The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102,
April, 1866, by Various

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866

Author: Various

Release Date: May 9, 2007 [EBook #21408]

Language: English

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[Pg 385]

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.

VOL. XVII.—APRIL, 1866.—NO. CII.

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.

Contents

LAST DAYS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
MY ANNUAL.
WERE THEY CRICKETS?
MADAM WALDOBOROUGH'S CARRIAGE.
PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
SAINTE-BEUVE.
DE SPIRIDIONE EPISCOPO.
A STRUGGLE FOR SHELTER.
DOCTOR JOHNS.
KILLED AT THE FORD
THE LATE INSURRECTION IN JAMAICA.
THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.
THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS.
GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

LAST DAYS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

PART I.

When, in October, 1864, the European steamer brought us the intelligence of Walter Savage Landor's death, which occurred the month previous at Florence, newspaper readers asked, "Who is Landor?" The few who remember him remotely through the medium of Mr. Hillard's selections from his writings exclaimed, "What! Did he not die long ago?" The half-dozen Americans really familiar with this author knew that the fire of a genius unequalled in its way had gone out. Two or three, who were acquainted with the man even better than with his books, sighed, and thanked God! They thanked God that the old man's prayer had at last been answered, and that the curtain had been drawn on a life which in reality terminated ten years before, when old age became more than ripe. But Landor's walk into the dark valley was slow and majestic. Death fought long and desperately before he could claim his victim; and it was not until the last three years that body and mind grew thoroughly apathetic. "I have lost my intellect," said Landor, nearly two years ago: "for this I care not; but alas! I have lost my teeth and cannot eat!" Was it not time for him to go?

The glory of old age ceases when second childishness and oblivion begin; therefore we thanked God for His goodness in taking the lonely old man home.

Long as was Landor's life and literary career, little is known of him personally. There are glimpses of him in Lady Blessington's Memoirs; and Emerson, in his "English Traits," describes two interviews with him in 1843 at his Florentine villa. "I found him noble and courteous, living in a cloud of pictures.... I had inferred from his books, or magnified from some anecdotes, an impression of Achillean wrath,—an untamable petulance. I do not know whether the imputation were just or not, but certainly on this May-day his courtesy veiled that haughty mind, and he was the most patient and gentle of hosts." According to the world's [Pg 386]opinion, it was not always "May-day" with Landor, for the world neither preaches nor practices that rarity, human charity. Its instinct is a species of divining-rod, the virtue of which seems to be limited to a fatal facility in discovering frailty. Great men and women live in glass houses, and what passer-by can resist the temptation to throw stones? Is it generous, or even just, in scoffers who are safely hidden behind bricks and mortar, to take advantage of the glass? Could they show a nobler record if subjected to equally close scrutiny? Worshippers, too, at the shrines of inspiration are prone to look for ideal lives in their elect, forgetting that the divine afflatus is, after all, a gift,—that great thoughts are not the daily food of even the finest intellects. It is a necessity of nature for valleys to lie beneath the lofty mountain peaks that daringly pierce the sky; and it would seem as though the artist-temperament, after rising to sublime heights of ecstasy, plunged into corresponding depths, showing thereby the supremacy of the man over the god. Then is there much sighing and shaking of heads at the failings of genius, whereas genius in its depths sinks no lower than the ordinary level of mankind. It simply proves its title-deeds to mortality. Humanity at best is weak, and can only be divine by flashes. The Pythia was a stupid old woman, saving when she sat upon the tripod. Seeing genius to the best advantage in its work,—not always, but most frequently,—they are wisest who love the artist without demanding personal perfection. It is rational to conclude that the loftiest possible genius should be allied to the most perfect specimen of man, heart holding equal sway with head. A great man, however, need not be a great artist,—that is, of course, understood; but time ought to prove that the highest form of art can only emanate from the noblest type of humanity. The most glorious inspirations must flow through the purest channels. But this is the genius of the future, as far removed from what is best known as order is removed from chaos. The genius most familiar is not often founded on common sense; the plus of one faculty denotes the minus of another; and matter-of-fact people, who rule the world,—as they should,—and who have never dreamed of an inclination from the perpendicular, bestow little patience and less sympathy on vagaries, moral and mental, than, partly natural, are aggravated by that "capacity for joy" which "admits temptation."

Landor's characteristic fault, in fact his vice, was that of a temper so undisciplined and impulsive as to be somewhat hurricanic in its consequences, though, not unlike the Australian boomerang, it frequently returned whence it came, and injured no one but the possessor. Circumstances aggravated, rather than diminished, this Landorian idiosyncrasy. Born in prosperity, heir to a large landed estate, and educated in aristocratic traditions, Walter Savage Landor began life without a struggle, and throughout a long career remained master of the situation, independent of the world and its favors. Perhaps too much freedom is as unfortunate in its results upon character as too much dependence. A nature to be properly developed should receive as well as give; otherwise it must be an angelic disposition that does not become tyrannical. All animated nature is despotic, the strong preying upon the weak. If men and women do not devour one another, it is merely because they dare not. The law of self-preservation prevents them from becoming anthropophagi. A knowledge that the eater may in his turn be eaten, is not appetizing. Materially and professionally successful, possessed of a physique that did honor to his ancestors and Nature, no shadows fell on Landor's path to chasten his spirit. Trials he endured of a private nature grievous in the extreme, yet calculated to harden rather than soften the heart,—trials of which others were partially the cause, and which probably need not have been had his character been understood and rightly dealt with. There is a soothing system for men as well as horses,—even[Pg 387] for human Cruisers,—and the Rarey who reduces it to a science will deserve the world's everlasting gratitude. Powerful natures are likely to be as strong in their weaknesses as in their virtues; this, however, is a reckoning entirely too rational to be largely indulged in by the packed jury that holds inquest over the bodies, rather than the souls, of men. In his old age at least, Landor's irascibility amounted to temporary madness, for which he was no more responsible than is the sick man for the feverish ravings of delirium. That miserable law-suit at Bath, which has done so much to drag the name of Landor into the mire, would never have been prosecuted had its instigators had any respect for themselves or any decent appreciation of their victim.

But Landor in his best moods was chivalry incarnate. His courtly manners toward ladies were particularly noticeable from the rarity of so much external polish in the new school of Anglo-Saxon gallantry. It was a pleasure to receive compliments from him; for they generally lay imbedded in the sauce piquante of a bon mot. Having one day dropped his spectacles, which were picked up and presented to him by an American girl, Landor quickly exclaimed, with a grace not to be translated into words, "Ah, this is not the first time you have caught my eyes!" It was to the same young lady that he addressed this heretofore unpublished poem:—

The following papers, in so far as they relate to Landor personally, are not reminiscences of him in the zenith of fame. They contain glimpses of the old man of Florence in the years 1859, 1860, and 1861, just before the intellectual light began to flicker and go out. Even then Landor was cleverer, and, provided he was properly approached, more interesting than many younger men of genius. I shall ever esteem it one of the great privileges of my life that I was permitted to know him well, and call him friend. These papers are given to the public with the hope that they may be of more than ordinary interest to the intelligent reader, and that they may delineate Landor in more truthful colors than those in which he has heretofore been painted. In repeating conversations, I have endeavored to stand in the background, where I very properly belong. For the inevitable egotism of the personal pronoun, I hope to be pardoned by all charitable souls. That Landor, the octogenarian, has not been photographed by a more competent person, is certainly not my fault. Having had the good fortune to enjoy opportunities beyond my deserts, I should have shown a great want of appreciation had I not availed myself of them. If, in referring to Landor, I avoid the prefix "Mr.," it is because I feel, with Lady Blessington, that "there are some people, and he is of those, whom one cannot designate as 'Mr.' I should as soon think of adding the word to his name, as, in talking of some of the great writers of old, to prefix it to theirs."

It was a modest house in a modest street that Landor inhabited during the last six years of his life. Tourists can have no recollection of the Via Nunziatina, directly back of the "Carmine" in the old part of Florence; but there is no loving lounger about those picturesque streets that does not remember how, strolling up the Via dei Seragli,[Pg 388] one encounters the old shrine to the Madonna, which marks the entrance to that street made historical henceforth for having sheltered a great English writer. There, half-way down the via, in that little two-story casa, No. 2671, dwelt Walter Savage Landor, with his English housekeeper and cameriera. Sitting-room, bed-room, and dining-room opened into each other; and in the former he was always found, in a large arm-chair, surrounded by paintings; for he declared he could not live without them. His snowy hair and beard of patriarchal proportions, clear, keen, gray eyes, and grand head made the old poet greatly resemble Michel Angelo's world-renowned masterpiece of "Moses"; nor was the formation of Landor's forehead unlike that of Shakespeare. "If, as you declare," said he, jokingly, one day, "I look like that meekest of men, Moses and Shakespeare, I ought to be exceedingly good and somewhat clever."

At Landor's feet was always crouched a beautiful Pomeranian dog, the gift of his kind American friend, William W. Story. The affection existing between "Gaillo" and his master was really touching. Gaillo's eyes were always turned towards Landor's; and upon the least encouragement, the dog would jump into his lap, lay his head most lovingly upon his master's neck, and generally deport himself in a very human manner. "Gaillo is such a dear dog!" said Landor, one day, while patting him. "We are very fond of each other, and always have a game of play after dinner; sometimes, when he is very good, we have two. I am sure I could not live, if he died; and I know that, when I am gone, he will grieve for me." Thereupon Gaillo wagged his tail, and looked piteously into padrone's face, as much as to say he would be grieved indeed. Upon being asked if he thought dogs would be admitted into heaven, Landor answered: "And, pray, why not? They have all of the good and none of the bad qualities of man." No matter upon what subject conversation turned, Gaillo's feelings were consulted. He was the only and chosen companion of Landor in his walks; but few of the Florentines who stopped to remark the vecchio con quel bel canino, knew how great was the man upon whom they thus commented.

It is seldom that England gives birth to so rampant a republican as Landor. Born on the 30th of January, two years before our Declaration of Independence, it is probable that the volcanic action of those troublous times had no little influence in permeating the mind of the embryo poet with that enthusiasm for and love of liberty for which he was distinguished in maturer years. From early youth, Landor was a poor respecter of royalty and rank per se. He often related, with great good-humor, an incident of his boyhood which brought his democratic ideas into domestic disgrace. An influential bishop of the Church of England, happening to dine with young Landor's father one day, assailed Porson, and, with self-assumed superiority, thinking to annihilate the old Grecian, exclaimed "We have no opinion of his scholarship." Irate at this stupid pronunciamento against so renowned a man, young Landor looked up, and, with a sarcasm the point of which was not in the least blunted by age, retorted, "We, my Lord?" Of course such unheard of audacity and contempt of my Lord Bishop's capacity for criticism was severely reprobated by Landor Senior; but no amount of reproof could force his son into a confession of sorrow.

"At Oxford," said Landor, "I was about the first student who wore his hair without powder. 'Take care,' said my tutor. 'They will stone you for a republican.' The Whigs (not the wigs) were then unpopular; but I stuck to my plain hair and queue tied with black ribbon."

Of Landor's mature opinion of republics in general we glean much from a passage of the "Pentameron," in which the author adorns Petrarca with his own fine thoughts.

"When the familiars of absolute princes taunt us, as they are wont to[Pg 389] do, with the only apothegm they ever learnt by heart,—namely, that it is better to be ruled by one master than by many,—I quite agree with them; unity of power being the principle of republicanism, while the principle of despotism is division and delegation. In the one system, every man conducts his own affairs, either personally or through the agency of some trustworthy representative, which is essentially the same: in the other system, no man, in quality of citizen, has any affairs of his own to conduct; but a tutor has been as much set over him as over a lunatic, as little with his option or consent, and without any provision, as there is in the case of the lunatic, for returning reason. Meanwhile, the spirit of republics is omnipresent in them, as active in the particles as in the mass, in the circumference as in the centre. Eternal it must be, as truth and justice are, although not stationary."

Let Europeans who, having predicted dismemberment of our Union, proclaimed death to democracy, and those thoughtless Americans who believe that liberty cannot survive the destruction of our Republic, think well of what great men have written. Though North America were submerged to-morrow, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans rushing over our buried hopes to a riotous embrace, republicanism would live as long as the elements endure,—borne on every wind, inhaled in every breath of air, abiding its opportunity to become an active principle. Absorbed in our own peculiar form of egotism, we believe that a Supreme Being has cast the cause of humanity upon one die, to prosper or perish by the chances of our game. What belittling of the Almighty! what magnifying of ourselves!

Though often urged, Landor never became a candidate for Parliamentary honors. Political wire-pulling was not to the taste of a man who, notwithstanding large landed interests, could say: "I never was at a public dinner, at a club or hustings. I never influenced or attempted to influence a vote, and yet many, and not only my own tenants, have asked me to whom they should give theirs." Nor was he ever presented at court, although a presentation would have been at the request of the (at that time) Regent. Landor would not countenance a system of court-favor that opens its arms to every noodle wearing an officer's uniform, and almost universally turns its back upon intellect. He put not his faith in princes, and of titles says: "Formerly titles were inherited by men who could not write; they now are conferred on men who will not let others. Theirs may have been the darker age; ours is the duller. In theirs a high spirit was provoked; in ours, proscribed. In theirs the bravest were pre-eminent; in ours, the basest."

Although a democrat, Landor was not indifferent to the good name of his own ancestors, not because of a long pedigree, but because many of these ancestors were historical personages and served their country long and well. That stock must be worthy of honorable mention which, extending with its ramifications over several centuries, gives to the world its finest fruit in its latest scion. It is a satisfaction to spring from hidalgo blood when the advantages of gentle rearing are demonstrated by being greater than one's fathers. In Lander's most admirable "Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare," the youngster whom Sir Silas Gough declares to be as "deep as the big tankard" says, "out of his own head":—"Hardly any man is ashamed of being inferior to his ancestors, although it is the very thing at which the great should blush, if, indeed, the great in general descended from the worthy. I did expect to see the day, and, although I shall not see it, it must come at last, when he shall be treated as a madman or an impostor who dares to claim nobility or precedency, and cannot show his family name in the history of his country. Even he who can show it, and who cannot write his own under it in the same or as goodly characters, must submit to the imputation of degeneracy,[Pg 390] from which the lowly and obscure are exempt." Good old Penn, too, is made a lay figure upon which Landor dressed his thoughts, when the Quaker tells Lord Peterborough: "Of all pride, however, and all folly, the grossest is where a man who possesses no merit in himself shall pretend to an equality with one who does possess it, and shall found this pretension on no better plea or title than that, although he hath it not, his grandfather had. I would use no violence or coercion with any rational creature; but, rather than that such a bestiality in a human form should run about the streets uncured, I would shout like a stripling for the farrier at his furnace, and unthong the drenching horn from my stable-door." Landor could write his name under that of his family in as goodly characters, therefore he was not ashamed to relate anecdotes of his forefathers. It was with honest satisfaction that he perpetuated the memory of two of these worthies in the "Imaginary Conversations" between King Henry IV. and Sir Arnold Savage, and Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble. "Sir Arnold, according to Elsynge, 'was the first who appears upon any record' to have been appointed to the dignity of Speaker in the House of Commons, as now constituted. He was elected a second time, four years afterwards, a rare honor in earlier days; and during this presidency he headed the Commons, and delivered their resolutions in the plain words recorded by Hakewell." These "plain words" were, that no subsidy should be granted to Henry IV. until every cause of public grievance had been removed. Landor came rightly by his independence of thought. "Walter Noble represented the city of Lichfield; he lived familiarly with the best patriots of the age, remonstrated with Cromwell, and retired from public life on the punishment of Charles."

Landor was very fond of selecting the grand old Roundheads for his conversations. In their society he was most at home, and with them he was able to air his pet opinions. Good Andrew Marvell, a man after the author's own heart, discourses upon this matter of family: "Between the titled man of ancient and the titled man of recent date, the difference, if any, is in favor of the last. Suppose them both raised for merit, (here, indeed, we do come to theory!) the benefits that society has received from him are nearer us.... Some of us may look back six or seven centuries, and find a stout ruffian at the beginning." In England, where the institutions are such that a title of nobility is considered by the majority to be the highest reward attainable by merit, it is not surprising that the great god of Rank should be worshipped at the family altar of Form. In England, too, it must be acknowledged that men of rank are men of education, frequently of culture, and are useful to the nation as patrons of art and of science; therefore nobility frequently means absolute gentility. But in America what good can be said of those who, living upon the fortunes of fathers or grandfathers, amassed in honest trade,—residents of a particular street which is thereby rendered pluperfectly genteel,—with no recommendation but that derived from fashion and idleness,—draw the lines of social demarcation more closely than they are drawn in Europe, intellect and accomplishments being systematically snubbed where the possessors cannot show their family passes? Is not this attempt to graft the foibles of an older and more corrupt civilization upon our institutions, a disgrace to republicanism? Were the truth known, we should be able to report the existence of many advocates of monarchy, a privileged class, and an established church, among those into whose ancestry it would be unsafe to dig deeper than a second generation; by digging deeper we might touch sugar or tumble into a vat of molasses, and then what blushes for false pride!

A very different idea of a great man from that of the vulgar do we get out of Landor's writings. His Diogenes tells us, (and very like the original seeker after honesty do we take him to be,) that[Pg 391] "the great man is he who hath nothing to fear and nothing to hope from another. It is he who, while he demonstrates the iniquity of the laws and is able to correct them, obeys them peaceably. It is he who looks on the ambitious both as weak and fraudulent. It is he who hath no disposition or occasion for any kind of conceit, no reason for being or for appearing different from what he is. It is he who can call together the most select company when it pleases him." And Petrarca says that "Time the Sovran is first to discover the truly great." Yet, though we put faith in the justice of posterity, even Time plays many a one false through misplaced favoritism. "They, O Timotheus," exclaims the imaginary Lucian, "who survive the wreck of ages, are by no means, as a body, most worthy of our admiration. It is in these wrecks as in those at sea,—the best things are not always saved. Hencoops and empty barrels bob upon the surface, under a serene and smiling sky, when the graven or depicted images of the gods are scattered on invisible rocks, and when those who most resembled them in knowledge and beneficence are devoured by cold monsters below." We claim, however, that Lucian's theory is good for this world only, as we believe that soul, though it may be temporarily wrecked, speeds on to the inevitable justice of eternity. And can we, now that the fever of military glory is upon us, remember that, great as may be the man who conquers his country's enemies upon the battle-field, he is far greater who conquers the prejudices of his age and instils into groping masses the doctrines of a more glorious civilization?

Every generation has two or three such men; no age has enough moral courage to give birth to more. They live under protest,—thought alone is free,—and when these men, fifty years in advance of their times, proclaim God's truth with the enthusiasm begotten of religion, grub-worms that rule the great status quo sting the prophets with all the virus of their nature, and render each step forward as difficult as was once the passage of the Simplon. There is no stumbling-block like that of ignorance, and he who would remove it must wear the holy crown of thorns. We speak of the horrors of the Inquisition as things of the past. Are we so sure of this? Has not prejudice invented most exquisite tortures for reformers of all ages? America has her sins to answer for in this respect.

On the stubbornness of Status Quo none have written better than Landor. "Unbendingness, in the moral as in the vegetable world, is an indication as frequently of unsoundness as of strength. Indeed, wise men, kings as well as others, have been free from it. Stiff necks are diseased ones."

It was impossible to be in Landor's society a half-hour and not reap advantage. His great learning, varied information, extensive acquaintance with the world's celebrities, ready wit, and even readier repartee, rendered his conversation wonderfully entertaining. He would narrate anecdote after anecdote with surprising accuracy, being possessed of a singularly retentive memory, that could refer to a catalogue of notables far longer than Don Giovanni's picture-gallery of conquests. Names, it is true, he was frequently unable to recall, and supplied their place with a "God bless my soul, I forget everything"; but facts were indelibly stamped upon his mind. He referred back to the year one with as much facility as a person of the rising generation invokes the shade of some deed dead a few years. I looked with wonder upon a person who remembered Napoleon Bonaparte as a slender young man, and listened with delight to a voice from so dim a past. "I was in Paris," said Landor one day, "at the time that Bonaparte made his entrance as First Consul. I[Pg 392] was standing within a few feet of him when he passed, and had a capital good look at him. He was exceedingly handsome then, with a rich olive complexion and oval face, youthful as a girl's. Near him rode Murat, mounted upon a gold-clad charger,—and very handsome he was too, but coxcombical."

Like the rest of human kind, Landor had his prejudices,—they were very many. Foremost among them was an antipathy to the Bonaparte family. It is not necessary to have known him personally to be aware of his detestation of the first Napoleon, as in the conversation between himself, an English and a Florentine visitor, he gives expression to a generous indignation, which may well be inserted here, as it contains the pith of what Landor repeated in many a social talk. "This Holy Alliance will soon appear unholy to every nation in Europe. I despised Napoleon in the plenitude of his power no less than others despise him in the solitude of his exile: I thought him no less an impostor when he took the ermine, than when he took the emetic. I confess I do not love him the better, as some mercenaries in England and Scotland do, for having been the enemy of my country; nor should I love him the less for it, had his enmity been principled and manly. In what manner did this cruel wretch treat his enthusiastic admirer and humble follower, Toussaint l'Ouverture? He was thrown into a subterranean call, solitary, dark, damp, pestiferously unclean, where rheumatism racked his limbs, and where famine terminated his existence." Again, in his written opinions of Cæsar, Cromwell, Milton, and Bonaparte, Landor criticises the career of the latter with no fondness, but with much truth, and justly says, that "Napoleon, in the last years of his sovereignty, fought without aim, vanquished without glory, and perished without defeat."

Great as was Landor's dislike to the uncle, it paled before his detestation of the reigning Emperor,—a detestation too general to be designated an idiosyncrasy on the part of the poet. We always knew who was meant when a sentence was prefaced with "that rascal" or "that scoundrel,"—such were the epithets substituted for the name of Louis Napoleon. Believing the third Napoleon to be the worst enemy of his foster-mother, Italy, as well as of France, Landor bestowed upon him less love, if possible, than the majority of Englishmen. Having been personally acquainted with the Emperor when he lived in England as an exile, Landor, unlike many of Napoleon's enemies, acknowledged the superiority of his intellect. "I used to see a great deal of the Prince when he was in London. I met him very frequently of an evening at Lady Blessington's, and had many conversations with him, as he always sought me and made himself particularly civil. He was a very clever man, well informed on most subjects. The fops used to laugh at him, and call him a bore. A coxcombical young lord came up to me one evening after the Prince had taken his leave, and said, 'Mr. Landor, how can you talk to that fool, Prince Napoleon?' To which I replied, 'My Lord, it takes a fool to find out that he is not a wise man!' His Lordship retired somewhat discomfited," added Landor with a laugh, "The Prince presented me with his work on Artillery, and invited me to his house. He had a very handsome establishment, and was not at all the poor man he is so often said to have been." Of this book Landor writes in an article to the "Quarterly Review" (I think): "If it is any honor, it has been conferred on me to have received from Napoleon's heir the literary work he composed in prison, well knowing, as he did, and expressing his regret for, my sentiments on his uncle. The explosion of the first cannon against Rome threw us apart forever." I shall not soon forget Landor's lively narration of Napoleon's escape from the prison at Ham, given in the same language in which it was told to him by the Prince. I would feign repeat it here, were it not that an account of this wonderful[Pg 393] escape found its way into print some years ago. Apropos of Napoleon, an old friend of Landor's told me that, while in London, the Prince was in the habit of calling upon him after dinner. He would sip café noir, smoke a cigar, ply his host with every conceivable question, but otherwise maintain a dignified reticence. It seems then that Louis Napoleon is indebted to nature, as well as to art, for his masterly ability in keeping his own counsel.

Among other persons of note encountered by Landor at Lady Blessington's was Rachel. It was many years ago, before her star had attained its zenith. "She took tea with her Ladyship, and was accompanied by a female attendant, her mother I think. Rachel had very little to say, and left early, as she had an engagement at the theatre. There was nothing particularly noticeable in her appearance, but she was very ladylike. I never met her again."

Landor entertained a genuine affection for the memory of Lady Blessington. "Ah, there was a woman!" he exclaimed one day with a sigh. "I never knew so brilliant and witty a person in conversation. She was most generous too, and kind-hearted. I never heard her make an ill-natured remark. It was my custom to visit her whenever the laurel was in bloom; and as the season approached, she would write me a note, saying, 'Gore House expects you, for the laurel has begun to blossom.' I never see laurel now, that it does not make me sad, for it recalls her to me so vividly. During these visits I never saw Lady Blessington until dinner-time. She always breakfasted in her own room, and wrote during the morning. She wrote very well, too; her style was pure. In the evening her drawing-room was thrown open to her friends, except when she attended the opera. Her opera-box faced the Queen's, and a formidable rival she was to her Majesty."

"D'Orsay was an Apollo in beauty, very amiable, and had considerable talent for modelling." Taking me into his little back sitting-room, Landor brought out a small album, and, passing over the likenesses of several old friends, among whom were Southey, Porson, Napier, and other celebrities, he held up an engraving of Lady Blessington. Upon my remarking its beauty, Landor replied: "That was taken at the age of fifty, so you can imagine how beautiful she must have been in her youth. Her voice and laugh were very musical." Then, turning to a young lady present, Landor made her an exceedingly neat compliment, by saying, "Your voice reminds me very vividly of Lady Blessington's. Perhaps," he continued with a smile, "this is the reason why my old, deaf ears never lose a word when you are speaking." Driving along the north side of the Arno, one summer's day, Landor gazed sadly at a terrace overlooking the water, and said: "Many a delightful evening have I spent on that terrace with Lord and Lady Blessington. There we used to take our tea. They once visited Florence for no other purpose than to see me. Was not that friendly? They are both dead now, and I am doomed to live on. When Lady Blessington died, I was asked to write a Latin epitaph for her tomb, which I did; but some officious person thought to improve the Latin before it was engraved, and ruined it."

This friendship was fully reciprocated by Lady Blessington, who, in her letters to Landor, refers no less than three times to those "calm nights on the terrace of the Casa Pelosi." "I send you," she writes, "the engraving, and have only to wish that it may sometimes remind you of the original.... Five fleeting years have gone by since our delicious evenings on the lovely Arno,—evenings never to be forgotten, and the recollections of which ought to cement the friendships then formed." Again, in her books of travel,—the "Idler in France" and "Idler in Italy,"—Lady Blessington pays the very highest tribute to Landor's heart, as well as intellect, and declares his real conversations to be quite as delightful as his imaginary ones. She who will live[Pg 394] long in history as the friend of great men now lies "beneath the chestnut shade of Saint Germain"; and Landor, with the indignation of one who loved her, has turned to D'Orsay, asking

Although a Latinist, Landor did not approve of making those who have passed away doubly dead to a majority of the living by Latin eulogy. In an interesting conversation he gives the following opinion: "Although I have written at various times a great number of such inscriptions" (Latin), "as parts of literature, yet I think nothing is so absurd, if you only inscribe them on a tomb. Why should extremely few persons, the least capable, perhaps, of sympathy, be invited to sympathize, while thousands are excluded from it by the iron grate of a dead language? Those who read a Latin inscription are the most likely to know already the character of the defunct, and no new feelings are to be excited in them; but the language of the country tells the ignorant who he was that lies under the turf before them; and, if he was a stranger, it naturalizes him among them; it gives him friends and relations; it brings to him and detains about him some who may imitate, many who will lament him. We have no right to deprive any one of a tender sentiment, by talking in an unknown tongue to him, when his heart would listen and answer to his own; we have no right to turn a chapel into a library, locking it with a key which the lawful proprietors cannot turn."

I once asked Landor to describe Wordsworth's personal appearance. He laughed and replied: "The best description I can give you of Wordsworth is the one that Hazlitt gave me. Hazlitt's voice was very deep and gruff, and he peppered his sentences very bountifully with 'sirs.' In speaking to me of Wordsworth, he said: 'Well, sir, did you ever see a horse, sir?' 'Yes.' 'Then, sir, you have seen Wordsworth, sir! He looks exactly like a horse, sir, and a very long-faced horse at that, sir!' And he did look like a horse," added Landor.

Those who have seen good likenesses of Wordsworth will readily remark this resemblance. A greater length of ear would liken the Lake poet to an animal of less dignity.

Continuing the conversation thus begun, Landor said: "I saw a great deal of Hazlitt when he was in Florence. He called upon me frequently, and a funny fellow he was. He used to say to me: 'Mr. Landor, I like you, sir,—I like you very much, sir,—you're an honest man, sir; but I don't approve, sir, of a great deal that you have written, sir. You must reform some of your opinions, sir.'" And again Landor laughed with great good-will.

"I regret that I saw Charles Lamb but once," replied Landor, in answer to many questions asked concerning this delightful man and writer. "Lamb sent word by Southey" (I think it was Southey) "that he would be very happy to see me, whereupon we made him a visit. He had then retired from the India House, and lived at Enfield. He was most charming in conversation, and his smile impressed me as being particularly genial. His sister also was a very agreeable person. During my visit, Lamb rose, went to a table in the centre of the room, and took up a book, out of which he read aloud. Soon shutting it, he turned to me, saying: 'Is not what I have been reading exceedingly good?' 'Very good,' I replied. Thereupon Lamb burst out laughing, and exclaimed: 'Did one ever know so conceited a man as Mr. Landor? He has actually praised his own ideas!' It was now my turn to laugh, as I had not the slightest remembrance of having written what Lamb had read."

Are there many to whom the following lines will not be better than new?

Being asked if he had met Byron, Landor replied: "I never saw Byron but once, and then accidentally. I went into a perfumery shop in London to purchase a pot of the ottar of roses, which at that time was very rare and expensive. As I entered the shop a handsome young man, with a slight limp in his walk, passed me and went out. The shopkeeper directed my attention to him, saying: 'Do you know who that is, sir?' 'No,' I answered. 'That is the young Lord Byron.' He had been purchasing some fancy soaps, and at that time was the fashion. I never desired to meet him."

As all the world knows, there was little love lost between these two great writers; but it was the man, not the poet, that Landor so cordially disliked.

MY ANNUAL.

FOR THE "BOYS OF '29."

WERE THEY CRICKETS?

[Pg 397]

About seven years ago, (it is possible that some of my readers may recall it,) the following paragraph appeared in the New York daily papers;—

No information was ever received until the 1st of April last, when the missing man himself returned to his father's house, as mysteriously as he went, and was welcomed as one risen from the dead. I am that George Snyder, and propose to give now a brief account of that strange going and coming. Since April last I have been engaged, as well as the excitement of listening to the narrative of the great events which had taken place in my native land during my absence would allow me, in preparing for publication a history of my observations, made during the six years' absence; but of this history I can now give merely an outline.

On the night of my departure, November 5, 1858, I was sitting in my own room, studying Gauss's "Theoria Motus"; and, as was often the case with me, I grew so absorbed in the study as to lose all consciousness of outward things beyond the limits of the single page before me. I had forgotten the time of night,—nay, I could not have recalled the time of my life, whether I was in college or had graduated, whether I had entered on my profession or was preparing for it. My loss of the sense of space was as absolute as my loss of the sense of time, and I could not have said whether I was in my father's house in New York, or in my room in Wentworth Hall, or in my office in Jersey City. I only knew that the page, illuminated by a drop gas-light, was before me, and on it the record of that brilliant triumph of the human intellect, the deduction of a planet's entire orbit from observations of its position.

As I sat thus absorbed, my attention was partially diverted by a slight tapping, as if upon the very table upon which my book was resting. Without raising my eyes from the page, I allowed my thoughts to wander, as I inquired within myself what could have produced the noise. Could it be that I was thus suddenly "developed as a medium," and that the spirit of some departed friend wished to communicate with me? I rejected the thought instantly, for I was no believer in modern necromancy. But no sooner had I mentally decided that this was not the true explanation than I began to feel my right hand tremble in an unnatural manner, and my fingers close against my will around a pencil which I had been loosely holding. Then suddenly, upon the paper on which I had been occasionally filling out the omitted links in Gauss's mathematical reasoning, my hand, against my will, legibly scrawled, "Copernicus,"—upon which a renewed tapping was heard upon the table. I sprang out of my chair, as one startled out of sleep, and looked about the room. My full consciousness of time and place returned, and I saw nothing unusual about my apartment; there were the books, the chairs, and even the table, standing in motionless silence as usual. I concluded that my late hours and excessive concentration on my studies had made me nervous, or else that I had had a dream. I closed the book and[Pg 398] prepared to go to bed. Like school-boy whistling to keep his courage up, I began to talk aloud, saying: "I wish Copernicus would really come and carry me off to explore the solar system; I fancy that I could make a better report than Andrew Jackson Davis has done."

I tremble even now as I recall the instantaneous effect of those words. While I was still speaking, all earthly things vanished suddenly from my sight. There was no floor beneath me, no ceiling above, no walls around. There was even no earth below me, and no sky above. Look where I would, nothing was visible but my own body. My clothing shone with a pale blue light, by which I could peer into the surrounding darkness to the distance, as I should judge, of about twenty or thirty feet. I was apparently hanging, like a planet, in mid-ether, resting upon nothing. Horrible amazement seized me, as the conviction flashed through me like an electric shock that I must have lost my reason. In a few moments, however, this terror subsided; I felt certain that my thoughts were rational, and concluded that it was some affection of the optic nerve. But in a very few seconds I discovered by internal sensations that I was in motion, in a rapid, irregular, and accelerating motion. Awful horror again seized me; I screamed out a despairing cry for help, and fainted.

When I recovered from the swoon, I found myself lying on a grassy bank near a sea-shore, with strange trees waving over me. The sun was apparently an hour high. I was dressed as on the preceding evening, without a hat. The air was deliciously mild, the landscape before me lovely and grand. I said to myself: "This is a beautiful dream; it must be a dream." But it was too real, and I said, "Can it be that I am asleep?" I pinched my arms, I went to the sea and dipped my head in the waters,—'t was in vain; I could not awake myself, because I was already awake.

"No!" I replied, "you are not awake." Do you not remember that saying of Engel, that when men dream of asking whether they are awake, they always dream that they answer yes? But I said, I will apply two tests of my own which have often, when I was dreaming, convinced me that I was asleep and thus enabled me to awake. I gathered some pebbles and began to count them and lay them in heaps, and count them over again. There were no discrepancies between my counts; I was awake. Then I took out my pencil and memorandum-book to see whether I could solve an equation. But my hand was seized with trembling, and wrote without my assistance or guidance these words: "I, Copernicus, will comfort your friends. Be calm, be happy, you shall return and reap a peculiar glory. You, first of the inhabitants of Earth, have visited another planet while in the flesh. You are on an island in the tropical regions of Mars. I will take you home when you desire it,—only not now."

It would be in vain for me to attempt to recall and to describe the whirling tumult of thoughts and emotions which this message created. I sat down upon the grass, and for a time was incapable of deliberate thought or action. At length I arose and paced up and down the turf, staring around upon the changeless blue of the seaward horizon, the heaving swell of the ocean, the restless surf fretting against the shore, and the motionless hills that rose behind each other inland, and lured the eye to a distant group of mountains. The coloring of sea and land was wonderfully fine; both seemed formed of similar translucent purple; and despite the excited state of my feelings and the stupendous nature of the words which I had just seen written by my own pencil, I was impressed with a sense of grandeur and of beauty which presently filled me with faith and hope. I assured myself that the spirit to whom permission had been given thus to transport me from my home was as kind as he was powerful. He had set me down in a beautiful country, he had promised to return me home when I desired it,—"only not now";—by which I concluded that he[Pg 399] wished me to think calmly over the question before asking to return. And why, I added, should I be in haste? Copernicus, if it be he, promises to comfort my parents,—the island looks fertile,—if I find no inhabitants, I can be a new Robinson Crusoe,—and when I have explored the island thoroughly, I will ask this spirit to carry me back to New York, where I shall publish my observations, and add a new chapter to our knowledge of the solar system.

I walked toward the mountains, among strange shrubs, and under strange trees. Some were in blossom, others laden with fruit, all in luxuriant foliage. As I walked on, the scenery became more and more charming; but I saw no signs of man, nor even of birds, nor beasts. Beautiful butterflies and other insects were abundant; in a little stream I saw minnows, and a fish elegantly striped with silver and gold; and as I followed up the brook, occasionally a frog, startled at my approach, leaped from the bank and dived into the water with a familiar cry. I wandered on until I judged it to be nearly noon, and, growing hungry, ventured to taste a fruit which looked more edible than any I had seen. To my delight I found it as delicious as a paw-paw. I dined on them heartily, and, sitting under the shade of the low trees from which I had gathered them, I fell into a reverie which ended in a sound sleep.

When I awoke it was night. I walked out of the little grove in which I was sheltered, that I might have a clearer view of the stars. I soon recognized the constellations with which I had been familiar for years, though in somewhat new positions. Conspicuous near, the horizon was the "Milk Dipper" of Sagittarius, and I instantly noticed, with a thrill of intense surprise, that the planet Mars was missing! When I had first awakened, and stepped out of the grove, I had only a dim remembrance in my mind of having rambled in the fields and fallen asleep on the grass; but this planet missing in the constellation Sagittarius recalled to me at once my miraculous position on the planet Mars. Here was a confirmation unexpected and irrefragable of the truth of what Copernicus had written by my hand. The excited whirl of thoughts and emotions thus revived banished sleep, and I walked back and forward under the grove, and out on the open turf, gazing again and again at the constellation in which, only two days before, I had from the Jersey City ferryboat seen the now missing planet. At length Sagittarius sank behind the mountains, and the Twins arose out of the sea. With new wonder and admiration I beheld in Castor's knee the steady lustre of a planet which I had not known before,—an overwhelming proof of the reality of my asserted position on the planet Mars. For as this new planet was exactly in the opposite pole of the point whence Mars was missing, what could it be but my native Earth seen as a planet from that planet which had now become my earth? You may imagine that this new vision excited me too much to allow sleep to overpower me again until nearly daybreak.

When I awoke, the sun was far above the waves. I breakfasted upon my newly tasted fruit, and resumed my journey toward the mountains in the west. An hour's walk brought me to the spot where I first saw the inhabitants of the island. I shall never forget a single feature of that landscape. The mingled delight at seeing them, and astonishment after looking a few moments at them, have photographed the whole surrounding scene to its minutest details indelibly upon my memory. I had ascended a little eminence in the principal valley of a brook, (which I had been following nearly from its outlet,) when suddenly the mountains, of which I had lost sight for a time, rose up before me in sublime strength, no longer of translucent purple, but revealing, under the direct light, their rugged solidity. On my right, in the foreground, were lofty black cliffs, made darker by being seen lying in their own shadow. On my left, green hills, in varying[Pg 400] forms, stretched almost an interminable distance, varying also in their color and depth of shade. At the foot of the cliffs, in full sight, but too distant to be distinctly heard, the brook leaped along its rocky bed in a succession of scrambling cataracts, until it was in a perfect foam with the exertion. I sat upon a stone, gazing upon this valley, calmed, soothed, charmed with its beauty, and was speculating upon the cause of the ruddy purplish hue which I still noticed in the landscape, as I had the day before, when I heard a choir of half a dozen voices, apparently on the nearest cliff, joining in a Haydn-like hymn of praise. I drew nearer to the spot, and soon satisfied myself that all the sounds proceeded from one man sitting alone on a projecting rock. I listened to him attentively, vainly endeavoring to imagine how he produced such a volume of sounds, and delighted with the beautiful melody and exquisite harmony of his polyphonous song. When he ceased to sing, I stepped out in front of him and hailed him with a hearty "Good morning!" What was my astonishment to see him instantly unfurl a prodigious pair of wings, and fly off the rock. Hovering over me for a little while, evidently as much astonished at me as I at him, he flew away, and presently returned with a companion. They alighted near me, and began, as I thought, to sing, but in a very fragmentary way. I afterwards found that they were in conversation. I spoke to them, and, concealing my fears, endeavored by various signs to intimate my friendly disposition. They were not very backward in meeting my advances; and yet I soon discovered that, although they were two to one against me, they were as much alarmed as I; whereupon I became greatly reassured. It was not long before we had exchanged presents of wild fruits, and they had begun, by dumb show, and beckoning, and the utterance of soothing sounds, to invite me to accompany them. We proceeded slowly, for they could not be satisfied in their examination of me, nor I in my examination of them; and yet we rather preferred to keep out of each other's reach. Two points in them chiefly attracted my attention. One was their prodigious wings, which they folded into a very small compass when they walked. The other was their peculiar language, not being any articulate speech, but only the utterance of vowel-sounds of musical quality, which seemed to come from several voices at once, and that not from the mouth, but, as I then thought, from all parts of their bodies.

At length we reached a charming arbor, into which they conducted me. This arbor was built of some sort of bamboo or cane, woven together into a coarse lattice-work, the roof being made of the same and covered with huge leaves, perhaps of some palm. I call it an arbor, because the latticed sides were covered with flowering vines, of great variety and beauty. Within were bamboo seats and a table, whose material I afterward discovered was the dried leaves of a gigantic flag, flattened and made hard by a peculiar process of drawing them between joints of bamboo, somewhat as cane is pressed between rollers. Upon the table were numerous manuscripts, written, as I afterwards learned, on a paper made of the same flag. These manuscripts were removed, and a repast set on the table by servants, as I then took them to be, who brought it in from an adjoining arbor; but I found afterwards that they were members of the family, and that the relation of servant and master was not known among the inhabitants of the island. When these new members of the family first came to the arbor in which I and my two captors, as they considered themselves, were sitting, they started back, terrified at my appearance; and it was with great difficulty that my captors prevailed upon them to enter. This further encouraged me in the faith that they were a timid and inoffensive people. Their noonday meal, of which they gave me a part, (although they did not invite me to come to the table with them,) gave me still greater assurance, since I found[Pg 401] it composed wholly of fruits and cereals. After their dinner, during which it was evident that they were engaged in a very lively discussion of their visitor or captive, some of the family flew away, and in the course of an hour returned, accompanied by half a dozen others, whom I afterwards found were the most learned naturalists of my captor's acquaintance. I was invited by pantomime to walk out into the open air, and of course accepted the invitation. Never was there such a Babel of musical tones as that which assailed my ears while these six learned—(what shall I call them? since their own name is not expressible by the letters of any alphabet)—learned men discussed me from every point of view. The mild and inoffensive appearance of the people, and the evident kindness mingled with their curiosity, had entirely disarmed my suspicions, and I as gladly showed them what I could do as I watched to see their habits. The whole afternoon was passed in exhibiting to these strange beings all of the various gaits and modes of motion and gymnastic exercises which I had ever learned.

After supper my captor led me to a separate arbor, and pointed to a bed of soft, white straw, upon which I immediately stretched myself, and he retired. Presently I arose and attempted to go out, but found that he had fastened the door on the outside. It was not pleasant to find myself a prisoner; but that subject was instantly driven from my mind as I looked out through the lattice and saw Sagittarius, with no signs of the planet Mars. I returned to my straw; and, after the excitement of the day had subsided, I fell asleep and slept until after sunrise. My captor soon after appeared, bringing a basket of delicious fruits and bread. When I had eaten freely, he allowed me to wander at will, setting first a boy on top of my arbor, apparently to watch that I did not wander out of sight. I walked about and found that the homestead of my captor consisted of seven arbors in a grove of fruit-trees, with about a dozen acres of corn adjoining. This corn is a perennial, like our grass, and a field once planted yields in good land fifteen or twenty crops with only the labor of gathering. It then becomes exhausted, and the canes are burnt at a particular season, which destroys the roots, and prepares the ground admirably for fruit-trees. There were no stables about the place, and there are no horses nor cows on the island,—indeed, frogs and toads are the highest vertebrates known there.

About the middle of the forenoon, my host, or captor, came, guided by his boy, who, flying from arbor to arbor and from tree to tree, had kept me in sight during my ramble. He brought with him seven others, bearing a hammock through the air, four flying on either side, and lowered it near me in the field. He then made signs to me to lie in the hammock. It was with some difficulty that I persuaded myself to risk it; but I thought at last that, after coming safely from the Earth to Mars, I would not shrink from a little excursion in the atmosphere of that planet. I laid myself in the hammock, and soon saw that the seven friends of my host were as much afraid of taking it up as I had been of getting in it. However, they mustered courage, and, spreading their wings, raised me up in the air. I was, I suppose, a deal heavier than they expected; for they set me down upon the top of the first knoll in their path, and set me down so suddenly that I was aware of their intention only by being dashed against the ground. I sprang up, and began to rub the bruised spots, while my winged bearers folded their wings, and lay panting on the turf. They had not taken me a half-mile. When they were rested, my host motioned to me to resume my place; and the eight again bore me, with more deliberate stroke, a full mile before dropping me again. But they were so much exhausted, and took so long to rest, that I suggested, by signs and motions, that I should rather walk; and so for the next mile they carried the empty hammock, flying very slowly, while I walked rapidly, or ran, after them. When, in my turn, I became exhausted,[Pg 402] they motioned me into the hammock again. In this way, partly by being carried and partly on my own feet, I at length reached an immense arbor, in which several hundred of these creatures were assembled. It was the regular day of meeting for their Society of Natural History. One of our party first went in, and, I suppose, announced our arrival, then came out and spoke to my captor, who beckoned me to follow, and led me in. I was placed on a platform, and he then made a polyphonous speech, without a consonant sound in it; describing, as I afterwards learned, the history of my discovery and capture, and going into some speculations on my nature. Then the principal men crowded about me and felt me, and led me about the hall, until, what with the landings of the hammock and the handling of these sons of Mars, I was sore and wearied beyond expression.

At length I was taken to a small arbor, where I was allowed to rest and to take food. The Society then, as I have since been told, held a long discussion, and finally appointed a committee to examine me, observe my habits, and report at the next regular meeting. There is no moon at Mars; but the regular meeting was on the twenty-eighth day following,—the seven notes of music having given them the idea of weeks.

Extra ropes were then attached to the hammock, (which was built for the use of the infirm and aged, but the weight of these creatures is scarce half that of men,) and sixteen of them carried me back to my captor's homestead. That night I fell asleep before it was dark enough to see the stars, and assure myself, by a glance at the Milk Dipper, that it was not all a dream; but I awoke before daylight, and gazed through the lattice at the Twins, and at the Earth, shining with steady lustre upon Castor's knee.

I will not weary the reader with details from my journal of each succeeding day. The committee came day after day and studied me. They induced me to lay aside part of my clothing that they might examine me more minutely, especially about the joints of the ankle, the knee, shoulder, and elbow; and were never weary of examining my neck and spinal column. I could not talk to them, and they had never seen a vertebrate higher in organization than their frogs and toads; wherefore, at the end of four weeks, they reported "that I was a new and wonderful gigantic Batrachian"; that "they recommended the Society to purchase me, and, after studying my habits thoroughly, dissect me, and mount my skeleton." Of which report I was, of course, in blessed ignorance for a long, long while.

So my captor and his friends took the kindest care of me, and endeavored to amuse and instruct me, and also to find out what I would do if left to myself,—taking notes assiduously for the memoirs of their Society. I can assure the reader that I, on my part, was not idle, but took notes of them with equal diligence, at which imitation of their actions they were greatly amused. But I flatter myself that, when my notes, now in the hands of the Smithsonian Institution, are published, with the comments of the learned naturalists to whom the Institution has referred them, they will be found to embody the most valuable contributions to science. My own view of the inhabitants of Mars is that they are Rational Articulates. Rational they certainly are, and, although I am no naturalist, I venture to pronounce them Articulates. I do not mean anything disrespectful to these learned inhabitants of Mars in saying that their figure and movements reminded me of crickets: for I never have watched the black field-crickets in New England, standing on tiptoe to reach a blade of grass, without a feeling of admiration at their gentlemanly figure and the gracefulness of their air. But what is more important, I am told that Articulates breathe through spiracles in the sides of their bodies; and I know that these planetary men breathe through six mouths, three on either side of the body, entirely different in appearance and character from the[Pg 403] seventh mouth in their face, through which they eat.

In the volumes of notes which will be published by the Smithsonian Institution as soon as the necessary engravings can be finished, will also appear all that I was able to learn concerning the natural history of that planet, under the strict limitation, to which I was subjected, of bringing to Earth nothing but what I could carry about my own person.[A]

I was, myself, particularly interested in investigating the Martial language, which differs entirely from our terrestrial tongues in not being articulate. Each of the six lateral mouths of these curious men is capable of sounding only one vowel, and of varying its musical pitch about five or six semitones. Thus, their six mouths give them a range of two and a half or three octaves. The right-hand lowest mouth is lowest in pitch, and gives a sound resembling the double o in moon; the next lowest in pitch is the lowest left-hand mouth, and its vowel is more like o in note. Thus they alternate, the highest left-hand mouth being highest in pitch, and uttering a sound resembling a long ee. The sound of each of the six is so individual, that, before I had been there six months, I could recognize, even in a stranger, the tones of each one of the six mouths. But they seldom use one mouth at a time. Their simplest ideas, such as the names of the most familiar objects, are expressed by brief melodic phrases, uttered by one mouth alone. Closely allied ideas are expressed by the same phrase uttered by a different mouth, and so with a different vowel-sound. But most ideas are complex; and these are expressed in the Mavortian speech by chords, or discords, produced by using two or more mouths at once. A few music types will illustrate this, by examples, better than any verbal description can do.

The signification of these chords is by no means arbitrary; but, on the contrary, their application is according to fixed rules and according to æsthetic principles; so that the highest poetry of these people becomes, in the very process of utterance, the finest music; while the utterance of base sentiments, or of fustian, becomes, by the very nature of the language, discordant, or at best vapid and unmelodious.

It will readily be imagined that I was a very long while in learning to understand a speech so entirely different in all its principles from our earthly tongues. And when I began to comprehend it, as spoken by my new friends, I was unable, having but one mouth, to express anything but the simplest ideas. However, I had Yankee ingenuity enough to supply in some measure my want of lateral mouths.

My captor daily allowed me more and more freedom, and at length permitted me to wander freely over the whole island, simply taking the precaution to send a boy with me as a companion and guide, in case I should lose my way. In one of these rambles I discovered a swamp of bamboos, and by the aid of my pocket-knife cut down several and carried them home. Then, with great difficulty and interminable labor, I managed to make a sort of small organ, a very rude affair, with[Pg 404] six kinds of pipes, six of each kind. A bamboo pipe, with a reed tongue of the same material, or even one with a flute action, was not so sweet in tone as the voice of my friends; but they saw what I was trying to do, and could, after growing familiar with the sound of my pipes, decipher my meaning. The astonishment of my captor and his family at finding that their monster Batrachian could not only express simple ideas with his one mouth, but all the most complex notions by pieces of bamboo fastened together and held on his knees before him, was beyond measure. From this time my progress in learning their speech was very rapid; and within a year from the completion of my organ I could converse fluently with them. Of course, I had not mastered all the intricacies of their tongue, and even up to the time of my leaving them I felt that I was a mere learner; nevertheless, I could understand the main drift of all that they said; and what was equally gratifying to me, I could express to them almost anything expressible in English, and they understood me.

My life now became a very happy one; I became sincerely attached to my captor and to his family, and was charmed with their good sense and their kind feeling. I flatter myself also that they, in their turn, were not only proud of their Batrachian, but grew fond of him. They showed me more and more attention, gave me a seat at their table, and furnished me with clothes of their own fashion. I must confess, however, that the openings on the sides for their mouths, and on the back for their wings, were rather troublesome to me, and occasioned me several severe colds, until I taught them to make my vesture close about my chest.

When visitors came to their house I was always invited to bring out my organ and converse with them. Strangers found some difficulty in understanding me; but with the family I conversed with perfect ease, and they interpreted for me. I found that the universal theory concerning me was, that I came from beyond a range of mountains on the nearest continent, beyond which no explorations had ever been made. Concerning my mode of crossing the steep and lofty barrier on the continent, and the deep, wide strait which separated the island from the mainland, they speculated in vain. I humored this theory at first, as far as I could without positive statements of falsehood, for I knew that, if I told the truth, it would be absolutely incredible to them; and I did not reveal to my Martial friends my own terrestrial, to them celestial character, until just before my departure.

But my psychical character perplexed them much more than my zoölogical. It seems that these islanders had been accustomed to call themselves, in their own tongue, "rational animals with sentiments of justice and piety,"—all which, be it remembered, is expressed in their wonderful language by a simple harmonic progression of four full chords.[B] But here was a Batrachian,—one of the lower orders of creation, in their view,—from whom the Almighty had withheld the gift of a rational soul, who nevertheless appeared to reason as soundly as they,—to understand all their ideas,—not only repeating their sentences on his bamboo pipes, but commenting intelligently on them; and who not only gave these proofs of an understanding mind, but of a heart and soul, manifesting almost Mavortian affection for his captor's family, and occasionally betraying even the existence of some religious sentiments. Was all this delusive? Did this Batrachian really possess a rational soul, with sentiments of piety and justice, or only a wonderfully constructive faculty of imitation?

Reader, in your pride of Caucasian blood, you may think it incredible that such doubts should have been entertained concerning a man whose father is from one of the best families in Holland, whose mother is descended from, good English stock, and who himself[Pg 405] exhibits sufficient intelligence to write this narrative; but nevertheless such doubts were actually entertained by a large proportion of the inhabitants of the island. Not only did the members of their Society of Natural History become warmly interested in the discussion, but finally the whole population of the island took sides on the question, and debated it with great warmth. The area of their country is about the same as that of Great Britain; but as they have no law of primogeniture, nor entailment of estates, nor hereditary rank, they have no poverty and no over-population; all of the inhabitants were happy and well-educated, all had abundant leisure, and all were ready to examine the evidence concerning the wonderful Batrachian that was said to have come ashore on the eastern side of their island.

But alas! even in this well-governed and happy community, not every man's opinion was free from error, nor every man's temper free from prejudice and passion. Those who insisted that my bamboo music was only a parrot-like imitation of their speech accused those who held that I was really rational of the crime of exalting a Batrachian into equality with "rational animals with sentiments of justice and piety"; and the accused party, after a little natural shrinking from so bold a position, finally confessed the crime, by acknowledging that they thought that I was at least entitled to all the rights of their race. Here was the beginning of a feud which presently waxed as hot as that between the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians of Liliput.

I have no doubt in my own mind that the temper displayed in this controversy sprang partly from causes which had been in operation for many years before my visit. Somewhere about the middle of the last century, (I am speaking now of terrestrial dates, translating their long years and odd numeral scale into ours,) a colony from the mainland had settled at one end of their island, and were still living among them. These continental men differed somewhat in figure and stature from the islanders, and their wings were of a dusky hue, while the islanders' wings were distinctly purple in their tone. These colonists were looked upon by most of the islanders as an inferior race, and there had been very few cases of intermarriage between them. These few cases had, however, led to some earnest discussions. Some maintained that it was only a want of good taste in a Purple-wing to be willing to marry a Dusky-wing, but that it was not a thing forbidden by morality or to be forbidden by law. Others maintained that such intermarriage was against nature, against public order and morality, and should be prohibited. Nay, some went so far as to say that these Dusky-wings were intruders, who ought to be sent back to their native continent; that the island was the Purple-wings' country, and that the Purple-wings should have absolute control over it, and ought not to suffer any other race to participate in its advantages.

This division of opinion and feeling concerning the Dusky-wings, although deep and earnest, had not led to much open debate; the people of the island were very hospitable and polite, and they refrained to a great extent from showing their prejudices against the colonists. But my arrival gave them an opportunity of saying with open frankness many things which, although said concerning me, were meant and understood as referring to the immigrants from the continent. The Dusky-wings themselves said but little; they were quiet, inoffensive, affectionate people, who were somewhat wounded occasionally by the scorn of a Purple-wing, but simply went on minding their own business, and showing kindness to all persons alike.

The aborigines of the island, outnumbering the others by twenty to one, discussed me and my position with eager warmth. On the one hand, it was argued that I was a Batrachian,—of a high species, it was granted, but still only an animal; that, if I really had reason and sentiments, they must be of a low order;[Pg 406] that certainly I had no social nor legal rights which their race were bound to respect; that I was the property of my captor, by right of discovery, and he had absolute rights over me as a chattel; that he might sell me or use me as lawfully as he could sell or use clothing, food, or books; that he might compel me to work for him; and that he even had a right to poison me (as they poisoned troublesome insects) whenever he was tired of the burden of my support, or wished to study my anatomy.

On the other hand, it was maintained that the fact of my being a Batrachian had no bearing on my moral rights, and ought not to have upon my social and legal rights. The capacity which I had for understanding the moral law and for feeling injustice gave me a claim to justice. Whoever has the moral sense to claim rights is by that very endowment vested with rights. "The true brotherhood between us rational animals," said this party, "is founded in our rationality and in our sentiments of justice and piety, and not in our animal nature. But this Batrachian, although belonging to the lower orders of animal nature, partakes with us of reason and of the sentiments of justice and piety. He is therefore our brother, and his rights are as sacred as our own. He is the guest, and not the chattel, of the family who discovered him. To sell him or to buy him, to force him to labor against his will, to hold his life less sacred than our own, would be criminal."

Of course I knew nothing of all this until I had been there for several years, and acquired a tolerable familiarity with their speech. Indeed, it required a considerable time for the feud to arrive at its highest. But at length party strife concerning me and concerning the relative superiority of the two races rose to such a pitch, that I seriously feared lest I should be the innocent cause of a civil war in this once happy island. Moreover, I saw that my presence was becoming a source of serious inconvenience to my host and to his family. They were attached to me, that I could not doubt; but neither could I doubt that it was unpleasant to them to have old acquaintances decline any further intercourse with them because they had allowed a Batrachian to sit at table with them.

Very reluctantly I decided that I would ask Copernicus to restore me to my own family on Earth. First I broke the matter cautiously to my host, and explained to him confidentially my real origin and my intended return. He was astonished beyond measure at my revelation, and I could with difficulty persuade him that I was not of celestial nature. We talked it over daily for several weeks, and then explained it to the family, and afterwards to a select circle of friends, who were to publish it after my departure, and give to the whole island their first notions of terrestrial geography and history. Finally, I decided upon a night in which I would depart, and at bed-time bade the family good by. At midnight I filled my pockets and sundry satchels with my note-books, specimens of dried plants, insects, fragments of minerals, etc., and, hanging these satchels on my arms, called on Copernicus to fulfil his promise. Instantly all things disappeared again from my view; I was floating with my satchels in mid-ether, and fell into a trance. When I awaked, I was in my father's house in New York. How long the passage required, I have no means of determining.

The present brief sketch of my life upon the planet Mars is designed partly to call attention to the volumes which I am preparing, in conjunction with more learned and more scientific collaborateurs, for immediate publication by the Smithsonian Institution, and partly for the gratification of readers who may never see those ponderous quartos.

I will only add, that, since my return to Earth, I have never been able to obtain any information either from Copernicus or from any other of the illustrious dead, except through the pages of their printed works.

[Pg 407]

MADAM WALDOBOROUGH'S CARRIAGE.

On a bright particular afternoon, in the month of November, 1855, I met on the Avenue des Champs Élysées, in Paris, my young friend Herbert J——.

After many desolate days of wind and rain and falling leaves, the city had thrown off her wet rags, so to speak, and arrayed herself in the gorgeous apparel of one of the most golden and perfect Sundays of the season. "All the world" was out of doors. The Boulevards, the Bois de Boulogne, the bridges over the Seine, all the public promenades and gardens, swarmed with joyous multitudes. The Champs Élysées, and the long avenue leading up to the Barrière de l'Étoile, appeared one mighty river, an Amazon of many-colored human life. The finest July weather had not produced such a superb display; for now the people of fashion, who had passed the summer at their country-seats, or in Switzerland, or among the Pyrenees, reappeared in their showy equipages. The tide, which had been flowing to the Bois de Boulogne ever since two o'clock, had turned, and was pouring back into Paris. For miles, up and down, on either side of the city-wall, extended the glittering train of vehicles. The three broad, open gateways of the Barrière proved insufficient channels; and far as you could see, along the Avenue de l'Impératrice, stood three seemingly endless rows of carriages, closely crowded, unable to advance, waiting for the Barrière de l'Étoile to discharge its surplus living waters. Detachments of the mounted city guard, and long lines of police, regulated the flow; while at the Barrière an extra force of customhouse officers fulfilled the necessary formality of casting an eye of inspection into each vehicle as it passed, to see that nothing was smuggled.

Just below the Barrière, as I was moving with the stream of pedestrians, I met Herbert. He turned and took my arm. As he did so, I noticed that he lifted his bran-new Parisian hat towards heaven, saluting with a lofty flourish one of the carriages that passed the gate.

It was a dashy barouche, drawn by a glossy-black span, and occupied by two ladies and a lapdog. A driver on the box, and a footman perched behind, both in livery,—long coats, white gloves, and gold bands on their hats,—completed the establishment The ladies sat facing each other, and their mingled, effervescing skirts and flounces filled the cup of the vehicle quite to over-foaming, like a Rochelle powder, nearly drowning the brave spaniel, whose sturdy little nose was elevated, for air, just above the surge.

Both ladies recognized my friend, and she who sat, or rather reclined, (for such a luxurious, languishing attitude can hardly be called a sitting posture.) fairy-like, in the hinder part of the shell, bestowed upon him a very gracious, condescending smile. She was a most imposing creature,—in freshness of complexion, in physical development, and, above all, in amplitude and magnificence of attire, a full-blown rose of a woman,—aged, I should say, about forty.

"Don't you know that turn-out?" said Herbert, as the shallop with its lovely freight floated on in the current.

"I am not so fortunate," I replied.

"Good gracious! miserable man! Where do you live? In what obscure society have you buried yourself? Not to know Madam Waldoborough's Carriage!"

This was spoken in a tone of humorous extravagance which piqued my curiosity. Behind the ostentatious deference with which he had raised his hat to the sky, beneath the respectful awe with which he spoke the lady's name, I detected irony and a spirit of mischief.

"Who is Madam Waldoborough? and what about her carriage?"[Pg 408]

"Who is Madam Waldoborough?" echoed Herbert, with mock astonishment; "that an American, six months in Paris, should ask that question! An American woman, and a woman of fortune, sir; and, which is more, of fashion; and, which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any in Messina or elsewhere;—one that occupies a position, go to! and receives on Thursday evenings, go to! and that hath ambassadors at her table, and everything handsome about her! And as for her carriage," he continued, coming down from his Dogberrian strain of eloquence, "it is the very identical carriage which I didn't ride in once!"

"How was that?"

"I'll tell you; for it was a curious adventure, and as it was a very useful lesson to me, so you may take warning by my experience, and, if ever she invites you to ride with her, as she did me, beware! beware! her flashing eyes, her floating hair!—do not accept, or, before accepting, take Iago's advice, and put money in your purse: put money in your purse! I'll tell you why.

"But, in the first place, I must explain how I came to be without money in mine, so soon after arriving in Paris, where so much of the article is necessary. My woes all arise from vanity. That is the rock, that is the quicksand, that is the maelstrom. I presume you don't know anybody else who is afflicted with that complaint? If you do, I'll but teach you how to tell my story, and that will cure him; or, at least, it ought to.

"You see, in crossing over to Liverpool in the steamer, I became acquainted with a charming young lady, who proved to be a second-cousin of my father's. She belongs to the aristocratic branch of our family. Every family tree has an aristocratic branch, or bough, or little twig at least, I believe. She was a Todworth; and having always heard my other relations mention with immense pride and respect the Todworths,—as if it was one of the solid satisfactions of life to be able to speak of 'my uncle Todworth,' or 'my cousins the Todworths,'—I was prepared to appreciate my extreme good fortune. She was a bride, setting out on her wedding tour. She had married a sallow, bilious, perfumed, very disagreeable fellow,—except that he too was an aristocrat, and a millionnaire besides, which made him very agreeable; at least, I thought so. That was before I rode in Madam Waldoborough's carriage: since which era in my life I have slightly changed my habits of thinking on these subjects.

"Well, the fair bride was most gratifyingly affable, and cousined me to my heart's content. Her husband was no less friendly: they not only petted me, but I think they really liked me; and by the time we reached London I was on as affectionately familiar terms with them as a younger brother could have been. If I had been a Todworth, they couldn't have made more of me. They insisted on my going to the same hotel with them, and taking a room adjoining their suite. This was a happiness to which I had but one objection,—my limited pecuniary resources. My family are neither aristocrats nor millionnaires; and economy required that I should place myself in humble and inexpensive lodgings for the two or three weeks I was to spend in London. But vanity! vanity! I was actually ashamed, sir, to do the honest and true thing,—afraid of disgracing my branch of the family in the eyes of the Todworth branch, and of losing the fine friends I had made, by confessing my poverty. The bride, I confess, was a delightful companion; but I know other ladies just as interesting, although they do not happen to be Todworths. For her sake, personally, I should never have thought of committing the folly; and still less, I assure you, for that piece of perfumed and yellow-complexioned politeness, her husband. It was pride, sir, pride that ruined me. They went to Cox's Hotel, in Jermyn Street; and I, simpleton as I was, went with them,—for that was before I rode in Madam Waldoborough's carriage.[Pg 409]

"Cox's, I fancy, is the crack hotel of London. Lady Byron boarded there; the author of 'Childe Harold' himself used to stop there; Tom Moore wrote a few of his last songs and drank a good many of his last bottles of wine there; my Lords Tom, Dick, and Harry,—the Duke of Dash, Sir Edward Splash, and Viscount Flash,—these and other notables always honor Cox's when they go to town. So we honored Cox's. And a very quiet, orderly, well-kept tavern we found it. I think Mr. Cox must have a good housekeeper. He has been fortunate in securing a very excellent cook. I should judge that he had engaged some of the finest gentlemen in England to act as waiters. Their manners would do credit to any potentate in Europe: there is that calm self-possession about them, that serious dignity of deportment, sustained by a secure sense of the mighty importance of their mission to the world which strikes a beholder with awe. I was made to feel very inferior in their presence. We dined at a private table, and these ministers of state waited upon us. They brought us the morning paper on a silver salver; they presented it as if it had been a mission from a king to a king. Whenever we went out or came in, there stood two of those magnates, in white waistcoats and white gloves, to open the folding-doors for us, with stately mien. You would have said it was the Lord High Chamberlain and his deputy, and that I was at least Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. I tried to receive these overpowering attentions with an air of easy indifference, like one who had been all his life accustomed to that sort of thing, you know; but I was oppressed with a terrible sense of being out of my place. I couldn't help feeling that these serene and lofty highnesses knew perfectly well that I was a green Yankee boy, with less than fifty pounds in my pocket; and I fancied that, behind the mask of gravity each imperturbable countenance wore, there was always lurking a smile of contempt.

"But this was not the worst of it. I suffered from another cause. If noblemen were my attendants, I must expect to maintain noblemen. All that ceremony and deportment must go into the bill. With this view of the case, I could not look at their white kids without feeling sick at heart; white waistcoats became a terror; the sight of an august neckcloth, bowing its solemn attentions to me, depressed my very soul. The folding-doors, on golden hinges turning,—figuratively, at least, if not literally, like those of Milton's heaven,—grated as horrible discords on my secret ear as the gates of Milton's other place. It was my gold that helped to make those hinges. And this I endured merely for the sake of enjoying the society, not of my dear newly-found cousins, but of two phantoms, intangible, unsatisfactory, unreal that hovered over their heads,—the phantom of wealth and the still more empty phantom of social position. But all this, understand, was before I rode in Madam Waldoborough's carriage.

"Well, I saw London in company with my aristocratic relatives, and paid a good deal more for the show, and really profited less by it, than if I had gone about the business in my own deliberate and humble way. Everything was, of course, done in the most lordly and costly manner known. Instead of walking to this place or that, or taking an omnibus or a cab, we rolled magnificently in our carriage. I suppose the happy bridegroom would willingly have defrayed all these expenses, if I had wished him to do so; but pride prompted me to pay my share. So it happened that, during nine days in London, I spent as much as would have lasted me as many weeks, if I had been as wise as I was vain,—that is, if I had ridden in Madam Waldoborough's carriage before I went to England.

"When I saw how things were going, bankruptcy staring me in the face, ruin yawning at my feet, I was suddenly seized with an irresistible desire to go on to Paris, I had a French fever of the most violent character. I declared[Pg 410] myself sick of the soot and smoke uproar of the great Babel,—I even spoke slightingly of Cox's Hotel, as if I had been used to better things,—and I called for my bill. Heavens and earth, how I trembled! Did ever a condemned wretch feel as faint at the sight of the priest coming to bid him prepare for the gallows, as I did at the sight of one of those sublime functionaries bringing me my doom on a silver salver? Every pore opened; a clammy perspiration broke out all over me; I reached forth a shaking hand, and thanked his highness with a ghastly smile.

"A few figures told my fate. The convict who hears his death-sentence may still hope for a reprieve; but figures are inexorable, figures cannot lie. My bill at Cox's was in pounds, shillings, and pence, amounting to just eleven dollars a day. Eleven times nine are ninety-nine. It was so near a round hundred, it seemed a bitter mockery not to say a hundred, and have done with it, instead of scrupulously stopping to consider a single paltry dollar. I was reminded of the boy whose father bragged of killing nine hundred and ninety-nine pigeons at one shot. Somebody asked why he didn't say a thousand. 'Thunder!' says the boy, 'do you suppose my father would lie just for one pigeon?' I told the story, to show my cousins how coolly I received the bill, and paid it,—coined my heart and dropped my blood for drachmas, rather than appear mean in presence of my relatives, although I knew that a portion of the charge was for the bridal arrangements for which the bridegroom alone was responsible.

"This drained my purse so nearly dry that I had only just money enough left to take me to Paris, and pay for a week's lodging or so in advance. They urged me to remain and go to Scotland with them; but I tore myself away, and fled to France. I would not permit them to accompany me to the railroad station, and see me off; for I was unwilling that they should know I was going to economize my finances by purchasing a second-class ticket. From the life I had been leading at Cox's to a second-class passage to Paris was that step from the sublime to the ridiculous which I did not wish to be seen taking. I think I'd have thrown myself into the Thames before I would thus have exposed myself; for, as I tell you, I had not yet been honored with a seat in Madame Waldoborough's carriage.

"It is certainly a grand thing to keep grand company; but if ever I felt a sense of relief, it was when I found myself free from my cousins, emancipated from the fearful bondage of keeping up such expensive appearances; when I found myself seated on the hard, cushionless bench of the second-class car, and nibbled my crackers at my leisure, unoppressed by the awful presence of those grandees in white waistcoats, and by the more awful presence of a condemning conscience within myself.

"I nibbled my crackers, and they tasted sweeter than Cox's best dinners; I nibbled, and contemplated my late experiences; nibbled, and was almost persuaded to be a Christian,—that is, to forswear thenceforth and forever all company which I could not afford to keep, all appearances which were not honest, all foolish pride, and silly ambition, and moral cowardice;—as I did after I had ridden in a certain carriage I have mentioned, and which I am coming to now as fast as possible.

"I had lost nearly all my money and a good share of my self-respect by the course I had taken, and I could think of only one substantial advantage which I had gained. That was a note of introduction from my lovely cousin to Madame Waldoborough. That would be of inestimable value to me in Paris. It would give me access to the best society, and secure to me, a stranger many privileges which could not otherwise be obtained. 'Perhaps, after all,' thought I, as I read over the flattering contents of the unsealed note,—'perhaps, after all, I shall find this worth quite as much as it has cost me.' O, had I foreseen that it was actually destined to procure me an invitation to ride[Pg 411] out with Madam Waldoborough herself, shouldn't I have been elated?

"I reached Paris, took a cheap lodging, and waited for the arrival of my uncle's goods destined for the Great Exhibition,—for to look after them, (I could speak French, you know,) and to assist in having them properly placed, was the main business that had brought me here. I also waited anxiously for my uncle and a fresh supply of funds. In the mean time I delivered my letters of introduction, and made a few acquaintances. Twice I called at Madam Waldoborough's hotel, but did not see her; she was out. So at least the servants said, but I suspect they lied; for, the second time I was told so, I noticed, O, the most splendid turn-out!—the same you just saw pass—waiting in the carriage-way before her door, with the driver on the box, and the footman holding open the silver-handled and escutchioned panel that served as a door to the barouche, as if expecting some grand personage to get in.

"'Some distinguished visitor, perhaps,' thought I; 'or, it may be, Madam Waldoborough herself; instead of being out, she is just going out, and in five minutes the servant's lie will be a truth.' Sure enough, before I left the street—for I may as well confess that curiosity caused me to linger a little—my lady herself appeared in all her glory, and bounced into the barouche with a vigor that made it rock quite unromantically; for she is not frail, she is not a butterfly, as you perceived. I recognized her from a description I had received from my cousin the bride. She was accompanied by that meagre, smart little sprite of a French girl, whom Madam always takes with her,—to talk French with, and to be waited upon by her, she says; but rather, I believe, by way of a contrast to set off her own brilliant complexion and imperial proportions. It is Juno and Arachne. The divine orbs of the goddess turned haughtily upon me, but did not see me,—looked through and beyond me, as if I had been nothing but gossamer, feathers, air; and the little black, bead-like eyes of the insect pierced me maliciously an instant, as the barouche dashed past, and disappeared in the Rue de Rivoli. I was humiliated; I felt that I was recognized,—known as the rash youth who had just called at the Hôtel de Waldoborough, been told that Madam was out, and had stopped outside to catch the hotel in a lie. It is very singular—how do you explain it?—that it should have seemed to me the circumstance was something, not for Madam, but for me to be ashamed of! I don't believe that the color of her peachy cheeks was heightened the shadow of a shade; but as for me, I blushed to the tips of my ears.

"You may believe that I did not go away in such a cheerful frame of mind as might have encouraged me to repeat my call in a hurry. I just coldly enclosed to her my cousin's letter of introduction, along with my address; and said to myself, 'Now, she'll know what a deuse of a fellow she has slighted: she'll know she has put an affront upon a connection of the Todworths!' I was very silly, you see, for I had not yet—but I am coming to that part of my story.

"Well, returning to my lodgings a few days afterwards, I found a note which had been left for me by a liveried footman,—Madam Waldoborough's footman, O heaven! I was thrown into great trepidation by the stupendous event, and eagerly inquired if Madam herself was in her carriage, and was immensely relieved to learn she was not; for, unspeakably gratifying as such condescension, such an Olympian compliment, would have been under other circumstances, I should have felt it more than offset by the mortification of knowing that she knew, that her own eyes had beheld, the very humble quarter in which a lack of means had compelled me to locate myself.

"I turned from that frightful possibility to the note itself. It was everything I could have asked. It was ambrosia, it was nectar. I had done a big thing when I fired the Todworth gun: it had brought the enemy to terms.[Pg 412] My cousin was complimented, and I was welcomed to Paris, and—the Hôtel Waldoborough!

"'Why have you not called to see me?' the note inquired, with charming innocence. 'I shall be at home to-morrow morning at two o'clock; cannot you give me the pleasure of greeting so near a relative of my dear, delightful Louise?'

"Of course, I would afford her that pleasure! 'O, what a thing it is,' I said to myself, 'to be a third cousin to a Todworth!' But the two o'clock in the morning,—how should I manage that? I had not supposed that fashionable people in Paris got up so early, much less received visitors at that wonderful hour. But, on reflection, I concluded that two in the morning meant two in the afternoon; for I had heard that the great folks commenced their day at about that time.

"At two o'clock, accordingly, the next afternoon,—excuse me, O ye fashionable ones! I mean the next morning,—I sallied forth from my little barren room in the Rue des Vieux Augustins, and proceeded to Madam's ancient palace in the Rue St. Martin, dressed in my best, and palpitating with a sense of the honor I was doing myself. This time the concierge smiled encouragingly, and ascertained for me that Madam was at home. I ascended the polished marble staircase to a saloon on the first floor, where I was requested to have the obligeance d'attendre un petit moment, until Madam should be informed of my arrival.

"It was a very large, and, I must admit, a very respectable saloon, although not exactly what I had expected to see at the very summit of the social Olympus. I dropped into a fauteuil near a centre-table, on which there was a fantastical silver-wrought card-basket. What struck me particularly about the basket was a well-known little Todworth envelope, superscribed in the delicate handwriting of my aristocratic cousin,—my letter of introduction, in fact,—displayed upon the very top of the pile of billets and cards. My own card I did not see; but in looking for it I discovered some curious specimens of foreign orthography,—one dainty little note to 'Madame Valtobureau'; another laboriously addressed to 'M. et Mme. Jean Val-d'eau-Bèrot'; and still a third, in which the name was conscientiously and industriously written out, 'Ouâldôbeurreaux. This last, as an instance of spelling an English word à la Française, I thought a remarkable success, and very creditable to people who speak of Lor Berong, meaning Lord Byron, (Be-wrong is good!) and talk glibly about Frongclang, and Vashangtong, meaning the great philosopher, and the Father of his Country.

"I was trying to amuse myself with these orthographical curiosities, yet waiting anxiously all the while for the appearance of that illustrious ornament of her sex, to whom they were addressed; and the servant's 'petit moment' had become a good petit quart d'heure, when the drawing-room door opened, and in glided, not the Goddess, but the Spider.

"She had come to beg Monsieur (that was me) to have the bounty to excuse Madam (that was the Waldoborough), who had caused herself to be waited for, and who, I was assured, would give herself 'le plaisir de me voir dans un tout petit moment.' So saying, with a smile, she seated herself; and, discovering that I was an American, began to talk bad English to me. I may say execrable English; for it is a habit your Frenchwoman often has, to abandon her own facile and fluent vernacular, which she speaks so charmingly, in order to show off a wretched smattering she may have acquired of your language,—from politeness, possibly, but I rather think from vanity. In the mean time Arachne busied her long agile fingers with some very appropriate embroidery; and busied her mind, too, I couldn't help thinking, weaving some intricate web of mischief,—for her eyes sparkled as they looked at me with a certain gleeful, malicious expression,—seeming to say, 'You have walked into my[Pg 413] parlor, Mr. Fly, and I am sure to entangle you!' which made me feel uncomfortable.

"The 'tout petit moment' had become another good quarter of an hour, when the door again opened, and Madam—Madam herself—the Waldoborough appeared! Did you ever see flounces? did you ever witness expansion? have your eyes ever beheld the—so to speak—new-risen sun trailing clouds of glory over the threshold of the dawn? You should have seen Madam enter that room; you should have seen the effulgence of the greeting smile she gave me; then you wouldn't wonder that I was dazzled.

"She filled and overflowed with her magnificence the most royal fauteuil in the saloon, and talked to me of my Todworth cousin, and of my Todworth cousin's husband, and of London, and America,—occasionally turning aside to show off her bad French by speaking to the Spider, until another quarter of an hour had elapsed. Then Paris was mentioned; one of us happened to speak of the Gobelins,—I cannot now recall which it was first uttered that fatal word to me, the direful spring of woes unnumbered! Had I visited the Gobelins? I had not, but I anticipated having that pleasure soon.

"'Long as I have lived in Paris, I have never yet been to the Gobelins!' says Mrs. Waldoborough. 'Mademoiselle' (that was Arachne) 'm'accuse toujours d'avoir tort, et me dit que je dois y aller, n'est ce pas, Mademoiselle?'

"'Certainement!' says Mademoiselle, emphatically; and in return for Madam's ill-spoken French, she added in English, of even worse quality, that the Gobelins' manufacture of tapisserie and carpet, was the place the moz curiouze and interressante which one could go see in Paris.

"'C'est ce qu'elle dit toujours,' says the Waldoborough. 'But I make great allowances for her opinions, since she is an enthusiast with regard to everything that pertains to weaving.'

"'Very natural that she should be, being a Spider,' I thought, but did not say so.

"'However,' Madam continued, 'I should like extremely well to go there, if I could ever get the time. Quand aurai-je le tems, Mademoiselle?'

"'I sink zis af'noon is more time zan you have anozer day, Madame,' says the Spider.

"So the net was completed, and I was caught thus: Mrs. Waldoborough, with an hospitable glance at me, referred the proposition; and I said, if she would like to go that day, she must not let me hinder her, and offered to take my leave; and Arachne said, 'Monsieur perhaps he like go too?' And as Madam suggested ordering the carriage for the purpose, of course I jumped at the chance. To ride in that carriage! with the Waldoborough herself! with the driver before and the footman behind, in livery! O ye gods!

"I was abandoned to intoxicating dreams of ambition, whilst Madam went to prepare herself, and Mademoiselle to order the carriage. It was not long before I heard a vehicle enter the court-yard, turn, and stop in the carriage-way, I tried to catch a glimpse of it from the window, but saw it only in imagination,—that barouche of barouches, which is Waldoborough's! I imagined myself seated luxuriously in that shell, with Madam by my side, rolling through the streets of Paris in even greater state than I had rolled through London with my Todworth cousin. I was impatient to be experiencing the new sensation. The moments dragged: five, ten, fifteen minutes at least elapsed, and all the while the carriage and I were waiting. Then appeared—who do you suppose? The Spider, dressed for an excursion. 'So she is going too!' thought I, not very well pleased. She had in her arms—what do you suppose? A confounded little lapdog,—the spaniel you saw just now with his nose just above the crinoline.

"'Monsieur,' says she, 'I desire make you know the King François.' I hate lapdogs; but, in order to be civil, I offered[Pg 414] to pat his majesty on the head. That, however, did not seem to be court-etiquette; and I got snapped at by the little despot. 'Our compagnon of voyage,' says Mademoiselle, pacifying him with caresses.

"'So, he is going too?' thought I,—so unreasonable as to feel a little dissatisfied; as if I had a right to say who should or who should not ride in Madam Waldoborough's carriage.

"Mademoiselle sat with her hat on, and held the pup; and I sat with my hat in my hand, and held my peace; and she talked bad English to me, and good French to the dog, for, may be, ten minutes longer, when the Waldoborough swept in, arrayed for the occasion, and said, 'Maintenant nous irons.' That was the signal for descending: as we did so, Madam casually remarked, that something was the matter with one of the Waldoborough horses, but that she had not thought it worth the while to give up our visit to the Gobelins on that account, since a coupé would answer our purpose;—and the coupés in that quarter were really very respectable!

"This considerate remark was as a feather-bed to break the frightful fall before me. You think I tumbled down the Waldoborough stairs? Worse than that: I dropped headlong, precipitately, from the heights of fairy dreams to low actuality; all the way down, down, down, from the Waldoborough barouche to a hired coach, a voiture de remise, that stood in its place at the door!

"'Mademoiselle suggested that it would be quite as well to go in a coupé,' says Mrs. Waldoborough, as she got in.

"'O certainly,' I replied, with preternatural cheerfulness. But I could have killed the Spider; for I suspected this was a part of the plot she had been weaving to entangle me.

"It was a vehicle with two horses and seats for four; one driver in a red face,—the common livery of your Paris hackman; but no footman, no footman, no footman!" Hubert repeated, with a groan. "Not so much as a little tiger clinging to the straps behind! I comforted myself, however, with the reflection that beggars must not be choosers; that, if I rode with Madam, I must accept her style of turn-out; and that if I was a good boy, and went in the coupé this time, I might go in the barouche the next.

"Madam occupied the back seat—the seat of honor in a coach—with whom, do you suppose? Me? No, sir! With the Spider? Not even with the Spider! With the lapdog, sir! And I was forced to content myself with a seat by Arachne's side, facing the royal pair.

"'Aux Gobelins,' says Mrs. Waldoborough, to the driver; 'mais allez par l'Hôtel de Ville, le pont Louis Philippe, el l'église de Nôtre Dame,—n'est-ce pas?' referring the question to me.

"I said, 'As you please.' And the red-faced driver said, 'Bien, Madame!' as he shut us into the coach. And off we went by the Hôtel de Ville, the Pont Louis Philippe, and Nôtre Dame, accordingly.

"We stopped a few minutes to look at the Cathedral front; then rattled on, up the Quai and across the Pont de l'Archevêché, and through the crooked, countless streets until we reached the Gobelins; and I must confess I did not yet experience any of the sublime emotions I had counted upon in riding with the distinguished Madam Waldoborough.

"You have been to the Gobelins? If you haven't, you must go there,—not with two ladies and a lapdog, as I did, but independently, and you will find the visit well worth the trouble. The establishment derives its name from an obscure wool-dyer of the fifteenth century, Jean Gobelin, whose little workshop has grown to be one of the most extensive and magnificent carpet and tapestry manufactories in the world.

"We found liveried attendants stationed at every door and turning-point, to direct the crowds of visitors and to keep out dogs. No dog could be admitted except in arms. I suggested that King Francis should be left in the coach; upon which Mrs. Waldoborough asked,[Pg 415] reproachfully, 'Could I be so cruel?' and the Spider looked at me as if I had been an American savage. To atone for my inhumanity, I offered to carry the cur; he was put into my arms at once; and so it happened that I walked through that wonderful series of rooms, hung with tapestries of the richest description, of the times of Francis I., Louis XIV., and so forth, with a detested lapdog in my hands. However, I showed my heroism by enduring my fate without a murmur, and quoting Tennyson for the gratification of Mrs. Waldoborough, who was reminded of the corridors of 'The Palace of Art.'

And so forth, and so on. I continued my citations in order to keep Madam's mouth shut; for she annoyed me exceedingly by telling everybody she had occasion to speak with who she was.

"'Je suis Madame Waldoborough; et je désire savoir' this thing, or that,—whatever she wished to inquire about; as if all the world knew of her fame, and she had only to state, 'I am that distinguished personage,' in order to command the utmost deference and respect.

"From the show-rooms we passed on to the work-rooms, where we found the patient weavers sitting or standing at the back side of their pieces, with their baskets of many-colored spools at their sides, and the paintings they were copying behind them, slowly building up their imitative fabrics, loop after loop, and stitch after stitch, by hand. Madam told the workmen who she was, and learned that one had been at work six months on his picture; it was a female figure kneeling to a colossal pair of legs, destined to support a warrior, whose upper proportions waited to be drawn out of the spool-baskets. Another had been a year at work on a headless Virgin with a babe in her arms, finished only to the eyes. Sometimes ten, or even twenty years, are expended by one man upon a single piece of tapestry; but the patience of the workmen is not more wonderful than the art with which they select and blend their colors, passing from the softest to the most brilliant shades, without fault, as the work they are copying requires.

"From the tapestry-weaving we passed on to the carpet-weaving rooms, where the workmen have the right side of their fabric before them, and the designs to be copied over their heads. Some of the patterns were of the most gorgeous description,—vines, scrolls, flowers, birds, lions, men; and the way they passed from the reflecting brain through the fingers of the weaver into the woollen texture was marvellous to behold. I could have spent some hours in the establishment pleasantly enough, watching the operatives, but for that terrible annoyance, the dog in my arms. I could not put him down, and I could not ask the ladies to take him. The Spider was in her element; she forgot everything but the toil of her fellow-spiders, and it was almost impossible to get her away from any piece she once became interested in. Madam, busy in telling who she was and asking questions, gave me little attention; so that I found myself more in the position of a lackey than a companion. I had regretted that her footman did not accompany us; but what need was there of a footman as long as she had me?

"In half and hour I had become weary of the lapdog and the Gobelins, and wished to get away. But no,—Madam must tell more people who she was, and make further inquiries; and as for Arachne, I believe she would have remained there until this time. Another half-hour, and another, and still the good part of another, exhausted the strength of my arms and the endurance of my soul, until at last Mrs. Waldoborough[Pg 416] said, 'Eh bien, nous avons tout vu, n'est-ce pas? Allons donc!' And we allonged.

"We found our coupé waiting for us, and I thrust his majesty King Francis into it rather unceremoniously. Now you must know that all this time Mrs. Waldoborough had not the remotest idea but that she was treating me with all due civility. She is one of your thoroughly egotistical, self-absorbed women, accustomed to receiving homage, who appear to consider that to breathe in their presence and attend upon them is sufficient honor and happiness for anybody.

"'Never mind,' thought I, 'she'll invite me to dinner, and may be I shall meet an ambassador!'

"Arrived at the Hotel Waldoborough, accordingly, I stepped out of the coupé, and helped out the ladies and the lapdog, and was going in with them, as a matter of course. But the Spider said, 'Do not give yourself ze pain, Monsieur!' and relieved me of King Francis. And Madam said, 'Shall I order the driver to be paid? or will you retain the coupé? You will want it to take you home. Well, good day,'—offering me two fingers to shake. 'I am very happy to have met you; and I hope I shall see you at my next reception. Thursday evening, remember; I receive Thursday evenings. Cocher, vous emporterez ce monsieur chez lui, comprennez?'

"'Bien, Madame!' says the cocher.

"'Bon jour, Monsieur!' says Arachne, gayly, tripping up the stairs with the king in her arms.

"I was stunned. For a minute I did not know very well what I was about; indeed, I should have done very differently if I had had my wits about me. I stepped back into the coupé,—weary, disheartened, hungry; my dinner hour was past long ago; it was now approaching Madam's dinner hour, and I was sent away fasting. What was worse, the coupé left for me to pay for. It was three hours since it had been ordered; price, two francs an hour; total, six francs. I had given the driver my address, and we were clattering away towards the Rue des Vieux Augustins, when I remembered, with a sinking of the heart I trust you may never experience, that I had not six francs in the world,—at least in this part of the world,—thanks to my Todworth cousin; that I had, in fact, only fifteen paltry sous in my pocket!

"Here was a scrape! I had ridden in Madam Waldoborough's carriage with a vengeance! Six francs to pay! and how was I ever to pay it? 'Cocher! cocher!' I cried out, despairingly, 'attendez!'

"'Qu'est-il?' says the cocher, stopping promptly.

"Struck with the appalling thought that every additional rod we travelled involved an increase of expense, my first impulse was to jump out and dismiss him. But then came the more frightful nightmare fancy, that it was not possible to dismiss him unless I could pay him! I must keep him with me until I could devise some means of raising the six francs, which an hour later would be eight francs, and an hour later ten francs, and so forth. Every moment that I delayed payment swelled the debt; like a ruinous rate of interest, and diminished the possibility of ever being able to pay him at all. And of course I could not keep him with me forever,—go about the world henceforth in a hired coach, with a driver and span of horses impossible to get rid of.

"'Que veut Monsieur?' says the driver, looking over at me with his red face, and waiting for my orders.

"That recalled me from my hideous revery. I knew I might as well be travelling as standing still, since he was to be paid by the hour; so I said, 'Drive on, drive faster!'

"I had one hope,—that on reaching my lodgings I might prevail upon the concierge to pay for the coach. I stepped out with alacrity, said gayly to my coachman, 'Combien est-ce que je vous dois?' and put my hand in among my fifteen sous with an air of confidence.

"The driver looked at his watch, and[Pg 417] said, with business-like exactness, 'Six francs vingt-cinq centimes, Monsieur.' Vingt-cinq centimes! My debt had increased five cents whilst I had been thinking about it! 'Avec quelque-chose pour la boisson,' he added with a persuasive smile. With a trifle besides for drink-money,—for that every French driver expects.

"Then I appeared to discover, to my surprise, that I had not the change; so I cried out to the old woman in the porter's lodge, 'Give this man five francs for me, will you?' 'Five francs!' echoed the ogress with astonishment: 'Monsieur, je n'ai pas le sou!'

"I might have known it; of course she wouldn't have a sou for a poor devil like me; but the reply fell upon my heart like a death sentence.

"I then proposed to call at the driver's stand and pay him in a day or two, if he would trust me. He smiled and shook his head.

"'Very well,' said I, stepping back into the coach, 'drive to number five, Cité Odiot.' I had an acquaintance there, of whom I thought I might possibly borrow. The coachman drove away cheerfully, seeming to be perfectly well satisfied with the state of things: he was master of the situation,—he was having employment, his pay was going on, and he could hold me in pledge for the money. We reached the Cité Odiot: I ran in at number five, and up stairs to my friend's room. It was locked; he was away from home.

"I had but one other acquaintance in Paris on whom I could venture to call for a loan of a few francs; and he lived far away, across the Seine, in the Rue Racine. There seemed to be no alternative; so away we posted, carrying my ever-increasing debt, dragging at each remove a lengthening chain. We reached the Rue Racine; I found my friend; I wrung his hand. 'For Heaven's sake,' said I, 'help me to get rid of this Old Man of the Sea,—this elephant won in a raffle!'

"I explained. He laughed. 'What a funny adventure!' says he. 'And how curious that at this time, of all others, I haven't ten sous in the world! But I'll tell you what I can do,' says he.

"'For mercy's sake, what?'

"'I can get you out of the building by a private passage, take you through into the Rue de la Harpe, and let you escape. Your coachman will remain waiting for you at the door until you have traversed half Paris. That will be a capital point to the joke,—a splendid finale for your little comedy!'

"I confess to you that, perplexed and desperate as I was, I felt for an instant tempted to accept this infamous suggestion. Not that I would willingly have wronged the coachman; but since there was no hope of doing him justice, why not do the best thing for myself? If I could not save my honor, I might at least save my person. And I own that the picture of him which presented itself to my mind, waiting at the door so complacently, so stolidly, intent only on sticking by me at the rate of two francs an hour until paid off,—without feeling a shadow of sympathy for my distress, but secretly laughing at it, doubtless,—that provoked me; and I was pleased to think of him waiting there still, after I should have escaped, until at last his beaming red face would suddenly grow purple with wrath, and his placidity change to consternation, on discovering that he had been outwitted. But I knew too well what he would do. He would report me to the police! Worse than that, he would report me to Madam Waldoborough!

"Already I fancied him, with his whip under his arm, smilingly taking off his hat, and extending his hand to the amazed and indignant lady, with a polite request that she would pay for that coupé! What coupé? And he would tell his story, and the Goddess would be thunderstruck; and the eyes of the Spider would sparkle wickedly; and I should be damned forever!

"Then I could see the Parisian detectives—the best in the world—going to take down from the lady's lips a minute description of the adventurer, the swindler, who had imposed upon them, and attempted to cheat a poor hack-driver[Pg 418] out of his hard-earned wages! Then would appear the reports in the newspapers,—how a well-dressed young man, an American, Monsieur X., (or perhaps my name would be given,) had been the means of enlivening the fashionable circles of Paris with a choice bit of scandal, by inviting a very distinguished lady, also an American, (whose Thursday evening receptions we well know, attended by some of the most illustrious French and foreign residents in the metropolis,) to accompany him on a tour of inspection to the Gobelins, and had afterwards been guilty of the unexampled baseness of leaving the coupé he had employed standing, unpaid, at the door of a certain house in the Rue Racine, whilst he escaped by a private passage into the Rue de la Harpe, and so forth, and so forth. I saw it all. I blushed, I shuddered at the fancied ignominy of the exposure.

"'No,' said I; 't is impossible! If you can't help me to the money, I must try—but where, how can I hope to raise eight francs, (for it is four hours by this time, to say nothing of the drink-money!)—how can I ever hope to raise that sum in Paris?'

"'You can pawn your watch,' says my false friend, rubbing his hands, and smiling, as if he really enjoyed the comicality of the thing.

"But I had already eaten my watch, as the French say: it had been a week at the Mont de Piété.

"'Your coat then,' says my counsellor, with good-mannered unconcern.

"'And go in my shirt-sleeves?' for I had placed my trunk and its contents in the charge of my landlord, as security for the payment of my board and room-rent.

"'In that case, I don't see what you will do, unless you take my original advice, and dodge the fellow.'

"I left my fair-weather acquaintance in disgust, and went off, literally staggering under the load, the ever-increasing load, the Pelion upon Ossa, of francs, francs, francs,—despair, despair, despair.

"'Eh bien?' says the driver, interrogatively, as I went out to him.

"'Pas de chance!' And I ordered him to drive back to the Cité Odiot.

"'Bien!' says he, polite as ever, cheery as ever; and away we went again, back across the Seine, up the Champs Élysées, into the Rue de l'Oratoire, to the Cité,—my stomach faint, my head aching, my thoughts whirling, and the carriage wheels rattling, clattering, chattering all the way, 'Two francs an hour and drink-money! Two francs an hour and drink-money!'

"Once more I tried my luck at number five, and was filled with exasperation and dismay to find that my friend had been home, and gone off again in great haste, with a portmanteau in his hand.

"Where had he gone? Nobody knew; but he had given his key to the house-servant, saying he would be absent several days.

"'Pensez-vous qu'il est allé à Londres?' I hurriedly inquired.

"'Monsieur, je n'en sais rien,' was the calm, decisive response.

"I knew he often went to London; and now my only hope was to catch him at one of the railway stations. But by which route would he be like to go? I thought of only one, that by way of Calais, by which I had come, and I ordered my coachman to drive with all speed to the Northern Railway Station. He looked a little glum at this, and his 'Bien!' sounded a good deal like the 'bang' of the coach-door, as he shut it rather sharply in my face.

"Again we were off, my head hotter than ever, my feet like ice, and the coach-wheels saying vivaciously, as before, 'Two francs an hour, and drink-money! Two francs an hour, and drink-money!' I was terribly afraid we should be too late; but on arriving at the station, I found there was no train at all. One had left in the afternoon, and another would leave late in the evening. Then I happened to think there were other routes to London, by the way of Dieppe and Havre. My friend might have gone by one of[Pg 419] those! Yes, there was a train at about that time, my driver somewhat sullenly informed me,—for he was fast losing his cheerfulness: perhaps it was his supper-time, or perhaps he was in a hurry for his drink-money. Did he know where the stations were? Know? of course he did! There was but one terminus for both routes; that was in the Rue St. Lazare. Could he reach it before the train started? Possibly; but his horses were jaded; they needed feeding. And why didn't I tell him before that I wished to stop there? for we had come through the Rue St. Lazare, and actually passed the railway station there, on our way from the Cité Odiot! That was vexing to think of, but there was no help for it; so back we flew on our course, to catch, if possible the train, and my friend, who I was certain was going in it.

"We reached the Lazarus Street Station; and I, all in a frenzy of apprehension, rushed in, to experience one of those fearful trials of temper to which nervous men—especially nervous Americans in Paris—are sometimes subject. The train was about starting; but, owing to the strict regulations which are everywhere enforced on French railways, I could not even force myself into the passenger-room,—much less get through the gate, and past the guard, to the platform where the cars were standing. Nobody could enter there without a ticket. My friend was going, and I could not rush in and catch him, and borrow my—ten francs, I suppose, by that time, because I had not a ticket, nor money to buy a ticket! I laugh now at the image of myself, as I must have appeared then,—frantically explaining what I could of the circumstances to any of the officials who would hear me,—pouring forth torrents of broken and hardly intelligible French, now shrieking to make myself understood, and now groaning with despair,—questioning, cursing, imploring,—and receiving the invariable, the inexorable reply, always polite, but always firm,—

"'On ne passe pas, Monsieur.'

"Absolutely no admittance! And while I was convulsing myself in vain, the train started! It was off,—my friend was gone, and I was ruined forever!

"When the worst has happened, and we feel that it is so, and our own efforts are no longer of any avail, then we become calm: the heart accepts the fate it knows to be inevitable. The bankrupt, after all his anxious nights and terrible days of struggle, is almost happy at last, when all is over. Even the convict sleeps soundly on the night preceding his execution. Just so I recovered my self-possession and equanimity after the train had departed.

"I went back to my hackman. His serenity had vanished as mine had arrived; and the fury that possessed me seemed to pass over and take up its abode with him.

"'Will you pay me?' he demanded, fiercely.

"'My friend,' said I, 'it is impossible.' And I repeated my proposition to call and settle with him in a day or two.

"'And you will not pay me now?' he vociferated.

"'My friend, I cannot.'

"'Then I know what I shall do!' turning away with a gesture of rage.

"'I have done what I could, now you shall try what you can,' I answered, mildly.

"'Écoutez donc!' he hissed, turning once more upon me. 'I go to Madam, I demand my pay of her. What do you say to that?'

"A few minutes before I should have been overwhelmed by the suggestion. I was not pleased with it now. No man who has enjoyed the society of ladies, and fancied that he appeared smart in their presence, fancies the idea of being utterly shamed and humiliated in their eyes. I ought to have had the courage to say to Mrs. Waldoborough, when she had the coolness to send me off with the coupé, instead of my dinner: 'Excuse me, Madam, I have not the money to pay this man!'

"It would have been bitter, that confession;[Pg 420] but better one pill at the beginning of a malady than a whole boxful afterwards. Better truth, anyhow, though it kills you, than a precarious existence on false appearances. I had, by my own folly, through toadyism in the first place and moral cowardice afterwards, placed myself in an embarrassing and ludicrous position; and I must take the consequences.

"'Very well,' said I, 'if you are absolutely bent on having your money to-night, I suppose that it is the best thing you can do. But say to Madam that I expect my uncle by the next steamer; that I wished you to wait till his arrival for your pay; and that you not only refused, but put me to a great deal of trouble. It is nothing extraordinary,' I continued, in the hope to soften him, 'for gay young men, Americans, to be without money for a few days in Paris, expecting remittances from home; and you fellows ought to be more accommodating.'

"'True! true!' says the driver, turning again to go. 'But I must have my pay all the same. I shall tell Madam what you say.'

"He was going. And now happened one of those wonderful things which sometimes occur in real life, but which, in novels, we pronounce improbable. Whilst we were speaking a train arrived; and I noticed a little withered old man,—a little smirking mummy of a man,—with a face all wrinkles and smiles, coming out of the building with his coat on his arm. I noticed him, because he was so ancient and dried up, and yet so happy, whilst I was so young and fresh, and yet so miserable. And I was wondering at his self-satisfaction, when I saw—what think you?—something fall to the ground from the waist-pocket of the coat he carried on his arm! It was—will you believe it?—a pocket-book!—a fat pocket-book, a respectable, well-worn pocket-book!—the pocket-book of a millionnaire, by Jove! I pounced upon it, like an eagle upon a rabbit. He was passing on when I ran after him, politely called his attention, and surprised him with a presentation of what he supposed was all the time conveyed safely in his coat.

"'Is it possible!' said he, in very poor French, which betrayed him to be a foreigner like myself. 'You are very kind,—very honest,—very obliging, very obliging indeed!'

"If thanks and smiles would answer my purpose, I had them in profusion. He looked to see that the pocket-book had not been opened, and thanked me again and again. He seemed very anxious to do the polite thing, yet still more anxious to be passing on. But I would not let him pass on; I held him with my glittering eye.

"'Ah!' said he, 'perhaps you won't feel yourself injured by the offer,'—for he saw that I was well dressed, and probably hesitated on that account to reward me,—'perhaps you will take something for your honesty, for your trouble.' And putting his hand in his pantaloons pocket, he took it out again, with the palm covered with glittering gold pieces.

"'Sir,' said I, 'I am ashamed to accept anything for so trifling a service; but I owe this man here,—how much is it now?'

"'Ten francs and a half,' says the driver, whom I had stopped just in time.

"'Ten francs and a half,' I repeated.

"'Mais n'oubliez pas la boisson,' he added, his persuasive smile returning.

"'With something for his dram,' I continued: 'which if you will have the kindness to pay him, and at the same time give me your address, I will see that the money is returned to you without fail in a day or two.'

"The smiling little man paid the money on the spot; saying it was of no consequence, and neglecting to give me his address. And he went his way well satisfied, and the driver went his, also well satisfied; and I went mine, infinitely better satisfied, I imagine, than either of them.

"Well, I had got rid of Madam Waldoborough's carriage, and learned a lesson which, I think, will last me the rest[Pg 421] of my life. If ever again I run after great folks, or place myself in a false position through folly or cowardice, may the Fates confound me! But I must haste and tell you the curious dénouement of the affair.

"I was not so anxious to cultivate Madam's acquaintance after riding in her carriage, you may well believe. For months I did not see her. At last my Todworth cousin and her yellow-complexioned husband came to town, and I went with my uncle to call upon them at Meurice's Hotel. They were delighted to see me, and fondly pressed me to come and take a room adjoining their suite, as I did at Cox's. A card was brought in. My cousin smiled, and directed that the visitor should be admitted. There was a rustle,—a volume of flounces came sweeping in,—a well-remembered voice cried, 'My dear Louise!'—and my Todworth cousin was clasped in the buxom embrace of Madam Waldoborough.

"But what did I behold? Following in Madam's wake, like a skiff towed at the stern of a rushing side-wheel steamer, a dapper little old man, a withered little old man, a gayly smiling little old man, whose countenance was somehow strangely familiar to me. I considered him a moment, and the scene in the Rue St. Lazare, with the coupé driver and the man with the pocket-book, flashed across my mind. This was the man! I remembered him well; but he had evidently forgotten me.

"Madam released Louise from her divine large arms, and greeted the yellow-complexioned one. Then she was introduced to my uncle. Then the bride said, 'You know my cousin Herbert, I believe?'

"'Ah, yes!' says the Waldoborough, who had glanced at me curiously, but doubtfully, 'I recognize him now!' giving me a smile and two fingers. 'I thought I had seen him somewhere. You have been to one or two of my receptions, haven't you?'

"'I have not yet had that pleasure,' said I.

"'Ah, I remember now! You called one morning, didn't you? And we went somewhere together,—where did we go?—or was it some other gentleman?'

"I said I thought it must have been some other gentleman; for indeed I could hardly believe now that I was that fool.

"'Very likely,' said she; 'for I see so many,—my receptions, you know, Louise, are always so crowded! But, dear me, what am I thinking of? Where are you, my love?' and the steamer brought the skiff alongside.

"'Louise, and gentlemen,' then said my lady, with a magnificent courtesy, the very wind of which I feared would blow him away,—but he advanced triumphantly, bowing and smiling extravagantly,—'allow me the happiness of presenting to you Mr. John Waldoborough, my husband.'

"How I refrained from shrieking and throwing myself on the floor, I never well knew; for I declare to you, I was never so caught by surprise and tickled through and through by any dénouement or situation, in or off the stage! To think that pigmy, that wart, that little grimacing monkey of a man, parchment-faced, antique,—a mere moneybag on two sticks,—should be the husband of the great and glorious Madam Waldoborough! His wondrous self-satisfaction was accounted for. Moreover, I saw that Heaven's justice was done: Madam's husband had paid for Madam's carriage!"

Here Herbert concluded his story. And it was time; for the day had closed, as we walked up and down, and the sudden November night had come on. Gas-light had replaced the light of the sun throughout the streets of the city. The brilliant cressets of the Place de la Concorde flamed like a constellation; and the Avenue des Champs Élysées, with its rows of lamps, and the throngs of carriages, each bearing now its lighted lantern, moving along that far-extending slope, looked like a new Milky Way, fenced with lustrous stars, and swarming with meteoric fire-flies.

[Pg 422]

PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.

IV.

Salem, August 22d, 1837.—A walk yesterday afternoon down to the Juniper and Winter Island. Singular effect of partial sunshine, the sky being broadly and heavily clouded, and land and sea, in consequence, being generally overspread with a sombre gloom. But the sunshine, somehow or other, found its way between the interstices of the clouds, and illuminated some of the distant objects very vividly. The white sails of a ship caught it, and gleamed brilliant as sunny snow, the hull being scarcely visible, and the sea around dark; other smaller vessels too, so that they looked like heavenly-winged things just alighting on a dismal world. Shifting their sails, perhaps, or going on another tack, they almost disappear at once in the obscure distance. Islands are seen in summer sunshine and green glory; their rocks also sunny and their beaches white; while other islands, for no apparent reason, are in deep shade, and share the gloom of the rest of the world. Sometimes part of an island is illuminated and part dark. When the sunshine falls on a very distant island, nearer ones being in shade, it seems greatly to extend the bounds of visible space, and put the horizon to a farther distance. The sea roughly rushing against the shore, and dashing against the rocks, and grating back over the sands. A boat a little way from the shore, tossing and swinging at anchor. Beach birds flitting from place to place.

The family seat of the Hawthornes is Wigcastle, Wigton, Wiltshire. The present head of the family, now residing there, is Hugh Hawthorne. William Hawthorne, who came over in 1635-6, was a younger brother of the family.

A young man and girl meet together, each in search of a person to be known by some particular sign. They watch and wait a great while for that person to pass. At last some casual circumstance discloses that each is the one that the other is waiting for. Moral,—that what we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.

The journal of a human heart for a single day in ordinary circumstances. The lights and shadows that flit across it; its internal vicissitudes.

Distrust to be thus exemplified:—Various good and desirable things to be presented to a young man, and offered to his acceptance,—as a friend, a wife, a fortune; but he to refuse them all, suspecting that it is merely a delusion. Yet all to be real, and he to be told so, when too late.

A man tries to be happy in love; he cannot sincerely give his heart, and the affair seems all a dream. In domestic life, the same; in politics, a seeming patriot; but still he is sincere, and all seems like a theatre.

An old man, on a summer day, sits on a hill-top, or on the observatory of his house, and sees the sunshine pass from one object to another connected with the events of his past life,—as the school-house, the place where his wife lived in her maidenhood,—its setting beams falling on the churchyard.

An idle man's pleasures and occupations and thoughts during a day spent by the sea-shore: among them, that of sitting on the top of a cliff, and throwing stones at his own shadow, far below.

A blind man to set forth on a walk through ways unknown to him, and to trust to the guidance of anybody who[Pg 423] will take the trouble; the different characters who would undertake it: some mischievous, some well-meaning, but incapable; perhaps one blind man undertakes to lead another. At last, possibly, he rejects all guidance, and blunders on by himself.

In the cabinet of the Essex Historical Society, old portraits.—Governor Leverett; a dark moustachioed face, the figure two-thirds length, clothed in a sort of frock coat, buttoned, and a broad sword-belt girded round the waist, and fastened with a large steel buckle; the hilt of the sword steel,—altogether very striking. Sir William Pepperell in English regimentals, coat, waistcoat, and breeches, all of red broadcloth, richly gold-embroidered; he holds a general's truncheon in his right hand, and extends the left towards the batteries erected against Louisbourg, in the country near which he is standing. Endicott, Pyncheon, and others, in scarlet robes, bands, &c. Half a dozen or more family portraits of the Olivers, some in plain dresses, brown, crimson, or claret; others with gorgeous gold-embroidered waistcoats, descending almost to the knees, so as to form the most conspicuous article of dress. Ladies, with lace ruffles, the painting of which, in one of the pictures, cost five guineas. Peter Oliver, who was crazy, used to fight with these family pictures in the old Mansion House; and the face and breast of one lady bear cuts and stabs inflicted by him. Miniatures in oil, with the paint peeling off, of stern, old, yellow faces. Oliver Cromwell, apparently an old picture, half length or one third, in an oval frame, probably painted for some New England partisan. Some pictures that had been partly obliterated by scrubbing with sand. The dresses, embroidery, laces of the Oliver family are generally better done than the faces. Governor Leverett's gloves,—the glove-part of coarse leather, but round the wrist a deep three or four inch border of spangles and silver embroidery. Old drinking-glasses, with tall stalks. A black glass bottle, stamped with the name of Philip English, with a broad bottom. The baby-linen, &c. of Governor Bradford of Plymouth colony. Old manuscript sermons, some written in shorthand, others in a hand that seems learnt from print.

Nothing gives a stronger idea of old worm-eaten aristocracy—of a family being crazy with age, and of its being time that it was extinct—than these black, dusty, faded, antique-dressed portraits, such as those of the Oliver family; the identical old white wig of an ancient minister producing somewhat the impression that his very scalp, or some other portion of his personal self, would do.

The excruciating agonies which Nature inflicts on men (who break her laws) to be represented as the work of human tormentors; as the gout, by screwing the toes. Thus we might find that worse than the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition are daily suffered without exciting notice.

Suppose a married couple fondly attached to one another, and to think that they lived solely for one another; then it to be found out that they were divorced, or that they might separate if they chose. What would be its effect?

Monday, August 27th.—Went to Boston last Wednesday. Remarkables:—An author at the American Stationers' Company, slapping his hand on his manuscript, and crying, "I'm going to publish."—An excursion aboard a steamboat to Thompson's Island, to visit the Manual Labor School for boys. Aboard the steamboat several poets and various other authors; a Commodore,—Colton, a small, dark brown, sickly man, with a good deal of roughness in his address; Mr. Waterston, talking poetry and philosophy. Examination and exhibition of the boys, little tanned agriculturists. After examination, a stroll round the island, examining the products, as wheat in sheaves on the[Pg 424] stubble-field; oats, somewhat blighted and spoiled; great pumpkins elsewhere; pastures; mowing ground;—all cultivated by the boys. Their residence, a great brick building, painted green, and standing on the summit of a rising ground, exposed to the winds of the bay. Vessels flitting past; great ships, with intricacy of rigging and various sails; schooners, sloops, with their one or two broad sheets of canvas: going on different tacks, so that the spectator might think that there was a different wind for each vessel, or that they scudded across the sea spontaneously, whither their own wills led them. The farm boys remain insulated, looking at the passing show, within sight of the city, yet having nothing to do with it; beholding their fellow-creatures skimming by them in winged machines, and steamboats snorting and puffing through the waves. Methinks an island would be the most desirable of all landed property, for it seems like a little world by itself; and the water may answer instead of the atmosphere that surrounds planets. The boys swinging, two together, standing up, and almost causing the ropes and their bodies to stretch out horizontally. On our departure, they ranged themselves on the rails of the fence, and, being dressed in blue, looked not unlike a flock of pigeons.

On Friday, a visit to the Navy Yard at Charlestown, in company with the Naval Officer of Boston, and Cilley. Dined aboard the revenue cutter Hamilton. A pretty cabin, finished off with bird's-eye maple and mahogany; two looking-glasses. Two officers in blue frocks, with a stripe of lace on each shoulder. Dinner, chowder, fried fish, corned beef,—claret, afterwards champagne. The waiter tells the Captain of the cutter that Captain Percival (Commander of the Navy Yard) is sitting on the deck of the anchor hoy, (which lies inside of the cutter,) smoking his cigar. The Captain sends him a glass of champagne, and inquires of the waiter what Percival says to it. "He said, sir, 'What does he send me this damned stuff for?' but drinks, nevertheless." The Captain characterizes Percival as the roughest old devil that ever was in his manners, but a kind, good-hearted man at bottom. By and by comes in the steward. "Captain Percival is coming aboard of you, sir." "Well, ask him to walk down into the cabin"; and shortly down comes old Captain Percival, a white-haired, thin-visaged, weather-worn old gentleman, in a blue Quaker-cut coat, with tarnished lace and brass buttons, a pair of drab pantaloons, and brown waistcoat. There was an eccentric expression in his face, which seemed partly wilful, partly natural. He has not risen to his present rank in the regular line of the profession; but entered the navy as a sailing-master, and has all the roughness of that class of officers. Nevertheless, he knows how to behave and to talk like a gentleman. Sitting down, and taking in hand a glass of champagne, he began a lecture on economy, and how well it was that Uncle Sam had a broad back, being compelled to bear so many burdens as were laid on it,—alluding to the table covered with wine-bottles. Then he spoke of the fitting up of the cabin with expensive woods,—of the brooch in Captain Scott's bosom. Then he proceeded to discourse of politics, taking the opposite side to Cilley, and arguing with much pertinacity. He seems to have moulded and shaped himself to his own whims, till a sort of rough affectation has become thoroughly imbued throughout a kindly nature. He is full of antique prejudices against the modern fashions of the younger officers, their moustaches and such fripperies, and prophesies little better than disgrace in case of another war; owning that the boys would fight for their country, and die for her, but denying that there are any officers now like Hull and Stuart, whose exploits, nevertheless, he greatly depreciated, saying that the Boxer and Enterprise fought the only equal battle which we won during the war; and that, in that action, an officer had proposed to haul down the stars and stripes, and a common sailor threatened to cut him to pieces,[Pg 425] if he should do so. He spoke of Bainbridge as a sot and a poltroon, who wanted to run from the Macedonian, pretending to take her for a line-of-battle ship; of Commodore Elliot as a liar; but praised Commodore Downes in the highest terms. Percival seems to be the very pattern of old integrity; taking as much care of Uncle Sam's interests as if all the money expended were to come out of his own pocket. This quality was displayed in his resistance to the demand of a new patent capstan for the revenue-cutter, which, however, Scott is resolved in such a sailor-like way to get, that he will probably succeed. Percival spoke to me of how his business in the yard absorbed him, especially the fitting of the Columbus seventy-four, of which ship he discoursed with great enthusiasm. He seems to have no ambition beyond his present duties, perhaps never had any; at any rate, he now passes his life with a sort of gruff contentedness, grumbling and growling, yet in good humor enough. He is conscious of his peculiarities; for when I asked him whether it would be well to make a naval officer Secretary of the Navy, he said, "God forbid, for that an old sailor was always full of prejudices and stubborn whim-whams," instancing himself; whereto I agreed. We went round the Navy Yard with Percival and Commodore Downes, the latter a sailor and a gentleman too, with rather more of the ocean than the drawing-room about him, but courteous, frank, and good-natured. We looked at rope-walks, rigging-lofts, ships in the stocks; and saw the sailors of the station laughing and sporting with great mirth and cheerfulness, which the Commodore said was much increased at sea. We returned to the wharf at Boston in the cutter's boat. Captain Scott, of the cutter, told me a singular story of what occurred during the action between the Constitution and Macedonian,—he being powder-monkey aboard the former ship. A cannon-shot came through the ship's side, and a man's head was struck off, probably by a splinter, for it was done without bruising the head or body, as clean as by a razor. Well, the man was walking pretty briskly at the time of the accident; and Scott seriously affirmed that he kept walking onward at the same pace, with two jets of blood gushing from his headless trunk, till, after going about twenty feet without a head, he sunk down at once, with his legs under him.

[In corroboration of the truth of this, see Lord Bacon, Century IV. of his Sylva Sylvarum, or Natural History, in Ten Centuries, paragraph 400.]

On Saturday, I called to see E. H——, having previously appointed a meeting for the purpose of inquiring about our name. He is an old bachelor, and truly forlorn. The pride of ancestry seems to be his great hobby. He had a good many papers in his desk at the Custom-House, which he produced and dissertated upon, and afterwards went with me to his sister's, and showed me an old book, with a record of the children of the first emigrant, (who came over two hundred years ago,) in his own handwriting. E——'s manners are gentlemanly, and he seems to be very well informed. At a little distance, I think, one would take him to be not much over thirty; but nearer to hand one finds him to look rather venerable,—perhaps fifty or more. He is nervous, and his hands shook while he was looking over the papers, as if he had been startled by my visit; and when we came to the crossings of streets, he darted across, cautioning me, as if both were in great danger to be run over. Nevertheless, being very quick-tempered, he would face the Devil if at all irritated. He gave a most forlorn description of his life; how, when he came to Salem, there was nobody except Mr. —— whom he cared about seeing; how his position prevented him from accepting of civilities, because he had no home where he could return them; in short, he seemed about as miserable a being as is to be found anywhere,—lonely, and with the sensitiveness to feel his loneliness, and capacities, now withered,[Pg 426] to have enjoyed the sweets of life. I suppose he is comfortable enough when busied in his duties at the Custom-House; for when I spoke to him at my entrance, he was too much absorbed to hear me at first. As we walked, he kept telling stories of the family, which seemed to have comprised many oddities, eccentric men and women, recluses and other kinds,—one of old Philip English, (a Jersey man, the name originally L'Anglais,) who had been persecuted by John Hawthorne, of witch-time memory, and a violent quarrel ensued. When Philip lay on his death-bed, he consented to forgive his persecutor; "But if I get well," said he, "I'll be damned if I forgive him!" This Philip left daughters, one of whom married, I believe, the son of the persecuting John, and thus all the legitimate blood of English is in our family. E—— passed from the matters of birth, pedigree, and ancestral pride to give vent to the most arrant democracy and locofocoism that I ever happened to hear, saying that nobody ought to possess wealth longer than his own life, and that then it should return to the people, &c. He says old S. I—— has a great fund of traditions about the family, which she learned from her mother or grandmother, (I forget which,) one of them being a Hawthorne. The old lady was a very proud woman, and, as E—— says, "proud of being proud," and so is S. I——.

October 7th, 1837.—A walk in Northfields in the afternoon. Bright sunshine and autumnal warmth, giving a sensation quite unlike the same degree of warmth in summer. Oaks,—some brown, some reddish, some still green; walnuts, yellow,—fallen leaves and acorns lying beneath; the footsteps crumple them in walking. In sunny spots beneath the trees, where green grass is overstrewn by the dry, fallen foliage, as I passed I disturbed multitudes of grasshoppers basking in the warm sunshine; and they began to hop, hop, hop, pattering on the dry leaves like big and heavy drops of a thunder-shower. They were invisible till they hopped. Boys gathering walnuts. Passed an orchard, where two men were gathering the apples. A wagon, with barrels, stood among the trees; the men's coats flung on the fence; the apples lay in heaps, and each of the men was up in a separate tree. They conversed together in loud voices, which the air caused to ring still louder, jeering each other, boasting of their own feats in shaking down the apples. One got into, the very top of his tree, and gave a long and mighty shake, and the big apples came down thump, thump, bushels hitting on the ground at once. "There! did you ever hear anything like that?" cried he. This sunny scene was pretty. A horse feeding apart, belonging to the wagon. The barberry-bushes have some red fruit on them, but they are frost-bitten. The rose-bushes have their scarlet hips.

Distant clumps of trees, now that the variegated foliage adorns them, have a phantasmagorian, an apparition-like appearance. They seem to be of some kindred to the crimson and gold cloud-islands. It would not be strange to see phantoms peeping forth from their recesses. When the sun was almost below the horizon, his rays, gilding the upper branches of a yellow walnut-tree, had an airy and beautiful effect,—the gentle contrast between the tint of the yellow in the shade, and its ethereal gold in the fading sunshine. The woods that crown distant uplands were seen to great advantage in these last rays, for the sunshine perfectly marked out and distinguished every shade of color, varnishing them as it were; while, the country round, both hill and plain, being in gloomy shadow, the woods looked the brighter for it.

The tide, being high, had flowed almost into the Cold Spring, so its small current hardly issued forth from the basin. As I approached, two little eels, about as long as my finger, and slender in proportion, wriggled out of the basin. They had come from the salt water. An Indian-corn field, as yet unharvested,—huge, golden pumpkins scattered[Pg 427] among the hills of corn,—a noble-looking fruit. After the sun was down, the sky was deeply dyed with a broad sweep of gold, high towards the zenith; not flaming brightly, but of a somewhat dusky gold. A piece of water extending towards the west, between high banks, caught the reflection, and appeared like a sheet of brighter and more glistening gold than the sky which made it bright.

Dandelions and blue flowers are still growing in sunny places. Saw in a barn a prodigious treasure of onions in their silvery coats, exhaling a penetrating perfume.

How exceeding bright looks the sunshine, casually reflected from a looking-glass into a gloomy region of the chamber, distinctly marking out the figures and colors of the paper hangings, which are scarcely seen elsewhere. It is like the light of mind thrown on an obscure subject.

Man's finest workmanship, the closer you observe it, the more imperfections it shows; as in a piece of polished steel a microscope will discover a rough surface. Whereas, what may look coarse and rough in Nature's workmanship will show an infinitely minute perfection, the closer you look into it. The reason of the minute superiority of Nature's work over man's is, that the former works from the innermost germ, while the latter works merely superficially.

Standing in the cross-road that leads by the Mineral Spring, and looking towards an opposite shore of the lake, an ascending bank, with a dense border of trees, green, yellow, red, russet, all bright colors, brightened by the mild brilliancy of the descending sun; it was strange to recognize the sober old friends of spring and summer in this new dress. By the by, a pretty riddle or fable might be made out of the changes in apparel of the familiar trees round a house, adapted for children. But in the lake, beneath the aforesaid border of trees,—the water being, not rippled, but its glassy surface somewhat moved and shaken by the remote agitation of a breeze that was breathing on the outer lake,—this being in a sort of bay,—in the slightly agitated mirror, the variegated trees were reflected dreamily and indistinctly; a broad belt of bright and diversified colors shining in the water beneath. Sometimes the image of a tree might be almost traced; then nothing but this sweep of broken rainbow. It was like the recollection of the real scene in an observer's mind,—a confused radiance.

A whirlwind, whirling the dried leaves round in a circle, not very violently.

To well consider the characters of a family of persons in a certain condition,—in poverty, for instance,—and endeavor to judge how an altered condition would affect the character of each.

The aromatic odor of peat smoke in the sunny autumnal air is very pleasant.

Salem, October 14th, 1837.—A walk through Beverly to Browne's Hill, and home by the iron factory. A bright, cool afternoon. The trees, in a large part of the space through which I passed, appeared to be in their fullest glory, bright red, yellow, some of a tender green, appearing at a distance as if bedecked with new foliage, though this emerald tint was likewise the effect of frost. In some places, large tracts of ground were covered as with a scarlet cloth,—the underbrush being thus colored. The general character of these autumnal colors is not gaudy, scarcely gay; there is something too deep and rich in it: it is gorgeous and magnificent, but with a sobriety diffused. The pastures at the foot of Browne's Hill were plentifully covered with barberry-bushes, the leaves of which were reddish, and they were hung with a prodigious quantity of berries. From the summit of the hill, looking down a tract of woodland at a considerable distance,[Pg 428] so that the interstices between the trees could not be seen, their tops presented an unbroken level, and seemed somewhat like a richly variegated carpet. The prospect from the hill is wide and interesting; but methinks it is pleasanter in the more immediate vicinity of the hill than miles away. It is agreeable to look down at the square patches of corn-field, or of potato-ground, or of cabbages still green, or of beets looking red,—all a man's farm, in short,—each portion of which he considers separately so important, while you take in the whole at a glance. Then to cast your eye over so many different establishments at once, and rapidly compare them,—here a house of gentility, with shady old yellow-leaved elms hanging around it; there a new little white dwelling; there an old farm-house; to see the barns and sheds and all the outhouses clustered together; to comprehend the oneness and exclusiveness and what constitutes the peculiarity of each of so many establishments, and to have in your mind a multitude of them, each of which is the most important part of the world to those who live in it,—this really enlarges the mind, and you come down the hill somewhat wiser than you go up. Pleasant to look over an orchard far below, and see the trees, each casting its own shadow; the white spires of meeting-houses; a sheet of water, partly seen among swelling lands. This Browne's Hill is a long ridge, lying in the midst of a large, level plain; it looks at a distance somewhat like a whale, with its head and tail under water, but its immense back protruding, with steep sides, and a gradual curve along its length. When you have climbed it on one side, and gaze from the summit at the other, you feel as if you had made a discovery,—the landscape being quite different on the two sides. The cellar of the house which formerly crowned the hill, and used to be named Browne's Folly, still remains, two grass-grown and shallow hollows, on the highest part of the ridge. The house consisted of two wings, each perhaps sixty feet in length, united by a middle part, in which was the entrance-hall, and which looked lengthwise along the hill. The foundation of a spacious porch may be traced on either side of the central portion; some of the stones still remain; but even where they are gone, the line of the porch is still traceable by the greener verdure. In the cellar, or rather in the two cellars, grow one or two barberry-bushes, with frost-bitten fruit; there is also yarrow with its white flower, and yellow dandelions. The cellars are still deep enough to shelter a person, all but his head at least, from the wind on the summit of the hill; but they are all grass-grown. A line of trees seems to have been planted along the ridge of the hill. The edifice must have made quite a magnificent appearance.

Characteristics during the walk:—Apple-trees with only here and there an apple on the boughs, among the thinned leaves, the relics of a gathering. In others you observe a rustling, and see the boughs shaking and hear the apples thumping down, without seeing the person who does it. Apples scattered by the wayside, some with pieces bitten out, others entire, which you pick up, and taste, and find them harsh, crabbed cider-apples though they have a pretty, waxen appearance. In sunny spots of woodland, boys in search or nuts, looking picturesque among the scarlet and golden foliage. There is something in this sunny autumnal atmosphere that gives a peculiar effect to laughter and joyous voices,—it makes them infinitely more elastic and gladsome than at other seasons. Heaps of dry leaves, tossed together by the wind, as if for a couch and lounging-place for the weary traveller, while the sun is warming it for him. Golden pumpkins and squashes, heaped in the angle of a house, till they reach the lower windows. Ox-teams, laden with a rustling load of Indian corn, in the stalk and ear. When an inlet of the sea runs far up into the country, you stare to see a large schooner appear amid the rural landscape; she is unloading a cargo of wood, moist with rain or salt water that has dashed[Pg 429] over it. Perhaps you hear the sound of an axe in the woodland; occasionally, the report of a fowling-piece. The travellers in the early part of the afternoon look warm and comfortable, as if taking a summer drive; but as eve draws nearer, you meet them well wrapped in top-coats or cloaks, or rough, great surtouts, and red-nosed withal, seeming to take no great comfort, but pressing homeward. The characteristic conversation among teamsters and country squires, where the ascent of a hill causes the chaise to go at the same pace as an ox-team,—perhaps discussing the qualities of a yoke of oxen. The cold, blue aspects of sheets of water. Some of the country shops with the doors closed; others still open as in summer. I meet a wood-sawyer, with his horse and saw on his shoulders, returning from work. As night draws on, you begin to see the gleaming of fires on the ceilings in the houses which you pass. The comfortless appearance of houses at bleak and bare spots,—you wonder how there can be any enjoyment in them. I meet a girl in a chintz gown, with a small shawl on her shoulders, white stockings, and summer morocco shoes,—it looks observable. Turkeys, queer, solemn objects, in black attire, grazing about, and trying to peck the fallen apples, which slip away from their bills.

October 16th, 1837.—Spent the whole afternoon in a ramble to the sea-shore, near Phillips's Beach. A beautiful, warm, sunny afternoon, the very pleasantest day, probably, that there has been in the whole course of the year. People at work, harvesting, without their coats. Cocks, with their squad of hens, in the grass-fields, hunting grasshoppers, chasing them eagerly with outspread wings, appearing to take much interest in the sport, apart from the profit. Other hens picking up the ears of Indian corn. Grasshoppers, flies, and flying insects of all sorts, are more abundant in these warm autumnal days than I have seen them at any other time. Yellow butterflies flutter about in the sunshine, singly, by pairs, or more, and are wafted on the gentle gales. The crickets begin to sing early in the afternoon, and sometimes a locust may be heard. In some warm spots, a pleasant buzz of many insects.

Crossed the fields near Brookhouse's villa, and came upon a long beach,—at least a mile long, I should think,—terminated by craggy rocks at either end, and backed by a high, broken bank, the grassy summit of which, year by year, is continually breaking away, and precipitated to the bottom. At the foot of the bank, in some parts, is a vast number of pebbles and paving-stones, rolled up thither by the sea long ago. The beach is of a brown sand, with hardly any pebbles intermixed upon it. When the tide is part way down, there is a margin of several yards from the water's edge, along the whole mile length of the beach, which glistens like a mirror, and reflects objects, and shines bright in the sunshine, the sand being wet to that distance from the water. Above this margin the sand is not wet, and grows less and less damp the farther towards the bank you keep. In some places your footstep is perfectly implanted, showing the whole shape, and the square toe, and every nail in the heel of your boot. Elsewhere, the impression is imperfect, and even when you stamp, you cannot imprint the whole. As you tread, a dry spot flashes around your step, and grows moist as you lift your foot again. Pleasant to pass along this extensive walk, watching the surf-wave;—how sometimes it seems to make a feint of breaking, but dies away ineffectually, merely kissing the strand; then, after many such abortive efforts, it gathers itself, and forms a high wall, and rolls onward, heightening and heightening, without foam at the summit of the green line, and at last throws itself fiercely on the beach, with a loud roar, the spray flying above. As you walk along, you are preceded by a flock of twenty or thirty beach birds, which are seeking, I suppose, for food on the margin of the surf, yet seem to be merely sporting, chasing the sea as[Pg 430] it retires, and running up before the impending wave. Sometimes they let it bear them off their feet, and float lightly on its breaking summit: sometimes they flutter and seem to rest on the feathery spray. They are little birds with gray backs and snow-white breasts; their images may be seen in the wet sand almost or full as distinctly as the reality. Their legs are long. As you draw near, they take a flight of a score of yards or more, and then recommence their dalliance with the surf-wave. You may behold their multitudinous little tracks all along your way. Before you reach the end of the beach, you become quite attached to these little sea-birds, and take much interest in their occupations. After passing in one direction, it is pleasant then to retrace your footsteps. Your tracks being all traceable, you may recall the whole mood and occupation of your mind during your first passage. Here you turned somewhat aside to pick up a shell that you saw nearer the water's edge. Here you examined a long sea-weed, and trailed its length after you for a considerable distance. Here the effect of the wide sea struck you suddenly. Here you fronted the ocean, looking at a sail, distant in the sunny blue. Here you looked at some plant on the bank. Here some vagary of mind seems to have bewildered you; for your tracks go round and round, and interchange each other without visible reason. Here you picked up pebbles and skipped them upon the water. Here you wrote names and drew faces with a razor sea-shell in the sand.

After leaving the beach, clambered over crags, all shattered and tossed about everyhow; in some parts curiously worn and hollowed out, almost into caverns. The rock, shagged with sea-weed,—in some places, a thick carpet of sea-weed laid over the pebbles, into which your foot would sink. Deep tanks among these rocks, which the sea replenishes at high tide, and then leaves the bottom all covered with various sorts of sea-plants, as if it were some sea-monster's private garden. I saw a crab in one of them; five-fingers too. From the edge of the rocks, you may look off into deep, deep water, even at low tide. Among the rocks, I found a great bird, whether a wild-goose, a loon, or an albatross, I scarcely know. It was in such a position that I almost fancied it might be asleep, and therefore drew near softly, lest it should take flight; but it was dead, and stirred not when I touched it. Sometimes a dead fish was cast up. A ledge of rocks, with a beacon upon it, looking like a monument erected to those who have perished by shipwreck. The smoked, extempore fireplace where a party cooked their fish. About midway on the beach, a fresh-water brooklet flows towards the sea. Where it leaves the land, it is quite a rippling little current; but in flowing across the sand, it grows shallower and more shallow, and at last is quite lost, and dies in the effort to carry its little tribute to the main.

An article to be made of telling the stories of the tiles of an old-fashioned chimney-piece to a child.

A person conscious that he was soon to die, the humor in which he would pay his last visit to familiar persons and things.

A description of the various classes of hotels and taverns, and the prominent personages in each. There should be some story connected with it,—as of a person commencing with boarding at a great hotel, and gradually, as his means grew less, descending in life, till he got below ground into a cellar.

A person to be in the possession of something as perfect as mortal man has a right to demand; he tries to make it better, and ruins it entirely.

A person to spend all his life and splendid talents in trying to achieve something naturally impossible,—as to make a conquest over Nature.[Pg 431]

Meditations about the main gas-pipe of a great city,—if the supply were to be stopped, what would happen? How many different scenes it sheds light on? It might be made emblematical of something.

December 6th, 1837.—A fairy tale about chasing Echo to her hiding-place. Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.

A house to be built over a natural spring of inflammable gas, and to be constantly illuminated therewith. What moral could be drawn from this? It is carburetted hydrogen gas, and is cooled from a soft shale or slate, which is sometimes bituminous, and contains more or less carbonate of lime. It appears in the vicinity of Lockport and Niagara Falls, and elsewhere in New York. I believe it indicates coal. At Fredonia, the whole village is lighted by it. Elsewhere, a farm-house was lighted by it, and no other fuel used in the coldest weather.

Gnomes, or other mischievous little fiends, to be represented as burrowing in the hollow teeth of some person who has subjected himself to their power. It should be a child's story. This should be one of many modes of petty torment. They should be contrasted with beneficent fairies, who minister to the pleasures of the good.

A man will undergo great toil and hardship for ends that must be many years distant,—as wealth or fame,—but none for an end that may be close at hand,—as the joys of heaven.

Insincerity in a man's own heart must make all his enjoyments, all that concerns him, unreal; so that his whole life must seem like a merely dramatic representation. And this would be the case, even though he were surrounded by true-hearted relatives and friends.

A company of men, none of whom have anything worth hoping for on earth, yet who do not look forward to anything beyond earth!

Sorrow to be personified, and its effect on a family represented by the way in which the members of the family regard this dark-clad and sad-browed inmate.

A story to show how we are all wronged and wrongers, and avenge one another.

To personify winds of various characters.

A man living a wicked life in one place, and simultaneously a virtuous and religious one in another.

An ornament to be worn about the person of a lady,—as a jewelled heart. After many years, it happens to be broken or unscrewed, and a poisonous odor comes out.

Lieutenant F. W—— of the navy was an inveterate duellist and an unerring shot. He had taken offence at Lieutenant F——, and endeavored to draw him into a duel, following him to the Mediterranean for that purpose, and harassing him intolerably. At last, both parties being in Massachusetts, F—— determined to fight, and applied to Lieutenant A—— to be his second. A—— examined into the merits of the quarrel, and came to the conclusion that F—— had not given F. W—— justifiable cause for driving him to a duel, and that he ought not to be shot. He instructed F—— in the use of the pistol, and, before the meeting, warned him, by all means, to get the first fire; for that, if F. W—— fired first, he, F——, was infallibly a dead man, as his antagonist could shoot to a hair's breadth. The parties met; and F——, firing immediately on the word's being given, shot F. W—— through the heart. F. W——, with a most savage expression of countenance, fired, after the bullet had gone through his heart, and when the blood had entirely left his[Pg 432] face, and shot away one of F——'s side-locks. His face probably looked as if he were already in the infernal regions; but afterwards it assumed an angelic calmness and repose.

A company of persons to drink a certain medicinal preparation, which would prove a poison, or the contrary, according to their different characters.

Many persons, without a consciousness of so doing, to contribute to some one end; as to a beggar's feast, made up of broken victuals from many tables; or a patch carpet, woven of shreds from innumerable garments.

Some very famous jewel or other thing, much talked of all over the world. Some person to meet with it, and get possession of it in some unexpected manner, amid homely circumstances.

To poison a person or a party of persons with the sacramental wine.

A cloud in the shape of an old woman kneeling, with arms extended towards the moon.

On being transported to strange scenes, we feel as if all were unreal. This is but the perception of the true unreality of earthly things, made evident by the want of congruity between ourselves and them. By and by we become mutually adapted, and the perception is lost.

An old looking-glass. Somebody finds out the secret of making all the images that have been reflected in it pass back again across its surface.

Our Indian races having reared no monuments, like the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, when they have disappeared from the earth, their history will appear a fable, and they misty phantoms.

A woman to sympathize with all emotions, but to have none of her own.

A portrait of a person in New England to be recognized as of the same person represented by a portrait, in Old England. Having distinguished himself there, he had suddenly vanished, and had never been heard of till he was thus discovered to be identical with a distinguished man in New England.

SAINTE-BEUVE.

The lives of French men of letters, at least during the last two centuries, have never been isolated or obscure. Had Rousseau been born on the borders of Loch Lomond, he might have proved in his own person, and without interruption, the superiority of the savage state; and after his death the information in regard to him would have been fragmentary and uncertain. But born on the shores of Lake Leman, centralization laid its grasp upon him, drew him into the vortex of the "great world," and caused his name to figure in all the questions, the quarrels, and the scandals of his day.

The truth is, that literature is a far more important element of society in France than elsewhere. We seldom think of a French author, without recalling the history and the manners of his time. In reading a French play, though it be a tragedy of Racine or a comedy of Molière, we are reminded[Pg 433] of the spectators before whom it was brought out. In reading a French book, though it be Pascal's "Thoughts" or the "Characters" of La Bruyère, our minds are continually diverted from the matter of the work to the circumstances under which it was written and the public for whom it was intended.

Generally, indeed, the author, however full of his subject, has evidently been thinking of his readers. His tone is that of a speaker with his audience before him. Madame de Staël actually composed in conversation, and her works are little more than imperfect records of her eloquent discourse. Innumerable productions have been read aloud, or handed round in private coteries, before being revised and published. The very excellence of the workmanship, if nothing else, shows that the article is "custom made." Even if the matter be poor, the writing is almost sure to be good. French literature abounds, beyond every other, in readable books,—books such as are welcomed by the mass of cultivated persons. It excels, in short, as a literature of the salon, rather than of the study.

As a natural corollary, criticism occupies a more distinct and prominent place in the literature of France than in that of any other nation. Every writer is sure of being heard, sure of being discussed, sure of being judged. This may not always have been favorable to originality. A fixed standard,—which is a necessary consequence,—though the guardian of taste, is a bar to innovation. When, however, the bar has been actually crossed, when encroachment has once obtained a footing, French criticism is swift to adjust itself to the new conditions imposed upon it, to widen its sphere and to institute fresh comparisons.

The present position of French criticism, its connection with the general course of literature and of society from the fall of the first Empire to the establishment of the second,—a period of remarkable effervescence and even fertility,—will be best illustrated by a sketch of the writings and career of M. Sainte-Beuve. He is, it is true, one of a group, compromising such critics as Villemain, Cousin, Vinet, Planche, Taine, and Scherer; but his name is more intimately associated than any of these with the progress and fluctuations of opinion and of taste. His notices of his contemporaries have been by far the most copious and assiduous. His literary life, extending over forty years, embraces the rise and the decline of what is known as the Romantic School; and during all this period his course, whether we regard it as that of a leader or of a follower, has harmonized singularily with the tendencies of the age.

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was born at Boulogne—a town not fruitful in distinguished names—on the 23d of December, 1804. His father, who had held an employment under the government, died two days before the birth of the son. His mother was the daughter of an Englishwoman,—a circumstance which has been thought to account for the appreciation he has shown of English poetry. The notion would be more plausible if there were any poetry which he has failed to appreciate. But when it is added that she was a woman of remarkable intelligence and sensibility, we recognize a fact of which the influence can neither be doubted nor defined.

After several years of prepatory instruction at a boarding-school in his native place, he was sent to Paris, when thirteen years old, and entered successively in several of the educational establishments which had succeeded to the ancient University. His studies, everywhere crowned with honors, were completed by a second course of rhetoric at the Collége Bourbon, in 1822. He afterwards, however, attended the lectures of Guizot, Villemain, and other distinguished professors at the Sorbonne. A hostile critic, though seven years his junior, professes to retain a distinct recollection of him at this period: "Among the most assiduous and most attentive auditors was a young man whose face, irregular in outline[Pg 434] but marvellously intelligent, reflected every thought and image of the speaker, almost as rivers reflect the landscape that unrolls itself along their banks. When I add that the volatile waves incessantly efface what they have just before reflected, the comparison will appear only the more exact." To an impartial inquirer it might appear singularly inexact; but having picked up the shaft, we shall not at present stop to examine whether it be poisoned.

On quitting college, M. Sainte-Beuve made choice of medicine as his profession. He threw himself with enthusiasm into the study of anatomy, and soon qualified himself for an appointment as externe at the Hospital of Saint Louis. This ardor, however, far from indicating the particular bent of his mind, proceeded from that eager curiosity which is ready to enter every avenue and knock at every door by which the domain of knowledge can be approached. With the faculties he was endowed with, and the training he had received, it was impossible that he should lose in any special pursuit his interest in general literature. His fellow-townsman and former master in rhetoric, M. Dubois, having become the principal editor of the newly founded "Globe," invited his co-operation. Accordingly, in 1824, he began to contribute critical and historical articles to that journal; and three years later he resigned his post at the hospital, with the purpose of devoting himself exclusively to literary pursuits.

The period was in the highest degree favorable to the development and display of his talent. The literary revolution, which in Germany and England had already passed through its principal stages, had as yet scarcely penetrated into France. It had been heralded, indeed, by Chateaubriand, at the beginning of the century; and Madame de Staël, some few years later, had come into contact with the reigning chiefs of German literature, and had made known to her countrymen their character and activity. But the energies of France were then absorbed in enterprises of another kind. It was not till peace had been restored, and a new generation, ardent, susceptible, as eager for novelty as the veterans were impatient of it, had come upon the stage, that the requisite impulse was given. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Mérimée, Alfred de Vigny, and other young men of genius, were just opening the assault on the citadel of classicisme. Conventional rules were set at defiance; the authorities that had so long held sway were summoned to abdicate; nature, truth, above all passion, were invoked as the sources of inspiration, the law-givers of the imagination, the sole arbiters of style. As usual, the movement extended beyond its legitimate sphere. Not only the forms, but the ideas, not only the traditions, but the novelties, of the eighteenth century were to be discarded. In fact, the period, though favorable to literary development, was, on the surface at least, one of political and religious reaction; and reaction often assumes the aspect of progress, nay, in some cases is identical with progress. Most of the poets, dramatists, and other writers of the Romantic School were, either by affinity or predilection, legitimists and neo-Catholics. Gothic art, mediæval sentiment, the ancient monarchy and the ancient creed, were blended in their programme with the abrogation of the "unities," and a greater license of poetical expression.

Imbued with the precepts of a former age, and fresh from the study of its masterpieces, M. Sainte-Beuve was at first repelled by the mutinous attitude of the new aspirants. He made his début in an attack upon the "Odes and Ballads" of Victor Hugo. But his opposition quickly yielded to the force of the attraction. Nature had given him a peculiar mobility of temperament, and a strong instinctive sense of beauty under every diversity of form. Moreover, resistance would have been useless and Quixotic. In literature, as in politics, dynasties perish through their own weakness. The classical school of France had no living representative[Pg 435] around whom its adherents could have rallied. Its only watchword was "The Past," which is always an omen of defeat.

Properly speaking, therefore, M. Sainte-Beuve began his career, not as an opponent, but as the champion of the new school. He entered into personal and intimate relations with its leaders, joined, as a member of the Cénacle, in the discussion of their plans, attended the private readings of "Cromwell" and other works by which the breach was to be forced, and took upon himself the task of justifying innovation, and securing its reception with a hesitating public. Hence his criticism at this period was, as he himself has styled it, "polemical" and "aggressive." It was, however, neither violent nor sophistical. On the contrary, it was distinguished by the candor and the suavity of its tone. Goethe, who watched from afar a movement which, directly or indirectly, owed much to German inspiration, was particularly struck with this trait. "Our scholars," he remarked to Eckermann, "think it necessary to hate whoever differs from them in opinion; but the writers in the Globe know how to blame with refinement and courtesy."

At home many, without being converted, were propitiated, and some, while still hostile or indifferent to the new literature, became warmly interested in its advocate. At the suggestion of Daunou, one of the most distinguished among the survivors of the Revolutionary epoch, he undertook a work on early French literature, with the intention of competing for a prize offered by the Academy. But his plan soon deviated from that which had been assigned; and his researches, more limited in their scope, but far deeper and more minute, than had been demanded, gave birth to a volume, published in 1828, under the title of Tableau historique et critique de la Poésie française et du Théâtre français au seizième Siécle. It was received with general favor. Some of the author's principles were strenuously disputed; but he was admitted to have made many discoveries in literary history, and to have introduced an entirely new method of criticism. Perhaps it would be more correct to say, that he had carried the torch of an enlightened judgment into a period which the brilliancy of succeeding epochs had thrown into obscurity.

In 1829 M. Sainte-Beuve published a volume of poetry, Poésies de Joseph Delorme, followed, in 1830, by another, entitled Consolations, and some years later by a third, Pensées d'Août. Although different degrees of merit have been assigned to these productions, their general character is the same. They exhibit, not the fire and inspiration of the true poetical temperament, but the experiments of a mind gifted with delicacy of sentiment and susceptible of varied impressions, in quest of appropriate forms and a deeper comprehension of the sources from which language derives its power as a vehicle of art. The influence of Wordsworth is observable in a studied familiarity of diction, as well as in the tendency to versify every thought or emotion suggested by daily observation. These peculiarities, coupled with the frequency of bold ellipses, provoked discussion, and seemed to promise a fresh expansion of poetical forms, in a somewhat different direction from that of the Romanticists. But it was not in this department that M. Sainte-Beuve was destined to become the founder of a school. His poetical talent, though unquestionable, had been bestowed, not as a special attribute, but as an auxiliary of other faculties granted in a larger measure. He has himself not only recognized its limits, but shown an inclination to underrate its value. "I have often thought," he remarks in one of his later papers, "that a critic who would attain to largeness of view would be better without any artistic faculty of his own. Goethe alone, by the universality of his poetical genius, was able to apply it in the estimation of what others had produced; in every species of composition he was entitled to say, 'Had I chosen, I could have given a perfect[Pg 436] specimen of this.' But one who possesses only a single circumscribed talent should, in becoming a critic, forget it, bury it, and confess to himself that Nature is more bountiful and more varied than she showed herself in creating him. Incomplete artists, let us strive for an intelligence wider than our own talent,—than the best we are capable of producing."

To the same period—perhaps to the same spirit of investigation and experiment—belongs the single prose work of fancy which has proceeded from his pen. It is a species of romance, bearing the title of Volupté, and designed to exhibit the struggle between the senses and the soul, or, more strictly speaking, the effect upon the intellectual nature of an early captivity to the pleasures of sense. The hero, Amaury, after a youth of indulgence, finds himself in the prime of his manhood, with his powers of perception and of thought vigorous and matured, but incapable of acting, of willing, or of loving. He inspires love, but cannot return it; he feels, he admires, but he shrinks from any step demanding resolution or self-devotion. Hence, instead of conferring happiness, he makes victims,—victims not of an active, but of a merely passive and negative egotism. A conjunction of circumstances brings him to a sudden and vivid realization of his condition and its results. Instead of escaping by suicide, as might be expected,—and as would probably have been the case if Werther had not forestalled him,—he breaks loose from his thraldom by a supreme effort, and finds in the faith and sacrifices of a religious life the means of restoration and of permanent freedom. He enters a seminary, is ordained priest, and performs the funeral rites of the woman whose affection for him had been the most ardent and exalted, and whom his purified heart could have best repaid.

In form, the work is an autobiography. The thoughts with which it teems are delicate and subtile; the style, somewhat labored and over-refined, is in contrast with that of the Poésies, while it betrays the same struggle for a greater amplitude and independence. In point of art the book appears to us a failure. The theme is not objectionable in itself. It is similar to that of many works which have sprung from certain phases of individual experience. But if such experience is to be idealized, its origin should disappear. Shakespeare may have undergone all the conflicts of doubt and irresolution represented in "Hamlet"; but in reading "Hamlet" we think, not of Shakespeare's conflicts, but of our own. Volupté is too palpably a confession. The story is not a creation; it has been simply evolved by that process of thought which transports a particular idiosyncrasy into conditions and circumstances where it becomes a kind of destiny and a subject of speculation. Reality is wanting, for the very reason that the Imagination, after being called into play, has proved too feeble for her office. Herein Amaury differs widely from René. Apart from the difference of power, Chateaubriand had poured out his entire self; he had transcended the limits of his actual life, but never those of his mental experience. M. Sainte-Beuve had felt only a part of what he sought to depict; the rest he had conjectured or borrowed. The pages which describe the hero's impressions and emotions in consecrating himself to the service of the Church were written by Lacordaire. They are a faithful transcript from nature, but from a nature not at all resembling that to which they have been applied. The circumstances under which the book was composed will exhibit the difference. The author was then intimate with Lamennais, whose eloquent voice, soon afterwards to be raised in support of the opposite cause, was proclaiming the sternest doctrines of a renovated Catholicism. A spell which acted so widely and so marvellously could not be altogether unfelt by a mind whose peculiar property it was to yield itself to every influence in order to extort its secret and comprehend its power. Beyond this point the magic failed. "In[Pg 437] all my transitions,"—thus he has written of himself,—"I have never alienated my judgment and my will; I have never pledged my belief. But I had a power of comprehending persons and things which gave rise to the strongest hopes on the part of those who wished to convert me and who thought me entirely their own." Thus Lamartine, in a rapturous strain, had congratulated himself on having been the instrument of saving his friend from the abysm of unbelief. When Lamennais was forming the group of disciples who retired with him to La Chesnaye, M. Sainte-Beuve was invited to join them. While declining the proposal, he imagined the position in which he might have been led to embrace it, and—wrote Volupté.

The revolution of 1830, with the events that led to it, marks a turning-point in literary as well as in political history. The public mind was in a state of ebullition very unlike that of an ordinary political contest, in which one party pulls while the other applies the drag, one seeks to maintain, the other to destroy. All parties were pulling in different directions; all sought to destroy, in order to reconstruct; principles, except with the extremists, were simply expedients, adopted to-day, abandoned on the morrow. Nor is this to be explained, as English writers generally explain it, by the mere volatility of the French temperament. In England, an established basis of political power is slowly but constantly expanding; privilege crumbles and wears away under the gradual action of democracy; concession on the one side, moderation on the other, are perfectly feasible, and obviate the necessity for sudden ruptures and violent transitions. But in France the question created by past convulsions, and left unsolved by recent experiments, was this: What is the basis of power? Privilege had been so shorn that those who desired to make that the foundation were necessarily not conservatives, but reactionists. On the other hand, if popular power were to be accepted in its widest sense, then a thousand questions, a thousand differences of opinion in regard to the mode, the form, the application, would naturally spring up. Besides, would it not be safer, wiser, to modify ideas by experience, to look abroad for patterns, to seek for an equilibrium, a juste milieu? Thus there was a diversity of systems, but all contemplative of change. No one was in favor of standing still, for there was nothing to stand upon. In a word, the agitation was not so much one of measures, of principles, or of prejudices, as of ideas.

Now in an agitation of this kind, literary men—that is to say, the men whose business is to think—are likely to be active, and in France, at least, are apt to become prominent and influential. But they, of all men, by the very fact that they think, are least under the control of party affinities and fixed doctrines, the most liable to be swayed by discussion and reflection. Hence the spectacle, so frequent at that time and since, of men distinguished in the world of letters passing from the ranks of the legitimists into those of the republicans, from the advocacy of papal supremacy in temporal affairs to that of popular supremacy in religious affairs, from the defence of a landed aristocracy to the demand for a community of property; and afterwards, in many instances, returning with the backward current, abjuring freedom and embracing imperialism.

In the case of M. Sainte-Beuve the changes were neither so abrupt nor so complete as in that of many others. But his course was still more meandering, skirting the bases of opposite systems, abiding with none. Never a blind adherent or a vehement opponent, he glided almost imperceptibly from camp to camp. He consorted, as we have seen, with legitimists and neo-Catholics, and allowed himself to be reckoned as one of them. Through the columns of the Globe, which had now become the organ of the Saint-Simonians, he invited the Romanticists to "step forth from the circle of pure art, and diffuse the doctrines of a progressive humanity." On the advent of Louis Philippe,[Pg 438] he was inclined to accept the constitutional régime as the triumph of good sense, as affording a practical solution and a promise of stability. But he appears soon to have lost his faith in a government too narrow in policy, too timid in action, too vulgar in aspect, to satisfy a cultivated Parisian taste.

A similar flexibility will be noticed in his literary judgments. Shall we then pronounce him a very chameleon in politics and in art? Shall we say, with the critic already quoted, M. de Pontmartin, that his mental hues have been simply reflections, effaced as rapidly as they were made? On the contrary, we believe that he, of all men, has retained the various impressions he has once received. Unlike so many others, who, in changing their views, have contradicted all their former utterances, disowned their former selves, undergone a sort of bisection into two irreconcilable halves, M. Sainte-Beuve has linked one opinion with another, modified each by its opposite, and thus preserved his continuity and cohesion. "Everything has two names," to use his own expression, and he has never been content with knowing only one of them. Guided by a sympathetic intelligence, adopting, not symbols, but ideas, he has, by force of penetration and comprehension, extracted the essence of each doctrine in turn. His changes therefore indicate, not superficiality, but depth. He is no more chargeable with volatility than society itself. Like it he is a seeker, listening to every proposition, accepting what is vital, rejecting what is merely formal. There is not one of the systems which have been presented, however contrasted they may appear, but has left its impress upon society,—not one but has left its impress on the mind and opinions of M. Sainte-Beuve.

In one particular—the most essential, in reality, of all—his constancy has been remarkable. He has remained true to his vocation. At the moment when his literary brethren, availing themselves of the opening we have noticed, were rushing into public life,—scholars and professors becoming ambassadors and ministers of state, poets and novelists mounting the tribune and the hustings, historians descending into the arena of political journalism,—M. Sainte-Beuve settled himself more firmly in the chair of criticism, concentrating his powers on the specialty to which they were so peculiarly adapted. His opportunities for doing this more effectively were themselves among the results of the events already mentioned. A greater freedom and activity of discussion demanded new and ampler organs. Cliques had been broken up; co-workers, brought together by sympathy, separated by the clash of opinions and ambitions, had dispersed; both in literature and in politics a wider, more inquisitive, more sympathetic public was to be addressed. Already in 1829, Véron, one of those shrewd and speculative—we hardly know whether to call them men of business or adventurers, who foresee such occasions, had set up the Revue de Paris, on a more extended plan than that of any previous French journal of the kind. The opening article of the first number was from the pen of M. Sainte-Beuve. But this undertaking was subsequently merged in that of the Revue des Deux Mondes, which, after one or two abortive beginnings, was fairly started in January, 1831, and soon assumed the position it has ever since retained, at the head of the publications of its class. It enlisted among its contributors nearly all the leading writers of the day, none of whom was so regular and permanent, none of whom did so much to build up its reputation and confer upon it the stamp of authority, as M. Sainte-Beuve. His connection with it extended over seventeen years, the period between the last two revolutions. His papers seem to have averaged five or six a year. They form, with those which had been previously inserted in the Revue de Paris, a series of Portraits, now embraced in seven volumes, and divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into Portraits littéraires, Portraits contemporains,[Pg 439] and Portraits de Femmes. The names included, which with few exceptions are those of French writers, belong to different epochs, different schools, and different departments of literature. Many are famous; some are obscure; not a few, which had before been overlooked or overshadowed, owe the recognition they have since received to their admission into a gallery where the places have been assigned and the lights distributed by no partial or incompetent umpire.

In the case of any kind of literature, but especially in that of criticism, it is interesting to have an author's own ideas of his office and art. The motto of the Edinburgh Review—"Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur"—was a very good indication of the spirit of its founders, whose legal habits and aspirations naturally suggested the spectacle of a court, in which the critic as judge was to sit upon the bench, and the author as prisoner was to stand at the bar. Had Jeffries, instead of Jeffrey, presided over the assizes, they could not have been gayer or bloodier. It is interesting to remember that among the criminals sentenced without reprieve were the greatest poet and the most original thinker of the time. A journal which has earned something of the prestige that attached to the youthful Edinburgh takes a not very different view of its own functions. "An author may wince under criticism," say the writers of the Saturday Review; "but is the master to leave off flogging because the pupil roars?" Here, too, the notion of the relative position of author and critic is perfectly natural. Young gentlemen, with a lively recollection of their own construings and birchings, are only too happy in the opportunity of sitting with bent brows and uplifted rod, watching for a false quantity or similar peccadillo, which may justify a withering rebuke or a vigorous flagellation. If we add, that these writers exhibit that accuracy of statement which usually accompanies the assumption of infallibility, and that their English is of that prim and painful kind, common to pedagogues, which betrays a constant fear of being caught tripping while engaged in correcting others, the comparison—to cite once more M. de Pontmartin—"will appear only the more exact." We forbear to descend to a far lower class, judges who know nothing of law, masters who have never been scholars, truly "incomplete artists" who cannot "forget or bury" their own extremely "circumscribed talent," but who are perfectly willing to bury, and would fain induce the world to forget, that of every suspected rival.

Had M. Sainte-Beuve entered upon his task with similar conceptions and associations, his early anatomical studies would perhaps have suggested the patient under the scalpel as an appropriate device. But we are in danger of dishonoring him by the mere supposition. Scattered through his works—beginning with the earliest and coming down to the latest—we find such sentences as the following: "The critical spirit is in its nature facile, insinuating, mobile, and comprehensive; it is a great and limpid river, which winds and spreads itself around the productions and the monuments of genius." "The best and surest way to penetrate and to judge any writer, any man, is to listen to him,—to listen long and intently: do not press him; let him move and display himself with freedom, and of himself he will tell you all about himself; he will imprint himself upon your mind. Be assured that in the long run no man, no writer, above all no poet, will preserve his secret." "It is by virtue of an exquisite analogy that the word 'taste' has prevailed over the word 'judgment.' Judgment! I know minds which possess it in a high degree, but which are yet wanting in taste; for taste expresses what is finest and most instinctive in an organ which is at once the most delicate and the most complex." "To know how to read a book, judging it as we go along, but never ceasing to taste it,—in this consists almost the whole art of criticism." "What Bacon says as to the proper mode of[Pg 440] educing the natural meaning from Scripture may be applied to ancient writings of all kinds, or even to the most modern. The best and sweetest criticism is that which exudes from a good book, not pressed as in a wine-press, but squeezed gently in a free reading. I love that criticism should be an emanation from the book." "Whenever I speak of a writer, I prefer to exhibit him in the brightest and happiest hour of his talent, to place him, if possible, directly under the rays." "The greatest triumph of criticism is when it recognizes the arrival of a power, the advent of a genius." "I cannot admit that the best mode of correcting a talent which is in process of development is to begin by throwing an inkstand at its head." "I am almost frightened at seeing to what an extent literary criticism becomes difficult, when it refrains from arrogance and from insult, claiming for itself both an honest freedom of judgment and the right to participate largely in the bestowment of deserved praise, as well as to maintain a certain cordiality even in its reservations." "If Diderot was as far as possible from being a dramatic poet, if he was destitute of that supreme creative power which involves the transformation of an author's own personality, he possessed, on the other hand, in the highest degree, that faculty of demi-metamorphosis which is the exercise and the triumph of criticism, and which consists in putting one's self in the the place of the author, occupying the point of view to the subject under examination, and reading every writing in the spirit by which it was dictated."

Let us admit that these are not so much absolute principles of criticism as the features which characterize that of the writer himself and the method which he has almost involuntarily pursued. Let us admit this, and in doing so we concede to him all the qualities that are rarest and most desirable in his art,—impartiality, sincerity, disinterestedness; freedom from theory, from passion, and from prejudice; insight, comprehension, sensitiveness to every trait and every kind of beauty and of power; a patient ardor and pure delight in acquisition, and a generous desire, in the interest of literature itself, to communicate the results and inspire similar feelings. Without denying that all good criticism will partake more or less largely of these qualities, or that some of them have been more abundantly possessed, more profoundly applied, by others, we believe that it would be difficult to cite an instance in which they have been so entirely combined or so continuously exercised. M. Sainte-Beuve is pre-eminently an artist in criticism. He has exhibited that self-absorption which it is easy to imagine, easy to find examples of, in poetry, in painting, and in music, but which in criticism had hitherto been hardly conceivable. "There is in him," wrote Gustave Planche in 1834,—and the force of the eulogy is in no degree impaired by subsequent censures from the same quarter,—"a happy mingling of enthusiasm and curiosity, renewed in proportion as they are appeased, and enrolled in the service of all nascent or unrecognized abilities.... He speaks the truth for the sole pleasure of speaking it, and asks no gratitude either from the disciples whom he initiates or from the new deities whom he exalts.... Whenever he finds a poet not sufficiently listened to, he aims to enlarge the audience, erects a stage on which to place him, and arranges everything for enabling him to produce the fullest effect.... Before him French criticism, when it was not either acrimonious or simply learned, consisted in a mere commonplace repetition of precepts and formulas of which the sense had been lost. His perpetual mobility is but a constant good faith; he believes in the most opposite schools, because believing is with him only a mode of comprehending."

Let it not be supposed from this description that M. Sainte-Beuve is wanting in acuteness, that his enthusiasm predominates over his sagacity. On the contrary, there is no keener eye than his for whatever is false, pretentious, or unsound. His sure instinct[Pg 441] quickly separates the gold from the alloy. Unlike the critics of the nil admirari school, whose reluctance to trust themselves to their emotions proceeds in great part from the absence of this instinct, he is proof against the approaches of the charlatan, and has never debased the word "art" by applying it to a mere melodramatic mechanism. But he rightly considers the office of the detector as insignificant in comparison with that of the discoverer, and his glow of satisfaction is reserved for the nobler employment. The points on which he insists are the obligation of honestly desiring to understand an author; the impropriety of fastening on defects, or of simply balancing between defects and merits; the duty of approving with heartiness and warmth, in place of that cold-blooded moderation which he pronounces, with Vauvenargues, "a sure sign of mediocrity." If, therefore, we say that his is only one species of criticism, we cannot deny its claim to be entitled the "criticism of appreciation." It is thus the exact reverse of that species to which we have before alluded, and which deserves to be called the "criticism of depreciation."

We come now to the particular characteristics of the Portraits, the manner in which the author has there applied his principles. "I have never," he remarks in a recent defence, "vaunted my method as a discovery, or affected to guard it as a secret." It involves, however, both the one and the other. The discovery consists in the perception of the truth that an author is always in his works; that he cannot help being there; that no reticence, no pretences, no disguises, will avail to hide him. The secret lies in the skill with which the search is pursued and the object revealed. We do not, of course, mean to say that M. Sainte-Beuve is the originator of biographical criticism, which in England especially, favored by the portly Reviews, has been carried to an extent undreamt of elsewhere. But in general it may be noticed that English articles of this kind have been simply biographies accompanied with criticism; their model is to be found in Johnson's "Lives of the Poets." The critical articles of Mr. Carlyle are a striking exception. Of Carlyle it may be said, as it has been said of M. Sainte-Beuve, that "what chiefly interests him in a book is the author, and in the author the very mystery of his personality." In other words, each looks upon a literary work, not as the production of certain impersonal intellectual faculties, but as a manifestation of the author in the totality of his nature. But while the point of view is thus identical, there is little similarity in the treatment. In the one case a powerful imagination causes the figure to stand out in bold relief, while a luminous humor plays upon every feature. The method of the Portraits—again we cite the author's own language—is "descriptive, analytical, inquisitive." We are led along through a series of details, each lightly touched, each contributing to the elucidation of the enigma, by a train of closely linked and subtile observation, which penetrates all the obscurities, unravels all the intricacies, of the subject. And the result is, not that broad but mingled conception which arises from personal intimacy or from the art which simulates it, but that idea, that distilled essence, which is obtained when what is most characteristic, what is purely mental and individual, has been selected and condensed.

The sympathetic nature of the critic displays itself in his general treatment of the theme, in the post of observation which he chooses. He is not an advocate or an apologist. But the opinions in which he does not coincide, the defects which he has no interest in concealing, he sets in their natural connection, and regards as portions of a living organism. Put before him a nature the most opposite to his own,—narrow, rigorous, systematic. Shall he oppose or condemn it because of this contrariety? But why, then, has he himself been endowed with suppleness and insight, why is he a critic, unless that he may enter into other minds see as they have seen, feel[Pg 442] as they have felt? He must get to the centre before he can trace the limits and imperfections. Once there, once identified with his object, he can observe its irregularities without being irritated or perturbed. As for that Rhadamanthine criticism which sits aloof from its object, and treats every aberration from a straight line as something abnormal and abominable, he leaves it to the immaculate. In truth, such criticism, with all its pretences to authority, is open to this fatal objection,—it tends to destroy our relish for literature; instead of stimulating the appetite, it creates disgust.[C] How different is the effect produced by the Portraits! Of all criticism they have the most power to refresh our interest in familiar topics, and to kindle curiosity in regard to those with which we are unacquainted. They serve as the best possible introduction to the study of the works themselves, to which, accordingly, they have in many cases been prefixed. They put us in the proper disposition for tasting as we read. Often they are guides with which we could hardly dispense. M. Sainte-Beuve is never more happy than in dealing with complexities or contradictions, with characters that puzzle the ordinary observer, with harmonies which are hidden in discords. Of women, it has been well said, he writes "as if he were one of them." Like Thackeray, like Balzac, he knows their secret. So, too, the spirit of a particular epoch or a particular school is seized, its successive phases are distinguished, with a nicety defying competition. Especially is this applicable to the developments of the present century. Who, indeed, was so competent to describe its parties and conflicts, its emotions and languors, as one who had shared in all its transitions, in all its experiences?

The style of the Portraits might form the subject of a separate study. Abjuring antithesis and epigram on the one hand, pomp and declamation on the other, it has yet none of the limpidity, the rapid flow, the incisive directness, of classical French prose. On the contrary, it is full of shadings and undulations. It abounds in caressing epithets, and in figures sometimes elaborated and prolonged to the last degree, sometimes clustered and contrasted like flowers in a bouquet. After a continuous reading a sense of luxury steals over us; we seem to be surrounded by the rich draperies and scented atmosphere of a boudoir. Yet the term "florid" will not apply to what is everywhere pervaded by an exquisite harmony and taste. Simplicity of expression, energy of tone, would be out of place, where the thought is so subtile and refined, the glow of feeling so soft and restrained, the mind so absorbed in the effort to catch every echo, every reflection, floating across the field of its survey. Difficult as it is to convey any adequate notion of such a style by mere description, it would be at least as difficult to do justice to its peculiarities in a translation. Our impressions[Pg 443] of it may perhaps be best summed up by saying that it is the farthest remove from oratory, and the nearest approach to poetry, of any prose not professedly idyllic or lyric with which we are acquainted.

It has been stated by the author himself, as one defect in his criticism at this period, that it was not "conclusive." It was perfectly sincere, but not equally frank. In fact, it was not full-grown. A mind like that of M. Sainte-Beuve is slow in arriving at maturity. It is quick to comprehend; but the very breadth of its comprehension and the variety of its researches make it tardy in attaining that completeness and decision, that air of mastery, which less capacious minds assume through the mere instinct, and as the outward sign, of virility. He has himself indicated the distinction in his notice of M. Taine, whom he describes as "entering the arena fully armed and equipped, taking his place with a precision, a vigor of expression, a concentration and absoluteness of thought, which he applies in turn to the most opposite subjects, without ever forgetting his own identity or losing faith in his system." There were, however, in the case of M. Sainte-Beuve, further impediments to the assumption of an explicit and confident tone. Among the authors whom he was called upon to criticise were his acknowledged leaders, those by whom he had been initiated into the mysteries of modern art. Though he was fast outgrowing their influence, he was in no haste to proclaim his independence. An indefatigable student, he was accumulating stores of material without as yet drawing upon them to any proportionate extent, or putting forth all the strength with which they supplied him. Besides the "Portraits," his only other work during this period was his "History of Port Royal," the five volumes of which were published at long intervals. Social relations, too, exerted a restraining influence. His position in the world of letters was generally recognized, and had brought him the distinctions and rewards which France has it in her power to bestow. In 1840 he was appointed one of the conservators of the Mazarine Library. In 1845 he was elected to the French Academy. He lived on terms of intimacy with men of all parties, and with the highest in every party. He moved in the élite of Parisian society, accepting rather than claiming its attentions, but fully sensible of its charms. All these circumstances combined to prolong, in his case, that season when, though the fruit has formed, the blossoms have not yet fallen, when the mind still yields itself to illusions as if loath to be disenchanted. His sincere admiration for the genius of Chateaubriand did not blind him to the monstrosities or the littlenesses by which it was disfigured. But should he rudely break the spell in the presence of the enchanter? should he disturb the veneration that encircled his decline? should he steel himself against the gracious pleadings of Madame Récamier, and throw a bomb-shell into that circle of which no one could better appreciate the seductive repose? He chose rather to limit the scope of his judgment, to look at the object solely on its attractive side, to postpone reservations which would have had the effect of a revolt.

Yet the extent of his concessions has been much exaggerated. No extravagant laudations ever fell from his pen. Moreover, his gradual emancipation, so to speak, is apparent in his writings,—in the last volumes of his "Port Royal" and in the later "Portraits." It was facilitated by the waning power displayed in the productions of some with whom he had been closely associated. It was suddenly completed by an event of which the momentous and wide-spread consequences are still felt,—the Revolution of February, 1848.

M. Sainte-Beuve has given a curious account of the immediate effect of that event upon his own external circumstances and position. Some lurking irony may be suspected,—a disposition to reduce the apparent magnitude of a great political convulsion by setting it in juxtaposition with its more trivial results. But as the narrative is characteristic,[Pg 444] and contains some passages that throw light upon the author's habits and sentiments, we give it, very slightly abridged, in his own words. It is prefixed to a course of lectures on Chateaubriand and his literary friends, delivered at Liége in 1848-49.

"In October, 1847, in my capacity as one of the Conservators of the Mazarine Library, I occupied rooms at the Institute, where I had a chimney that smoked. With the view of guarding against this inconvenience before the winter should have set in, I summoned the fumiste of the establishment, who, after entering into details and fixing upon the remedy,—some contrivance on the roof in the nature of a hooded chimney-pot,—observed that the expense, amounting to a hundred francs or so, was one of those which are chargeable to the landlord, that is to say, in this case, the government. Consequently I made a requisition on the Minister to whose department it belonged; the work was executed, and I thought no more of it.

"Some months later, the Revolution of the 24th of February broke out. I perceived from the first day all the importance of that event, but also its prematureness. Without being one of those who regretted the fall of a dynasty or of a political system, I grieved for a civilization which seemed to me for the moment greatly compromised. I did not, however, indulge in the gloomy anticipations which I saw had taken possession of many who the day before had professed themselves republicans, but who were now surprised, and even alarmed, at their own success. I thought we should get out of this, as we had already got out of so many other embarrassments. I reflected that History has more than one road by which to advance; and I awaited the development of facts with the curiosity of an observer, closely blended, I must confess, with the anxieties of a citizen.

"About a month later, towards the end of March, I was told by a friend that M. Jean Reynaud, who then filled an office which, though nominally in the department of Public Instruction, corresponded in fact with that of Under-Secretary of State, wished to see me. I had been well acquainted with M. Reynaud for seventeen or eighteen years, and had dined with him, in company with M. Charton, on Wednesday, the 25th of February preceding, while the Revolution was in full blast. Profiting by a short truce which had suddenly intervened on the afternoon of that day, I had been able to traverse the Champs-Élysées, at the farther end of which he lived, and to keep an appointment dating from several days before. On that Wednesday, at six o'clock in the evening, I did not expect, and as little did M. Reynaud himself expect, that two days later he would be holding the post of quasi-minister in the department of Public Instruction. I heard with pleasure of his appointment, in conjunction with that of M. Carnot and M. Charton, for I knew their perfect integrity.

"Summoned then, about a month after these events, by M. Reynaud, and having entered his office and approached him with my ordinary air, I saw in his countenance a look of consternation. He informed me that something very grave had taken place, and that this something concerned me; that certain lists specifying the sums distributed by the late government, with the names of the recipients, had been seized at the Tuileries; that my name had been found in them; that it occurred several times, with a sum—with sums—of a considerable amount attached to it. At first I began to laugh; but perceiving that M. Reynaud did not laugh, and receiving from him repeated appeals to my recollection, I began to ply him with questions in return. He was unable to enter into any exact details; but he assured me that the fact was certain,—that he had verified it with his own eyes; and as his alarm evidently proceeded from his friendship, I could not doubt the reality of what he had told me.

"I believe that, by my manner of replying on the instant, I convinced him of the existence of some error or some[Pg 445] fraud. But I perceived that there were others, near him, behind him, who would be less easily convinced. As soon, therefore, as I had returned home, I addressed to the Journal des Débats a letter of denial, a defiance to calumny, in the tone natural to honorable persons and such as feel secure in their own innocence. This letter furnished M. Reynaud with a weapon against my accusers behind the scene. As a proof that he accepted both the sentiment and the terms, he caused it to be inserted in the Moniteur.

"However, I was not entirely satisfied; I wished to bring the affair fully to light. I made attempts to procure the lists in question. I went to see M. Taschereau, who was publishing them in his Revue rétrospective; I saw M. Landrin, the Attorney-General of the Republic; I even caused inquiries to be made of the former Ministers, then in London, with whom I had had the honor of being personally acquainted. No result; nobody understood to what my questions had reference. Wearied out at last, I discontinued the pursuit, though without dismissing the subject from my thoughts.

"I will get to the bottom of this affair. There was in the department of Public Instruction a man newly elevated to power, who honored me with an enmity already of long standing. I have never in my life met M. Génin; I have never once seen his face; but the fact is that he has always detested me, has often in his writings made me the object of his satire, and in his critical articles especially has ridiculed me to the extent of his powers. I did not suit this writer, whom all his friends pronounced a man of intellect; I appeared to him affected and full of mannerisms; and to me, on the other hand, he perhaps appeared neither so subtile, nor so refined, nor so original, as he seemed to others. Now M. Génin, who had been intrusted, after the 24th of February, 1848, with the distribution of the papers in the Bureau of Public Instruction, was undoubtedly the person who had availed himself of the list in which my name was said to figure, for the purpose of bringing an accusation against my honor. He was himself a man of probity, but one who, in the violence of his prejudices and the acerbity of his disposition, could hardly stop short of actions positively bad.

"If M. Génin had lived in the world, in society, during the fifteen years previous to 1848 which I had passed in it, he would have comprehended how a man of letters, without fortune, without ambition, of retiring manners, and keeping strictly to his own place, may yet—by his intellect perhaps, by his character, by his tact, and by his general conduct—obtain an honorable and agreeable position, and live with persons of every rank, the most distinguished in their several walks,—persons not precisely of his own class,—on that insensible footing of equality which is, or which was, the charm and honor of social life in France. For my own part, during those years,—happy ones I may call them,—I had endeavored, not without a fair degree of success, to arrange an existence combining dignity with ease. To write from time to time things which it might be agreeable to read; to read what was not only agreeable but instructive; above all, not to write too much, to cultivate friendships, to keep the mind at liberty for the intercourse of each day and be able to draw upon it without fear of exhausting it; giving more to one's intimates than to the public, and reserving the finest and tenderest thoughts, the flower of one's nature, for the inner sanctuary;—such was the mode of life I had conceived as suitable to a literary knight, who should not allow has professional pursuits and associations to domineer over and repress the essential elements of his heart and soul. Since then necessity has seized upon me and constrained me to renounce what I considered the only happiness. It is gone, it has forever vanished, that better time, adorned with study and leisure, passed in a chosen circle, where I once received, from a fair friend whose loss has been irreparable, this charming counsel insinuated in the[Pg 446] form of praise: 'If you think yourself dependent on the approbation of certain people, believe me, that others are dependent upon yours. And what better, sweeter bond can there be between persons who esteem each other, than this mutual dependence on moral approbation, balancing, so to speak, one's own sentiment of freedom. To desire to please and at the same time to remain free,—this is the rule we ought to follow.' I accepted the motto; I promised myself to be faithful to it in all that I might write; my productions at that period will show perhaps the degree in which I was influenced by it. But I perceive that I have strayed from my text.

"I had forgotten to mention that, on the same day on which I wrote the letter inserted first in the Journal des Débats, and afterwards in the Moniteur, I forwarded to Messieurs Reynaud and Carnot the resignation of my place at the Mazarine. I did not wish to expose myself to interrogatories and explanations where I could be less sure of being questioned in a friendly spirit and listened to with confidence. From the moment of taking this step there was no longer much choice for me. I had to live by my pen; and during the year 1848, literature in my understanding of that term—and indeed literature of every kind—formed one of those branches of industry, devoted to the production of luxuries, which were struck with a sudden interdict, a temporary death. I was asked in conversation if I knew any man of letters who would accept a place in Belgium as professor of French literature. Learning that the vacancy was at the University of Liége, I offered myself. I went to Brussels to confer on the project with M. Charles Rogier, Minister of the Interior, whom I had known a long time, and I accepted with gratitude the propositions that were made to me.

"I left France in October, 1848. The press of Paris noticed my departure only with raillery. When a man of letters has no party, no followers, at his back, when he takes his way alone and independently, the least that can be expected is that the world should give itself the pleasure of insulting him a little on his passage. In Belgium I met with unexpected difficulties, thrown in my way by hostile compatriots. Pamphlets containing incredible calumnies were published against me. I have reason to speak with praise of the youth of Belgium, who decided to wait, and to judge me only by my acts and words. In spite of obstacles I succeeded. The present book, which was entirely composed and was to have been published before the end of 1849, represents one of the two courses which I delivered.

"P.S. I had almost forgotten to recur to the famous lists. The one containing my name appeared at last in the Revue rétrospective. 'M. Sainte-Beuve, 100 francs,'—this was what was to be read there. The fabulous ciphers had vanished. On seeing this entry a ray of light dawned upon my memory. I recollected my smoky chimney of 1847, the repair of which was to have cost about that sum. But for this incident, I should never have been led to deliver the course now submitted to the reader, and the one circumstance has occasioned my mention of the other."

It must be confessed that the chimney that drove M. Sainte-Beuve into temporary exile, and led to the production of a work in which his views on many important topics were enunciated with a clearness and force he had hitherto held in reserve, had smoked to some purpose. We may be permitted to believe that his integrity had never been seriously questioned; that the pretext for a brief abandonment of his beloved Paris while she was in a state of excitement and dishabille had not been altogether unwelcome. Though no admirer of the government of Louis Philippe, he had, as he still acknowledges, appreciated "the mildness of that régime, its humanity, and the facilities it afforded for intellectual culture and the development of pacific interests of every kind." The sudden overthrow, the turmoil, the vagaries that ensued, were little to his taste. He was content[Pg 447] to stand aside, availing himself of the general dislocation to look around and choose for himself a new field, a more independent position.

Here then begins the third, and, as we must suppose, the final stage of his career. In September, 1849, he returned to Paris, feeling "a great need of activity," as if his mind had been "refreshed by a year of study and solitude." What was he to undertake? No sooner did the question arise, than an answer presented itself in the form of an offer from one whose coadjutor he had become on a previous and similar occasion. M. le docteur Véron, now the proprietor of the Constitutionnel, and as sagacious as ever in catering for the public taste, proposed to him to furnish every Monday an article on some literary topic. The notion of writing for the masses, of adapting his style to the requirements of a newspaper, gave him a momentary shock. Hitherto he had addressed only the most select audiences. But, after all, he was conscious of an almost boundless versatility, and no plan could better satisfy the desire which he had long felt of becoming "a critic in the full sense of the word, with the advantages of ripeness and perhaps of boldness." Such a change would be suited also to the new aspect of society. In literature it was no longer the time for training, tending, and watering, but the season of gathering the fruit, selecting the good and rejecting the unsound. Romanticism as a school had done its work and was now extinct. Every one went his separate way. Questions of form were no longer mooted; the public tolerated everything. Whoever had an idea on any subject wrote about it, and whoever chose to write was a littérateur. "With such a noise in the streets it was necessary to raise one's voice in order to be heard. Accordingly," says M. Sainte-Beuve, "I set to work for the first time on that kind of criticism, frank and outspoken, which belongs to the open country and the broad day."

With the old manner he laid aside the old title. The term Portraits, which in its literary signification recalled the times of the Rochefoucaulds and the Sévignés, was exchanged for the more modern one of Conversations,—Causeries de Lundis. Begun in the Constitutionnel on the 1st of October, 1849, they were continued three years later in the Moniteur, and in 1861 again resumed, under the title of Nouveaux Lundis, in the first-named journal, where they are still in progress. More than once the author has intimated his intention to bring them to a close. But neither his own powers nor the appetite of his readers having suffered any abatement, one series has followed upon another, until, in their reprinted form, they now fill nineteen volumes, while more are eagerly expected.

The transformation of style which was visible at the very outset is one of the miracles of literary art. Simplicity, swiftness, precision, all the qualities which were conspicuously absent, we will not say wanting, in the Portraits,—these are the characteristics, and that in a surpassing degree, of the Causeries. The whole arrangement, too, is different. There is no preluding, there are no intricate harmonies: the key-note is struck in the opening chord, and the theme is kept conspicuously in view throughout all the modulations. The papers at once acquired a popularity which of course had never attended the earlier ones. "He has not the time to make them bad," was the praise accorded by some of their admirers, and smilingly accepted by the author. But is this indeed the explanation? Had he merely taken to "dashing off" his thoughts, after the general manner of newspaper writers? Had he deserted "art," and fallen back upon the crudities misnamed "nature"? If such had been the case, there would have been no occasion for the present notice. His fame would long since have been buried under the rubbish he had himself piled up. The fact is very different. "Natural fluency"—that is to say, the inborn capacity of the writer—he undoubtedly possessed; but "acquired difficulty,"—this was the school in[Pg 448] which he had practised, this was the discipline which enabled him, when the need arose, to carry on a campaign of forced marches, brilliant and incessant skirmishes, without severing his lines or suffering a mishap. It was in wielding the lance that he had acquired the vigor and agility to handle the javelin with consummate address. Contrasted as are his earlier and later styles, they have some essential qualities in common;—an exquisite fitness of expression; a total exemption from harshness, vulgarity, and all the vices that have grown so common; a method, a sequence, which is at once the closest and the least obtrusive to be found in any prose of the present day.

We pass from the style to the substance. The criticism, as we have seen, was to be "frank and outspoken." It became so at a single bound. The subject of the second number of the Causeries was the Confidences of M. de Lamartine, and the article opens with these words: "And why, then, should I not speak of it? I know the difficulty of speaking of it with propriety; the time of illusions and of complaisances has passed; it is absolutely necessary to speak truths; and this may seem cruel, so well chosen is the moment. Yet when such a man as M. de Lamartine has deemed it becoming not to close the year 1848 without giving to the public the confessions of his youth and crowning his political career with idyls, shall criticism hesitate to follow him and to say what it thinks of his book? shall it exhibit a discretion and a shamefacedness for which no one, the author least of all, would care?" And what follows? An outpouring of ridicule, of severity, such as the same book received from so many quarters? Nothing of the sort; nothing more than a thoroughly candid and discriminating judgment, never over-stepping the bounds of courtesy, never exaggerating a defect or concealing a beauty. A talk might be raised about the inconsistency with a former tone; but if the fact was made apparent that the later effusions of a tender and melodious, but shallow Muse, were but dilutions, ever more watery and insipid, of the first sweet and abundant flow, was the critic or the poet at fault?

And so it has been in all the subsequent articles of M. Sainte-Beuve. It matters not who or what is the subject,—let it be a long-established reputation, like that of M. Guizot; a youthful aspirant, such as M. Hyppolite Rigault and many others; a brother critic, like M. Prevost-Paradol; a fanatical controversialist, like M. Veuillot; a personal friend, like M. Flaubert; or a bitter and unscrupulous assailant, like M. de Pontmartin,—the treatment is ever the same, sincere, impartial, unaffected. "To say nothing of writers, even of those who are the most opposed to us, but what their judicious friends already think and would be forced to admit,—this is the height of my ambition." Such was his proclamation, such has been his practice. No one has ever been bold enough to gainsay it. An equity so great, so unvarying, has almost staggered his brethren of the craft. "It is grand, it is royal," says M. Scherer,—who has himself approached near enough to the same summit to appreciate its height,—"only in him it cannot be called a virtue: it belongs to the intellect, which in him is blended with the character."

"But he professes neutrality! He has no doctrines, no belief, no emotions! He discusses everything, not with any regard to the eternal considerations of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, but solely in the view of literature and art!" So cry certain voices, loudest among them that of M. de Pontmartin. It is certainly somewhat surprising that a man without opinions, without emotions, should be made the object of violent attacks, that according to M. de Pontmartin himself, whose authority, however, upon this point we may take the liberty of rejecting, there should be "few men more generally hated." Mere jealousy can have nothing to do with it. "There is not," remarks M. Scherer, "the trace of a literary rivalry to be found in his whole career." The truth[Pg 449] is, that M. Sainte-Beuve has, on all the subjects he has examined, convictions which are strong, decided, earnestly and powerfully maintained. But he differs from the rest of us in this, that he not only professes, but enforces, a perfect freedom of opinion, a perfect equality in discussion. In religion he attaches more importance to the sentiment than to the creed. In morals he sets up a higher standard than conventionalism. In politics, as we shall presently see, he has even given in his adhesion to a system; but, treating politics, like medicine, as an experimental science, he refuses to see in any system an article of faith to be adopted and proclaimed irrespective of its results. In questions of literature and art he declines to apply any test but the principles of art, the literary taste "pure and simple." In all matters he prefers to look at the practical rather than the dogmatic side, to study living forces rather than dead forms. Hence the charge of indifference. He would better please those who differ from him, were he one-sided, narrow, rancorous. It is because his armor is without a flaw that they detest him.[D]

We have spoken frequently of M. de Pontmartin. It is time to speak of him a little more definitely. As M. Sainte-Beuve has remarked, "the subject is not a difficult one." He belongs to the old aristocracy, and takes care that his readers shall not forget the fact. In religion and politics—with him, as with so many others, the two words have much the same meaning—he adheres consistently and chivalrously to causes once great and resplendent, now only fit subjects for elegies. As a writer, he is a master of the critique spirituelle,—that species which is so brilliant in display, so unsubstantial in results. He sparkles and glows; but his light only directs the brown nightingale where to find its repast. Armed cap-à-pie, glittering with epigram, rhetoric, and irony, he entered the lists against M. Sainte-Beuve, ostensibly to defend the reputation of Chateaubriand, provoked in reality by the causes already noticed. We have no space for the controversy that ensued. It is worthy of remark that the assault was directed, not against the censures which had been passed upon Chateaubriand,—M. de Pontmartin took good care not to aim at his adversary's shield,—but against the motives which had led to their suppression while the object was alive, and to their publication after he was dead. Now there are in the book on Chateaubriand some disclosures which might better have been spared. But in determining motives we shall go utterly astray if we leave character out of sight; and the whole career of M. Sainte-Beuve rises up against the implication that he was prompted in this instance by any other impulse than that spirit of investigation, that desire to penetrate to the heart of his subject, to unveil truth and dissipate illusions, which has grown stronger and more imperative at every step of his advance. We pass over his immediate replies. When, in the regular course of his avocation, he found an opportunity for expressing his opinion of M. de Pontmartin, he did it in a characteristic manner. There is not a particle of temper, not the slightest assumption of superiority, in the article. It is not "scathing" or "crushing,"—as we have seen it described. It has all the keenness, merely because it has all the simplicity, of truth. The playful but searching satire which the author has ever at command just touches the declamation of his opponent, and it falls like a house of cards. He sums up with a judgment as fair and as calm as if he had been speaking of a writer of some distant period. Astonished at the sleight of hand which had disarmed, and at the generosity which had spared him, M. de Pontmartin, in the first moment of his defeat,—before he had had time to recover his (bad) temper, to arm himself for more fiery assaults[Pg 450] to be followed by fresh overthrows,—declared that, in spite of the susceptibility of his friends, he himself was well satisfied with a criticism which "assigned to him nearly all the merit to which he could pretend," and in which, "for the first time in his literary life, he had seen himself discussed, appreciated, and valued without either the indulgences of friendship or the violence of hatred."

One point still remains to be touched upon. M. Sainte-Beuve has been from the first a steady supporter of the present Empire. This of course accounts for a portion of the enmity with which he has been "honored." In 1852 he received the appointment of Professor of Latin in the Collége de France; but his opening lecture was interrupted by the clamors of the students, and the course was never resumed. From 1857 to 1861 he held a position in connection with the superintendence of the École Normale. In April, 1865, he was raised to the dignity of a Senator. No one, so far as we know, in France,—no one out of France, so far as we know, but a Saturday Reviewer,[E]—has ever been foolish enough to insinuate that he had purchased his elevation by a sacrifice of principle. It seems to us that the grounds on which such a man defends a system still on its probation before the world are worth examining. He has stated them more than once with his usual clearness and frankness. We extract some passages, with only the slight verbal alterations indispensable for condensation.

"Liberty! the name is so beautiful, so responsive to our noblest aspirations, that we hesitate to analyze it. But politics are, after all, not a mere matter of enthusiasm. I ask, therefore, of what liberty we are disputing? The word conveys many different ideas. Have we to do with an article of faith, some divine dogma not to be touched without sacrilege? Modern liberty, which keeps altogether in view the security of the individual, the free exercise of his faculties, is a very complex thing. If under a bad government, though it be in form republican, I cannot walk the streets with safety at night, then my liberty is curtailed. On the other hand, every advantage, every improvement, which science, civilization, a good police, or a watchful and philanthropic government furnishes to the masses and to individuals, is a liberty acquired, a liberty not the less practical, positive, and fruitful for being unwritten, unestablished by any charter. These, I shall be told, are 'little liberties.' I do not call them such. But we have a greater and more essential one,—the right of the representatives of the nation to discuss and vote on the budget; and this supposes others,—it brings with it publicity, and the liberty of touching upon such questions in the press. Here the difference of opinion is one of degree; some demand an unqualified freedom of discussion, others stop at a point more or less advanced.

"In human society, liberty, like everything else, is relative, and dependent on a multitude of circumstances. A sober, orderly, laborious, educated people can support a larger dose than one less richly gifted in these respects. Liberty is, thank God! a progressive conquest; that portion of it which is denied us to-day we can always hope to acquire to-morrow. Let us develop, as far as it lies with us, intelligence, morality, habits of industry, in all the classes of society; that done, we may die tranquilly; France will be free, not with that absolute freedom which is not of this world, but with the relative freedom which corresponds with the imperfect, but perfectible, conditions of our nature.

"This, however, will not satisfy those who are faithful to the primary idea of liberty as absolute and indivisible. After every concession, there must still remain two distinct classes of minds, divided by a broad line of demarcation.

"One embraces those who hold firmly to that generous inspiration which, under all diversities of time and circumstances, has had the same moral source; who contend that such champions of liberty as Brutus, William of Orange,[Pg 451] De Witt, Chatham, however haughty and aristocratic the ideas of some of them, were yet of the same political faith, filled with ideas of human nobleness and dignity, conceding much, if not to the masses, at least to the advanced and enlightened classes which in their eyes represented humanity. Thinkers of this kind are not far to seek; witness Scherer, Rémusat, Tocqueville,—the last of whom was so imbued and penetrated with the idea that all his language vibrated with it; and, most striking example of all, that great minister too early removed, Cavour, who, confident in the patriotic sentiment of his countrymen, adopted it as a principle and a point of honor not to govern or reform without letting the air of liberty blow and even bluster around him.

"It will not be said that I undervalue this class. I will come boldly to the other, composed of those who are neither servile not absolutists,—I repel this name, in my turn, with all the pride to which every sincere conviction has a right,—but who believe that humanity has in all times owed much to the mind and character of particular individuals; that there have always been, and always will be, what were formerly called heroes, what under one name or another are to be recognized as directors, guides, superior men,—men who, whether born or raised to power, cause their countrymen, their contemporaries, to take some of those decisive steps which would otherwise have been retarded or indefinitely adjourned. I picture to myself the first progress of society as having taken place in this way: tribes or collections of men stop short at a stage of civilization which indolence or ignorance leads them to be content with; in order that they shall pass beyond it, it is necessary that a superior and far-seeing mind, the civilizer, should assist them, should draw them to himself, raise them a degree by sheer force, as in the 'Deluge' of Poussin, those on the upper terraces stretch their hands to those below, clutch and lift them up. But humanity, I shall be told, is at last emancipated; it has no longer any deluge to fear; it has attained its majority; it finds within itself all the motives and stimulants to action; light circulates; every one has the right to speak and to be heard; the sum total of all opinions, the net result of discussion, may be accepted as the voice of truth itself! I do not deny that in certain questions of general interest and utility, on which every one may be tolerably well informed, the voice of all has, in our mild and instructed ages, its share of reason, and even of wisdom; ideas ripen by the mere conjunction of forces and the course of the seasons. And yet has routine altogether ceased? Is prejudice, that monster with a thousand forms which has the quality of never recognizing its own visage, as far removed as we flatter ourselves? Is progress, true progress, as entirely the order of the day as it is believed to be? How many steps are there still to take,—steps which I am persuaded never will be taken save by the impulsion and at the signal of a firm and vigorous head, which shall take the direction upon itself!

"Some years since there was a question about finishing the Louvre. Could it of could it not be done? A great Assembly, when consulted, declared it to be impracticable. It was in fact impracticable under the conditions which then existed. Yet within the short period that has since elapsed, the Louvre has been finished. This instance is for me only a symbol. How many moral Louvres remain to be completed!

"There are governments which have for their principle resistance and obstruction; but there are also governments of initiation. Governments founded on pure liberty are not necessarily the most active. Free assemblies are better suited to put the drag upon the wheels, to check them when they go too fast, than to accelerate them. Like criticism, which is in fact their province and their strength, they excel in warning and in hindering rather than in undertaking. The eternal problem is to reconcile, to balance, authority and liberty, using sometimes the one, sometimes[Pg 452] the other. In this double play theory may be at fault, but practical ability will always triumph.

"Some nations, it was lately said by a liberal, have tried to dispense with great men, and have succeeded. There is a perspective to contemplate! Let us not, however, in France, try too often to dispense with them. The greatest of our moralists, he who knew us best, has said of man in general, what is true of the French nature in particular, that we have more force than will. Let us hope that this latter quality may not fail us too long or in too many cases; and, that it may be efficacious, there is nothing like a man, a determined and sovereign will, at the head of the nation.

"I appreciate human dignity as much as others. Woe to him who would seek to diminish the force of this moral spring; he would cripple at a blow all the virtues. I do not, however, place this noblest of sentiments on the somewhat isolated height where it is put by the exclusive adorers of liberty. Let us not confound dignity with mere loftiness. Moreover, by the side of dignity let us never forget that other inspiring sentiment, which is at least its equal in value, humanity; that is to say, the remembrance, the care, of that great number who are condemned to a life of poverty and suffering, and whose precarious condition will not endure those obstacles, retardments, and delays that belong to every plan of amelioration founded on agitation and a conflict of systems and ideas. I am far from imputing to the worshippers of liberty a disregard of this humane and generous feeling. But with them the means is more sacred than the end. They would rather take but one step in the path of true progress, than be projected two by an adverse principle. Their political religion is stronger than mine. Mine is not proof against experience.

"If a question were put to us in a general way, Which is the better for a people, self-government, full discussion, decisions in accordance with good sense, and submitted to by all—or government by one, however able?—it would be only too easy to decide. But the practical question is, Given such a nation, with such a character, with such a history, in such a position,—does it, can it, wish to govern itself by itself? would not the end be anarchy? We talk of principles; let us not leave out of sight France, which is for us the first and most sacred of principles. Some have their idol in Rome and the Vatican; others in Westminster and the English Parliament; meanwhile, what becomes of poor France, which is neither Roman nor English, and which does not wish to be either?

"No, without doubt, all is not perfect. Let us accept it on the condition of correcting and improving it. Examine the character, original and altogether modern, of this new Empire, which sincerely has no desire to repress liberty, which has acquired glory, and in which the august chain of tradition is already renewed. What a rôle does it offer to young and intelligent minds, to generous minds, which, putting apart secondary questions and disengaging themselves from formulas, should be willing to seize and comprehend their entire epoch, accepting all that it contains! What a problem in politics, in public economy, in popular utility, that of seeking and aiding to prepare the way for such a future as is possible for France, as is now grandly opening before her, with a chief who has in his hand the power of Louis XIV., and in his heart the democratic principles of the Revolution,—for he has them, and his race is bound to have them!"

This, it will be perceived, is an application of the ideas of Mr. Carlyle, modified by the special views and characteristics of the writer, and adapted to the circumstances and necessities of the particular case. It has far less similarity with the doctrines so pompously announced, so vaguely applied, in the Vie de Jules César. It does not lie open to the criticism which that clumsy and feeble apology seemed intended to provoke, and which it had received at the competent hands of M.[Pg 453] Scherer. We have here no mysterious revelations of the designs of Providence, no intimations that the world was created as a theatre for the exaltation of certain godlike individuals. The question, as presented by M. Sainte-Beuve, is a practical one, and as such we accept it. We believe with him in the necessity for great men, in the guidance of heroes. We believe with M. Scherer in the animating forces of liberty, in its activity and power as an essential principle of progress and civilization. That the combination may exist is attested by such examples as William of Orange, Count Cavour, Abraham Lincoln.

It all comes, therefore, to this single inquiry: Is the present ruler of France a great man, a hero? Is he the enlightened leader whom a nation may and confidently follow? Has he the genius and the will to solve the problem before him, to reconcile liberty with authority? Posterity alone will be able to pronounce with unanimity. For ourselves, we must answer in the negative. We do not denounce him, we believe it absurd to denounce him, as a conspirator or a usurper. If he was a conspirator, France was his accomplice. There cannot be a doubt that the nation not only was ready to accept him, but sought him; not indeed for his personal qualities, not as recognizing its appointed guide, but from the recollections and the hopes of which his name was the symbol. We acknowledge, too, his obvious abilities; we acknowledge the material and economical improvements which his government has inaugurated. But we fail to see the "moral Louvres" which he has opened; we fail to see in his character any evidences of the moral power which can alone inspire such improvements; we fail to see in his reign any principle of "initiation," save that which the Ruler of the universe has implanted in every system and in every government. Yet we concede the right of others to think differently on these points, without being suspected of moral obtuseness or obliquity. Especially can we comprehend how a patriotic Frenchman should choose to accept all the conditions of his epoch, and embrace every opportunity of aiding in the task of correction and amelioration.

We are unwilling to emerge from our subject at its least agreeable angle. Our strain, however feeble, shall not close with a discord. And indeed, in looking back, we are pained to perceive how slight is the justice we have been able to render to the rare combination of powers exhibited in the works we have enumerated. We have left unnoticed the wonderful extent and accuracy of the learning, the compass and profundity of the thought, the inexhaustible spirit, ever preserving the happy mean between mental languor and nervous excitement. In these twenty-seven volumes of criticism, scarcely an error has been detected, scarcely a single repetition is met with; there is scarcely a page which a reader, unpressed for time, would be inclined to skip. Where you least agree with the author, there you will perhaps have the most reason to thank him for his hints and elucidations. Is it not then with reason that M. Sainte-Beuve has been styled "the prince of contemporaneous criticism"? His decisions have been accepted by the public, and he has founded a school which does honor to France.

How is it that our own language offers no such example? How is it that the English literature of the present century, superior to that of France in so many departments, richer therefore in the material of criticism, has nothing to show in this way, we will not say equal, but—taking quantity as well as quality into the account—in any degree similar? How is it that nothing has been written on the highest minds and chief productions of the day—on Tennyson, on Thackeray, on Carlyle—which is worth preserving or remembering? Is it that criticism has been almost abandoned to a class of writers who have no sense of their responsibilities, no enlightened interest in their art, no[Pg 454] liberality of views,—who make their position and the influence attached to it subservient either to their interests or to their vanity? Descend, gentlemen reviewers, from the heights on which you have perched yourselves; lay aside your airs and your tricks, your pretences and affectations! Have the honesty not to misrepresent your author, the decency not to abuse him, the patience to read, and if possible to understand him! Point out his blemishes, correct his blunders, castigate his faults; it is your duty,—he himself will have reason to thank you. But do not approach him with arrogance or a supercilious coldness; do not, if your knowledge be less than his, seek to mask your ignorance with the deformity of conceit; do not treat him as a criminal or as a dunce, unless he happens really to be one. Above all, do not, by dint of judging, vitiate your faculty of tasting. Recognize the importance, the inestimable virtues, of that quality which you have piqued yourselves on despising,—that sympathy which is the sum of experience, the condition of insight, the root of tolerance, the seal of culture!

DE SPIRIDIONE EPISCOPO.

A STRUGGLE FOR SHELTER.

Having, in "A Letter to a Young Housekeeper," held counsel with her whose home is made by a noble husband, it is no less pleasant to recall the claims of her whose home is made by herself; who, instead of keeping house for two, keeps house for but one, and whose stars have not yet led her on either to matrimony or to Washington Territory.

Mrs. Stowe, in a late number of the Atlantic, has discoursed admirably on the woman question of how to get occupation; a point to be equally anxious upon is that of how to get a shelter. It is often easier to get a husband than either. Perhaps every one knows the exceeding difficulty with which, in our large cities, the single woman obtains even a room wherein to lodge; but only the victims can know the real distresses it involves. In the capital, where noble women are chiefly needed, to begin homeless is a positive peril; and to stand on the surest integrity is only to fall at last. If one apply at the boarding-houses it is either to be instantly rebuffed by learning that no rooms are let to ladies, or more delicately parried by being told that the terms are forty dollars a week! If one have attractions and friends, it is equivocal; if one have them not, it is equally desperate. Should Minerva herself alight there with a purse that would not compass Willard's, one cannot imagine what would become of her. She would probably be seen wandering at late night, with bedimmed stars and bedraggled gauze, until some vigorous officer should lead her to the station-house for vagrancy. Thus when fascination and forlornness are at equal discount, when powers and penuries go down together, and common and uncommon sense fail alike, to what natural feeling shall one hope to appeal? There is no sound spot of humanity left to rest upon. It is a dilemma that is nothing but horns.

Possibly it is a trifle better in New England; but here, as elsewhere, the chief enemy of woman is woman. It is women who keep our houses for boarding and lodging, and, with a few radiant exceptions, it is they who never take ladies. If by any chance a foothold be[Pg 457] obtained there, the only safety is in keeping it with stern self-denial of all outside pleasures or excursions. Surrender for a week, and you return to that door only to hear that two gentlemen have taken your room, and that they will pay more. You ask for an attic. Just now there are two gentlemen there. Will there be a place under the eaves? Possibly, next week. But before then the two gentlemen are on hand again, have unpacked their vials of unctuous hair-oil, and are happily snuggled under the eaves. Indeed, they seem to make long journeys expressly to head one off, and to be where they should not be. They are on time always, and in at the winning. Some day one will pathetically die of two gentlemen on the brain; and the doctor will only call it congestion. O for a new Knight of a Sorrowful Figure, to demolish all such ubiquitous persons! I have sometimes had as many as three of my engaged rooms at a time occupied by these perpetual individuals,—myself waiting a-tremble on the portico. Then it struck me that, if there were really any more gentlemen in Washington Territory than here, women had better not go there.

Out of this exigency has arisen a grand vision of mine to build a flat of five or six rooms; a single landing of dining- and drawing-rooms, boudoir, bedroom, and kitchen with its apartment for a domestic. And, either by lounge-bedstead or famous Plympton, there should be the possibility of sleeping in every apartment but the kitchen. This would be such sweet revenge for one whom the Fates had driven about for five years to hunt lodgings. I would gormandize on bedrooms,—like Cromwell resting in a different one every night,—and the empty ones filling with forlornest of females, provided one need not do the honors at their table in the morning and hear how they have slept. There should be alcoves too, with statues; and unexpected niches of rooms crimson with drapery, "fit to soothe the imagination with privacy"; and oh! perhaps somewhere a bit of a conservatory and a fountain,—did not Mrs. Stowe tell us of these too? Here one could dwell snugly as in the petals of a rose, or expansively as in a banyan-tree, undisturbed alike from gentlemen in black or women in white, liable only to the elements and to mortality.

If only this castle were as attainable as that of Thoreau!—which was to consist of but one room, with one door to enter it, and where "some should live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles,—some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders if they chose."

But on the terra firma of realities one's trouble is somewhat mitigated by the fact that, when all is said and done, the boarding-houses are usually so poor, that, having entered them, one's effort to get admitted is rather exceeded by one's desire to depart. The meats are all cooked together with one universal gravy;—beef is pork, and lamb is pork, each passing round the swinal sin; the vegetables often seem to know but one common kettle, for turnip is onion, and squash is onion; while the corn-cake has soda for sugar, and the bread is sour and drab-colored, much resembling slices of Kossuth hat.

From these facts grew the experiment of becoming housekeeper extraordinary to myself,—a strait to which many a one is likely to be driven, unless we are to have something better than can be offered by the present system of boarding-houses. For since one's castle was not yet builded outside of the brain, it only took a little Quixotism of imagination to consider as castles all these four-story brick houses with placards affixed of "Rooms to be let," and to secure the most eligible corner in one of these at moderate rent.

This of course is not so easy to do; but at last a petite room seemed to be struck out from the white heat of luck,—so petite!—six feet by thirteen feet, two carpet-breadths wide and four masculine strides long; one flight up, and just large enough to sheathe one's self in; high-walled and corniced, with[Pg 458] on the one hand a charming bay-window looking three ways, and cheerily catching the sunlight early and late; on the other, an open grate fire, fit to illuminate the gray Boston mornings,—though, when the brilliant sun came round full at noon, there seemed no fire till that was gone. I strove to forget that it might have been a doctor's consulting office, and three days after there blossomed out of it seven several apartments; the inevitable curtain across the corner giving a wardrobe and bath; the short side of the room, with desk, a library; the long side, with sofa, a bedchamber; the upper end, with table, a dining-hall; the cupboard and region about the hearth, a kitchen; while the remainder, with a lively camp-stool chair that balanced about anywhere and doubled into nothing when desired, was drawing-room,—that is, it was drawing-room wherever the chair was drawn. In this apartment everything was handy. One could sit in the centre thereof, and, by a little dexterous tacking to north or south, reach every article in it. But when a lad whose occasional infirmity was fainting was proposed to build the fire, it became necessary to decline, on the ground that there really was not room enough, unless he were so kind as to faint up chimney. A genuine bower it was, but not a Boffin's Bower, where the wedded occupants suited their contrary tastes by having part sanded-floor for Mr. Boffin, and part high-colored carpet for Mrs. Boffin,—"comfort on one side and fashion on the other." In this the walls were hung with pictures, and the windows with lace, while the corner curtain was a gorgeous piano cover. Mr. Boffin not being here, it was both comfort and fashion all round.

In this minute way of living, the first visiting messages could only include the announcement of dainty regards, and of readiness to receive friends one by one; and dining messages could only entreat "the best one to come to the petite one on Thursday, for sake of a suggestion of pigeons' wings." Assuredly none would have voted any exquisite thing out of place, from a dish of lampreys, that favorite viand of kings, to the common delicacy of Rome, a stew of nightingales' tongues. And so compact were all the arrangements, that a brilliant friend was fain to declare that the hostess should certainly live on condensed milk.

Indeed, it was the grand concentration of having wardrobe and bath together that caused a very singular mishap. One morning, being in clumsy-fingered haste to get to a train, I summarily dropped my bonnet into the wash-bowl. This was not a very dry joke, but having mopped up the article as well as possible, I put it on and departed with usual hilarity,—still remembering what it was to have the kindest fortune in the world, and that one should not expect so rare a life as mine without an occasional disaster.

But none need undertake a plan of this sort on the theology of Widow Bedott's hymn, "K. K., Kant Kalkerlate"; for in this song of life on six feet by thirteen, calculation is the sole rhyme for salvation. We have heard of dying by inches: this is living by inches. If there be not floor-room, then perhaps there is wall-room, and every possible article must be made to hang, from the boot-bag and umbrella behind the curtain to the pretty market-basket, so toy-like, in the corner. Indeed, it is the chief charm of a camp-stool chair that this too, when off duty, may be hung upon the wall, like a hunter's saddle when the chase is ended. Only see that all the screws are in stoutly, so that in some entertaining hour various items of your wardrobe or adornments do not bring their owner to sudden grief.

As might be anticipated, it was rather a struggle to get condensed; and afterward, too, there were fleeting phases of feeling about it all. For at times it is not pleasant to connect the day of the week chiefly with its being the day to clean one's cupboard or lamp-chimney. Often, too, during a very nice breakfast, one is ready to vow that she will never do otherwise than board herself; and while despatching the work after, equally ready to vow that she will take flight[Pg 459] from this as soon as possible. Sometimes, also, one gets a little too much of herself, and an overdose in this direction is about as bad as most insufferable things. But then there must be seasons of discouragement in everything. They inhere to all human enterprises, just as measles and whooping-cough to childhood. It is well to remember as they pass how rarely it is that they prove fatal.

And wherefore discouraged, indeed? Is it not the charm of life that nothing is final,—not even death itself? In this strange existence, with its great and rapid transitions, happy events are always imminent. One may be performing her own menialities to-day, and to-morrow, in an ambassador's carriage, be folded in a fur robe with couchant lions upon it; to-day be quartered in a single attic, to-morrow be treading the tapestries of her own drawing-rooms. Thus the golden Fate turns and keeps turning; it is only when, through frigidness or fear, we refuse to revolve with it, that there ensues the discord of despair.

But instead of going to a Walden and camping on the shady edges of the world, to see what could be done without civilization, I preferred to camp down in the heart of civilization, and see what could be done with it;—not to fly the world, but to face it, and give it a new emphasis, if so it should be; to conjure it a little, and strike out new combinations of good cheer and good fellowship. In fact, it seems to me ever that the wild heart of romance and adventure abides no more with rough, uncouth nature than with humanity and art. To sit under the pines and watch the squirrels run, or down in the bush-tangles of the Penobscot and see the Indians row, is to me no more than when Gottschalk wheels his piano out upon the broad, lone piazza of his house on the crater's edge, and rolls forth music to the mountains and stars. Here too are mystery, poesy, and a perpetual horizon.

This for romance; but true adventure abides most where most the forces of humanity are. So I camped down in the heart of things, surely; for in the next room were a child, kitten, and canary; in the basement was a sewing-machine; while across the entry were a piano, flute, and music-box. But Providence, that ever takes care of its own, did ever prevent all these from performing at once, or the grand seraglio of Satan would have been nothing to it.

But if in getting a room one is haunted by the two gentlemen, in getting furniture and provisions one is afterward haunted by the "family" relation. It is a result of the youthfulness of our civilization, that as yet it is cumbrous and unwieldy. We do not yet master it, but are mastered by it; and nowhere in America will one find the charming arrangements for single living which have filled the Old World with delightful haunts for the students of every land. As yet we provide for people, not persons; and the needs of the single woman are no more considered in business than in boarding. Forever she is reminded of the Scripture, "He setteth the solitary in families"; and forever it seems that all must be set there but herself. For nice crockery is sold by the set, knives and forks by the half-dozen, the best coal by the half-ton; the tin-pans are immense, and suggest a family Thanksgiving; pokers gigantic, fit only to be wielded by the father of a family; and at market the game is found with feet tied together in clever family bunches, while one is equally troubled to get a chop or a steak, because it will spoil the family roast,—and as to a bit of venison for breakfast, it may be had by taking two haunches and a saddle. In desperation she exclaims with O'Grady of Arrah na Pogue, "O father Adam, why had you not died with all your ribs left in your body!" For since there is neither place nor provision for her in the world, why indeed should she have come?

Having once, on a fruitless tour through Faneuil Hall Market for a single slice of beef, come to the last stall, and here finding nothing less than a[Pg 460] sirloin of six pounds, which was not to be cut, I could only answer imploringly, "But pray, what is one person to do with a sirloin of six pounds?" A relenting smile swept over the stern butcher's face. "I will cut it!" he said, brandishing the knife at once. "Thank you," I cried, with a gush of emotion; for he seemed a really religious man. He comprehended that there was at least one solitary whom the Lord had not set in a family. I took the number of his stall.

Nor is it yet too late to be grateful to him who proposed breaking a bundle of cutlery in my behalf. He too realized the situation, and saw that by no possibility could one person gracefully get on with six knives and forks at once.

Indeed, since one's single wants are not regularly met by this system of things, the only way at present to get them answered is by favor. So that the first item in setting up an establishment is not only to bring one's resources about one, but to find the people of the trade who will assist in the gladdest way. One wants the right stripe in the morning and evening papers, but none the less happy are just the right merchant and just the right menial. Since all of life may be rounded into rhythm, shall we not even consult the harmonies in a grocer or an upholsterer? Personal power can be carried into every department. It is well to find where one's word has weight, then always say the word there. This is a part of the quest which makes life a perpetual adventure; and there is nothing more piquant than to go on an exploring tour for one's affinities among the trades. It is perhaps rather more of the sensational than the sentimental, and might be marked in the private note-book with famous headings, like those of the New York papers on a balloon marriage, as, The last affinity item! A raid among the magnetisms! or, Hifalutin among prunes! However, in some subtile way, one soon divines on entering a store whether she is to be well served there, and must follow with tact the undercurrent in the shop as well as in the salon. If it be not the right encounter, ask for something there is not, and pass on to the next. Thus, "my grocer" apologizes for keeping honey, because I do not eat sweets, and proposes to open the butter trade because it is so annoying to go about for butter; "my stoveman" descends from the stilts of the firm, looking after these chimney affairs himself; "my carpenter" says, "Shure, an' ye don't owe me onything; I'd work for ye grat-tis if I could"; "my cabinet-dealer" sends tables and wardrobes at midnight if desired, and takes them back and sells them over the next day; even the washerwoman is an affinity, exclaiming, "Shure, an' ye naid n't think I'll be chargin' ye with all the collars an' ruffles ye put in,—shure, an' I'll not."

Perhaps it sounds a little egotistic to say "my grocer," &c., but is not this the way that heads of families talk, and am I not head and family too? At least the solitary may soothe themselves with the family sounds. Indeed, it soon appears that all these faithful servers are like to become so radical a part of the my and mine of existence, as to make it really alarming. When one's comfort is thus bound up in fire-boy and washerwoman, alas! what will become of the grand philosophy of Epictetus?

To begin housekeeping proper, one will need at least a bread-knife and tumbler, a gridiron and individual salt,—cost eighty-four cents. My list also includes for kitchen and table use:—

[Pg 461]

To this should be added a small iron frying-pan for gravied meats. The quart pail usually did duty for vegetables, the saucepan for soup, while prime chops and steaks appeared from the gridiron. Tea-spoons are not included, nor any tea things whatever. These excepted, it will be seen that less than five dollars gives a full housekeeping apparatus, with pretty white crockery enough to invite a dinner guest.

The provisions for one week were:—

At the end of the week there was stock unused to the amount of $1.00, making $2.85 for actual board, (I did not dine out once,) and this included the most expensive meats, which one might not always care to get; for it is not parsimony that often prefers a sirloin steak at thirty cents to a tenderloin at forty cents. But this note may be added. Don't buy quails, they are all gizzard and feathers; and don't buy halibut, till you have inquired the price. It will also be perceived that beverages are not mentioned. None of that seven million pounds of tea shipped from China last September ever came to my shores. If this article were added, there would come in large complications of furniture and food, beside the obligation of being on the stairs at early hours in fearful dishabille, watching for the milkman, as I have seen my sister-lodgers.

The pecuniary result is, that, for less than three dollars per week and the work, one may have the best food in the market; for three dollars and no work, one may have the very worst in the world.

For any ordinary amount of cooking, an open grate is admirable, though it do not furnish that convenient stove-pipe whereon lady boarders can smooth out their ribbons, &c.; but it is accessible, and draws the culinary odors speedily out of the room. At least it is admirable from fall to the middle of December, when you find that it draws the heat, as well as the odors, up chimney; then you will get a "Fairy" stove of the smallest size, with a portable oven, and fairly go into winter quarters. But by the grate one may boil, broil, and toast, if not roast; for I used with delight to cook apples on the cool corners, giving them a turn between sentences as I read or wrote. They seemed to have a higher flavor, being seasoned with thoughts; but it was not equally sure if the thoughts were better for being seasoned with apple. However, one must not count herself so recherché as Schiller, who could only write when his desk was full of rotten apples.

Still the grate has no oven, and the chief difficulty is in bread. One starts bravely on the baker's article, but such is the excess of yeast that the bitterness becomes intolerable. Then one begins to perambulate the city, and thinks she has a prize in this or that brand,—is enamored of Brigham's Graham biscuits, hot twice a week, or of Parker's rolls,—but soon eats through novelty to the core, and that is always hops. Thus one goes from baker to baker, but it is only a hopping from hops to hops. I see with malicious joy that the exportation tariff is to be removed from hops.

As to crackers, they are of course no more available than pine splints, though the Graham variety is the best. Aerated bread is probably the most healthful, but this is pitiable to live on; it tastes like salted flannel.

Finally, let me confess to the use of a friendly oven near by, and from this came every week the indispensable Graham cakes, which are the despair of all the cooks. Of course, on this point it is impossible, without seeing their experiment, to say why it failed;[Pg 462] but all the given conditions being met, if the cakes were tough, there was probably too much meal; if soggy, too little. Also the latest improvement is not to cut them in diamonds, but to roll them into various forms. After scalding, the dough is just too soft to be handled easily; it is then to be dropped into meal upon the board, separating it in small quantities with a spoon or knife, and rolling lightly in the meal into small biscuits, rolls, or any form desired. But do not work in any of the meal. Possibly some of the failures come from disregard of this; for the meal which is added after, being unscalded, is not light, and would only clog the cakes. And, in eating, the biscuits should be broken, never sliced. They are in their prime when hot, quite as much as Ward Beecher's famous apple-pie; but, unlike that, may be freshened afterward by dipping in cold water and heating in a quick oven just before wanted. In other words, they may be regenerated by immersion.

As to the system of this minute household,—if any should be curious to know,—it was to have breakfast-dishes despatched, with the dinner vegetables pared, at half past nine, a. m.; dinner out of hand by two, p. m.; bread and butter and Cochituate precisely at six, p. m.

In one of Mr. and Mrs. Hall's "Memories of Authors," mention is made of a little Miss Spence, who, with rather limited arrangements in two rooms, used to give literary tea-parties, and was shrewdly suspected of keeping her butter in a wash-bowl. I did not follow any such underhanded proceeding. I kept my butter on the balcony. All-out-doors was my refrigerator; and if one will look abroad some cool, glittering night, he may yet see my oyster-pail hung by a star, or swinging on the horns of a new moon.

Perhaps it is fair to mention, however, that on one glittering night the mercury fell below zero, and the windows all froze hard down, and there was the butter locked on the outer side! And oh! it is such a trying calamity to be frozen in from one's butter! But after this experience the housekeeper shrewdly watches for these episodes of weather, and takes the jar in of a night. So it is that eternal vigilance is the price even of butter.

Still it seemed that, with careful and economizing mind, on six feet by thirteen it was not only possible to live, but to take table-boarders. Certainly nothing could be gayer, unless to ramble delightfully forever in one of those orange-colored ambrotype-saloons, drawn by milk-white oxen; or to quarter like Gavroche of Les Miserables among the ribs of the plaster elephant in the Bastile; or more pensively to abide in the crannied boat-cabin of the Peggotys, watching the tide sweep out and in.

This must be the weird, barbaric side of the before-named brick and mortar flat of five rooms.

Pope, the tragedian, said that he knew of but one crime a man could commit,—peppering a rump steak. It is an argument for boarding one's self that all these comfortable crimes thus become feasible. One may even butter her bread on three sides with impunity; or eat tamarinds at every meal, running the risk of her own grimaces; or take her stewed cherries with curious, undivided interest as to whether a sweet or sour one will come next (dried cherries are a great consolation); and, being allowed to help herself, can the better bring all the edibles to an end at once upon her plate,—an indication of Providence that the proper feast is finished. Wonderfully independent all this! Life with the genuine bachelor flavor. As L. remarked, even the small broom in the corner had a sturdy little way of standing alone.

Perhaps there is nothing finer than the throng of fancies that comes in a solitary breakfast. Then one reaches hands of greeting to all the lone artists taking their morning acquavite in Rome; to the young students of Germany at their early coffee and eggs; even remembering the lively grisette of Paris, as, with a parting fillip to her canary, she flits forth from her upper room; and finally drinks to the memory[Pg 463] of our own Irving at his bachelor breakfast among the fountains and flowers in the Court of Lions at the Alhambra.

And very sweet, too, it is, in the fall of the day, to sit by the rich, ruby coals, and think of those who are far, until they come near; and of that which is hoped for, until it seems that which is; to sit and dream, till

This it is to keep house with a bread-knife and tumbler, a gridiron and an individual salt. This it is to vitally understand the multum in parvo of existence. This it is to have used and mastered civilization.

But the total pecuniary result is, that the rent of the very smallest room in central location—at the hub of the hub—will not be less than three dollars per week, without light, heat, or furniture. Fire, and a boy to make it, will be two dollars per week; light seventy-five cents if gas, twenty-five cents if kerosene; this, with board at three dollars, washing at one dollar per dozen, and the constant Tribune, etc., brings one up to the pretty little sum of ten dollars per week, without a single item of luxury, unless daily papers can be called luxurious. Or, should one go out to breakfasts and dinners, nothing tolerable can be had under five dollars per week; and this gives a total of twelve dollars. Then, to complete one's life, there must be clothing, literature, perhaps travel and hospitality, making nearly as much more; and to crown it, there must be the single woman's favorite lecturer or prima donna; for ah! we too, in some form, must have our cigars and champagne. A round thousand a year for ever so small a package of humanity!

And of course, as goods are higher in small quantities, so in living by this individual way it will be discovered that prices are prodigious, but that weights and measures are not. After opening the small purse regularly at half-hour intervals for several weeks, one at length finds herself opening it when there is nothing to be bought, from mere muscular habit. Altogether it is easy to spend as much as a second-rate Congressman, without any of his accommodations. This is wherein one does not master civilization.

Mr. McCulloch, in his Report on the Treasury, suggested an increase of salary for certain subordinates in his department, declaring that they could not support their families in due rank on four, five, or even six thousand dollars a year. It is easy to believe it. It is easy to believe anything that may be stated with regard to money, except that one will ever be able to get enough of it to cover these terrible charges. The entire fabric of things rests on money; and our prices would drive a respectable Frenchman into suicide. O poor Robin Ruff! alas for your grand visions that you sang so glowingly to dear Gaffer Green! In this age of the world, O what could you do, or where could you go, e'en on a thousand pounds a year, poor Robin Ruff?

And so long as each must keep her separate establishment, it will not be found possible to reduce living much below the present figures. But London has more wisely met the pressure of the times in those magnificent clubhouses, which have made Pall Mall almost a solid square of palaces hardly inferior to the homes of the nobility themselves. Each of these houses has its hundreds of members, who really fare sumptuously, having all the luxuries of wealth on the prices that one pays here for poverty. The food is furnished by the best purveyors, and charged to the consumers at cost; all other expenses of the establishment being met by the members' initiation fees, ranging from £32 entrance fee and £11 annual subscription, to £9 and £6 for entrance and subscription. Being admirably officered and planned throughout, these gigantic households are systematized to the beautiful smoothness of small ones; their phrase of "fare-well" is one of epicurean invitation, not of dismissal; while such are the combined luxuriousness and economy that,[Pg 464] says one authority, "the modern London club is a realization of a Utopian cœnobium,—a sort of lay convent, rivalling the celebrated Abbey of Thelemé, with the agreeable motto of Fais ce que voudras, instead of monastic discipline."

Of course, New York also has followed suit, and there, too, clubs are trumps; but, according to "The Nation," with this remarkable exception, that "at these houses the leading idea seems to be, not to furnish the members at cost price, but to increase the finances with a view to some future expenditure." The writer reasonably observes, that "what a man wants is his breakfast or dinner cheaper than he can get it at the hotel, and not to pay thirty or sixty dollars annually in order that ten years hence the club may have a new building farther up town." And Boston has followed New York, with its trio of well-known clubs, differing also from those of London in having poorer appointments and the highest conceivable charges.

But most of these clubs do not include lodgings, and none of them include ladies. It remains for America to give us the club complete in both. There is every reason why women should secure elegant and economical homes in this way. Indeed, in the present state of things, there seems no other way to secure them. There is no remedy but in a system of judicious clubbing. Since this phase of the world seems made up for the family relation, then ladies must make themselves into a sort of family to face it. Where is the coming man who shall communicate this art of clubbing, which has not yet even been admitted into the feminine dialect? Mr. Mercer is doing for the women who wish to go out in the world that which womanly gratitude can but lightly repay.[F] Where is the kindly, honest-hearted Mr. Mercer who shall further a like enterprise here,—a provision of quarters for those who can pay reasonably and who do not wish to go away? This would be a genuine Stay-at-home Club, a Can't-get-away Club of the very happiest sort. And this alone can put life in our noble cities, where active-brained women love to be, on something like possible terms.

In Miss Howitt's "Art Student at Munich,"—a charming sketch, by the way, of women living en bachelier abroad,—we find one young enthusiast idealizing upon this very need of feminine life, which she christens an Associated Home. In her artistic mind it takes the form of an outer and inner sisterhood,—the inner devoted to culture, the outer attending to the useful, ready alike to broil a steak or toe a stocking for the more ethereal ones of the household. This is all quite amiably intended, but no queen-bee and common-bee scheme of the sort seems to be either generous or practicable. It involves at once too much caste and too much contact. We do not wish to find servants or scrubs in our sisters, nor do we wish at all times even to see our sisters. There must be elbow-room for mood and temperament, as well as high walls of defence. The social element is too shy and elusive, and will not, like a monkey, perform on demand; therefore our plan abjures all these poetic organizations, which have a great deal of cant and very little good companionship; it has no sentimentalism to offer, proposing an association of purses rather than of persons,—a household on the base of protection rather than of society,—a mere combining for privileges and against prices. It is resolved into a simple matter of business; and the only help women need is that of an organizing brain to put themselves into this associate form, whereby they can meet the existing state of things with somewhat of human comfort.

Are we never to obtain even this, until the golden doors of the Millennium swing open? Ah, then indeed one must melt a little, looking regretfully back to Brook Farm, undismayed by the fearful Zenobia; looking leniently toward Wallingford, Lebanon, and Haryard.[Pg 465] Anything for wholesome diet, free life, and a quiet refuge.

But whether to live alone or together, the first want is of houses,—which is another hitch in the social system. In the city a building-lot is an incipient fortune; and the large sum paid for it is the beginning of reasons for the large rent of the building that is put upon it. But then if ground is costly, air is cheap,—land is high, but sky is low; and one need have but very little earth to a great deal of house. A writer, describing the London of thirty years ago, speaks of the huge, narrow dwellings, full five stories high, and says that the agility with which the inmates "ran up and down, and perched on the different stories, gave the idea of a cage with its birds and sticks"; and the like figure seems to have occurred to the queer Mademoiselle Marchand of "Denise," who, as she toiled to her eyrie on the topmost landing, exclaimed, "One would think these houses were built by a winged race, who only used stairs when they were moulting!" But these same lofty houses are the very thing we must have to-day, all but the running up and down. Build us houses up, and up, as high as they will stand; give us plenty of sky-parlors, but also plenty of steam-elevators to go to and from "my lady's chamber." It is not a wise economy to devote one's precious power to this enormous amount of stair-work. It is not a kind of exercise that is sanitive. The Evans House and Hotel Pelham, for instance, are very pretty Bostonianisms, but all their rooms within range of ordinary means are beyond the range of ordinary strength. The achievement of twenty flights a day, back and forth, would leave but small surplus of vigor. While the steam power is there for heating purposes, why not use some of it to propel the passengers up and down that wilderness of rosy boudoirs? Is there any reason why this labor-saving machine, the steam-elevator, which we now associate with Fifth Avenue luxury, should not be the common possession of all our large tenanted buildings? And is there any reason, indeed, in our houses being no better appointed than the English houses of thirty years ago? Ruskin has been honorably named for renting a few cottages with an eye to his tenants as well as himself; but the men who in our crowded cities shall erect these mammoth rental establishments, with steam access to every story, will build their own best monuments for posterity. We commend it to capitalists as a chance to invest in a generous fame. Until this is done, we shall even disapprove of bestowing any more mansions upon our beloved General Grant. It is not gallant. Until then, too, how shall one ever pass that venerable Park Street Church of Boston, without the irreverent sigh of "What capital lodgings it would make!" Those three little windows in the curve, looking up and down the street, and into the ever-fascinating Atlantic establishment; the lucky tower, into which one might retreat, pen in hand, if not wishing to be at home to callers nor abroad to himself,—Carlyle-like, making the library at the top of the house; and all within glance of the dominating State-House, whither one might steal up for an occasional lunch of oratory or a digest of laws. We also hear of a new hotel being builded on Tremont Street, and wonder if there will be any rooms fit for ladies, and whether one of those in the loft will rent for as much as a charming villa should command.

But while we ask now for immediate relief by clubs and rental establishments, the great practical and artistic problem of America still remains in learning to manage its civilization; in acquiring a forecaste, a system, that meets individual wants; in adjusting resource to requirement. Then we shall not be driven into association. It is jocosely said, that in the West, whose rivers are shallow and uncertain, the steamers are built to run on a heavy dew. Allowing for the joke, this is not more nice than wise. To be dexterous, fine-fingered, facile! How perfect is the response in all the petty personalities of politics! In this America, where all men aspire, and more men get office[Pg 466] than one would think there were offices to get, what miracles of adroitness! It is one perpetual, Turn, turn again, Lord Mayor! If but half the genius were diverted from office-getting to house-building, what towering results! But since it is the misery of a republic that politics is supreme, and that a people who govern themselves can have little leisure for anything else, I have sometimes feared that the only way to get these woman questions through is by tacking them on to politics. If, then, any of our masculine friends now go to Congress on an amelioration of labor, Heaven speed the day when they can only go on an amelioration of lodgings.

But on this side of the question we as yet hold close to the leeward. For to make it political, women must have political power, the power of the ballot; and this claim she chooses to defer to the more oppressed race,—chooses first to secure justice to all men, before entering the long campaign of justice to women.

Meanwhile, we young housekeepers, who are neither capitalists to build what we need, nor politicians to procure it builded, can only live on these real-unreal lives as we may. But sometimes, when the city lamps are agleam in the early evening, we go out for a walk of romance upon the brilliant avenue near by, gazing eagerly into those superb drawing-rooms where the curtains are kindly lifted a little, and tempted to ring at the door on a false errand where they are not,—simply to get a peep at the captivating comfort inside. And thus we too possess houses and homes; with all these to enjoy and none of them to care for, why may not one easily remain the wealthiest person in the universe? Ah, no one knows what riches we have in our thoughts, and how little bliss there is in the world that we have not!

DOCTOR JOHNS.

LIII.

Reuben, meantime, is leading a dashing life in the city. The Brindlock family have taken him to their arms again as freely and heartily as if he had never entered the fold over which the good Doctor exercised pastoral care, and as if he had never strayed from it again.

"I told you 't would be all right, Mabel," said Mr. Brindlock to his wife; and neither of them ever rallied him upon his bootless experience in that direction.

But the kindly aunt had not forborne (how could she?) certain pertinent inquiries in regard to the pretty Miss Maverick, under which Reuben had shown considerable disposition to flinch; although he vainly fancied that he stood the interrogation with a high hand. Mrs. Brindlock drew her own conclusions, but was not greatly disturbed by them. Why should she be, indeed? Reuben, with his present most promising establishment in business, and with a face and air that insured him a cordial welcome in that circle of wealthy acquaintances which Mrs. Brindlock especially cultivated, was counted a bon parti, independent of his position as presumptive heir to a large share of the Brindlock estate.

Once or twice since his leave of Ashfield he has astonished the good people there by a dashing visit. Perhaps he has enjoyed (such things are sometimes enjoyed) setting forth before the quiet parishioners of his father his new consequence as a man of the world and of large moneyed prospects. It is even[Pg 467] possible that he may have entertained agreeably the fancy of dazing the eyes of both Rose and Adèle with the glitter of his city distinctions. But their admiration, if they felt any, was not flatteringly expressed. Adèle, indeed, was always graciously kind, and, seeing his confirmed godlessness, tortured herself secretly with the thought that, but for her rebuff, he might have made a better fight against the bedevilments of the world, and lived a truer and purer life. All that, however, was irrevocably past. As for Rose, if there crept into her little prayers a touch of sentiment as she pleaded for the backslidden son of the minister, her prayers were none the worse for it. Such trace of sentimental color—like the blush upon her fair cheek—gave a completed beauty to her appeals.

Reuben saw that Phil was terribly in earnest in his love, and he fancied, with some twinges, that he saw indications on the part of Adèle of its being not wholly unacceptable. Rose, too, seemed not disinclined to receive the assiduous attentions of the young minister, who had become a frequent visitor in the Elderkin household, and who preached with an unction and an earnestness that touched her heart, and that made her sigh despondingly over the outcast son of the old pastor. Watching these things with a look studiedly careless and indifferent, Reuben felt himself cut off more than ever from such charms or virtues as might possibly have belonged to continued association with the companions of his boyhood, and nerved himself for a new and firmer grip upon those pleasures of the outer world which had not yet proved an illusion. There were moments—mostly drifting over him in silent night-hours, within his old chamber at the parsonage—when it seemed to him that he had made a losing game of it. The sparkling eyes of Adèle, suffused with tears,—as in that memorable interview of the garden,—beam upon him, promising, as then, other guidance; they gain new brilliance, and wear stronger entreaty, as they shine lovingly upon him from the distance—growing greater and greater—which now lies between them. Her beauty, her grace, her tenderness, now that they are utterly beyond reach, are tenfold enticing; and in that other sphere to which, in his night revery, they seem translated, the joyous face of Rose, like that of an attendant angel, looks down regretfully, full of a capacity for love to which he must be a stranger.

He is wakened by the bells next morning,—a Sunday morning, may be. There they go,—he sees them from the window,—the two comely damsels, picking their way through the light, fresh-fallen snow of March. Going possibly to teach the catechism; he sneers at this thought, for he is awake now. Has the world no richer gift in store for him? That Sophie Bowrigg is a great fortune, a superb dancer, a gorgeous armful of a woman. What if they were to join their fortunes and come back some day to dazzle these quiet townsfolk with the splendor of their life? His visits in Ashfield grow shorter and more rare. There is nothing particularly alluring. We shall not meet him there again until we meet him for the last time.

Mr. Catesby is an "acceptable preacher." He unfolds the orthodox doctrines with more grace than had belonged to the manner of the Doctor, and illustrates them from time to time with a certain youthful glow, and touches of passionate exhortation, which for many years the Ashfield pulpit had not known. The old ladies befriend him and pet him in their kindly way; and if at times his speculative humor (which he is not wholly without) leads him beyond the bounds of the accepted doctrines, he compounds the matter by strong assertion of those sturdy generalities which lie at the bottom of the orthodox creed.

But his self-control is not so apparent in his social intercourse; and before he has been three months in Ashfield, he has given tongue to gossip, and all the old ladies comment upon his enslavement to the pretty Rose[Pg 468] Elderkin. And they talk by the book; he is desperately enamored. Young clergymen have this way of falling, at sight, into the toils, which is vastly refreshing to middle-aged observers. But we have no occasion to detail his experience. An incident only of his recreative pursuits in this direction belongs to our narrative.

Upon one of the botanical excursions of later spring which he had inaugurated, and to which the maidenly modesty of Rose had suggested that Adèle should make a party, the young Catesby (who was a native of Eastern Massachusetts) had asked in his naïve manner after her family connections. An uncle of his had known a Mr. Maverick, who had long been a resident of Europe.

"It may possibly be some relation of yours, Miss Maverick," said the young minister.

"Do you recall the first name?" said Rose.

Mr. Catesby hesitated in that interesting way in which lovers are wont to hesitate. No, he did not remember; but he was a jovial, generous-hearted man, (he had heard his uncle often describe him,) who must be now some fifty or sixty years old.—"Frank Maverick, to be sure; I have the name."

"Why, it is my father," said Adèle with a swift, happy rush of color to her face.

"O no, Miss Maverick," said the young Catesby with a smile, "that is quite impossible. The gentleman of whom I speak, and my uncle visited him only three years ago, is a confirmed bachelor, and he had rallied him, I remember, upon never having married."

The color left the cheeks of Adèle.

"Frank, did you say?" persisted Rose.

"Frank was the name," said the innocent young clergyman; "and he was a merchant, if I remember rightly, somewhere upon the Mediterranean."

"It's very strange," said Rose, turning to Adèle.

And Adèle, all her color gone, had the fortitude to pat Rose lovingly upon the shoulder, and to say, with a forced smile, "Life is very strange, Rose."

But from this time till they reached home,—fortunately not far away,—Adèle said nothing more. Rose remarked an unwonted pallor in her cheeks.

"You are tired, Adèle," said she; "you are so pale!"

"Child," said Adèle, tapping her again, in a womanly way that was strange to her companion, "you have color for us both."

At this, her reserve of dignity and fortitude being now wellnigh spent, she rushed away to her chamber. What wonder if she sought the little crucifix, sole memento of the unknown mother, and glued it to her lips, as she fell upon her knees by the bedside, and uttered such a prayer for help and strength as had never uttered before?

"It is true! it is true! I see it now. The child of shame! The child of shame! O my father, my father! what wrong have you done me!" And again she prays for help and strength.

There is not a doubt in her mind where the truth lies. In a moment her thought has flashed over the whole chain of evidence. The father's studied silence; her alienation from any home of her own; the mysterious hints of the Doctor; and the strange communication of Reuben,—all come up in stately array and confound her with the bitter truth. There is a little miniature of her father which she has kept among her choicest treasures. She seeks it now. Is it to throw it away in scorn? No, no, no. Our affections are after all not submissible to strict moral regimen. It is with set teeth and a hard look in her eye that she regards it at first; then her eyes suffuse with tears while she looks, and she kisses it passionately again and again.

"Can there be some horrible mistake in all this?" she asks herself. At the thought she slips on hat and shawl and glides noiselessly down the stairs, (not for the world would she have been[Pg 469] interrupted!) and walks swiftly away to her old home at the parsonage.

Dame Tourtelot meets her and says, "Good evening, Miss Adeel."

And Adèle, in a voice so firm that it does not seem her own, says, "Good evening, Miss Tourtelot." She wonders greatly at her own calmness.

LIV.

The Doctor is alone in his study when Adèle comes in upon him, and she has reached his chair and dropped upon her knees beside him before he has time to rise.

"New Papa, you have been so kind to me! I know the truth now,—the mystery, the shame";—and she dropped her head upon his knees.

"Adaly, Adaly, my dear child!" said the old man with a great tremor in his voice, "what does this mean?"

She was sobbing, sobbing.

"Adaly, my child, what can I do for you?"

"Pray for me, New Papa!" and she lifted her eyes upon him with a tender, appealing look.

"Always, always, Adaly!"

"Tell me, New Papa,—tell me honestly,—is it not true that I can call no one mother,—that I never could?"

The Doctor trembled: he would have given ten years of his life to have been able to challenge her story, to disabuse her mind of the belief which he saw was fastened past all recall. "Adaly," said he, "Christ befriended the Magdalen,—how much more you, then, if so be you are the unoffending child of——"

"I knew it! I knew it!" and she fell to sobbing again upon the knee of the old gentleman, in a wild, passionate way.

In such supreme moments the mind reaches its decisions with electrical rapidity. Even as she leaned there, her thought flashed upon that poor Madame Arles who had so befriended her,—against whom they had cautioned her, who had shown such intense emotion at their first meeting, who had summoned her at the last, and who had died with that wailing cry, "Ma fille!" upon her lip. Yes, yes, her mother indeed, who died in her arms! (she can never forget that death-clasp.)

She hints as much to the Doctor, who, in view of his recent communication from Maverick, will not gainsay her.

When she moved away at last, as if for a leave-taking, silent and humiliated, the old man said to her, "My child, are you not still my Adaly? God is no respecter of persons; his ministers should be like him."

Whereupon Adèle came and kissed him with a warmth that reminded him of days long past.

She rejoiced in not having encountered the gray, keen eyes of the spinster. She knew they would read unfailingly the whole extent of the revelation that had dawned upon her. That the spinster herself knew the truth, and had long known it, she was sure; and she recalled with a shudder the look of those uncanny eyes upon the evening of their little frolic at the Elderkins. She dreaded the thought of ever meeting them again, and still more the thought of listening to the stiff, cold words of consolation which she knew she would count it her duty to administer.

It was dusk when she left the Doctor's door; he would have attended, but she begged to be alone. It was an April evening, the chilliness of the earth just yielding to the coming summer; the frogs clamorous in all the near pools, and filling the air with the harsh uproar of their voices; the delicate grass-blades were just thrusting their tips through the brown web of the old year's growth, and in sunny, close-trodden spots showing a mat of green, while the fleecy brown blossoms of the elm were tufting all the spray of the embowering trees. Here and there a village loiterer greeted her kindly. They all knew Miss Adèle. "They will all know it to-morrow," she thought, "and then—then—"

With a swift but unsteady step she makes her way to the little graveyard; she had gone there often, and there were those who said wantonly that she[Pg 470] went to say her prayers before the little cross upon the tombstone she had placed over the grave of Madame Arles. Now she threw herself prone upon the little hillock, with a low, sharp cry of distress, like that of a wounded bird,—"My mother! my mother!"

Every word, every look of tenderness which the dead woman had lavished, she recalls now with a terrible distinctness. Those loud, vague appeals of her delirium come to her recollection with a meaning in them that is only too plain; and then the tight, passionate clasp, when, strained to her bosom, relief came at last. Adèle lies there unconscious of the time, until the night dews warn her away; she staggers through the gate. Where next? She fancies they must know it all at the Elderkins',—that she has no right there. Is she not an estray upon the world? Shall she not—as well first as last—wander forth, homeless as she is, into the night? And true to these despairing thoughts, she hurries away farther and farther from the town. The frogs croak monotonously in all the marshes, as if in mockery of her grief. On some near tree an owl is hooting, with a voice that is strangely and pitifully human. Presently an outlying farm-house shows its cheery, hospitable light through the window-panes, and she is tempted to shorten her steps and steal a look into the room where the family sits grouped around the firelight. No such sanctuary for her ever was or ever can be. Even the lowing of a cow in the yard, and the answering bleat of a calf within the barn, seem to mock the outcast.

On she passes, scarce knowing whither her hurrying steps are bearing her, until at last she spies a low building in the fields away upon her right, which she knows. It is the home of that outlawed woman where Madame Arles had died. Here at least she will be met with sympathy, even if the truth were wholly known; and yet perhaps last of all places would she have it known there. She taps at the door; she has wandered out of her way, and asks for a moment's rest. The little boy of the house, when he has made out the visitor by a few furtive peeps from behind the mother's chair, comes to her fawningly and familiarly; and as Adèle looks into his bright, fearless eyes, a new courage seems to possess her. God's children, all of us; and He careth even for the sparrows. She will conquer her despairing weakness; she will accept her cross and bear it resolutely. By slow degrees she is won over by the frolicsome humor of the curly-pated boy, who never once quits her side, into cheerful prattle with him. And when at last, fairly rested, she would set off on her return, the lone woman says she will see her safely as far as the village street; the boy, too, insists doggedly upon attending them; and so, with her hand tightly clasped in the hand of the lad, Adèle makes her way back into the town. Along the street she passes, even under the windows of the parsonage, with her hand still locked in that of the outlawed boy; and she wonders if in broad day the same courage would be meted to her? They only part when within sight of the broad glow of light from the Elderkin windows; and here Adèle, taking out her purse, counts out the half of her money and places it in the hands of the boy.

"We will share and share alike, Willie," said she, "But never tell who gave you this."

"But, Miss Maverick, it's too much," said the woman.

"No, it's not," said the boy, clutching it eagerly.

With a parting good-night, Adèle darted within the gate, and opened softly the door, determined to meet courageously whatever rebuffs might be in store for her.

LV.

Rose has detailed the story of the occurrence, with the innocent curiosity of girlhood, to the Squire and Mrs. Elderkin (Phil being just now away). The Squire, as he hears it, has passed a significant look across to Mrs. Elderkin.[Pg 471]

"It's very queer, isn't it?" asked Rose.

"Very," said the Squire, who had for some time cherished suspicions of certain awkward relations existing between Maverick and the mother of Adèle, but never so decided as this story would seem to warrant. "And what said Adèle?" continued he.

"It disturbed her, I think, papa; she didn't seem at all herself."

"Rose, my dear," said the kindly old gentleman, "there is some unlucky family difference between Mr. and Mrs. Maverick, and I dare say the talk was unpleasant to Adèle; if I were you, I wouldn't allude to it again; don't mention it, please, Rose."

If it could be possible, good Mrs. Elderkin greeted Adèle as she came in more warmly than ever. "You must be careful, my dear, of these first spring days of ours; you are late to-night."

"Yes," says Adèle, "I was gone longer than I thought. I rambled off to the churchyard, and I have been at the Doctor's."

Again the old people exchanged glances.

Why does she find herself watching their looks so curiously? Yet there is nothing but kindness in them. She is glad Phil is not there.

The next morning the Squire stepped over at an early hour to the parsonage, and by an adroit question or two, which the good Doctor had neither the art nor the disposition to evade, unriddled the whole truth with respect to the parentage of Adèle. The Doctor also advised him of the delusion of the poor girl with respect to Madame Arles, and how he had considered it unwise to attempt any explanation until he should hear further from Mr. Maverick, whose recent letter he counted it his duty to lay before Mr. Elderkin.

"It's a sad business," said he.

And the Doctor, "The way of the wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble."

The Squire walks home in a brown study. Like all the rest, he has been charmed with the liveliness and grace of Adèle; over and over he has said to his boy, "How fares it, Phil? Why, at your age, my boy, I should have had her in the toils long ago."

Since her domestication under his own roof, the old gentleman's liking for her had grown tenfold strong; he had familiarized himself with the idea of counting her one of his own flock. But, the child of a French——

"Well, well, we will see what the old lady may say," reflected he. And he took the first private occasion to lay the matter before Mrs. Elderkin.

"Well, mother, the suspicions of last night are all true,—true as a book."

"God help the poor child, then!" said Madam, holding up her hands.

"Of course He'll do that, wife. But what say you to Phil's marriage now? Does it look as tempting as it did?"

The old lady reflected a moment, lifting her hand to smooth the hair upon her temple, as if in aid of her thought, then said,—"Giles, you know the world better than I; you know best what may be well for the boy. I love Adèle very much; I do not believe that I should love her any less if she were the wife of Phil. But you know best, Giles; you must decide."

"There's a good woman!" said the Squire; and he stayed his pace up and down the room to lay his hand approvingly upon the head of the old lady, touching as tenderly those gray locks as ever he had done in earlier years the ripples of golden brown.

In a few days Phil returns,—blithe, hopeful, winsome as ever. He is puzzled, however, by the grave manner of the Squire, when he takes him aside, after the first hearty greetings, and says, "Phil, my lad, how fares it with the love matter? Have things come to a crisis, eh?"

"What do you mean, father?" and Phil blushes like a boy of ten.

"I mean to ask, Philip," said the old gentleman, measuredly, "if you have made any positive declaration to Miss Maverick."

"Not yet," said Phil, with a modest frankness.[Pg 472]

"Very good, my son, very good. And now, Phil, I would wait a little,—take time for reflection; don't do anything rashly. It's an important step to take."

"But, father," says Phil, puzzled by the old gentleman's manner, "what does this mean?"

"Philip," said the Squire, with a seriousness that seemed almost comical by its excess, "would you really marry Adèle?"

"To-morrow, if I could," said Phil.

"Tut, tut, Phil! It's the old hot blood in him!" (He says this, as if to himself.) "Philip, I wouldn't do so, my boy."

And thereupon he gives him in his way a story of the revelations of the last few days.

At the first, Phil is disposed to an indignant denial, as if by no possibility any indignity could attach to the name or associations of Adèle. But in the whirl of his feeling he remembered that interview with Reuben, and his boast that Phil could not affront the conventionalities of the world. It confirmed the truth to him in a moment. Reuben then had known the whole, and had been disinterestedly generous. Should he be any less so?

"Well, father," said Phil, after a minute or two of silence, "I don't think the story changes my mind one whit. I would marry her to-morrow, if I could," and he looked the Squire fairly and squarely in the face.

"Gad, boy," said the old gentleman, "you must love her as I loved your mother!"

"I hope I do," said Phil,—"that is if I win her. I don't think she's to be had for the asking."

"Aha! the pinch lies there, eh?" said the Squire, and he said it in better humor than he would have said it ten days before. "What's the trouble, Philip?"

"Well, sir, I think she always had a tenderness for Reuben; I think she loves him now in her heart."

"So, so! The wind lies there, eh? Well, let it bide, my boy; let it bide awhile. We shall know something more of the matter soon."

And there the discourse of the Squire ended.

Meantime, however, Rose and Adèle are having a little private interview above stairs, which in its subject-matter is not wholly unrelated to the same theme.

"Rose," Adèle had said, as she fondled her in her winning way, "your brother Phil has been very kind to me."

"He always meant to be," said Rose, with a charming glow upon her face.

"He always has been," said Adèle; "but, dear Rose, I know I can talk as plainly to you as to another self almost."

"You can,—you can, Ady," said she.

"I have thought," continued Adèle, "though I know it is very unmaidenly in me to say it, that Phil was disposed sometimes to talk even more warmly than he has ever talked, and to ask me to be a nearer friend to him even than you, dear Rose. May be it is only my own vanity that leads me sometimes to suspect this."

"O, I hope it may be true!" burst forth Rose.

"I hope not," said Adèle, with a voice so gravely earnest that Rose shuddered.

"O Ady, you don't mean it! you who are so good, so kind! Phil's heart will break."

"I don't think that," said Adèle, with a faint hard smile, in which her womanly vanity struggled with her resolution. "And whatever might have been, that which I have hinted at must not be now, dear Rose. You will know some day why—why it would be ungrateful in me to determine otherwise. Promise me, darling, that you will discourage any inclination toward it, wherever you can best do so. Promise me, dear Rose!"

"Do you really, truly mean it?" said the other, with a disappointment she but poorly concealed.

"With all my heart, I do," said Adèle.

And Rose promised, while she threw herself upon the neck of Adèle and said, "I am so sorry! It will be such a blow to poor Phil!"[Pg 473]

After this, things went on very much in their old way. To the great relief of Adèle there was no explosive village demonstration of the news which had come home so cruelly to herself. The Doctor had given an admonition to the young minister, and the old Squire had told him, in a pointed and confidential way, that he had heard of his inquiries and assertions with respect to Mr. Maverick, and begged to hint that the relations between the father and the mother of Adèle were not of the happiest, and it was quite possible that Mr. Maverick had assumed latterly the name of a bachelor; it was not, however, a very profitable subject of the speculation or of gossip, and if he valued the favor of the young ladies he would forbear all allusion to it. A suggestion which Mr. Catesby was not slow to accept religiously, and scrupulously to bear in mind.

Phil was as hot a lover as ever, though for a time a little more distant: and the poor fellow remarked a new timidity and reserve about Adèle, which, so far from abating, only fed the flame; and there is no knowing to what reach it might have blazed out, if a trifling little circumstance had not paralyzed his zeal.

From time to time, Phil had been used to bring home a rare flower or two as a gift for Adèle, which Rose had always lovingly arranged in some coquettish fashion, either upon the bosom or in the hair of Adèle; but a new and late gift of this kind—a little tuft of the trailing arbutus which he has clambered over miles of woodland to secure—is not worn by Adèle, but by Rose, who glances into the astounded face of Phil with a pretty, demure look of penitence.

"I say, Rose," says he, seizing his chance for a private word,—"that's not for you."

"I know it, Phil; Adèle gave it to me."

"And that's her favorite flower."

"Yes, Phil," and there is a shake in her voice now. "I think she's grown tired of such gifts, Phil";—whereat she glances keenly and pitifully at him.

"Truly, Rose?" says Phil, with the color on a sudden quitting his cheeks.

"Truly,—truly, Phil,"—and in spite of herself the pretty hazel eyes are brimming full, and, under pretence of some household duty, she dashes away. For a moment Phil stands confounded. Then, through his set teeth, he growls, "I was a fool not to have known it!"

But Phil was not a fool, but a sturdy, brave-hearted fellow, who bore whatever blows fortune gave him, or seemed to give, with a courage that had a fine elastic temper in it. He may have made his business engagements at the river or in the city a little more frequent and prolonged after this; but always there was the same deferential show of tender feeling toward his father's guest, whenever he happened in Ashfield. Indeed, he felt immensely comforted by a little report which Rose made to him in her most despairing manner. Adèle had told her that she "would never, never marry."

There are a great many mothers of fine families who have made such a speech at twenty or thereabout; and Phil knew it.

LVI.

We by no means intend to represent our friend Adèle as altogether a saint. Such creatures are very rare, and not always the most lovable, according to our poor human ways of thinking; but she may possibly grow into saintship, in view of a certain sturdy religious sense of duty that belongs to her, and a faith that is always glowing. At present she is a high-spirited, sensitive girl,—not without her pride and her lesser vanities, not without an immense capacity for loving and being loved, but just now trembling under that shock to her sensibilities which we have detailed,—but never fainting, never despairing. Not even relinquishing her pride, but guarding it with triple defences, by her reserve in respect to Phil, as well as by a certain new dignity of manner which has grown out of her conflict with the opprobrium[Pg 474] that seems to threaten, for no fault of her own.

Adèle sees clearly now the full burden of Reuben's proposal to cherish and guard her against whatever indignities might threaten; she sees more clearly than ever the rich, impulsive generosity of his nature reflected, and it disturbs her grievously to think that she had met it only with reproach. The thought of the mad, wild, godless career upon which he may have entered, and of which the village gossips are full, is hardly more afflictive to her than her recollection of that frank, self-sacrificing generosity, so ignobly requited. She longs in her heart to clear the debt,—to tell him what grateful sense she has of his intended kindness. But how? Should she,—being what she is,—even by a word, seem to invite a return of that devotion which may be was but the passion of an hour, and which it were fatal to renew? Her pride revolts at this. And yet—and yet—so brave a generosity shall not be wholly unacknowledged. She writes:—

"Reuben, I know now the full weight of the favor of what you promised to bestow upon me when I so blindly reproached you with intrusion upon my private griefs. Forgive me, Reuben! I thank you now, late as it is, with my whole heart. It is needless to tell you how I came to know what, perhaps, I had better never have known, but which must always have overhung me as a dark cloud charged with a blasting fate. This knowledge, dear Reuben, which separates us so surely and so widely, relieves me of the embarrassment which I might otherwise have felt in telling you of my lasting gratitude, and (if as a sister I may say it) my love. If your kind heart could so overflow with pity then, you will surely pity me the more now; yet not too much, Reuben, for my pride as a woman is as strong as ever. The world was made for me, as much as it was made for others; and if I bear its blight, I will find some flowers yet to cherish. I do not count it altogether so grim and odious a world,—even under the broken light which shines upon it for me,—as in your last visits you seemed disposed to reckon it.

"And this reminds me, Reuben, that I have told you frankly how the cloud which overhung me has opened with a terrible surety. How is it with the cloud that lay upon you? Is there any light? Ah, Reuben, when I recall those days in which long ago your faith in something better beyond this world than lies in it seemed to be so much stronger and firmer than mine, and when your trust was so confident as to make mine stronger, it seems like a strange dream to me,—all the more when now you, who should reason more justly than I, believe in 'nothing,' (was not that your last word?)—and yet, dear Reuben, I cling,—I cling. Do you remember the old hymn I sung in those days:—

Even the old Doctor, who was so troubled by the Romish hymns, said it must have been written by a good man."

Much more she writes in this vein, but returns ever and again to that noble generosity of his,—her delicacy struggling throughout with her tender gratitude,—yet she fails not to show a deep, earnest undercurrent of affection, which surely might develop under sympathy into a very fever of love. Will it not touch the heart of Reuben? Will it not divert him from the trail where he wanders blindly? If we have read his character rightly, surely this letter, in which a delicate sensibility hardly veils a great passionate wealth of feeling, will stir him to a new and more hopeful venture.

God send that the letter may reach him safely!

For a long time Adèle has not written to Reuben, and it occurs to her, as she strolls away toward the village post, that to mail it herself may possibly provoke new town gossip. In this perplexity she presently encounters her boy friend, Arthur, who for a handful of pennies, and under injunction of secrecy,[Pg 475] cheerfully undertakes the duty. To the house of the lad's mother, far away as it was, Adèle had wandered frequently of late, and had borne away from time to time some trifling memento of the dead one whose memory so endeared the spot. It happens that she continues her stroll thither on this occasion; and the poor woman, toward whom Adèle's charities have flowed with a profusion that has astounded the Doctor, repays some new gift by placing in her hands a little embroidered kerchief, "too fine for such as she," which had belonged to Madame Arles. A flimsy bit of muslin daintily embroidered; but there is a name stitched upon its corner, for which Adèle treasures it past all reckoning,—the name of Julie Chalet.

It was as if the dead one had suddenly come back and whispered it in her ear,—Julie Chalet. The spring birds sung the name in chorus as she walked home; and on the grave-stone, under the cross, she seemed to see it cut upon the marble,—Julie Chalet.

Adèle has written to her father, of course, in those days when the first shock of the new revelation had passed. How could she do otherwise? If she has poured out the bitterness of her grief and of her isolation, she has mercifully spared him any reproach!

"I think I now understand," she writes, "the reason of your long absence from me. Whatever other griefs I bear, I will not believe that it has been from lack of affection for me. I recall that day, dear papa, when, with my head lying on your bosom, you said to me, 'She is unworthy; I will love you for both.' You must! But was she, papa, so utterly unworthy? I think I have known her; nay, I feel almost sure,—sure that these arms held her in the moment when she breathed adieu to the world. If ever bad, I am sure that she must have grown into goodness. I cannot, I will not, think otherwise. I can tell you so many of her kind deeds as will take away your condemnation. In this hope I live, dear papa.

"I have found her true name too, at last,—Julie Chalet,—is it not so? I wonder with what feeling you will read it; will it be with a wakened fondness? will it be with loathing? I tremble while I ask. You shall go with me (will you not?) to her grave; and there a kind Heaven will put in our hearts what memories are best.

"I know now the secret of your caution in respect to Reuben; you have been unwilling that your child should bring any possible shame to the household of a friend! Trust to me,—trust to me, papa, your sensitiveness cannot possibly be keener, if it be more generous, than my own. Yet I have never told you—what I have since learned—of the unselfish devotion of Reuben, which declared itself when he knew all,—all. Would I not be almost tempted to thank him with—myself? Yet, trust me, if I have written him with an almost unmaidenly warmth, I have called to his mind the great gulf that must lie between us.

"Is the old godmother, of whom you used to speak, still alive? It seems that I should love to hang about her neck in memory of days gone; it seems that I should love the warm sky under which I was born,—I am sure I should love the olive orchards, and the vines, and the light upon the sea. I feel as if I were living in chains now. When, when will you come to break them, and set me free?"

In those days of May, when the leaflets were unfolding, and when the downy bluebells were lifting their clustered blossoms filled with a mysterious fragrance, like the breath of young babes, Adèle loved to linger in the study of the parsonage; more than ever the good Doctor seemed a "New Papa,"—more than ever his eye dwelt upon her with a parental smile. It was not that she loved Rose less, that she lingered here so long; but she could not shake off the conviction that some day soon Rose might shrink from her. The good Doctor never would. Nor can it be counted strange if there, in the study so familiar to her childhood, she should recall the days when she had frolicked down the orchard, when[Pg 476] Reuben had gathered flowers for her, when life seemed enchanting. Was it enchanting now?

The Doctor was always gravely kind. "Have courage, Adaly, have courage!" he was wont to say, "God orders all things right."

And somehow, when she hears him say it, she believes it more than ever.

Ten days, a fortnight, and a month pass, and there is no acknowledgment from Reuben of her grateful letter. He does not count it worth his while, apparently, to break his long silence; or, possibly, he is too much engrossed with livelier interests to give a thought to this episode of his old life in Ashfield. Adèle is disturbed by it; but the very disturbance gives her new courage to combat faithfully the difficulties of her position. "One cheering word I would have thought he might have given me," said she.

The appeal to her father, too, has no answer. Before it reaches its destination, Maverick has taken ship for America; and, singularly enough, it is fated that the letter of Adèle should be first opened and read—by her mother.

LVII.

Some time in mid-May of this year Maverick writes:—

"My dear Johns,—I shall again greet you, God willing, in your own home, some forty days hence, and I shall come as a repentant Benedick; for I now wear the dignities of a married man. Your kind letter counted for a great deal toward my determination; but I will not affect to conceal from you, that my tender interest in the future of Adèle counted for a great deal more. As I had supposed, the communication to Julie (which I effected through her brother) that her child was still living, and living motherless, woke all the tenderness of her nature. I cannot say that the sudden change in her inclinations was any way flattering to me; but knowing her recent religious austerities, I was prepared for this. I shall not undertake to describe to you our first interview, which I can never forget. It belongs to those heart-secrets which cannot be spoken of; but this much I may tell you,—that, if there was no kindling of the old and wayward love, there grew out of it a respect for her present severity and elevation of character that I had never anticipated. At our age, indeed, (though, when I think of it, I must be many years your junior,) a respect for womanly character most legitimately takes the place of that disorderly sentiment which twenty years ago blazed out in passion.

"We have been married according to the rites of the Romish Church. If I had proposed other ceremony, more agreeable to your views, I am confident that she would not have listened to me. She is wrapped as steadfastly in her creed as ever you in yours. To do otherwise in so sacred a matter—and with her it wore solely that aspect—than as her Church commands, would have been to do foully and vainly. I had prepared you, I think, for her perversity in this matter; nor do I think that all your zeal and powers of persuasion could make her recreant to the faith for which she has immolated all the womanly vanities which certainly once belonged to her. Indeed, the only trace of worldliness which I see in her is her intense yearning toward our dear Adèle, and her passionate longing to clasp her child once more to her heart. Nor will I conceal from you that she hopes, with all the fervor of a mother's hope, to wean her from what she counts the heretical opinions under which she has been reared, and to bring her into the fold of the faithful.

"You will naturally ask, my dear Johns, why I do not combat this; but I am too old and too far spent for a fight about creeds. I should have made a lame fight on that score at any day; but now my main concern, it would seem, should be to look out personally for the creed which has most of mercy in it. If I seem to speak triflingly, my dear Johns, I pray you excuse me; it is only my[Pg 477] business way of stating the actual facts in the case. As for Madame Maverick, I am sure you will find no trifling in her (if you ever meet her); she is terribly in earnest. I tell her she would have made a magnificent lady prioress, whereat she thumbs her beads and whispers a Latin distich, as if she were exorcising a demon. Yet I should do wrong if I were to represent her as always severe, even upon such a theme; there certainly belongs to her a tender, appealing manner (reminding of Adèle in a way that brings tears to my eyes); but it is always bounded by allegiance to her sworn faith. You will think it an exaggeration, but she reminds me at times of those women of the New Testament (which I have not altogether forgotten) who gave up all for the following of the Master. If I were in your study, my dear Johns, you might ask me who those women were? And for my soul I could not tell you. Yet I have a vague recollection that there were those who showed a beautiful devotion to the Christian faith, that somehow sublimated their lives and memories. Again, I feel constrained to put before you another feature in her character, which I am confident will make you feel kindly toward her; my home near to Marseilles, which has been but a gypsy home for so many years, she has taken under her hand, and by its new appointments and order has convicted me of the losses I have felt so long. True, you might object to the oratoire; but in all else I am confident you would approve, and in all else felicitate Adèle upon the home which was preparing for her.

"Madame Maverick will not sail with me for America; although the marriage, under French law, may have admitted Adèle to all rights and even social immunities, yet I have represented that another law and custom rules with you. Whatever opprobrium might attach to the mother, Julie, with her exalted religious sentiment, would not weigh for a moment; but as regards Adèle, she manifests a strange tenderness. To spare her any pang, or possible pangs, she is content to wait. I have feared, too, I must confess, that any undue expression of condemnation or distrust might work revulsion of her own feeling. But while she assents,—with some reluctance, I must admit,—to this plan of deferring her meeting with Adèle, on whom all her affections seem to centre, she insists, in a way that I find it difficult to combat, upon her child's speedy return. That her passionate love will insure entire devotion on the part of Adèle, I cannot doubt. And how the anti-Romish faith which must have been instilled in the dear girl by your teachings, as well as by her associations, may withstand the earnest attack of Madame Maverick, I cannot tell. I have a fear it may lead to some dismal complications. You know what the earnestness of your own faith is; but I don't think you yet know the earnestness of an opposing faith, with a Frenchwoman to back it. Even as I write, she comes to cast a glance at my work, and says, 'Monsieur Maverick,' (she called me Frank once,) 'what are you saying there to the heretical Doctor?'

"Whereupon I translate for her ear a sentence or two. 'Tell him,' says she, 'that I thank him for his kindness; tell him besides, that I can in no way better atone for the guiltiness of the past, than by bringing back this wandering lamb into the true fold. Only when we kneel before the same altar, her hand in mine, can I feel that she is truly my child.'

"I fear greatly this zeal may prove infectious.

"And now, my dear Johns, in regard to the revelation to Adèle of what is written here,—of the whole truth, in short, for it must come out,—I haven't the heart or the courage to make it myself. I must throw myself on your charity. For Heaven's sake, tell the story as kindly as you can. Don't let her think too harshly of me. See to it, I pray, that my name don't become a bugbear in the village. I have pretty broad shoulders, and could bear it, if I only were to be sufferer; but I am sure 't would react fearfully on the sensibilities[Pg 478] of poor Adèle. That sin is past cure and past preachment; no good can come from trumpeting wrath against it. Do me this favor, Johns, and you will find me a more willing listener in what is to come. I can't promise, indeed, to accept all your dogmas; there is a thick crust of the world on me, and I doubt if you could force them through it; but, for Adèle's sake, I think I could become a very orderly and presentable person, even for a New England meeting-house. I will make a beginning now by turning over the little property which you hold for Adèle, in trust, for disbursement in your parish charities. The dear child won't need it, and the parish may."

The Doctor was happy to be relieved of the worst part of the revelation; but he had yet to communicate the fact that the mother was still alive, and (what was to him worst of all) that she was imbruted with the delusions of the Romish Church. He chose his hour, and, meeting her upon the village street, asked her into his study.

"Adaly, your father is coming. He will be here within a month."

"At last! at last!" said she, with a cry of joy.

"But, Adaly," continued he, with great gravity, "I have perhaps led you into error. Your mother, Adaly,—your mother is still living."

"Living!" and an expression almost of radiance shot over the fair face. But in an instant it was gone. Was not the poor lady she had so religiously mourned over her mother? That death embrace and the tomb were, then, only solemn mockeries! With a frightful alertness her thought ran to them,—weighed them. "New Papa," said she, approaching him with a gravity that matched his own, "is this some new delusion? Is it true? Has he written me?"

"He has not written you, my child; but I have a letter, informing me of his marriage, and begging me to make the revelation to you as kindly as I might."

"Marriage! Marriage to whom?" says Adèle, her eyes flashing fire, and her lips showing a tempest of scarce controllable feeling.

"Marriage to your mother, Adaly. He would be just at last."

"O my God!" exclaimed Adèle, with a burst of tears. "It's false! I shall never see my mother again in this world. I know it! I know it!"

"But, Adaly, my child, consider!" said the old gentleman.

Adèle did not heed him. She was lost in her own griefs. She could only exclaim, "O my father! my father!"

The old Doctor was greatly moved; he laid down his spectacles, and paced up and down the room. The earnestness of her doubt made him almost believe that he was himself deceived.

"Can it be? can it be?" he muttered, half under breath, while Adèle sat drooping in her chair. "May be the instinct of the poor girl is right, after all," thought he,—"sin is so full of disguises."

At this moment there is a sharp tap at the door, and Miss Eliza steps in, the bearer of a letter from Reuben.[Pg 479]

KILLED AT THE FORD

THE LATE INSURRECTION IN JAMAICA.

If Cuba be the Queen of the Antilles, then fairest of the sisterhood which adorn her regal state is Jamaica. A land of streams and mountains, from the one it derives almost inexhaustible fertility of valleys and plains; from the other, enchanting prospects, which challenge comparison with the scenery even of Tyrol and Switzerland. Tropical along its shores, temperate up its steep hills, the sun of Africa on its plains, the frosts of New England in its mountains, there is scarcely a luxury of the South or a comfort of the North which may not be cultivated to advantage somewhere within its borders. Here is the natural home of the sugar-cane; and it is scarcely a figure of speech to say that the sugar supply of the world might come from the teeming bosom of this little island. Here too are slopes of hills, and broad savannas, where "the grass may almost be seen growing," and where may be bred cattle fit to compete with the far-famed herds of England. The forests are full of mahogany and logwood. The surrounding waters swarm with fish of every variety, and of the finest flavor. Nominally, at least, the people are free and self-governed; and if, under propitious skies, the burdens either of the private home or of the state are heavy and crushing, it is because of mismanagement and not of necessity. To a casual observer, therefore, it would seem as if nowhere in the same space were gathered more elements of wealth, prosperity, and happiness than in Jamaica.

Yet Jamaica is poor and discontented, and from year to year is growing more miserable and more full of complaints. While on the little island of Barbadoes, which is flat and comparatively destitute of natural beauty, the inhabitant is proud to the verge of the ludicrous of his home, the Jamaican, dwelling amid scenes of perpetual loveliness, despises his native soil. And not without reason. For Jamaica presents that saddest and least flattering sight, a land sinking into hopeless ruin. Her plantations are left uncultivated. Her cities look time-worn and crumbling. Her fields, which once blossomed like the rose, are relapsing into the wilderness. She does not feed her people. She does not clothe them. She does not furnish them shelter. With three hundred and fifty thousand negroes she has not sufficient labor. With twenty thousand whites she has not employers enough who are capable of managing wisely and paying honestly what labor she has. With a soil which Nature has made one broad pasture, she does not raise the half of her own beef and pork. With plains which ought to be waving with luxuriant harvests of wheat and corn, her children are fed from our overflowing granaries. With woods filled with trees fit for building, she sends all the way to the Provinces for shingles, joist, and boards. On her two hundred swift, sparkling rivers there was not, in 1850, a single saw-mill. In an age of invention and labor-saving machines, the plough is to her a modern innovation; and her laborers still scratch the soil which they seek to till with tools of the Middle Ages. Even the production of sugar, to which she has sacrificed every other industrial interest, has sunk from the boasted hundred and fifty thousand hogsheads of the last century, to a meagre yearly crop of thirty thousand. Nine tenths of her proprietors are absentees. More than that proportion of her great estates are ruinously mortgaged. A tourist gives as the final evidence of exhaustion, that Jamaica has no amusements, no circus, no theatre, no opera, none of the pleasant trifles which surplus wealth creates.

Nor are the moral aspects any more encouraging. Slavery, dying, cursed the soil with its fatal bequest, contempt for labor; and the years which have elapsed since emancipation have done little or[Pg 481] nothing to give to the toiler conscious dignity and worth. The bondsman, scarcely yet freed from all his chains, naturally enough thinks that, "if Massa will not work," it is the highest gentility in him not to work either, and sighs for a few acres whereon he may live in sluggish content. And his quondam master, left to his own resources, will not any more than before put his shoulder to the work; and, though sunk himself in sloth, ceases not to complain of another's indolence. The spirit of caste is still relentless. The white man despises the black man, and, if he can, cheats him and tramples upon him. The black man, in return, suspects and fears his old oppressor, and sometimes, goaded to desperation, turns upon him. A perpetual discontent has always brooded over Jamaica; and it is recorded that no less than thirty bloody rebellions have left their crimson stains on her ignoble annals.

It is in vain to inquire for the causes of this physical and moral decay. For every class has its special complaint, every traveller his favorite theory, and every political economist his sufficient explanation. But let the cause be what it may, the fact stands out black and repulsive. Jamaica, which came from the hand of the Creator a fair and well-watered garden, has presented for more than half a century that melancholy spectacle, too common in Equatorial America, of a land rich in every natural advantage, and yet through the misfortune or folly of its people plunged in poverty and misery.

The world at large had become tired of the griefs of Jamaica, and reconciled itself to her wretchedness as a foregone conclusion, when the events of last October lent a fresh and terrible interest to her history. An insurrection, including in its purpose the murder of every white man on the island, has been quenched in the blood of its leaders, say the Governor of Jamaica and his defenders. An insignificant riot has been followed by a wholesale and indiscriminate massacre, sparing not even the women and children, reply their opponents.

Admitting for a moment the whole planter theory of a general insurrection, the question inevitably arises, What are the causes which would prompt such a rebellion, and which, while they do not justify violence, furnish reasons why every humane mind should desire to treat with leniency the errors, and even the crimes, of an ignorant and oppressed race? The ordinary burden of the Jamaica negro is far from a light one. The yearly expense of his government is not less than a million dollars, or about three dollars for every man, woman, and child on the island. The executive and judicial departments are on a scale of expense which would befit a continent. The Governor receives a salary of forty thousand dollars, the Chief Justice fifteen thousand dollars, the Associate Justices ten thousand dollars. The ecclesiastical establishment, which ministers little or nothing to the religious wants of the colored race, absorbs another huge portion of the public revenue. And all this magnificence of expenditure in a population of twenty thousand bankrupt whites and three hundred and fifty thousand half-naked blacks. If, now, the negro believed that this burden was distributed evenly, he might bear it with patience. But he does not believe so. He is sure, on the contrary, that the white man, who controls legislation, so assesses the revenue that it shall relieve the rich and burden the poor. He tells you that the luxuries of the planter are admitted at a nominal duty, while the coarse fabrics with which he must clothe himself and family pay forty per cent; that while the planter's huge hogshead of seventeen hundred pounds' weight pays only an excise of three shillings, the hard-raised barrel of his home produce of two hundred pounds must pay two shillings; that every miserable mule-cart of the petty land-owner is subjected to eighteen shillings license, while the great ox-carts of the thousand-acre plantation go untaxed,—a law under which the number of little carts in one district[Pg 482] sunk from five hundred to less than two hundred, and with it sunk who shall tell how much growing enterprise. These complaints may be unjust, but the negro believes in them, and they chafe and exasperate him.

Another important question is, What is the ability of the negro to bear these burdens? A defender of the planters gravely asserts "that the negro demands a price for his labor which would be exorbitant in any part of the world." What is that exorbitant price? An able-bodied agricultural laborer in Jamaica receives from eighteen to thirty cents a day; and, if he is both fortunate and industrious, may net for a year's work the fabulous sum of from fifty to eighty dollars. And this in a country which is one of the dearest in the world; where the necessaries of life are always at war prices; where flour is now twenty dollars a barrel, and eggs are fifty cents a dozen, and butter is forty cents a pound, and ham twenty-five, and beef and mutton still higher.

Did the laborer actually receive his pittance, his lot might be more tolerable. But it is the almost universal complaint, that, either from inability or disinclination, the planter does not keep his agreements. Sometimes the overseer, when the work has been done, and well done, arbitrarily retains a quarter, or even a half, of the stipulated wages. The negro says he has no chance for redress; that even a written agreement is worth no more than a blank paper, for the magistrates are either all planters, or their dependents, and have no ears to hear the cry of the lowly. Add now to all this the fact, that the last few seasons have been unfavorable to agriculture; that planters and peasants alike are even more than usually poor; that in whole districts the blacks are destitute, their children up to the age of ten or twelve years from absolute necessity going about stark naked, and their men and women wearing only rags and streamers, which do not preserve even the show of decency;—and is there not sufficient reason, not indeed to justify murder and arson, but why a whole race of suffering and excitable people should not be stamped as fiends in human shape for the outrages of a few of their number?

Turn now to the actual scene of conflict. In a little triangular tract of country on the east shore of Jamaica, hemmed in between the sea and the Blue Mountains, twenty-five miles long and two thirds as wide, occurred in October last what Governor Eyre has seen fit to dignify with the name of an insurrection. The first act of violence was committed at Morant Bay,—a town where it is said that no missionary to the blacks has been permitted to live for thirty-five years,—in the parish of St. Thomas in the East,—that very St. Thomas, possibly, whose court-house was called forty years ago the "hell of Jamaica," and where is preserved as a pleasant relic of the past a record book wherein the curious traveller reads the prices paid in the palmy days of slavery for cutting off the ears and legs, and slitting the noses, of runaway negroes. Had these negroes of Morant Bay any special causes of exasperation? They had. Their complaint was threefold. First, that the only magistrate who protected their interests had been arbitrarily removed. Second, that a plantation claimed by them to be deserted was as arbitrarily adjudged to be the rightful property of a white man. Third, that the plucking of fruit by the wayside, which had been a custom from time immemorial, and which resembled the plucking of ears of corn under the Jewish law, was by new regulations made a crime. Thus matters stood on the day of the outbreak; a general condition of poverty and discontent throughout the island; a special condition of exasperation in the parish of St. Thomas in the East, and particularly at Morant Bay.

On the 7th of last October, a negro was arrested for picking two cocoanuts, value threepence. This arrest had every exasperating condition. The fruit was taken from a plantation whose title was disputed, and upon which the[Pg 483] negroes had squatted. The law which made the plucking of fruit a crime was itself peculiarly obnoxious. The magistrate before whom the offence was to be tried, rightly or wrongly, was accused by the blacks of gross partiality and injustice. The accused man was followed to the court by a crowd of his friends, armed, it is said, with clubs, though this latter statement seems to be doubtful. When a sentence of four shillings' fine, or, in default of payment, thirty days' imprisonment, was imposed, the award was received in silence. But when the costs were adjudged to be twelve shillings and sixpence, there were murmurs. Some tumultuously advised the man not to pay. Some, believing the case involved the title to the land, told him to appeal to a higher court. The magistrate ordered the arrest of all noisy persons. But these fled to the street, and, shielded by the citizens, escaped. The next day but one, six constables armed with a warrant proceeded to Stony Gut, the scene of the original arrest, to take into custody twenty-eight persons accused of riot. But they were forcibly resisted, handcuffed with their own irons, and forced ignominiously to take their way back. Some of the arrests, however, were made quietly a little time after.

On the 11th of October dawned an eventful day. The magistrates were assembled in the court-house at Morant Bay for the purpose of examining the prisoners. The court-house was guarded by twenty armed volunteers, a body apparently of local militia. Some four or five hundred excited blacks surrounded the court-house, armed with bludgeons, grasping stones. What led to a collision can never be known. Very probably missiles were thrown at the guard. At any rate the officer in command ordered them to fire upon the crowd, and fifteen of the rioters fell dead or wounded. Then all restraint was at an end. The negroes threw themselves with incredible fury upon the guard, drove them into the court-house, summoned them to surrender at discretion, then set fire to the building, and murdered, with many circumstances of atrocity, the unhappy inmates, as they sought to flee. Sixteen were killed, and eighteen wounded, while a few escaped unharmed, by the help of the negroes themselves. This was the beginning and the end of the famous armed insurrection, so far as it ever was armed insurrection. The rioters dispersed. The spirit of insubordination spread to the plantations. There was general confusion, some destruction of property, some robbery. The whites were filled with alarm. Many left all and fled. The most exaggerated reports obtained credence. But if we except a Mr. Hine, who had rendered himself especially unpopular, and who was murdered on his plantation, not one white man appears to have been killed in cold blood, and not one white woman or child suffered from violence of any sort. Facts to the contrary may yet come to light. Official reports may reveal some secret chapter of bloodshed. But the chances of such a revelation are small enough. Three months have elapsed since the first tidings of the outbreak reached the mother country. There has been a great excitement; investigation has been demanded; facts have been called for; the defenders of the planters have been defied to produce facts. Meanwhile the Governor of Jamaica has written home repeated despatches; the commander of the military forces which crushed the rebellion has visited England; the planters' journals have come laden with vulgar abuse of the negro, and with all sorts of evil surmises as to his motives and purposes; letters have been received from Jamaica from persons in every position in life; and still no new facts,—not so much as one clear accusation of any further fatal violence. The conclusion is irresistible, that this was a riot, and not an insurrection; and that it began and ended, so far as armed force was concerned, at Morant Bay, on that unhappy day, the 11th of last October.

It cannot be denied that the occurrences of that day were marked by some[Pg 484] circumstances of painful ferocity. Men were literally hacked to pieces, crying for mercy. One man's tongue was cut from his mouth even while he lived. Another, escaping, was thrown back into the burning building, and roasted to death. The joints of the hand of the dead chief magistrate were dissevered by the blacks, who cried out exultingly, "This hand will write no more lying despatches to the Queen." But the events of that day were marked also by instances of humanity. The clerk of the court was rescued by his negro servant, who thrust him beneath the floor, and, watching his opportunity, conveyed him to the shelter of the woods next morning. A child, who happened to be with his father in the court-house, was snatched up by a negro woman, who, at the risk of her own life, carried him to a place of safety. But admitting the worst charges, any one who remembers the New York riot of 1863 will be slow to assert that this black mob exhibited any barbarity which has not been more than emulated by white mobs. Shocking enough the details are; but human action always and with every race is ferocious, when once the restraints of self-control and the law are thrown off.

With a people so excitable as the blacks of Jamaica, and among whom there existed so many causes of disaffection, the greatest promptitude of action was a virtue. Had Governor Eyre marched with a military force into the district, had he crushed out every vestige of armed resistance, had he brought before proper tribunals and punished with severity all persons who were convicted of any complicity in these outrages, he would have merited the praise of every good man. What he did was to let loose upon a little district, unmuzzled, the dogs of war. What he did was to gather from all quarters an armed force, a motley crew, regulars and militia, sailors and landsmen, black and white, and permit them to hold for fourteen long days a saturnalia of blood. What he did was to summon the savage Maroon tribes to the feast of death, that by their barbaric warfare they might add yet one more shade of gloom to the picture. The official accounts are enough to blanch the cheek with horror. In two days after the riot martial law was declared. In four, the outbreak was hemmed into narrow quarters. In a week, it ceased to exist in any shape. Yet the work of death went on. Bands of maddened soldiers pierced the country in every direction. Men were arrested upon the slightest suspicion. Every petty officer constituted himself a judge; every private soldier became an executioner. If the black man fled, he was shot as a rebel; if he surrendered, he was hung on the same pretext, after the most summary trial. If the number of prisoners became inconveniently large, they were shot, or else whipped and let go, apparently according to the whim of the officer in command. Women were seized, stripped half naked, and thrown among the vulgar soldiery to be scourged. The estimate is that five hundred and fifty were hung by order of drum-head court-martials, five hundred destroyed by the Maroons, two thousand shot by the soldiery, and that three hundred women were catted, and how many men nobody presumes even to guess. One asks, At what expense of life to the victors was all this slaughter accomplished? And he reads, that not one soldier was killed, that not one soldier was wounded, that not one soldier received so much as a scratch, unless from the bushes through which he pursued his human prey. It was not war: it was a massacre. These poor people fled like panic-struck sheep, and the soldiery tracked them like wolves. The human heart could wish to take refuge in incredulity, but alas! the worst testimony of all is found in the official reports of the actors themselves.

A few terrible anecdotes will give reality to the picture. George Marshall, a mulatto, was taken up with others as a straggler, and ordered to receive fifty lashes. With each lash the unfortunate man gritted his teeth and turned his head, whether from pain or anger is[Pg 485] uncertain. The provost-marshal construed this into a threatening look, and ordered him to be hung, which was done. There was no proof whatever that Marshall had any connection with the riot. A company of Maroons discovered a body of blacks, men, women, and children, who had taken refuge up in the trees, and stood and deliberately shot them, one by one, until they had all fallen, and the ground beneath was thickly strewn with their dead bodies. On a plantation between Morant Bay and Port Antonio the people were led by evil example into some acts of riot and pillage. But even in the midst of their license they sent word to the English gentleman who had charge of the plantation, that, if he and his family remained quiet, they should be protected. So rapidly did the spirit of rioting burn itself out, that on the next Sunday, only four days after the first outbreak at Morant Bay, he rode down to the estate, conducted a religious service as usual, speaking boldly to the people of the folly and sin of their course, and counselling them to return quietly to their work. His words were so well received, that on Monday morning he started for the plantation, purposing to appoint for the workmen their tasks, as the best possible way of keeping them out of mischief. As he drew near, he heard firing, and the first sight which greeted him was a negro shot down. The village was in possession of a small company of soldiers, without even a subaltern to control them. Without pretence of a trial, they were shooting the people one by one, as they were pointed out to them by a petty constable. On their march, these very soldiers had been ordered to fire upon every one who ran away, and they fired at every bush at random, never stopping to count the slain.

Nothing can exceed the horrible frankness of the reports of the officers. Here is Lieutenant Aldcock's language: "On returning to Golden Grove in the evening, sixty-seven prisoners were sent in by the Maroons. I disposed of as many as possible, but was too tired to continue after dark. On the morning of the 24th, I started for Morant Bay, having first flogged four, and hung six rebels." Here is a gem from Captain Ford: "The black troops are more successful than ours in catching horses; nearly all of them are mounted. They shot about one hundred and sixty people in their march from Port Antonio to Manchioneal, hanged seven in Manchioneal, and shot three on their way here. This is a picture of martial law. The soldiers enjoy it." Now consider a moment this killing of one hundred and sixty people on the way from Port Antonio. The distance traversed in a direct line was about twelve miles. There are no large towns on the line of march; and if you suppose that the rural population had here the average density of the island, there could not have been, in a belt of country one mile wide and the twelve miles long, over five hundred people; and we are forced to the conclusion, that these restorers of peace cleaned a strip a mile wide of every man and every well-grown boy. "And the soldiers enjoy it!" And the officers glory in it! Nothing was permitted to stop or clog the death mills. At Morant Bay, "to save time," two court-martials were formed. No time was lost in proceeding to business. "Each five minutes condemned rebels were taken down under escort awaiting their doom." Only three brought before these terrible tribunals escaped death. The court, composed exclusively of military and naval officers, spared none; every one brought before it was hanged. How many other such courts were at work does not appear; but it is evident not less than ten or a dozen. And subalterns, who ought not to have been intrusted with the charge of a score of men, assumed the dread power of life and death over poor wretches snatched from their homes, and given neither time nor opportunity for defence. Yet all this does not satisfy the remorseless planter. When, in a parish of thirty thousand people, two or three thousand sleep in bloody graves, and at least as many more have been pitilessly scourged, he calls "the clemency of the[Pg 486] authorities extraordinary," and says, "that it comes too soon." No wonder that such a record as this stirred to its depth the popular heart of England. And it is the only relieving feature, that the indignation thus aroused has overridden all opposition, silenced all paltry excuses, and forced the government to appoint a Commission of Inquiry, and pending that inquiry to suspend Governor Eyre from his office.

One case, that of the judicial murder of Mr. Gordon, has properly awakened great attention. Mr. Gordon was the very magistrate whose removal from office created so much discontent in the whole parish of St. Thomas in the East. He was a colored man with a very slight infusion of black blood. His father was an Englishman, and he himself was bred in England and married an English lady. He was wealthy, and the owner of a great plantation. A bitter and fearless opponent of what he considered to be the oppression of the planters, they in turn concentrated upon him all their anger and malice, while the negroes looked up to him as their hope and defence. The mere statement of the facts indicates that, if Mr. Gordon was to be tried at all, the investigation should have been patient, open, and thorough, granting to the accused every opportunity of defence. What did take place was this. Mr. Gordon was at Kingston, forty miles away from the scene of action. As soon as he learned that a warrant was out for his arrest, he surrendered himself, and was hurried away from the place where civil law was supreme to the scene of martial law at Morant Bay. Without a friend to defend him, with no opportunity to procure rebutting evidence, he was brought before a court of three subalterns, and, after what was called "a very patient trial" of four or five hours, sentenced to be hanged. Not one insult was spared. When he was marched up from the wharf, the sailors were permitted to heap upon him every opprobrious epithet. Before his execution "his black coat and vest were taken from him as a prize by one soldier, his spectacles by another; so," as an officer boasts, "he was treated not differently from the common herd." The accusation was, that he had plotted a wide-spread and diabolical rebellion. The only evidence which has been submitted proves him guilty of intemperate language, and an abounding sympathy for the poor and oppressed.[G] In his last letter to his wife, written just before his execution, he uses language which has the stamp of truth upon it. "I do not deserve my sentence, for I never advised or took part in the insurrection. All I ever did was to recommend the people who complained to seek redress in a legitimate way. It is, however, the will of God that I should thus suffer in obeying his command to relieve the poor and needy, and so far as I was able to protect the oppressed. And glory be to His name, and I thank Him that I suffer in such a cause." But it matters not of what Mr. Gordon was guilty; the method of the proceedings, the dragging him from civil protection, the deprivation of all proper opportunity for defence, the putting him to death as it were in a corner, were all subversive of personal rights and safety. The highest authority in England has declared the whole trial an illegality. And the circumstances of the hour, when every vestige, ever pretence, of armed resistance had been swept away, left no excuse for over-stepping the bounds of legal authority.[Pg 487]

It is proper that full weight should be given to the alleged justification of these enormities. A diabolical plot existed, whose meshes included the whole island, and whose purpose was to put to death every white man and to outrage every white woman. This is what the Governor asserts. This is what the Assembly reiterates. This is the charge upon which every appeal of the Jamaican journals turns. The whole truth we probably never shall know. The men who could best reveal it are silent in the graves which lawless violence has dug for them, and will bear no testimony except at the bar or Eternal Justice. The report of the Committee of Inquiry will no doubt shed some light. Pending that inquiry there are considerations which strike every one. If for two years a bloody insurrection had been plotted, and the outbreak at Morant Bay was the first stroke to toward its accomplishment, is it credible that these truculent rebels should submit themselves as sheep to the slaughter,—that not one band should be found to strike a manly blow for life and liberty? If such an insurrection had its roots in every part of the island, is it credible, that, while the whole military and naval force, and no small part of the white inhabitants, were engaged in putting down the thirty thousand of their brethren in St. Thomas and Portland parishes, the three hundred thousand blacks all over the island should remain peaceable and law-abiding? And it is to be noticed that, since the reign of terror has subsided a little, those who know the negroes best, the missionaries who labor among them, express the most hearty contempt for these charges. But suppose that the negro had plotted insurrection, diabolical, satanic, would that be any excuse for wholesale slaughter, without forms of law, when all resistance was at an end? We know that the South plotted and consummated rebellion; that her people have slain three hundred thousand of our sons on the battle-field; that more than thirty thousand have wasted and died of slow torture in her prisons; that whenever the secrets of that charnel-house, Southern life, are disclosed, they will tell of thousands of Unionists who were hung, who were shot, who were burned at the stake, who were hunted by dogs, who were scourged to death with whips, and all because they were faithful to their country. And knowing all this, is there a man of the North who, when military resistance has ceased, would march our armies southward, hang every tenth man, shoot every fourth, scourge as many more, and suffer a wild soldiery to strip half naked and score with cruel whips thousands of the women? And does it alter the moral aspect of the case, that these things are transacted on a little island of the sea, and not on a continent,—or that the skin of the sufferer is black instead of white?

The use men seek to make of events reveals often the motives which they carried into the transaction of these events. Never was this more true of any body of people than of the planters of Jamaica. The Kingston Journal, an opposition, but not radical paper, boldly asserts, that the press has been gagged because it urged upon government the necessity of reform; that it has not dared to comment upon current facts, lest it should come under grave suspicion; that "now, when the greatest order prevails, and there is not the remotest probability of another outbreak, we dare not comment upon events, which, for the good of all classes, ought to be calmly and fully discussed." A significant commentary upon these statements is the fact that Mr. Levien, the editor of a Jamaica paper, was arrested, because in an editorial he boldly condemned the trial and execution of Mr. Gordon. And it is probable that he escaped paying dearly for his courage, only because the Chief Justice of Jamaica declared the whole law under which he was arrested unconstitutional, and dismissed the case. A still more significant commentary upon these statements is that other fact, that, in the midst of what they averred were the throes of a great rebellion, the members of the Assembly proceeded to destroy[Pg 488] the very foundations of civil and religious liberty and of the freedom of the press. They proposed to give the Governor almost despotic authority, by surrendering the franchise of the Assembly, and vesting its power in a council of twenty-four, half of whom should be appointed by the Governor himself, and half elected by the people from the list only of those who had estates worth more than fifteen hundred dollars a year, or a salary of more than twenty-five hundred dollars. All social worship, all conference and prayer meetings, and even family prayers, if more than two strangers were present, were to be interdicted, unless, indeed, they were conducted by a minister of a favored sect. The denominations who had chiefly ministered to the blacks were to be placed under such disabilities as should greatly limit, or else destroy, their usefulness. And to round out and complete the circle of despotism, this proposition, was introduced,—"that if anything is contained in any printed paper which may be considered seditious, or that may be adjudged so by any court which the Governor may appoint, the writer shall be sentenced to hard labor in the penitentiary for seven years." It is idle to suppose that these measures will be sanctioned by the Queen; but they show what feelings burn in the breasts of the planters, and admonish us to receive with caution any statements which they may make concerning other classes of the community.

This Jamaica "insurrection," whose origin, growth, and extinguishment in blood have now been traced, has been the cause of we know not how many oracular warnings from the lips of those who have not been distinguished by any hearty attachment to the rights of the black. "See now," they say, "what is the peril of emancipating these blacks." "Behold what comes of educating this people up to the capacity of mischief." "Acknowledge now that not even the gift of universal suffrage will elevate and soften a race at once fickle and ferocious. There is no safety but in keeping them under. Stop in your perilous experiments while you can."

So long as the accounts of this outbreak are at once so conflicting and so colored by party feeling, it may not be easy to say what are its positive lessons. But it is easy to tell some things which it does not teach.

In the first place, it does not teach the danger of conferring the right to vote upon the negro, for the negro of Jamaica has never attained to that privilege. His traducers cry out, "What a race! The best fed, the best clothed, the best sheltered, the least worked peasantry on the face of the earth! Free! Free to make their own laws, to choose their own rulers, to govern themselves! And yet they are discontented!" Turn now and inquire what are the facts about their governing themselves. True, no law says the negro shall not vote, but the qualification is made so high that it is impossible that he should vote. In a country where wages are scarcely a quarter of a dollar a day, he is required to have an estate worth thirty dollars a year, or an income of one hundred and forty dollars a year, or to pay taxes of fifteen dollars a year. Suppose now that in New England a law were passed that no man should vote who had not an estate worth two hundred dollars a year, or an income of one thousand dollars, or who did not pay one hundred dollars yearly tax,—and this, considering the difference of wages, is scarcely as high a qualification as that of Jamaica,—and how large a proportion of our people would obtain the privileges of a voter? In fact, in Jamaica only three thousand vote, or about one twenty-fifth of the adult males. Is it not just possible that the discontent there may grow out of aspirations for self-government, and for the dignity and privileges, as well as the name, of freemen? May not the outbreak teach the danger of not allowing the negro to vote?

In the second place, this rebellion does not teach the danger of educating the negro; for the negro of Jamaica never[Pg 489] has been educated. While the government has wrung from his scanty wages a million dollars, it pays the Governor alone more than three times the sum it appropriates to education. It doles out for the education of seventy-five thousand children the pittance of twelve thousand five hundred dollars. Did not the negro himself eke out this bounty from his own little savings, not one in a dozen of the children would ever enter a school-room or see a book. As it is, only one sixth part of the children are, or ever were, under instruction. And the instruction they receive is too often from persons themselves illiterate and full of superstition, but who are the best teachers who can be obtained with limited means. Consider, then, the real condition of affairs,—three hundred and fifty thousand blacks, a large share of them children or grandchildren of those who were brought from Africa, with the wild blood of their fathers scarcely diluted in their veins, with all the old traditions of Fetichism and Obi worship fresh in their minds, altogether uneducated, or at best half educated; consider what virgin soil is here for every vile superstition, what a field for the demagogue to cultivate, and then decide whether it might not be safer, after all, to educate the negro in Jamaica.

This insurrection does not teach, in the third place, the danger of obliterating the lines of caste, for in Jamaica those lines have never been obliterated, or even made faint. It may be doubted whether there was ever a moment when the ill-dissembled contempt of the whites, and the distrust of the blacks, were more profound then now. An intelligent observer declared, in 1850, that the gap between the blacks and whites had been steadily increasing ever since emancipation. And ten years later the Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society records, "that, as a general statement, there is no generous feeling in the relations between employer and employed. The negro can expect nothing but barest justice, and is happy if he gets that." Can there be any safety for the minority, when the majority, which numbers fifteen to one, has such a sense of injustice rankling in its breast? One wades through the late reprints of the Jamaica journals, column after column, page after page, filled with coarse invective, with bitter denunciation, with injurious suspicion; sees with what terrible relish the sufferings of these deluded people are recorded; marks how the heroism which goes to the scaffold without a tremor, and looks undeserved death in the face without a fear, is travestied; shudders to hear the planters, after thousands have been slain, yet cry for more blood; and then he puts the paper down and says, "Here in this language is material enough out of which to create a dozen bloody rebellions." How any race with the blood of the tropics boiling in their veins, with the traditions of old oppressions burning in their memory, can ever forget or forgive this language and these unbridled outrages is inconceivable. He is mad who does not see that the gulf of caste, too wide before, has widened and deepened almost unfathomably by the influence of the events of the last few months. He is mad, too, who thinks that Morant Bay, or the parish of St. Thomas in the East, with their unshrived dead, is a safer place for a white man to dwell in than it was six months ago.

It is too early to gather up all the lessons of this last of the almost innumerable outbreaks in Jamaica. They may never be gathered up. But one lesson stands out prominently, and that is, the safety of justice. We cannot bring perfect equality upon the earth. It is not desirable perhaps that we should. To the end of time, probably, there will be rich and poor, high and low, weak and strong, black and white. But we can be just. We can recognize every man as a child of God. We can grant to him all the rights, all the privileges, and all the opportunities which belong to a man. That is a lesson which Jamaica has never learned, and therefore she sits under the shadow of her mountains, by the side of the restless sea, clothed in garments of wretchedness.

[Pg 490]

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.

IV.

DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS.

The door of my study being open, I heard in the distant parlor a sort of flutter of silken wings, and chatter of bird-like voices, which told me that a covey of Jennie's pretty young street birds had just alighted there. I could not forbear a peep at the rosy faces that glanced out under pheasants' tails, doves' wings, and nodding hummingbirds, and made one or two errands in that direction only that I might gratify my eyes with a look at them.

Your nice young girl, of good family and good breeding, is always a pretty object, and, for my part, I regularly lose my heart (in a sort of figurative way) to every fresh, charming creature that trips across my path. All their mysterious rattle-traps and whirligigs,—their curls and networks and crimples and rimples and crisping-pins,—their little absurdities, if you will,—have to me a sort of charm, like the tricks and stammerings of a curly-headed child. I should have made a very poor censor if I had been put in Cato's place: the witches would have thrown all my wisdom into some private chip-basket of their own, and walked off with it in triumph. Never a girl bows to me that I do not see in her eye a twinkle of confidence that she could, if she chose, make an old fool of me. I surrender at discretion on first sight.

Jennie's friends are nice girls,—the flowers of good, staid, sensible families,—not heathen blossoms nursed in the hot-bed heat of wild, high-flying, fashionable society. They have been duly and truly taught and brought up, by good mothers and painstaking aunties, to understand in their infancy that handsome is that handsome does; that little girls must not be vain of their pretty red shoes and nice curls, and must remember that it is better to be good than to be handsome; with all other wholesome truisms of the kind. They have been to school, and had their minds improved in all modern ways,—have calculated eclipses, and read Virgil, Schiller, and La Fontaine, and understand all about the geological strata, and the different systems of metaphysics,—so that a person reading the list of their acquirements might be a little appalled at the prospect of entering into conversation with them. For all these reasons I listened quite indulgently to the animated conversation that was going on about—Well!

What do girls generally talk about, when a knot of them get together? Not, I believe, about the sources of the Nile, or the precession of the equinoxes, or the nature of the human understanding, or Dante, or Shakespeare, or Milton, although they have learned all about them in school; but upon a theme much nearer and dearer,—the one all-pervading feminine topic ever since Eve started the first toilet of fig-leaves; and as I caught now and then a phrase of their chatter, I jotted it down in pure amusement, giving to each charming speaker the name of the bird under whose colors she was sailing.

"For my part," said little Humming-Bird, "I'm quite worn out with sewing; the fashions are all so different from what they were last year, that everything has to be made over."

"Isn't it dreadful!" said Pheasant. "There's my new mauve silk dress! it was a very expensive silk, and I haven't worn it more than three or four times, and it really looks quite dowdy; and I can't get Patterson to do it over for me for this party. Well, really, I shall have to give up company because I have nothing to wear."

"Who does set the fashions, I wonder,"[Pg 491] said Humming-Bird; "they seem now-a-days to whirl faster and faster, till really they don't leave one time for anything."

"Yes," said Dove, "I haven't a moment for reading, or drawing, or keeping up my music. The fact is, now-a-days, to keep one's self properly dressed is all one can do. If I were grande dame now, and had only to send an order to my milliner and dressmaker, I might be beautifully dressed all the time without giving much thought to it myself; and that is what I should like. But this constant planning about one's toilet, changing your buttons and your fringes and your bonnet-trimmings and your hats every other day, and then being behindhand! It is really too fatiguing.

"Well," said Jennie, "I never pretend to keep up. I never expect to be in the front rank of fashion, but no girl wants to be behind every one; nobody wants to have people say, 'Do see what an old-times, rubbishy-looking creature that is.' And now, with my small means and conscience, (for I have a conscience in this matter, and don't wish to spend any more time and money than is needed to keep one's self fresh and tasteful,) I find my dress quite a fatiguing care."

"Well, now, girls," said Humming-Bird, "do you really know, I have sometimes thought I should like to be a nun, just to get rid of all this labor. If I once gave up dress altogether, and knew I was to have nothing but one plain robe tied round my waist with a cord, it does seem to me as if it would be a perfect repose,—only one is a Protestant, you know."

Now, as Humming-Bird was the most notoriously dressy individual in the little circle, this suggestion was received with quite a laugh. But Dove took it up.

"Well, really," she said, "when dear Mr. S—— preaches those saintly sermons to us about our baptismal vows, and the nobleness of an unworldly life, and calls on us to live for something purer and higher than we are living for, I confess that sometimes all my life seems to me a mere sham,—that I am going to church, and saying solemn words, and being wrought up by solemn music, and uttering most solemn vows and prayers, all to no purpose; and then I come away and look at my life, all resolving itself into a fritter about dress, and sewing-silk, cord, braid, and buttons,—the next fashion of bonnets,—how to make my old dresses answer instead of new,—how to keep the air of the world, while in my heart I am cherishing something higher and better. If there's anything I detest it is hypocrisy; and sometimes the life I lead looks like it. But how to get out of it? what to do?"

"I'm sure," said Humming-Bird, "that taking care of my clothes and going into company is, frankly, all I do. If I go to parties, as other girls do, and make calls, and keep dressed,—you know papa is not rich, and one must do these things economically,—it really does take all the time I have. When I was confirmed the Bishop talked to us so sweetly, and I really meant sincerely to be a good girl,—to be as good as I knew how; but now, when they talk about fighting the good fight and running the Christian race, I feel very mean and little, for I am sure this isn't doing it. But what is,—and who is?"

"Aunt Betsey Titcomb is doing it, I suppose," said Pheasant.

"Aunt Betsey!" said Humming-Bird, "well, she is. She spends all her money in doing good. She goes around visiting the poor all the time. She is a perfect saint;—but O girls, how she looks! Well, now, I confess, when I think I must look like Aunt Betsey, my courage gives out. Is it necessary to go without hoops, and look like a dipped candle, in order to be unworldly? Must one wear such a fright of a bonnet?"

"No," said Jennie, "I think not. I think Miss Betsey Titcomb, good as she is, injures the cause of goodness by making it outwardly repulsive. I really think, if she would take some pains with her dress, and spend upon her own wardrobe a little of the money[Pg 492] she gives away, that she might have influence in leading others to higher aims; now all her influence is against it. Her outré and repulsive exterior arrays our natural and innocent feelings against goodness; for surely it is natural and innocent to wish to look well, and I am really afraid a great many of us are more afraid of being thought ridiculous than of being wicked."

"And after all," said Pheasant, "you know Mr. St. Clair says, 'Dress is one of the fine arts,' and if it is, why of course we ought to cultivate it. Certainly, well-dressed men and women are more agreeable objects than rude and unkempt ones. There must be somebody whose mission it is to preside over the agreeable arts of life; and I suppose it falls to 'us girls.' That's the way I comfort myself, at all events. Then I must confess that I do like dress; I'm not cultivated enough to be a painter or a poet, and I have all my artistic nature, such as it is, in dress. I love harmonies of color, exact shades and matches; I love to see a uniform idea carried all through a woman's toilet,—her dress, her bonnet, her gloves, her shoes, her pocket-handkerchief and cuffs, her very parasol, all in correspondence."

"But, my dear," said Jennie, "anything of this kind must take a fortune!"

"And if I had a fortune, I'm pretty sure I should spend a good deal of it in this way," said Pheasant. "I can imagine such completeness of toilet as I have never seen. How I would like the means to show what I could do! My life, now, is perpetual disquiet. I always feel shabby. My things must all be bought at hap-hazard, as they can be got out of my poor little allowance,—and things are getting so horridly dear! Only think of it, girls! gloves at two and a quarter! and boots at seven, eight, and ten dollars! and then, as you say, the fashions changing so! Why, I bought a sack last fall and gave forty dollars for it, and this winter I'm wearing it, to be sure, but it has no style at all,—looks quite antiquated!"

"Now I say," said Jennie, "that you are really morbid on the subject of dress; you are fastidious and particular and exacting in your ideas in a way that really ought to be put down. There is not a girl of our set that dresses as nicely as you do, except Emma Seyton, and her father, you know, has no end of income."

"Nonsense, Jennie," said Pheasant. "I think I really look like a beggar; but then, I bear it as well as I can, because, you see, I know papa does all for us he can, and I won't be extravagant. But I do think, as Humming-Bird says, that it would be a great relief to give it up altogether and retire from the world; or, as Cousin John says, climb a tree and pull it up after you, and so be in peace."

"Well," said Jennie, "all this seems to have come on since the war. It seems to me that not only has everything doubled in price, but all the habits of the world seem to require that you shall have double the quantity of everything. Two or three years ago a good balmoral skirt was a fixed fact; it was a convenient thing for sloppy, unpleasant weather. But now, dear me! there is no end to them. They cost fifteen and twenty dollars; and girls that I know have one or two every season, besides all sorts of quilled and embroidered and ruffled and tucked and flounced ones. Then, in dressing one's hair, what a perfect overflow there is of all manner of waterfalls, and braids, and rats and mice, and curls, and combs; when three or four years ago we combed our own hair innocently behind our ears, and put flowers in it, and thought we looked nicely at our evening parties! I don't believe we look any better now, when we are dressed, than we did then,—so what's the use?"

"Well, did you ever see such a tyranny as this of fashion?" said Humming-Bird. "We know it's silly, but we all bow down before it; we are afraid of our lives before it; and who makes all this and sets it going? The Paris milliners, the Empress, or who?"

"The question where fashions come from is like the question where pins go[Pg 493] to," said Pheasant. "Think of the thousands and millions of pins that are being used every year, and not one of them worn out. Where do they all go to? One would expect to find a pin mine somewhere."

"Victor Hugo says they go into the sewers in Paris," said Jennie.

"And the fashions come from a source about as pure," said I, from the next room.

"Bless me, Jennie, do tell us if your father has been listening to us all this time!" was the next exclamation; and forthwith there was a whir and rustle of the silken wings, as the whole troop fluttered into my study.

"Now, Mr. Crowfield, you are too bad!" said Humming-Bird, as she perched upon a corner of my study-table, and put her little feet upon an old "Froissart" which filled the arm-chair.

"To be listening to our nonsense!" said Pheasant.

"Lying in wait for us!" said Dove.

"Well, now, you have brought us all down on you," said Humming-Bird, "and you won't find it so easy to be rid of us. You will have to answer all our questions."

"My dears, I am at your service, as far as mortal man may be," said I.

"Well, then," said Humming-Bird, "tell us all about everything,—how things come to be as they are. Who makes the fashions?"

"I believe it is universally admitted that, in the matter of feminine toilet, France rules the world," said I.

"But who rules France?" said Pheasant. "Who decides what the fashions shall be there?"

"It is the great misfortune of the civilized world, at the present hour," said I, "that the state of morals in France is apparently at the very lowest ebb, and consequently the leadership of fashion is entirely in the hands of a class of women who could not be admitted into good society, in any country. Women who can never have the name of wife,—who know none of the ties of family,—these are the dictators whose dress and equipage and appointments give the law, first to France, and through France to the civilized world. Such was the confession of Monsieur Dupin, made in a late speech before the French Senate, and acknowledged, with murmurs of assent on all sides, to be the truth. This is the reason why the fashions have such an utter disregard of all those laws of prudence and economy which regulate the expenditures of families. They are made by women whose sole and only hold on life is personal attractiveness, and with whom to keep this up, at any cost, is a desperate necessity. No moral quality, no association of purity, truth, modesty, self-denial, or family love, comes in to hallow the atmosphere about them, and create a sphere of loveliness which brightens as mere physical beauty fades. The ravages of time and dissipation must be made up by an unceasing study of the arts of the toilet. Artists of all sorts, moving in their train, rack all the stores of ancient and modern art for the picturesque, the dazzling, the grotesque; and so, lest these Circes of society should carry all before them, and enchant every husband, brother, and lover, the staid and lawful Penelopes leave the hearth and home to follow in their triumphal march and imitate their arts. Thus it goes in France; and in England, virtuous and domestic princesses and peeresses must take obediently what has been decreed by their rulers in the demi-monde of France; and we in America have leaders of fashion, who make it their pride and glory to turn New York into Paris, and to keep even step with everything that is going on there. So the whole world of womankind is marching under the command of these leaders. The love of dress and glitter and fashion is getting to be a morbid, unhealthy epidemic, which really eats away the nobleness and purity of women.

"In France, as Monsieur Dupin, Edmond About, and Michelet tell us, the extravagant demands of love for dress lead women to contract debts unknown to their husbands, and sign obligations[Pg 494] which are paid by the sacrifice of honor, and thus the purity of the family is continually undermined. In England there is a voice of complaint, sounding from the leading periodicals, that the extravagant demands of female fashion are bringing distress into families, and making marriages impossible; and something of the same sort seems to have begun here. We are across the Atlantic, to be sure; but we feel the swirl and drift of the great whirlpool; only, fortunately, we are far enough off to be able to see whither things are tending, and to stop ourselves if we will.

"We have just come through a great struggle, in which our women have borne an heroic part,—have shown themselves capable of any kind of endurance and self-sacrifice; and now we are in that reconstructive state which makes it of the greatest consequence to ourselves and the world that we understand our own institutions and position, and learn that, instead of following the corrupt and worn-out ways of the Old World, we are called on to set the example of a new state of society,—noble, simple, pure, and religious; and women can do more towards this even than men, for women are the real architects of society.

"Viewed in this light, even the small, frittering cares of woman's life—the attention to buttons, trimmings, thread, and sewing-silk—may be an expression of their patriotism and their religion. A noble-hearted woman puts a noble meaning into even the commonplace details of life. The women of America can, if they choose, hold back their country from following in the wake of old, corrupt, worn-out, effeminate European society, and make America the leader of the world in all that is good."

"I'm sure," said Humming-Bird, "we all would like to be noble and heroic. During the war, I did so long to be a man! I felt so poor and insignificant because I was nothing but a girl!"

"Ah, well," said Pheasant, "but then one wants to do something worth doing, if one is going to do anything. One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me."

"Then, I suppose, you agree with the man we read of, who buried his one talent in the earth, as hardly worth caring for."

"To say the truth, I always had something of a sympathy for that man," said Pheasant. "I can't enjoy goodness and heroism in homœopathic doses. I want something appreciable. What I can do, being a woman, is a very different thing from what I should try to do if I were a man, and had a man's chances: it is so much less—so poor—that it is scarcely worth trying for."

"You remember," said I, "the apothegm of one of the old divines, that if two angels were sent down from heaven, the one to govern a kingdom, and the other to sweep a street, they would not feel any disposition to change works."

"Well, that just shows that they are angels, and not mortals," said Pheasant; "but we poor human beings see things differently."

"Yet, my child, what could Grant or Sherman have done, if it had not been for the thousands of brave privates who were content to do each their imperceptible little,—if it had not been for the poor, unnoticed, faithful, never-failing common soldiers, who did the work and bore the suffering? No one man saved our country, or could save it; nor could the men have saved it without the women. Every mother that said to her son, Go; every wife that strengthened the hands of her husband; every girl who sent courageous letters to her betrothed; every woman who worked for a fair; every grandam whose trembling hands knit stockings and scraped lint; every little maiden who hemmed shirts and made comfort-bags for soldiers,—each and all have been the joint doers of a great heroic work, the doing of which has been the regeneration of our era. A whole generation[Pg 495] has learned the luxury of thinking heroic thoughts and being conversant with heroic deeds, and I have faith to believe that all this is not to go out in a mere crush of fashionable luxury and folly and frivolous emptiness,—but that our girls are going to merit the high praise given us by De Tocqueville, when he placed first among the causes of our prosperity the noble character of American women. Because foolish female persons in New York are striving to outdo the demi-monde of Paris in extravagance, it must not follow that every sensible and patriotic matron, and every nice, modest young girl, must forthwith, and without inquiry, rush as far after them as they possibly can. Because Mrs. Shoddy opens a ball in a two-thousand-dollar lace dress, every girl in the land need not look with shame on her modest white muslin. Somewhere between the fast women of Paris and the daughters of Christian American families there should be established a cordon sanitaire, to keep out the contagion of manners, customs, and habits with which a noble-minded, religious democratic people ought to have nothing to do."

"Well now, Mr. Crowfield," said the Dove, "since you speak us so fair, and expect so much of us, we must of course try not to fall below your compliments; but, after all, tell us what is the right standard about dress. Now we have daily lectures about this at home. Aunt Maria says that she never saw such times as these, when mothers and daughters, church-members and worldly people, all seem to be going one way, and sit down together and talk, as they will, on dress and fashion,—how to have this made and that altered. We used to be taught, she said, that church-members had higher things to think of,—that their thoughts ought to be fixed on something better, and that they ought to restrain the vanity and worldliness of children and young people; but now, she says, even before a girl is born, dress is the one thing needful,—the great thing to be thought of; and so, in every step of the way upward, her little shoes, and her little bonnets, and her little dresses, and her corals and her ribbons, are constantly being discussed in her presence, as the one all-important object of life. Aunt Maria thinks mamma is dreadful, because she has maternal yearnings over our toilet successes and fortunes; and we secretly think she is rather soured by old age, and has forgotten how a girl feels."

"The fact is," said I, "that the love of dress and outside show has been always such an exacting and absorbing tendency, that it seems to have furnished work for religionists and economists, in all ages, to keep it within bounds. Various religious bodies, at the outset, adopted severe rules in protest against it The Quakers and the Methodists prescribed certain fixed modes of costume as a barrier against its frivolities and follies. In the Romish Church an entrance on any religious order prescribed entire and total renunciation of all thought and care for the beautiful in person or apparel, as the first step towards saintship. The costume of the religieuse seemed to be purposely intended to imitate the shroudings and swathings of a corpse and the lugubrious color of a pall, so as forever to remind the wearer that she was dead to the world of ornament and physical beauty. All great Christian preachers and reformers have levelled their artillery against the toilet, from the time of St. Jerome downward; and Tom Moore has put into beautiful and graceful verse St. Jerome's admonitions to the fair church-goers of his time.

'WHO IS THE MAID?

'ST. JEROME'S LOVE.

"But the defect of all these modes of warfare on the elegances and refinements of the toilet was that they were too indiscriminate. They were in reality founded on a false principle. They took for granted that there was something radically corrupt and wicked in the body and in the physical system. According to this mode of viewing things, the body was a loathsome and pestilent prison, in which the soul was locked up and enslaved, and the eyes, the ears, the taste, the smell, were all so many corrupt traitors in conspiracy to poison her. Physical beauty of every sort was a snare, a Circean enchantment, to be valiantly contended with and straitly eschewed. Hence they preached, not moderation, but total abstinence from all pursuit of physical grace and beauty.

"Now, a resistance founded on an over-statement is constantly tending to reaction. People always have a tendency to begin thinking for themselves; and when they so think, they perceive that a good and wise God would not have framed our bodies with such exquisite care only to corrupt our souls,—that physical beauty, being created in such profuse abundance around us, and we being possessed with such a longing for it, must have its uses, its legitimate sphere of exercise. Even the poor, shrouded nun, as she walks the convent garden, cannot help asking herself why, if the crimson velvet of the rose was made by God, all colors except black and white are sinful for her; and the modest Quaker, after hanging all her house and dressing all her children in drab, cannot but marvel at the sudden outstreaking of blue and yellow and crimson in the tulip-beds under her window, and reflect how very differently the great All-Father arrays the world's housekeeping. The consequence of all this has been, that the reforms based upon these severe and exclusive views have gradually gone backward. The Quaker dress is imperceptibly and gracefully melting away into a refined simplicity of modern costume, which in many cases seems to be the perfection of taste. The obvious reflection, that one color of the rainbow is quite as much of God as another, has led the children of gentle dove-colored mothers to appear in shades of rose-color, blue, and lilac; and wise elders have said, it is not so much the color or the shape that we object to, as giving too much time and too much money,—if the heart is right with God and man, the bonnet ribbon may be of any shade you please."

"But don't you think," said Pheasant, "that a certain fixed dress, marking the unworldly character of a religious order, is desirable? Now, I have said before that I am very fond of dress. I have a passion for beauty and completeness in it; and as long as I am in the world and obliged to dress as the world does, it constantly haunts me, and tempts me to give more time, more thought, more money, to these things than I really think they are worth. But I can conceive of giving up this thing altogether as being much easier than regulating it to the precise point. I never read of a nun's taking the veil, without a certain thrill of sympathy. To cut off one's hair, to take off and cast from her, one by one, all one's trinkets and jewels, to lie down and have the pall thrown over one, and feel one's self, once for all, dead to the world,—I cannot help feeling as if this were real, thorough, noble renunciation, and as if one might rise up from it with a grand, calm consciousness of having risen to a higher and purer atmosphere, and got above all the littlenesses and distractions that beset us here. So I have heard charming young Quaker girls, who, in more thoughtless days,[Pg 497] indulged in what for them was a slight shading of worldly conformity, say that it was to them a blessed rest when they put on the strict, plain dress, and felt that they really had taken up the cross and turned their backs on the world. I can conceive of doing this, much more easily than I can of striking the exact line between worldly conformity and noble aspiration, in the life I live now."

"My dear child," said I, "we all overlook one great leading principle of our nature, and that is, that we are made to find a higher pleasure in self-sacrifice than in any form of self-indulgence. There is something grand and pathetic in the idea of an entire self-surrender, to which every human soul leaps up, as we do to the sound of martial music.

"How many boys of Boston and New York, who had lived effeminate and idle lives, felt this new power uprising in them in our war! How they embraced the dirt and discomfort and fatigue and watchings and toils of camp-life with an eagerness of zest which they had never felt in the pursuit of mere pleasure, and wrote home burning letters that they never were so happy in their lives! It was not that dirt and fatigue and discomfort and watchings and weariness were in themselves agreeable, but it was a joy to feel themselves able to bear all and surrender all for something higher than self. Many a poor Battery bully of New York, many a street rowdy, felt uplifted by the discovery that he too had hid away under the dirt and dust of his former life this divine and precious jewel. He leaped for joy to find that he too could be a hero. Think of the hundreds of thousands of plain, ordinary workingmen, and of seemingly ordinary boys, who, but for such a crisis, might have passed through life never knowing this to be in them, and who courageously endured hunger and thirst and cold, and separation from dearest friends, for days and weeks and months, when they might, at any day, have bought a respite by deserting their country's flag! Starving boys, sick at heart, dizzy in head, pining for home and mother, still found warmth and comfort in the one thought that they could suffer, die, for their country; and the graves at Salisbury and Andersonville show in how many souls this noble power of self-sacrifice to the higher good was lodged,—how many there were, even in the humblest walks of life, who preferred death by torture to life in dishonor.

"It is this heroic element in man and woman that makes self-sacrifice an ennobling and purifying ordeal in any religious profession. The man really is taken into a higher region of his own nature, and finds a pleasure in the exercise of higher faculties which he did not suppose himself to possess. Whatever sacrifice is supposed to be duty, whether the supposition be really correct or not, has in it an ennobling and purifying power; and thus the eras of conversion from one form of the Christian religion to another are often marked with a real and permanent exaltation of the whole character. But it does not follow that certain religious beliefs and ordinances are in themselves just, because they thus touch the great heroic master-chord of the human soul. To wear sackcloth and sleep on a plank may have been of use to many souls, as symbolizing the awakening of this higher nature; but, still, the religion of the New Testament is plainly one which calls to no such outward and evident sacrifices.

"It was John the Baptist, and not the Messiah, who dwelt in the wilderness and wore garments of camel's hair; and Jesus was commented on, not for his asceticism, but for his cheerful, social acceptance of the average innocent wants and enjoyments of humanity. 'The Son of man came eating and drinking.' The great, and never-ceasing, and utter self-sacrifice of his life was not signified by any peculiarity of costume, or language, or manner; it showed itself only as it unconsciously welled up in all his words and actions, in his estimates of life, in all that marked him out as a being of a higher and holier sphere."

"Then you do not believe in influencing[Pg 498] this subject of dress by religious persons' adopting any particular laws of costume?" said Pheasant.

"I do not see it to be possible," said I, "considering how society is made up. There are such differences of taste and character,—people move in such different spheres, are influenced by such different circumstances,—that all we can do is to lay down certain great principles, and leave it to every one to apply them according to individual needs."

"But what are these principles? There is the grand inquiry."

"Well," said I, "let us feel our way. In the first place, then, we are all agreed in one starting-point,—that beauty is not to be considered as a bad thing,—that the love of ornament in our outward and physical life is not a sinful or a dangerous feeling, and only leads to evil, as all other innocent things do, by being used in wrong ways. So far we are all agreed, are we not?"

"Certainly," said all the voices.

"It is, therefore, neither wicked nor silly nor weak-minded to like beautiful dress, and all that goes to make it up. Jewelry, diamonds, pearls, emeralds, rubies, and all sorts of pretty things that are made of them, are as lawful and innocent objects of admiration and desire, as flowers or birds or butterflies, or the tints of evening skies. Gems, in fact, are a species of mineral flower; they are the blossoms of the dark, hard mine; and what they want in perfume, they make up in durability. The best Christian in the world may, without the least inconsistency, admire them, and say, as a charming, benevolent old Quaker lady once said to me, 'I do so love to look at beautiful jewelry!' The love of beautiful dress, in itself, therefore, so far from being in a bad sense worldly, may be the same indication of a refined and poetical nature that is given by the love of flowers and of natural objects.

"In the third place, there is nothing in itself wrong, or unworthy a rational being, in a certain degree of attention to the fashion of society in our costume. It is not wrong to be annoyed at unnecessary departures from the commonly received practices of good society in the matter of the arrangement of our toilet; and it would indicate rather an unamiable want of sympathy with our fellow-beings, if we were not willing, for the most part, to follow what they indicate to be agreeable in the disposition of our outward affairs."

"Well, I must say, Mr. Crowfield, you are allowing us all a very generous margin," said Humming-Bird.

"But, now," said I, "I am coming to the restrictions. When is love of dress excessive and wrong? To this I answer by stating my faith in one of old Plato's ideas, in which he speaks of beauty and its uses. He says there were two impersonations of beauty worshipped under the name of Venus in the ancient times,—the one celestial, born of the highest gods, the other earthly. To the earthly Venus the sacrifices were such as were more trivial; to the celestial, such as were more holy. 'The worship of the earthly Venus,' he says, 'sends us oftentimes on unworthy and trivial errands, but the worship of the celestial to high and honorable friendships, to noble aspirations and heroic actions.'

"Now it seems to me that, if we bear in mind this truth in regard to beauty, we shall have a test with which to try ourselves in the matter of physical adornment. We are always excessive when we sacrifice the higher beauty to attain the lower one. A woman who will sacrifice domestic affection, conscience, self-respect, honor, to love of dress, we all agree, loves dress too much. She loses the true and higher beauty of womanhood for the lower beauty of gems and flowers and colors. A girl who sacrifices to dress all her time, all her strength, all her money, to the neglect of the cultivation of her mind and heart, and to the neglect of the claims of others on her helpfulness, is sacrificing the higher to the lower beauty. Her fault is not the love of beauty, but loving the wrong and inferior kind.

"It is remarkable that the directions[Pg 499] of Holy Writ, in regard to the female dress, should distinctly take note of this difference between the higher and the lower beauty which we find in the works of Plato. The Apostle gives no rule, no specific costume, which should mark the Christian woman from the Pagan; but says, 'whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.' The gold and gems and apparel are not forbidden; but we are told not to depend on them for beauty, to the neglect of those imperishable, immortal graces that belong to the soul. The makers of fashion among whom Christian women lived when the Apostle wrote, were the same class of brilliant and worthless Aspasias who make the fashions of modern Paris; and all womankind was sunk into slavish adoration of mere physical adornment when the Gospel sent forth among them this call to the culture of a higher and immortal beauty.

"In fine, girls," said I, "you may try yourselves by this standard. You love dress too much when you care more for your outward adornings than for your inward dispositions,—when it afflicts you more to have torn your dress than to have lost your temper,—when you are more troubled by an ill-fitting gown than by a neglected duty,—when you are less concerned at having made an unjust comment, or spread a scandalous report, than at having worn a passée bonnet,—when you are less troubled at the thought of being found at the last great feast without the wedding garment, than at being found at the party to-night in the fashion of last year. No Christian woman, as I view it, ought to give such attention to her dress as to allow it to take up all of three very important things, viz.:—

Whoever does this lives not the Christian, but the Pagan life,—worships not at the Christian's altar of our Lord Jesus, but at the shrine of the lower Venus of Corinth and Rome."

"O now, Mr. Crowfield, you frighten me," said Humming-Bird. "I'm so afraid, do you know, that I am doing exactly that."

"And so am I," said Pheasant; "and yet, certainly, it is not what I mean or intend to do."

"But how to help it," said Dove.

"My dears," said I, "where there is a will, there is a way. Only resolve that you will put the true beauty first,—that, even if you do have to seem unfashionable, you will follow the highest beauty of womanhood,—and the battle is half gained. Only resolve that your time, your strength, your money, such as you have, shall not all—nor more than half—be given to mere outward adornment, and you will go right. It requires only an army of girls animated with this noble purpose to declare independence in America, and emancipate us from the decrees and tyrannies of French actresses and ballet-dancers. En avant, girls! You yet can, if you will, save the republic."

[Pg 500]

THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS.

The President of the United States was not elected to the office he holds by the voice of the people of the loyal States; in voting for him as Vice-President nobody dreamed that, by the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, he would constitutionally succeed to the more important post. The persons who now form the Congress of the United States were elected by the people or the States for the exact positions they hold. In any comparison between the two as to the direct derivation of their power from the people and the States, Congress has everything in its favor; Mr. Johnson, nothing. The immense power he enjoys, a power not merely greater than that of Queen Victoria, but greater than that of Earl Russell, the real British Executive, is the result not of design, but of accident. That the executive power he holds is legitimate, within its just constitutional bounds, must not blind us to the fact that it did not have its origin in the popular vote, especially now when he is appealing to the people to support him against their direct representatives.

For the event which the Union party of the country was so anxious to avert, but which some clearly foresaw as inevitable, has occurred; the President has come to an open rupture with Congress on the question of reconstruction. No one who has witnessed during the past eight months the humiliating expedients to which even statesmen and patriots have resorted, in order to avoid giving Mr. Johnson offence, without at the same time sacrificing all decent regard for their own convictions and the will of the people, can assert that this rupture was provoked by Congress. The President has, on the whole, been treated with singular tenderness by the national party whose just expectations he has disappointed; the opposition to his schemes has, indeed, exhibited, if anything, too much of the style of "bated breath" to befit the dignity of independent legislators; and the only result of this timorous dissent has been to inflame him with the notion that the public men who offered it were conscious that the people were on his side, and concealed anxiety for their own popularity under a feigned indisposition to quarrel with him.

The President seems to belong to that class of men who act not so much from principles as from moods; as his moods vary, his conduct changes; but while he is possessed by one of them, his mind is inaccessible to evidence which does not sustain his dominant feeling, and uninfluenced by arguments which do not confirm his dominant ideas. Mr. Covode and Mr. Schurz could get no hearing from him, because they were sent south to collect evidence while he was in one mood, and had to report the results of their investigations when he had passed into another. This peculiarity of his mind makes the idea of a "Johnson party" so difficult of realization; for a party cannot be founded on a man, unless that man's intellect and integrity are so manifestly pre-eminent as to dwarf all comparison with others, or unless his conduct obeys laws, and can therefore be calculated. Thus the gentlemen who spoke for him in New York, on the 22d of February, at the time he was speaking for himself in Washington, found that they were unwittingly his opponents, while appearing as his mouth-pieces, and had accordingly to send telegrams to Washington of such fond servility, that the vindication of their partisanship could only be made at the expense of provoking the hilarity of the public. But one principle, taken up from personal feeling, at the time he resented the idea that "Tennessee had ever gone out of the Union," has had a mischievous influence in directing his policy, though it has never been consistently carried[Pg 501] out; for Mr. Johnson's mode of dealing with a principle is strikingly individual. He uses it to justify his doing what he desires, while he does not allow it to restrain him from doing what he pleases. The principle which he thus adopted was, that the seceded States had never been out of the Union as States. It would seem to be clear that, constitutionally speaking, a State in the American Union is a vital part of the government, to which, at the same time, it owes allegiance. The seceded States solemnly, by conventions of their people, broke away from this allegiance, and have not, up to the present moment, formed a part of the government. The condition in which they were left by their own acts may be variously stated; it may be said that they were "States out of practical relations to the Union,"—which is simply to decline venturing farther than one step in the analysis of their condition,—or "States in rebellion," or "States whose governments have lapsed," or "Territories"; but certainly, neither in principle nor in fact, were they States in the Union, according to the constitutional meaning of that phrase. The one thing certain is, that their criminal acts did not affect at all the rights of the United States over their geographical limits and population; for these rights were given by conventions of the people of all the States, and could not therefore be abrogated by the will of the particular States that rebelled. Whether or not the word "Territories" fits their condition, it is plain that they cannot be brought back to their old "practical relations to the Union" without a process similar to that by which Territories are organized into States and brought into the Union. If they were, during the Rebellion, States in the Union, then the only clause in the Constitution which covers their case is that in which each house of Congress is authorized "to compel the attendance of absent members"; but, even conceding that we have waged war in the character of a colossal sergeant-at-arms, we should, by another clause of the Constitution, be bound to compel their attendance as members, only to punish their absence as traitors.

Still, even if we should admit, against all the facts and logic of the case, that the Rebel communities have never been out of the Union as States, it is plain that the conduct of the Executive has not, until recently, conformed to that theory. He violated it constantly in the processes of his scheme of reconstruction, only to make it reappear as mandatory in the results. All the steps he took in creating State governments were necessarily subversive of universally recognized State rights. The Secessionists had done their work so completely, as regards their respective localities, that there was left no possible organic connection between the old States and any new ones which might be organized under the lead of the Federal government. The only persons who could properly call State conventions were disqualified, by treason, for the office, and might have been hanged as traitors while occupied in preserving unbroken the unity of their State life. In other words, the only persons competent to act constitutionally were the persons constitutionally incompetent to act,—a gigantic practical bull and absurdity, which met Mr. Johnson as the first logical consequence of his fundamental maxim. He accordingly was forced to go to work as if no principle hampered him. He assumed, at the start, the most radical and important of all State rights; that is, from a mixed population of black and white freemen he selected a certain number, whose distinguishing mark was color; and these persons were, after they had taken an extra-constitutional oath, constituted by him the people of each of the seceded States. A provisional governor, nominated by himself, directed this people, constituted such by himself, to elect delegates to a convention which was to pass ordinances dictated by himself. In this, he may have simply accepted the condition of things; he may have done the best with the materials he had[Pg 502] to work with; still he plainly did not deal with South Carolina, Mississippi, and the rest, as if they were States that "had never been out of the Union," and entitled to any of the rights enjoyed by Pennsylvania or New York. But the hybrid States, which are thus purely his own creations, he now presents, in a veto message, to the Senate of the United States as the equals of the States it represents; informs that body that he is constitutionally the President of the States he has made, as well as the President of the States which have not enjoyed the advantage of his formative hand; and unmistakably hints that Congress, unless it admits the representatives of the States he has reconstructed, is not a complete and competent legislative body for the whole Union,—is, in plain words, a Rump. The President, to be sure, qualifies his suggestion by asking for the admission only of loyal men, who can take the oaths. But is it not plain that Congress, if it admits Senators and Representatives, admits the States from which they come? The Constitution says that "the Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State"; that "the House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States." Now let us suppose that some of the South Carolina members are admitted on the President's plan, and that others are rejected. What is the result? Is not South Carolina in the Union? Can a fraction of the State be in, and another fraction out, by the terms of the United States Constitution? Are not the "loyal men" in for their term of office simply, and the State in permanently? The proposition to let in what are called loyal men, and then afterwards to debate the terms on which the States which sent them shall be admitted, might be seriously discussed in a Fenian Congress, but it would prove too much for the gravity of an American assembly. The President thinks Congress is bound to admit "loyal men"; but in conceding this claim, would not the great legislative bodies of the nation practically confess that they had no right or power to exact guaranties, no business whatever with "reconstruction"? It is the office of the President, it seems, to reconstruct States; the duty of Congress is confined to accepting, placidly, the results of his work. Such is the only logical inference from Mr. Johnson's last position. And thus a man, who was intended by the people who voted for him to have no other connection with reconstruction than what a casting vote in the Senate might possibly give him, has taken the whole vast subject into his exclusive control. Was there ever acted on the stage of history such a travesty of constitutional government?

The loyal States, indeed, come out of the war separated from the disloyal, not by such thin partitions as the President so cavalierly breaks through, but by a great sea of blood. It is across that we must survey their rights and duties; it is with that in view we must settle the terms of their readmission. It is idle to apply to 1866 the word-twisting of 1860. The Rebel communities which began the war are not the same communities which were recognized as States in the Union before the war occurred. No sophistry that perplexes the brain of the people can prevent this fact being felt in their hearts. The proposition that States can plunge into rebellion, and, after waging against the government a war which is put down only at the expense of enormous sacrifices of treasure and blood, can, when defeated, return of right to form a part of the government they have labored to subvert, is a proposition so repugnant to common sense that its acceptance by the people would send them down a step in the zoölogical scale. Have we been fighting in order to compel the South to resume its reluctant rôle of governing us? Are we to be told that the States which have sent mourning into every loyal family in the land, and which have loaded every loyal laborer's back with a new and unexampled burden of taxation,[Pg 503] have the same right to seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives which New York and Illinois can claim? The question is not whether the victorious party shall exercise magnanimity and mercy, whether it shall attempt to heal wounds rather than open them afresh, but whether its legal representatives, constituting, as it was supposed, the legislative department of the United States government, shall have anything to do with the matter at all. The President seems to think they have not; and finding that Congress, by immense majorities, declined to abdicate its functions, he and his partisans appealed to such legislative assemblies as could be extemporized for the occasion. Congress did not fairly represent the people of the whole Union; and Mr. Johnson accordingly unfolded his measures to a body which, in his opinion, we must suppose did, namely, a Copperhead mob which gathered under his windows at Washington. The Secretary of State addressed a meeting in New York, assembled in a hall which is the very symbol of mutation. Some collectors and postmasters have, we believe, been kind enough to take upon themselves the trouble of calling similar legislative assemblies in their respective cities; and Keokuk, it is well known, has won deserved celebrity for the rapidity with which its gathering of publicists passed the President's plan. Still more important, perhaps, is the unanimity with which the "James Page Library Company," of Philadelphia, fulfilled its duty of legislating for the whole republic. This mode of taking the opinion of the people, if considered merely as an innocent amusement of great officials, may be harmless; but political farces played by actors who do not seem to take their own jokes sometimes lead to serious consequences; and the effect upon the South of suggesting that the Congress of the United States not only misrepresents its constituents, but excludes "loyal men" who have a right to seats, cannot but give fierce additional stimulants to Southern disaffection.

We are accordingly, it would seem, in danger of having a President, who is at variance with nearly two thirds of Congress, using his whole executive power and influence against the party he was supposed to represent, and having on his side the Southerners who made the Rebellion, the Northerners whose sympathies were on the side of the Rebellion, a small collection of Republican politicians called "the President's friends," and the undefined political force passing under the name of "the Blairs." But Congress is stronger than the whole body of its opponents, and is backed by the great mass of the loyal people, determined not to surrender all the advantages of the position which has been gained by the profuse shedding of so much loyal blood.

"Constitutional government is on trial" in this contest; and Mr. Johnson seems neither to have the constitutional instinct in his blood, nor the constitutional principle in his brain. The position of the President of the United States is analogous, not so much to that of a Napoleon or a Bismark, as to that of an English prime-minister. In the theory and ordinary working of the government, he is one of a body of statesmen, agreeing in their general views, and elected by the same party; what are called his measures are passed by Congress, because the majority of Congress and he are in general accord on all important questions; and it is against the whole idea of constitutional government that the executive will is a fair offset to the legislative reason,—that one man is the equal of the whole body of the people's representatives. The powers of an executive are of such a character, that, pushed wilfully to their ultimate expression, they can absorb all the other departments of the government, as when James the Second practically repealed laws by pushing to its abstract logical consequences his undoubted power of pardon; but a constitutional government implies, as a condition of its existence, that the executive will have that kind of mind and temper which instinctively recognizes[Pg 504] the practical limitations of powers in themselves vague; for if the executive can defy the legislature, the legislature can bring the whole government to an end by a simple refusal to grant supplies. In his Washington speech, the President selected for special attack the chairman of the House Committee of Ways and Means, and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; but it would be difficult to conjecture how he could carry on the government without the aid of what these men represent, for Mr. Stevens pays him his salary, and Mr. Sumner gives effect to his treaties. Bismark, in Prussia, snaps his fingers in the faces of the Prussian Chambers, and still contrives to get along very comfortably; but an American President does not enjoy similar advantages. He can follow his own will or caprice only by the toleration of the legislative body he defames and disregards. His great power is the veto; but the perverse use of this could easily be checked by the perverse use of many a legislative power which a mere majority of Congress can effectively use. The fallacy of the argument of "the President's friends," in their proposition that Congress should settle the dispute by the easy method of allowing Mr. Johnson to have his own way, consists in its entire oversight of the essential character of constitutional government.

And now what would be the consequences of the yielding of Congress in this struggle? The first effect would be the concession that, in respect to the most important matter that will probably ever be brought before the United States government, the executive branch was everything, and the legislative nothing. The second effect would be, that the Rebel Slates would re-enter the Union, not only without giving additional guaranties for their good behavior, but with the elated feeling that they had gained a great triumph over the "fanatical" North. The third effect would be the establishment of the principle, that they had never been out of the Union as States; that, accordingly, a doubt was over the legality of the legislation which had been transacted in the absence of their representatives; and that, Congress having, for the past five years, represented only a section of the country, that section was alone bound by its measures. The moment it is admitted that the national legislature, as now constituted, is an incomplete body, and that it needs Southern "loyal men" to make its laws operative over the South, a whole brood of deductive reasoners will spring up in that region, eager to carry the principle out to its remotest logical consequences. After two or three of those cotton crops on which some persons rely so much to make the South contented have given it the requisite leisure to follow long trains of reasoning, it will by degrees convince itself that the whole national legislation during the war, including the debt and the Anti-Slavery Amendment, was unconstitutional, and that, as far as it concerns the Southern States, it is void, and should be of no effect. Persons who are accustomed to nickname as "radicals" all those statesmen who do not consider that the removal of an immediate inconvenience exhausts the whole science of practical politics, are wont to make merry over this possibility of Southern repudiation, or to look down upon its fanatical suggesters with the benevolent pity of serenely superior intelligence; but nobody who has watched the steps by which Calhoun's logic was inwrought into the substance of the Southern mind,—nobody who has noted the process by which the justification of one of the bloodiest rebellions in the history of the world was deduced from the definition of an abstraction,—nobody who explores the meaning of the phrase, common in many mouths, that "the South thought itself in the right,"—will doubt that the seeming bugbear may turn out a dreadful reality. It is impossible, in fact, for the most far-sighted mind to predict all the evils which may flow from the heedless adoption of a vicious principle; if the war has not taught us this, it has taught us nothing.

But it is not to be supposed that Congress[Pg 505] will yield, for to yield would be to commit suicide. There is not an interest in the nation which is not concerned in its adherence to the principle, that in it the whole legislative power of the United States government is vested, and that it has the right to exact irreversible guaranties of the Rebel States as the conditions of the admission of their Senators and Representatives. They are not in the Union until they are in its government; and Congress has the same power to keep them out that it has to let them in. By the very nature of the case, the whole question must be left to its judgment of what is necessary for the public safety and honor. Its members may be mistaken, but the only method to correct their mistake is to elect other persons in their places, when their limited period of service has expired; and any new Congress will, unless it is scandalously neglectful of the public interests, admit the Rebel States to their old places in the Union, not because it must, but because it thinks that a sufficient number of guaranties have been obtained to render their admission prudent and safe. It is in this form that the subject is coming before the people in the autumn elections; and this explains the eager haste of the President's friends to forestall and mislead the public mind, and sacrifice a great party, founded on principles, to the will of an individual, veering with his moods.

We think, if the vote were taken now, that Congress would be overwhelmingly sustained by the people. We think this, in spite of such expressions of the popular will as found vent in the President's meeting at Washington and Mr. Seward's meeting in New York,—in spite even of the resolutions of Keokuk and the address of the "James Page Library Company" of Philadelphia,—in spite, above all, of the perfect felicity in which, if we may believe the Secretary of State, the President's speech left the American people. The loyal men of the loyal States do not intend that the war they carried on for great ends shall pass into history as the bloodiest of all purposeless farces, beginning in an ecstasy of public spirit and ending in an ignominious surrender of the advantages of hard-won victory. They demand such guaranties, in the shape of amendments to the Constitution, as shall insure security for the future from such evils as have scourged them in the past; and these guaranties they do not think have been yet obtained. They make this demand in no spirit of rancorous hostility to the South, for they require nothing which it is not for the permanent welfare of the South to grant. They feel that, if a settlement is patched up on the President's plan, it will leave Southern society a prey to most of the influences which have so long been its curse, which have narrowed its patriotism, checked its progress, vitiated its character, educated it in disloyalty, and impelled it into war. They desire that a settlement shall be effected which shall make the South republican, like the North, homogeneous with it in institutions, as well as nominally united to it under one government,—a settlement which shall annihilate the accursed heresy of Secession by extinguishing the accursed prejudice of caste.

Such a settlement the people have not in the "President's plan." What confidence, indeed, can they place in the professions of the cunning Southern politicians who have taken the President captive, and used him as an instrument while seeming to obey him as agents? There is something to make us distrust the stability of the firmest and most upright statesman in the spectacle of that remarkable conquest. Mr. Johnson, when elected, appeared to represent the most violent radical ideas and the most vindictive passions engendered by the war. He spoke as if the blacks were to find in him a Moses, and the Rebels a Nemesis. It seemed as if there could not be in the whole land a sufficient number of sour-apple trees to furnish hanging accommodations for the possible victims of his patriotic wrath. One almost feared that reconciliation would be indefinitely postponed[Pg 506] by the relentless severity with which he would visit treason with death. But the Southern politicians, finding that further military resistance was hopeless, resorted at once to their old game of intrigue and management, and proved that, fresh as they were from the experience of violent methods, they had not forgotten their old art of manipulating Presidents. They adapted themselves with marvellous flexibility to the changed condition of things, in order to become masters of the situation, and began to declaim in favor of the Union, even while their curses against it were yet echoing in the air. They wheedled the President into pardoning, in the place of hanging them; they made themselves serviceable agents in carrying out his plan of reconstruction; they gave up what it was impossible for them to retain, in order to retain what it would destroy their influence to give up; they got possession of him to the extent of insinuating subtly into his mind ideas which they made him think he himself originated; and finally they capped the climax of their skilful audacity, by taking him out of "practical relations" with the party to which he was indebted for his elevation, and made him the representative of the small party which voted against him, and of the defeated Rebel Confederacy, which, of course, could not do even that. The Southern politicians have succeeded in many shrewd political contrivances in the course of our history, but this last is certainly their masterpiece. Its only parallel or precedent is to be found in Richard's wooing of Anne:—

Now can the people trust these politicians to the extent of placing in their hands the powers of their State governments, and the representative power of their States in Congress, without exacting irreversible guaranties necessary for the public safety? Can the people uphold, as against Congress, a President whose mind seems to be so much under the influence of these men that he publicly insults the legislature of the nation? Is the President to be supported because he sustains State Rights against Centralization? The only centralization which is to be feared, in this case, is the centralization of all the powers of the government in its executive branch. Is the President to be supported because he represents the principle of "no taxation without representation"? The object of Congress is to see to it that there shall not be a "representation" which, in respect to the national debt, shall endeavor to abolish "taxation" altogether,—which, in respect to the freedmen, shall tax permanently a population it misrepresents,—which, in respect to the balance of political power, shall use the black freemen as a basis of representation, while it excludes them from having a voice in the selection of the representatives. Is the President to be supported because he is determined the defeated South shall not be oppressed? The purpose of Congress is not to commit, but prevent oppression; not to oppress the Rebel whites, but to guard from oppression the loyal blacks; not to refuse full political privileges to the late armed enemies of the nation, but to avoid the intolerable ignominy of giving those enemies the power to play the robber and tyrant over its true and tried friends. Is the President to be supported because he is magnanimous and merciful? Congress doubts the magnanimity which sacrifices the innocent in order to propitiate the guilty, and the mercy which abandons the helpless and weak to the covetousness of the powerful and strong. Is the President to be supported because he aims to represent the whole people? Congress may well suspect that he represents the least patriotic portion, especially when he puts a stigma on all ardent loyalty by denouncing as equally traitorous the "extremists of both sections," and thus makes no distinction[Pg 507] between the "fanaticism" which perilled everything in fighting for the government, and the "fanaticism" which perilled everything in fighting against it. And, finally, is the President to be supported because he is the champion of conciliation and peace? Congress believes that his conciliation is the compromise of vital principles; that his peace is the surrender of human rights; that his plan but postpones the operation of causes of discord it fails to eradicate; and that, if the war has taught us nothing else, it has taught us this,—spreading it out indeed before all eyes in letters of fire and blood,—that no conciliation is possible which sacrifices the defenceless, and that no peace is permanent which is unfounded in justice.

GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.

CHAPTER XV.

One day, at dinner, Father Francis let them know that he was ordered to another part of the county, and should no longer be able to enjoy their hospitality. "I am sorry for it," said Griffith, heartily; and Mrs. Gaunt echoed him out of politeness; but, when husband and wife came to talk it over in private, she let out all of a sudden, and for the first time, that the spiritual coldness of her governor had been a great misfortune to her all these years. "His mind," said she, "is set on earthly things. Instead of helping the angels to raise my thoughts to heaven and heavenly things, he drags me down to earth. O that man's soul was born without wings!"

Griffith ventured to suggest that Francis was, nevertheless, an honest man, and no mischief-maker.

Mrs. Gaunt soon disposed of this, "O, there are plenty of honest men in the world," said she; "but in one's spiritual director one needs something more than that, and I have pined for it like a thirsty soul in the desert all these years. Poor good man, I love him dearly; but, thank Heaven, he is going."

The next time Francis came, Mrs. Gaunt took an opportunity to inquire, but in the most delicate way, who was to be his successor.

"Well," said he, "I fear you will have no one for the present: I mean no one very fit to direct you in practical matters; but in all that tends directly to the welfare of the soul you will have one young in years but old in good works, and very much my superior in piety."

"I think you do yourself injustice, Father," said Mrs. Gaunt, sweetly. She was always polite; and, to be always polite, you must be sometimes insincere.

"No, my daughter," said Father Francis, quietly, "thank God, I know my own defects, and they teach me a little humility. I discharge my religious duties punctually, and find them wholesome and composing; but I lack that holy unction, that spiritual imagination, by which more favored Christians have fitted themselves to converse with angels. I have too much body, I suppose and too little soul. I own to you that I cannot look forward to the hour of death as a happy release from the burden of the flesh. Life is pleasant to me; immortality tempts me not; the pure in heart delight me; but in the sentimental part of religion I feel myself dry and barren. I fear God, and desire to do his will; but I cannot love him as the saints have done; my spirit is too dull, too gross. I have often been unable to keep pace with you in your pious and lofty aspirations; and this[Pg 508] softens my regret at quitting you; for you will be in better hands, my daughter."

Mrs. Gaunt was touched by her old friend's humility, and gave him both hands, with the tears in her eyes. But she said nothing; the subject was delicate; and really she could not honestly contradict him.

A day or two afterwards he brought his successor to the house; a man so remarkable that Mrs. Gaunt almost started at first sight of him. Born of an Italian mother, his skin was dark, and his eyes coal-black; yet his ample but symmetrical forehead was singularly white and delicate. Very tall and spare, and both face and figure were of that exalted kind which make ordinary beauty seem dross. In short, he was one of those ethereal priests the Roman Catholic Church produces every now and then by way of incredible contrast to the thickset peasants in black that form her staple. This Brother Leonard looked and moved like a being who had come down from some higher sphere to pay the world a very little visit, and be very kind and patient with it all the time.

He was presented to Mrs. Gaunt, and bowed calmly, coldly, and with a certain mixture of humility and superiority, and gave her but one tranquil glance, then turned his eyes inward as before.

Mrs. Gaunt, on the contrary, was almost fluttered at being presented so suddenly to one who seemed to her Religion embodied. She blushed, and looked timidly at him, and was anxious not to make an unfavorable impression.

She found it, however, very difficult to make any impression at all. Leonard had no small talk, and met her advances in that line with courteous monosyllables; and when she, upon this, turned and chatted with Father Francis, he did not wait for an opening to strike in, but sought a shelter from her commonplaces in his own thoughts.

Then Mrs. Gaunt yielded to her genuine impulse, and began to talk about the prospects of the Church, and what might be done to reconvert the British Isles to the true faith. Her cheek flushed, and her eye shone with the theme; and Francis smiled paternally; but the young priest drew back. Mrs. Gaunt saw in a moment that he disapproved of a woman meddling with so high a matter uninvited. If he had said so, she had spirit enough to have resisted; but the cold, lofty look of polite but grave disapproval dashed her courage and reduced her to silence.

She soon recovered so far as to be piqued. She gave her whole attention to Francis, and, on parting with her guests, she courtesied coldly to Leonard, and said to Francis, "Ah, my dear friend, I foresee I shall miss you terribly."

I am afraid this pretty speech was intended as a side cut at Leonard.

Her new confessor retired, and left her with a sense of inferiority, which would have been pleasing to her woman's nature if Leonard himself had appeared less conscious of it, and had shown ever so little approval of herself; but, impressed upon her too sharply, it piqued and mortified her.

However, like a gallant champion, she awaited another encounter. She so rarely failed to please, she could not accept defeat.

Father Francis departed.

Mrs. Gaunt soon found that she really missed him. She had got into a habit of running to her confessor twice a week, and to her director nearly every day that he did not come of his own accord to her.

Her good sense showed her at once she must not take up Brother Leonard's time in this way. She went a long time, for her, without confession; at last she sent a line to Leonard asking him when it would be convenient to him to confess her. Leonard wrote back to say that he received penitents in the chapel for two hours after matins every Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday.

This implied, first come, first served; and was rather galling to Mrs. Gaunt.

However, she rode one morning, with[Pg 509] her groom behind her, and had to wait until an old woman in a red cloak and black bonnet was first disposed of. She confessed a heap. And presently the soft but chill tones of Brother Leonard broke in with these freezing words: "My daughter, excuse me; but confession is one thing, gossip about ourselves is another."

This distinction was fine, but fatal. The next minute the fair penitent was in her carriage, her eyes filled with tears of mortification.

"The man is a spiritual machine," said she; and her pride was mortified to the core.

In these happy days she used to open her heart to her husband; and she went so far as to say some bitter little feminine things of her new confessor before him.

He took no notice at first; but at last he said one day: "Well, I am of you mind; he is very poor company compared with that jovial old blade, Francis. But why so many words, Kate? You don't use to bite twice at a cherry; if the milk-sop is not to your taste, give him the sack and be d——d to him." And with this homely advice Squire Gaunt dismissed the matter and went to the stable to give his mare a ball.

So you see Mrs. Gaunt was discontented with Francis for not being an enthusiast, and nettled with Leonard for being one.

The very next Sunday morning she went and heard Leonard preach. His first sermon was an era in her life. After twenty years of pulpit prosers, there suddenly rose before her a sacred orator; an orator born; blest with that divine and thrilling eloquence that no heart can really resist. He prepared his great theme with art at first; but, once warm, it carried him away, and his hearers went with him like so many straws on the flood, and in the exercise of this great gift the whole man seemed transfigured; abroad, he was a languid, rather slouching priest, who crept about, a picture of delicate humility, but with a shade of meanness; for, religious prejudice apart, it is ignoble to sweep the wall in passing as he did, and eye the ground: but, once in the pulpit, his figure rose and swelled majestically, and seemed to fly over them all like a guardian angel's; his sallow cheek burned, his great Italian eye shot black lightning at the impenitent, and melted ineffably when he soothed the sorrowful.

Observe that great, mean, brown bird in the Zoölogical Gardens, which sits so tame on its perch, and droops and slouches like a drowsy duck! That is the great and soaring eagle. Who would believe it, to look at him? Yet all he wants is to be put in his right place instead of his wrong. He is not himself in man's cages, belonging to God's sky. Even so Leonard was abroad in the world, but at home in the pulpit; and so he somewhat crept and slouched about the parish, but soared like an eagle in his native air.

Mrs. Gaunt sat thrilled, enraptured, melted. She hung upon his words; and when they ceased, she still sat motionless, spell-bound; loath to believe that accents so divine could really come to an end.

Even whilst all the rest were dispersing, she sat quite still, and closed her eyes. For her soul was too high-strung now to endure the chit-chat she knew would attack her on the road home,—chit-chat that had been welcome enough coming home from other preachers.

And by this means she came hot and undiluted to her husband; she laid her white hand on his shoulder, and said, "O Griffith, I have heard the voice of God."

Griffith looked alarmed, and rather shocked than elated.

Mrs. Gaunt observed that, and tacked on, "Speaking by the lips of his servant." But she fired again the next moment, and said, "The grave hath given us back St. Paul in the Church's need; and I have heard him this day."

"Good heavens! where?"

"At St. Mary's Chapel."

Then Griffith looked very incredulous. Then she gushed out with, "What, because it is a small chapel, you think[Pg 510] a great saint cannot be in it. Why, our Saviour was born in a stable, if you go to that."

"Well, but my dear, consider," said Griffith; "who ever heard of comparing a living man to St. Paul, for preaching? Why, he was an apostle, for one thing; and there are no apostles now-a-days. He made Felix tremble on his throne, and almost persuaded Whatsename, another heathen gentleman, to be a Christian."

"That is true," said the lady, thoughtfully; "but he sent one man that we know of to sleep. Catch Brother Leonard sending any man to sleep! And then nobody will ever say of him that he was long preaching."

"Why, I do say it," replied Griffith. "By the same token, I have been waiting dinner for you this half-hour, along of his preaching."

"Ah, that's because you did not hear him," retorted Mrs. Gaunt; "if you had, it would have seemed too short, and you would have forgotten all about your dinner for once."

Griffith made no reply. He even looked vexed at her enthusiastic admiration. She saw, and said no more. But after dinner she retired to the grove, and thought of the sermon and the preacher: thought of them all the more that she was discouraged from enlarging on them. And it would have been kinder, and also wiser, of Griffith, if he had encouraged her to let out her heart to him on this subject, although it did not happen to interest him. A husband should not chill an enthusiastic wife, and, above all, should never separate himself from her favorite topic, when she loves him well enough to try and share it with him.

Mrs. Gaunt, however, though her feelings were quick, was not cursed with a sickly or irritable sensibility; nor, on the other hand, was she one of those lovely little bores who cannot keep their tongues off their favorite theme. She quietly let the subject drop for a whole week; but the next Sunday morning she asked her husband if he would do her a little favor.

"I'm more likely to say ay than nay," was the cheerful reply.

"It is just to go to chapel with me; and then you can judge for yourself."

Griffith looked rather sheepish at this proposal; and he said he could not very well do that.

"Why not, dearest, just for once?"

"Well, you see, parties run so high in this parish; and everything one does is noted. Why, if I was to go to chapel, they'd say directly, 'Look at Griffith Gaunt, he is so tied to his wife's apron he is going to give up the faith of his ancestors.'"

"The faith of your ancestors! That is a good jest. The faith of your grandfather at the outside: the faith of your ancestors was the faith of mine and me."

"Well, don't let us differ about a word," said Griffith; "you know what I mean. Did ever I ask you to go to church with me? and if I were to ask you, would you go?"

Mrs. Gaunt colored; but would not give in. "That is not the same thing," said she. "I do profess religion: you do not. You scarce think of God on week-days; and, indeed, never mention his name, except in the way of swearing; and on Sunday you go to church—for what? to doze before dinner, you know you do. Come now, with you 't is no question of religion, but just of nap or no nap: for Brother Leonard won't let you sleep, I warn you fairly."

Griffith shook his head. "You are too hard on me, wife. I know I am not so good as you are, and never shall be; but that is not the fault of the Protestant faith, which hath reared so many holy men: and some of 'em our ancestors burnt alive, and will burn in hell themselves for the deed. But, look you, sweetheart, if I'm not a saint I'm a gentleman, and, say I wear my faith loose, I won't drag it in the dirt none the more for that. So you must excuse me."

Mrs. Gaunt was staggered; and if Griffith had said no more, I think she would have withdrawn her request, and[Pg 511] so the matter ended. But persons unversed in argument can seldom let well alone; and this simple Squire must needs go on to say, "Besides, Kate, it would come to the parson's ears, and he is a friend of mine, you know. Why, I shall be sure to meet him to-morrow."

"Ay," retorted the lady, "by the cover-side. Well, when you do, tell him you refused your wife your company for fear of offending the religious views of a fox-hunting parson."

"Nay, Kate," said Griffith, "this is not to ask thy man to go with thee; 't is to say go he must, willy nilly." With that he rose and rang the bell. "Order the chariot," said he, "I am to go with our dame."

Mrs. Gaunt's face beamed with gratified pride and affection.

The chariot came round, and Griffith handed his dame in. He then gave an involuntary sigh, and followed her with a hang-dog look.

She heard the sigh, and saw the look, and laid her hand quickly on his shoulder, and said, gently but coldly, "Stay you at home, my dear. We shall meet at dinner."

"As you will," said he, cheerfully: and they went their several ways. He congratulated himself on her clemency, and his own escape.

She went along, sorrowful at having to drink so great a bliss alone; and thought it unkind and stupid of Griffith not to yield with a good grace if he could yield at all: and, indeed, women seem cleverer than men in this, that, when they resign their wills, they do it graciously and not by halves. Perhaps they are more accustomed to knock under; and you know practice makes perfect.

But every smaller feeling was swept away by the preacher, and Mrs. Gaunt came home full of pious and lofty thoughts.

She found her husband seated at the dinner-table, with one turnip before him; and even that was not comestible; for it was his grandfather's watch, with a face about the size of a new-born child's. "Forty-five minutes past one, Kate," said he, ruefully.

"Well, why not bid them serve the dinner?" said she with an air of consummate indifference.

"What, dine alone o' Sunday? Why, you know I couldn't eat a morsel without you, set opposite."

Mrs. Gaunt smiled affectionately. "Well then, my dear, we had better order dinner an hour later next Sunday."

"But that will upset the servants, and spoil their Sunday."

"And am I to be their slave?" said Mrs. Gaunt, getting a little warm. "Dinner! dinner! What? shall I starve my soul, by hurrying away from the oracles of God to a sirloin? O these gross appetites! how they deaden the immortal half, and wall out Heaven's music! For my part, I wish there was no such thing as eating and drinking. 'T is like falling from Heaven down into the mud, to come back from such divine discourse and be greeted with 'Dinner! dinner! dinner!'"

The next Sunday, after waiting half an hour for her, Griffith began his dinner without her.

And this time, on her arrival, instead of remonstrating with her, he excused himself. "Nothing," said he, "upsets a man's temper like waiting for his dinner."

"Well, but you have not waited."

"Yes, I did, a good half-hour. Till I could wait no longer."

"Well, dear, if I were you I would not have waited at all, or else waited till your wife came home."

"Ah, dame, that is all very well for you to say. You could live on hearing of sermons and smelling to rosebuds. You don't know what 't is to be a hungry man."

The next Sunday he sat sadly down, and finished his dinner without her. And she came home and sat down to half-empty dishes; and ate much less than she used when she had him to keep her company in it.

Griffith, looking on disconsolate, told[Pg 512] her she was more like a bird pecking than a Christian eating of a Sunday.

"No matter, child," said she; "so long as my soul is filled with the bread of Heaven."

Leonard's eloquence suffered no diminution, either in quantity or quality; and, after a while, Gaunt gave up his rule of never dining abroad on the Sunday. If his wife was not punctual, his stomach was; and he had not the same temptation to dine at home he used to have.

And indeed, by degrees, instead of quietly enjoying his wife's company on that sweet day, he got to see less of her than on the week-days.

CHAPTER XVI.

Your mechanical preacher flings his words out happy-go-lucky; but the pulpit orator, like every other orator, feels his people's pulse as he speaks, and vibrates with them, and they with him.

So Leonard soon discovered he had a great listener in Mrs. Gaunt: she was always there whenever he preached, and her rapt attention never flagged. Her gray eyes never left his face, and, being upturned, the full orbs came out in all their grandeur, and seemed an angel's, come down from heaven to hear him: for, indeed, to a very dark man, as Leonard was, the gentle radiance of a true Saxon beauty seems always more or less angelic.

By degrees this face became a help to the orator. In preaching he looked sometimes to it for sympathy, and lo, it was sure to be melting with sympathy. Was he led on to higher or deeper thoughts than most of his congregation could understand, he looked to this face to understand him; and lo, it had quite understood him, and was beaming with intelligence.

From a help and an encouragement it became a comfort and a delight to him.

On leaving the pulpit and cooling, he remembered its owner was no angel, but a woman of the world, and had put him frivolous questions.

The illusion, however, was so beautiful, that Leonard, being an imaginative man, was unwilling to dispel it by coming into familiar contact with Mrs. Gaunt. So he used to make his assistant visit her, and receive her when she came to confess, which was very rarely; for she was discouraged by her first reception.

Brother Leonard lived in a sort of dwarf monastery, consisting of two cottages, an oratory, and a sepulchre. The two latter were old, but the cottages had been built expressly for him and another seminary priest who had been invited from France. Inside, these cottages were little more than ceils; only the bigger had a kitchen which was a glorious place compared with the parlor; for it was illuminated with bright pewter plates, copper vessels, brass candlesticks, and a nice clean woman, with a plain gown kilted over a quilted silk petticoat; Betty Scarf, an old servant of Mrs. Gaunt's, who had married, and was now the Widow Gough.

She stood at the gate one day, as Mrs. Gaunt drove by; and courtesied, all beaming.

Mrs. Gaunt stopped the carriage, and made some kind and patronizing inquiries about her; and it ended in Betty asking her to come in and see her place. Mrs. Gaunt looked a little shy at that, and did not move. "Nay, they are both abroad till supper time," said Betty, reading her in a moment by the light of sex. Then Mrs. Gaunt smiled, and got out of her carriage. Betty took her in and showed her everything in doors and out. Mrs. Gaunt looked mighty demure and dignified, but scanned everything closely, only without seeming too curious.

The cold gloom of the parlor struck her. She shuddered, and said, "This would give me the vapors. But, doubtless, angels come and brighten it for him."

"Not always," said Betty. "I do see him with his head in his hand by the hour, and hear him sigh ever so[Pg 513] loud as I pass the door. Why, one day he was fain to have me and my spinning-wheel aside him. Says he, 'Let me hear thy busy wheel, and see thee ply it.' 'And welcome,' says I. So I sat in his room, and span, and he sat a gloating of me as if he had never seen a woman spin hemp afore (he is a very simple man): and presently says he—but what signifies what he said?"

"Nay, Betty; if you please! I am much interested in him. He preaches so divinely."

"Ay," said Betty, "that's his gift. But a poor trencher-man; and I declare I'm ashamed to eat all the vittels that are eaten here, and me but a woman."

"But what did he say to you that time?" asked Mrs. Gaunt, a little impatiently.

Betty cudgelled her memory. "Well, says he, 'My daughter,' (the poor soul always calls me his daughter, and me old enough to be his mother mostly,) says he, 'how comes it that you are never wearied, nor cast down, and yet you but serve a sinner like yourself; but I do often droop in my Master's service, and He is the Lord of heaven and earth?' Says I, 'I'll tell ye, sir: because ye don't eat enough o' vittels.'"

"What an answer!"

"Why, 't is the truth, dame. And says I, 'If I was to be always fasting, like as you be, d' ye think I should have the heart to work from morn till night?' Now, wasn't I right?"

"I don't know till I hear what answer he made," said Mrs. Gaunt, with mean caution.

"O, he shook his head, and said he ate mortal food enow, (poor simple body!) but drank too little of grace divine. That were his word."

Mrs. Gaunt was a good deal struck and affected by this revelation, and astonished at the slighting tone Betty took in speaking of so remarkable a man. The saying that "No man is a hero to his valet" was not yet current, or perhaps she would have been less surprised at that.

"Alas! poor man," said she, "and is it so? To hear him, I thought his soul was borne up night and day by angels' pinions—"

The widow interrupted her. "Ay, you hear him preach, and it is like God's trumpet mostly, and so much I say for him in all companies. But I see him directly after; he totters in to this very room, and sits him down pale and panting, and one time like to swoon, and another all for crying, and then he is ever so dull and sad for the whole afternoon."

"And nobody knows this but you? You have got my old petticoat still, I see. I must look you up another."

"You are very good, dame, I am sure. 'T will not come amiss; I've only this for Sundays and all. No, my lady, not a soul but me and you. I'm not one as tells tales out of doors, but I don't mind you, dame; you are my old mistress, and a discreet woman. 'T will go no further than your ear."

Mrs. Gaunt told her she might rely on that. The widow then inquired after Mrs. Gaunt's little girl, and admired her dress, and described her own ailments, and poured out a continuous stream of topics bearing no affinity to each other except that they were all of them not worth mentioning. And all the while she thus discoursed, Mrs. Gaunt's thoughtful eyes looked straight over the chatterbox's white cap, and explored vacancy; and by and by she broke the current of twaddle with the majestic air of a camelopard marching across a running gutter.

"Betsy Gough," said she, "I am thinking."

Mrs. Gough was struck dumb by an announcement so singular.

"I have heard, and I have read, that great and pious and learned men are often to seek in little simple things, such as plain bodies have at their fingers' ends. So, now, if you and I could only teach him something for all he has taught us! And, to be sure, we ought to be kind to him if we can; for O Betty, my woman, 't is a poor vanity to go and despise the great, and the learned,[Pg 514] and the sainted, because forsooth we find them out in some one little weakness,—we that are all made up of weaknesses and defects. So, now, I sit me down in his very chair, so. And sit you there. Now let us, you and me, look at his room quietly, all over, and see what is wanting."

"First and foremost methinks this window should be filled with geraniums and jessamine and so forth. With all his learning perhaps he has to be taught, the color of flowers and golden green leaves, with the sun shining through, how it soothes the eye and relieves the spirits; yet every woman born knows that. Then do but see this bare table! a purple cloth on that, I say."

"Which he will fling it out of the window, I say."

"Nay, for I'll embroider a cross in the middle with gold braid. Then a rose-colored blind would not be amiss; and there must be a good mirror facing the window; but, indeed, if I had my way, I'd paint these horrid walls the first thing."

"How you run on, dame! Bless your heart, you'd turn his den into a palace; he won't suffer that. He is all for self-mortification, poor simple soul."

"O, not all at once, I did not mean," said Mrs. Gaunt; "but by little and little, you know. We must begin with the flowers: God made them; and so to be sure he will not spurn them."

Betty began to enter into the plot. "Ay, ay," said she: "the flowers first; and so creep on. But naught will avail to make a man of him so long as he eats but of eggs and garden-stuff, like the beasts of the field, 'that to-day are, and to-morrow are cast into the oven.'"

Mrs. Gaunt smiled at this ambitious attempt of the widow to apply Scripture. Then she said, rather timidly, "Could you make his eggs into omelets? and so pound in a little meat with your small herbs; I dare say he would be none the wiser, and he so bent on high and heavenly things."

"You may take your oath of that."

"Well, then. And I shall send you some stock from the castle, and you can cook his vegetables in good strong gravy, unbeknown."

The Widow Gough chuckled aloud.

"But stay," said Mrs. Gaunt; "for us to play the woman so, and delude a saint for his mere bodily weal, will it not be a sin, and a sacrilege to boot?"

"Let that flea stick in the wall," said Betty, contemptuously. "Find you the meat, and I'll find the deceit: for he is as poor as a rat into the bargain. Nay, nay, God Almighty will never have the heart to burn us two for such a trifle. Why 't is no more than cheating a froward child into taking 's physic."

Mrs. Gaunt got into her carriage and went home, thinking all the way. What she had heard filled her with feelings strangely but sweetly composed of veneration and pity. In that Leonard was a great orator and a high-minded priest, she revered him; in that he was solitary and sad, she pitied him; in that he wanted common sense, she felt like a mother, and must take him under her wing. All true women love to protect; perhaps it is a part of the great maternal element: but to protect a man, and yet look up to him, this is delicious. It satisfies their double craving; it takes them by both breasts, as the saying is.

Leonard, in truth, was one of those high-strung men who pay for their periods of religious rapture by hours of melancholy. This oscillation of the spirits in extraordinary men appears to be more or less a law of nature; and this the Widow Gough was not aware of.

The very next Sunday, while he was preaching, she and Mrs. Gaunt's gardener were filling his bow-window with flower-pots, the flowers in full bloom and leaf. The said window was large and had a broad sill outside, and inside, one of the old-fashioned high window-seats that follow the shape of the window. Mrs. Gaunt, who did nothing by halves, sent up a cart-load of flower-pots,[Pg 515] and Betty and the gardener arranged at least eighty of them, small and great, inside and outside the window.

When Leonard returned from preaching, Betty was at the door to watch. He came past the window with his hands on his breast, and his eyes on the ground, and never saw the flowers in his own window. Betty was disgusted. However, she followed him stealthily as he went to his room, and she heard a profound "Ah!" burst from him.

She bustled in and found him standing in a rapture, with the blood mantling in his pale cheeks, and his dark eyes glowing.

"Now blessed be the heart that hath conceived this thing, and the hand that hath done it," said he. "My poor room, it is a bower of roses, all beauty and fragrance."

And he sat down, inhaling them and looking at them; and a dreamy, tender complacency crept over his heart, and softened his noble features exquisitely.

Widow Gough, red with gratified pride, stood watching him, and admiring him; but, indeed, she often admired him, though she had got into a way of decrying him.

But at last she lost patience at his want of curiosity; that being a defect she was free from herself.

"Ye don't ask me who sent them," said she, reproachfully.

"Nay, nay," said he; "prithee do not tell me: let me divine."

"Divine, then," said Betty, roughly. "Which I suppose you means 'guess.'"

"Nay, but let me be quiet awhile," said he, imploringly; "let me sit down and fancy that I am a holy man, and some angel hath turned my cave into a Paradise."

"No more an angel than I am," said the practical widow. "But, now I think on 't, y' are not to know who 't was. Them as sent them they bade me hold my tongue."

This was not true; but Betty, being herself given to unwise revelations and superfluous secrecy, chose suddenly to assume that this business was to be clandestine.

The priest turned his eye inwards and meditated.

"I see who it is," said he, with an air of absolute conviction. "It must be the lady who comes always when I preach, and her face like none other; it beams with divine intelligence. I will make her all the return we poor priests can make to our benefactors. I will pray for her soul here among the flowers God has made, and she has given his servant to glorify his dwelling. My daughter, you may retire."

This last with surprising, gentle dignity; so Betty went off rather abashed, and avenged herself by adulterating the holy man's innutritious food with Mrs. Gaunt's good gravy; while he prayed fervently for her eternal weal among the flowers she had given him.

Now Mrs. Gaunt, after eight years of married life, was too sensible and dignified a woman to make a romantic mystery out of nothing. She concealed the gravy, because there secrecy was necessary; but she never dreamed of hiding that she had sent her spiritual adviser a load of flowers. She did not tell her neighbors, for she was not ostentatious; but she told her husband, who grunted, but did not object.

But Betty's nonsense lent an air of romance and mystery that was well adapted to captivate the imagination of a young, ardent, and solitary spirit like Leonard.

He would have called on the lady he suspected, and thanked her for her kindness. But this, he feared, would be unwelcome, since she chose to be his unknown benefactress. It would be ill taste in him to tell her he had found her out: it might offend her sensibility, and then she would draw in.

He kept his gratitude, therefore, to himself, and did not cool it by utterance. He often sat among the flowers, in a sweet revery, enjoying their color and fragrance; and sometimes he would shut his eyes, and call up the angelical face, with great, celestial, upturned orbs,[Pg 516] and fancy it among her own flowers, and the queen of them all.

These day-dreams did not at that time interfere with his religious duties. They only took the place of those occasional hours when, partly by the reaction consequent on great religious fervor, partly by exhaustion of the body weakened by fasts, partly by the natural delicacy of his fibre and the tenderness of his disposition, his soul used to be sad.

By and by these languid hours, sad no longer, became sweet and dear to him. He had something so interesting to think of, to dream about. He had a Madonna that cared for him in secret.

She was human; but good, beautiful, and wise. She came to his sermons, and understood every word.

"And she knows me better than I know myself," said he; "since I had these flowers from her hand, I am another man."

One day he came into his room and found two watering-pots there. One was large and had a rose to it, the other small and with a plain spout.

"Ah!" said he; and colored with delight. He called Betty, and asked her who had brought them.

"How should I know?" said she, roughly. "I dare say they dropped from heaven. See, there is a cross painted on 'em in gold letters."

"And so there is!" said Leonard, and crossed himself.

"That means nobody is to use them but you, I trow," said Betty, rather crossly.

The priest's cheek colored high. "I will use them this instant," said he. "I will revive my drooping children as they have revived me." And he caught up a watering-pot with ardor.

"What, with the sun hot upon 'em?" screamed Betty. "Well, saving your presence, you are a simple man."

"Why, good Betty, 't is the sun that makes them faint," objected the priest, timidly, and with the utmost humility of manner, though Betty's tone would have irritated a smaller mind.

"Well, well," said she, softening; "but ye see it never rains with a hot sun, and the flowers they know that; and look to be watered after Nature, or else they take it amiss. You, and all your sort, sir, you think to be stronger than Nature; you do fast and pray all day, and won't look at a woman like other men; and now you wants to water the very flowers at noon!"

"Betty," said Leonard smiling, "I yield to thy superior wisdom, and I will water them at morn and eve. In truth we have all much to learn: let us try and teach one another as kindly as we can."

"I wish you'd teach me to be as humble as you be," blurted out Betty, with something very like a sob: "and more respectful to my betters," added she, angrily.

Watering the flowers she had given him became a solace and a delight to the solitary priest: he always watered them with his own hands, and felt quite paternal over them.

One evening Mrs. Gaunt rode by with Griffith, and saw him watering them. His tall figure, graceful, though inclined to stoop, bent over them with feminine delicacy; and the simple act, which would have been nothing in vulgar hands, seemed to Mrs. Gaunt so earnest, tender, and delicate in him, that her eyes filled, and she murmured, "Poor Brother Leonard!"

"Why, what's wrong with him now?" asked Griffith, a little peevishly.

"That was him watering the flowers."

"O, is that all?" said Griffith, carelessly.

Leonard said to himself, "I go too little abroad among my people." He made a little round, and it ended in Hernshaw Castle.

Mrs. Gaunt was out.

He looked disappointed; so the servant suggested that perhaps she was in the Dame's haunt: he pointed to the grove.

Leonard followed his direction, and soon found himself, for the first time, in that sombre, solemn retreat.[Pg 517]

It was a hot summer day, and the grove was delicious. It was also a place well suited to the imaginative and religious mind of the Italian.

He walked slowly to and fro, in religious meditation. Indeed, he had nearly thought out his next sermon, when his meditative eye happened to fall on a terrestrial object that startled and thrilled him. Yet it was only a lady's glove. It lay at the foot of a rude wooden seat beneath a gigantic pine.

He stooped and picked it up. He opened the little fingers, and called up in fancy the white and tapering hand that glove could fit. He laid the glove softly on his own palm, and eyed it with dreamy tenderness. "So this is the hand that hath solaced my loneliness," said he: "a hand fair as that angelical face, and sweet as the kind heart that doeth good by stealth."

Then, forgetting for a moment, as lofty spirits will, the difference between meum and tuum, he put the little glove in his bosom, and paced thoughtfully home through the woods, that were separated from the grove only by one meadow: and so he missed the owner of the glove, for she had returned home while he was meditating in her favorite haunt.

Leonard, amongst his other accomplishments, could draw and paint with no mean skill. In one of those hours that used to be of melancholy, but now were hours of dreamy complacency, he took out his pencils and endeavored to sketch the inspired face that he had learned to preach to, and now to dwell on with gratitude.

Clearly as he saw it before him, he could not reproduce it to his own satisfaction. After many failures he got very near the mark: yet still something was wanting.

Then, as a last resource, he actually took his sketch to church with him, and in preaching made certain pauses, and, with a very few touches, perfected the likeness; then, on his return home, threw himself on his knees and prayed forgiveness of God with many sighs and tears, and hid the sacrilegious drawing out of his own sight.

Two days after, he was at work coloring it; and the hours flew by like minutes, as he laid the mellow, melting tints on with infinite care and delicacy. Labor ipse voluptas.

Mrs. Gaunt heard Leonard had called on her in person. She was pleased at that, and it encouraged her to carry out her whole design.

Accordingly, one afternoon, when she knew Leonard would be at vespers, she sent on a loaded pony-cart, and followed it on horseback.

Then it was all hurry-skurry with Betty and her, to get their dark deeds done before their victim's return.

These good creatures set the mirror opposite the flowery window, and so made the room a very bower. They fixed a magnificent crucifix of ivory and gold over the mantel-piece, and they took away his hassock of rushes and substituted a prie-dieu of rich crimson velvet. All that remained was to put their blue cover, with its golden cross, on the table. To do this, however, they had to remove the priest's papers and things: they were covered with a cloth. Mrs. Gaunt felt them under it.

"But perhaps he will be angry if we move his papers," said she.

"Not he," said Betty. "He has no secrets from God or man."

"Well, I won't take it on me," said Mrs. Gaunt, merrily. "I leave that to you." And she turned her back and settled the mirror, officiously, leaving all the other responsibilities to Betty.

The sturdy widow laughed at her scruples, and whipped off the cloth without ceremony. But soon her laugh stopped mighty short, and she uttered an exclamation.

"What is the matter?" said Mrs. Gaunt, turning her head sharply round.

"A wench's glove, as I'm a living sinner," groaned Betty.

A poor little glove lay on the table; and both women eyed it like basilisks a moment. Then Betty pounced on it and examined it with the fierce keenness[Pg 518] of her sex in such conjunctures, searching for a name or a clew.

Owing to this rapidity, Mrs. Gaunt, who stood at some distance, had not time to observe the button on the glove, or she would have recognized her own property.

"He have had a hussy with him unbeknown," said Betty, "and she have left her glove. 'T is easy to get in by the window and out again. Only let me catch her! I'll tear her eyes out, and give him my mind. I'll have no young hussies creeping in an' out where I be."

Thus spoke the simple woman, venting her coarse domestic jealousy.

The gentlewoman said nothing, but a strange feeling traversed her heart for the first time in her life.

It was a little chill, it was a little ache, it was a little sense of sickness; none of these violent, yet all distinct. And all about what? After this curious, novel spasm at the heart, she began to be ashamed of herself for having had such a feeling.

Betty held her out the glove: and she recognized it directly, and turned as red as fire.

"You know whose 't is?" said Betty, keenly.

Mrs. Gaunt was on her guard in a moment. "Why, Betty," said she, "for shame! 't is some penitent hath left her glove after confession. Would you belie a good man for that? O, fie!"

"Humph!" said Betty, doubtfully. "Then why keep it under cover? Now you can read, dame; let us see if there isn't a letter or so writ by the hand as owns this very glove."

Mrs. Gaunt declined, with cold dignity, to pry into Brother Leonard's manuscripts.

Her eye, however, darted sidelong at them, and told another tale; and, if she had been there alone, perhaps, the daughter of Eve would have predominated.

Betty, inflamed by the glove, rummaged the papers in search of female handwriting. She could tell that from a man's, though she could not read either.

But there is a handwriting that the most ignorant can read at sight; and so Betty's researches were not in vain: hidden under several sheets of paper, she found a picture. She gave but one glance at it, and screamed out: "There, didn't I tell you? Here she is! the brazen, red-haired—Lawk a daisy! why, 't is yourself."

CHAPTER XVII.

"Me!" cried Mrs. Gaunt, in amazement: then she ran to the picture, and at sight of it every other sentiment gave way for a moment to gratified vanity. "Nay," said she, beaming and blushing, "I was never half so beautiful. What heavenly eyes!"

"The fellows to 'em be in your own head, dame, this moment."

"Seeing is believing," said Mrs. Gaunt, gayly, and in a moment she was at the priest's mirror, and inspected her eyes minutely, cocking her head this way and that. She ended by shaking it, and saying, "No. He has flattered them prodigiously."

"Not a jot," said Betty. "If you could see yourself in chapel, you do turn 'em up just so, and the white shows all round." Then she tapped the picture with her finger: "O them eyes! they were never made for the good of his soul,—poor simple man!"

Betty said this with sudden gravity: and now Mrs. Gaunt began to feel very awkward. "Mr. Gaunt would give fifty pounds for this," said she, to gain time: and, while she uttered that sentence, she whipped on her armor.

"I'll tell you what I think," said she, calmly, "he wished to paint a Madonna; and he must take some woman's face to aid his fancy. All the painters are driven to that. So he just took the best that came to hand, and that is not saying much, for this is a rare ill-favored parish: and he has made an angel of her, a very angel. There, hide Me away again, or I shall long for Me—to show to my husband. I must be going; I wouldn't be caught here now for a pension."[Pg 519]

"Well, if ye must," said Betty; "but when will ye come again?" (She hadn't got the petticoat yet.)

"Humph!" said Mrs. Gaunt, "I have done all I can for him; and perhaps more than I ought. But there's nothing to hinder you from coming to me. I'll be as good as my word; and I have an old Paduasoy, besides, you can perhaps do something with it."

"You are very good, dame," said Betty, courtesying.

Mrs. Gaunt then hurried away, and Betty looked after her very expressively, and shook her head. She had a female instinct that some mischief or other was brewing.

Mrs. Gaunt went home in a revery.

At the gate she found her husband, and asked him to take a turn in the garden with her.

He complied; and she intended to tell him a portion, at least, of what had occurred. She began timidly, after this fashion: "My dear, Brother Leonard is so grateful for your flowers," and then hesitated.

"I'm sure he is very welcome," said Griffith. "Why doesn't he sup with us, and be sociable, as Father Francis used? Invite him; let him know he will be welcome."

Mrs. Gaunt blushed; and objected. "He never calls on us."

"Well, well, every man to his taste," said Griffith, indifferently, and proceeded to talk to her about his farm, and a sorrel mare with a white mane and tail that he had seen, and thought it would suit her.

She humored him, and affected a great interest in all this, and had not the courage to force the other topic on.

Next Sunday morning, after a very silent breakfast, she burst out, almost violently, "Griffith, I shall go to the parish church with you, and then we will dine together afterwards."

"You don't mean it, Kate," said he, delighted.

"Ay, but I do. Although you refused to go to chapel with me."

They went to church together, and Mrs. Gaunt's appearance there created no small sensation. She was conscious of that, but hid it, and conducted herself admirably. Her mind seemed entirely given to the service, and to a dull sermon that followed.

But at dinner she broke out, "Well, give me your church for a sleeping draught. You all slumbered, more or less: those that survived the drowsy, droning prayers sank under the dry, dull, dreary discourse. You snored, for one."

"Nay, I hope not, my dear."

"You did then, as loud as your bass fiddle."

"And you sat there and let me!" said Griffith, reproachfully.

"To be sure I did. I was too good a wife, and too good a Christian, to wake you. Sleep is good for the body, and twaddle is not good for the soul. I'd have slept too, if I could; but with me going to chapel, I'm not used to sleep at that time o' day. You can't sleep, and Brother Leonard speaking."

In the afternoon came Mrs. Gough, all in her best. Mrs. Gaunt had her into her bedroom, and gave her the promised petticoat, and the old Paduasoy gown; and then, as ladies will, when their hand is once in, added first one thing, then another, till there was quite a large bundle.

"But how is it you are here so soon?" asked Mrs. Gaunt.

"O, we had next to no sermon to-day. He couldn't make no hand of it: dawdled on a bit; then gave us his blessing, and bundled us out."

"Then I've lost nothing," said Mrs. Gaunt.

"Not you. Well, I don't know. Mayhap if you had been there he'd have preached his best. But la! we warn't worth it."

At this conjecture Mrs. Gaunt's face burned, but she said nothing: only she cut the interview short, and dismissed Betty with her bundle.

As Betty crossed the landing, Mrs. Gaunt's new lady's-maid, Caroline Ryder, stepped accidentally, on purpose, out of an adjoining room, in which she had been lurking, and lifted her black[Pg 520] brows in affected surprise. "What, are you going to strip the house, my woman?" said she, quietly.

Betty put down the bundle, and set her arms akimbo. "There is none on 't stolen, any way," said she.

Caroline's black eyes flashed fire at this, and her cheek lost color; but she parried the innuendo skilfully. "Taking my perquisites on the sly,—that is not so very far from stealing."

"O, there's plenty left for you, my fine lady. Besides, you don't want her; you can set your cap at the master, they say. I'm too old for that, and too honest into the bargain."

"Too ill-favored, you mean, ye old harridan," said Ryder, contemptuously.

But, for reasons hereafter to be dealt with, Betty's thrust went home: and the pair were mortal enemies from that hour.

Mrs. Gaunt came down from her room discomposed: from that she became restless and irritable; so much so, indeed, that at last Mr. Gaunt told her, good-humoredly enough, if going to church made her ill (meaning peevish), she had better go to chapel. "You are right," said she, "and so I will."

The next Sunday she was at her post in good time.

The preacher cast an anxious glance around to see if she was there. Her quick eye saw that glance, and it gave her a demure pleasure.

This day he was more eloquent than ever: and he delivered a beautiful passage concerning those who do good in secret. In uttering these eloquent sentences his cheek glowed, and he could not deny himself the pleasure of looking down at the lovely face that was turned up to him. Probably his look was more expressive than he intended: the celestial eyes sank under it, and were abashed, and the fair cheek burned: and then so did Leonard's at that.

Thus, subtly yet effectually, did these two minds communicate in a crowd that never noticed nor suspected the delicate interchange of sentiment that was going on under their very eyes.

In a general way compliments did not seduce Mrs. Gaunt: she was well used to them, for one thing. But to be praised in that sacred edifice, and from the pulpit, and by such an orator as Leonard, and to be praised in words so sacred and beautiful that the ears around her drank them with delight,—all this made her heart beat, and filled her with soft and sweet complacency.

And then to be thanked in public, yet, as it were, clandestinely, this gratified the furtive tendency of woman.

There was no irritability this afternoon; but a gentle radiance that diffused itself on all around, and made the whole household happy,—especially Griffith, whose pipe she filled, for once, with her own white hand, and talked dogs, horses, calves, hinds, cows, politics, markets, hay, to please him: and seemed interested in them all.

But the next day she changed: ill at ease, and out of spirits, and could settle to nothing.

It was very hot for one thing: and, altogether, a sort of lassitude and distaste for everything overpowered her, and she retired into the grove, and sat languidly on a seat with half-closed eyes.

But her meditations were no longer so calm and speculative as heretofore. She found her mind constantly recurring to one person, and, above all, to the discovery she had made of her portrait in his possession. She had turned it off to Betty Gough; but here, in her calm solitude and umbrageous twilight, her mind crept out of its cave, like wild and timid things at dusk, and whispered to her heart that Leonard perhaps admired her more than was safe or prudent.

Then this alarmed her, yet caused her a secret complacency: and that, her furtive satisfaction, alarmed her still more.

Now, while she sat thus absorbed, she heard a gentle footstep coming near. She looked up, and there was Leonard close to her; standing meekly, with his arms crossed upon his bosom.

His being there so pat upon her thoughts scared her out of her habitual[Pg 521] self-command. She started up, with a faint cry, and stood panting, as if about to fly, with her beautiful eyes turned large upon him.

He put forth a deprecating hand, and soothed her. "Forgive me, madam," said he; "I have unawares intruded on your privacy; I will retire."

"Nay," said she, falteringly, "you are welcome. But no one comes here; so I was startled." Then, recovering herself, "Excuse my ill-manners. 'T is so strange that you should come to me here, of all places."

"Nay, my daughter," said the priest, "not so very strange: contemplative minds love such places. Calling one day to see you, I found this sweet and solemn grove; the like I never saw in England: and to-day I returned in hopes to profit by it. Do but look around at these tall columns; how calm, how reverend! 'T is God's own temple, not built with hands."

"Indeed it is," said Mrs. Gaunt, earnestly. Then, like a woman as she was, "So you came to see my trees, not me."

Leonard blushed. "I did not design to return without paying my respects to her who owns this temple, and is worthy of it; nay, I beg you not to think me ungrateful."

His humility and gentle but earnest voice made Mrs. Gaunt ashamed of her petulance. She smiled sweetly, and looked pleased. However, erelong, she attacked him again. "Father Francis used to visit us often," said she. "He made friends with my husband, too. And I never lacked an adviser while he was here."

Leonard looked so confused at this second reproach that Mrs. Gaunt's heart began to yearn. However, he said humbly that Francis was a secular priest, whereas he was convent-bred. He added, that by his years and experience Francis was better fitted to advise persons of her age and sex, in matters secular, than he was. He concluded timidly that he was ready, nevertheless, to try and advise her; but could not, in such matters, assume the authority that belongs to age and knowledge of the world.

"Nay, nay," said she, earnestly, "guide and direct my soul, and I am content."

He said, yes! that was his duty and his right.

Then, after a certain hesitation, which at once let her know what was coming, he began to thank her, with infinite grace and sweetness, for her kindness to him.

She looked him full in the face, and said she was not aware of any kindness she had shown him worth speaking of.

"That but shows," said he, "how natural it is to you to do acts of goodness. My poor room is a very bower now, and I am happy in it. I used to feel very sad there at times; but your hand has cured me."

Mrs. Gaunt colored beautifully. "You make me ashamed," said she. "Things are come to a pass indeed, if a lady may not send a few flowers and things to her spiritual father without being thanked for it. And, O, sir, what are earthly flowers compared with those blossoms of the soul you have shed so liberally over us? Our immortal parts were all asleep when you came here and wakened them by the fire of your words. Eloquence! 't was a thing I had read of, but never heard, nor thought to hear. Methought the orators and poets of the Church were all in their graves this thousand years, and she must go all the way to heaven that would hear the soul's true music. But I know better now."

Leonard colored high with pleasure, "Such praise from you is too sweet," he muttered. "I must not court it. The heart is full of vanity." And he deprecated further eulogy, by a movement of the hand extremely refined, and, in fact, rather feminine.

Deferring to his wish Mrs. Gaunt glided to other matters, and was naturally led to speak of the prospects of their Church, and the possibility of reconverting these islands. This had been the dream of her young heart; but marriage and maternity, and the[Pg 522] universal coldness with which the subject had been received, had chilled her so, that of late years she had almost ceased to speak of it. Even Leonard, on a former occasion, had listened coldly to her; but now his heart was open to her. He was, in fact, quite as enthusiastic on this point as ever she had been; and then he had digested his aspirations into clearer forms. Not only had he resolved that Great Britain must be reconverted, but had planned the way to do it. His cheek glowed, his eyes gleamed, and he poured out his hopes and his plans before her with an eloquence that few mortals could have resisted.

As for this, his hearer, she was quite carried away by it. She joined herself to his plans on the spot; she begged, with tears in her eyes, to be permitted to support him in this great cause. She devoted to it her substance, her influence, and every gift that God had given her: the hours passed like minutes in this high converse; and when the tinkling of the little bell at a distance summoned him to vespers, he left her with a gentle regret he scarcely tried to conceal, and she went slowly in like one in a dream, and the world seemed dead to her forever.

Nevertheless, when Mrs. Ryder, combing out her long hair, gave one inadvertent tug, the fair enthusiast came back to earth, and asked her, rather sharply, who her head was running on.

Ryder, a very handsome young woman, with fine black eyes, made no reply, but only drew her breath audibly hard.

I do not very much wonder at that, nor at my having to answer that question for Mrs. Ryder. For her head was at that moment running, like any other woman's, on the man she was in love with.

And the man she was in love with was the husband of the lady whose hair she was combing, and who put her that curious question—plump.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

The Resources of California, comprising Agriculture, Mining, Geography, Climate, Commerce, &c., and the Past and Future Development of the State. By John S. Hittell. Second Edition, with an Appendix on Oregon and Washington Territory. San Francisco: A. Roman & Co. New York: W. J. Widdleton.

This is a book almost as encyclopedic as its title would indicate; and is evidently written with a desire to say everything which the theme permits, and to say it truly. It answers almost every question that an intelligent person can ask, in respect to California, besides a good many which few intelligent persons know enough to propound. And it is a proof of its honesty that it does not, after all, make California overpoweringly attractive, whether in respect of climate, society, or business. This is saying a good deal, when we consider that the Preface sums up the allurements of the Pacific coast in a single sentence covering two and a half pages.

The philosophy of the author is sometimes rather bewildering, as where he defines "universal suffrage" to mean that "every sane adult white male citizen, not a felon, may vote at every election." (p. 349.) His general statements, too, are apt to be rather sweeping. For instance, he says, in two different passages, that, "so far as we know, the climate of San Francisco is the most equable and the mildest in the world." (pp. 29, 431.) Yet he puts the extremes of temperature in this favored climate at +25° and +97° Fahrenheit; while at Fayal, in the Azores, the recorded extremes are, if we mistake not, +40° and +85°; and no doubt there are other temperate climates as uniform.

One might object, too, from the side of severe science, to his devoting the "Reptile"[Pg 523] department of his zoölogical section chiefly to spiders, with incidental remarks on fleas and mosquitos. Perhaps it is to balance Captain Stedman in Surinam, who under the head of "Insects" discourses chiefly of vampyre-bats.

The wonders of the Yo-semite valley he describes as well as most people; and faithfully contends for their superiority to those of Niagara, where, as he plaintively observes, "a day or two is enough," while one could contentedly remain for months among the California wonders. He shows, however, that his memories of Atlantic civilization are still painfully vivid, when he counsels the beholder of the Mariposa grove to lie on his back, and think of Trinity Church steeple. Might not one also beguile a third day at Niagara by reflections on the Croton Aqueduct?

But these little glimpses of the author's personality make the book only the more entertaining, and give spice to the really vast mass of accurate information which it conveys. There are few passages which one can call actually imaginative, unless one includes under that head the description (page 40) of that experiment "common in the Eastern cities," where a man dressed in woollen, by sliding on a carpet a few steps, accumulates enough personal electricity to light gas with his fingers. This familiar process, it appears, is impossible in California, and so far his descriptions of that climate convey a sense of safety. Yet even one seasoned to such wonders as these might be startled, for a moment, before his account of the mountain sheep (Ovis montana). This ponderous animal, weighing three hundred and fifty pounds, has a sportive habit of leaping headlong from precipices one hundred feet high, and alighting on its horns, which, being strong and elastic, throw him ten or fifteen feet into the air, "and the next time he alights on his feet all right." (p. 124.) "Mountaineers assert" this; and after this it can be hardly doubted that the products of the human imagination, in California, are on a scale of Yo-semite magnificence.

The American Republic: its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny. By O. A. Brownson, LL. D. New York: P. O'Shea.

Mr. Brownson's influence over the American people, which had dwindled pretty nearly to zero at the beginning of the war, revived with that revival of the old Adam which made him a patriot, and thus showed him rather in the light of a heretic. This book sets him right (or wrong) again, and his temporary partnership with "humanitarians" may be regarded as closed by official notification. In a volume which might well be compressed into one fourth its present size, he covers a great deal of ground, and has pungent suggestions on both sides of a great many questions. Even in the Preface he announces his abandonment of the doctrine of State sovereignty, after holding it for thirty-three years, and at once proceeds to explain how, in a profounder sense, he holds it more thoroughly than ever. In the chapter on "Secession," which is the best in the book, he indorses Charles Sumner's theory of State suicide; holds that the Southern States are now "under the Union, not of it," and seems quite inclined to pardon Mr. Lincoln for abolishing slavery by proclamation. On the other hand, he scouts the theory that the Rebels committed treason, in any moral sense, and proclaims that we are all "willing and proud to be their countrymen, fellow-citizens, and friends." "There need be no fear to trust them now." To hang or exile them would be worse than "deporting four millions of negroes and colored men." (pp. 335-338.)

It must, indeed, be owned that our author has apparently reverted to an amount of colorphobia which must cheer the hearts of the Hibernian portion of his co-religionists. Ignoring the past in a way which seems almost wilful, he declares that the freedman has no capacity of patriotism, no sort of appreciation of the question at stake; and that he would, if enfranchised, invariably vote with his former master. "In any contest between North and South, they would take, to a man, the Southern side." (pp. 346, 376.) Nevertheless, he thinks that the negro will be ultimately enfranchised, "and the danger is, that it will be attempted too soon." If, indeed, it be postponed, he seems to think the negro may, by the blessing of Providence, "melt away." (p. 437.) What a pity that the obstinate fellow, with all the aid now being contributed in the way of assassination, so steadfastly refuses to melt!

Against the Abolitionists, also, Mr. Brownson is still ready to break a lance, with the hearty unreasoning hostility of the good old times. "Wendell Phillips is as[Pg 524] far removed from true Christian civilization as was John C. Calhoun, and William Lloyd Garrison is as much of a barbarian and despot in principle and tendency as Jefferson Davis." (p. 355.) This touch of righteous indignation is less crushing, however, than his covert attacks upon our two great generals. For in one place he enumerates as typical warriors "McClellan, Grant, and Sherman," and in another place, "Halleck, Grant, and Sherman." This is indeed the very refinement of unkindness.

Of a standing army Mr. Brownson thinks well, and wishes it to number a hundred thousand; but his reason for the faith that is in him is a little unexpected. He thinks it useful because "it creates honorable places for gentlemen or the sons of gentlemen without wealth." (p. 386.) Touching our naturalized foreigners, he admits that they have been rather a source of embarrassment in recruiting for our armies (p. 381); but consoles himself by hinting, with his accustomed modesty, that "the best things written on the controversy have been by Catholics." (p. 378.)

He sees danger in the horizon, and frankly avows it. It is none of the commonplace perils, however,—national bankruptcy, revival of the slave power, oppression of Southern loyalists. A wholly new and profounder terror is that which his penetrating eye evokes from the future. It is, that, if matters go on as now, foreign observers will never clearly understand whether it was the "territorial democracy" or the "humanitarian democracy" which really triumphed in the late contest! "The danger now is, that the Union victory will, at home and abroad, be interpreted as a victory won in the interest of social or humanitarian democracy. It was because they regarded the war waged on the side of the Union as waged in the interest of this terrible democracy, that our bishops and clergy sympathized so little with the government in prosecuting it; not, as some imagined, because they were disloyal.... If the victory of the Union should turn out to be a victory for the humanitarian democracy, the civilized world will have no reason to applaud it." (pp. 365, 366.)

After this passage, it is needless to say that its author is the same Mr. Brownson whom the American people long since tried and found wanting as a safe or wise counsellor; the same of whom the Roman Catholic Church one day assumed the responsibility, and found the task more onerous than had been expected. He retains his arrogance, his gladiatorial skill, his habit of sweeping assertion; but perhaps his virulence is softened, save where some unhappy "humanitarian" is under dissection. Enough remains of the habit, however, to make his worst pages the raciest, and to render it a sharp self-satire when he proclaims, at the very outset, that a constitutional treatise should be written "with temper."

Across the Continent: a Summer's Journey to the Rocky Mountains, the Mormons, and the Pacific States, with Speaker Colfax. By Samuel Bowles, Editor of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican. Springfield, Mass.: Samuel Bowles & Co.

Since Mr. Greeley set the example, it has been the manifest destiny of every enterprising journalist to take an occasional trip across the continent, and personally inspect his subscribers. The latest overland Odyssey of this kind—transacted by three silent editors and one very public Speaker—is recorded in Mr. Bowles's new book; which proceeds, as one may observe, from his own publishing office and bindery, and may therefore almost claim, like the quaint little books presented by the eccentric Quincy Tufts to Harvard College Library, to have been "written, printed, and bound by the same hand."

Journalism is a good training, in some ways, for a trip like this. It implies a quick eye for facts, a good memory for figures, a hearty faith in the national bird, and a boundless appetite for new acquaintances. Every Eastern editor, moreover, is sure to find old neighbors throughout the West; and he who escorts a rising politician has all the world for a friend.

The result is, in this case, a thoroughly American book,—American in the sense of to-day, if not according to the point of view of the millennium. It is American in its vast applications of arithmetic; in the facility with which it brings the breadth of a continent within the limits of a summer's ride; in the eloquence which rises to sublimity over mining stock, and dwindles to the verge of commonplace before unmarketable natural beauties. Of course, it is the best book on the theme it handles, for it is the latest; it is lively, readable, instructive;[Pg 525] but no descriptions of those changing regions can last much longer than an almanac, and this will retain its place only until the coming of the next editorial pilgrim.

Esperance. By Meta Lander, author of "Light on the Dark River," "Marion Graham," &c. New York: Sheldon & Co.

Can it be possible that any literature of the world now yields sentimental novels so vague and immature as those which America brings forth? Or is it that their Transatlantic compeers float away and dissolve by their own feebleness before they reach our shores?

"Cry, Esperance! Percy! and set on." This Shakespearian motto might have appeared upon the title-page of this volume; but there is nothing so vivacious upon that page, nor indeed on any other. The name of the book comes from that of the heroine, who was baptized Hope. But the friend of her soul was wont to call her Esperance, "in her wooing moods," and from this simple application of the French dictionary results the title of the romance. Even this does not close the catalogue of the heroine's pet names however, for in moments of yet higher ecstasy, when she rides sublime upon the storm of passion, she is styled, not without scientific appropriateness, "Espy."

Esperance is a young girl who seeks her destiny. She also has her "wooing moods," during which, on small provocation, she "hastily pens a few lines"—of verse such as no young lady's diary should be without. She has, moreover, her intervals of sternness, when she boxes ears; now in case of her father, unfilially, and anon in more righteous conflict with her step-mother's wicked lover. But her demonstrations do not usually take the brief form of blows, but the more formidable shape of words. Indeed, it takes a good many words to meet the innumerable crises of her daily life; and, to do her justice, the more desperate the emergencies, the better she likes them. Anguish is heaped upon her, father and mother desert her, several eligible lovers jilt her,—she would be much obliged to you to point out any specific sorrow of which at least one good specimen has not occurred within her experience. There is a distressing casualty to every chapter, and then come in the poisoned arrows! "Once in the room, I bolted the door and threw myself—not on the bed—the floor better suited my mood. And there I lay, with reeling senses, and a brain on fire, while in my trampled and bruised heart were wildly struggling tenderness and scorn, love and hate, life and death.... The slow-moving hours tolled a mournful requiem, as the long procession of stricken hopes and joys were borne onward to their death and burial. And I, the victim, turned executioner."

The French dictionary extends onward from the title-page, and haunts these impassioned pages. Phrases of a recondite and elaborate description, such as "Oui, monsieur," "Très-bien," and "Entrez," adorn the sportive conversation of this cultivated circle. Sometimes, with higher flight, some one essays to gambol in the Latin tongue: "It seemed to me that old Tempus must have taken to himself a new pair of wings to have fugited so rapidly as he did." Yet the French and the Latin are better than the English; for the main body of the book, while breaking no important law of morals or of grammar, is scarcely adapted for any phase of human existence beyond the boarding-school. It seems rather hard, perhaps, to devote serious censure to a thing so frail; but without a little homely truth, how are we ever to get beyond this bread-and-butter epoch of American fiction?

Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds: with Notices of Some of his Contemporaries. Commenced by Charles Robert Leslie, R. A. Continued and concluded by Tom Taylor, M. A. London: John Murray. 2 vols. 8vo.

"When, in 1832," writes C. R. Leslie, "Constable exhibited his 'Opening of Waterloo Bridge,' it was placed in the school of painting,—one of the small rooms in Somerset House. A sea-piece, by Turner, was next to it,—a gray picture, beautiful and true, but with no positive color in any part of it. Constable's 'Waterloo' seemed as if painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times into the room while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and flags of the city barges. Turner stood behind him, looking from the 'Waterloo' to his own picture, and at last brought his palette from the great room where he was touching another picture, and, putting a round daub of red[Pg 526] lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his gray sea, went away without saying a word. The intensity of the red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of his picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of Constable to look weak. I came into the room just as Turner left it. 'He has been here,' said Constable, 'and fired a gun.'"

Twenty years ago the erratic life of Haydon the artist was dashed suddenly and violently out by his own hand. Men brought the cold light of their judgment then, and overspread his character, forgetful of the fires of his genius; but Mr. Tom Taylor remembered the burning spirit, memorable to the soul of art, and he published two volumes containing Haydon's autobiography and journals, which have set a seal upon his memory, and lead us to thank the man who has done for Haydon what Turner did for his own picture,—fired a gun.

Since Haydon's Autobiography was published, Mr. Taylor has not been idle. Some of the purest and most popular plays now upon the stage we owe to his hand. The face of the blasé theatre-goer shines when his play is announced for the evening; and even the long-visaged critic, fond of talking of the décadence of the modern stage, has been known to appear punctually in his seat when Tom Taylor's play was to lead off the performance.

The days of Burton have passed, and the echoes of roof-splitting laughter he excited have died away; but while the remembrance of "lovely things" remains with us, those who were fortunate enough to have seen Mr. Taylor's play of "Helping Hands," as performed at Burton's Theatre in New York, will be sure never to forget it.

We should be glad, if space permitted, to speak of Mr. Taylor in the several branches of literature wherein he has become distinguished; but it is chiefly with him as a biographer, and principally with one biography, we are concerned here.

Six years ago, Leslie's "Biographical Recollections" were given to the world by the hand of the same editor. There are few books more delightful of this kind in our language; and no small share of the interest results from the conscientious work Mr. Taylor has put into the study of Mr. Leslie's pictures, and his recognition of him as distinctively a literary painter, possessing a kindly brotherhood to Washington Irving in the subtile humor he loved to depict.

We remember having the good fortune once to meet Mr. Taylor, while he was preparing this book, and being impressed with the idea that he had committed Mr. Leslie's paintings to memory, as one of the necessary preliminaries in order to do justice to his subject. He had that day returned from a pilgrimage to one of the pictures, and was able to inform the artists who were present with regard to the smallest accessory. We fancied, had painting, and not penning, been his forte, he could have reproduced the picture for us on the spot, could we, at the same time, have transformed the table-cloth into a canvas.

In the Preface to the Recollections of Leslie, we are told that the reason his autobiography ends abruptly was not because of Mr. Leslie's failing health, "but because all the time he could spare from painting was, during the last year of his life, occupied by him in writing the Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, at which he worked hard even a month before his death." When the Leslie papers were put into Mr. Taylor's hands, this Life, then in a fragmentary condition, being hardly more than memoranda, for the most part, also came into his possession. And it having been his "lot," as he has elsewhere said, to have the materials for two artistic biographies already intrusted to his care, he must have accepted the third, thus silently bestowed, as the especial legacy of his friend.

Therefore, by education and by accident, (if we may choose to consider it such,) setting aside Mr. Taylor's natural ability for the labor, he found himself pre-eminently elected to complete and issue the "Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds." The request of Mr. Murray, the publisher, appears, however, to have spurred him to the actual acceptance of the work. Some idea of these volumes, with their varied interest of life and art, may be briefly conveyed by quoting from the Preface, where Mr. Taylor writes:—

"The life of a painter, more than most men, as a rule, derives its interest from his work and from the people he paints. When his sitters are the chief men and women of his time, for beauty, genius, rank, power, wit, goodness, or even fashion and folly, this interest is heightened. It culminates when the painter is the equal and honored associate of his sitters. All these conditions concur in the case of Reynolds. It is impossible to write a Life and Times of the painter without passing in review—hasty and brief as it must be—the great facts of politics, literature, and manners during his[Pg 527] busy life, which touched, often very closely, the chief actors in a drama taking in the most stirring events of the last century, and containing the germs of many things that have materially operated to shape our arts, manners, and institutions.

"By the use of these materials, I have attempted to carry out Mr. Leslie's intention of presenting Sir Joshua in his true character, as the genial centre of a most various and brilliant society, as well as the transmitter of its chief figures to our time by his potent art."

It is only by turning over the pages of each chapter, and observing closely the brackets wherein Mr. Taylor's portion of the work is enclosed, that we discover how great his labor has been, and how well fulfilled. His interpolations are flung, like the Fribourg Bridge, fine and strong, welding together opposing points, and never inserted like a wedge. A happy instance of this appears in the first volume, where Mr. Taylor says, speaking of Johnson, after the death of his mother, "The regard of such men as Reynolds was henceforth the best comfort of that great, solitary heart; and the painter's purse and house and pen were alike at his friend's service." "For example," Leslie continues, "in this year Reynolds wrote three papers for the 'Idler.' 'I have heard Sir Joshua say,' observes Northcote, 'that Johnson required them from him on a sudden emergency, and on that account he sat up the whole night to complete them in time; and by it he was so much disordered, that it produced a vertigo in his head.'"

The story of Reynolds's youth is a happier one than is often recorded of young artists. His father was too wise and too kind to cross the natural proclivities of the boy, although he does appear to have wavered for a moment when Joshua declared he "had rather be an apothecary than an ordinary painter." He was, however, early apprenticed to Hudson, the first portrait-painter of his time in England. But hardly two years had elapsed before the master saw himself eclipsed, and the two separated without great waste of love on the part of Hudson. From that moment, Reynolds's career was decided. He put the mannerism of his former master away from his pictures when he distanced himself from his studio, and, going soon after to the Continent, devoted himself to the study of great works of art. With what vigor and faithfulness this labor was pursued, the Roman and Venetian note-books testify. "For the studies he made from Raphael," writes Leslie, "he paid dearly; for he caught so severe a cold in the chambers of the Vatican as to occasion a deafness which obliged him to use an ear-trumpet for the remainder of his life."

The fertility and inexhaustibility of power shown by Sir Joshua Reynolds have seldom, if ever, been surpassed in the history of Art. In the "Catalogue Raisonnée" of his paintings, soon to be given to the public, nearly three thousand pictures will be enumerated. Many of these were, of course, finished by his assistants, according to the fashion of the time, but the expression of the face remains to attest the master's hand. (Unless, perchance, the head may have dropped off the canvas entirely, as happened once, when an unfortunate youth, who had borrowed one of his fine pictures to copy, was carrying it home under his arm.)

In the record for the year 1758, we are startled by the number of one hundred and fifty sitters. And although this was probably the busiest year of his life, our astonishment never wanes while observing the ceaseless industry of every moment of his career, during the seventh day as well as the other six; and this, too, in spite of a promise won from him by Dr. Johnson, when on his death-bed, that he would never use his pencil on a Sunday. But the habit of a long working life was too strong upon him, and he soon persuaded himself that it was better to have made the promise than distress a dying friend, although he did not intend to observe it strictly.

Sir Joshua possessed the high art of inciting himself to work by repeatedly soliciting the most beautiful and most interesting persons of the time to sit to him. The lovely face of Kitty Fisher was painted by him five times, and no less frequently that of the charming actress, Mrs. Abington, who was also noted for her bel esprit, and was evidently a favorite with the great painter. There are two or three pictures of Mrs. Siddons by his hand, and many of the beautiful Maria Countess Waldegrave, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester, a lock of whose "delicate golden-brown" hair was found by Mr. Taylor in a side-pocket of one of Sir Joshua's note-books,—"loveliest of all, whom Reynolds seems never to have been tired of painting, nor she of sitting to him."

Of his numerous and invaluable pictures of Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith and Admiral[Pg 528] Keppel, it is hardly necessary to speak. Many of them are well known to us from engravings.

To a painter, this Life is of incalculable interest and value. The account of his manner of handling "the vehicles" is minute and faithful; and if, as Northcote complained, who was a pupil of Reynolds, Sir Joshua could not teach, he could only show you how he worked,—many an artist can gather from these pages what Northcote gathered by looking from palette to canvas. The descriptions of some of the paintings are rich in color, and are worthy of the highest praise.

Sir Joshua Reynolds is one of the few men of genius who have been also men of society. In his note-books for the year, sometimes the number of engagements for dinners and visits would preponderate over the number of his sitters, and sometimes the scale would be about equal. Yet the amount of the latter was always astonishingly large. Perhaps no man, through a long series of years, was more esteemed and sought by the most honorable in society than he; while his diary, with its meagre jottings, brings before us a motley and phantasmagorical procession of the wisest and wittiest, the most beautiful and most notorious men and women of that period, who thronged his studio. We can see the bitterest political opponents passing each other upon the threshold of his painting-room, and, what was far more agreeable to Sir Joshua than having to do with these stormy petrels, we can see the worshipping knight and his lovely mistress, or the fair-cheeked children of many a lady whom he had painted, years before, in the first blossoming of her own youth.

The gentleness and natural amiability of his disposition eminently fitted him for the high social position he attained; but the fervor he felt for his work made him forget everything foreign to it until the hour arrived when he must leave his painting-room. He was fond of receiving company, especially at dinner, and his dinners were always most agreeable. He often annoyed his sister, Miss Reynolds, who presided over his household for a time, by inviting any friends who might happen into his studio in the morning to come to dine with him at night, quite forgetting that the number of seats he had provided was already filled by guests previously asked. The result was what might be expected, and it was often simply bare good fortune if everybody had enough to eat. But, "though the dinner might be careless and inelegant, and the servants awkward and too few," the talk was always pleasant, and no invitations to dine were more eagerly accepted than his.

It was on the principle, perhaps, that "to the feasts of the good the good come uninvited," that Dr. Johnson made it a point to be present on these occasions, and was seldom welcomed otherwise than most cordially by Sir Joshua. On one occasion, however, when another guest was expected to converse, Sir Joshua was really vexed to find Dr. Johnson in the drawing-room, and would hardly speak to him. Miss Reynolds, who appears to have been one of the "unappreciated and misunderstood" women who thought she was a painter when she was not, and of whose copies Sir Joshua said, "They make other people laugh, and me cry," became a great favorite with Dr. Johnson, who probably knew how to sympathize with the morbid sensitiveness of the poor lady. She seems never to have tired of pouring tea for him! He, in return, wrote doggerel verses to her over the tea-tray in this fashion:—

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