and acts well, no matter under what temptation, as surely as Claude and Raphael paint well. Why, sir, what do you seek in a wife? Wealth? title?[Pg 624] family? But you possess them already; you want something in addition that will make you happy. Well, take that angelic goodness into your house, and you will find, by your own absolute happiness, how ill your neighbors have wived. For my part, I see but one objection: the child. Well, if you are man enough to take the mother, I am woman enough to take the babe. In one word, he who has the sense to fall in love with such an angel, and has not the sense to marry it, if he can, is a fool.

"Postscript.—My poor friend, to what end think you I sent you down in the coach with her?"

Sir George, thus advised, acted as he would have done had the advice been just the opposite.

He sent Mercy a love-letter by every post, and he often received one in return; only his were passionate, and hers gentle and affectionate.

He came too late. The little boy had died suddenly of croup, and was to be buried next morning.

The poor mother received him up stairs, and her grief was terrible. She clung sobbing to him, and could not be comforted. Yet she felt his coming. But a mother's anguish overpowered all.

Crushed by this fearful blow, her strength gave way for a time, and she clung to George Neville, and told him she had nothing left but him, and one day implored him not to die and leave her.

Sir George said all he could think of to comfort her; and at the end of a fortnight persuaded her to leave the "Packhorse," and England, as his wife.

At the end of that time they returned to Neville's Court, and Mercy took her place there with the same dignified simplicity that had adorned her in a humbler station.

Sir George had given her no lessons; but she had observed closely, for his sake; and being already well educated, and very quick and docile, she seldom made him blush except with pride.

They were the happiest pair in Cumberland. Her merciful nature now found a larger field for its exercise, and, backed by her husband's purse, she became the Lady Bountiful of the parish and the county.

The day after she reached Neville's Court came an exquisite letter to her from Mrs. Gaunt. She sent an affectionate reply.

Sir George Neville and Mrs. Gaunt, being both singularly brave and haughty people, rather despised this arrangement.

But it seems that, one day, when, they were all four in the Town Hall, folk whispered and looked; and both Griffith Gaunt and Lady Neville surprised these glances, and determined, by one impulse, it should never happen again. Hence it was quite understood that the Nevilles and the Gaunts were not to be asked to the same party or ball.

The wives, however, corresponded, and Lady Neville easily induced Mrs. Gaunt to co-operate with her in her benevolent acts, especially in saving young women, who had been betrayed, from sinking deeper.

Living a good many miles apart, Lady Neville could send her stray sheep to service near Mrs. Gaunt; and vice versâ; and so, merciful, but discriminating, they saved many a poor girl who had been weak, not wicked.

So then, though they could not eat nor dance together in earthly mansions, they could do good together; and methinks,[Pg 625] in the eternal world, where years of social intercourse will prove less than cobwebs, these their joint acts of mercy will be links of a bright, strong chain, to bind their souls in everlasting amity.

It was a remarkable circumstance, that the one child of Lady Neville's unhappy marriage died, but her nine children by Sir George all grew to goodly men and women. That branch of the Nevilles became remarkable for high principle and good sense; and this they owe to Mercy Vint, and to Sir George's courage in marrying her. This Mercy was granddaughter to one of Cromwell's ironsides, and brought her rare personal merit into their house, and also the best blood of the old Puritans, than which there is no blood in Europe more rich in male courage, female chastity, and all the virtues.

GUROWSKI.

The late Count Gurowski came to this country from France in November, 1849, and resided at first in New York. He made his appearance at Boston, I think, in the latter part of 1850, and, being well introduced by letters from men of note in Paris, was received with attention in the highest circles of society. Among his friends at this period were Prescott, Ticknor, Longfellow, Lowell, Parker, Sumner, Felton, and Everett,—the last named of whom was then President of Harvard University. The eccentric appearance and character of the Count, of course, excited curiosity and gave rise to many idle rumors, the most popular of which declared him to be a Russian spy, though what there was to spy in this country, where everything is published in the newspapers, or what the Czar expected to learn from such an agent, nobody undertook to explain. The phrase was a convenient one, and, like many others equally senseless, was currently adopted because it seemed to explain the incomprehensible; and certainly, to the multitude, no man was ever less intelligible than Gurowski.

To those, however, who cared for precise information, the French and German periodicals of the day, in which his name frequently figured, furnished sufficient to determine his social and historical status. From authentic sources it was soon learned that he was the head of a distinguished noble family of Poland; that he was born in 1805, and had taken part in the great insurrection of 1831 against the Russians, for which he had been condemned to death, while his estates were confiscated and assigned to a younger brother, who had remained loyal to the Czar. It was known also that at Paris, where he had found refuge, he had been a special favorite of Lafayette and of the leading republicans, and an active member of the Polish Revolutionary Committee, till, in 1835, he published La Vérité sur la Russie, in which work he maintained that the interests of Poland and of all the other Slavic countries would be promoted by absorption into the Russian Empire and union under the Russian Czar. This book drew upon him the indignant denunciation of his countrymen, who regarded it as a betrayal of their cause, and led to the revocation of his sentence of death, and to an invitation to enter the service of Nicholas. He accordingly went to St. Petersburg in 1836, where his sister had long resided, personally attached to the Empress and in high favor at the imperial court. He was employed at first in the private chancery of the Emperor,[Pg 626] and afterwards in the Department of Public Instruction, in which he suggested and introduced various measures tending to Russianize Poland by means of schools and other public institutions. He seems for some years to have been in favor, and on the high road to power and distinction. In 1844, however, he fled from St. Petersburg secretly, and took refuge at the court of Berlin. He was pursued, and his extradition demanded of the Prussian government. What his offence was I have never learned, but can readily suppose that it was only a too free use of his tongue, which was at all times uncontrollable, and was always involving him in difficulties wherever he resided. He was quite as likely to contradict and snub the Czar as readily as he would the meanest peasant, and, for that matter, even more readily. His flight from Russia caused a good deal of discussion in the Continental newspapers, and it is certain that for some reason or other strong and pertinacious efforts were made by the Russian government to have him delivered up. The Czar had at that time great influence over the court of Berlin; and Gurowski was at length privately requested by the Prussian government, in a friendly way, to relieve them of embarrassment by withdrawing from the kingdom. He accordingly went to Heidelberg and afterwards to Munich, and for two years subsequently was a Lecturer on Political Economy at the University of Berne, in Switzerland. At a later period he visited Italy, and for a year previous to his arrival in this country had resided in Paris. Besides his first work on Panslavism, already mentioned, he had published several others in French and German, which had attracted considerable attention by the force and boldness of their ideas, and the wide range of erudition displayed in them. Finally, it became known to those who cared to inquire, that one of his brothers, Ignatius Gurowski, was married to an infanta of Spain, whom I believe he had persuaded to elope with him; that Gurowski himself was a widower, with a son in the Russian navy and a daughter married in Switzerland; and that some compromise had been made about his confiscated estates by which his "loyal" brother had agreed to pay him a slender annual allowance, which was not always punctually remitted.

Such was the substance of what was known, or at least of what I knew and can now recall, of Gurowski, soon after his arrival in Boston, sixteen years ago. He came to Massachusetts, I think, with some expectation of becoming connected with Harvard University as a lecturer or professor, and took up his residence in Cambridge in lodgings in a house on Main Street, nearly opposite the College Library. In January, 1851, he gave, at President Everett's house, a course of lectures upon Roman jurisprudence, of which I have preserved the following syllabus, printed by him in explanation of his purpose.

"Count de Gurowski proposes to give Six Lectures upon the Roman Jurisprudence, or the Civil Law according to the following syllabus:—

"As the history of the Roman Law is likewise the history of the principle of the Right (das Recht) as it exists in the consciousness of men, and of its outward manifestation as a law in an organized society; a philosophical outline of this principle and of its manifestations will precede.

"The philosophical and historical progress of the notion or conception of the Right, through the various moments or data of jurisprudential formation by the Romans. Explanation of the principal elements and facts, out of which was framed successively the Roman law.

"Such are, for instance, the Ramnian, the Sabinian, or Quiritian; their influence on the character of the legislation and jurisprudence.

"The peculiarity and the legal meaning of the jus quiritium. Explanation of some of its legal rites, as those concerning matrimony, jus mancipi, in jure cessio, etc.[Pg 627]

"The primitive jus civile derived from the jus quiritium. Point out the principal social element on which, and through which, the jus privatum, connected with the jus civile, was developed.

"The primitive difference between both these two kinds of jus.

"Other elements of the Roman Civil Law. The jus gentium, its nature and origin. How it was conceived by the Romans, and how it acted on the Roman community. Its agency, enlightening and softening influence on the Roman character, and on the severity of the primitive jus civile.

"The nature, the agency of the prætorian or edictorial right and jurisprudence.

"A condensed sketch of the Roman civil process. The principal formalities and rules according to the jus quiritium, jus civile, and the edicta prætorum. Difference between the magistrate and the judge.

"The scientific development of the above-mentioned data in the formation of the Roman Law, or the period between Augustus and Alex. Severus. Epoch of the imperial jurisconsults; its character.

"Decline. The codification of the Roman Law, or the formation of the Justinian Code. Sketch of it during the mediæval and modern periods.

"Count Gurowski is authorized to refer to Hon. Edward Everett, Prof. Parsons, Prof. Parker, Wm. H. Prescott, Esq., Hon. T. G. Gary, Charles Sumner, Esq., Hon. G. S. Hillard, Prof. Felton.

"Cambridge, January 24, 1851."

The lectures were not successful, being attended by only twenty or thirty persons, who did not find them very interesting. The truth is, that few Americans care anything for the Roman law, or for the history of the principle of the Right (das Recht); nor for the Ramnian, Sabinian, or Quiritian jurisprudence; nor whether the jus civile was derived from the jus quiritium, or the jus quiritium from the jus civile,—nor do I see why they should care. But even if the subject had been interesting in itself, Gurowski's imperfect pronunciation of our language at that time would have insured his failure as a lecturer. He had a copious stock of English words at command; but as he had learned the language almost wholly from books, his accent was so strongly foreign that few persons could understand him at first, except those of quick apprehension and some knowledge of the French and German idioms which he habitually used.

The favor with which Gurowski had been received in the high circles of Boston society soon evaporated, as his faults of temper and of manner, and his rough criticisms on men and affairs, began to be felt. Massachusetts was then in the midst of the great conservative and proslavery reaction of 1850, and Gurowski's dogmatic radicalism was not calculated to recommend him to the ruling influences in politics, literature, or society. He denounced with vehemence, and without stint or qualification, slavery and its Northern supporters. Nothing could silence him, nobody could put him down. It was in vain to appeal to Mr. Webster, then at the height of his reputation as a Union-saver and great constitutional expounder. "What do I care for Mr. Webster," he said on some occasion when the Fugitive Slave Law was under discussion in the high circles of Beacon Street, and the dictum of the great expounder had been triumphantly appealed to. "I can read the Constitution as well as Mr. Webster." "But surely, Count, you would not presume to dispute Mr. Webster's opinion on a question of constitutional law?" "And why not?" replied Gurowski, in high wrath, and in his loudest tones. "I tell you I can read the Constitution as well as Mr. Webster, and I say that the Fugitive Slave Law is unconstitutional,—is an outrage and an imposition of which you will all soon be ashamed. It is a disgrace to humanity and to your republicanism, and Mr. Webster should be hung for advocating it. He[Pg 628] is a humbug or an ass," continued the Count, his wrath growing fiercer as he poured it out,—"an ass if he believes such an infamous law to be constitutional; and if he does not believe it, he is a humbug and a scoundrel for advocating it." Beacon Street, of course, was aghast at this outburst of blasphemy; and the high circles thereof were speedily closed against the plain-spoken radical who dared to question Mr. Webster's infallibility, and who made, indeed, but small account of the other idols worshipped in that locality.

It was at this time, in the spring of 1851, that I became acquainted with Gurowski. I was standing one day at the door of the reading-room in Lyceum Hall in Cambridge, of which city I was then a resident, when I saw approaching through Harvard Square a strange figure which I knew must be the Count, who had often been described to me, but whom till then I had never chanced to see. He was at the time about forty-five years of age, of middle size, with a large head and big belly, and was partly wrapped in a huge and queerly-cut cloak of German material and make. On his head he wore a high, bell-shaped, broad-brimmed hat, from which depended a long, sky-blue veil, which he used to protect his eyes from the sunshine. His waistcoat was of bright red flannel, and as it reached to his hips and covered nearly the whole of his capacious front, it formed a startlingly conspicuous portion of his attire. In addition to the veil, his eyes were protected by enormous blue goggles, with glasses on the sides as well as in front. These extraordinary precautions for the defence of his sight were made necessary by the fact that he had lost an eye, not in a duel, as has been commonly reported, but by falling on an open penknife when he was a boy of ten years old. The wounded eye was totally ruined and wasted away, and had been the seat of long and intense pain, in which, as is usual in such cases, the other eye had participated. During the first year or two of his residence in this country he was much troubled by the intense sunshine; but afterwards becoming used to it, he left off his veil, and in other respects conformed his costume to that of the people.

There were several gentlemen in the reading-room whom we both knew, one of whom introduced me to Gurowski, who received me very cordially, and immediately began to talk with much animation about Kossuth and Hungary, concerning which I had recently published something. He was exceedingly voluble, and seemed to have, even then, a remarkably copious stock of English words at command; but his pronunciation, as before remarked, was very imperfect, and until I grew accustomed to his accent I found it difficult to comprehend him. This, however, made little difference to Gurowski. He would talk to any one who would listen, without caring much whether he was understood or not. On this occasion he soon became engaged in a discussion with one of the gentlemen present, a Professor in the University, who demurred to some of his statements about Hungary; and in a short time Gurowski was foaming with rage, and formally challenged the Professor to settle the dispute with swords or pistols. This ingenious mode of deciding an historical controversy being blandly declined, Gurowski, apparently dumfounded at the idea of any gentleman's refusing so reasonable a proposition, abruptly retreated, asking me to go with him, as he said he wished to consult me; to which request I assented very willingly, for my curiosity was a good deal excited by his strange appearance and evidently peculiar character.

He walked along in silence, and we soon reached his lodgings, which were convenient and comfortable enough. He had a parlor and bedroom on the second floor, well furnished, though in dire confusion, littered with books, papers, clothing, and other articles, tossed about at random. He gave me a cigar, and, sitting down, began to talk quite calmly and rationally about the affair[Pg 629] at the reading-room. His excitement had entirely subsided, and he seemed to be sorry for his rudeness to the Professor, for whom he had a high regard, and who had been invariably kind to him. I spoke to him pretty roundly on the impropriety of his conduct, and the folly of which he had been guilty in offering a challenge,—a proceeding peculiarly repugnant to American, or at least to New England notions, and which only made him ridiculous. There was something so frank and childlike in his character, that, though I had known him but an hour, we seemed already intimate, and from that time to the day of his death I never had any hesitation in speaking to him about anything as freely as if he were my brother.

He took my scolding in good part, and was evidently ashamed of his conduct, though too proud to say so. He wanted to know, however, what he had best do about the matter. I advised him to do nothing, but to let the affair drop, and never make any allusion to it; and I believe he followed my advice. At all events, he was soon again on good terms with the gentleman he had challenged.

I spent several hours with Gurowski on this occasion, and, as we both at that time had ample leisure, we soon grew intimate, and fell into the habit of passing a large part of the day together. For a long period I was accustomed to visit him every day at his lodgings, generally in the morning, while he came almost every afternoon to my house. He had a good deal of wit, but little humor, and did not relish badinage. His chief delight was in serious discussions on questions of politics, history, or theology, on which he would talk all day with immense erudition and a wonderful flow of "the best broken English that ever was spoken." He was well read in Egyptology and in mediæval history, and had a wide general knowledge of the sciences, without special familiarity with any except jurisprudence. He disdained the details of the natural sciences, and despised their professors, whose pursuits seemed to him frivolous. He was jealous of Agassiz, and of the fame and influence he had attained in this country, and was in the habit of spitefully asserting that the Professor spoke bad French, and was a mere icthyologist, who would not dare in Europe to set up as an authority in so many sciences as he did here. Even the amiable Professor Guyot, the most unassuming man in the world, who then lived in Cambridge, was also an object of this paltry jealousy. "How finely Guyot humbugs you Americans with his slops," Gurowski said to me one day. I replied that "slops" was a very unworthy and offensive word to apply to the productions of a man like Guyot, who certainly was of very respectable standing in his department of physical geography. "O bah! bah! you do not understand," exclaimed Gurowski. "I do not mean the slops of the kitchen, but the slops of the continent,—the slops and indentations which he talks so much about." Slopes was, of course, the word he meant to use; and the incident may serve as a good illustration of the curious infelicities of English with which his conversation teemed.

But the truth is that Gurowski spared nobody, or scarcely anybody, in his personal criticisms. Of all his vast range of acquaintance in New England, Felton, Longfellow, and Lowell were the only persons of note of whom he spoke with uniform respect. It was really painful to see how utterly his vast knowledge and his great powers of mind were rendered worthless by a childishness of temper and a habit of contradiction which made it almost impossible for him to speak of anybody with moderation and justice. He had also a sort of infernal delight in detecting the weak points of his acquaintances, which he did with fearful quickness and penetration. The slightest hint was sufficient. He saw at a glance the frail spot, and directed his spear against it. Failings the most secret, peculiarities the most subtle,[Pg 630] which had, perhaps, been hidden from the acquaintances of years, seemed to reveal themselves at the first glance of his single eye.

He was very fond of controversy, and would prolong a discussion from day to day with apparently unabated interest. I remember once we had a discussion about some point of mediæval history of which I knew little, but about which I feigned to be very positive, in order to draw out the stores of his knowledge, which was really immense in that direction. After a hot dispute of several hours we parted, leaving the question as unsettled as ever. The next day I called at his lodgings early in the afternoon. I knocked at the door of his room. He shouted, "Come in"; but as I opened the door I heard him retreating into his adjacent bedroom. He thrust his head out, and, seeing who it was, came back into the parlor, absolutely in a state of nature. He had not even his spectacles on. In his hand he held a pair of drawers, which he had apparently been about to assume when I arrived. Shaking this garment vehemently with one hand, while with the other he gave me a cigar, he broke out at once in a torrent of argument on the topic of the preceding day. I made no reply; but at the first pause suggested that he had better dress himself. To this he paid no attention, but stamped round the room, continuing his argument with his usual vehemence and volubility. Half an hour had elapsed, when some one knocked. Gurowski roared, "Come in!" A maid-servant opened the door, and of course instantly retreated. I turned the key, and again entreated the Count to put on his clothes. He did not comply, but kept on with his argument. Presently some one else rapped. "It is Desor," said the Count; "I know his knock; let him in." Desor was a Swiss, a scientific man, who lodged in the adjacent house. Gurowski apparently was involved in a dispute with him also, which he immediately took up, on some question of natural history. The Swiss, however, did not seem to care to contest the point, whatever it was, and soon went away. On his departure Gurowski again began his mediæval argument; but I positively refused to stay unless he put on his clothes. He reluctantly complied, and went into his bedroom, while I took up a book. Every now and then, however, he would sally out to argue some fresh point which had suggested itself to him; and his toilet was not fairly completed till, at the end of the third hour, the announcement of dinner put an end to the discussion.

Disappointed in his hopes of getting employment as a lecturer or teacher, on which he had relied for subsistence, Gurowski felt himself growing poorer and poorer as the little stock of money he had brought from Europe wasted away. The discomforts of poverty did not tend to sweeten his temper nor to abate his savage independence. He grew prouder and fiercer as he grew poorer. He was very economical, and indulged in no luxuries except cigars, of which, however, he was not a great consumer, seldom smoking more than three or four a day. But with all his care, his money was at length exhausted, his last dollar gone. He had expected remittances from Poland, which did not come; and he now learned that, from some cause which I have forgotten, nothing would be sent him for that year at least. He used to tell me from day to day of the progress of his "decline and fall," as he called it, remarking occasionally that, when the worst came to the worst, he could turn himself into an Irishman and work for his living. I paid little attention to this talk, for really the idea of Gurowski and manual labor was so ridiculously incongruous that I could not form any definite conception of it. But he was more in earnest than I supposed.

Going one day at my usual hour to his lodgings, I found him absent. I called again in the course of the day, but he was still not at home, and the people of the house informed me that[Pg 631] he had been absent since early morning. The next day it was the same. On the third day I lay in wait for him at evening at his lodgings, to which he came about dark, in a most forlorn condition, with his hands blistered, his clothes dusty, and exhibiting himself every mark of extreme fatigue. He was cheerful, however, and very cordial, and gave me an animated account of his adventures in his "Irish life," as he called it. It seems he had formed an acquaintance with Mr. Hovey, the proprietor of the large nurseries between Boston and the Colleges, and on the morning of the day on which I found him absent from his lodgings he had gone to Hovey and offered himself as a laborer in his garden. Hovey was astounded at the proposition, but the Count insisted, and finally a spade was given to him, and he set to work "like an Irishman," as he delighted to express it. It was dreadfully wearisome to his unaccustomed muscles, but anything, he said, was better than getting in debt. He could earn a dollar a day, and that would pay for his board and his cigars. He had clothes enough, he thought, to last him the rest of his life,—especially, he added somewhat dolefully, as he was not likely to live long under the Irish regimen.

I thought the joke had been carried far enough, and that it was time to interfere. I accordingly went next day to Boston, and, calling on the publisher of a then somewhat flourishing weekly newspaper, now extinct, called "The Boston Museum," I described to him the situation and the capacities of Gurowski, and proposed that he should employ the Count to write an article of reasonable length each week about European life, for which he was to be paid twelve dollars. I undertook to revise Gurowski's English sufficiently to make it intelligible. The publisher readily acceded to this proposition; and the Count, when I communicated it to him, was as delighted as if he had found a gold mine, or, in the language of to-day, "had struck ile." He was already, in spite of his philosophic cheerfulness, heartily sick of his labor with the spade, for which he was totally unfitted. He resumed his pen with alacrity, and wrote an article on the private life of the Russian court, which I copied, with the necessary revision, and carried to the publisher of the Museum, who was greatly pleased with it, and readily paid the stipulated price.

For several months Gurowski continued to write an article every week, which he did very easily, and the pay for them soon re-established his finances on what, with his simple habits, he considered a sound basis. In fact, he soon grew rich enough, in his own estimation, to spend the summer at Newport, which he said he wanted to do, because the Americans of the highest social class evidently regarded a summer visit to that place as the chief enjoyment of their life and the crowning glory of their civilization. He went thither in June, 1851, and after that I only saw him at long intervals, and for very brief periods.

His stay at Newport was short, and he went from there to New York, where he soon became an editorial writer for the Tribune. To a Cambridge friend of mine, who met him in Broadway, he expressed great satisfaction with his new avocation. "It is the most delightful position," he said, "that you can possibly conceive of. I can abuse everybody in the world except Greeley, Ripley, and Dana." He inquired after me, and, as my friend was leaving him, sent me a characteristic message,—"Tell C—— that he is an ass." My friend inquired the reason for this flattering communication; and Gurowski replied, "Because he does not write to me." Busy with many things which had fallen to me to do after his departure, I had neglected to keep up our correspondence, at which he was sometimes very wrathful, and wrote me savagely affectionate notes of remonstrance.

Besides writing for the Tribune, Gurowski was employed by Ripley and Dana on the first four volumes of the[Pg 632] New American Cyclopædia, for which he wrote the articles on Alexander the Great, the Alexanders of Russia, Aristocracy, Attila, the Borgias, Bunsen, and a few others. It was at this time also that he wrote his books, "Russia as it is," and "America and Europe." In preparing for publication his articles and his books, he had the invaluable assistance of Mr. Ripley, who gratuitously bestowed upon them an immense amount of labor, for which he was very ill requited by the Count, who quarrelled both with him and Dana, and for a time wantonly and most unjustly abused them both in his peculiar lavish way.

For two or three years longer I lost sight of him, during which period he led a somewhat wandering life, visiting the South, and residing alternately in Washington, Newport, Geneseo, and Brattleborough. The last time I saw him in New York was at the Athenæum Club one evening in December, 1860, just after South Carolina had seceded. A dispute was raging in the smoking-room, between Unionists on one side and Copperheads on the other, as to the comparative character of the North and South. Gurowski, who was reading in an adjoining room, was attracted by the noise, and came in, but at first said nothing, standing in silence on the outside of the circle. At last a South-Carolinian who was present appealed to him, saying, "Count, you have been in the South, let us have your opinion; you at least ought to be impartial." Gurowski thrust his head forward, as he was accustomed to do when about to say anything emphatic, and replied in his most energetic manner: "I have been a great deal in the South as well as in the North, and know both sections equally well, and I tell you, gentlemen, that there is more intelligence, more refinement, more cultivation, more virtue, and more good manners in one New England village than in all the South together." This decision put an end to the discussion. The South-Carolinian retreated in dudgeon, and Gurowski, chuckling, returned to his book or his paper.

Shortly after this he took up his abode in Washington, where he soon became one of the notables of the city, frequenting some of the best houses, and almost certain to be seen of an evening at Willard's, the political exchange of the capital, where his singular appearance and emphatic conversation seldom failed to attract a large share of attention. The proceeds of the books he had published, never very large, had by this time been used up; and he was consequently very poor, for which, however, he cared little. But some of the Senators, who liked and pitied the rough-spoken, but warm-hearted and honest old man, persuaded Mr. Seward to appoint him to some post in the State Department created for the occasion. His nominal duty was to explore the Continental newspapers for matter interesting to the American government, and to furnish the Secretary of State, when called upon, with opinions upon diplomatic questions. As he once stated it to me in his terse way, it was "to read the German newspapers, and keep Seward from making a fool of himself." The first part of this duty, he said, was easy enough, but the latter part rather difficult. He kept the office longer than I expected, knowing his temper and habit of grumbling; but even Mr. Seward's patience was at length exhausted, and he was dismissed for long-continued disrespectful remarks concerning his official superior.

Some time in 1862 I met Gurowski in Washington, at the rooms of Senator Sumner, which he was in the habit of visiting almost every evening. I had not seen him for a long time, and he greeted me very cordially; but I soon perceived that his habit of dogmatism had increased terribly, and that he was more impatient than ever of contradiction. He began to talk in a high tone about McClellan, the Army of the Potomac, and the probable duration of the Rebellion. His views for the most part seemed sound enough, but were so offensively expressed that, partly in impatience[Pg 633] and partly for amusement, I soon began to contradict him roundly on every point. He became furious, and for nearly an hour stormed and stamped about the room, in the centre of which sat Mr. Sumner in his great chair, taking no part in the discussion, but making occasional ineffectual attempts to pacify Gurowski, who at length rushed out of the room in a rage too deep for even his torrent of words to express. After his departure, Mr. Sumner remarked that he reminded him of the whale in Barnum's Museum, which kept going round and round in its narrow tank, blowing with all its might whenever it came to the surface, which struck me at the time as a singularly apt comparison.

I met Gurowski the next evening at the Tribune rooms, near Willard's, and found him still irritated and disposed to "blow." I checked him, however, told him I had had enough of nonsense, and wanted him to talk soberly; and, taking his arm, walked with him to his lodgings, where, while he dressed for a party, which he always did with great care, I made him tell me his opinion about men and affairs. He was unusually moderate and rational, and described the "situation," as the newspapers call it, with force and penetration. The army, he thought, was everything that could be desired, if it only had an efficient commander and a competent staff. I asked what he thought of Lincoln. "He is a beast." This was all he would say of him. I knew, of course, that he meant bête in the French sense, and not in the offensive English sense of the word. The truth was, that Gurowski had little relish for humor, and the drollery which formed so prominent a part of Lincoln's external character was unintelligible and offensive to him. At a later period, as I judge from his Diary, he understood the President better, and did full justice to his noble qualities.

I was particularly curious to know what he thought of Seward, whom he had good opportunities of seeing at that time, as he was still in the service of the State Department. He pronounced him shallow and insincere, and ludicrously ignorant of European affairs. The diplomatists of Europe, he said, were all making fun of his despatches, and looked upon him as only a clever charlatan.

This proved to be my last conversation with Gurowski. I met him once again, however, at Washington, in the spring of 1863. I was passing up Fifteenth Street, by the Treasury Department, and reached one of the cross-streets just as a large troop of cavalry came along. The street was ankle-deep with mud, only the narrow crossing being passable, and I hurried to get over before the cavalry came up. Midway on the crossing I encountered Gurowski, wrapped in a long black cloak and a huge felt hat, rather the worse for wear. He threw open his arms to stop me, and, without any preliminary phrase, launched into an invective on Horace Greeley. In an instant the troop was upon us, and we were surrounded by trampling and rearing horses, and soldiers shouting to us to get out of the way. Gurowski, utterly heedless of all around him, raised his voice above the tumult, and roared that Horace Greeley was "an ass, a traitor, and a coward." It was no time to hold a parley on that question, and, breaking from him, I made for the opposite sidewalk, then, turning, saw Gurowski for the last time, enveloped in a cloud of horsemen, through which he was composedly making his way at his usual meditative pace.

THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES.

Andrew Johnson has dealt the most cruel of all blows to the respectability of the faction which rejoices in his name. Hardly had the political Pecksniffs and Turveydrops contrived so to manage the Johnson Convention at Philadelphia that it violated few of the proprieties of intrigue and none of the decencies of dishonesty, than the commander-in-chief of the combination took the field in person, with the intention of carrying the country by assault. His objective point was the grave of Douglas, which became by the time he arrived the grave also of his own reputation and the hopes of his partisans. His speeches on the route were a volcanic outbreak of vulgarity, conceit, bombast, scurrility, ignorance, insolence, brutality, and balderdash. Screams of laughter, cries of disgust, flushings of shame, were the various responses of the nation he disgraced to the harangues of this leader of American "conservatism." Never before did the first office in the gift of the people appear so poor an object of human ambition, as when Andrew Johnson made it an eminence on which to exhibit inability to behave and incapacity to reason. His low cunning conspired with his devouring egotism to make him throw off all the restraints of official decorum, in the expectation that he would find duplicates of himself in the crowds he addressed, and that mob diffused would heartily sympathize with Mob impersonated. Never was blustering demagogue led by a distempered sense of self-importance into a more fatal error. Not only was the great body of the people mortified or indignant, but even his "satraps and dependents," even the shrewd politicians—accidents of an Accident and shadows of a shade—who had labored so hard at Philadelphia to weave a cloak of plausibilities to cover his usurpations, shivered with apprehension or tingled with shame as they read the reports of their master's impolitic and ignominious abandonment of dignity and decency in his addresses to the people he attempted alternately to bully and cajole. That a man thus self-exposed as unworthy of high trust should have had the face to expect that intelligent constituencies would send to Congress men pledged to support his policy and his measures, appeared for the time to be as pitiable a spectacle of human delusion as it was an exasperating example of human impudence.

Not the least extraordinary peculiarity of these addresses from the stump was the immense protuberance they exhibited of the personal pronoun. In Mr. Johnson's speech, his "I" resembles the geometer's description of infinity, having "its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere." Among the many kinds of egotism in which his eloquence is prolific, it may be difficult to fasten on the particular one which is most detestable or most laughable; but it seems to us that when his arrogance apes humility it is deserving perhaps of an intenser degree of scorn or derision than when it riots in bravado. The most offensive part which he plays in public is that of "the humble individual," bragging of the lowliness of his origin, hinting of the great merits which could alone have lifted him to his present exalted station, and representing himself as so satiated with the sweets of unsought power as to be indifferent to its honors. Ambition is not for him, for ambition aspires; and what object has he to aspire to? From his contented mediocrity as alderman of a village, the people have insisted on elevating him from one pinnacle of greatness to another, until they have at last made him President of the United States. He might have been Dictator had he pleased; but what, to a man wearied with authority and dignity, would dictatorship be worth?[Pg 635] If he is proud of anything, it is of the tailor's bench from which he started. He would have everybody to understand that he is humble,—thoroughly humble. Is this caricature? No. It is impossible to caricature Andrew Johnson when he mounts his high horse of humility and becomes a sort of cross between Uriah Heep and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Indeed, it is only by quoting Dickens's description of the latter personage that we have anything which fairly matches the traits suggested by some statements in the President's speeches. "A big, loud man," says the humorist, "with a stare and a metallic laugh. A man made out of coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face, that it seemed to hold his eyes open and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was continually proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility."

If we turn from the moral and personal to the menial characteristics of Mr. Johnson's speeches, we find that his brain is to be classed with notable cases of arrested development. He has strong forces in his nature, but in their outlet through his mind they are dissipated into a confusing clutter of unrelated thoughts and inapplicable phrases. He seems to possess neither the power nor the perception of coherent thinking and logical arrangement. He does not appear to be aware that prepossessions are not proofs, that assertions are not arguments, that the proper method to answer an objection is not to repeat the proposition against which the objection was directed, that the proper method of unfolding a subject is not to make the successive statements a series of contradictions. Indeed, he seems to have a thoroughly animalized intellect, destitute of the notion of relations, with ideas which are but the form of determinations, and which derive their force, not from reason, but from will. With an individuality thus strong even to fierceness, but which has not been developed in the mental region, and which the least gust of passion intellectually upsets, he is incapable of looking at anything out of relations to himself,—of regarding it from that neutral ground which is the condition of intelligent discussion between opposing minds. In truth, he makes a virtue of being insensible to the evidence of facts and the deductions of reason, proclaiming to all the world that he has taken his position, that he will never swerve from it, and that all statements and arguments intended to shake his resolves are impertinences, indicating that their authors are radicals and enemies of the country. He is never weary of vaunting his firmness, and firmness he doubtless has, the firmness of at least a score of mules; but events have shown that it is a different kind of firmness from that which keeps a statesman firm to his principles, a political leader to his pledges, a gentleman to his word. Amid all changes of opinion, he has been conscious of unchanged will, and the intellectual element forms so small a portion of his being, that, when he challenged "the man, woman, or child to come forward" and convict him of inconstancy to his professions, he knew that, however it might be with the rest of mankind, he would himself be unconvinced by any evidence which the said man, woman, or child might adduce. Again, when he was asked by one of his audiences why he did not hang Jeff Davis, he retorted by exclaiming, "Why don't you ask me why I have not hanged Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips? They are as much traitors as Davis." And we are almost charitable enough to suppose that he saw no difference between the moral or legal treason of the man who for four years had waged open[Pg 636] war against the government of the United States, and the men who for one year had sharply criticised the acts and utterances of Andrew Johnson. It is not to be expected that nice distinctions will be made by a magistrate who is in the habit of denying indisputable facts with the fury of a pugilist who has received a personal affront, and of announcing demonstrated fallacies with the imperturbable serenity of a philosopher proclaiming the fundamental laws of human belief. His brain is entirely ridden by his will, and of all the public men in the country its official head is the one whose opinion carries with it the least intellectual weight. It is to the credit of our institutions and our statesmen that the man least qualified by largeness of mind and moderation of temper to exercise uncontrolled power should be the man who aspired to usurp it. The constitutional instinct in the blood, and the constitutional principle in the brain, of our real statesmen, preserve them from the folly and guilt of setting themselves up as imitative Caesars and Napoleons, the moment they are trusted with a little delegated power.

Still we are told, that, with all his defects, Andrew Johnson is to be honored and supported as a "conservative" President engaged in a contest with a "radical" Congress! It happens, however, that the two persons who specially represent Congress in this struggle are Senators Trumbull and Fessenden. Senator Trumbull is the author of the two important measures which the President vetoed; Senator Fessenden is the chairman and organ of the Committee of Fifteen which the President anathematizes. Now we desire to do justice to the gravity of face which the partisans of Mr. Johnson preserve in announcing their most absurd propositions, and especially do we commend their command of countenance while it is their privilege to contrast the wild notions and violent speech of such lawless radicals as the Senator from Illinois and the Senator from Maine, with the balanced judgment and moderate temper of such a pattern conservative as the President of the United States. The contrast prompts ideas so irresistibly ludicrous, that to keep one's risibilities under austere control while instituting it argues a self-command almost miraculous.

Andrew Johnson, however, such as he is in heart, intellect, will, and speech, is the recognized leader of his party, and demands that the great mass of his partisans shall serve him, not merely by prostration of body, but by prostration of mind. It is the hard duty of his more intimate associates to translate his broken utterances from Andy-Johnsonese into constitutional phrase, to give these versions some show of logical arrangement, and to carry out, as best they may, their own objects, while professing boundless devotion to his. By a sophistical process of developing his rude notions, they often lead him to conclusions which he had not foreseen, but which they induce him to make his own, not by a fruitless effort to quicken his mind into following the steps of their reasoning, but by stimulating his passions to the point of adopting its results. They thus become parasites in order that they may become powers, and their interests make them particularly ruthless in their dealings with their master's consistency. Their relation to him, if they would bluntly express it, might be indicated in this brief formula: "We will adore you in order that you may obey us."

The trouble with these politicians is, that they cannot tie the President's tongue as they tied the tongues of the eminent personages they invited from all portions of the country to keep silent at their great Convention at Philadelphia. That Convention was a masterpiece of cunning political management; but its Address and Resolutions were hardly laid at Mr. Johnson's feet, when, in his exultation, he blurted out that unfortunate remark about "a body called, or which assumed to be, the Congress of the United States," which, it appears, "we have seen hanging on the verge of the government." Now all[Pg 637] this was in the Address of the Convention, but it was not so brutally worded, nor so calculated to appall those timid supporters of the Johnson party who thought, in their innocence, that the object of the Philadelphia meeting was to heal the wounds of civil war, and not to lay down a programme by which it might be reopened. Turning, then, from Mr. Johnson to the manifesto of his political supporters, let us see what additions it makes to political wisdom, and what guaranties it affords for future peace. We shall not discriminate between insurgent States and individual insurgents, because, when individual insurgents are so overwhelmingly strong that they carry their States with them, or when States are so overwhelmingly strong that they force individuals to be insurgents, it appears to be needless. The terms are often used interchangeably in the Address, for the Convention was so largely composed of individual insurgents that it was important to vary a little the charge that they usurped State powers with the qualification that they obeyed the powers they usurped. At the South, individual insurgents constitute the State when they determine to rebel, and obey it when they desire to be pardoned. An identical thing cannot be altered by giving it two names.

The principle which runs through the Philadelphia Address is, that insurgent States recover their former rights under the Constitution by the mere fact of submission. This is equivalent to saying that insurgent States incurred no guilt in rebellion. But States cannot become insurgent, unless the authorities of such States commit perjury and treason, and their people become rebels and public enemies; perjury, treason, and rebellion are commonly held to be crimes; and who ever heard, before, that criminals were restored to all the rights of honest citizens by the mere fact of their arrest?

The doctrine, moreover, is a worse heresy than that of Secession; for Secession implies that seceded States, being out of the Union, can plainly only be brought back by conquest, and on such terms as the victors may choose to impose. No candid Southern Rebel, who believes that his State seceded, and that he acted under competent authority when he took up arms against the United States, can have the effrontery to affirm that he had inherent rights of citizenship in "the foreign country" against which he plotted and fought for four years. The so-called "right" of secession was claimed by the South as a constitutional right, to be peaceably exercised, but it passed into the broader and more generally intelligible "right" of revolution when it had to be sustained by war; and the condition of a defeated revolutionist is certainly not that of a qualified voter in the nation against which he revolted. But if insurgent States recover their former rights and privileges when they submit to superior force, there is no reason why armed rebellion should not be as common as local discontent. We have, on this principle, sacrificed thirty-five hundred millions of dollars and three hundred thousand lives, only to bring the insurgent States into just those "practical relations to the Union" which will enable us to sacrifice thirty-five hundred millions of dollars more, and three hundred thousand more lives, when it suits the passions and caprices of these States to rebel again. Whatever they may do in the way of disturbing the peace of the country, they can never, it seems, forfeit their rights and privileges under the Constitution. Even if everybody was positively certain that there would be a new rebellion in ten years, unless conditions of representation were exacted of the South, we still, according to the doctrine of the Johnsonian jurists, would be constitutionally impotent to exact them, because insurgent States recover unconditioned rights to representation by the mere fact of their submitting to the power they can no longer resist. The acceptance of this principle would make insurrection the chronic disease of our political system. War would follow war,[Pg 638] until nearly all the wealth of the country was squandered, and nearly all the inhabitants exterminated. Mr. Johnson's prophetic vision of that Paradise of constitutionalism, shadowed forth in his exclamation that he would stand by the Constitution though all around him should perish, would be measurably realized; and among the ruins of the nation a few haggard and ragged pedants would be left to drone out eulogies on "the glorious Constitution" which had survived unharmed the anarchy, poverty, and depopulation it had produced. An interpretation of the Constitution which thus makes it the shield of treason and the destroyer of civilization must be false both to fact and sense. The framers of that instrument were not idiots; yet idiots they would certainly have been, if they had put into it a clause declaring "that no State, or combination of States, which may at any time choose to get up an armed attempt to overthrow the government established by this Constitution, and be defeated in the attempt, shall forfeit any of the privileges granted by this instrument to loyal States." But an interpretation of the Constitution which can be conceived of as forming a possible part of it only by impeaching the sanity of its framers, cannot be an interpretation which the American people are morally bound to risk ruin to support.

But even if we should be wild enough to admit the Johnsonian principle respecting insurgent States, the question comes up as to the identity of the States now demanding representation with the States whose rights of representation are affirmed to have been only suspended during their rebellion. The fact would seem to be, that these reconstructed States are merely the creations of the executive branch of the government, with every organic bond hopelessly cut which connected them with the old State governments and constitutions. They have only the names of the States they pretend to be. Before the Rebellion, they had a legal people; when Mr. Johnson took hold of them, they had nothing but a disorganized population. Out of this population he by his own will created a people, on the principle, we must suppose, of natural selection. Now, to decide who are the people of a State is to create its very foundations,—to begin anew in the most comprehensive sense of the word; for the being of a State is more in its people, that is, in the persons selected from its inhabitants to be the depositaries of its political power, than it is in its geographical boundaries and area. Over this people thus constituted by himself, Mr. Johnson set Provisional Governors nominated by himself. These Governors called popular conventions, whose members were elected by the votes of those to whom Mr. Johnson had given the right of suffrage; and these conventions proceeded to do what Mr. Johnson dictated. Everywhere Mr. Johnson; nowhere the assumed rights of the States! North Carolina was one of these creations; and North Carolina, through the lips of its Chief Justice, has already decided that Mr. Johnson was an unauthorized intruder, and his work a nullity, and even Mr. Johnson's "people" of North Carolina have rejected the constitution framed by Mr. Johnson's Convention. Other Rebel communities will doubtless repudiate his work, as soon as they can dispense with his assistance. But whatever may be the condition of these new Johnsonian States, they are certainly not States which can "recover" rights which existed previous to their creation. The date of their birth is to be reckoned, not from any year previous to the Rebellion, but from the year which followed its suppression. It may, in old times, have been a politic trick of shrewd politicians, to involve the foundations of States in the mists of a mythical antiquity; but we happily live in an historical period, and there is something peculiarly stupid or peculiarly impudent in the attempt of the publicists of the Philadelphia Convention to ignore the origins of political societies for which, after they have obtained a certain degree of organization,[Pg 639] they claim such eminent traditional rights and privileges. Respectable as these States may be as infant phenomena, it will not do to Methuselahize them too recklessly, or assert their equality in muscle and brawn with giants full grown.

It is evident, from the nature of the case, that Mr. Johnson's labors were purely experimental and provisional, and needed the indorsement of Congress to be of any force. The only department of the government constitutionally capable to admit new States or rehabilitate insurgent ones is the legislative. When the Executive not only took the initiative in reconstruction, but assumed to have completed it; when he presented his States to Congress as the equals of the States represented in that body; when he asserted that the delegates from his States should have the right of sitting and voting in the legislature whose business it was to decide on their right to admission; when, in short, he demanded that criminals at the bar should have a seat on the bench, and an equal voice with the judges, in deciding on their own case, the effrontery of Executive pretension went beyond all bounds of Congressional endurance.

The real difference at first was not on the question of imposing conditions,—for the President had notoriously imposed them himself,—but on the question whether or not additional conditions were necessary to secure the public safety. The President, with that facility "in turning his back on himself" which all other logical gymnasts had pronounced an impossible feat, then boldly look the ground, that, being satisfied with the conditions he had himself exacted, the exaction of conditions was unconstitutional. To sustain this curious proposition he adduced no constitutional arguments, but he left various copies of the Constitution in each of the crowds he recently addressed, with the trust, we suppose, that somebody might be fortunate enough to find in that instrument the clause which supported his theory. Mr. Johnson, however, though the most consequential of individuals, is the most inconsequential of reasoners; every proposition which is evident to himself he considers to fulfil the definition of a self-evident proposition; but his supporters at Philadelphia must have known, that, in affirming that insurgent States recover their former rights by the fact of submission, they were arraigning the conduct of their leader, who had notoriously violated those "rights." They took up his work at a certain stage, and then, with that as a basis, they affirmed a general proposition about insurgent States, which, had it been complied with by the President, would have left them no foundation at all; for the States about which they so glibly generalized would have had no show of organized governments. The premises of their argument were obtained by the violation of its conclusion; they inferred from what was a negation of their inference, and deduced from what was a death-blow to their deduction.

It is easy enough to understand why the Johnson Convention asserted the equality of the Johnson reconstructions of States with the States now represented in Congress. The object was to give some appearance of legality to a contemplated act of arbitrary power, and the principle that insurgent States recover all their old rights by the fact of submission was invented in order to cover the case. Mr. Johnson now intends, by the admission of his partisans, to attempt a coup d'état on the assembling of the Fortieth Congress, in case seventy-one members of the House of Representatives, favorable to his policy, are chosen, in the elections of this autumn, from the twenty-six loyal States. These, with the fifty Southern delegates, would constitute a quorum of the House; and the remaining hundred and nineteen members are, in the President's favorite phrase, "to be kicked out" from that "verge" of the government on which they now are said to be "hanging." The question, therefore, whether Congress, as it is at present[Pg 640] constituted, is a body constitutionally competent to legislate for the whole country, is the most important of all practical questions. Let us see how the case stands.

The Constitution, ratified by the people of all the States, establishes a government of sovereign powers, supreme over the whole land, and the people of no State can rightly pass from under its authority except by the consent of the people of all the States, with whom it is bound by the most solemn and binding of contracts. The Rebel States broke, in fact, the contract they could not break in right. Assembled in conventions of their people, they passed ordinances of secession, withdrew their Senators and Representatives from Congress, and began the war by assailing a fort of the United States. The Secessionists had trusted to the silence of the Constitution in relation to the act they performed. A State in the American Union, as distinguished from a Territory, is constitutionally a part of the government to which it owes allegiance, and the seceded States had refused to be parts of the government, and had forsworn their allegiance. By the Constitution, the United States, in cases of "domestic violence" in a State, is to interfere, "on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive when the Legislature cannot be convened." But in this case legislatures, executives, conventions of the people, were all violators of the domestic peace, and of course made no application for interference. By the Constitution, Congress is empowered to suppress insurrections; but this might be supposed to mean insurrections like Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts and the Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania, and not to cover the action of States seceding from the Congress which is thus empowered. The seceders, therefore, felt somewhat as did the absconding James II. when he flung the Great Seal into the Thames, and thought he had stopped the machinery of the English government.

Mr. Buchanan, then President of the United States, admitted at once that the Secessionists had done their work in such a way that, though they had done wrong, the government was powerless to compel them to do right. And here the matter should have rested, if the government established by the Constitution was such a government as Mr. Johnson's supporters now declare it to be. If it is impotent to prescribe terms of peace in relation to insurgent States, it is certainly impotent to make war on insurgent States. If insurgent States recover their former constitutional rights in laying down their arms, then there was no criminality in their taking them up; and if there was no criminality in their taking them up, then the United States was criminal in the war by which they were forced to lay them down. On this theory we have a government incompetent to legislate for insurgent States, because lacking their representatives, waging against them a cruel and unjust war. And this is the real theory of the defeated Rebels and Copperheads who formed the great mass of the delegates to the Johnson Convention. Should they get into power, they would feel themselves logically justified in annulling, not only all the acts of the "Rump Congress" since they submitted, but all the acts of the Rump Congresses during the time they had a Confederate Congress of their own. They may deny that this is their intention; but what intention to forego the exercise of an assumed right, held by those who are out of power, can be supposed capable of limiting their action when they are in?

But if the United States is a government having legitimate rights of sovereignty conferred upon it by the people of all the States, and if, consequently, the attempted secession of the people of one or more States only makes them criminals, without impairing the sovereignty of the United States, then the government, with all its powers, remains with the representatives of the loyal people.[Pg 641] By the very nature of government as government, the rights and privileges guaranteed to citizens are guaranteed to loyal citizens; the rights and privileges guaranteed to States are guaranteed to loyal States; and loyal citizens and loyal States are not such as profess a willingness to be loyal after having been utterly worsted in an enterprise of gigantic disloyalty. The organic unity and continuity of the government would be broken by the return of disloyal citizens and Rebel States without their going through the process of being restored by the action of the government they had attempted to subvert; and the power to restore carries with it the power to decide on the terms of restoration. And when we speak of the government, we are not courtly enough to mean by the expression simply its executive branch. The question of admitting and implicitly of restoring States, and of deciding whether or not States have a republican form of government, are matters left by the Constitution to the discretion of Congress. As to the Rebel States now claiming representation, they have succumbed, thoroughly exhausted, in one of the costliest and bloodiest wars in the history of the world,—a war which tasked the resources of the United States more than they would have been tasked by a war with all the great powers of Europe combined,—a war which, in 1862, had assumed such proportions, that the Supreme Court decided that it gave the United States the same rights and privileges which the government might exercise in the case of a national and foreign war. The inhabitants of the insurgent States being thus judicially declared public enemies as well as Rebels, there would seem to be no doubt at all that the victorious close of actual hostilities could not deprive the government of the power of deciding on the terms of peace with public enemies. The government of the United States found the insurgent States thoroughly revolutionized and disorganized, with no State governments which could be recognized without recognizing the validity of treason, and without the power or right to take even the initial steps for State reorganization. They were practically out of the Union as States; their State governments had lapsed; their population was composed of Rebels and public enemies, by the decision of the Supreme Court. Under such circumstances, how the Commander-in-Chief, under Congress, of the forces of the United States could re-create these defunct States, and make it mandatory on Congress to receive their delegates, has always appeared to us one of those mysteries of unreason which require faculties either above or below humanity to accept. In addition to this fundamental objection, there was the further one, that almost all of the delegates were Rebels presidentially pardoned into "loyal men," were elected with the idea of forcing Congress to repeal the test oath, and were incapacitated to be legislators even if they had been sent from loyal States. The few who were loyal men in the sense that they had not served the Rebel government, were still palpably elected by constituents who had; and the character of the constituency is as legitimate a subject of Congressional inquiry as the character of the representative.

It not being true, then, that the twenty-two hundred thousand loyal voters who placed Mr. Johnson in office, and whom he betrayed, have no means by their representatives in Congress to exert a controlling power in the reconstruction of the Rebel communities, the question comes up as to the conditions which Congress has imposed. It always appeared to us that the true measure of conciliation, of security, of mercy, of justice, was one which would combine the principle of universal amnesty, or an amnesty nearly universal, with that of universal, or at least of impartial suffrage. In regard to amnesty, the amendment to the Constitution which Congress has passed disqualifies no Rebels from voting, and only disqualifies them from holding office when they have happened[Pg 642] to add perjury to treason. In regard to suffrage, it makes it for the political interest of the South to be just to its colored citizens, by basing representation on voters, and not on population, and thus places the indulgence of class prejudices and hatreds under the penalty of a corresponding loss of political power in the Electoral College and the National House of Representatives. If the Rebel States should be restored without this amendment becoming a part of the Constitution, then the recent Slave States will have thirty Presidential Electors and thirty members of the House of Representatives in virtue of a population they disfranchise, and the vote of a Rebel white in South Carolina will carry with it more than double the power of a loyal white in Massachusetts or Ohio. The only ground on which this disparity can be defended is, that as "one Southerner is more than a match for two Yankees," he has an inherent, continuous, unconditioned right to have this superiority recognized at the ballot-box. Indeed, the injustice of this is so monstrous, that the Johnson orators find it more convenient to decry all conditions of representation than to meet the incontrovertible reasons for exacting the condition which bases representation on voters. Not to make it a part of the Constitution would be, in Mr. Shellabarger's vivid illustration, to allow "that Lee's vote should have double the elective power of Grant's; Semmes's double that of Farragut's; Booth's—did he live—double that of Lincoln's, his victim!"

It is also to be considered that these thirty votes would, in almost all future sessions of Congress, decide the fate of the most important measures. In 1862 the Republicans, as Congress is now constituted, only had a majority of twenty votes. In alliance with the Northern Democratic party, the South with these thirty votes might repeal the Civil Rights Bill, the principle of which is embodied in the proposed amendment. It might assume the Rebel debt, which is repudiated in that amendment. It might even repudiate the Federal debt, which is affirmed in that amendment. We are so accustomed to look at the Rebel debt as dead beyond all power of resurrection, as to forget that it amounts, with the valuation of the emancipated slaves, to some four thousand millions of dollars. If the South and its Northern Democratic allies should come into power, there is a strong probability that a measure would be brought in to assume at least a portion of this debt,—say two thousand millions. The Southern members would be nearly a unit for assumption, and the Northern Democratic members would certainly be exposed to the most frightful temptation that legislators ever had to resist. Suppose it were necessary to buy fifty members at a million of dollars apiece, that sum would only be two and a half per cent of the whole. Suppose it were necessary to give them ten millions apiece, even that would only be a deduction of twenty-five per cent from a claim worthless without their votes. The bribery might be conducted in such a way as to elude discovery, if not suspicion, and the measure would certainly be trumpeted all over the North as the grandest of all acts of statesmanlike "conciliation," binding the South to the Union in indissoluble bonds of interest. The amendment renders the conversion of the Rebel debt into the most enormous of all corruption funds an impossibility.

But the character and necessity of the amendment are too well understood to need explanation, enforcement, or defence. If it, or some more stringent one, be not adopted, the loyal people will be tricked out of the fruits of the war they have waged at the expense of such unexampled sacrifices of treasure and blood. It never will be adopted unless it be practically made a condition of the restoration of the Rebel States; and for the unconditioned restoration of those States the President, through his most trusted supporters, has indicated his intention to venture a coup d'état. This threat has failed doubly[Pg 643] of its purpose. The timid, whom it was expected to frighten, it has simply scared into the reception of the idea that the only way to escape civil war is by the election of over a hundred and twenty Republican Representatives to the Fortieth Congress. The courageous, whom it was intended to defy, it has only exasperated into more strenuous efforts against the insolent renegade who had the audacity to make it.

Everywhere in the loyal States there is an uprising of the people only paralleled by the grand uprising of 1861. The President's plan of reconstruction having passed from a policy into a conspiracy, his chief supporters are now not so much his partisans as his accomplices; and against him and his accomplices the people will this autumn indignantly record the most overwhelming of verdicts.

ART.

MARSHALL'S PORTRAIT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

When we consider the conditions under which the art of successful line-engraving is attained, the amount and quality of artistic knowledge implied, the years of patient, unwearied application imperiously demanded, the numerous manual difficulties to be overcome, and the technical skill to be acquired, it is not surprising that the names of so few engravers should be pre-eminent and familiar.

In our own country, at least, the instinct and habit of the people do not favor the growth and perfection of an art only possible under such conditions.

So fully and satisfactorily, however, have these demands been met in Marshall's line-engraving of the head of Abraham Lincoln, executed after Mr. Marshall's own painting, that we are induced to these preliminary thoughts as much by a sense of national pride as of delight and surprise.

Our admiration of the engraving is first due to its value as a likeness; for it is only when the heart rests from a full and satisfied contemplation of the face endeared to us all, that we can regard it for its artistic worth.

Mr. Marshall did not need this last work, to rank him at the head of American engravers; for his portraits of Washington and Fenimore Cooper had done that already; but it has lifted him to a place with the foremost engravers of the world.

The greatness and glory of his success, in this instance, are to be measured by the inherent difficulties in the subject itself.

The intellectual and physical traits of Abraham Lincoln were such as the world had never seen before. Original, peculiar, and anomalous, they seemed incapable of analysis and classification.

While the keen, comprehensive intellect within that broad, grand forehead was struggling with the great problems of national fate, other faculties of the same organization, strongly marked in the lower features of his face, seemed to be making light of the whole matter.

His character and the physical expression of it were unique, and yet made up of the most complex elements;—simple, yet incomprehensible; strong, yet gentle; inflexible, yet conciliating; human, yet most rare; the strangest, and yet for all in all the most lovable, character in history.

To represent this man, to embody these characteristics, was the work prescribed the artist. Instead of being fetters, these contradictions seem to have been incentives to the artist. Justice to himself, as to an American who loved Lincoln, and justice to the great man, the truest American of his time, appear also to have been his inspiration.

Neglected now, this golden opportunity might be lost forever, and the future be haunted by an ideal only, and never be familiarized with the plain, good face we knew. For what could the future make of all these caricatures and uncouth efforts at portraiture, rendered only more grotesque when stretched upon the rack of a thousand canvases? No less a benefactor[Pg 644] to art than to humanity is he who shall deliver the world of these.

The artist has chosen, with admirable judgment, a quiet, restful, familiar phase of Mr. Lincoln's life, with the social and genial sentiments of his nature at play, rather than some more impressive and startling hour of his public life, when a victory was gained, or an immortal sentence uttered at Gettysburg or the Capitol, or when, as the great Emancipator, he walked with his liberated children through the applauding streets of Richmond. It was tempting to paint him as President, but triumphant to represent him as a man.

Though the face is wanting in the crowning glory of the dramatic, the romantic, the picturesque,—elements so fascinating to an artist,—we still feel no loss in the absence of these; for Mr. Marshall has found abundant material in the rich and varied qualities that Mr. Lincoln did possess, and has treated them with the loftier sense of justice and truth, he has employed no adventitious agencies to give brilliancy or emphasis to any salient point in the character of the man he portrays; he has treated Mr. Lincoln as he found him; he has interpreted him as he would have interpreted himself; in inspiration, in execution, and in result, he thought of none other, he labored for none other, he has given us none other, than simple, honest Abraham Lincoln.

Were all the biographies and estimates of the President's character to be lost, it would seem as if, from this picture alone, the distinguishing qualities of his head and heart might be saved to the knowledge of the future; for a rarer exhibition seems impossible of the power of imparting inner spiritual states to outward physical expression.

As a work of art, we repeat, this is beyond question the finest instance of line-engraving yet executed on this continent. Free from carelessness or coarseness, it is yet strong and emphatic; exquisitely finished, yet without painful over-elaboration; with no weary monotony of parallel lines to fill a given space, and no unrelieved masses of shade merely because here must the shadow fall.

As a likeness, it is complete and final. Coming generations will know Abraham Lincoln by this picture, and will tenderly and lovingly regard it; for all that art could do to save and perpetuate this lamented man has here been done. What it lacks, art is incapable to express; what it has lost, memory is powerless to restore.

There is, at least, some temporary solace to a bereaved country in this,—that so much has been saved from the remorseless demands of Death; though the old grief will ever come back to its still uncomforted heart, when it turns to that tomb by the Western prairie, within whose sacred silence so much sweetness and kindly sympathy and unaffected love have passed away, and the strange pathos, that we could not understand, and least of all remove, has faded forever from those sorrowful eyes.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

The grandeur which can survive proximity was peculiarly Abraham Lincoln's. Had that great and simple hero had a valet,—it is hard to conceive of him as so attended,—he must still have been a hero even to the eye grown severe in dusting clothes and brushing shoes. Indeed, first and last, he was subjected to very critical examination by the valet-spirit throughout the world; and he seems to have passed it triumphantly, for all our native valets, North and South, as well as those of the English press, have long since united in honoring him.

We see him in this book of Mr. Carpenter's to that advantage which perfect unaffectedness and sincerity can never lose. It is certainly a very pathetic figure, however, that the painter presents us, and not[Pg 645] to be contemplated without sadness and that keen sense of personal loss which we all felt in the death of Abraham Lincoln. During the time that Mr. Carpenter was making studies for his picture of the President signing the Emancipation Proclamation, he was in daily contact with him,—saw him in consultation with his Cabinet, at play with his children, receiving office-seekers of all kinds, granting many favors to poor and friendless people, snubbing Secession insolence, and bearing patiently much impertinence from every source,—jesting, laughing, lamenting. It is singular that, in all these aspects of his character, there is no want of true dignity, though there is an utter absence of state,—and that we behold nothing of the man Lincoln was once doubted to be, but only a person of noble simplicity, cautious but steadfast, shrinking from none of the burdens that almost crushed him, profoundly true to his faith in the people, while surveying the awful calamity of the war with

We have read Mr. Carpenter's book through with an interest chiefly due, we believe, to the subject; for though the author had the faculty to observe and to note characteristic and striking things, he has not the literary art to present them adequately. His style is compact of the manner of the local reporters and the Sunday-school books. If he depicts a pathetic scene, he presently farces it by adding that "there was not a dry eye among those that witnessed it," and goody-goody dwells in the spirit and letter of all his attempts to portray the religious character of the President. It is greatly to his credit, however, that his observation is employed with discretion and delicacy; and as he rarely lapses from good taste concerning things to be mentioned, we readily forgive him his want of grace in recounting the incidents which go to form his entertaining and valuable book.

The author of this novel tells us that it was written in the heart of the rebellious territory during the late war, and that his wife habitually carried the manuscript to church with her in her pocket, while on one occasion he was obliged to bury it in the ground to preserve it from the insidious foe. These facts, in themselves startling, appear yet more extraordinary on perusal of the volume, in which there seems to be nothing of perilous value. Nevertheless, to the ill-regulated imagination of the Rebels, this novel might have appeared a very dangerous thing, to be kept from ever seeing the light in the North by all the means in their power; and we are not ready to say that Mr. Harrington's precautions, though unusual, were excessive. It is true that we see no reason why he should not have kept the material in his mind, and tranquilly written it out after the war was over.

Let us not, however, give too slight an idea of the book's value because the Preface is silly. The story is sluggish, it must be confessed, and does not in the least move us. But the author has made a very careful study of his subject, and shows so genuine a feeling for character and manner that we accept his work as a faithful picture of the life he attempts to portray. Should he write another fiction, he will probably form his style less visibly upon that of Thackeray, though it is something in his favor that he betrays admiration for so great a master even by palpable imitation; and we hope he will remember that a story, however slender, must be coherent. In the present novel, we think the characters of Colonel Juggins and his wife done with masterly touches; and General Lamum, politician pure and simple, is also excellent. Brother Barker, of the hard-shell type, is less original, though good; while Captain Simmons, Colonel Ret Roberts, and other village idlers and great men, seem admirably true to nature. Except for some absurd melodrama, the tone of the book is quiet and pleasant, and there is here and there in it a vein of real pathos and humor.

We imagine that most readers, in turning over the pages of this volume, will not be greatly struck by the novelty of the truths urged. Indeed, they are very old truths, and they contain the precepts which we all know and neglect. Except that the present preacher was qualified to illustrate them with original force and clearness, he might[Pg 646] well have left them untouched. As it is, however, we think that every one who reads a page in the book will learn to honor the faculty that presents them. It is not because Mr. Beecher reproves hatred, false-witness, lust, envy, and covetousness, that he is so successful in his office. We all do this, and dislike sin in our neighbors; but it is his power of directly reproving these evils in each one of us that gives his words so great weight. He of course does this by varying means and with varying effect. Here we have detached passages from many different discourses,—not invariably selected with perfect judgment, but affording for this reason a better idea of his range and capacity. That given is not always of his best; but, for all this, it may have been the best for some of those who heard it. In the changing topics and style of the innumerable extracts in this volume, we find passages of pure sublimity, of solemn and pathetic eloquence, of flower-like grace and sweetness, followed by exhortations apparently modelled upon those of Mr. Chadband, but doubtless comforting and edifying to Mrs. Snagsby in the congregation, and not, we suppose, without use to Mrs. Snagsby in the parlor where she sits down to peruse the volume on Sunday afternoon. For according to the story which Mr. Beecher tells his publishers in a very pleasant prefatory letter, this compilation was made in England, where it attained great popularity among those who never heard the preacher, and who found satisfaction in the first-rate or the second-rate, without being moved by the arts of oratory. Indeed, the book is one that must everywhere be welcome, both for its manner and for its matter. The application of the "Truths" is generally enforced by a felicitous apologue or figure; in some cases the lesson is conveyed in a beautiful metaphor standing alone. The extracts are brief, and the point, never wanting, is moral, not doctrinal.

Margaret Fuller said that everybody liked gossip, and the only difference was in the choice of a subject. A bookful of gossip about flowers—their loves and hates, thoughts and feelings, genealogy and cousinships—is certainly always attractive. Who does not like to hear that Samphire comes from Saint-Pierre, and Tansy from Athanasie, and that Jerusalem Artichokes are a kind of sunflower, whose baptismal name is a corruption of girasole, and simply describes the flower's love for the sun? Does this explain all the Jerusalems which are scattered through our popular flora,—as Jerusalem Beans and Jerusalem Cherries? The common theory has been that the sons of the Puritans, by a slight theological reaction, called everything which was not quite genuine on week-days by that name which sometimes wearied them on Sundays.

It is pleasant also to be reminded that our common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) dates back to Achilles, who used it to cure his wounded friend, and that Mint is simply Menthe, transformed to a plant by the jealous Proserpine. It is refreshing to know that Solomon's Seal was so named by reason of the marks on its root; and that this root, according to the old herbalists, "stamped while it is fresh and greene, and applied, taketh away in one night, or two at the most, any bruse, black or blew spots gotten by falls, or woman's wilfulness in stumbling upon their hasty husband's fists, or such like." It was surely a generous thing in Solomon, who set his seal of approbation upon the rod, to furnish in that same signet a balm for injuries like these.

This pretty gift-book is the first really American contribution to the language of flowers. It has many graceful and some showy illustrations; its floral emblems are not all exotic; and though the editor's appellation may at first seem so, a simple application of the laws of anagram will reveal a name quite familiar, in America, to all lovers of things horticultural.

Several articles in this volume give it an unusual interest and value. The paper on Cholera is not the kind of reading to which one could have turned with cheerfulness last July, from a repast of summer vegetables and hurried fruits; nor can that on Trichinosis be pleasant to the friend of pork; but they are both clearly and succinctly written, and will contribute to the popular understanding of the dangers which they discuss.

The Cyclopædia, however, has its chief[Pg 647] merit in those articles which present resumés of the past year's events in politics, literature, science, and art. The one on the last-named subject is less complete than could be wished, and is written in rather slovenly English; but the article on literature is very full and satisfactory. A great mass of biographical matter is presented under the title of "Obituaries," but more extended notices of more distinguished persons are given under the proper names. Among the latter are accounts of the lives and public services of Lincoln, Everett, Palmerston, Cobden, and Corwin; and of the lives and literary works of Miss Bremer, Mrs. Gaskell, Hildreth, Proudhon, etc. The article on Corwin is too slight for the subject, and the notice of Hildreth, who enjoyed a great repute both in this country and in Europe, is scant and inadequate. Under the title of "Army Operations," a fair synopsis of the history of the last months of the war is given; and, as a whole, the Cyclopædia is a valuable, if not altogether complete, review of the events of 1865.

Why Columbus should have been at the trouble to sail from the Old World in order to find a nearer path to it, as our author states in his opening chapter, he will probably explain in the future edition in which he will chastise the occasionally ambitious writing of this. His book is a most interesting narrative of all the events in the history of telegraphic communication between Europe and America, and has the double claim upon the reader of an important theme and an attractive treatment of it. Now that the great nervous cord running from one centre of the world's life to the other is quick with constant sensation, the wonder of its existence may fade from our minds; and it is well for us to remember how many failures—involving all the virtue of triumph—went before the final success. And it cannot but be forever gratifying to our national pride, that, although the idea of the Atlantic telegraph originated in Newfoundland, and was mainly realized through the patience of British enterprise, yet the first substantial encouragement which it received was from Americans, and that it was an American whose heroic perseverance so united his name with this idea that Cyrus W. Field and the Atlantic cable are not to be dissociated in men's minds in this or any time.

Our author has not only very interestingly reminded us of all this, but he has done it with a good judgment which we must applaud. His brother was the master-spirit of the whole enterprise; but, while he has contrived to do him perfect justice, he has accomplished the end with an unfailing sense of the worth of the constant support and encouragement given by others.

The story is one gratifying to our national love of adventurous material and scientific enterprise, as well as to our national pride. We hardly know, however, if it should be a matter of regret that neither on the one account nor on the other are we able to receive the facts of the cable's success and existence with the effusion with which we hailed them in 1858. Blighting De Sauty, suspense, and scepticism succeeded the rapture and pyrotechnics of those joyful days; and in the mean time we have grown so much that to be electrically united with England does not impart to us the fine thrill that the hope of it once did. Indeed, the jubilation over the cable's success seems at last to have been chiefly on the side of the Englishmen, who found our earlier enthusiasm rather absurd, but who have since learned to value us, and just now can scarcely make us compliments enough.

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.

Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border. Comprising Descriptions of the Indian Nomads of the Plains; Explorations of New Territory; a Trip across the Rocky Mountains in the Winter; Descriptions of the Habits of different Animals found in the West, and the Methods of hunting them; with Incidents in the Life of different Frontier Men, etc., etc. By Colonel R. B. Marcy, U. S. A., Author of "The Prairie Traveller." With numerous Illustrations. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 442. $3.00.

Life and Times of Andrew Johnson, Seventeenth President of the United States. Written from a National Stand-point. By a National Man. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. xii. 363. $2.00.

The American Printer: a Manual of Typography, containing complete Instructions for Beginners, as well as Practical Directions for managing all Departments of a Printing-Office. With several useful Tables, Schemes for Imposing Forms in every Variety, Hints to Authors and Publishers, etc., etc. By Thomas Mackellar. Philadelphia. L. Johnson & Co. 12mo. pp. 336. $2.00.

Coal, Iron, and Oil; or, the Practical American Miner. A Plain and Popular Work on our Mines and Mineral Resources, and a Text-Book or Guide to their Economical Development. With Numerous Maps and Engravings, illustrating and explaining the Geology, Origin, and Formation of Coal, Iron, and Oil, their Peculiarities, Characters, and General Distribution, and the Economy of mining, manufacturing, and using them; with General Descriptions of the Coal-Fields and Coal-Mines of the World, and Special Descriptions of the Anthracite Fields and Mines of Pennsylvania, and the Bituminous Fields of the United States, the Iron-Districts and Iron-Trade of our Country, and the Geology and Distribution of Petroleum, the Statistics, Extent, Production, and Trade in Coal, Iron, and Oil, and such useful Information on Mining and Manufacturing Matters as Science and Practical Experience have developed to the present Time. By Samuel Harries Daddow, Practical Miner and Engineer of Mines, and Benjamin Bannan, Editor and Proprietor of the "Miner's Journal." Pottsville. B. Bannan. 8vo. pp. 808. $7.50.

Index to the New York Times for 1865. Including the Second Inauguration of President Lincoln, and his Assassination; the Accession to the Presidency of Andrew Johnson; the Close of the XXXVIII. and Opening of the XXXIX. Congress, and the Close of the War of Secession. New York. Henry J. Raymond & Co. 8vo. pp. iv., 182. $5.00.

Sherbrooke. By H. B. G., Author of "Madge." New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 463. $2.00.

Sermons preached on different Occasions during the last Twenty Years. By the Rev. Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D. D., Prebendary of St. Paul's, and one of her Majesty's Chaplains in Ordinary. Reprinted from the Second London Edition. Two Volumes in one. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. iv., 397. $2.00.

Miscellanea. Comprising Reviews, Lectures, and Essays, on Historical, Theological, and Miscellaneous Subjects. By Most Rev. M.J. Spalding, D. D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Baltimore. Murphy & Co. 8vo. pp. lxii., 807. $3.50.

Poems. By Christina G. Rosetti. Boston. Roberts Brothers. 16mo. pp. x., 256. $1.75.

Christine: a Troubadour's Song, and other Poems. By George H. Miles. New York. Lawrence Kehoe. 12mo. pp. 285. $2.00.

The Admiral's Daughter. By Mrs. Marsh. Philadelphia. T. B. Peterson & Bro. 8vo. paper. pp. 115. 50 cts.

The Orphans; and Caleb Field. By Mrs. Oliphant. Philadelphia. T. B. Peterson & Bro. 8vo. paper. pp. 133. 50 cts.

Life of Benjamin Silliman, M. D., LL. D., late Professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology in Yale College. Chiefly from his Manuscript Reminiscences, Diaries, and Correspondence. By George P. Fisher, Professor in Yale College. In Two Volumes. New York. C. Scribner & Co. 12mo. pp. xvi., 407; x., 408. $5.00.

The Mormon Prophet and his Harem; or, An Authentic History of Brigham Young, his numerous Wives and Children. By Mrs. C. V. Waite. Cambridge. Printed at the Riverside Press, 12mo. pp. x., 280. $2.00.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 18, NO. 109, NOVEMBER, 1866 ***

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