The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 04, February, 1858 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 04, February, 1858

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 01, NO. 04, FEBRUARY, 1858 ***

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY,

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

* * * * *

VOL. I.—FEBRUARY, 1858.—NO. IV.

* * * * *

THE GREAT FAILURE.

The crucial fact, in this epoch of commercial catastrophes, is not the stoppage of Smith, Jones, and Robinson,—nor the suspension of specie payments by a greater or less number of banks,—but the paralysis of the trade of the civilized globe. We have had presented to us, within the last quarter, the remarkable, though by no means novel, spectacle of a sudden overthrow of business,—in the United States, in England, in France, and over the greater part of the Continent.

At a period of profound and almost universal peace,—when there had been no marked deficit in the productiveness of industry, when there had been no extraordinary dissipation of its results by waste and extravagance,—when no pestilence or famine or dark rumor of civil revolution had benumbed its energies,—when the needs for its enterprise were seemingly as active and stimulating as ever,—all its habitual functions are arrested, and shocks of disaster run along the ground from Chicago to Constantinople, toppling down innumerable well-built structures, like the shock of some gigantic earthquake.

Everybody is of course struck by these phenomena, and everybody has his own way of accounting for them; it will not, therefore, appear presumptuous in us to offer a word on the common theme. Let it be premised, however, that we do not undertake a scientific solution of the problem, but only a suggestion or two as to what the problem itself really is. In a difficult or complicated case, a great deal is often accomplished when the terms of it are clearly stated.

It is not enough, in considering the effects before us, to say that they are the results of a panic. No doubt there has been a panic, a contagious consternation, spreading itself over the commercial world, and strewing the earth with innumerable wrecks of fortune; but that accounts for nothing, and simply describes a symptom. What is the cause of the panic itself? These daring Yankees, who are in the habit of braving the wildest tempests on every sea, these sturdy English, who march into the mouths of devouring cannon without a throb, these gallant Frenchmen, who laugh as they scale the Malakoff in the midst of belching fires, are not the men to run like sheep before an imaginary terror. When a whole nation of such drop their arms and scatter panic-stricken, there must be something behind the panic; there must be something formidable in it, some real and present danger threatening a very positive evil, and not a mere sympathetic and groundless alarm.

Neither do we conceive it as sufficiently expressing or explaining the whole facts of the case, to say that the currency has been deranged. There has been unquestionably a great derangement of the currency; but this may have been an effect rather than a cause of the more general disturbance; or, again, it may have been only one cause out of many causes. In an article in the first number of this magazine, the financial fluctuations in this country are ascribed to the alternate inflation and collapse of our factitious paper-money. Adopting the prevalent theory, that the universal use of specie in the regulation of the international trade of the world determines for each nation the amount of its metallic treasure, it was there argued that any redundant local circulation of paper must raise the level of local prices above the legitimate specie over exports; which imports can be paid for only in specie,—the very basis of the inordinate local circulation. Of course, then, there is a rapid contraction in the issue of notes, and an inevitable and wide-spread rupture of the usual relations of trade. But although this view is true in principle, and particularly true in its application to the United States, where trade floats almost exclusively upon a paper ocean, it is yet an elementary and local view;—local, as not comprising the state of facts in England and France; and elementary, inasmuch as it omits all reference to the possibility of a great fluctuation of prices being produced by other means than an excess or deficiency of money.[A] In France, as we know, the currency is almost entirely metallic, while in England it is metallic so far as the lesser exchanges of commerce are concerned; there is an obvious impropriety, therefore, in extending to the financial difficulties of those nations a theory founded upon a peculiarity in the position of our own.

[Footnote A: A failure of one half the cotton or wheat crop, we suspect, would play a considerable part among "the prices," whatever the state of the note circulation.]

If, however, it be alleged that the disturbances there are only a reaction from the disturbances here, we must say that that point is not clear, and Brother Jonathan may be exaggerating his commercial importance. The ties of all the maritime nations are growing more and more intimate every year, and the trouble of one is getting to be more and more the trouble of the others in consequence; but as yet any unsettled balance of American trade, compared with the whole trade of those nations, is but as the drop in the bucket. John Bull, with a productive industry of five thousand millions of dollars a year, and Johnny Crapaud, with an industry only less, are not both to be thrown flat on their backs by the failure of a few millions of money remittances from Jonathan. The houses immediately engaged in the American trade will suffer, and others again immediately dependent upon them; but the disturbing shock, as it spreads through the widening circle of the national trade, will very soon be dissipated and lost in its immensity. That is, it will be lost, if trade there is itself sound, and not tottering under the same or similar conditions of weakness which produced the original default in this country; in which event, we submit, our troubles are to be considered as the mere accidental occasion of the more general downfall,—while the real cause is to be sought in the internal state of the foreign nations. Accordingly, let any one read the late exposures of the methods in which business is transacted among the Glasgow banks, the London discount-houses, and the speculators of the French Bourse, and he will see at a glance that we Americans have no right to assume and ought not to be charged with the entire responsibility of this stupendous syncope. Our bankruptcy has aggravated, as our restoration will relieve the general effects; but the vicious currency on this side the water, whatever domestic sins it may have to answer for, cannot properly be made the scapegoat for the offences of the other side of the water. The disasters abroad have occurred under conditions of currency differing in many respects from our own, and we believe that if there had been no troubles in America, there would still have been considerable troubles in England and France, as, indeed, the financial writers of both these countries long ago predicted from the local signs.

The same train of remark may be applied to those who impute the existing embarrassments to our want of a protective tariff; for, granting that to be an adequate explanation of our own difficulties, it is not therefore an adequate explanation of those in Europe. The external characteristics of the phenomena before us are everywhere pretty much the same, namely,—a prosperous trade gradually slackening, an increasing demand for money, depreciation and sacrifice of securities, numerous failures, disappearance of gold, panic, and the complete stagnation of every branch of labor; and it should seem that the cause or causes to be assigned for them ought also to be everywhere pretty much the same. At any rate, no local cause is in itself to be regarded as sufficient, unless it can be shown that such local cause has a universal operation. But who will undertake to contend that the absence of a protective system here is enough to prostrate both Great Britain and France,—the nations which the same theory supposes to have been chiefly benefited by such deficiency? The scheme of free trade is often denounced by its opponents as British free trade; but we respectfully suggest that if its operations lead to so serious a destruction of British interests as is now alleged, the phrase is at least a misnomer. No! as the characteristics of the crisis are common to the United States, England, and France, so the causes of that crisis are to be sought in something which is also common to the United States, England, and France.

Now the one thing common to all these nations, and to all commercial nations, is the universal use of Credit, in the transactions of business. We conceive, therefore, that the existing condition of things may be most correctly and comprehensively described as a suspension of credit, and the consequent pressure for payment of immense masses of outstanding debt. This, we say, is the central fact, common to all the nations; and the solution of it, as a problem, is to be sought in some vice or disturbing element common to the general system, and not in any local incident or cause.

Credit has gained so enormous an extension within the last two centuries, that it may almost be pronounced the distinctive feature of modern times. It existed, undoubtedly, in ancient days,—for its correlative, Debt, existed; and we know, that, among the Jews, Moses enacted a sponging law, which was to be carried into effect every fifty years; that Solon, among the Greeks, began his administration with the Seisachtheia, or relief-laws, designed to rescue the poor borrowers from their overbearing creditors; and that the usurers were a numerous class at Rome, where also the Patrician houses were immense debtor-prisons. But in ancient times, when the chief source of wealth (aside from conquest and confiscation by the State) was the labor of slaves, and the principal exchanges were effected either by direct barter or the coined metals, the system of credit could not have been very complicated or general. As for the lending of money on interest, it appears to have been looked at askance by most of the ancients; and the prejudice against it continued, under the fostering care of the Church, far down into the Middle Ages. With the emancipation of the towns, however, with the splendid development of the Italian republics, with the noble commercial triumphs of the cities of the Hansa, credit was recovered from the hands of the Jews, and began a career of rapid and beneficent expansion. It was in an especial manner promoted by the magnificent prospects unfolded to colonial and mining enterprise in the discovery of the New World, by the stimulus and the facilities afforded to industrial skill by the researches of natural science, and by the emancipation won for all the activities of the human mind through the free principles of the Reformation. Thus, by degrees, credit came to intervene in nearly every operation of commerce and of social exchange, from the small daily dealings of the mechanic at the shop, to the larger wholesale transactions of merchant with merchant, and to the prodigious expenditures and debts of imperial governments. Credit by note of hand, credit by book account, credit by mortgages and hypothecations, credit by bills of exchange, credit by certificates of stock, credit by bank-notes and post-notes, credit by exchequer and treasury drafts, credit, in short, in a thousand ways, enters into trade, filling up all its channels, turning all its wheels, freighting all its ships, coming down from the past, pervading the present, hovering over the future, reaching every nook and affecting every man and woman in the civilized world.

Such is the extent of credit; but let it be remarked in connection, that, in all these innumerable and multifarious forms of it, in all the stupendous interchanges of Mine and Thine, the ultimate reference is to one sole standard of value, which is the value of the precious metals. The civilized world has adopted these as the universal solvent of its vast masses of obligation. It is assumed that some standard is indispensable; it is asserted to be the imperative duty of governments, if they would not make their exactions of taxes arbitrary, unequal, and oppressive,—if they would render the dealings of individuals mutual and just,—if they would preserve the property and labor of their subjects from the merciless caprices of the powerful, and keep society from reverting to a more or less barbarous state,—to supply a fixed and equable money-measure; and the majority of the governments have selected gold and silver as the best. As seemingly less changeable in quantity and value than anything else, as imperishable, as portable, as divisible, as both convenient and safe, the precious metals challenge superiority over every other product; and accordingly every contract and every debt is resolvable into gold and silver. From this fact, the reader will see at once the prodigious significance of those materials in the economy of trade, and the prime necessity that they should be not only uniform in value, but so equally distributed that they may be easily attainable when needed. Every change in their value is a virtual change in the value of the vast variety of obligations which are measured and liquidated by them; and every apprehension of their scarcity or disappearance, by whatever cause excited, is an apprehension of embarrassment on the part of all those who have debts to pay or to receive.

But it happens that this standard is not an accurate standard. It does not stand, while other things alone move, but moves itself; its value is changeable,—fluctuating from time to time according to the relation of supply and demand, and from place to place according to the perturbations of the trade of the world. Moreover, its very preeminence of function—the universality and the durability of its worth—renders it peculiarly sensitive to accidental influences, or to influences outside of the usual workings of trade. A great war or revolution occurring anywhere, the loss by tempests or frosts of an important staple, such as wheat or cotton, the fall and reaction consequent upon some great speculative excitement, are all likely to produce enormous drains or sequestrations of this valuable material. When the revolt of 1848 broke out in Italy, every particle of specie disappeared as effectually as if it had been thrown into the Adriatic or the mouth of Vesuvius; when the corn crop failed in England in 1846, the Bank of England lost ten millions of dollars in gold in less than nine days, and the country five times that in about a month; and in our own late experiences, with three hundred millions of gold among the people, we have seen it so put away, that no charm or bait could allure it from its hiding-places.

Need we go any farther, then, than these simple truths, to lay our finger on the primal fact which underlies all financial embarrassments and panics? The mass of the transactions in commerce rests upon credit; the solvent of that credit is gold; and gold has not only a sliding scale of value, but is apt to disappear when most wanted. While business is moving on in the ordinary way, it is more than ample for every purpose; but the moment any event arises, such as a rapidly falling market, inducing hurried sales, or a drain of specie, disturbing the general confidence, everybody gets apprehensive, everybody calls upon everybody for payment, and everybody puts everybody off,—till a feeling of sauve qui peut becomes universal.

If there were no currency anywhere but a metallic currency, this liability to sudden revulsions would still hang over trade, provided credit and paper tokens of credit continued to be the media of exchanges; and the instinctive or experimental perception of this truth, combined with other motives, is what has led men to their various attempts to provide a money substitute for gold and silver. Lycurgus, in Sparta, found it, as he supposed, in stamped leather; but modern wisdom has preferred paper. The degree of success attained by Lycurgus we do not know; but of the success of the moderns we do know, by some one hundred and fifty years of recurring disaster. There are some steeds that cannot be ridden; they are so fractious and intractable, that, put whom you will upon their back, he is thrown, and invent what snaffle or breaking-bit you may, they will not be held to an equable or moderate pace. And of this sort, judging by the past attempts, is Paper Money. All the ingenuity and efforts of the most skillful trainers of the Old World, and of the most cunning jockeys of the New, have been tasked in vain to devise an effective discipline and curb for this impatient colt. Paper Money either refuses to be ridden, and runs rampant away, or, if any one succeed in mounting him for a time, he performs a journey like that which Don Quixote took on the back of the famous Cavalino, or Winged Horse. In imagination he ascended to the enchanted regions,—but in reality he was only dragged through alternate gusts of fire and of cold winds, to find the horse himself, in the end, a mere depository of squibs and crackers.

Paper money has been issued, for the most part, on the one or the other of two conditions, namely: as irredeemable, when it has been made to rest on the vague obligation of some government to pay it some time or other in property; or as convertible into gold and silver on demand. But under both conditions it seems to have been impossible to preserve it from excess and consequent depreciation. Nothing would appear to be safer and sounder, on the face of it, than a money-obligation backed by all the responsibility and property of a government; and yet we do not recall a single instance in which an irredeemable government-money has been issued, where it did not sooner or later swamp the government beyond all hope of its redemption. No virtue of statesmanship is proof against the temptation of creating money at will. Even where there has been a nominal convertibility on demand of the bills of government banks, they have worked badly in practice. In 1637, for instance, the monarch of Sweden established the Bank of Stockholm; yet in a little while its issues amounted to forty-eight millions of roubles, and their depreciation to ninety-six per cent. In 1736, Denmark created the Bank of Copenhagen; but within nine years from its foundation it suspended redemptions altogether, and its notes were depreciated forty-six per cent. We need not refer to the extraordinary issues of French assignats, or of American continental money,—nor to the deluges of paper which have fallen upon Russia and Austria. During all these experiments, the sufferings of the people, according to the different historians, were absolutely appalling. One of these experiments of paper money, however, begun under the most promising auspices, and on a professed basis of convertibility, was yet so stupendous and awful in its effects, that it has taken its place as a Pharos in History, and is never to be forgotten. We refer, of course, to the banking prodigalities of the Regency of France, undertaken in connection with the scheme known as Law's Mississippi Bubble,—although the Bank and the Bubble were not essentially connected. We presume that our readers are acquainted with the incidents, because all the modern historians have described them, and because the more philosophical impute to them an active agency in the origination of that moral corruption and lack of political principle which hastened the advent of the great Revolution. Louis XIV. having left behind him, as the price of his glory, a debt of about a thousand millions of dollars, the French ministry, with a view to reduce it, ordered a re-coinage of the louis-d'or. An edict was promulgated, calling in the coin at sixteen livres, to be issued again at twenty; but Law, an acute and enterprising Scotchman, suggested that the end might be more happily accomplished by a project for a bank, which he carried in his pocket. He proposed to buy up the old coin at a higher rate than the mint allowed, and to pay for it in bank-notes. This project was so successful that the Regent took it into his own hands, and then began an issue of bills which literally intoxicated the whole of France. No scenes of stock-jobbing, of gambling, of frenzied speculation, of reckless excitement and licentiousness ever surpassed the scenes daily enacted in the Rue Quincampoix; and when the bubble burst, the distress was universal, heartrending, and frightful. With millions in their pockets, says a contemporary memoir, many did not know where to get a dinner; complaints and imprecations resounded on every side; some, utterly ruined, killed themselves in despair; and mysterious rumors of popular risings spread throughout Paris the terror of another expected St. Bartholomew.

In this case the phenomena were the more striking because they were gathered within a short compass of time, and took place among a people proverbial for the versatility and extravagance of their impressions. The French are an excitable race, who carry whatever they do or suffer to the last extreme of theatrical effect; and for that reason it might be supposed that the tremendous revulsions we have alluded to were owing in part to national temperament. But similar effects have been wrought, by similar causes, among the slower and cooler English, with whom commercial disturbances have been as numerous and as disastrous as among the French, only that they have been distributed over wider spaces of time, and controlled by the more sluggish and conservative habits of the nation. Some twenty years before Law made his approaches to the French Regent, another Scotchman, William Patterson, had got the ear of Macaulay's hero, William, and of his ministers, and laid the foundations of the great Bank of England. It was chartered in 1694, on advances made to the government; and gradually, under its auspices, the vast system of English banking, which gives tone to that of the world, grew up. Let us see with what results; they may be expressed in a few words: every ten or fifteen years, a terrific commercial overturn, with intermediate epochs of speculation, panic, and bankruptcy.

We cannot here go into a history of this bank, nor of the various causes of its reverses; but we select from a brief chronological table, in its own words, some of the principal events, which are also the events of British trade and finance.

1694. The Bank went into operation.

1696. Bank suspended specie payments. Panic and failures.

1707. Threatened invasion of the Pretender. Run upon the Bank,—panic. Government helped it through, by guarantying its bills at six per cent.

1714. The Pretender proclaimed in Scotland. Run upon the Bank,—panic.

1718-20. Time of the South-Sea Bubble. Reaction,—demand for money,—Bank of England nearly swept away,—trade suspended,—nation involved in suffering.

1744. Charles Edward sails for Scotland, and marches upon Derby. Panic. Run upon the Bank,—is obliged to pay in sixpences, and to block its doors, in order to gain time.

1772. Extensive failures and a monetary panic. The Bank maintains the convertibility of its notes for several years, at an annual expense of £850,000.

1793. War with France,—drain of gold,—Bank contracts,—panic,—failures throughout the country,—universal hoarding,—one hundred country banks stop,—notes as low as five pounds first issued,—general fall of prices.

1796. An Order in Council suspends specie payment by the Bank.

1799. Numerous failures,—chiefly on the Continent. The pressure in England relieved by an issue of Exchequer bills.

1807-9. Great speculations in flax, hemp, silk, wool, etc.

1810. Recoil of speculation,—extensive failures, and great demand for money.

1811. Parliament adopts a resolution declaring a one-pound note and a shilling legal tender for a guinea.

1814-16. Heavy losses and bankruptcies,—failure of two hundred and forty country banks,—the distress and suffering of the people compared to that in France after the bursting of the Mississippi Scheme.

1819. Law passed for the resumption of specie payments in 1823,—after a suspension of twenty-seven years.

1822. Great commercial depression throughout Europe,—agricultural distress,—famine in Ireland.

1824. Speculations in scrips and shares of foreign loans and new companies, to a fabulous amount.

1825. Recoil of the speculations,—run upon the banks,—seventy banks stop,—a drain of gold exhausts the bullion of the Bank.

1826. Depression of trade,—government advances Exchequer bills to the Bank.

1832. A run for gold,—bullion in the Bank again alarmingly reduced.

1834-7. Jackson vs. Biddle in America produces considerable derangements in England,—drain of gold,—great alternate contractions and expansions,—severe mercantile distress.

1844. Renewal of the Bank Charter, limiting its issues,—great speculations in railroad shares, to the amount of £500,000,000.

1845. Recoil of the speculations,—immense sacrifice of property.

1846. Drain of gold,—large importations of corn,—alarm.

1847. Drain of gold continues,—panic and universal mercantile depression,—Bank refuses discounts,—forced sales of all kinds of property,—the Bank Charter suspended.

1857. The experiences of 1847 repeated on a more injurious scale, with another suspension of the Bank Charter Act.

Now this record does not show a brilliant success in banking; it does not encourage the hopes of those who place great hopes in a national institution; for the Bank of England is the highest result of the financial sagacity and political wisdom of the first commercial nation of the globe. A recognized ally of the government,—at the very centre of the world's trade,—enjoying a large freedom of movement within its sphere,—conducted by the most eminent merchants of the metropolis, assisted by the advice of the most accomplished political economists,—sanctioned and amended, from time to time, by the greatest ministers, from Walpole to Peel,—it has had, from its position, its power, and the talent at its command, every opportunity for doing the best things that a bank could do; and yet behold this record of periodical impotence! Its periodical mischiefs we leave out of the account.

In the United States, we have suffered from similarly recurring attacks of financial epilepsy; we have tried every expedient, and we have failed in each one; we have had three national banks; we have had thousands of chartered banks, under an infinity of regulations and restrictions against excesses and frauds; and we have had, as the appropriate commentary, three tremendous cataclysms, in which the whole continent was submerged in commercial ruin, besides a dozen lesser epochs of trying vicissitude. The history of our trade has been that of an incessant round of inflations and collapses; and the amount of rascality and fraud perpetrated in connection with the banks, in order to defeat the restrictions upon them, has no parallel but in the sponging-houses. A Belgian philosopher, from the study of statistics, has deduced a certain order in disorder,—or a law of periodicity in the recurrence of murders, suicides, crimes, and illegitimate births; and it appears that a similar regularity of irregularity might be easily detected in our cyclic bank explosions.

With the sad experiences of other nations before us,—with the rocks of danger standing high out of the water, and covered all over with the fragments of former wrecks, we have yet persisted in following the old wretched way. What a humiliating confession! what a comment on the alleged practical discernment of this practical people! what a text for radicals, socialists, and all sorts of Utopian dreamers! If the mischiefs of these monetary aberrations were confined to a mere loss of wealth,[B] which is proverbial for its winged uncertainty, we might regard them as a seeming admonition of Providence against putting too much trust in riches; but they are to be considered as something infinitely worse than mere reverses of fortune: the disorders they generate shake the very foundations of morals; and while shattering the industry, they undermine the economy and frugality and rend the integrity of mankind. We doubt whether any of the great forms of evil incident to our imperfect civilization—the slave-trade, debauchery, pauperism—cause more individual anguish or more public detriment than these incessant revolutions in the value and tenure of property. Those afflict limited classes alone, but these every class; they relax and pervert the whole moral regimen of society; and if, as it is sometimes alleged, the present age is more profoundly steeped in materialism than any before,—if its enterprise is not simply more bold, but more reckless and prodigal,—if the monitions of conscience have lost their force in practical affairs, and the dictates of religion and honor alike their sanctity, it is because of the uncertain principle, the gambling spirit, the feverish eagerness, and the insane extravagance, which beset the ways of traffic. Living in a world in which days of golden and delusive dreams are rapidly succeeded by nights of monstrous nightmares and miseries, society loses its grasp upon the realities of life, and goes staggering blindly on towards a fatal degeneracy and dissolution.

[Footnote B: Yet this is not to be lightly estimated. Seaman, in his Progress of Nations says the direct losses by paper money, within the last century and a half, have equalled $2,000,000,000.]

The question, then, is, whether this melancholy march of things should be allowed to proceed, or whether we should strive to do better. Our good sense, our moral sense, our progressive instincts, conspire with our interests in proclaiming that we ought to do better; but how shall we do better? "Why," reply the great Democratic doctors,—Mr. Buchanan, the President, and Mr. Benton, the Nestor of the people,—"suppress the issue of small bank-notes!" Well, that nostrum is not to be despised; there would be some advantages in such a measure; it would, to a certain extent, operate as a check upon the issues of the banks; it would enlarge the specie basis, by confining the note circulation to the larger dealers, and so exempt the poorer and laboring classes from the chances of bank failures and suspensions. But if these gentlemen suppose that the extrusion of small notes would be in any degree a remedy for overtrading, or moderate in any degree the disastrous fluctuations of which everybody complains, they have read the history of commerce only in the most superficial manner. Speculations, overtrading, panics, money convulsions, occur in countries where small notes are not tolerated, just as they do in countries where they are; and they occur in both without our being able to trace them always to the state of the currency. The truth is, indeed, that nearly all the great catastrophes of trade have occurred in times and places when and where there were no small notes. Every one has heard of the tulip-mania of Holland,—when the Dutchmen, nobles, farmers, mechanics, sailors, maid-servants, and even chimney-sweeps and old-clothes-women, dabbled in bulbs,—when immense fortunes were staked upon the growth of a root, and the whole nation went mad about it, although there was never a bank nor a paper florin yet in existence.[C] Every one has heard of the great South-Sea Bubble in England, in 1719, when the stock of a company chartered simply to trade in the South Seas rose in the course of a few weeks to the extraordinary height of eight hundred and ninety per cent., and filled all England with an epidemic frenzy of gambling, so that the recoil ruined thousands upon thousands of persons, who dragged down with them vast companies and institutions.[D] Yet there was not a banknote in England, at that time, for less than twenty pounds, or nearly a hundred dollars.

[Footnote C: Mackay's History of Popular Delusions.]

[Footnote D: Doubleday's Financial History of England, p. 93.]

More recent revulsions are still more to the point. In 1825, in England, there were enormous speculations in joint-stock enterprises and foreign loans. Some five hundred and thirty-two new companies were formed, with a nominal capital of about $2,200,000,000, and Greek, Austrian, and South American loans were negotiated, to the extent of $275,000,000. Scarcely one of these companies or of these loans ever paid a dividend; and the consequence was a general destruction of credit and property, and a degree of distress which was compared to the terrible sufferings inflicted by the Mississippi and the South-Sea Bubbles. Yet there were no bank-notes in circulation in England under five pounds, or twenty-five dollars. Again, our readers may recall the monstrous overtrading in railroad shares in the years 1845-6. Projects involving the investment of £500,000,000 were set on foot in a very little while; the contagion of purchasing spread to all the provincial towns; the traditionally staid and sober Englishman got as mad as a March hare about them; Mr. Murdle reigned triumphant; and, in the end, the nation had to pay for its delirium with another season of panic, misery, and ruin. Yet during all this excitement there were not only no small notes in circulation, but, what is most remarkable, there was no unusual increase in the issues of the banks, of any kind.

Let us not hope too much, therefore, from the suppression of small notes, should that scheme be carried into effect; let us not delude ourselves with the expectation that it will prove a satisfactory remedy, in any sense, for the periodical disease of the currency; for its benefits, though probable, must be limited.[E] It is a remedy which merely plays round the extremities of the disorder, without invading the seat of it at all.

[Footnote E: It is very curious, that, while our leaders are in favor of exorcising small notes, many of the French and English Liberals are calling for an issue of them!]

We have endeavored, in the foregoing remarks, to point out (for our limits do not allow us to expound) two things: first, that in the universal modern use of credit as the medium of exchanges,—which credit refers to a standard in itself fluctuating,—there is a liability to certain critical derangements, when the machinery will be thrown out of gear, if we may so speak, or when credit will dissolve in a vain longing for cash; and, second, that in the paper-money substitutes which men have devised as a provision against the consequences of this liability, they have enormously aggravated, instead of counteracting or alleviating the danger. But if these views be correct, the questions to be determined by society are also two, namely: whether it be possible to get rid of these aggravations; and whether credit itself may not be so organized as to be self-sufficient and self-supporting, whatever the vagaries of the standard. The suppression of small notes might have a perceptible effect in lessening the aggravations of paper, but it would not touch the more fundamental point, as to a stable organization of credit. Yet it is in this direction, we are persuaded, that all reformatory efforts must turn. Credit is the new principle of trade,—the nexus of modern society; but it has scarcely yet been properly considered. While it has been shamefully exploited, as the French say, it has never been scientifically constituted.

Neither will it be, under the influence of the old methods,—not until legislators and politicians give over the business of tampering with the currency,—till they give over the vain hope of "hedging the cuckoo," to use Locke's figure,—and the principle of FREEDOM be allowed to adjust this, as it has already adjusted equally important matters. Let the governments adhere to their task of supplying a pure standard of the precious metals, and of exacting it in the discharge of what is due to them, if they please; but let them leave to the good sense, the sagacity, and the self-interest of Commerce, under the guardianship of just and equal laws, the task of using and regulating its own tokens of credit. Our past experiments in the way of providing an artificial currency are flagrant and undeniable failures; but as it is still possible to deduce from them, as we believe, ample proof of the principle, that the security, the economy, and the regularity of the circulation have improved just in the degree in which the entire money business has been opened to the healthful influences of unobstructed trade,—so we infer that a still larger liberty would insure a still more wholesome action of the system. The currency is rightly named the circulation, and, like the great movements of blood in the human body, depends upon a free inspiration of the air.

Under a larger freedom, we should expect Credit to be organized on a basis of MUTUAL RESPONSIBILITY AND GUARANTY, which would afford a stable and beautiful support to the great systolic and disastolic movements of trade; that it would reduce all paper emissions to their legitimate character as mere mercantile tokens, and liberate humanity from the fearful debaucheries of a factitious money; and that Commerce, which has been compelled hitherto to sit in the markets of the world, like a courtesan at the gaming-table, with hot eye and panting chest and painted cheeks, would be regenerated and improved, until it should become, what it was meant to be, a beneficent goddess, pouring out to all the nations from her horns of plenty the grateful harvests of the earth.

THE BUSTS OF GOETHE AND SCHILLER.

This is GOETHE, with a forehead
Like the fabled front of Jove;
In its massive lines the tokens
More of majesty than love.

This is SCHILLER, in whose features,
With their passionate calm regard,
We behold the true ideal
Of the high heroic Bard,

Whom the inward world of feeling
And the outward world of sense
To the endless labor summon,
And the endless recompense.

These are they, sublime and silent,
From whose living lips have rung
Words to be remembered ever
In the noble German tongue:

Thoughts whose inspiration, kindling
Into loftiest speech or song,
Still through all the listening ages
Pours its torrent swift and strong.

As to-day in sculptured marble
Side by side the Poets stand,
So they stood in life's great struggle,
Side by side and hand to hand,

In the ancient German city,
Dowered with many a deathless name,
Where they dwelt and toiled together,
Sharing each the other's fame:

One till evening's lengthening shadows
Gently stilled his faltering lips,
But the other's sun at noonday
Shrouded in a swift eclipse.

There their names are household treasures,
And the simplest child you meet
Guides you where the house of Goethe
Fronts upon the quiet street;

And, hard by, the modest mansion
Where full many a heart has felt
Memories uncounted clustering
Round the words, "Here Schiller dwelt."

In the churchyard both are buried,
Straight beyond the narrow gate,
In the mausoleum sleeping
With Duke Charles in sculptured state.

For the Monarch loved the Poets,
Called them to him from afar,
Wooed them near his court to linger,
And the planets sought the star.

He, his larger gifts of fortune
With their larger fame to blend,
Living, counted it an honor
That they named him as their friend;

Dreading to be all-forgotten,
Still their greatness to divide,
Dying, prayed to have his Poets
Buried one on either side.

But this suited not the gold-laced
Ushers of the royal tomb,
Where the princely House of Weimar
Slumbered in majestic gloom.

So they ranged the coffins justly,
Each with fitting rank and stamp,
And with shows of court precedence
Mocked the grave's sepulchral damp.

Fitly now the clownish sexton
Narrow courtier-rules rebukes;
First he shows the grave of Goethe,
Schiller's next, and last—the Duke's.

Vainly 'midst these truthful shadows
Pride would daunt her painted wing;
Here the Monarch waits in silence,
And the Poet is the King!

THE LIBRARIAN'S STORY.

Librarians are a singular class of men,—or rather, a class of singular men. I choose the latter phrase, because I think that the singularities do not arise from the employment, but characterize the men who are most likely to gravitate toward it. A great philosopher, whom nobody knows, once stated the Problem of Humanity thus: "There are two kinds of people,—round people, and three-cornered people; and two kinds of holes,—round holes, and three-cornered holes. All mysterious providences, misfortunes, dispensations, evils, and wrong things generally, are attributable to this cause, namely, that round people get into three-cornered holes, and three-cornered people get into round holes." The librarian is not only a three-cornered person, but a many-cornered one,—a human polyhedron. And he is in his right place,—a many-cornered man in a many-cornered hole; especially if the hole be like that which I am thinking of,—an Historical Library.

The only bibliothecarian peculiarity in point at present is, a gift to root up, (country boys, speaking of pigs, say rootle; it is more onomatopoeian,) to rootle up the most obscure and useless pieces of information; not, like Mr. Nadgett, to work them into a chain of connected evidence for some actual purpose, but merely to know them, to possess a record of them, either as found in some printed or manuscript document, or as recorded by the librarian himself; and to keep the record pickled away in some place where it will be as little likely as possible to be found or read by anybody else.

So much concerning Librarians; a word now about Character.

Bad blood is hereditary. I don't mean scrofulous, but wicked blood. Vicious tendencies pass down in a family, appearing in the most various manifestations, until at last the evil of the race works its only possible remedy, by resulting in its extinction. There is, in some sense, an absolute unity amongst the successive generations of those of one blood; at least, so much so that our feeling of poetical justice is rather gratified than otherwise when the crimes of one are avenged, it may be a century after, upon the person of another of the name. This was the truth which underlay the vast gloomy fables of the ancient Fates, and the stories of the inevitable destruction of the great ancient houses of Greece. It is the same which the Indian feels when he revenges upon one of the white race the wrongs inflicted by another. Succession in time does not interfere with the stern promise of Jehovah to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.—The reader will see presently how I have been led into this train of reflection.

My predecessor in office had a strong fancy for Numismatology. I have, too; nobody would more enjoy a vast collection of coins; but, oddly enough, I should prefer contemporary ones. He was simple and almost penurious in personal expenditure; yet, besides a great collection of books, he had, from his scanty income, got together, in the course of a long life, a large and very valuable collection of coins and medals, especially rich in gold. These coins lay—they do not now, for I assure you I keep them pretty carefully out of sight latterly—luxuriously imbedded in a neat case, among the great collection of antique objects, weapons, ornaments, furniture, clothing, etc., which usually accumulate within the precincts of an Historical Society's Library.

In the one under my charge there is an astonishing number of them; and naturally, where the long series of the ancient Indian wars, and later ones with civilized foes, form together so strong a strand in the thread of our history, there is a very great number proportionally of warlike weapons.

I like to read old books, both ex officio and ex naturâ. But I need not enlarge upon this liking. For my part, however, they please me most when I am wholly alone, in that deep silence which by listening you can seem to hear, and in a place well furnished,—especially in such a place as the Historical Library is, with many full bookshelves, and a great multitude of ancient portraits, grim curiosities, and weapons of war.

It may be unfortunate to be sensitive, but I am. The few things that do excite me excite me easily, and by virtue of the trooping together and thronging on of the procession of my own imaginations, thus awakened, I am prone to reveries of the most various complexion.

In one of the secret repositories where during his latter years my venerable predecessor used with senile cunning to hide, indiscriminately, the coins of the Romans and of the Yankees, rags, bottles of rhubarb and magnesia, books, papers, and buttons, I had found, one night, an ancient MS. I had been all the evening reading a High-German Middle-Age volume, illustrated with wood-cuts, cut as with a hatchet, and being, as per title-page, Julius der erste Römische Kayser, von seinen Kriegen,—"Julius the first Roman Emperor, of his Wars."

Buried in the extraordinary adventures of the Kayser, not to be found in any Roman historian, and full of quaint and ludicrous jumbles of the ancient and the modern, I was suddenly stopped by finding that the last folios were missing.

After a moment of ineffectual vexation, I bethought me of several repositories in which I had seen portions of débris,—leaves, covers, brazen bosses, and other membra disjecta; in one of these I might very probably find the missing pages.

I fumbled through half a dozen; did not find what I sought, but did find the aforesaid MS. I was interested at once by the close but clear penmanship, and by the date, February 29, 1651/2; for this day, by its numeral, would be in leap-year, according to old style, but not according to new. How did they settle it? I asked; and what was to determine for lovelorn maidens, whether they might or might not use the privilege of the year?

I returned to my desk, and sat down to read; and, as I remember, the heavy bell of the First Church, close by, just then struck eleven, and I listened with pleasure to the long, mellow cadence of the reverberations after each deliberate and solid stroke.

Beginning at the beginning, I read until past midnight. The contents, after all, were not remarkable. It was a collection of copies of papers relating to various matters of accounts and law, all pertaining to a certain Beardsley family, of high and ancient fame in the Colony, and afterwards in the State. Somewhat beyond the middle, however, I lighted upon a document which attracted my more particular attention. It was a transcript from the State Records, and, as the date showed, from a very early volume of them, now missing from the office of the Secretary of State. It immediately occurred to me that this volume was strongly suspected to have been purloined by one Isaac Beardsley, an unscrupulous man, of some influence, who used, for amusement, to potter about in various antiquarian enterprises of no moment, but who had now been dead for some fifteen years. I then also recollected that he had an only child, a graceless gallows-bird of a son, who broke his father's heart, then wasted his substance in riotous living, and, after being long a disgrace and nuisance at home, had sunk out of sight amid the lowest strata of vice and crime in New York.

The document was a complaint to the "Generall Court" against "Goodman Joab Brice"—the complainant being designated by the honorable prefix of "Mr."—"for y't hee, the s'd Goodman Brice, had sayd in y'e hearing of" various persons mentioned, "and to the verry face of y'e s'd Mr. Isaac Beardslie, y't y'e s'd Mr. Beardslie did grind y'e faces of the poor, and had served him, the s'd Brice, worse than anie Turk w'd serve his slaves; and this with fearfull and blasphemous curses, and prayres that God would return evill upon the heads of this complaynant and his children after him," etc.

The transcript was long, alleging various similar offences. Its perusal recalled to my mind several hints and obscure allusions, and one or two brief histories of the proceedings in this case, which may be found in ancient books relating to the Colony. These proceedings between Beardsley and Brice were famous in their day, and were thought little creditable to the head of the Beardsley family. That he himself partook of the general opinion is shown by the circumstance that the matter was diligently hushed up in that day; and those most familiar with the ancient records of the State averred, that upon the pages of the missing volume was spread matter amply sufficient to account for its theft and destruction by the late Col. Isaac Beardsley.

The details of this ancient quarrel have perished out of remembrance. The chief substance of it was, however, a lawsuit which ended in the rich man's obtaining possession of the poor man's land. Brice, a yeoman of vindictive, obstinate, and fearless character, had insulted his opponent, who was a magistrate, had threatened his life, and otherwise so bore himself that his oppressor procured him to be whipped at the cart's tail, and to be held to give large sureties for the peace, with the alternative penalty of banishment. The bitter vehemence of Brice's curses was remarkable even among the dry phrases of the complaint; and tradition relates that his fearful imprecations even caused his dignified opponent, the magistrate, to turn pale and tremble.

I was sure, too, that among the stores of the Library I had seen some memorial of Brice as well as of Beardsley; but could not at the time call up any remembrance more definite than an impression that this memorial was something which had belonged to a descendant of Joab Brice, who had been in his youth a soldier in the old French War, and later a subaltern in the "State line" during the Revolution.

The Library room, in which I was reading, is a large, lofty hall, fitted with dark bookcases, heavy and huge as if for giants, singularly perfect in point of inconvenience and inaccessibility, and good only in that they bore a certain architectural proportion to the great height and expanse of the dark room. My desk was so placed that my back was toward the entrance, which was the balustraded opening, in the Library floor, of a wide staircase; and close at my side and before me were racks with muskets and spears, cases of curiosities, and other appurtenances of the room. It being now past the middle of the night, when sleep is heaviest, the stillness was perfect. My two shaded lamps made a small sphere of dusky yellow light, which I felt to be surrounded and, as it were, compressed by the thick darkness, which I could easily fancy to be something tangible and heavy, settling noiselessly down from beneath the lofty arches of the roof. The ancient penmanship and curious contents of the faded pages before me carried my thoughts backward into the old Colonial times, with their rigid social distinctions, lofty manners, and ill-concealed superstition; and I mused upon grim old magistrates, wizened witches, stately dames, rugged Indian-fighters, and all their strange doings and sayings in the ancient days, until, between drowsiness and imagining, I fell into a tangled labyrinth of romance, history, and reverie.

Then all at once I seemed half to awake, and fell into one of those fits of foolish nervous apprehension to which many even of the coolest and bravest are liable in deep solitude and darkness,—and if they, how much more an excitable person like myself! My heart throbbed for no reason, and, sitting with my head bowed down upon my hands, I fancied the most impossible dangers,—of men taking aim at me with the antique firearms out of the far dark corners, or casting heavy weights upon me through the skylight overhead. How easily, I fancied, could it happen. Did not the cellar-door open just now?

I half arose, almost frightened. I believe I should have taken an old rapier and a light and gone to look, but for very shame. And besides, there were two thick floors between me and the door, and that itself was set in the heavy wall between the cellar of this wing of the building and that under its main body; so that if it had been opened, I could not have heard it. Accordingly I resumed my posture and my painful intense musing. But now I could have almost sworn that I heard soft steps coming up the staircase, and whispers floating upon the air of the great solitary room:—I did!

But not soon enough. At the sound of a distinct, heavy footstep behind me, I sprang up and turned about, but only to find myself pinioned by one of the arms of a rough-looking, vicious-faced man, who pressed his other hand tightly over my mouth. A confederate was busy at the case of coins.

Although only a librarian, I have in my day been something of an athlete; much more than the person who had rushed into so sudden an intimacy reckoned upon. And I was pretty well strung up, too, with my nonsensical fancies.

Being face to face with me, therefore, my assailant had mastered my right arm, and was clasping my back with his left hand, while his right was over my month. So driving back my left elbow, I struck him a sharp and cruel blow in the right side, just above the hip-bone. It is a bad place to strike; I would not hit there, unless unfairly attacked. The sudden pain jerked a groan out of him, and surprised him into slackening his hold; so that I wrenched myself loose, and gave him a straight, heavy, right-hand hit in the nose, sending him reeling against the old chest that came over in the Mayflower, which saved him from a fall.

At one and the same moment, both the thieves drew knives and made at me together, and I, springing backwards, seized from the wooden rack of weapons the first which my hand reached. It was a musket. Instinctively, for there was no time to reason, I cocked, presented in a sort of charge-bayonet attitude, the only one possible, and pulled trigger. The old weapon went off with a deafening report, sending out a blinding sheet of flame in the darkness. One thief fell headlong at my very feet; the other, turning, fled blindly towards the staircase. I ought to have caught him; but, in the unreflecting anger of the moment, coming up with him at the stair-head, I struck at him with such good will and good effect, that he fell down stairs faster than I cared to chase him in the dark. Scrambling up at the bottom, he hurried out by the way he had come, and fled; while I returned to my prisoner.

He was quite dead. The charge, a bullet, had passed in just above the region of the heart, killing him instantly. I searched him, but found only a knife, a little money, and some tobacco; nothing which could identify him. He was well-made, middle-aged, and of a thoroughly vile and repulsive countenance.

The necessary legal formalities were gone through as quickly and quietly as possible, and the entrances by which the burglars had come in well secured. They had evidently reconnoitred within and without the building during the day, and selected a back way into the cellar, through which they found no trouble in ascending to the Library.

Some days afterwards, I bethought me to examine the old musket. It was a heavy, old-fashioned "queen's arm," with no unusual marks, as I thought; but upon a silver plate, let into the hollow of the butt, I found, coarsely and strongly engraved, "JOAB BRYCE, 1765."

Upon mentioning this circumstance to our Recording Secretary, and wondering how the gun came to be loaded, he told me that the fault was his. The weapon, he said, had been deposited in the Library by a son of the old revolutionary soldier; and he added, that this son had informed him that the old man, who seems to have inherited something of the peculiar traits of his ancient race, having had this charge in his gun at the conclusion of the siege of Yorktown, where he was present with a New England regiment, had managed afterwards to avoid discharging or drawing it, and had left it by will to his eldest son to be kept loaded as it was; with the strange clause, that the charge "might sarve out a Beardsley, if it couldn't a Britisher."

The depositor, the Secretary further told me, had religiously kept the old gun, and, with a curious, simple strictness of adherence to the spirit of his father's directions, had oiled the lock, picked the flint, wired the touch-hole, and put in fresh priming, when he brought the weapon to the Library.

"I meant to have unloaded it, of course," pursued the excellent
Secretary, "but it passed out of my mind."

A week or two afterwards, I found in one of those obscure columns of "minion solid," in which the great New York papers embalm the memory of their current metropolitan crime, the following notice:—

"We are informed that the burglar lately killed in an attempt to rob the
—— Historical Library has been found to be the notorious cracksman,
'Bill Young'; but that his real name was Isaac Beardsley."

* * * * *

DAYLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

In broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a school-boy's paper kite.

In broad daylight, yesterday,
I read a poet's mystic lay;
And it seemed to me at most
As a phantom, or a ghost.

But at length the feverish day
Like a passion died away,
And the night, serene and still,
Fell on village, vale, and hill.

Then the moon, in all her pride,
Like a spirit glorified,
Filled and overflowed the night
With revelations of her light.

And the poet's song again
Passed like music through my brain;
Night interpreted to me
All its grace and mystery.

SOMETHING ABOUT PICTURES.

It is not surprising that pictures, with all their attraction for eye and mind, are, to many honest and intelligent people, too much of a riddle to be altogether pleasant. What with the oracular dicta of self-constituted arbiters of taste, the discrepancies of popular writers on Art, the jargon of connoisseurship, the vagaries of fashion, the endless theories about color, style, chiaro 'scuro, composition, design, imitation, nature, schools, etc., painting has become rather a subject for the gratification of vanity and the exercise of pedantic dogmatism, than a genuine source of enjoyment and culture, of sympathy and satisfaction,—like music, literature, scenery, and other recognized intellectual recreations. In these latter spheres it is not thought presumptuous to assert and enjoy individual taste; the least independent talkers will bravely advocate their favorite composer, describe the landscape which has charmed or the book which has interested them; but when a picture is the subject of discussion, few have the moral courage to say what they think; there is a self-distrust of one's own impressions and even convictions in regard to what is represented on canvas, that never intervenes between thought and expression, where ideas or sentiments are embodied in writing or in melody. Nor is this to be ascribed wholly to the technicalities of pictorial art, in which so few are deeply versed, but in a great measure to the incongruous and irrelevant associations which have gradually overlaid and mystified a subject in itself as open to the perception of a candid mind and healthy senses as any other department of human knowledge. Half the want of appreciation of pictures arises from ignorance, not of the principles of Art, but of the elements of Nature. Good observers are rare. The peasant's criticism upon Moreland's "Farm-yard"—that three pigs never eat together without one foot at least in the trough—was a strict inference from personal knowledge of the habits of the animal; so the surgeon found a head of the Baptist untrue, because the skin was not withdrawn somewhat from the line of decollation. These and similar instances show that some knowledge of or interest in the thing represented is essential to the appreciation of pictures. Sailors and their wives crowded around Wilkie's "Chelsea Pensioners," when first exhibited; French soldiers enjoy the minutiae of Vernet's battle-pieces; a lover can judge of his betrothed's miniature; and the most unrefined sportsman will point out the niceties of breed in one of Landseer's dogs. To the want of correspondence so frequent between the subject of a picture and the observer's experience may, therefore, be attributed no small degree of the prevalent want of sympathy and confident judgment. "Gang into an Exhibition," says the Ettrick Shepherd, "and only look at a crowd o' cockneys, some with specs, and some wi' quizzing-glasses, and faces without ae grain o' meaning in them o' ony kind whatsomever, a' glowering, perhaps, at a picture o' ane o' Nature's maist fearfu' or magnificent warks! What, I ask, could a Prince's-Street maister or missy ken o' sic a wark mair than a red deer wad ken o' the inside o' George's-Street Assembly-Rooms?"

The incidental associations of pictures link them to history, tradition, and human character, in a manner which indefinitely enhances their suggestiveness. Horace Walpole wove a standard collection of anecdotes from the lives and works of painters. The frescoes of St. Mark's, at Florence, have a peculiar significance to the spectator familiar with Fra Angelico's life. One of the most pathetic and beautiful tragedies in modern literature is that which a Danish poet elaborated from Correggio's artist career. Lamb's great treasure was a print from Da Vinci, which he called "My Beauty," and its exhibition to a literal Scotchman gave rise to one of the richest jokes in Elia's record. The pen-drawing Andre made of himself the night before his execution,—the curtain painted in the space where Faliero's portrait should have been, in the ducal palace at Venice,—and the head of Dante, discovered by Mr. Kirkup, on the wall of the Bargello, at Florence,—convey impressions far beyond the mere lines and hues they exhibit; each is a drama, a destiny. And the hard but true lineaments of Holbein, the aërial grace of Malbone's "Hours," Albert Durer's mediaeval sanctities, Overbeck's conservative self-devotion, a market-place by Ostade, Reynolds's "Strawberry Girl," one of Copley's colonial grandees in a New England farmer's parlor, a cabinet gem by Greuze, a dog or sheep of Landseer's, the misty depths of Turner's "Carthage," Domenichino's "Sibyl," Claude's sunset, or Allston's "Rosalie,"—how much of eras in Art, events in history, national tastes, and varieties of genius do they each foreshadow and embalm! Even when no special beauty or skill is manifest, the character of features transmitted by pictorial art, their antiquity or historical significance, often lends a mystery and meaning to the effigies of humanity. In the carved faces of old German church choirs and altars, the existent facial peculiarities of race are curiously evident; a Grecian life breathes from many a profile in the Elgin marbles, and a sacred marvel invests the exhumed giants of Nineveh; in the cartoons of Raphael, and the old Gobelin tapestries, are hints of what is essential in the progress and the triumphs of painting. Considered as a language, how definitely is the style of painters associated with special forms of character and spheres of life! It is this variety of human experience typified and illustrated on canvas, that forms our chief obligations to the artist; through him our perception of and acquaintance with our race, its individuality and career, its phases and aspects, is indefinitely enlarged. "The greatest benefit," says a late writer, "we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies. Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying our experience and extending our contact with our fellow-creatures beyond the bounds of our personal lot."

The effect of a picture is increased by isolation and surprise. I never realized the physiognomical traits of Madame de Maintenon, until her portrait was encountered in a solitary country-house, of whose drawing-room it was the sole ornament; and the romance of a miniature by Malbone first came home to me, when an ancient dame, in the costume of the last century, with trembling fingers drew one of her husband from an antique cabinet, and descanted on the manly beauty of the deceased original, and the graceful genius of the young and lamented artist. Hazlitt wrote an ingenious essay on "A Portrait by Vandyck," which gives us an adequate idea of what such a masterpiece is to the eye and mind of genuine artistic perception and sympathy. Few sensations, or rather sentiments, are more inextricably made up of pleasure and sadness than that with which we contemplate (as is not infrequent in some old gallery of Europe) a portrait which deeply interests or powerfully attracts us, and whose history is irrevocably lost. A better homily on the evanescence of human love and fame can scarcely be imagined: a face alive with moral personality and human charms, such as win and warm our stranger eyes, yet the name, subject, artist, owner, all lost in oblivion! To pause before an interesting but "unknown portrait" is to read an elegy as pathetic as Gray's.

The mechanical processes by which Nature is so closely imitated, and the increase of which during the last few years is one of the most remarkable facts in science, may at the first glance appear to have lessened the marvellous in Art, by making available to all the exact representation of still-life. But, when duly considered, the effect is precisely the reverse; for exactly in proportion as we become familiar with the mechanical production of the similitudes of natural and artificial objects, do we instinctively demand higher powers of conception, greater spiritual expression in the artist. The discovery of Daguerre and its numerous improvements, and the unrivalled precision attained by Photography, render exact imitation no longer a miracle of crayon or palette; these must now create as well as reflect, invent and harmonize as well as copy, bring out the soul of the individual and of the landscape, or their achievements will be neglected in favor of the fac-similes obtainable through sunshine and chemistry. The best photographs of architecture, statuary, ruins, and, in some cases, of celebrated pictures, are satisfactory to a degree which has banished mediocre sketches, and even minutely finished but literal pictures. Specimens of what is called "Nature-printing," which gives an impression directly from the veined stone, the branching fern, or the sea-moss, are so true to the details as to answer a scientific purpose; natural objects are thus lithographed without the intervention of pencil or ink. And these several discoveries have placed the results of mere imitative art within reach of the mass; in other words, her prose language, that which mechanical science can utter, is so universal, that her poetry, that which must be conceived and expressed through individual genius, the emanation of the soul, is more distinctly recognized and absolutely demanded from the artist, in order to vindicate his claim to that title, than ever before.

Perhaps, indeed, the scope which Painting offers to experimental, individual, and prescriptive taste, the loyalty it invokes from the conservative, the "infinite possibilities" it offers to the imaginative, the intimacy it promotes with Nature and character, are the cause of so much originality and attractiveness in its votaries. The Lives of Painters abound in the characteristic, the adventurous, and the romantic. Open Vasari, Walpole, or Cunningham, at random, and one is sure to light upon something odd, genial, or exciting. One of the most popular novelists of our day assured me, that, in his opinion, the richest unworked vein for his craft, available in these days of civilized uniformity, is artist-life at Rome, to one thoroughly cognizant of its humors and aspirations, its interiors and vagrancies, its self-denials and its resources. I have sometimes imagined what a story the old white dog who so long frequented the Lepri and the Caffè Greco, and attached himself so capriciously to the brother artists of his deceased master, could have told, if blest with memory and language. He had tasted the freedom and the zest of artist-life in Rome, and scorned to follow trader or king. He preferred the odor of canvas and oil to that of conservatories, and had more frolic and dainty morsels at an al fresco of the painters, in the Campagna, than the kitchen of an Italian prince could furnish. His very name betokened good cheer, and was pronounced after the manner of the pert waiters who complacently enunciate a few words of English. Bif-steck was a privileged dog; and though occasionally made the subject of a practical joke, taught absurd tricks, sent on fools' errands, and his white coat painted like a zebra, these were but casual troubles; he was a sensible dog to despise them, when he could enjoy such quaint companionship, behold such experiments in color and drawing, serve as a model himself, and go on delicious sketching excursions to Albano and Tivoli, besides inhaling tobacco-smoke and hearing stale jests and love soliloquies ad infinitum. I am of Bif-steck's opinion. There is no such true, earnest, humorous, and individual life, in these days of high civilization, as that of your genuine painter; impoverished as it often is, baffled in its aspirations, unregarded by the material and the worldly, it often rears and keeps pure bright, genial natures whose contact brings back the dreams of youth. It is pleasant, too, to realize, in a great commercial city, that man "does not live by bread alone," that fun is better than furniture, and a private resource of nature more prolific of enjoyment than financial investments. It is rare comfort, here, in the land of bustle and sunshine, to sit in a tempered light and hear a man sing or improvise stories over his work, to behold once more vagaries of costume, to let the eye rest upon pictorial fragments of Italy,—the "old familiar faces" of Roman models, the endeared outlines of Apennine hills, the contadina bodice and the brigand hat, until these objects revive to the heart all the romance of travel.

The technicalities of Art, its refinements of style, its absolute significance, are, indeed, as dependent for appreciation on a special endowment as are mathematics; but the general and incidental associations, in which is involved a world of poetry, may be enjoyed to the full extent by those whose perception of form, sense of color, and knowledge of the principles of sculpture, painting, music, and architecture are notably deficient. It is a law of life and nature, that truth and beauty, adequately represented, create and diffuse a limitless element of wisdom and pleasure. Such memorials are talismanic, and their influence is felt in all the higher and more permanent spheres of thought and emotion; they are the gracious landmarks that guide humanity above the commonplace and the material, along the "line of infinite desires." Art, in its broad and permanent meaning, is a language,—the language of sentiment, of character, of national impulse, of individual genius; and for this reason it bears a lesson, a charm, or a sanction to all,—even those least versed in its rules and least alive to its special triumphs. Sir Walter Scott was no amateur, yet, through his reverence for ancestry and his local attachments, portraiture and architecture had for him a romantic interest. Sydney Smith was impatient of galleries when he could talk with men and women, and made a practical joke of buying pictures; yet Newton and Leslie elicited his best humor. Talfourd cared little and knew less of the treasures of the Louvre, but lingered there because it had been his friend Hazlitt's Elysium. Indeed, there are constantly blended associations in the history of English authors and artists; Reynolds is identified with Johnson and Goldsmith, Smibert with Berkeley, Barry with Burke, Constable and Wilkie with Sir George Beaumont, Haydon with Wordsworth, and Leslie with Irving; the painters depict their friends of the pen, the latter celebrate in verse or prose the artist's triumphs, and both intermingle thought and sympathy; and from this contact of select intelligences of diverse vocation has resulted the choicest wit and the most genial companionship. If from special we turn to general associations, from biography to history, the same prolific affinities are evident, whereby the artist becomes an interpreter of life, and casts the halo of romance over the stern features of reality. Hampton Court is the almost breathing society of Charles the Second's reign; the Bodleian Gallery is vivid with Britain's past intellectual life; the history of France is pictured on the walls of Versailles; the luxury of color bred by the sunsets of the Euganean hills, the waters of the Adriatic, the marbles of San Marco, and the skies and atmosphere of Venice, are radiant on the canvas of Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese; Michel Angelo has embodied the soul of his era and the loftiest spirit of his country; Salvator typified the half-savage picturesqueness, Neapolitan Claude the atmospheric enchantments, Carlo Dolce the effeminate grace, Titian the voluptuous energy, Guido the placid self-possession, and Raphael and Correggio the religious sentiment of Italy; Watteau put on canvas the fête champêtre; the peasant-life of Spain is pictured by Murillo, her asceticism by the old religious limners; what English rustics were before steam and railroads Gainsborough and Moreland reveal, Wilkie has permanently symbolized Scotch shrewdness and domesticity, and Lawrence framed and fixed the elegant shapes of a London drawing-room; and each of these is a normal type and suggestive exemplar to the imagination, a chapter of romance, a sequestration and initial token of the characteristic and the historical, either of what has become traditional or what is forever true.

The indirect service good artists have rendered by educating observation has yet to be acknowledged. The Venetian painters cannot be even superficially regarded, without developing the sense of color; nor the Roman, without enlarging our cognizance of expression; nor the English, without refining our perception of the evanescent effects in scenery. Raphael has made infantile grace obvious to unmaternal eyes; Turner opened to many a preoccupied vision the wonders of atmosphere; Constable guided our perception of the casual phenomena of wind; Landseer, that of the natural language of the brute creation; Lely, of the coiffure; Michel Angelo, of physical grandeur; Rolfe, of fish; Gerard Dow, of water; Cuyp, of meadows; Cooper, of cattle; Stanfield, of the sea; and so on through every department of pictorial art. Insensibly these quiet but persuasive teachers have made every phase and object of the material world interesting, environed them with more or less of romance, by such revelations of their latent beauty and meaning; so that, thus instructed, the sunset and the pastoral landscape, the moss-grown arch and the craggy seaside, the twilight grove and the swaying cornfield, an old mill, a peasant, light and shade, form and feature, perspective and anatomy, a smile, a gesture, a cloud, a waterfall, weather-stains, leaves, deer,—every object in Nature, and every impress of the elements, speaks more distinctly to the eye and more effectively to the imagination.

The vicissitudes which sometimes attend a picture or statue furnish no inadequate materials for narrative interest. Amateur collectors can unfold a tale in reference to their best acquisitions which outvies fiction. Beckford's table-talk abounded in such reminiscences. An American artist, who had resided long in Italy and made a study of old pictures, caught sight at a shop-window in New Orleans of an "Ecce Homo" so pathetic in expression as to arrest his steps and engross his attention. Upon inquiry, he learned that it had been purchased of a soldier fresh from Mexico, after the late war between that country and the United States; he bought it for a trifle, carried it to Europe, and soon authenticated it as an original Guercino, painted for the royal chapel in Madrid, and sent thence by the government to a church in Mexico, whence, after centuries, it had found its way, through the accidents of war, to a pawnbroker's shop in Louisiana. A lady in one of our eastern cities, wishing to possess, as a memorial, some article which had belonged to a deceased neighbor, and not having the means, at the public sale of her effects, to bid for an expensive piece of furniture, contented herself with buying for a few shillings a familiar chimney-screen. One day she discovered a glistening surface under the flowered paper which covered it, and when this was torn away, there stood revealed a picture of Jacob and Rebecca at the Well, by Paul Veronese; doubtless thus concealed with a view to its secret removal during the first French Revolution. The missing Charles First of Velasquez was lately exhibited in this country, and the account its possessor gives of the mode of its discovery and the obstacles which attended the establishment of its legal ownership in England is a remarkable illustration both of the tact of the connoisseur and the mysteries of jurisprudence.

There is scarcely, indeed, an artist or a patron of art, of any eminence, who has not his own "story of a picture." Like all things of beauty and of fame, the very desire of possession which a painting excites, and the interest it awakens, give rise to some costly sacrifice, or incidental circumstance, which associates the prize with human fortune and sentiment. I remember an anecdote of this kind told me by a friend in Western New York.

"Waiting," said he, "in the little front-parlor of a house in the town of C——, to transact some business with its occupant, I was attracted by a clean sketch in oil that hung above the fireplace. It might have escaped notice elsewhere, but traces of real skill in Art were too uncommon in this region to be disregarded by any lover of her fruits. The readiness to seize upon any casual source of interest, common with those who "stand and wait" in a place where they are strangers, doubtless had something to do with the careful attention I bestowed upon this production. It was a very modest attempt,—a bit of landscape, with two horses grazing and a man at work in the foreground. Quiet in tone, and half-concealed by the shaded casement, it was only by degrees, and to ward off the ennui of a listless half-hour, that I gradually became absorbed in its examination. There were some masterly lines, clever arrangement, a true feeling, and a peculiar delicacy of treatment, that implied the hand of a trained artist.

"My pleasant communion with the unknown was at last interrupted by the entrance of my tardy man-of-business, but the instant our affair was transacted I inquired about the sketch. It proved to be the work of a young Englishman then residing in the neighborhood. I obtained his address and sought his dwelling. He was scraping an old palette as we entered, and advanced with it in one hand, while he saluted me with the air of a gentleman and the simplicity of an honest man. He wore a linen blouse, his collar was open, his hair long and dark, his complexion pale, his eye thoughtful, and a settled expression of sweetness and candor about the mouth made me feel, at a glance, that I had rightly interpreted the sketch. I mentioned it as an apology for my intrusion, and added, that a natural fondness for Art, and rare opportunities for gratifying the taste, induced me to improve occasions like this with alacrity. He seemed delighted to welcome such a visitor, as his life, for several weeks, had been quite isolated. The retirement and agreeable scenery of this inland town harmonized with his feelings; he was unambitious, happy in his domestic relations, and had managed, from time to time, to execute a portrait or dispose of a sketch, and thus subsist in comfort; so that an accidental and temporary visit to this secluded region had unconsciously lengthened into a whole summer's residence,— partly to be ascribed to the kindness and easy terms of his good old host, a thrifty farmer, whose wife, having no children of her own, doted upon the painter's boy, and grieved at the mention of their departure. I doubt if my new friend would have had the enterprise to migrate at all, but for my urgency; but I soon discovered, that, with the improvidence of his tribe, he had laid nothing by, and that he stood in need of medical advice, and, after a long conversation, upon my engaging to secure him an economical home and plenty of work in Utica, he promised to remove thither in a month; and then becoming more cheerful, he exhibited, one by one, the trophies of Art in his possession.

"Among them were a Moreland and a Gainsborough, some fine engravings after Reynolds, prints, cartoons, and crayon heads by famous artists, and two or three Hogarth proof-impressions; but the treasure which riveted my gaze was a masterly head of such vigorous outline and effective tints, that I immediately recognized the strong, free, bold handling of Gilbert Stuart. 'That was given me,' said the gratified painter, 'by the son of an Edinburgh physician, who, when a young practitioner, had the good-fortune to call one day upon Stuart when he was suffering from the effects of a fall. He had been thrown from a vehicle and had broken his arm, which was so unskilfully set that it became inflamed and swollen, and the clumsy surgeon talked of amputation. Imagine the feeling of such an artist at the idea of losing his right arm! The doctor's visit was not professional, but, seeing the despondent mood of the invalid artist, he could not refrain the offer of service. It was accepted, and proved successful, and the patient's gratitude was unbounded. As the doctor refused pecuniary compensation, Stuart insisted upon painting a likeness of his benefactor; and as he worked under no common impulse, the result, as you see, was a masterpiece.'

"A few weeks after this pleasant interview, I had established my protégé at Utica, and obtained him several commissions. But his medical attendant pronounced his disease incurable; he lingered a few months, conversing to the last, during the intervals of pain and feebleness, with a resignation and intelligence quite endearing. When he died, I advised his widow to preserve as long as possible the valuable collection he had left, and with it she repaired to one of her kindred in affluent circumstances, living fifty miles away. She endeavored to force upon my acceptance one, at least, of her husband's cherished pictures; but, knowing her poverty, I declined, only stipulating that if ever she parted with the Stuart, I should have the privilege of taking it at her own price.

"A year passed, and I was informed that many of her best things had become the property of her relative, who, however, knew not how to appreciate them. I commissioned a friend, who knew him, to purchase at any cost the one I craved. He discovered that a native artist, who had been employed to delineate the family, had obtained this work in payment, and had it carefully enshrined in his studio at Syracuse. This was Charles Elliot; and the possession of so excellent an original by one of the best of our artists in this department explains his subsequent triumphs in portraiture. He made a study of this trophy; it inspired his pencil; from its contemplation he caught the secret of color, the breadth and strength of execution, which have since placed him among the first of American portrait-painters, especially for old and characteristic heads. Thus, in the centre of Western New York, he found his Academy, his Royal College, his Gallery and life-school, in one adequate effort of Stuart's masterly hand; the offering of gratitude became the model and the impulse whereby a farmer's son on the banks of the Mohawk rose to the highest skill and eminence. But this was a gradual process; and meantime it is easy to imagine what a treasure the picture became in his estimation. It was only by degrees that his merit gained upon public regard. His first visit to New York was a failure; and after waiting many weeks in vain for a sitter, he was obliged to pay his indulgent landlord with a note of hand, and return to the more economical latitude of Syracuse. There he learned that a wealthy trader, desirous of the éclat of a connoisseur, was resolved to possess the cherished portrait. Although poor, he was resolved never to part with it; but the sagacious son of Mammon was too keen for him; discovering his indebtedness, he bought the artist's note of the inn-keeper, and levied an execution upon his effects. But genius is often more than a match for worldly-wisdom. Elliot soon heard of the plot, and determined to defeat it. He worked hard and secretly, until he had made so good a copy that the most practised eye alone could detect the counterfeit; and then concealing the original at his lodgings, he quietly awaited the legal attachment. It was duly levied, the sale took place, and the would-be amateur bought the familiar picture hanging in its accustomed position, and then boasted in the market-place of the success of his base scheme. Ere long one of Elliot's friends revealed the clever trick. The enraged purchaser commenced a suit, and, although the painter eventually retained the picture, the case was carried to the Supreme Court, and he was condemned to pay costs. Ten years elapsed. The artist became an acknowledged master, and prosperity followed his labors. No one can mistake the rich tints and vigorous expression, the character and color, which distinguish Elliot's portraits; but few imagine how much he is indebted to the long possession and study of so invaluable an original for these traits, moulded by his genius into so many admirable representations of the loved, the venerable, and the honored, both living and dead."

Another friend of mine, in exploring the more humble class of boarding-houses in one of our large commercial towns, in search of an unfortunate relation, found himself, while expecting the landlady, absorbed in a portrait on the walls of a dingy back-parlor. The furniture was of the most common description. A few smutched and faded annuals, half-covered with dust, lay on the centre-table, beside an old-fashioned astral lamp, a cracked porcelain vase of wax-flowers, a yellow satin pincushion embroidered with tarnished gold-lace, and an album of venerable hue filled with hyperbolic apostrophes to the charms of some ancient beauty; which, with the dilapidated window-curtains, the obsolete sideboard, the wooden effigy of a red-faced man with a spyglass under his arm, and the cracked alabaster clock-case on the mantel, all bespoke an impoverished establishment, so devoid of taste that the beautiful and artistic portrait seemed to have found its way there by a miracle. It represented a young and spirituelle woman, in the costume, so elegant in material and formal in mode, which Copley has immortalized; in this instance, however, there was a French look about the coiffure and robe. The eyes were bright with intelligence chastened by sentiment, the features at once delicate and spirited, and altogether the picture was one of those visions of blended youth, grace, sweetness, and intellect, from which the fancy instinctively infers a tale of love, genius, or sorrow, according to the mood of the spectator. Subdued by his melancholy errand and discouraged by a long and vain search, my friend, whose imagination was quite as excitable as his taste was correct, soon wove a romance around the picture. It was evidently not the work of a novice; it was as much out of place in this obscure and inelegant domicil, as a diamond set in filigree, or a rose among pigweed. How came it there? who was the original? what her history and her fate? Her parentage and her nurture must have been refined; she must have inspired love in the chivalric; perchance this was the last relic of an illustrious exile, the last memorial of a princely house.

This reverie of conjecture was interrupted by the entrance of the landlady. My friend had almost forgotten the object of his visit; and when his anxious inquiries proved vain, he drew the loquacious hostess into general conversation, in order to elicit the mystery of the beautiful portrait. She was a robust, gray-haired woman, with whose constitutional good-nature care had waged a long and partially successful war. That indescribable air which speaks of better days was visible at a glance; the remnants of bygone gentility were obvious in her dress; she had the peculiar manner of one who had enjoyed social consideration; and her language indicated familiarity with cultivated society; yet the anxious expression habitual to her countenance, and the bustling air of her vocation which quickly succeeded conversational repose, hinted but too plainly straitened circumstances and daily toil. But what struck her present curious visitor more than these casual traits were the remains of great beauty in the still lovely contour of the face, the refined lines of her mouth, and the depth and varied play of the eyes. He was both sympathetic and ingenious, and ere long gained the confidence of his auditor. The unfeigned interest and the true perception he manifested in speaking of the portrait rendered him, in its owner's estimation, worthy to know the story his own intuition had so nearly divined. The original was Theodosia, the daughter of Aaron Burr. His affection for her was the redeeming fact of his career and character. Both were anomalous in our history. In an era remarkable for patriotic self-sacrifice, he became infamous for treasonable ambition; among a phalanx of statesmen illustrious for directness and integrity, he pursued the tortuous path of perfidious intrigue; in a community where the sanctities of domestic life were unusually revered, he bore the stigma of unscrupulous libertinism. With the blood of his gallant adversary and his country's idol on his hands, the penalties of debt and treason hanging over him, the fertility of an acute intellect wasted on vain expedients,—an outlaw, an adventurer, a plausible reasoner with one sex and fascinating betrayer of the other, poor, bereaved, contemned,—one holy, loyal sentiment lingered in his perverted soul,—love for the fair, gifted, gentle being who called him father. The only disinterested sympathy his letters breathe is for her; and the feeling and sense of duty they manifest offer a remarkable contrast to the parallel record of a life of unprincipled schemes, misused talents, and heartless amours. As if to complete the tragic antithesis of destiny, the beloved and gifted woman who thus shed an angelic ray upon that dark career was soon after her father's return from Europe lost in a storm at sea while on her way to visit him, thus meeting a fate which, even at the distance of time, is remembered with pity. Her wretched father bore with him, in all his wanderings and through all his remorseful exile, her picture—emblem of filial love, of all that is beautiful in the ministry of woman, and all that is terrible in human fate. At length he lay dangerously ill in a garret. He had parted with one after another of his articles of raiment, books, and trinkets, to defray the expenses of a long illness; Theodosia's picture alone remained; it hung beside him,—the one talisman of irreproachable memory, of spotless love, and of undying sorrow; he resolved to die with this sweet relic of the loved and lost in his possession; there his sacrifices ended. Life seemed slowly ebbing; the underpaid physician lagged in his visits; the importunate landlord threatened to send this once dreaded partisan, favored guest, and successful lover to the almshouse; when, as if the spell of woman's affection were spiritually magnetic, one of the deserted old man's early victims—no other than she who spoke—accidentally heard of his extremity, and, forgetting her wrongs, urged by compassion and her remembrance of the past, sought her betrayer, provided for his wants, and rescued him from impending dissolution. In grateful recognition of her Christian kindness, he gave her all he had to bestow,—Theodosia's portrait.

* * * * *

CRETINS AND IDIOTS:

WHAT HAS BEEN AND WHAT CAN BE DONE FOR THEM.

Among the numerous philanthropic movements which have characterized the nineteenth century, none, perhaps, are more deserving of praise than those which have had for their object the improvement of the cretin and the idiot, classes until recently considered as beyond the reach of curative treatment.

The traveller, whom inclination or science may have led into the Canton Valais, or Pays-de-Vaud, in Switzerland, or into the less frequented regions of Savoy, Aosta, or Styria, impressed as he may be with the beauty and grandeur of the scenery through which he passes, finds himself startled also at the frightful deformity and degradation of the inhabitants. By the roadside, basking in the sun, he beholds beings whose appearance seems such a caricature upon humanity, that he is at a loss to know whether to assign them a place among the human or the brute creation. Unable to walk,—usually deaf and dumb,—with bleared eyes, and head of disproportionate size,—brown, flabby, and leprous skin,—a huge goitre descending from the throat and resting upon the breast,—an abdomen enormously distended,—the lower limbs crooked, weak, and ill-shaped,—without the power of utterance, or thoughts to utter,—and generally incapable of seeing, not from defect of the visual organs, but from want of capacity to fix the eye upon any object,—the cretin seems beyond the reach of human sympathy or aid. In intelligence he is far below the horse, the dog, the monkey, or even the swine; the only instincts of his nature are hunger and lust, and even these are fitful and irregular.

The number of these unfortunate beings in the mountainous districts of Europe, and especially of Central and Southern Europe, is very great. In several of the Swiss cantons they form from four to five per cent of the population. In Rhenish Prussia, and in the Danubian provinces of Austria, the number is still greater; in Styria, many villages of four or five thousand inhabitants not having a single man capable of bearing arms. In Würtemberg and Bavaria, in Savoy, Sardinia, the Alpine regions of France, and the mountainous districts of Spain, the disease is very prevalent.

The causes of so fearful a degeneration of body and mind are not satisfactorily ascertained. Extreme poverty, impure air, filthiness of person and dwelling, unwholesome diet, the use of water impregnated with some of the magnesian salts, intemperance, (particularly in the use of the cheap and vile brandy of Switzerland,) and the intermarriage of near relatives and of those affected with goitre, have all been assigned, and with apparently good reason; yet there are cases which are attributable to none of these causes.

The disease is not, however, confined to Europe. It is prevalent also in China and Chinese Tartary, in Thibet, along the base of the Himalaya range in India, in Sumatra, in the vicinity of the Andes in South America, in Mexico; and sporadic cases are found along the line of the Alleghanies. It is said not to occur in Europe at a higher elevation than four thousand feet above the sea level.

The derivation of the name is involved in some mystery; most writers regarding it as a corruption of the French Chrétien, as indicative of the incapacity of these unfortunate beings to commit sin. A more probable theory, however, is that which deduces it from the Grison-Romance Cretira, "creature."

The existence of this disease has long been known; references are made to it by Pliny, as well as by some of the Roman writers in the second century of the Christian era; and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries its prevalence and causes were frequently discussed. Most of the writers on the subject, however, considered the case of the poor cretin as utterly hopeless; and the few who deemed a partial improvement of his health, though not of his intellect, possible, merely suggested some measures for that purpose, without making any effort to reduce them to practice. It was reserved for a young physician of Zurich, Doctor Louis Guggenbühl, whose practical benevolence was active enough to overcome any repugnance he might feel to labors in behalf of a class so degraded and apparently unpromising, to be the pioneer in an effort to improve their physical, mental, and moral condition.

It is now twenty-one years since this noble philanthropist, then just entering upon the duties of his profession, was first led by some incidents occurring during a tour in the Bernese Alps to investigate the condition of the cretin. For three years he devoted himself to the study of the disease and the method of treating it. Two years of this period were spent in the small village of Seruf, in the Canton Glarus, where he was successful in restoring several to the use of their limbs. It was at the end of this period, that, with a moral courage and devotion of which history affords but few examples, Doctor Guggenbühl resolved to dedicate his life to the elevation of the cretins from their degraded condition. Consecrating his own property to the work, he asked assistance from the Canton Bern in the purchase of land for a hospital, and received a grant of six hundred francs ($120) for the work. His investigations had satisfied him that an elevated and dry locality was desirable, and that it was only the young who could be benefited. He accordingly purchased, in 1840, a tract of about forty acres of land, comprising a portion of the hill called the Abendberg, in the Canton Bern, above Interlachen. The site of his Hospital buildings is about four thousand feet above the sea, and one or two hundred feet below the summit of the hill; it is well protected from the cold winds, and the soil is tolerably fertile.

There are few spots, even among the Alps, which can compare with the Abendberg in beauty and grandeur of scenery. Doctor Guggenbühl was led to select it as much for this reason as for its salubrity, in the belief, which his subsequent experience has fully justified, that the striking nobleness of the landscape would awaken, even in the torpid mind of the cretin, that sense of the beautiful in Nature which would materially aid in his intellectual culture.

On the southern slope of the Abendberg he erected his Hospital buildings, plain, wooden structures, without ornament, but comfortable, and well adapted to his purpose. Here he gathered about thirty cretin children, mostly under ten years of age, and began his work.

To understand fully what was to be accomplished, in order to transform the young cretin into an active, healthy child, it is necessary that we should glance at his physical and mental condition, when placed under treatment.

Cretinism seems to be a combination of two diseases, the one physical, the other mental. The physical disorder is akin to Rachitis, or rickets, while the mental is substantially idiocy. The osseous structure, deficient in the phosphate of lime, is unable to sustain the weight of the body, and the cretin is thus incapacitated for active motion; the muscles are soft and wasted; the skin dingy, cold, and unhealthy; the appetite voracious; spasmodic and convulsed action frequent; and the digestion imperfect and greatly disordered. The mind seems to exist only in a germinal state; observation, memory, thought, the power of combination, are all wanting. The external senses are so torpid, that, for months perhaps, it is in vain to address either eye or ear; nor is the sense of touch much more active. The cretin is insensible to pain or annoyance, and seems to have as little sensation as an oyster.

It was to the work of restoring these diseased and enfeebled bodies to health, and of developing these germs of intellect, that Doctor Guggenbühl addressed himself. For this purpose, pure air, enforced exercise, the use of cold, warm, and vapor baths, of spirituous lotions and frictions, a simple yet eminently nutritive diet, regular habits, and the administration of those medicinal alternatives which would give tone to the system, activity to the absorbents, and vigor to the muscles, were the remedial measures adopted. As their strength increased, they were led to practise the simpler gymnastic exercises,—running, jumping, climbing, marching, the use of the dumb-bells, etc.

The body thus partially invigorated, the culture of the mind was next to be attempted,—a far more difficult task. The first step was, to teach the child to speak; and as this implied the ability to hear, the ear, hitherto dead to all sounds, must be impressed. For this purpose, sound was communicated by speaking trumpets or other instruments, which should force and fix the attention. The lips and vocal organs were then moulded to imitate these sounds. The process was long and wearisome, often occupying months, and even years; but in the end it was successful. The eye was trained by the attraction of bright and varied colors, and little by little simple ideas were communicated to the feeble intellect,—great care being necessary, however, to proceed very slowly, as the cretin is easily discouraged, and when once overtasked, will make no further attempts to learn.

It was only by gaining the love of these poor creatures that they could be led to make any progress; and at an early stage of their training, Doctor Guggenbühl deemed it wise to infuse into their dawning minds the knowledge and the love of a higher Being, to teach them something of the power and goodness of God. The result, he assures us, has been highly satisfactory; the mind, too feeble for earthly lore, too weak to grasp the simplest facts of science, has yet comprehended something of the love of the All-father, and lifted up to him its imperfect but plaintive supplication. That the enthusiasm of this good man may have led him to exaggerate somewhat the extent of the religious attainments of his pupils is possible; but the experience of every teacher of the cretin or the idiot has satisfactorily demonstrated that simple religious truths are acquired by those who seem incapable of understanding the plainest problems in arithmetic or the most elementary facts of science. God has so willed it, that the mightiest intellect which strives unavailingly to comprehend the wisdom and glory of his creation, and the feeblest intelligence which knows only and instinctively his love, shall alike find in that love their highest solace and delight.

The phenomena of Nature were next made the objects of instruction; and to this the well-chosen position of the establishment largely contributed. Sunshine and storm, the light clouds which mottled the sky and the black heaps which foreboded the tempest, the lightning and the rainbow, all in turn served to awaken the slumbering faculties, and to rouse the torpid intellect to greater activity.

The next step was, to teach the cretin some knowledge of objects around him, animate and inanimate, and of his relations to them. The exercise of the senses followed, and gayly colored pictures were presented to the eye, charming music to the ear, fragrant odors to the smell, and the varieties of sweet, bitter, sour, and pungent substances to the taste.

When the perceptive faculties were thus trained, books were made to take the place of object lessons; reading and writing were taught by long and patient endeavor; the elements of arithmetic, of Scripture history, and of geography were communicated; and mechanical instruction was imparted at the same time.

Under this general routine of instruction, Dr. Guggenbühl has conducted his establishment for seventeen years, often with limited means, and at times struggling with debt, from which, more than once, kind English friends, who have visited the Hospital, or become interested in the man, during his occasional hasty visits to Great Britain, have relieved him. His personal appearance is thus described by a friend who was on terms of intimacy with him; the place is at one of Lord Rosse's conversazioni. "Imagine in the crowd which swept through his Lordship's suite of rooms a small, foreign-looking man, with features of a Grecian cast, and long, shoulder-covering, black hair; look at that man's face; there is a gentleness, an amiability combined with intelligence, which wins you to him. His dress is peculiar in that crowd of white cravats and acres of cambric shirt-fronts; black, well-worn black, is his suit; but his waistcoat is of black satin,—double-breasted, and buttoned closely up to the throat. It is Dr. Guggenbühl, the mildest, the gentlest of men, but one of those calm, reflecting minds that push on after a worthy object, undismayed by difficulties, undeterred by ridicule or rebuff."

In his labors in behalf of the unfortunate class to whom he has devoted himself, Dr. Guggenbühl has been assisted very greatly by the Protestant Sisters of Charity, who, like the Catholic sisterhood, dedicate their lives to offices of charity and love to the sick, the unfortunate, and the erring.

Dr. Guggenbühl claims to have effected a perfect cure in about one third of the cases which have been under his charge, by a treatment of from three to six years' duration. The attainment of so large a measure of success has been questioned by some who have visited the Hospital on the Abendberg; and while a part of these critics were undoubtedly actuated by a jealous and fault-finding disposition, it is not impossible that the enthusiasm of the philanthropist may have led him to regard the acquirements of his pupils as beyond what they really were.

A greater source of fallacy, however, is in the want of fixed standards for estimating the comparative capacity of children affected with cretinism, when placed under treatment, and the degree of intellectual and physical development which constitutes a "perfect cure," in the opinion of such men as Dr. Guggenbühl. It is a fact, which all who have long had charge of either cretins or idiots well understand, that a great degree of physical deformity and disorder, a strongly marked rachitic condition of the body, complicated even with loss of hearing and speech, may exist, while the intellectual powers are but slightly affected; in other words, that a child may be in external appearance a cretin, and even one of low grade, yet with a higher degree of intellectual capacity than most cretins possess. On the other hand, the bodily weakness and deformity may be slight, while the mental condition is very low. In the former case, we might reasonably expect, on the successful treatment of the rachitic symptoms, a rapid intellectual development; the child would soon be able to pursue its studies in an ordinary school, and a "perfect cure" would be effected. In the latter case, though far more promising, apparently, at first, a longer course of training would be requisite, and the most strenuous efforts on the part of the teacher would not, in all probability, bring the pupil up to the level of a respectable mediocrity.

From a great number of cases, narrated in the different Reports of Dr. Guggenbühl before us, we select one as the type of a large class, in which the development of the intellect seems to have been retarded by the physical disorder, but proceeded regularly on the return of health.

"C. was four years old when she entered, with every symptom of confirmed rachitic cretinism. Her nervous system was completely out of order, so that the strongest electric shocks produced scarcely any effect on her for some months. Aromatic baths, frictions, moderate exercise, a regimen of meat and milk, were the means of restoring her. Her bones and muscles grew so strong, that, in the course of a year, she could run and jump. Her mind appeared to advance in proportion to her body, for she learned to talk in French as well as in German. The life and spirits of her age at length burst forth, and she was as gay and happy as she had before been cross and disagreeable. She was particularly open-hearted, active, kind, and cleanly. She learned to read, write, and cipher, to sew and knit, and above all she loved to sing. It is now two years since she left, and she continues quite well, and goes to school."

We think our readers will perceive that this was not a case of confirmed intellectual degradation, but only of retarded mental development, the result of diseased bodily condition. These diseases are distressing to parents and friends, and he who succeeds in restoring them to health, intelligence, and the enjoyment of life, accomplishes a great and good work; but it does not necessarily follow that the cases where the mental degeneration is as complete as the physical would as readily yield to treatment; and we are driven to the conviction that the enthusiasm and zeal of Dr. Guggenbühl have led him to exaggerate the measure of success attained in these cases of low grade, and thus to excite hopes which could never be fulfilled.[A]

[Footnote A: Dr. F. Kern, Superintendent of the Idiot School at Gohlis, near Leipzig, in an article in the Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, published the present year, (1857,) states that he examined a boy in the Abendberg Hospital in 1853, of whom Dr. Guggenbühl had said, in his work Upon the Cure of Cretinism, published a few months previously, that, "after the painstaking examination of Dr. Naville, he was held to be capable of entering a training school for teachers, in order to qualify himself for a teacher": Dr. Kern found that he knew neither the day of the week or the mouth, nor his birthday, nor his age.]

There are four other institutions in Germany devoted wholly or in part to the treatment of cretins; they are located at Bendorf, Mariaberg, Winterbach, and Hubertsburg. There are also two in Sardinia. All together they may contain three hundred children. The success of these institutions has not been equal to that of the Abendberg, although the teachers seem to have been faithful and patient. The statistics of the latest census of the countries of Central and Southern Europe render it certain that those countries contain from seventy-five to eighty thousand cretins, and as the cretin seldom passes his thirtieth year, the number under ten years of age must exceed thirty thousand. The provision for their training is, of course, entirely inadequate to their needs.

The limited experience of the few institutions already established warrants, we think, the conclusion, that too high expectations have been raised in regard to the complete cure of cretinism; that only a small proportion (cases in which the bodily disease is the principal difficulty, and the mental deterioration slight) can be perfectly cured; but that these institutions, regarded as hospitals for the treatment and training of cretins, are in the highest degree important and beneficial; and that, under proper care and medication, the physical symptoms of the disease may be greatly diminished and in many cases entirely eradicated, and the mental condition so far improved, that the patient shall be able, under proper direction, to support himself wholly or in part by his own labor. The hideous and repulsive condition of the body can be cured; the mental deformity will yield less readily; yet in some instances this, too, may disappear, and the cretin take his place with his fellow-men.

Let us now turn our attention to another class, in whom, as a people, we have a deeper interest; for though cretinism does undoubtedly exist in the United States, yet the cases are but few; while idiocy is fearfully prevalent throughout the country.

The possibility of improving the condition of the idiot is one of those discoveries which will make the nineteenth century remarkable in the annals of the future for its philanthropic spirit. Idiots have existed in all ages, and have commonly vegetated through life in utter wretchedness and degrading filth, concealed from public view.

During the early part of the present century, a few attempts were made to instruct them; the earliest known being at the American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, in Hartford, in 1818. In 1824, Dr. Belhomme, of Paris, published an essay on the possibility of improving the condition of idiots; and in 1828, a few were instructed for a short time at the Bicêtre, one of the large insane hospitals of Paris. In 1831, M. Falret attempted the same work at the Salpêtrière, another of the hospitals for the insane in the same city. Neither of these efforts was continued long in existence. In 1833, Dr. Voisin, a distinguished French physiologist and phrenologist, attempted the organization of a school for idiots in Paris. In 1839, aided by Dr. Leuret, he revived the School for Idiots in the Bicêtre, subsequently under the charge of M. Vallée. The "Apostle to the Idiots," however, to use a French expression, was Dr. Edward Seguin. The friend and pupil of Itard, the celebrated surgeon and philanthropist, he had in early youth entered into the views of his master respecting the practicability of their instruction; and when, during his last illness, Itard, with a philanthropy which triumphed over the terrible pangs of disease, reminded him of the work which he had himself longed to undertake, and urged him to devote his abilities to it, the young physician accepted the sacred trust, and thenceforth consecrated his life to the work of endeavoring to elevate the helpless idiot in the scale of humanity.

Previous teachers of the imbecile had not attempted to master the philosophy of idiocy. They had gone to work at hap-hazard, striking at random, hoping somehow, they knew not exactly how, to get some ideas into the mind of the patient, and, by exciting the faculty of imitation, perhaps improve his condition. They succeeded in making him more cleanly, and in inducing him to perform certain acts and exercises, as a well-trained dog, monkey, or parrot might perform them.

Seguin adopted an entirely different course. By a long and careful investigation he satisfied himself as to what idiocy consisted in, and then adopted such measures as he deemed most judicious, for the development of the intellect, and the elevation of the social, mental, moral, and physical character of the idiot.

In his view idiocy is only a prolonged infancy, in which the infantile grace and intelligence having passed away, there remains only the feeble muscular development and mental weakness of that earliest stage of growth. He proposes to follow Nature in his processes of treatment; to invigorate the muscles by bathing and exercise, using some compulsion, if necessary, to effect this; to fix the attention by bright colors, strong contrasts, military manoeuvres, etc.; to strengthen and develope the will, the imagination, the senses, and the imitative powers, by a great variety of exercises; and at each step, to impress the mind with moral principles. The mere acquisition of a few facts, more or less, and the capacity to repeat these, parrot-like, he regards as an attainment of very little consequence; the great object should be to make the child do his own thinking, and this once attained, he will acquire facts as he needs them.

Dr. Seguin met with a high degree of success in the instruction of idiotic and imbecile children, and in 1846 published a treatise on the treatment of idiocy, which will, for years to come, be the manual of every teacher of this unfortunate class.

While Seguin was demonstrating the truth of his theory of instruction at Paris, Herr Saegert, a teacher of deaf mutes at Berlin, having attempted, unsuccessfully, the instruction of a deaf and dumb idiot, was led to inquire into the reasons of his failure. Without any knowledge of Seguin's labors, he arrived substantially at the same conclusions, and devoted his leisure to medical study, in order to grapple more successfully with the problem of the instruction of idiots. In 1840 he commenced receiving idiotic pupils, and has maintained a school for them in Berlin up to the present time. Herr Saegert is inclined to regard idiocy as dependent upon the condition of the brain and nervous system, to a greater extent, perhaps, than Dr. Seguin, and to rely upon medication to some extent; though in his writings he professes to consider it a condition, and not a disease.

The success of the efforts of Seguin and Saegert was soon reported in other countries, and as early as 1846 excited the attention of philanthropists in England and the United States. Schools for the training of idiots were established, on a small scale at first, by some benevolent ladies, at Bath, Brighton, and Lancaster, England. In 1847, an effort was made to establish an institution in some degree commensurate with the wants of the unfortunate class for whom it was intended. In this movement, Dr. John Conolly, the father of the non-restraint system in the treatment of the insane, Rev. Dr. Andrew Reed, Rev. Edwin Sidney, and Sir S.M. Peto have distinguished themselves by their zeal and liberality. Extensive buildings were rented at Highgate, near London, and at Colchester, for the accommodation of idiotic pupils, while a strenuous and successful effort was made to obtain the necessary funds for the erection of an asylum of great size. The Royal Institution for Idiots, completed in 1856, has between four hundred and five hundred beds, and is already nearly or quite full. Essex Hall, at Colchester, has also been fitted up as a permanent establishment for their instruction, and furnishes accommodation for some two hundred more. Two small institutions, supported by private beneficence, have also been organized in Scotland.

The British institutions have admitted, to a very considerable extent, a class of pupils who are not properly idiots, but only persons of imbecile purpose, or simply awkward, and of partially developed intellects. Some of these, who have arrived even at the age of twenty-five or thirty years, have been greatly benefited, and, after two or three years' instruction, have left the institution with as much intelligence, apparently, as most of those in the same walk of life. This result is, and should be, a matter of great gratification to the managers; but it is hardly just to regard success in such cases as cures of idiocy. The greater part of the admissions to the Royal Institution are from the pauper and poor laboring classes; and the simple substitution of wholesome and sufficient food for a meagre and innutritious diet is alone sufficient to effect a marked change in them. The greater part of the pupils in that institution are instructed in some of the simpler mechanic arts, and the Reports assure us that they have generally acquired them with facility.

There can be no question of the benevolence of attempting the restoration to society, and to active and useful life, of these awkward, undeveloped, and backward youth,—of educating their hitherto undeveloped faculties, of eradicating those habits which rendered them disagreeable, and often almost unendurable; but these youths are not idiots, and no such analogy exists between them and idiots as would enable us to infer with certainty the successful treatment of the latter from the comparatively rapid development of the former.

In our own country more satisfactory data exist for determining this point. The movement for the instruction of idiots commenced almost simultaneously in New York and Massachusetts. The first school for idiots in this country was commenced at Barre, Massachusetts, by Dr. H.B. Wilbur, in July, 1848; and the Massachusetts Experimental School, by Dr. S.G. Howe, in October of the same year. There are now in the United States six institutions for the instruction and training of this unfortunate class, namely: the Massachusetts School, at South Boston, still under the general superintendence of Dr. Howe; a private institution for idiots, imbeciles, backward and eccentric children at Barre, under the care of Dr. George Brown, being the one originally founded by Dr. Wilbur; the New York State Asylum for Idiots, at Syracuse, of which Dr. Wilbur is the superintendent; a private school for idiots and imbeciles at Haerlem, N.Y., under the care of Mr. J.B. Richards; the Pennsylvania Training School for Idiots, at Germantown, Penn., under the care of Dr. Parish; and an Experimental School, recently organized, at Columbus, Ohio, under an appropriation from the State legislature, presided over by Dr. Patterson. Of these, only the first three have had an experience sufficiently long to offer any reliable results from which the success of idiot instruction can be deduced.

The solution of the question, whether the idiot can be elevated to the standard of mediocrity, physically and intellectually, is not merely one of interest to the psychologist, who seeks to ascertain the metes and bounds of the mental capacity of the race; it is also of paramount importance to the political economist, who wishes to determine the productive force of the community, physical and intellectual; it is of practical interest to the statesman, who seeks to know how large a proportion of the population are necessarily dependent upon the state or individuals for their support; it is a matter of pecuniary importance to the tax-payer, who is naturally desirous of learning whether these drones in the hive, who not only perform no labor themselves, but require others to attend them, and who often, also, from their imbecility, are made the tools and dupes of others in the commission of crime, cannot be transformed into producers instead of consumers, and become quiet and orderly citizens, instead of pests in the community.

The statistics of idiocy are necessarily imperfect. No United States census or State enumeration is at all reliable; the idea of what constitutes idiocy is so very vague, that one census-taker would report none, in a district where another might find twenty. It is very seldom the case that the friends or relatives of an idiot will admit that he is more than a little eccentric; many of the worst cases in the institutions for idiots were brought there by friends who protested that they were not idiots, but only a little singular in their habits.

In Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Ohio, efforts have been made, by correspondence with physicians and town officers, to obtain data from which an approximate estimate might be attained. These efforts, though not so satisfactory as could be desired, are yet sufficient to authorize the conclusion that there are in those three States (and probably the same figures would hold good for the rest of the Union) about one fifth of one per cent. of the population who are idiots of low grade, and about the same number who are of weak and imbecile intellect. This would give us in the United States about fifty-two thousand idiots, and as many more imbeciles. At the lowest estimate, the cost of supporting this vast army of the unfortunate, beyond the trifling sum which a few of them may be able to earn, is more than ten millions of dollars per annum. Nor is this all, or even the worst feature of their case. The greater part of them are without sense of shame, without any notions of chastity or decency, and so weak in moral sense as to be the ready tools and dupes of artful villains, and often themselves exhibit a perverseness and malignity of character which render them dangerous members of society. Their influence for evil, direct and indirect, no man can estimate. The chaplains and other officers of our State prisons and penitentiaries will testify that a large proportion of the inmates of those establishments, though not idiots, are weak-minded and imbecile; and it by no means a rare circumstance to find persons, who should properly be under treatment as idiots, suffering the doom of the felon.

Under these circumstances, the question, What can be done with this unfortunate and helpless class? becomes one of great importance.

A careful examination of the institutions for their training in this country and Europe, and an extended inquiry into their present condition when not under instruction, have enabled us to arrive at the following conclusions.

There is very little hope of any considerable permanent improvement of the idiot, if not placed under training before his sixteenth year. His habits may, indeed, be somewhat amended, and the mind temporarily roused; but this improvement will seldom continue after he is removed from the institution.

The existence of severe epilepsy, or other profound disease, is a serious bar to success.

Of those not affected by epilepsy, who are brought under instruction in childhood, from one third to one fourth may be so far improved as to become capable of performing the ordinary duties of life with tolerable fidelity and ability. They may acquire sufficient knowledge to be able to read, to write, to understand the elementary facts of geography, history, and arithmetic; they may be capable of writing a passable letter; they may acquire a sufficient knowledge of farming, or of the mechanic arts, to be able to work well and faithfully under appropriate supervision; they may attain a sufficient knowledge of the government and laws under which they live, to be qualified to exercise the electoral franchise quite as well as many of those who do exercise it; they may make such advances in morals, as to act with justice and honor toward their fellow-men, and exhibit the influence of Christianity in changing their degraded and wayward natures to purity, chastity, and holiness.

A larger class, probably one half of the whole, can be so much benefited, as to become cleanly in their habits, quiet in their deportment, capable, perhaps, of reading and writing, but not of original composition, able to perform, with suitable supervision, many kinds of work which require little close thought, and, under the care of friends, of becoming happy and useful. This class, if neglected after leaving the school, will be likely to relapse into some of their early habits, but if properly cared for, may continue to improve.

A small number, and as frequently, perhaps, as otherwise, those apparently the most promising at entering, will make little or no progress. It cannot be predicted beforehand that such will be the result of any case, for the most hopeless at entering have often made decided advancement; but the fact remains, that no methods of instruction yet adopted will invariably develope the slumbering intellect, or strengthen and correct the enfeebled or depraved will.

The institutions for the training of idiots should be greatly multiplied, and should have a department for awkward, eccentric, and backward children. The methods adopted would be of great benefit to these, and would often call into activity intellects which might be useful in their proper spheres.

We regard this great movement for the improvement of a class hitherto considered so hopeless, as one of the most honorable and benevolent enterprises of our time. It is yet in its infancy; but we hope to see, ere many years have passed, in every State of our Union, asylums reared, where these waifs of humanity shall be gathered, and such training given them as may develope in the highest degree possible the hitherto rudimentary faculties of their minds, and render them capable of performing, in some humble measure, their part in the drama of life.

* * * * *

AMOURS DE VOYAGE.

Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio,
And taste with a distempered appetite! Shakspeare.

Il doutait de tout, même de l'amour.—French Novel.

Solvitur ambulando. Solutio Sophismatum.

Flevit amores
Non elaboratum ad pedem.—Horace.

Over the great windy waters, and over the clear crested summits,
Unto the sun and the sky, and unto the perfecter earth,
Come, let us go,—to a land wherein gods of the old time wandered,
Where every breath even now changes to ether divine.
Come, let us go; though withal a voice whisper, "The world that we
live in,
Whithersoever we turn, still is the same narrow crib;
'Tis but to prove limitation, and measure a cord, that we travel;
Let who would 'scape and be free go to his chamber and think;
'Tis but to change idle fancies for memories wilfully falser;
'Tis but to go and have been."—Come, little bark, let us go!

I.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Dear Eustatio, I write that you may write me an answer,
Or at the least to put us en rapport with each other.
Rome disappoints me much,—St. Peter's, perhaps, in especial;
Only the Arch of Titus and view from the Lateran please me:
This, however, perhaps, is the weather, which truly is horrid.
Greece must be better, surely; and yet I am feeling so spiteful,
That I could travel to Athens, to Delphi, and Troy, and Mount Sinai,
Though but to see with my eyes that these are vanity also.

Rome disappoints me much; I hardly as yet understand, but
Rubbishy seems the word that most exactly would suit it.
All the foolish destructions, and all the sillier savings,
All the incongruous things of past incompatible ages,
Seem to be treasured up here to make fools of present and future.
Would to Heaven the old Goths had made a cleaner sweep of it!
Would to Heaven some new ones would come and destroy me these churches!
However, one can live in Rome as also in London.
Rome is better than London, because it is other than London.
It is a blessing, no doubt, to be rid, at least for a time, of
All one's friends and relations,—yourself (forgive me!) included,—
All the assujettissement of having been what one has been,
What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one;
Yet, in despite of all, we turn like fools to the English.
Vernon has been my fate; who is here the same that you knew him,—
Making the tour, it seems, with friends of the name of Trevellyn.

II.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Rome disappoints me still; but I shrink and adapt myself to it.
Somehow a tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppression
Still, wherever I go, accompanies ever, and makes me
Feel like a tree (shall I say?) buried under a ruin of brick-work.
Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo,
Merely a marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots.
Ye gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed,
Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in?
What do I think of the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars.
Well, but St. Peter's? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture!
No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum.
Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement,
This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea?
Yet of solidity much, but of splendor little is extant:
"Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!" their Emperor vaunted;
"Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!" the Tourist may
answer.

III.—GEORGINA TREVELLYN TO LOUISA ——-.

At last, dearest Louisa, I take up my pen to address you.
Here we are, you see, with the seven-and-seventy boxes,
Courier, Papa and Mamma, the children, and Mary and Susan:
Here we all are at Rome, and delighted of course with St Peter's,
And very pleasantly lodged in the famous Piazza di Spagna.
Rome is a wonderful place, but Mary shall tell you about it;
Not very gay, however; the English are mostly at Naples;
There are the A.s, we hear, and most of the W. party.
George, however, is come; did I tell you about his mustachios?
Dear, I must really stop, for the carriage, they tell me, is waiting.
Mary will finish; and Susan is writing, they say, to Sophia.
Adieu, dearest Louise,—evermore your faithful Georgina.
Who can a Mr. Claude be whom George has taken to be with?
Very stupid, I think, but George says so very clever.

IV.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

No, the Christian faith, as at any rate I understood it,
With its humiliations and exaltations combining,
Exaltations sublime, and yet diviner abasements,
Aspirations from something most shameful here upon earth and
In our poor selves to something most perfect above in the heavens,—
No, the Christian faith, as I, at least, understood it,
Is not here, O Rome, in any of these thy churches;
Is not here, but in Freiberg, or Rheims, or Westminster Abbey.
What in thy Dome I find, in all thy recenter efforts,
Is a something, I think, more rational far, more earthly,
Actual, less ideal, devout not in scorn and refusal,
But in a positive, calm, Stoic-Epicurean acceptance.
This I begin to detect in St. Peter's and some of the churches,
Mostly in all that I see of the sixteenth-century masters;
Overlaid of course with infinite gauds and gewgaws,
Innocent, playful follies, the toys and trinkets of childhood,
Forced on maturer years, as the serious one thing essential,
By the barbarian will of the rigid and ignorant Spaniard.

V.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Luther, they say, was unwise; like a half-taught German, he could not
See that old follies were passing most tranquilly out of remembrance;
Leo the Tenth was employing all efforts to clear out abuses;
Jupiter, Juno, and Venus, Fine Arts, and Fine Letters, the Poets,
Scholars, and Sculptors, and Painters, were quietly clearing away the
Martyrs, and Virgins, and Saints, or at any rate Thomas Aquinas.
He must forsooth make a fuss and distend his huge Wittenberg lungs, and
Bring back Theology once yet again in a flood upon Europe:
Lo, you, for forty days from the windows of heaven it fell; the
Waters prevail on the earth yet more for a hundred and fifty;
Are they abating at last? The doves that are sent to explore are
Wearily fain to return, at the best with a leaflet of promise,—
Fain to return, as they went, to the wandering wave-tost vessel,—
Fain to reënter the roof which covers the clean and the unclean.
Luther, they say, was unwise; he didn't see how things were going;
Luther was foolish,—but, O great God! what call you Ignatius?
O my tolerant soul, be still! but you talk of barbarians,
Alaric, Attila, Genseric;—why, they came, they killed, they
Ravaged, and went on their way; but these vile, tyrannous Spaniards,
These are here still,—how long, O ye Heavens, in the country of Dante?
These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not
This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you can see them,—
Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu,
Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,—
Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,—
Here, overcrusting with shame, perverting, defacing, debasing,
Michael Angelo's dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven,
Raphael's Joys and Graces, and thy clear stars, Galileo!

VI.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Which of three Misses Trevellyn it is that Vernon shall marry
Is not a thing to be known; for our friend's is one of those natures
Which have their perfect delight in the general tender-domestic,
So that he trifles with Mary's shawl, ties Susan's bonnet,
Dances with all, but at home is most, they say, with Georgina,
Who is, however, too silly in my apprehension for Vernon.
I, as before when I wrote, continue to see them a little;
Not that I like them so much, or care a bajocco for Vernon,
But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance,
And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses.
Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly
Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d'hôte and restaurant
Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth even:
Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth!
Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, well connected;
Doubtless somewhere in some neighborhood have, and careful to keep, some
Threadbare-genteel relations, who in their turn are enchanted
Grandly among county people to introduce at assemblies
To the unpennied cadets our cousins with excellent fortunes.
Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth!

VII.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Ah, what a shame, indeed, to abuse these most worthy people!
Ah, what a sin to have sneered at their innocent rustic pretensions!
Is it not laudable really, this reverent worship of station?
Is it not fitting that wealth should tender this homage to culture?
Is it not touching to witness these efforts, if little availing,
Painfully made, to perform the old ritual service of manners?
Shall not devotion atone for the absence of knowledge? and fervor
Palliate, cover, the fault of a superstitious observance?
Dear, dear, what have I said? but, alas, just now, like Iago,
I can be nothing at all, if it is not critical wholly;
So in fantastic height, in coxcomb exaltation,
Here in the Garden I walk, can freely concede to the Maker
That the works of his hand are all very good: his creatures,
Beast of the field and fowl, he brings them before me; I name them;
That which I name them, they are,—the bird, the beast, and the cattle.
But for Adam,—alas, poor critical coxcomb Adam!
But for Adam there is not found an help-meet for him.

VIII.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

No, great Dome of Agrippa, thou art not Christian! canst not,
Strip and replaster and daub and do what they will with thee, be so!
Here underneath the great porch of colossal Corinthian columns,
Here as I walk, do I dream of the Christian belfries above them;
Or on a bench as I sit and abide for long hours, till thy whole vast
Round grows dim as in dreams to my eyes, I repeople thy niches,
Not with the Martyrs, and Saints, and Confessors, and Virgins,
and children,
But with the mightier forms of an older, austerer worship;
And I recite to myself, how

Eager for battle here
Stood Vulcan, here matronal Juno,
And with the bow to his shoulder faithful
He who with pure dew laveth of Castaly
His flowing locks, who holdeth of Lycia
The oak forest and the wood that bore him,
Delos and Patara's own Apollo.[A]

[Footnote A:

Hic avidus stetit
Vulcanus, hic matrona Juno, et
Nunquam humero positurus arcum;
Qui rore puro Castaliae lavat
Crines solutos, qui Lyciae tenet
Dumeta natalemque sylvum,
Delius et Patareus Apollo.]

IX.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Yet it is pleasant, I own it, to be in their company: pleasant,
Whatever else it may be, to abide in the feminine presence.
Pleasant, but wrong, will you say? But this happy, serene coexistence
Is to some poor soft souls, I fear, a necessity simple,
Meat and drink and life, and music, filling with sweetness,
Thrilling with melody sweet, with harmonies strange overwhelming,
All the long-silent strings of an awkward, meaningless fabric.
Yet as for that, I could live, I believe, with children; to have those
Pure and delicate forms encompassing, moving about you,
This were enough, I could think; and truly with glad resignation
Could from the dream of romance, from the fever of flushed adolescence,
Look to escape and subside into peaceful avuncular functions.
Nephews and nieces! alas, for as yet I have none! and, moreover,
Mothers are jealous, I fear me, too often, too rightfully; fathers
Think they have title exclusive to spoiling their own little darlings;
And by the law of the land, in despite of Malthusian doctrine,
No sort of proper provision is made for that most patriotic,
Most meritorious subject, the childless and bachelor uncle.

X.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Ye, too, marvellous Twain, that erect on the Monte Cavallo
Stand by your rearing steeds in the grace of your motionless movement,
Stand with your upstretched arms and tranquil regardant faces,
Stand as instinct with life in the might of immutable manhood,—
O ye mighty and strange, ye ancient divine ones of Hellas,
Are ye Christian too? to convert and redeem and renew you,
Will the brief form have sufficed, that a Pope has set up on the apex
Of the Egyptian stone that o'ertops you the Christian symbol?
And ye, silent, supreme in serene and victorious marble,
Ye that encircle the walls of the stately Vatican chambers,
Juno and Ceres, Minerva, Apollo, the Muses and Bacchus,
Ye unto whom far and near come posting the Christian pilgrims,
Ye that are ranged in the halls of the mystic Christian pontiff,
Are ye also baptized? are ye of the Kingdom of Heaven?
Utter, O some one, the word that shall reconcile Ancient and Modern!
Am I to turn me for this unto thee, great Chapel of Sixtus?

XI.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

These are the facts. The uncle, the elder brother, the squire, (a
Little embarrassed, I fancy,) resides in a family place in
Cornwall, of course. "Papa is in business," Mary informs me;
He's a good sensible man, whatever his trade is. The mother
Is—shall I call it fine?—herself she would tell you refined, and
Greatly, I fear me, looks down on my bookish and maladroit manners;
Somewhat affecteth the blue; would talk to me often of poets;
Quotes, which I hate, Childe Harold; but also appreciates Wordsworth;
Sometimes adventures on Schiller; and then to religion diverges;
Questions me much about Oxford; and yet, in her loftiest flights, still
Grates the fastidious ear with the slightly mercantile accent.

Is it contemptible, Eustace,—I'm perfectly ready to think so,—
Is it,—the horrible pleasure of pleasing inferior people?
I am ashamed my own self; and yet true it is, if disgraceful,
That for the first time in life I am living and moving with freedom.
I, who never could talk to the people I meet with my uncle,—
I, who have always failed,—I, trust me, can suit the Trevellyns;
I, believe me,—great conquest,—am liked by the country bankers.
And I am glad to be liked, and like in return very kindly.
So it proceeds; Laissez faire, laissez aller,—such is the watchword.
Well, I know there are thousands as pretty and hundreds as pleasant,
Girls by the dozen as good, and girls in abundance with polish
Higher and manners more perfect than Susan or Mary Trevellyn.
Well, I know, after all, it is only juxtaposition,—
Juxtaposition, in short; and what is juxtaposition?

XII.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

But I am in for it now,—laissez faire, of a truth, laissez aller.
Yes, I am going,—I feel it, I feel and cannot recall it,—
Fusing with this thing and that, entering into all sorts of relations,
Tying I know not what ties, which, whatever they are, I know one thing,
Will and must, woe is me, be one day painfully broken,—
Broken with painful remorses, with shrinkings of soul, and relentings,
Foolish delays, more foolish evasions, most foolish renewals.
But I am in for it now,—I have quitted the ship of Ulysses;
Yet on my lips is the moly, medicinal, offered of Hermes.
I have passed into the precinct, the labyrinth closes around me,
Path into path rounding slyly; I pace slowly on, and the fancy,
Struggling awhile to sustain the long sequences, weary, bewildered,
Fain must collapse in despair; I yield, I am lost and know nothing;
Yet in my bosom unbroken remaineth the clue; I shall use it.
Lo, with the rope on my loins I descend through the fissure; I sink, yet
Inly secure in the strength of invisible arms up above me;
Still, wheresoever I swing, wherever to shore, or to shelf, or
Floor of cavern untrodden, shell-sprinkled, enchanting, I know I
Yet shall one time feel the strong cord tighten about me,—
Feel it, relentless, upbear me from spots I would rest in; and though the
Rope sway wildly, I faint, crags wound me, from crag unto crag re-
Bounding, or, wide in the void, I die ten deaths ere the end, I
Yet shall plant firm foot on the broad lofty spaces I quit, shall
Feel underneath me again the great massy strengths of abstraction,
Look yet abroad from the height o'er the sea whose salt wave I
have tasted.

XIII.—GEORGINA TREVELLYN TO LOUISA ——-

DEAREST LOUISA,—Inquire, if you please, about Mr. Claude ——-.
He has been once at R., and remembers meeting the H.s.
Harriet L., perhaps, may be able to tell you about him.
It is an awkward youth, but still with very good manners;
Not without prospects, we hear; and, George says, highly connected.
Georgy declares it absurd, but Mamma is alarmed and insists he has
Taken up strange opinions and may be turning a Papist.
Certainly once he spoke of a daily service he went to.
"Where?" we asked, and he laughed and answered, "At the Pantheon."
This was a temple, you know, and now is a Catholic church; and
Though it is said that Mazzini has sold it for Protestant service,
Yet I suppose the change can hardly as yet be effected.
Adieu again,—evermore, my dearest, your loving Georgina.

P.S. BY MARY TREVELLYN.

I am to tell you, you say, what I think of our last new acquaintance.
Well, then, I think that George has a very fair right to be jealous.
I do not like him much, though I do not dislike being with him.
He is what people call, I suppose, a superior man, and
Certainly seems so to me; but I think he is frightfully selfish.

* * * * *

Alba, thou findest me still, and, Alba, thou findest me ever,
Now from the Capitol steps, now over Titus's Arch,
Here from the large grassy spaces that spread from the Lateran portal,
Towering o'er aqueduct lines lost in perspective between,
Or from a Vatican window, or bridge, or the high Coliseum,
Clear by the garlanded line cut of the Flavian ring.
Beautiful can I not call thee, and yet thou hast power to o'ermaster,
Power of mere beauty; in dreams, Alba, thou hauntest me still.
Is it religion? I ask me; or is it a vain superstition?
Slavery abject and gross? service, too feeble, of truth?
Is it an idol I bow to, or is it a god that I worship?
Do I sink back on the old, or do I soar from the mean?
So through the city I wander and question, unsatisfied ever,
Reverent so I accept, doubtful because I revere.

[To be continued.]

* * * * *

MY AQUARIUM.

On the tenth of May, 1857, I became the glad possessor of a tank capable of holding thirteen or fourteen gallons of water. Its substantial frame of well-seasoned oak, its stout plank bottom, lavishly covered with cement, promised to resist alike the heat and dryness from without and the wet within. The sides and ends, of double flint-glass, seemed to invite the eye across their clearness. Its chosen site was at a south window, so shaded by a wing of the house as to receive only the morning sun for about two hours; and clustering vines overhung the window, so that the beams fell in checkered light. All was now ready.

A few fragments of white quartz were arranged in rude imitation of ocean recesses, and in their fissures were placed four or five small plants of Enteromorpha and Corallina. Sand was strewn upon the bottom, to the depth of two inches, and ten gallons of sea-water were then poured in. This had been brought from one of the wharves, at high tide, twenty-four hours previously, and twice drawn off with a siphon,—each time after twelve hours' rest. It was not, however, perfectly translucent, and at the end of a week was still cloudy. On the fifth day after the tank was filled, I began to introduce the animals to their future home.

Ten Buccina were first put in possession, in the hope that they would perform the part of gardeners to the young plants. On the sixth day, seven Actinias were disposed upon the rock-work. On the seventh, a Horsefoot (or, as our Southern neighbors call it, a King-Crab, though of most unregal aspect) was allowed to make his burrow in the sand. On the eighth day, four Hermit and Soldier Crabs and two Sand-Crabs were invited to choose their several retreats. On the ninth, three fine Sticklebacks and three Minnows were made free of the mimic ocean; and on the tenth, an Eel and two Prawns.

All seemed well until the evening of the twelfth day, when a small white cloud was seen rising from the bottom. The spot was searched for some dead member of the new colony; but none was found, either there, or in any other part of the tank.

Supposing that the impure gas might be generated by the decay of minute creatures congregated in the cloudy corner, a lump of charcoal was tied to a stone and sunk upon the spot. Next morning, the cloud had cleared from around the charcoal, but slender wreaths of similar appearance were rapidly rising from the sand in every other part of the Aquarium. The fishes came oftener to the surface than they were wont, and all the animals had lost vigor.

Aeration was resorted to, which was performed by dipping up the water, and pouring it back in a thin stream from a height of several feet, continuing the operation for ten minutes. This was repeated four or five times during the day, and at night more charcoal was added. Some of the pieces were sunk to the bottom, and others were suspended at different depths in the water.

Two or three days passed in this way,—the putrescence kept in check by the means used, but not entirely overcome. Meantime, though none of the stock had died, there was less vitality than at first; especially each morning, after seven or eight hours unaided by aeration.

Tired of what seemed an ineffectual struggle, I determined to leave the Aquarium untouched for a day, and await the result. Accordingly, the charcoal was withdrawn and aeration discontinued. The milky cloud increased in density, and the whole mass of water became turbid. The fishes kept constantly near the surface, swam languidly, and snatched mouthfuls of atmospheric air. The Eel became bloodshot about the gills, and, writhing, gasped for breath. The Soldier-Crabs hung listlessly from their shells, and no longer went about in quest of food. Even the Actinise shrunk to half their former size; and the Buccina, crawling above the water, ranged themselves in a row upon the dry glass.

Disappointed, but not discouraged, I filled several shallow pans with pure sea-water, clean sand, and fresh plants, and transferred to them my suffering and wellnigh exhausted animals. A day restored them to their normal condition, and now I was ready to begin my Aquarium anew.

But to what purpose should I begin anew? Would there not be the same failure? What had been wrong?

At least two great faults were evident. First, in order to guard against the possibility of a leak, the bottom and posts of the tank had been covered with many coats of an alcoholic varnish. Now it was probable that time enough had not elapsed between the several applications for the thorough evaporation of the alcohol. Might not its gradual infusion in the water have caused the death of the animalcula in such numbers as to taint the whole by their decay?

The second fault was, strewing upon the surface of the sand a handful or two of white powdered quartz, which, from having been pulverized in an iron mortar, was so oxydized as to turn a deep yellow. This might have poisoned the animalcula.

The first fault seemed to me the chief, but I proceeded to remedy both. The whole contents of the tank being removed, it was thoroughly washed on the inside, exposed for several days to the sun and air, and then soaked for twelve hours in clean sea-water. This being thrown away, the stones, scalded and well-washed, were restored, and clean sand, replaced the old.

Water was drawn from the dock at high tide; but it was less clear now, on the fourth of June, than that which had been got early in May. This surprised me not a little; for, as I stood upon the wharf and looked down into it just before sunset on the previous evening, I was struck with its beautiful limpidity. Curious to see if its aspect remained unaltered, I went to the same spot where I had stood the night before. The tide was at the same height, but twelve hours had made a marvellous change in the appearance of the water. Its sparkling clearness had given way to greenness and turbidity, and no object could be seen a foot below the surface. No storm had stirred its depths during the night,—why this change? Conjecture was of no practical utility, and I returned home satisfied that my fifteen gallons of water were as clear as any it was then in my power to obtain. Covering the tub from the dust, I left it to settle until sunset. Then the ever-useful siphon drew off two thirds of it tolerably clear, leaving a thick green deposit upon the sides and bottom of the vessel. Next day, it was again drawn off from the sediment, (at this time, small in quantity,) and poured into the tank. Several newly obtained plants of well-growing Enteromorpha and Corallina were arranged among the stones, and the Aquarium was left at rest. Gradually the water became nearly clear, but not perfectly so until after the introduction of animals.

Eight days after it was filled, the Actinias were put in; on the ninth, several small Mollusks; on the tenth, Crustacea; and on the eleventh and twelfth, other varieties of the same types; but not until the fourteenth day were fishes ventured upon.

Day by day the water grew clearer and clearer, until, at the end of three weeks, it was beautifully translucent. Three more weeks passed, during which the beauty of the Aquarium was much heightened by a luxuriant growth of Confervae mingled with Enteromorpha, which together covered all those parts of the stones which received a direct light. The mimic rocks seemed draped in green velvet, and in the sunlight were studded with pearly bubbles. There was, however, one blemish: the hungry crabs had so nibbled the larger plants that it was deemed necessary to renew them, in order to secure a sufficient supply of food and oxygen. Accordingly, a fine specimen of Enteromorpha was added. It consisted of five or six delicate fronds about five inches in length, and these soon increased to treble their original number and twice their original size. At the end of about two weeks, they suddenly became covered with a dull bluish mould, at the same time ceasing to give out bubbles; and the whole plant, instead of rising to the surface of the water as hitherto, hung limp from the fissure where it was placed, and trailed upon the sand. Coincidently, (was it consequently?) a greenish tinge pervaded the water, speedily increasing in depth and opacity. In five days, no object could be discerned six inches from the glass, and my beautiful Aquarium was transformed to an unsightly ditch.

Yet the water was apparently pure, and the activity of its inhabitants was in no wise lessened. What was this vexatious greenness? Was it animal or vegetable? Was it the diffused spores of the perfected Enteromorpha or of the rank Confervae upon the stones? If neither, what was its cause?

Excess of light was the most obvious suggestion; and so it was supposed that its exclusion might be a potent remedy. Therefore a double curtain of glazed muslin was stretched across the window; and the tank, both top and sides, wrapped in folds of paper. A week of darkness changed the deep green to a dingy olive. But the experiment could not be continued. The nightly admission of air by lifting the paper covering was insufficient to maintain the imprisoned creatures. They were happy, though captive, while in a mimic ocean, but miserable in a dark dungeon. Languid and spiritless, they lay supine, or crawled listlessly and aimlessly about. This would not do, and so light was again admitted freely to all but one side of the tank; there, a screen of yellow paper intercepted the direct rays of the sun, while upon the top they fell through the foliage of a Clematis vine.

Three weeks more wrought a slight change for the better; but it was too slight and too slow for my patience, or that of curious friends waiting to see my Aquarium.

The second experiment had failed, and so once more the tank was emptied. Two or three animals only had died; all the others gave evidence of health. Again they were removed to other vessels, and again I began anew.

Clean sand, clean stones, water drawn at high tide and carefully decanted, three small plants of Ulva Latissima, with one clump of Corallina Officinalis, made up the contents of the tank, when, on the tenth of August, it was the third time filled. A sheet of yellow paper was placed between the tank and the window, and it was left three days at rest. At the end of that time, the water, which was beautifully clear when introduced, had grown a little hazy, and, as the sunbeams fell aslant it, the unaided eye could perceive a multitude of minute whitish creatures darting forward and backward like a swarm of bees. Then five Actinias were laid upon the rocks, to which they at once adhered, spreading out their restless tentacles in busy seizure of the tiny prey. In a week more the foggy appearance had ceased; but the clearness of the water was marred by the slimy exudations from the Actinias. Knowing that this matter was eaten by some of the Crustacea, five or six small Soldier-Crabs were dropped in, which faithfully performed their allotted labor. From this time, animals were added daily, until they had reached to thirty in number. On the fifteenth of September, a fine specimen of brown Chondrus Crispus was added, and on the thirtieth, a very large frond of Ulva Latissima. A great portion of the Chondrus decayed at its junction with the shell on which it grew, and fell off; but the Ulva increased much in size, as well as in depth of color and firmness of texture.

And now months have gone by, and at last my Aquarium is successful. Fifty lively denizens now sport in the crystalline water and come at the daily roll-call. Come with me and I will introduce them to you. A fig for scientific nomenclature! you shall know them by their household names.

This Bernhard Crab in the front, so leisurely pushing away the sand before him with his broad, flat claws, quietly enjoys the meal he finds, undisturbed by fears of a failing supply. There is less of enterprise than complacency in his character, and I call him Micawber, for he is always expecting "something to turn up." Twice since March has he changed his coat, and thrown off his tight boots and gloves for new ones. The disrobing seemed to give him little trouble, though he sat dozing at the door of his cell some hours after, as though fatigued by the unusual effort. Very becoming is the new costume; and the red coat is prettily relieved by the gray tint of his Diogenes-like dwelling.

There goes a military cousin of his, striding along, with his heavy armor clattering against the glass as he walks. A pugnacious fellow is that same soldier; and if he meet an opponent, you may see the tug of war. Should he chance to prefer the other's shield to his own, he will seize him in his burly arms, and shake him from under its protection. Yet he is cautious withal; for though obliged to doff his own armor before he can try that of his denuded foe, he retains hold of both until satisfied with the trial. If he like the new mail, he will march off with it; if not, he will array himself in his own again. Meanwhile the vanquished combatant waits tremblingly the result of the examination, glad to get possession of the rejected defence, be it which it may.

Yon dark little crab, with the bulky claws so gayly mottled with yellow and black, lurks in that hole at the base of the cliff nearly all day long. His name is 'Possum; for at the slightest sign of danger he doubles up his claws like a dead spider, and lies in feigned lifelessness.

Speaking of spiders,—here are two Spider-Crabs, the very monkeys of this aqueous menagerie. The small one climbing the post is Topsy. There she is, sliding down again, and with headlong pace is now scampering over yon yielding Anemone. Heedless of its hundred arms, so generally dreaded and avoided, she jumps this way and that across its wide mouth; and now, seated on its back, she snatches morsels from its shrinking side. Now look at her sister sprite, Crazy Kate. Her head adorned with a long plume of Coralline, she is tearing ribbon-like shreds from the silky lettuce and hanging them upon her already fantastic person. Anon she dances in mad glee, and next her arms are solemnly stretched upward in grotesque similitude to one in prayer.

When she is hungry, she will, one by one, take off those weedy trophies from her back and feed upon them.

Why do you start? That is not a sea-serpent winding from under the arch, but only an innocent Eel. Yet innocent and tiny though it be, there is something frightful about it. Its fixed, staring eye, its snake-like stealthiness, bid you be on your guard. Sometimes it rises behind that bushy Carrageen, and with high uplifted head peers over at me in such a way that I am half afraid; it is so like the old pictures of Satan tempting Eve.

Would you like to see an Actinia eat? I will drop a bit of raw oyster upon its outspread disk. See with what eager start it closes its fingers about the dainty viand, passing it along slowly, but surely, to its now gaping mouth, while every nerve is vibrating with the anticipated pleasure of the feast! That milk-white one is my favorite, and I call it Una. Seated in modest contentment on that brown-stone seat, she upturns her pure face to the mild light of evening; but folds her arms, and bows her head, and veils herself, when the noon-day sun gazes too ardently upon her.

This one in the rich salmon-colored robe has all our national propensity for travelling. Wandering restlessly about, she never remains two days on the same spot. Yesterday, she climbed the cliff, and sat looking off upon the water nearly all day long. To-day, she has come down to the sand, where, with base distended, as if in caricature of crinoline, she perambulates the crowded thoroughfare.

Here is a semi-twin, one base and two trunks. Shall I call it Janus, for its two faces? or will Chang-and-Eng best distinguish this dual unit? Sometimes, one, with tentacles in-tucked and mouth sealed, seems dozing; while his waking brother is busily waving his arms for food. At another time, you may see them both folded together in sleep, like the Babes in the Woods all bestrewn with leaves.

Ah, you should have seen my Amphitrite! She bore her plumy crown so grandly, you would have said she was indeed the queen of Actiniae. But, alas! she could not brook imprisonment, and, pining for the unwalled grottoes of Poseidon, she drooped and died.

Behind that sheltering rock, and overhung with sea-weed, there is a dark, deep cave, the chosen abode of Giant Grim. Push one of those soldiers to the mouth of the den and wait the result. At the first movement made by the unwitting trespasser on guarded ground, two long, flexile rods are thrust out, reconnoitring right and left. Two huge claws follow, lighted up by two great glaring eyes. At last the whole creature emerges, seizes the intruder, and bears him swiftly away, far beyond his jealously kept premises. With dogged mien he stalks gravely back to his stronghold. You exclaim, "It is a Lobster!" A lobster truly; but saw you ever a lobster with such presence before? Does he resemble the poor bewildered crustaceans you have seen bunched together at a fish-stall? Bears he any likeness to the innocent-looking edibles you have seen lying on a dish, by boiling turned, like the morn, from black to red?

Those ghost-like Prawns are near relatives of the giant. See them, gliding so gracefully from under the arch, disappearing under the waving Ulva, and floating into sight again from behind the cliff. At night, if you look at them athwart a lighted candle, their eyes are seen to glow like living rubies. As they row silently and swiftly towards you, you might fancy each a fairy gondola, with gem-lighted prow.

A quick dashing startles you, and you see a Scallop rising to the top of the water with zigzag jerks, and immediately sinking to the sand again, on the side opposite that whence it started. There it rests with expanded branchiae and moving cilia; a rude passer-by jostles it, and with startled sensitiveness it shrinks from the outer world and hides behind a stony mask.

The small, greenish, rough-coated creature, so like a flattened burr, is an Echinus. It is hardly domiciliated, being a new-comer, and creeps restlessly across the glass.

Under this sand-mound some one lies self-buried,—not dead, but only hiding from the crowd in this bustling watering-place. He must learn that there is no lasting retirement in Newport; so tap with a stick at his lodging. With anger vexed, forth rushes the Swimming-Crab and dashes away from the unwelcome visitor. As if he knew a bore to be the most persistent of hunters, he plies his paddles with rapid beat until far from his invaded chamber. His swimming is more like the fluttering of a butterfly than the steady poise of a fish. Pretty as is his variegated coat by day, it is far more beautiful by night; then his limbs shine with metallic lustre, and every joint seems tinged with molten gold.

I could spend the day in showing you my Aquarium;—the merry antics of the blithe Minnows; the slow wheeling of the less vivacious Sticklebacks; the beautiful siphon of the Quahaug and the Clam; the starry disk of the Serpula; the snug tent of the Limpet; the lithe proboscis of the busy Buccinum; the erect and rapid march of his little flesh-tinted cousin; the slow Horsefoot, balancing his huge umbrella as he goes; the——But I cannot name them all.

Neither could you learn to know them at a single visit. Come and sit by this indoor sea, day by day, and learn to love its people. Many a lesson for good have they taught me. When weary and disheartened, the patient perseverance of these undoubting beings has given me new impulses upward and onward. Remembering that their sole guide is instinct, while mine is the voice behind me, saying, "This is the way," I have risen with new resolve to walk therein. Seeing the blind persistency with which some straying zoöphyte has refused to follow other counsel than its own, I have learned that self-reliance and strength of will are not, in higher natures, virtues for gratulation, but, if unsanctified, faults to blush for. Finding each creature here so fitted with organs and instincts for the life it was meant to lead, I have considered that to me also is given all that I ought to wish, more than I have ever rightly used.

New evidences are here disclosed to me of God's care for his creation, deepening my faith in the fact that he is not merely the great First Cause, but still the watchful Father. New revelations teach me of his sympathy in our joys, as well as of his care for our necessities. The Maker's love of the beautiful fills me with gladness, and I catch new glimpses of those boundless regions where the perfection of his conceptions has never been marred by sin; and where each of us who may attain thereto shall find a fitting sphere for every energy, an answering joy for every pure aspiration.

* * * * *

THE QUEEN OF THE RED CHESSMEN.

The box of chessmen had been left open all night. That was a great oversight! For everybody knows that the contending chessmen are but too eager to fight their battles over again by mid-night, if a chance is only allowed them.

It was at the Willows,—so called, not because the house is surrounded by willows, but because a little clump of them hangs over the pond close by. It is a pretty place, with its broad lawn in front of the door-way, its winding avenue hidden from the road by high trees. It is a quiet place, too; the sun rests gently on the green lawn, and the drooping leaves of the willows hang heavily over the water.

No one would imagine what violent contests were going on under the still roof, this very night. It was the night of the first of May. The moon came silently out from the shadows; the trees were scarcely stirring. The box of chessmen had been left on the balcony steps by the drawing-room window, and the window, too, that warm night, had been left open. So, one by one, all the chessmen came out to fight over again their evening's battles.

It was a famously carved set of chessmen. The bishops wore their mitres, the knights pranced on spirited steeds, the castles rested on the backs of elephants,—even the pawns mimicked the private soldiers of an army. The skilful carver had given to each piece, and each pawn, too, a certain individuality. That night there had been a close contest. Two well-matched players had guided the game, and it had ended with leaving a deep irritation on the conquered side.

It was Isabella, the Queen of the Red Chessmen, who had been obliged to yield. She was young and proud, and it was she, indeed, who held the rule; for her father, the old Red King, had grown too imbecile to direct affairs; he merely bore the name of sovereignty. And Isabella was loved by knights, pawns, and all; the bishops were willing to die in her cause, the castles would have crumbled to earth for her. Opposed to her, stood the detested White Queen. All the Whites, of course, were despised by her; but the haughty, self-sufficient queen angered her most.

The White Queen was reigning during the minority of her only son. The White Prince had reached the age of nineteen, but the strong mind of his mother had kept him always under restraint. A simple youth, he had always yielded to her control. He was pure-hearted and gentle, but never ventured to make a move of his own. He sought shelter under cover of his castles, while his more energetic mother went forth at the head of his army. She was dreaded by her subjects,—never loved by them. Her own pawn, it is true, had ventured much for her sake, had often with his own life redeemed her from captivity; but it was loyalty that bound even him,—no warmer feeling of devotion or love.

The Queen Isabella was the first to come out from her prison.

"I will stay here no longer," she cried; "the blood of the Reds grows pale in this inactivity."

She stood upon the marble steps; the May moon shone down upon her. She listened a moment to a slight murmuring within the drawing-room window. The Spanish lady, the Murillo-painted Spanish lady, had come down from her frame that bound her against the wall. Just for this one night in the year, she stepped out from the canvas to walk up and down the rooms majestically. She would not exchange a word with anybody; nobody understood her language. She could remember when Murillo looked at her, watched over her, created her with his pencil. She could have nothing to say to little paltry shepherdesses, and other articles of virtù, that came into grace and motion just at this moment.

The Queen of the Red Chessmen turned away, down into the avenue. The May moon shone upon her. Her feet trod upon unaccustomed ground; no black or white square hemmed her in; she felt a new liberty.

"My poor old father!" she exclaimed, "I will leave him behind; better let him slumber in an ignoble repose than wander over the board, a laughing-stock for his enemies. We have been conquered,—the foolish White Prince rules!"

A strange inspiration stole upon her; the breath of the May night hovered over her; the May moon shone upon her. She could move without waiting for the will of another; she was free. She passed down the avenue; she had left her old prison behind.

Early in the morning,—it was just after sunrise,—the kind Doctor Lester was driving home, after watching half the night out with a patient. He passed the avenue to the Willows, but drew up his horse just as he was leaving the entrance. He saw a young girl sitting under the hedge. She was without any bonnet, in a red dress, fitting closely and hanging heavily about her. She was so very beautiful, she looked so strangely lost and out of place here at this early hour, that the Doctor could not resist speaking to her.

"My child, how came you here?"

The young girl rose up, and looked round with uncertainty.

"Where am I?" she asked.

She was very tall and graceful, with an air of command, but with a strange, wild look in her eyes.

"The young woman must be slightly insane," thought the Doctor; "but she cannot have wandered far."

"Let me take you home," he said aloud. "Perhaps you come from the
Willows?"

"Oh, don't take me back there!" cried Isabella, "they will imprison me again! I had rather be a slave than a conquered queen!"

"Decidedly insane!" thought the Doctor. "I must take her back to the
Willows."

He persuaded the young girl to let him lift her into his chaise. She did not resist him; but when he turned up the avenue, she leaned back in despair. He was fortunate enough to find one of the servants up at the house, just sweeping the steps of the hall-door. Getting out of his chaise, he said confidentially to the servant,—

"I have brought back your young lady."

"Our young lady!" exclaimed the man, as the Doctor pointed out Isabella.

"Yes, she is a little insane, is she not?"

"She is not our young lady," answered the servant; "we have nobody in the house just now, but Mr. and Mrs. Fogerty, and Mrs. Fogerty's brother, the old geologist."

"Where did she come from?" inquired the Doctor.

"I never saw her before," said the servant, "and I certainly should remember. There's some foreign folks live down in the cottage, by the railroad; but they are not the like of her!"

The Doctor got into his chaise again, bewildered.

"My child," he said, "you must tell me where you came from."

"Oh, don't let me go back again!" said Isabella, clasping her hands imploringly. "Think how hard it must be never to take a move of one's own! to know how the game might be won, then see it lost through folly! Oh, that last game, lost through utter weakness! There was that one move! Why did he not push me down to the king's row? I might have checkmated the White Prince, shut in by his own castles and pawns,—it would have been a direct checkmate! Think of his folly! he stopped to take the queen's pawn with his bishop, and within one move of a checkmate!"

"Quite insane!" repeated the Doctor. "But I must have my breakfast. She seems quiet; I think I can keep her till after breakfast, and then I must try and find where the poor child's friends live. I don't know what Mrs. Lester will think of her."

They rode on. Isabella looked timidly round.

"You don't quite believe me," she said, at last. "It seems strange to you."

"It does," answered the Doctor, "seem very strange."

"Not stranger than to me," said Isabella,—"it is so very grand to me! All this motion! Look down at that great field there, not cut up into squares! If I only had my knights and squires there! I would be willing to give her as good a field, too; but I would show her where the true bravery lies. What a place for the castles, just to defend that pass!"

The Doctor whipped up his horse.

Mrs. Lester was a little surprised at the companion her husband had brought home to breakfast with him.

"Who is it?" she whispered.

"That I don't know,—I shall have to find out," he answered, a little nervously.

"Where is her bonnet?" asked Mrs. Lester; this was the first absence of conventionality she had noticed.

"You had better ask her," answered the Doctor.

But Mrs. Lester preferred leaving her guest in the parlor while she questioned her husband. She was somewhat disturbed when she found he had nothing more satisfactory to tell her.

"An insane girl! and what shall we do with her?" she asked.

"After breakfast I will make some inquiries about her," answered the
Doctor.

"And leave her alone with us? that will never do! You must take her away directly,—at least to the Insane Asylum,—somewhere! What if she should grow wild while you were gone? She might kill us all! I will go in and tell her that she cannot stay here."

On returning to the parlor, she found Isabella looking dreamily out of the window. As Mrs. Lester approached, she turned.

"You will let me stay with you a little while, will you not?"

She spoke in a quiet tone, with an air somewhat commanding. It imposed upon nervous little Mrs. Lester. But she made a faint struggle.

"Perhaps you would rather go home," she said.

"I have no home now," said Isabella; "some time I may recover it; but my throne has been usurped."

Mrs. Lester looked round in alarm, to see if the Doctor were near.

"Perhaps you had better come in to breakfast," she suggested.

She was glad to place the Doctor between herself and their new guest.

Celia Lester, the only daughter, came down stairs. She had heard that her father had picked up a lost girl in the road. As she came down in her clean morning dress, she expected to have to hold her skirts away from some little squalid object of charity. She started when she saw the elegant-looking young girl who sat at the table. There was something in her air and manner that seemed to make the breakfast equipage, and the furniture of the room about her, look a little mean and poor. Yet the Doctor was very well off, and Mrs. Lester fancied she had everything quite in style. Celia stole into her place, feeling small in the presence of the stranger.

After breakfast, when the Doctor had somewhat refreshed himself by its good cheer from his last night's fatigue, Isabella requested to speak with him.

"Let me stay with you a little while," she asked, beseechingly; "I will do everything for you that you desire. You shall teach me anything;—I know I can learn all that you will show me, all that Mrs. Lester will tell me."

"Perhaps so,—perhaps that will be best," answered the Doctor, "until your friends inquire for you; then I must send you back to them."

"Very well, very well," said Isabella, relieved. "But I must tell you they will not inquire for me. I see you will not believe my story. If you only would listen to me, I could tell it all to you."

"That is the only condition I can make with you," answered the Doctor, "that you will not tell your story,—that you will never even think of it yourself. I am a physician. I know that it is not good for you to dwell upon such things. Do not talk of them to me, nor to my wife or daughter. Never speak of your story to any one who comes here. It will be better for you."

"Better for me," said Isabella, dreamily, "that no one should know! Perhaps so. I am, in truth, captive to the White Prince; and if he should come and demand me,—I should be half afraid to try the risks of another game."

"Stop, stop!" exclaimed the Doctor, "you are already forgetting the condition. I shall be obliged to take you away to some retreat, unless you promise me"——

"Oh, I will promise you anything." interrupted Isabella; "and you will see that I can keep my promise."

Meanwhile Mrs. Lester and Celia had been holding a consultation.

"I think she must be some one in disguise," suggested Celia.

Celia was one of the most unromantic of persons. Both she and her mother had passed their lives in an unvarying routine of duties. Neither of them had ever found time from their sewing even to read. Celia had her books of history laid out, that she meant to take up when she should get through her work; but it seemed hopeless that this time would ever come. It had never come to Mrs. Lester, and she was now fifty years old. Celia had never read any novels. She had tried to read them, but never was interested in them. So she had a vague idea of what romance was, conceiving of it only as something quite different from her every-day life. For this reason the unnatural event that was taking place this very day was gradually appearing to her something possible and natural. Because she knew there was such a thing as romance, and that it was something quite beyond her comprehension, she was the more willing to receive this event quietly from finding it incomprehensible.

"We can let her stay here to-day, at least," said Mrs. Lester. "We will keep John at work in the front door-yard, in case we should want him. And I will set Mrs. Anderson's boy to weeding in the border; we can call him, if we should want to send for help."

She was quite ashamed of herself, when she had uttered these words, and
Isabella walked into the room, so composed, so refined in her manners.

"The Doctor says I may stay here a little while, if you will let me," said Isabella, as she took Mrs. Lester's hands.

"We will try to make you comfortable," replied Mrs. Lester.

"He says you will teach me many things,—I think he said, how to sew."

"How to sew! Was it possible she did not know how to sew?" Celia thought to herself, "How many servants she must have had, never to have learned how to sew, herself!"

And this occupation was directly provided, while the Doctor set forth on his day's duties, and at the same time to inquire about the strange apparition of the young girl. He was so convinced that there was a vein of insanity about her, that he was very sure that questioning her only excited her the more. Just as he had parted from her, some compunction seized her, and she followed him to the door.

"There is my father," said she.

"Your father! where shall I find him?" asked the Doctor.

"Oh, he could not help me," she replied; "it is a long time since he has been able to direct affairs. He has scarcely been conscious of my presence, and will hardly feel my absence, his mind is so weak."

"But where can I find him?" persisted the Doctor.

"He did not come out," said Isabella; "the White Queen would not allow it, indeed."

"Stop, stop!" exclaimed the Doctor, "we are on forbidden ground."

He drove away.

"So there is insanity in the family," he thought to himself. "I am quite interested in this case. A new form of monomania! I should be quite sorry to lose sight of it. I shall be loath to give her up to her friends."

But he was not yet put to that test. No one could give him any light with regard to the strange girl. He went first to the Willows, and found there so much confusion that he could hardly persuade any one to listen to his questions. Mrs. Fogerty's brother, the geologist, had been riding that morning, and had fallen from his horse and broken his leg. The Doctor arrived just in time to be of service in setting it. Then he must linger some time to see that the old gentleman was comfortable, so that he was obliged to stay nearly the whole morning. He was much amused at the state of disturbance in which he left the family. The whole house was in confusion, looking after some lost chessmen.

"There was nothing," said Mrs. Fogerty, apologetically, "that would soothe her brother so much as a game of chess. That, perhaps, might keep him quiet. He would be willing to play chess with Mr. Fogerty by the day together. It was so strange! they had a game the night before, and now some of the pieces could not be found. Her brother had lost the game, and to-day he was so eager to take his revenge!"

"How absurd!" thought the Doctor; "what trifling things people interest themselves in! Here is this old man more disturbed at losing his game of chess than he is at breaking his leg! It is different in my profession, where one deals with life and death. Here is this young girl's fate in my hands, and they talk to me of the loss of a few paltry chessmen!"

The "foreign people" at the cottage knew nothing of Isabella. No one had seen her the night before, or at any time. Dr. Lester even drove ten miles to Dr. Giles's Retreat for the Insane, to see if it were possible that a patient could have wandered away from there. Dr. Giles was deeply interested in the account Dr. Lester gave. He would very gladly take such a person under his care.

"No," said Dr. Lester, "I will wait awhile. I am interested in the young girl. It is not impossible but that I shall in time find out from her, by chance, perhaps, who her friends are, and where she came from. She must have wandered away in some delirium of fever,—but it is very strange, for she appears perfectly calm now. Yet I hardly know in what state I shall find her."

He returned to find her very quiet and calm, learning from his wife and daughter how to sew. She seemed deeply interested in this new occupation, and had given all her time and thought to it. Celia and her mother privately confided to the Doctor their admiration of their strange guest. Her ways were so graceful and beautiful! all that she said seemed so new and singular! The Doctor, before he went away, had exhorted Mrs. Lester and Celia to ask her no questions about her former life, and everything had gone on very smoothly. And everything went on as smoothly for some weeks. Isabella seemed willing to be as silent as the Doctor, upon all exciting subjects. She appeared to be quite taken up with her sewing, much to Mrs. Lester's delight.

"She will turn out quite as good a seamstress as Celia," said she to the Doctor. "She sews steadily all the time, and nothing seems to please her so much as to finish a piece of work. She will be able to do much more than her own sewing, and may prove quite a help to us."

"I shall be very glad," said the Doctor, "if anything can be a help, to prevent you and Celia from working yourselves to death. I shall be glad if you can ever have done with that eternal sewing. It is time that Celia should do something about cultivating her mind."

"Celia's mind is so well regulated," interrupted Mrs. Lester.

"We won't discuss that," continued the Doctor,—"we never come to an agreement there. I was going on to say that I am becoming so interested in Isabella, that I feel towards her as if she were my own. If she is of help to the family, that is very well,—it is the best thing for her to be able to make herself of use. But I don't care to make any profit to ourselves out of her help. Somehow I begin to think of her as belonging to us. Certainly she belongs to nobody else. Let us treat her as our own child. We have but one, yet God has given us means enough to care for many more. I confess I should find it hard to give Isabella up to any one else. I like to find her when I come home,—it is pleasant to look at her."

"And I, too, love her," said Mrs. Lester. "I like to see her as she sits quietly at her work."

So Isabella went on learning what it was to be one of the family, and becoming, as Mrs. Lester remarked, a very experienced seamstress. She seldom said anything as she sat at her work, but seemed quite occupied with her sewing; while Mrs. Lester and Celia kept up a stream of conversation, seldom addressing Isabella, as, indeed, they had few topics in common.

One day, Celia and Isabella were sitting together.

"Have you always sewed?" asked Isabella.

"Oh, yes," answered Celia,—"since I was quite a child."

"And do you remember when you were a child?" asked Isabella, laying down her work.

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Celia; "I used to make all my doll's dresses myself."

"Your doll's dresses!" repeated Isabella.

"Oh, yes," replied Celia,—"I was not ashamed to play with dolls in that way."

"I should like to see some dolls," said Isabella.

"I will show you my large doll," said Celia; "I have always kept it, because I fitted it out with such a nice set of clothes. And I keep it for children to play with."

She brought her doll, and Isabella handled it and looked at it with curiosity.

"So you dressed this, and played with it," said Isabella, inquiringly, "and moved it about as one would move a piece at chess?"

Celia started at this word "chess." It was one of the forbidden words.
But Isabella went on:—

"Suppose this doll should suddenly have begun to speak, to move, and walk round, would not you have liked it?"

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Celia. "What! a wooden thing speak and move! It would have frightened me very much."

"Why should it not speak, if it has a mouth, and walk, if it has feet?" asked Isabella.

"What foolish questions you ask!" exclaimed Celia, "of course it has not life."

"Oh, life,—that is it!" said Isabella. "Well, what is life?"

"Life! why it is what makes us live," answered Celia. "Of course you know what life is."

"No, I don't know," said Isabella, "but I have been thinking about it lately, while I have been sewing,—what it is."

"But you should not think, you should talk more, Isabella," said Celia.
"Mamma and I talk while we are at work, but you are always very silent."

"But you think sometimes?" asked Isabella.

"Not about such things," replied Celia. "I have to think about my work."

"But your father thinks, I suppose, when he comes home and sits in his study alone?"

"Oh, he reads when he goes into his study,—he reads books and studies them," said Celia.

"Do you know how to read?" asked Isabella.

"Do I know how to read!" cried Celia, angrily.

"Forgive me," said Isabella, quickly, "but I never saw you reading. I thought perhaps—women are so different here!"

She did not finish her sentence, for she saw Celia was really angry. Yet she had no idea of hurting her feelings. She had tried to accommodate herself to her new circumstances. She had observed a great deal, and had never been in the habit of asking questions. Celia was disturbed at having it supposed that she did not know how to read; therefore it must be a very important thing to know how to read, and she determined she must learn. She applied to the Doctor. He was astonished at her entire ignorance, but he was very glad to help her. Isabella gave herself up to her reading, as she had done before to her sewing. The Doctor was now the gainer. All the time he was away, Isabella sat in his study, poring over her books; when he returned, she had a famous lesson to recite to him. Then he began to tell her of books that he was interested in. He made Celia come in, for a history class. It was such a pleasure to him to find Isabella interested in what he could tell her of history!

"All this really happened," said Isabella to Celia once,—"these people really lived!"

"Yes, but they died," responded Celia, in an indifferent tone,—"and ever so long ago, too!"

"But did they die," asked Isabella, "if we can talk about them, and imagine how they looked? They live for us as much as they did then."

"That I can't understand," said Celia. "My uncle saw Napoleon when he was in Europe, long ago. But I never saw Napoleon. He is dead and gone to me, just as much as Alexander the Great."

"Well, who does live, if Alexander the Great, if Napoleon, and Columbus do not live?" asked Isabella, impatiently.

"Why, papa and mamma live," answered Celia, "and you"——

"And the butcher," interrupted Isabella, "because he brings you meat to eat; and Mr. Spool, because he keeps the thread store. Thank you for putting me in, too! Once"——

"Once!" answered Celia, in a dignified tone, "I suppose once you lived in a grander circle, and it appears to you we have nobody better than Mr. Spool and the butcher."

Isabella was silent, and thought of her "circle," her former circle. The circle here was large enough, the circumference not very great, but there were as many points in it as in a larger one. There were pleasant, motherly Mrs. Gibbs, and her agreeable daughters,—the Gresham boys, just in college,—the Misses Tarletan, fresh from a New York boarding-school,—Mr. Lovell, the young minister,—and the old Misses Pendleton, that made raspberry-jam,—together with Celia's particular friends, Anna and Selina Mountfort, who had a great deal of talking with Celia in private, but not a word to say to anybody in the parlor. All these, with many others in the background, had been speculating upon the riddle that Isabella presented,—"Who was she? and where did she come from?"

Nobody found any satisfactory answer. Neither Celia nor her mother would disclose anything. It is a great convenience in keeping a secret, not to know what it is. One can't easily tell what one does not know.

"The Doctor really has a treasure in his wife and daughter," said Mrs. Gibbs, "they keep his secrets so well! Neither of them will lisp a word about this handsome Isabella."

"I have no doubt she is the daughter of an Italian refugee," said one of the Misses Tarletan. "We saw a number of Italian refugees in New York."

This opinion became prevalent in the neighborhood. That Dr. Lester should be willing to take charge of an unknown girl did not astonish those who knew of his many charitable deeds. It was not more than he had done for his cousin's child, who had no especial claim upon him. He had adopted Lawrence Egerton, educated him, sent him to college, and was giving him every advantage in his study of the law. In the end Lawrence would probably marry Celia and the pretty property that the Doctor would leave behind for his daughter.

"She is one of my patients," the Doctor would say, to any one who asked him about her.

The tale that she was the daughter of an Italian refugee became more rife after Isabella had begun to study Italian. She liked to have the musical Italian words linger on her tongue. She quoted Italian poetry, read Italian history. In conversation, she generally talked of the present, rarely of the past or of the future. She listened with wonder to those who had a talent for reminiscence. How rich their past must be, that they should be willing to dwell in it! Her own she thought very meagre. If she wanted to live in the past, it must be in the past of great men, not in that of her own little self. So she read of great painters and great artists, and because she read of them she talked of them. Other people, in referring to bygone events, would say, "When I was in Trenton last summer,"—"In Cuba the spring that we were there"; but Isabella would say, "When Raphael died, or when Dante lived." Everybody liked to talk with her,—laughed with her at her enthusiasm. There was something inspiring, too, in this enthusiasm; it compelled attention, as her air and manner always attracted notice. By her side, the style and elegance of the Misses Tarletan faded out; here was a moon that quite extinguished the light of their little tapers. She became the centre of admiration; the young girls admired her, as they are prone to admire some one particular star. She never courted attention, but it was always given.

"Isabella attracts everybody," said Celia to her mother. "Even the old Mr. Spencers, who have never been touched by woman before, follow her, and act just as she wills."

Little Celia, who had been quite a belle hitherto, sunk into the shade by the side of the brilliant Isabella. Yet she followed willingly in the sunny wake that Isabella left behind. She expanded somewhat, herself, for she was quite ashamed to know nothing of all that Isabella talked about so earnestly. The sewing gave place to a little reading, to Mrs. Lester's horror. The Mountforts and the Gibbses met with Isabella and Celia to read and study, and went into town with them to lectures and to concerts.

A winter passed away and another summer came. Still Isabella was at Dr.
Lester's; and with the lapse of time the harder did it become for the
Doctor to question her of her past history,—the more, too, was she
herself weaned from it.

The young people had been walking in the garden one evening.

"Let me sit by you here in the porch," said Lawrence Egerton to Celia,—"I want rest, for body and spirit. I am always in a battle-field when I am talking with Isabella. I must either fight with her or against her. She insists on my fighting all the time. I have to keep my weapons bright, ready for use, every moment. She will lead me, too, in conversation, sends me here, orders me there. I feel like a poor knight in chess, under the sway of a queen"——

"I don't know anything about chess," said Celia, curtly.

"It is a comfort to have you a little ignorant," said Lawrence. "Please stay in bliss awhile. It is repose, it is refreshment. Isabella drags one into the company of her heroes, and then one feels completely ashamed not to be on more familiar terms with them all. Her Mazzinis, her Tancreds, heroes false and true,—it makes no difference to her,—put one into a whirl between history and story. What a row she would make in Italy, if she went back there!"

"What could we do without her?" said Celia; "it was so quiet and commonplace before she came!"

"That is the trouble," replied Lawrence, "Isabella won't let anything remain commonplace. She pulls everything out of its place,—makes a hero or heroine out of a piece of clay. I don't want to be in heroics all the time. Even Homer's heroes ate their suppers comfortably. I think it was a mistake in your father, bringing her here. Let her stay in her sphere queening it, and leave us poor mortals to our bread and butter."

"You know you don't think so," expostulated Celia; "you worship her shoe-tie, the hem of her garment."

"But I don't want to," said Lawrence,—"it is a compulsory worship. I had rather be quiet."

"Lazy Lawrence!" cried Celia, "it is better for you. You would be the first to miss Isabella. You would find us quite flat without her brilliancy, and would be hunting after some other excitement."

"Perhaps so," said Lawrence. "But here she comes to goad us on again.
Queen Isabella, when do the bull-fights begin?"

"I wish I were Queen Isabella!" she exclaimed. "Have you read the last accounts from Spain? I was reading them to the Doctor to-day. Nobody knows what to do there. Only think what an opportunity for the Queen to show herself a queen! Why will not she make of herself such a queen as the great Isabella of Castile was?"

"I can't say," answered Lawrence.

"Queens rule in chess," said Horace Gresham. "I always wondered that the king was made such a poor character there. He is not only ruled by his cabinet, bishops, and knights, but his queen is by far the more warlike character."

"Whoever plays the game rules,—you or Mr. Egerton," said Isabella, bitterly; "it is not the poor queen. She must yield to the power of the moving hand. I suppose it is so with us women. We see a great aim before us, but have not the power."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Lawrence, "it is just the reverse. With some women,—for I won't be personal,—the aim, as you call it, is very small,—a poor amusement, another dress, a larger house"——

"You may stop," interrupted Isabella, "for you don't believe this. At least, keep some of your flings for the women that deserve them; Celia and I don't accept them."

"Then we'll talk of the last aim we were discussing,—the ride to-morrow."

The next winter was passed by Mrs. Lester, her daughter, and Isabella in Cuba. Lawrence Egerton accompanied them thither, and the Doctor hoped to go for them in the spring. They went on Mrs. Lester's account. She had worn herself out with her household labors,—very uselessly, the Doctor thought,—so he determined to send her away from them. Isabella and Celia were very happy all this winter and spring. With Isabella Spanish took the place of Italian studies. She liked talking in Spanish. They made some friends among the residents, as well as among the strangers, particularly the Americans. Of these last, they enjoyed most the society of Mrs. Blanchard and her son, Otho, who were at the same hotel with them.

The opera, too, was a new delight to Isabella, and even Celia was excited by it.

"It is a little too absurd, to see the dying scene of Romeo and Juliet sung out in an opera!" remarked Lawrence Egerton, one morning; "all the music of the spheres could not have made that scene, last night, otherwise than supremely ridiculous."

"I am glad you did not sit by us, then," replied Celia; "Isabella and I were crying."

"I dare say," said Lawrence. "I should be afraid to take you to see a tragedy well acted. You would both be in hysterics before the killing was over."

"I should be really afraid," said Celia, "to see Romeo and Juliet finely performed. It would be too sad."

"It would be much better to end it up comfortably," said Lawrence. "Why should not Juliet marry her Romeo in peace?"

"It would be impossible!" exclaimed Isabella,—"impossible to bring together two such hostile families! Of course the result must be a tragedy."

"In romances," answered Lawrence, "that may be necessary; but not in real life."

"Why not in real life?" asked Isabella. "When two thunder-clouds meet, there must be an explosion."

"But we don't have such hostile families arrayed against each other now-a-days," said Lawrence. "The Bianchi and the Neri have died out; unless the feud lives between the whites and the blacks of the present day."

"Are you sure that it has died out everywhere?" asked Isabella.

"Certainly not," said Otho Blanchard; "my mother, Bianca Bianco, inherits her name from a long line of ancestry, and with it come its hatreds as well as its loves."

"You speak like an Italian or Spaniard," said Lawrence. "We are cold-blooded Yankees, and in our slow veins such passions do die out. I should have taken you for an American from your name."

"It is our name Americanized; we have made Americans of ourselves, and the Bianchi have become the Blanchards."

"The romance of the family, then," persisted Lawrence, "must needs become Americanized too. If you were to meet with a lovely young lady of the enemy's race, I think you would be willing to bury your sword in the sheath for her sake."

"I hope I should not forget the honor of my family," said Otho. "I certainly never could, as long as my mother lives; her feelings on the subject are stronger even than mine."

"I cannot imagine the possibility of such feelings dying out," said Isabella. "I cannot imagine such different elements amalgamating. It would be like fire and water uniting. Then there would be no longer any contest; the game of life would be over."

"Why will you make out life to be a battle always?" exclaimed Lawrence; "won't you allow us any peace? I do not find such contests all the time,—never, except when I am fighting with you."

"I had rather fight with you than against you," said Isabella, laughing.
"But when one is not striving, one is sleeping."

"That reminds me that it is time for our siesta," said Lawrence; "so we need not fight any longer."

Afterwards Isabella and Celia were talking of their new friend Otho.

"He does not seem to me like a Spaniard," said Celia, "his complexion is so light; then, too, his name sounds German."

"But his passions are quick," replied Isabella. "How he colored up when he spoke of the honor of his family!"

"I wonder that you like him," said Celia; "when he is with his mother, he hardly ventures to say his soul is his own."

"I don't like his mother," said Isabella; "her manner is too imperious and unrefined, it appears to me. No wonder that Otho is ill at ease in her presence. It is evident that her way of talking is not agreeable to him. He is afraid that she will commit herself in some way."

"But he never stands up for himself," answered Celia; "he always yields to her. Now I should not think you would like that."

"He yields because she is his mother," said Isabella; "and it would not be becoming to contradict her."

"He yields to you, too," said Celia; "how happens that?"

"I hope he does not yield to me more than is becoming," answered Isabella, laughing; "perhaps that is why I like him. After all, I don't care to be always sparring, as I am with Lawrence Egerton. With Otho I find that I agree wonderfully in many things. Neither of us yields to the other, neither of us is obliged to convince the other."

"Now I should think you would find that stupid," said Celia. "What becomes of this desire of yours never to rest, always to be struggling after something?"

"We might strive together, we might struggle together," responded
Isabella.

She said this musingly, not in answer to Celia, but to her own thoughts,—as she looked away, out from everything that surrounded her. The passion for ruling had always been uppermost in her mind; suddenly there dawned upon her the pleasure of being ruled. She became conscious of the pleasure of conquering all things for the sake of giving all to another. A new sense of peace stole upon her mind. Before, she had felt herself alone, even in the midst of the kindness of the home that had been given her. She had never dared to think or to speak of the past, and as little of the future. She had gladly flung herself into the details of every-day life. She had given her mind to the study of all that it required. She loved the Doctor, because he was always leading her on to fresh fields, always exciting her to a new knowledge. She loved him, too, for himself, for his tenderness and kindness to her. With Mrs. Lester and Celia she felt herself on a different footing. They admired her, but they never came near her. She led them, and they were always behind her.

With Otho she experienced a new feeling. He seemed, very much as she did herself, out of place in the world just around him. He was a foreigner,—was not yet acclimated to the society about him. He was willing to talk of other things than every-day events. He did not talk of "things," indeed, but he speculated, as though he lived a separate life from that of mere eating and drinking. He was not content with what seemed to every-day people possible, but was willing to believe that there were things not dreamed of in their philosophy.

"It is a satisfaction," said Lawrence once to Celia, "that Isabella has found somebody who will go high enough into the clouds to suit her. Besides, it gives me a little repose."

"And a secret jealousy at the same time; is it not so?" asked Celia. "He takes up too much of Isabella's time to please you."

"The reason he pleases her," said Lawrence, "is because he is more womanly than manly, and she thinks women ought to rule the world. Now if the world were made up of such as he, it would be very easily ruled. Isabella loves power too well to like to see it in others. Look at her when she is with Mrs. Blanchard! It is a splendid sight to see them together!"

"How can you say so? I am always afraid of some outbreak."

These families were, however, so much drawn together, that, when the Doctor came to summon his wife and daughter and Isabella home, Mrs. Blanchard was anxious to accompany them to New England. She wondered if it were not possible to find a country-seat somewhere near the Lesters, that she could occupy for a time. The Doctor knew that the Willows was to be vacant this spring. The Fogertys were all going to Europe, and would be very willing to let their place.

So it was arranged after their return. The Fogertys left for Europe, and Mrs. Blanchard took possession of the Willows. It was a pleasant walking distance from the Lesters, but it was several weeks before Isabella made her first visit there. She was averse to going into the house, but, in company with Celia, Lawrence, and Otho, walked about the grounds. Presently they stopped near a pretty fountain that was playing in the midst of the garden.

"That is a pretty place for an Undine," said Otho.

"The idea of an Undine makes me shiver," said Lawrence. "Think what a cold-blooded, unearthly being she would be!"

"Not after she had a soul!" exclaimed Isabella.

"An Undine with a soul!" cried Lawrence. "I conceive of them as malicious spirits, who live and die as the bubbles of water rise and fall."

"You talk as if there were such things as Undines," said Celia. "I remember once trying to read the story of Undine, but I never could finish it."

"It ends tragically," remarked Otho.

"Of course all such stories must," responded Lawrence; "of course it is impossible to bring the natural and the unnatural together."

"That depends upon what you call the natural," said Otho.

"We should differ, I suppose," said Lawrence, "if we tried to explain what we each call the natural. I fancy your 'real life' is different from mine."

"Pictures of real life," said Isabella, "are sometimes pictures of horses and dogs, sometimes of children playing, sometimes of fruits of different seasons heaped upon one dish, sometimes of watermelons cut open."

"That is hardly your picture of real life," said Lawrence, laughing,—"a watermelon cut open! I think you would rather choose the picture of the Water Fairies from the Düsseldorf Gallery."

"Why not?" said Isabella. "The life we see must be very far from being the only life that is."

"That is very true," answered Lawrence; "but let the fairies live their life by themselves, while we live our life in our own way. Why should they come to disturb our peace, since we cannot comprehend them, and they certainly cannot comprehend us?"

"You do not think it well, then," said Isabella, stopping in their walk, and looking down,—"you do not think it well that beings of different natures should mingle?"

"I do not see how they can," replied Lawrence. "I am limited by my senses; I can perceive only what they show me. Even my imagination can picture to me only what my senses can paint."

"Your senses!" cried Otho, contemptuously,—"it is very true, as you confess, you are limited by your senses. Is all this beauty around you created merely for you—and the other insects about us? I have no doubt it is filled with invisible life."

"Do let us go in!" said Celia. "This talk, just at twilight, under the shade of this shrubbery, makes me shudder. I am not afraid of the fairies. I never could read fairy stories when I was a child; they were tiresome to me. But talking in this way makes one timid. There might be strollers or thieves under all these hedges."

They went into the house, through the hall, and different apartments, till they reached the drawing-room. Isabella stood transfixed upon the threshold. It was all so familiar to her!—everything as she had known it before! Over the mantelpiece hung the picture of the scornful Spanish lady; a heavy bookcase stood in one corner; comfortable chairs and couches were scattered round the room; beautiful landscapes against the wall seemed like windows cut into foreign scenery. There was an air of ease in the room, an old-fashioned sort of ease, such as the Fogertys must have loved.

"It is a pretty room, is it not?" said Lawrence. "You look at it as if it pleased you. How much more comfort there is about it than in the fashionable parlors of the day! It is solid, substantial comfort."

"You look at it as if you had seen it before," said Otho to Isabella.
"Do you know the room impressed me in that way, too?"

"It is singular," said Lawrence, "the feeling, that 'all this has been before,' that comes over one at times. I have heard it expressed by a great many people."

"Have you, indeed, ever had this feeling?" asked Isabella.

"Certainly," replied Lawrence; "I say to myself sometimes, 'I have been through all this before!' and I can almost go on to tell what is to come next,—it seems so much a part of my past experience."

"It is strange it should be so with you,—and with you too," she said, turning to Otho.

"Perhaps we are all more alike than we have thought," said Otho.

Otho's mother appeared, and the conversation took another turn.

Isabella did not go to the Willows again, until all the Lester family were summoned there to a large party that Mrs. Blanchard gave. She called it a house-warming, although she had been in the house some time. It was a beautiful evening. A clear moonlight made it as brilliant outside on the lawn as the lights made the house within. There was a band of music stationed under the shrubbery, and those who chose could dance. Those who were more romantic wandered away down the shaded walks, and listened to the dripping of the fountain.

Lawrence and Isabella returned from a walk through the grounds, and stopped a moment on the terrace in front of the house. Just then a dark cloud appeared in the sky, threatening the moon. The wind, too, was rising, and made a motion among the leaves of the trees.

"Do you remember," asked Lawrence, "that child's story of the Fisherman and his Wife? how the fisherman went down to the sea-shore, and cried out,—

'O man of the sea,
Come listen to me!
For Alice, my wife,
The plague of my life,
Has sent me to beg a boon of thee!'

The sea muttered and roared;—do you remember? There was always something impressive to me in the descriptions, in the old story, of the changes in the sea, and of the tempest that rose up, more and more fearful, as the fisherman's wife grew more ambitious and more and more grasping in her desires, each time that the fisherman went down to the sea-shore. I believe my first impression of the sea came from that. The coming on of a storm is always associated with it. I always fancy that it is bringing with it something beside the tempest,—that there is something ruinous behind it."

"That is more fanciful than you usually are," said Isabella; "but, alas!
I cannot remember your story, for I never read it."

"That is where your education and Celia's was fearfully neglected," said
Lawrence; "you were not brought up on fairy stories and Mother Goose.
You have not needed the first, as Celia has; but Mother Goose would have
given a tone to your way of thinking, that is certainly wanting."

A little while afterwards, Isabella stood upon the balcony steps leading from the drawing-room. Otho was with her. The threatening clouds had driven almost every one into the house. There was distant thunder and lightning; but through the cloud-rifts, now and then, the moonlight streamed down. Isabella and Otho had been talking earnestly,—so earnestly, that they were quite unobservant of the coming storm, of the strange lurid light that hung around.

"It is strange that this should take place here!" said Isabella,—"that just here I should learn that you love me! Strange that my destiny should be completed in this spot!"

"And this spot has its strange associations with me," said Otho, "of which I must some time speak to you. But now I can think only of the present. Now, for the first time, do I feel what life is,—now that you have promised to be mine!"

Otho was interrupted by a sudden cry. He turned to find his mother standing behind him.

"You are here with Isabella! she has promised herself to you!" she exclaimed. "It is a fatality, a terrible fatality! Listen, Isabella! You are the Queen of the Red Chessmen; and he, Otho, is the King of the White Chessmen,—and I, their Queen. Can there be two queens? Can there be a marriage between two hostile families? Do you not see, if there were a marriage between the Reds and the Whites, there were no game? Look! I have found our old prison! The pieces would all be here,—but we, we are missing! Would you return to the imprisonment of this poor box,—to your old mimic life? No, my children, go back! Isabella, marry this Lawrence Egerton, who loves you. You will find what life is, then. Leave Otho, that he may find this same life also."

Isabella stood motionless.

"Otho, the White Prince! Alas! where is my hatred? But life without him! Even stagnation were better! I must needs be captive to the White Prince!"

She stretched out her hand to Otho. He seized it passionately. At this moment there was a grand crash of thunder.

A gust of wind extinguished at once all the lights in the drawing-room.
The terrified guests hurried into the hall, into the other rooms.

"The lightning must have struck the house!" they exclaimed.

A heavy rain followed; then all was still. Everybody began to recover his spirits. The servants relighted the candles. The drawing-room was found untenanted. It was time to go; yet there was a constraint upon all the party, who were eager to find their hostess and bid her good-bye.

But the hostess could not be found! Isabella and Otho, too, were missing! The Doctor and Lawrence went everywhere, calling for them, seeking them in the house, in the grounds. They were nowhere to be found,—neither that night, nor the next day, nor ever afterwards!

The Doctor found in the balcony a box of chessmen fallen down. It was nearly filled; but the red queen, and the white king and queen, were lying at a little distance. In the box was the red king, his crown fallen from his head, himself broken in pieces. The Doctor took up the red queen, and carried it home.

"Are you crazy?" asked his wife. "What are you going to do with that red queen?"

But the Doctor placed the figure on his study-table, and often gazed at it wistfully.

Whenever, afterwards, as was often the case, any one suggested a new theory to account for the mysterious disappearance of Isabella and the Blanchards, the Doctor looked at the carved image on his table and was silent.

* * * * *

DAYBREAK.

A wind came up out of the sea,
And said, "O mists, make room for me!"

It hailed the ships, and cried, "Sail on,
Ye mariners! the night is gone!"

And hurried landward far away,
Crying, "Awake! it is the day!"

It said unto the forest, "Shout!
Hang all your leafy banners out!"

It touched the wood-bird's folded wing,
And said, "O bird, awake and sing!"

And o'er the farms, "O chanticleer,
Your clarion blow! the day is near!"

It whispered to the fields of corn,
"Bow down, and hail the coming morn!"

It shouted through the belfry-tower,
"Awake, O bell! proclaim the hour!"

It crossed the churchyard with a sigh,
And said, "Not yet! in quiet lie!"

TEA.

Gossiping Mr. Pepys little imagined, when he wrote in his Diary, September 25th, 1660, "I did send for a cup of tee, (a China drink,) of which I never had drank before," that he had mentioned a beverage destined to exert a world-wide influence on civilization, and in due time gladden every heart in his country, from that of the Sovereign Lady Victoria, down to humble Mrs. Miff with her "mortified bonnet." Reader, if you wish some little information on the subjects of tea-growing, gathering, curing, and shipping, you must come with us to China, in spite of the war. We know how to elude the blockade, how to beard Viceroy Yeh; and in one of the great hongs on the Canton River we will give you a short lecture on the virtues of Souchong and flowery Pekoe.

The native name of the article is Cha, although it has borne two or three names among the Chinese,—in the fourth century being called Ming. To botanists it is known as Thea, having many affinities with the Camellia. It has long been a doubtful point whether or not two species exist, producing the green and black teas. True, there are the green-tea country and the black-tea region, hundreds of miles apart; but the latest investigation goes to prove that there is really but one plant. Mr. Robert Fortune, whose recent and interesting work, "The Tea Countries of China and India," is familiar to many of our readers, has not only had peculiar facilities for gaining a knowledge of tea as grown in the Central Flowery Kingdom, but is, moreover, one of the most scientific of English botanists. He maintains the "unity theory" of the plant, and we are content to agree with him,—the differences in the leaves being owing to climate, situation, soil, and other accidental influences. The shrub is generally from three to six feet high, having numerous branches and a very dense foliage. Its wood is hard and tough, giving off a disagreeable smell when cut. The leaves are smooth, shining, of a dark green color, and with notched edges; those of the Thea Bohea, the black tea, being curled and oblong,—while those of the Thea viridis, the green tea, are broader in proportion to their length, but not so thick, and curled at the apex. The plant flowers early in the spring, remaining in bloom about a month; and its seeds ripen in December and January. According to Chinese authority, tea is grown in nearly every province of the empire; but the greater part of it is produced in four or five provinces, affording all that is shipped from Canton. Very large quantities, however, are consumed by the countries adjoining the western frontier, and Russia draws an immense supply by caravans, all of which is the product of the northwest provinces. The Bohea Hills, in Lat. 27° 47' North, and Long. 119° East, distant about nine hundred miles from Canton, produce the finest kinds of black tea; while the green teas are chiefly raised in another province, several hundred miles farther north. The soil of many plantations examined by Mr. Fortune is very thin and poor, in some places little more than sand, such soil as would grow pines and scrub oaks. The shrubs are generally planted on the slopes of hills, the plants in many places not interfering with the cultivation of wheat and other grain. They are always raised from seeds, which in the first place are sown very thickly together, as many of them never shoot; and when the young plants have attained the proper size they are transplanted into the beds prepared for them, although in some cases the seeds are sown in the proper situations without removal. Care is taken that the plants be not overshadowed by large trees, and many superstitious notions prevail as to the noxious influence of certain vegetables in the vicinity. Although the shrub is very hardy, not being injured even by snow, yet the weather has great influence on the quality of the leaves, and many directions are given by Chinese authors with regard to the proper care to be observed in the culture of the plant. Leaves are first gathered from it when it is three years old, but it does not attain its greatest size for six or seven,—thriving, according to care and situation, from ten to twenty years.

The famous Bohea Hills are said to derive their name from two brothers, Woo and E, the sons of a prince in ancient times, who refused to succeed him, and came to reside among these mountains, where to this day the people burn incense to their memory. Another legend states that the people of this district were first taught the use of tea as a beverage by a venerable man who suddenly appeared among them, holding a sprig in his hand, from which he proposed that they should make a decoction and drink it. On their doing so and approving the drink, he instantly vanished.

There is very great choice in the teas; connoisseurs being much more particular in their taste than even the most fastidious wine-drinkers. Purchasers inquire the position of the gardens from which the samples were taken; teas from the summit of a hill, from the middle, and from the base bearing different values. Some of the individual shrubs are greatly prized; one being called the "egg-plant," growing in a deep gully between two hills, and nourished by water which trickles from the precipice. Another is appropriated exclusively to the imperial use, and an officer is appointed every year to superintend the gathering and curing. The produce of such plants is never sent to Canton, being reserved entirely for the emperor and the grandees of the court, and commanding enormous prices; the most valuable being said to be worth one hundred and fifty dollars a pound, and the cheapest not less than twenty-five dollars. There is said to be a very fine kind called "monkey tea," from the fact that it grows upon heights inaccessible to man, and that monkeys are therefore trained to pick it. For the truth of this story I cannot vouch, and of course ask no one to believe it.

The picking of the leaf is frequently performed by a different class of laborers from those who cultivate it; but the customs vary in different places. There are four pickings in the course of the year,—the last one, however, being considered a mere gleaning. The first is made as early as the 15th of April, and sometimes sooner, when the delicate buds appear and the foliage is just opening, being covered with a whitish down. From this picking the finest kinds of tea are made, although the quantity is small. The next gathering is technically called "second spring," and takes place in the early part of June, when the branches are well covered, producing the greatest quantity of leaves. The third gathering, or "third spring," follows in about one month, when the branches are again searched, the most common kinds of tea being the result. The fourth gleaning is styled the "autumn dew"; but this is not universally observed, as the leaves are now old and of very inferior quality. These poorest sorts are sometimes clipped off with shears; but the general mode of gathering is by hand, the leaves being laid lightly on bamboo trays.

The curing of the leaf is of the utmost importance,—some kinds of tea depending almost entirely for their value on the mode of preparation. When the leaves are brought to the curing-houses, they are thinly spread upon bamboo trays, and placed in the wind to dry until they become somewhat soft; then, while lying on the trays, they are gently rubbed and rolled many times. From the labor attending this process the tea is called kung foocha, or "worked tea"; hence the English name of Congou. When the leaves have been sufficiently worked they are ready for the firing, an operation requiring the exercise of the greatest care. The iron pan used in the process is made red hot, and the workman sprinkles a handful of leaves upon it and waits until each leaf pops with a slight noise, when he at once sweeps all out of the pan, lest they should be burned, and then fires another handful. The leaves are then put into dry baskets over a pan of coals. Care is taken, by laying ashes over the fire, that no smoke shall ascend among the leaves, which are slowly stirred with the hand until perfectly dry. The tea is then poured into chests, and, when transported, placed in boxes enclosing leaden canisters, and papered to keep out the dampness. In curing the finest kinds of tea, such as Powchong, Pekoe, etc., not more than ten to twenty leaves are fired in the pan at one time, and only a few pounds rolled at once in the trays. As soon as cured, these fine teas are packed in papers, two or three pounds in each, and stamped with the name of the plantation and the date of curing.

Beside the hongs in Canton, which I shall presently speak of, there are large buildings, styled "pack-houses," containing all the apparatus for curing. Into these establishments foreigners are not readily admitted. Two or three rows of furnaces are built in a large, airy apartment, having a number of hemispherical iron pans inserted into the brick-work, two pans being heated by one fire. Into these pans the rolled leaves are thrown and stirred with the arm until too hot for the flesh to bear, when they are swept out and laid on a table covered with matting, where they are again rolled. The firing and rolling are sometimes repeated three or four times, according to the state of the leaves. The rolling is attended with some pain, as an acrid juice exudes from the leaves, which acts upon the hands; and the whole operation of tea-curing and packing is somewhat unpleasant, from the fine dust arising, and entering the nose and mouth,—to prevent which, the workmen often cover the lower part of the face with a cloth. The leaves are frequently tested, during the process of curing, by pouring boiling water upon them; and their strength and quality are judged of by the number of infusions that can be made from the same leaves, as many as fifteen drawings being obtained from the richest kinds.

Many persons have imagined that the peculiar effects of green tea upon the nerves after drinking it, as well as its color, are owing to its having been fired in copper pans, which is not the case, as no copper instruments are used in its manufacture; but these effects are probably due to the partial curing of the leaf, and its consequent retention of many of the peculiar properties of the growing plant. The bloom upon the cheaper kinds of green tea is produced by gypsum or Prussian blue; and perhaps the effects alluded to are in some degree caused by these minerals. Such teas are prepared entirely for exportation, the Chinese themselves never drinking them.

Each foreign house employs an inspector or taster, whose business it is to examine samples of all the teas submitted to the firm for purchase. When a taster has a lot of teas to examine, several samples, selected from various chests, being placed before him, he first of all takes up a large handful and smells it repeatedly, then chews some of it, and records his opinion in a huge folio, wherein are chronicled the merits of every lot examined by him; and lastly, he puts small portions of the various kinds into a great many little cups into which boiling water is poured, and when the tea is drawn he takes a sip of the infusion. With all due deference to his art, sometimes, when the taster does not know exactly what to say of a sample, the book will bear witness that the parcel has "a decided tea flavor." But the accuracy of good tasters is really wonderful; they will classify and fix the true value of a chop of teas beyond dispute, and the East India Company's tasters were occasionally of eminent service in detecting frauds. A first-rate tea-taster may make a fortune in a few years; but, from constantly inhaling minute particles of the herb, the health is frequently ruined.

The teas which come to Canton are brought chiefly by water. Only occasional land stages are used in transportation, the principal one being the pass which crosses the Ineiling Mountain, in the north of the Canton or Quang-tong Province, cut through at the beginning of the eighth century. As every article of merchandise which goes through the pass, either from the south or the north, is carried across on the backs of men, several hundred thousand porters are here employed. Many tortuous paths are cut over the mountain, and through them are continually passing these poor creatures, condemned by poverty to terrible fatigue, the work being so laborious that the generality of them live but a short time. At certain intervals are little bamboo sheds, where travellers rest on their journey, smoking a pipe and drinking tea for refreshment; while at the summit of the pass is an immense portal, or kind of triumphal arch, erected on the boundary line of the two Provinces of Quang-tong and Kiang-si. The teas, securely packed in chests wrapped in matting, are placed in the boats which ply upon the rivers flowing from the tea countries into the Poyang Lake, and after successive changes are at length brought to the foot of the Ineiling Mountain, carried over it on the backs of men, and reshipped on the south side of the pass. The boats in which the tea is brought to Canton convey from five hundred to eight hundred chests each, and are called chopboats by foreigners, from each lot of teas being called a chop. They serve admirably for inland navigation, drawing but little water, and are so rounded as to make it almost impossible to overset one. A ledge is built upon each side of the boat for the trackers, who, when the wind fails, collect in the bow, and, sticking long bamboo poles into the bed of the stream, walk along the ledge to the stern, thus propelling the barge, and repeating the operation as often as they have traversed the length of the planks. A number of excise posts and custom-houses are established along the route from the tea regions to Canton, for the purpose of levying duties on the teas, none being allowed to be sent to that city by coastwise voyages.

And now of the various kinds of black and green teas.—But, Reader, I hear you cry, "Halt! halt! pray do not bore us with a dry catalogue of the 'Padre Souchongs' and 'Twankays'; we know them already."—Then speak for me, immortal Pindar Cockloft! crusty bachelor that thou art! who hast told that tea and scandal are inseparable, and hast so wittily described a gathering around the urn as

"A convention of tattling, a tea-party hight,
Which, like meeting of witches, is brewed up
at night,
Where each matron arrives fraught with tales
of surprise,
With knowing suspicion and doubtful surmise;
Like the broomstick-whirled hags that appear
in Macbeth,
Each bearing some relic of venom or death,
To stir up the toil and to double the trouble,
That fire may burn, and that cauldron may
bubble.
The wives of our cits of inferior degree
Will soak up repute in a little Bohea;
The potion is vulgar, and vulgar the slang
With which on their neighbors' defects they
harangue.
But the scandal improves,—a refinement in
wrong!—
As our matrons are richer and rise to Souchong.
With Hyson, a beverage that's still more refined,
Our ladies of fashion enliven their mind,
And by nods, innuendoes, and hints, and what
not,
Reputations and tea send together to pot;
While madam in cambrics and laces arrayed,
With her plate and her liveries in splendid
parade,
Will drink in Imperial a friend at a sup,
Or in Gunpowder blow them by dozens all
up."

There, now, Reader, you have the best classification extant of teas; and
I will not detain you with any long descriptions of other kinds, seldom
heard of by Americans, such as the "Sparrow's Tongue," the "Black
Dragon," the "Dragon's Whiskers," the "Dragon's Pellet," the "Flowery
Fragrance," and the "Careful Firing."

Perhaps a notice of the great hongs will prove more interesting to you. They stretch for miles along the Canton River, and in the busy season are crammed with hundreds of thousands of chests, filled with the fragrant herb. The hongs front upon the river, in order that cargo-boats may approach them; but they have also another entrance at the end which opens from the suburbs. Imagine a building twelve hundred feet long by twenty to forty broad, and in some portions fifty feet high, built of brick, of one story, here and there open to the sky, with the floor as level as that of a ropewalk, and of such extent, that, to a person standing at one end, forms at the other end appear dwarfed, and men seem engaged in noiseless occupations: you have here the picture of a Chinese hong. In these warehouses the tea is assorted, repacked, and then put on board the chop-boats and sent down the river to the ships at their anchorage off Whampoa. Here are enormous scales for weighing the chests; here, where the light falls in from the roof, are tables placed for superintendents, who carefully watch the workmen; farther off, are foreigners inspecting a newly arrived chop; at the extreme end is the little apartment where the tea merchant receives people upon business; and through the high door beyond, we see the crowded river, and chopboats waiting for cargoes. At the river end of the building a second story is added, often fitted up with immense suites of beautiful rooms, elegantly furnished, and abounding with rare and costly articles of virtù. Here is a door leading higher still, out upon the roof, which is flat. Below us is the river with its myriads of boats, visible as far as the eye can reach, no less than eighty-four thousand belonging to Canton alone. On our right is the public square, where of late stood the foreign factories, now destroyed by the mob, while the flags of France, England, and America have disappeared. On our left is another vista of river life, the pagoda near Whampoa, and the forts of Dutch and French Folly. In our rear is the immense city of Canton, and opposite to us, across the river, lies the verdant island of Honan, with its villages, its canals, and its great Buddhist temple. On descending, we find that a servant has placed for us on a superb table in one of the pretty rooms cups of delicious tea,—it being the custom in all the hongs to offer the beverage to strangers at all times. A cup of the aromatic Oulong will serve to steady our nerves for the completion of the tea-lecture.

The visitor will soon form some idea of the magnitude of the tea trade, by going from one hong to another, and finding all of them filled with chests, while armies of coolies are bringing in chops, sorting cargoes, loading chop-boats, making leaden canisters, packing, and labelling the packages. A heavy gate, with brilliant, figures painted on it, and adorned with enormous lanterns, swings yawning open, and admits the stranger. Just inside of the gate, at a little table, sits a man who keeps count of the coolies, as they enter with chests of tea, and sees that they do not carry any out except for good reasons. Looking down the length of the hong, a busy scene presents itself. It is crammed with big square chests just from the tea regions, and piled up to the roof. Presently a string of coolies, stretching out like a flock of wild geese, come past, and set down chests enough on the floor to cover half an acre. These half-naked fellows are nimble workmen, and will unload a boat full of tea in an incredibly short time. Very valuable as an animal is the cooly: he is a Jack-at-all-trades; works at the scull of a boat, or in a tea pack-house; bears a mandarin's sedan-chair, or sweeps out a chamber. His ideas are as limited as his means, and nearly as much so as his clothing; but he works all day without grumbling at his lot, is cheerful, and seems to enjoy life, although he lives on a few cents a day. He sleeps soundly at night, though his accommodations are such as an American beggar would scorn. Any person visiting a hong will see on the sides of the building, at a considerable elevation from the ground, a number of shelves with divisions arranged like berths in a steamboat, intended for beds, but consisting of rough boards with square wooden blocks for pillows. Each one is enclosed with a coarse blue mosquito-netting; and mounting to the apartments by a ladder, here the coolies sleep the year round.

The teas are not generally brought to the hongs until sold. Before sale they are stored in warehouses, chiefly on Honan Island, opposite the city; but after disposal the large-sized chests are carried into the hongs, where they are sorted and repacked into smaller boxes, according to the wants of the purchaser. You will see different parts of the floor covered with packages large and small, into which the coolies are shaking teas. Each box contains a leaden canister, into some of which the teas are loosely poured, while in others the herb is wrapped in papers of half a pound weight, each stamped with Chinese characters. The canister is then closed by a lid, and afterward securely fastened down by the top of the chest. These canisters are made near at hand. Look around, and a few rods off you will see three or four expert hands turning the large sheets of the prepared metal into shape. Knowing the required size, the operators have a cubic block placed on the metal sheet, which, bending like paper, is folded over the block, assuming its shape, and the edges of the canister are instantly soldered by a second hand; a third, with the aid of another wooden form, prepares the lids; and thus a knot of half a dozen workmen, keeping steadily at their tasks, will make a large number of canisters in a day. Besides the laborers who cultivate and those who cure the tea, and the porters and boatmen who transport it, thousands are employed in different occupations connected with the trade. Carpenters make the chests, plumbers the leaden canisters, while painters adorn the boxes containing the finer kinds of teas with brilliant flowers or grotesque scenes.

About the season of the arrival of the tea in Canton, the Chinese dealers come to the foreign factories with "musters," or samples in nice little tin canisters, with the names of the owners written on paper pasted down the sides, and you can select such as you like. The principal business is of course held with the tea merchants themselves, not those who come from the North, but the Cantonese, while the minor business of all the hongs is in a great measure conducted through the "pursers," or foremen, who act between the Chinese and the foreigners, bringing in the accounts to the shipping-houses, and receiving the orders for cargoes. Give one of these men an order for tea and go to the hong shortly afterward, you will find numbers of workmen employed for you;—some bringing in the small boxes; others filling them, or, when filled, fastened, papered, and covered with matting, securing them firmly with ratans; others, finally, labelling them on the outer covering,—the labels being printed with the name of the vessel, of the tea merchant, of the tea, and of the Canton forwarding-house, also with the initials of the purchaser, and the number of the lot. These labels are printed rapidly, being cut by one set of hands to the proper size for the use of the others who stamp them. All the types are carved in blocks of wood, and the whole formed into a frame; then, in a little space just large enough for work,—for the printer has no immense establishment with signs on the outside of "Book and Job Printing,"—a Chinaman will sit down, snatch up a paper in one hand, and stamp it instantly with the wooden block letters, moistened with the coloring mixture used in printing.

When the teas are fairly ready to be conveyed to the ships, heavy cargo-boats are moored at the foot of the hong, their crews prepare for the chop, and the coolies within the hong stand ready to carry the chests. Every box is properly weighed, papered, and bound with split ratan, the bill of the purchase has gone duly authenticated to the foreign factory, and the teas bid farewell to their native soil. The word is given, and each cooly, placing his two chests in the ropes swinging from his shoulder-bar, lifts them from the ground, and with a brisk walk conveys them on board the chop-boat, where they are carefully stowed away. As they are carried out of the hong, a fellow stands ready, and, as if about to stab the packages, thrusts at each one two sharp sticks with red ends, leaving them jammed between the ratan and the tea-box. One of these sticks is taken out when the chest leaves the chop-boat, and the other when it reaches the deck of the vessel; and as soon as one hundred chests are passed into the ship, the sticks are counted and thus serve as tallies. Should the two bundles not correspond, a chest is missing somewhere, and woe betide the blunderer!

In the busy season the chop-boats are seen pushing down the river with every favorable tide. As for pushing against the tide, no Chinaman ever thinks of such a thing, unless absolutely compelled, the value of time being quite unknown in China. Coolly anchoring as soon as the tide is adverse, the crew fall to playing cards until it is time to get under way again. Nearly every chop-boat contains a whole family, father, mother, and children,—sometimes an old grandparent, also, being included in the domestic circle,—and all assist in working. At the stern of the boat the wife has a little cooking-apparatus, and prepares the cheap rice for the squad of eager gormandizers, who bolt it in huge quantities without fear of indigestion. The family sit down to their repast on the deck; the men keep an eye to windward and a hand on the tiller; the mother knots the cord that goes around the baby's waist into an iron ring, and, feeling secure against the bantling's falling overboard, chats sociably, occasionally enforcing a mild reproof to a vagabond son by a tap on the head with her chopstick. There is but one dish, rice, of a very ordinary sort and of a pink color, but all seem to thrive upon it. The meal over, the men smoke their pipes, and the wife washes her cooking utensils with water drawn from the muddy river, and then, strapping her infant to her back, overhauls the scanty wardrobe and mends the ragged garments.

It is interesting to mark how accurately the chop-boat is brought alongside of the ship for which it is destined. No matter how strong the wind blows or the tide runs, the sails are trimmed as occasion requires, and the big scull does its offices without ever the least mistake. The boat running under the quarter scrapes along the edge, the ropes are thrown, caught, and belayed, and the crew prepare for passing the cargo into the vessel's hold. The stevedores who load the ships are very active men. They have also good heads, and, measuring the length, breadth, and height of the hold, calculate pretty accurately how many chests the ship will carry, and the number of small boxes to be squeezed into narrow places. When the hold is full the hatch is fastened down and caulked, as exposure to the salt air injures the teas. The finest kinds are so delicate, indeed, that they cannot be exported by sea; for, however tightly sealed, they would deteriorate during the voyage. The very superior flavor noticed by travellers in the tea used at St. Petersburg is doubtless to be attributed in an important measure to its overland transportation, and its consequent escape from dampness; the large quantities consumed in Russia being, as before observed, all carried from the northwest of China to Kiakhta, whence it is distributed over the empire.

One of the most remarkable and interesting facts in the history of commerce is the comparatively recent origin of the tea trade. The leaves of the tea-plant were extensively used by the people of China and Japan centuries before it was known to Western nations. This is the more singular from the fact that the silks of China found their way to the West at a very early period,—as early, at least, as the first century of the Christian era,—while the use of tea in Europe dates back only about two hundred years. The earliest notices of its use in the countries where it is indigenous are found in the writings of the Moorish historians and travellers, about the end of the eighth century, at which time the Mahometans were freely allowed to visit China, and travel through the empire as they pleased. Soliman, an Arabian merchant, who visited China about A.D. 850, describes it under the name of Sah, as being the favorite beverage of the people; and Ibn Batuta, A.D. 1323, speaks of it as used for correcting the bad properties of water, and as a medicine. Mandelslo, a German, who travelled in India, 1638-40, in describing the customs of the European merchants at Surat, speaks of tea as of something unfamiliar. The reasons he gives for drinking both it and coffee are charmingly incongruous, as is generally the case when men undertake to find some solemn excuse for doing what they like. "At our ordinary meetings every day we took only Thé, which is commonly used all over the Indies, not only among those of the Country, but among the Dutch and English, who take it as a Drug that cleanses the stomach and digests the superfluous humours, by a temperate heat particular thereto. The Persians, instead of Thé, drink their Kahwa, which cools and abates the natural heat which Thé preserves."[A] Of its first introduction into Europe little is known. In 1517, King Emanuel of Portugal sent a fleet of eight ships to China, and an embassy to Peking; but it was not until after the formation of the Dutch East India Company, in 1602, that the use of tea became known on the Continent, and even then, although the Hollanders paid much attention to it, it made its way slowly for many years. The first notice of it in England is found in Pepys's "Diary," under date of September 25th, 1660,—as before quoted. In 1664, the East India Company presented to the king, among other "raretyes," 2 lb. 2 oz. of "thea"; and in 1667, they desire their agent at Bantam to send "100 lb. waight of the best tey that he can gett."[B] From this insignificant beginning the importation has grown from year to year, until ninety million pounds went to Great Britain in 1856, forty million coming to the United States the same year.

[Footnote A: Mandelslo's Voyages and Travels into the East Indies, p. 18, ed. 1662.]

[Footnote B: Grant's History of the East India Company. London, 1813, p. 76.]

The "Edinburgh Review," in an article on this subject, says: "The progress of this famous plant has been somewhat like the progress of Truth;—suspected at first, though very palatable to those who had the courage to taste it; resisted as it encroached; abused as its popularity seemed to spread; and establishing its triumph at last in cheering the whole land, from the palace to the cottage, only by the slow and resistless efforts of time and its own virtues."

Many substitutes for tea are in vogue among the Chinese, but in general only the very lowest of the population are debarred the use of the genuine article. Being the universal drink, it is found at all times in every house. Few are so poor that a simmering tea-pot does not stand ever filled for the visitor. It is invariably offered to strangers; and any omission to do so is considered, and is usually intended, as a slight. It appears to be preferred by the people to any other beverage, even in the hottest weather; and while Americans in the heats of July would gladly resort to ice-water or lemonade, the Chinaman will quench his thirst with large draughts of boiling tea.

The Muse of China has not disdained to warble harmonious numbers in praise of her favorite beverage. There is a celebrated ballad on tea-picking, in thirty stanzas, sung by a young woman who goes from home early in the day to work, and lightens her labors with song. I give a few of the verses, distinctly informing the reader, at the same time, that for the real sparkle and beauty of the poem he must consult the Chinese original.

"By earliest dawn I at my toilet only half-dress my hair
And seizing my basket, pass the door, while yet the mist is thick.
The little maids and graver dames, hand in hand winding along,
Ask me, 'Which steep of Semglo do you climb to-day?'

"In social couples, each to aid her fellow, we seize the tea twigs,
And in low words urge one another, 'Don't delay!'
Lest on the topmost bough the bud has now grown old,
And lest with the morrow come the drizzling silky rain.

"My curls and hair are all awry, my face is quite begrimed;
In whose house lives the girl so ugly as your slave?
'Tis only because that every day the tea I'm forced to pick;
The soaking rains and driving winds have spoiled my former charms.

"Each picking is with toilsome labor, but yet I shun it not;
My maiden curls are all askew, my pearly fingers all benumbed;
But I only wish our tea to be of a superfine kind,—
To have it equal his 'Sparrow's Tongue' and their 'Dragon's Pellet.'

"For a whole month where can I catch a single leisure day?
For at the earliest dawn I go to pick, and not till dusk return;
Till the deep midnight I'm still before the firing-pan.
Will not labor like this my pearly complexion deface?

"But if my face is lank, my mind is firmly fixed
So to fire my golden buds they shall excel all beside.
But how know I who'll put them into the gemmy cup?
Who at leisure will with her taper fingers give them to the maid to
draw?"

Will any one say, after this, that there is no poetry connected with tea?

The theme, in truth, is replete with poetical associations, and of a kind that we look in vain for in connection with any other potable. Unlike the Anacreontic in praise of the grape,—song suggestive chiefly of bacchanal revels and loose jollity,—the verse which extols "the cup that cheers, but not inebriates," brings to mind home comforts and a happy household. And not only have some of the "canonized bards" of England celebrated its honors,—like Pope, in the "Rape of the Lock," when describing Hampton Court,—

"There, thou great Anna, whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea,"—

but, if it be true that

"Many are poets who have never penned
Their inspiration,"

how many an unknown bard have we among us, who, at the close of a hard day's work, tramps cheerily home, whistling,—

"Molly, put the kettle on,
We'll all have tea,"—

and thinking of a well-spread board, a simmering urn, a sweet wife, and rosy-cheeked children, waiting his coming. Grave father of a family! Your heart has grown cold and hard, if you have ceased to enjoy such scenes. Young husband! cannot you remember the first time you hoped with good reason, when, as you took leave after an afternoon call, a pair of witching eyes looked into yours, and a sweet voice sounded sweeter, as it timidly asked, "Won't you stay—and take a cup of tea?"

THE OLD BURYING-GROUND.

Our vales are sweet with fern and rose,
Our hills are maple-crowned;
But not from them our fathers chose
The village burying-ground.

The dreariest spot in all the land
To Death they set apart;
With scanty grace from Nature's hand,
And none from that of Art.

A winding wall of mossy stone,
Frost-flung and broken, lines
A lonesome acre thinly grown
With grass and wandering vines.

Without the wall a birch-tree shows
Its drooped and tasselled head;
Within, a stag-horned sumach grows,
Fern-leafed with spikes of red.

There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain
Like white ghosts come and go,
The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain,
The cow-bell tinkles slow.

Low moans the river from its bed,
The distant pines reply;
Like mourners shrinking from the dead,
They stand apart and sigh.

Unshaded smites the summer sun,
Unchecked the winter blast;
The school-girl learns the place to shun,
With glances backward cast.

For thus our fathers testified—
That he might read who ran—
The emptiness of human pride,
The nothingness of man.

They dared not plant the grave with flowers,
Nor dress the funeral sod,
Where, with a love as deep as ours,
They left their dead with God.

The hard and thorny path they kept,
From beauty turned aside;
Nor missed they over those who slept
The grace to life denied.

Yet still the wilding flowers would blow,
The golden leaves would fall,
The seasons come, the seasons go.
And God be good to all.

Above the graves the blackberry hung
In bloom and green its wreath,
And harebells swung as if they rung
The chimes of peace beneath.

The beauty Nature loves to share,
The gifts she hath for all,
The common light, the common air,
O'ercrept the graveyard's wall.

It knew the glow of eventide,
The sunrise and the noon,
And glorified and sanctified
It slept beneath the moon.

With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod,
Around the seasons ran,
And evermore the love of God
Rebuked the fear of man.

We dwell with fears on either hand,
Within a daily strife,
And spectral problems waiting stand
Before the gates of life.

The doubts we vainly seek to solve,
The truths we know, are one;
The known and nameless stars revolve
Around the Central Sun.

And if we reap as we have sown,
And take the dole we deal,
The law of pain is love alone,
The wounding is to heal.

Unharmed from change to change we glide,
We fall as in our dreams;
The far-off terror, at our side,
A smiling angel seems.

Secure on God's all-tender heart
Alike rest great and small;
Why fear to lose our little part,
When He is pledged for all?

O fearful heart and troubled brain!
Take hope and strength from this,—
That Nature never hints in vain,
Nor prophesies amiss.

Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave,
Her lights and airs are given,
Alike, to playground and the grave,—
And over both is Heaven.

* * * * *

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.

[I am so well pleased with my boarding-house that I intend to remain there, perhaps for years. Of course I shall have a great many conversations to report, and they will necessarily be of different tone and on different subjects. The talks are like the breakfasts,—sometimes dipped toast, and sometimes dry. You must take them as they come. How can I do what all these letters ask me to? No. 1. wants serious and earnest thought. No. 2. (letter smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes; wants me to tell a "good storey" that he has copied out for me. (I suppose two letters before the word "good" refer to some Doctor of Divinity who told the story.) No. 3. (in female hand)—more poetry. No. 4. wants something that would be of use to a practical man. (Prahctical mahn he probably pronounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged, sweet-scented)—"more sentiment,"—"heart's outpourings."——

My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but report such remarks as I happen to have made at our breakfast-table. Their character will depend on many accidents,—a good deal on the particular persons in the company to whom they were addressed. It so happens that those which follow were mainly intended for the divinity-student and the school-mistress; though others, whom I need not mention, saw fit to interfere, with more or less propriety, in the conversation. This is one of my privileges as a talker; and of course, if I was not talking for our whole company, I don't expect all the readers of this periodical to be interested in my notes of what was said. Still, I think there may be a few that will rather like this vein,—possibly prefer it to a livelier one,—serious young men, and young women generally, in life's roseate parenthesis from —— years of age to —— inclusive.

Another privilege of talking is to misquote.—Of course it wasn't Proserpina that actually cut the yellow hair,—but Iris. It was the former lady's regular business, but Dido had used herself ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood firm on the point of etiquette. So the bathycolpian Here—Juno, in Latin—sent down Iris instead. But I was mightily pleased to see that one of the gentlemen that do the heavy articles for this magazine misquoted Campbell's line without any excuse. "Waft us home the message" of course it ought to be. Will he be duly grateful for the correction?]

——The more we study the body and the mind, the more we find both to be governed, not by, but according to laws, such as we observe in the larger universe.—You think you know all about walking,—don't you, now? Well, how do you suppose your lower limbs are held to your body? They are sucked up by two cupping vessels, ("cotyloid"—cup-like-cavities,) and held there as long as you live, and longer. At any rate, you think you move them backward and forward at such a rate as your will determines, don't you? On the contrary, they swing just as any other pendulums swing, at a fixed rate, determined by their length. You can alter this by muscular power, as you can take hold of the pendulum of a clock and make it move faster or slower; but your ordinary gait is timed by the same mechanism as the movements of the solar system.

[My friend, the Professor, told me all this, referring me to certain German physiologists by the name of Weber for proof of the facts, which, however, he said he had often verified. I appropriated it to my own use; what can one do better than this, when one has a friend that tells him anything worth remembering?

The Professor seems to think that man and the general powers of the universe are in partnership. Some one was saying that it had cost nearly half a million to move the Leviathan only so far as they had got it already.—Why,—said the Professor,—they might have hired an EARTHQUAKE for less money!]

Just as we find a mathematical rule at the bottom of many of the bodily movements, just so thought may be supposed to have its regular cycles. Such or such a thought comes round periodically, in its turn. Accidental suggestions, however, so far interfere with the regular cycles, that we may find them practically beyond our power of recognition. Take all this for what it is worth, but at any rate you will agree that there are certain particular thoughts that do not come up once a day, nor once a week, but that a year would hardly go round without your having them pass through your mind. Here is one that comes up at intervals in this way. Some one speaks of it, and there is an instant and eager smile of assent in the listener or listeners. Yes, indeed; they have often been struck by it.

All at once a conviction flashes through us that we have been in the same precise circumstances as at the present instant, once or many times before.

O, dear, yes!—said one of the company,—everybody has had that feeling.

The landlady didn't know anything about such notions; it was an idee in folks' heads, she expected.

The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of way, that she knew the feeling well, and didn't like to experience it; it made her think she was a ghost, sometimes.

The young fellow whom they call John said he knew all about it; he had just lighted a cheroot the other day, when a tremendous conviction all at once came over him that he had done just that same thing ever so many times before. I looked severely at him, and his countenance immediately fell—on the side toward me; I cannot answer for the other, for he can wink and laugh with either half of his face without the other half's knowing it.

——I have noticed—I went on to say—the following circumstances connected with these sudden impressions. First, that the condition which seems to be the duplicate of a former one is often very trivial,—one that might have presented itself a hundred times. Secondly, that the impression is very evanescent, and that it is rarely, if ever, recalled by any voluntary effort, at least after any time has elapsed. Thirdly, that there is a disinclination to record the circumstances, and a sense of incapacity to reproduce the state of mind in words. Fourthly, I have often felt that the duplicate condition had not only occurred once before, but that it was familiar, and, as it seemed, habitual. Lastly, I have had the same convictions in my dreams.

How do I account for it?—Why, there are several ways that I can mention, and you may take your choice. The first is that which the young lady hinted at;—that these flashes are sudden recollections of a previous existence. I don't believe that; for I remember a poor student I used to know told me he had such a conviction one day when he was blacking his boots, and I can't think he had ever lived in another world where they use Day and Martin.

Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the brain's being a double organ, its hemispheres working together like the two eyes, accounts for it. One of the hemispheres hangs fire, they suppose, and the small interval between the perceptions of the nimble and the sluggish half seems an indefinitely long period, and therefore the second perception appears to be the copy of another, ever so old. But even allowing the centre of perception to be double, I can see no good reason for supposing this indefinite lengthening of the time, nor any analogy that bears it out. It seems to me most likely that the coincidence of circumstances is very partial, but that we take this partial resemblance for identity, as we occasionally do resemblances of persons. A momentary posture of circumstances is so far like some preceding one that we accept it as exactly the same, just as we accost a stranger occasionally, mistaking him for a friend. The apparent similarity may be owing, perhaps, quite as much to the mental state at the time as to the outward circumstances.

——Here is another of these curiously recurring remarks. I have said it and heard it many times, and occasionally met with something like it in books,—somewhere in Bulwer's novels, I think, and in one of the works of Mr. Olmsted, I know.

Memory, imagination, old sentiments and associations, are more readily reached through the sense of SMELL than by almost any other channel.

Of course the particular odors which act upon each person's susceptibilities differ.—O, yes! I will tell you some of mine. The smell of phosphorus is one of them. During a year or two of adolescence I used to be dabbling in chemistry a good deal, and as about that time I had my little aspirations and passions like another, some of these things got mixed up with each other: orange-colored fumes of nitrous acid, and visions as bright and transient; reddening litmus-paper, and blushing cheeks;—eheu!

"Soles occidere et redire possunt,"

but there is no reagent that will redden the faded roses of eighteen hundred and——spare them! But, as I was saying, phosphorus fires this train of associations in an instant; its luminous vapors with their penetrating odor throw me into a trance; it comes to me in a double sense "trailing clouds of glory." Only the confounded Vienna matches, ohne phosphor-geruch, have worn my sensibilities a little.

Then there is the marigold. When I was of smallest dimensions, and wont to ride impacted between the knees of fond parental pair, we would sometimes cross the bridge to the next village-town and stop opposite a low, brown, "gambrel-roofed" cottage. Out of it would come one Sally, sister of its swarthy tenant, swarthy herself, shady-lipped, sad-voiced, and, bending over her flower-bed, would gather a "posy," as she called it, for the little boy. Sally lies in the churchyard with a slab of blue slate at her head, lichen-crusted, and leaning a little within the last few years. Cottage, garden-beds, posies, grenadier-like rows of seedling onions,—stateliest of vegetables,—all are gone, but the breath of a marigold brings them all back to me.

Perhaps the herb everlasting, the fragrant immortelle of our autumn fields, has the most suggestive odor to me of all those that set me dreaming. I can hardly describe the strange thoughts and emotions that come to me as I inhale the aroma of its pale, dry, rustling flowers. A something it has of sepulchral spicery, as if it had been brought from the core of some great pyramid, where it had lain on the breast of a mummied Pharaoh. Something, too, of immortality in the sad, faint sweetness lingering so long in its lifeless petals. Yet this does not tell why it fills my eyes with tears and carries me in blissful thought to the banks of asphodel that border the River of Life.

——I should not have talked so much about these personal susceptibilities, if I had not a remark to make about them that I believe is a new one. It is this. There may be a physical reason for the strange connection between the sense of smell and the mind. The olfactory nerve—so my friend, the Professor, tells me—is the only one directly connected with the hemispheres of the brain, the parts in which, as we have every reason to believe, the intellectual processes are performed. To speak more truly, the olfactory "nerve" is not a nerve at all, he says, but a part of the brain, in intimate connection with its anterior lobes. Whether this anatomical arrangement is at the bottom of the facts I have mentioned, I will not decide, but it is curious enough to be worth remembering. Contrast the sense of taste, as a source of suggestive impressions, with that of smell. Now the Professor assures me that you will find the nerve of taste has no immediate connection with the brain proper, but only with the prolongation of the spinal cord.

[The old gentleman opposite did not pay much attention, I think, to this hypothesis of mine. But while I was speaking about the sense of smell he nestled about in his seat, and presently succeeded in getting out a large red bandanna handkerchief. Then he lurched a little to the other side, and after much tribulation at last extricated an ample round snuff-box. I looked as he opened it and felt for the wonted pugil. Moist rappee, and a Tonka-bean lying therein. I made the manual sign understood of all mankind that use the precious dust, and presently my brain, too, responded to the long unused stimulus.——O boys,—that were,—actual papas and possible grandpapas,—some of you with crowns like billiard-balls,—some in locks of sable silvered, and some of silver sabled,—do you remember, as you doze over this, those after-dinners at the Trois Frères, when the Scotch-plaided snuff-box went round, and the dry Lundy-Foot tickled its way along into our happy sensoria? Then it was that the Chambertin or the Clôt Vougêot came in, slumbering in its straw cradle. And one among you,—do you remember how he would have a bit of ice always in his Burgundy, and sit tinkling it against the sides of the bubble-like glass, saying that he was hearing the cow-bells as he used to hear them, when the deep-breathing kine came home at twilight from the huckleberry pasture, in the old home a thousand leagues towards the sunset?]

Ah, me! what strains and strophes of unwritten verse pulsate through my soul when I open a certain closet in the ancient house where I was born! On its shelves used to lie bundles of sweet-marjoram and pennyroyal and lavender and mint and catnip; there apples were stored until their seeds should grow black, which happy period there were sharp little milk-teeth always ready to anticipate; there peaches lay in the dark, thinking of the sunshine they had lost, until, like the hearts of saints that dream of heaven in their sorrow, they grew fragrant as the breath of angels. The odorous echo of a score of dead summers lingers yet in those dim recesses.

——Do I remember Byron's line about "striking the electric chain"?—To be sure I do. I sometimes think the less the hint that stirs the automatic machinery of association, the more easily this moves us. What can be more trivial than that old story of opening the folio Shakspeare that used to lie in some ancient English hall and finding the flakes of Christmas pastry between its leaves, shut up in them perhaps a hundred years ago? And, lo! as one looks on those poor relics of a bygone generation, the universe changes in the twinkling of an eye; old George the Second is back again, and the elder Pitt is coming into power, and General Wolfe is a fine, promising young man, and over the Channel they are pulling the Sieur Damiens to pieces with wild horses, and across the Atlantic the Indians are tomahawking Hirams and Jonathans and Jonases at Fort William Henry; all the dead people that have been in the dust so long—even to the stout-armed cook that made the pastry—are alive again; the planet unwinds a hundred of its luminous coils, and the precession of the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of heaven! And all this for a bit of pie-crust!

——I will thank you for that pie,—said the provoking young fellow whom I have named repeatedly. He looked at it for a moment, and put his hands to his eyes as if moved.—I was thinking,—he said, indistinctly——

——How? What is't?—said our landlady.

——I was thinking—said he—who was king of England when this old pie was baked,—and it made me feel bad to think how long he must have been dead.

[Our landlady is a decent body, poor, and a widow, of course; celà va sans dire. She told me her story once; it was as if a grain of corn that had been ground and bolted had tried to individualize itself by a special narrative. There was the wooing and the wedding,—the start in life,—the disappointment,—the children she had buried,—the struggle against fate,—the dismantling of life, first of its small luxuries, and then of its comforts,—the broken spirits,—the altered character of the one on whom she leaned,—and at last the death that came and drew the black curtain between her and all her earthly hopes.

I never laughed at my landlady after she had told me her story, but I often cried,—not those pattering tears that run off the eaves upon our neighbors' grounds, the stillicidium of self-conscious sentiment, but those which steal noiselessly through their conduits until they reach the cisterns lying round about the heart; those tears that we weep inwardly with unchanging features;—such I did shed for her often when the imps of the boarding-house Inferno tugged at her soul with their red-hot pincers.]

Young man,—I said,—the pasty you speak lightly of is not old, but courtesy to those who labor to serve us, especially if they are of the weaker sex, is very old, and yet well worth retaining. The pasty looks to me as if it were tender, but I know that the hearts of women are so. May I recommend to you the following caution, as a guide, whenever you are dealing with a woman, or an artist, or a poet;—if you are handling an editor or politician, it is superfluous advice. I take it from the back of one of those little French toys which contain paste-board figures moved by a small running stream of fine sand; Benjamin Franklin will translate it for you: "Quoiqu'elle soit très solidement montée, il faut ne pas BRUTALISER la machine."—I will thank you for the pie, if you please.

[I took more of it than was good for me,—as much as 85°, I should think,—and had an indigestion in consequence. While I was suffering from it, I wrote some sadly desponding poems, and a theological essay which took a very melancholy view of creation. When I got better I labelled them all "Pie-crust," and laid them by as scarecrows and solemn warnings. I have a number of books on my shelves that I should like to label with some such title; but, as they have great names on their title-pages,—Doctors of Divinity, some of them,—it wouldn't do.]

——My friend, the Professor, whom I have mentioned to you once or twice, told me yesterday that somebody had been abusing him in some of the journals of his calling. I told him that I didn't doubt he deserved it; that I hoped he did deserve a little abuse occasionally, and would for a number of years to come; that nobody could do anything to make his neighbors wiser or better without being liable to abuse for it; especially that people hated to have their little mistakes made fun of, and perhaps he had been doing something of the kind.—The Professor smiled.—Now, said I, hear what I am going to say. It will not take many years to bring you to the period of life when men, at least the majority of writing and talking men, do nothing but praise. Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay—I don't know what it is,—whether a spontaneous change, mental or bodily, or whether it is thorough experience of the thanklessness of critical honesty,—but it is a fact, that most writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, tired of finding fault at about the time when they are beginning to grow old. As a general thing, I would not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is himself an author, over fifty years of age. At thirty we are all trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of this tenement of life; twenty years later we have carved it, or shut up our jack-knives. Then we are ready to help others, and care less to hinder any, because nobody's elbows are in our way. So I am glad you have a little life left; you will be saccharine enough in a few years.

——Some of the softening effects of advancing age have struck me very much in what I have heard or seen here and elsewhere. I just now spoke of the sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you know that in the gradual passage from maturity to helplessness the harshest characters sometimes have a period in which they are gentle and placid as young children? I have heard it said, but I cannot be sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain, Lochiel, was rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old age. An old man, whose studies had been of the severest scholastic kind, used to love to hear little nursery-stories read over and over to him. One who saw the Duke of Wellington in his last years describes him as very gentle in his aspect and demeanor. I remember a person of singularly stern and lofty bearing who became remarkably gracious and easy in all his ways in the later period of his life.

And that leads me to say that men often remind me of pears in their way of coming to maturity. Some are ripe at twenty, like human Jargonelles, and must be made the most of, for their day is soon over. Some come into their perfect condition late, like the autumn kinds, and they last better than the summer fruit. And some, that, like the Winter-Nelis, have been hard and uninviting until all the rest have had their season, get their glow and perfume long after the frost and snow have done their worst with the orchards. Beware of rash criticisms; the rough and astringent fruit you condemn may be an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you picked up beneath the same bough in August may have been only its worm-eaten windfalls. Milton was a Saint-Germain with a graft of the roseate Early-Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet-skinned old Chaucer was an Easter-Beurré; the buds of a new summer were swelling when he ripened.

——There is no power I envy so much—said the divinity-student—as that of seeing analogies and making comparisons. I don't understand how it is that some minds are continually coupling thoughts or objects that seem not in the least related to each other, until all at once they are put in a certain light, and you wonder that you did not always see that they were as like as a pair of twins. It appears to me a sort of miraculous gift.

[He is rather a nice young man, and I think has an appreciation of the higher mental qualities remarkable for one of his years and training. I try his head occasionally as housewives try eggs,—give it an intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, or only contains lifeless albumen.]

You call it miraculous,—I replied,—tossing the expression with my facial eminence, a little smartly, I fear.—Two men are walking by the poly-phloesboean ocean, one of them having a small tin cup with which he can scoop up a gill of sea-water when he will, and the other nothing but his hands, which will hardly hold water at all,—and you call the tin cup a miraculous possession!

It is the ocean that is the miracle, my infant apostle! Nothing is clearer than that all things are in all things, and that just according to the intensity and extension of our mental being we shall see the many in the one and the one in the many. Did Sir Isaac think what he was saying when he made his speech about the ocean,—the child and the pebbles, you know? Did he mean to speak slightingly of a pebble? Of a spherical solid which stood sentinel over its compartment of space before the stone that became the pyramids had grown solid, and has watched it until now! A body which knows all the currents of force that traverse the globe; which holds by invisible threads to the ring of Saturn and the belt of Orion! A body from the contemplation of which an archangel could infer the entire inorganic universe as the simplest of corollaries! A throne of the all-pervading Deity, who has guided its every atom since the rosary of heaven was strung with beaded stars!

So,—to return to our walk by the ocean,—if all that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has raved, all that maddening narcotics have driven through the brains of men, or smothered passion nursed in the fancies of women,—if the dreams of colleges and convents and boarding-schools,—if every human feeling that sighs, or smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or groans, should bring all their innumerable images, such as come with every hurried heart-beat,—the epic that held them all, though its letters filled the zodiac, would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes and analogies that rolls through the universe.

[The divinity-student honored himself by the way in which he received this. He did not swallow it at once, neither did he reject it; but he took it as a pickerel takes the bait, and carried it off with him to his hole (in the fourth story) to deal with at his leisure.]

—Here is another remark made for his especial benefit.—There is a natural tendency in many persons to run their adjectives together in triads, as I have heard them called,—thus: He was honorable, courteous, and brave; she was graceful, pleasing, and virtuous. Dr. Johnson is famous for this; I think it was Bulwer who said you could separate a paper in the "Rambler" into three distinct essays. Many of our writers show the same tendency,—my friend, the Professor, especially. Some think it is in humble imitation of Johnson,—some that it is for the sake of the stately sound only. I don't think they get to the bottom of it. It is, I suspect, an instinctive and involuntary effort of the mind to present a thought or image with the three dimensions that belong to every solid,—an unconscious handling of an idea as if it had length, breadth, and thickness. It is a great deal easier to say this than to prove it, and a great deal easier to dispute it than to disprove it. But mind this: the more we observe and study, the wider we find the range of the automatic and instinctive principles in body, mind, and morals, and the narrower the limits of the self-determining conscious movement.

——I have often seen piano-forte players and singers make such strange motions over their instruments or song-books that I wanted to laugh at them. "Where did our friends pick up all these fine ecstatic airs?" I would say to myself. Then I would remember My Lady in "Marriage a la Mode," and amuse myself with thinking how affectation was the same thing in Hogarth's time and in our own. But one day I bought me a Canary-bird and hung him up in a cage at my window. By-and-by he found himself at home, and began to pipe his little tunes; and there he was, sure enough, swimming and waving about, with all the droopings and liftings and languishing side-turnings of the head that I had laughed at. And now I should like to ask, WHO taught him all this?—and me, through him, that the foolish head was not the one swinging itself from side to side and bowing and nodding over the music, but that other which was passing its shallow and self-satisfied judgment on a creature made of finer clay than the frame which carried that same head upon its shoulders?

——Do you want an image of the human will, or the self-determining principle, as compared with its prearranged and impassable restrictions? A drop of water, imprisoned in a crystal; you may see such a one in any mineralogical collection. One little fluid particle in the crystalline prism of the solid universe!

——Weaken moral obligations?—No, not weaken, but define them. When I preach that sermon I spoke of the other day, I shall have to lay down some principles not fully recognized in some of your text-books.

I should have to begin with one most formidable preliminary. You saw an article the other day in one of the journals, perhaps, in which some old Doctor or other said quietly that patients were very apt to be fools and cowards. But a great many of the clergyman's patients are not only fools and cowards, but also liars.

[Immense sensation at the table.—Sudden retirement of the angular female in oxydated bombazine. Movement of adhesion—as they say in the Chamber of Deputies—on the part of the young fellow they call John. Falling of the old-gentleman-opposite's lower jaw—(gravitation is beginning to get the better of him). Our landlady to Benjamin Franklin, briskly,—Go to school right off, there's a good boy! Schoolmistress curious,—takes a quick glance at divinity-student. Divinity-student slightly flushed; draws his shoulders back a little, as if a big falsehood—or truth—had hit him in the forehead. Myself calm.]

——I should not make such a speech as that, you know, without having pretty substantial indorsers to fall back upon, in case my credit should be disputed. Will you run up stairs, Benjamin Franklin, (for B.F. had not gone right off, of course,) and bring down a small volume from the left upper corner of the right-hand shelves?

[Look at the precious little black, ribbed-backed, clean-typed, vellum-papered 32mo. "DESIDERII ERASMI COLLOQUIA. Amstelodami. Typis Ludovici Elzevirii. 1650." Various names written on title-page. Most conspicuous this: Gul. Cookeson: E. Coll. Oum. Anim. 1725. Oxon.

——O William Cookeson, of All-Souls College, Oxford,—then writing as I now write,—now in the dust, where I shall lie,—is this line all that remains to thee of earthly remembrance? Thy name is at least once more spoken by living men;—is it a pleasure to thee? Thou shalt share with me my little draught of immortality,—its week, its month, its year, whatever it may be,—and then we will go together into the solemn archives of Oblivion's Uncatalogued Library!]

——If you think I have used rather strong language, I shall have to read something to you out of the book of this keen and witty scholar,—the great Erasmus,—who "laid the egg of the Reformation which Luther hatched." Oh, you never read his Naufragium, or "Shipwreck," did you? Of course not; for, if you had, I don't think you would have given me credit—or discredit—for entire originality in that speech of mine. That men are cowards in the contemplation of futurity he illustrates by the extraordinary antics of many on board the sinking vessel; that they are fools, by their praying to the sea, and making promises to bits of wood from the true cross, and all manner of similar nonsense; that they are fools, cowards, and liars all at once, by this story: I will put it into rough English for you,—"I couldn't help laughing to hear one fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to be heard, a promise to Saint Christopher of Paris—the monstrous statue in the great church there—that he would give him a wax taper as big as himself. 'Mind what you promise!' said an acquaintance that stood near him, poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for it, if you sold all your things at auction.' 'Hold your tongue, you donkey!' said the fellow,—but softly, so that Saint Christopher should not hear him,—'do you think I'm in earnest? If I once get my foot on dry ground, catch me giving him so much as a tallow candle!'"

Now, therefore, remembering that those who have been loudest in their talk about the great subject of which we were speaking have not necessarily been wise, brave, and true men, but, on the contrary, have very often been wanting in one or two or all of the qualities these words imply, I should expect to find a good many doctrines current in the schools which I should be obliged to call foolish, cowardly, and false.

——So you would abuse other people's beliefs, Sir, and yet not tell us your own creed!—said the divinity-student, coloring up with a spirit for which I liked him all the better.

——I have a creed,—I replied;—none better, and none shorter. It is told in two words,—the two first of the Paternoster. And when I say these words I mean them. And when I compared the human will to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant to define moral obligations, and not weaken them, this was what I intended to express: that the fluent, self-determining power of human beings is a very strictly limited agency in the universe. The chief planes of its enclosing solid are, of course, organization, education, condition. Organization may reduce the power of the will to nothing, as in some idiots; and from this zero the scale mounts upwards by slight gradations. Education is only second to nature. Imagine all the infants born this year in Boston and Timbuctoo to change places! Condition does less, but "Give me neither poverty nor riches" was the prayer of Agur, and with good reason. If there is any improvement in modern theology, it is in getting out of the region of pure abstractions and taking these every-day working forces into account. The great theological question now heaving and throbbing in the minds of Christian men is this:—

No, I won't talk about these things now. My remarks might be repeated, and it would give my friends pain to see with what personal incivilities I should be visited. Besides, what business has a mere boarder to be talking about such things at a breakfast-table? Let him make puns. To be sure, he was brought up among the Christian fathers, and learned his alphabet out of a quarto "Concilium Tridentinum." He has also heard many thousand theological lectures by men of various denominations; and it is not at all to the credit of these teachers, if he is not fit by this time to express an opinion on theological matters.

I know well enough that there are some of you who had a great deal rather see me stand on my head than use it for any purpose of thought. Does not my friend, the Professor, receive at least two letters a week, requesting him to ….. .. ….. .. .. …,—on the strength of some youthful antic of his, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent constituency of autograph-hunters to address him as a harlequin?

——Well, I can't be savage with you for wanting to laugh, and I like to make you laugh, well enough, when I can. But then observe this: if the sense of the ridiculous is one side of an impressible nature, it is very well; but if that is all there is in a man, he had better have been an ape at once, and so have stood at the head of his profession. Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all. I have often heard the Professor talk about hysterics as being Nature's cleverest illustration of the reciprocal convertibility of the two states of which these acts are the manifestations; but you may see it every day in children; and if you want to choke with stifled tears at sight of the transition, as it shows itself in older years, go and see Mr. Blake play Jesse Rural.

It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man to indulge his love for the ridiculous. People laugh with him just long as he amuses them; but if he attempts to be serious, they must still have their laugh, and so they laugh at him. There is in addition, however, a deeper reason for this than would at first appear. Do you know that you feel a little superior to every man who makes you laugh, whether by making faces or verses? Are you aware that you have a pleasant sense of patronizing him, when you condescend so far as to let him turn somersets, literal or literary, for your royal delight? Now if a man can only be allowed to stand on a dais, or raised platform, and look down on his neighbor who is exerting his talent for him, oh, it is all right!—first-rate performance!—and all the rest of the fine phrases. But if all at once the performer asks the gentleman to come upon the floor, and, stepping upon the platform, begins to talk down at him,—ah, that wasn't in the programme!

I have never forgotten what happened when Sydney Smith—who, as everybody knows, was an exceedingly sensible man, and a gentleman, every inch of him—ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties of Royalty. The "Quarterly," "so savage and tartarly," came down upon him in the most contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a "diner-out of the first water," in one of his own phrases; sneering at him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have been mean enough to do to a man of his position and genius, or to any decent person even. If I were giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all means to keep his wit in the background until after he had made a reputation by his more solid qualities. And so to an actor: Hamlet first, and Bob Logic afterwards, if you like; but don't think, as they say poor Liston used to, that people will be ready to allow that you can do anything great with Macbeth's dagger after flourishing about with Paul Pry's umbrella. Do you know, too, that the majority of men look upon all who challenge their attention,—for a while, at least,—as beggars, and nuisances? They always try to get off as cheaply as they can; and the cheapest of all things they can give a literary man—pardon the forlorn pleasantry!—is the funny-bone. That is all very well so far as it goes, but satisfies no man, and makes a good many angry, as I told you on a former occasion.

——Oh, indeed, no! I am not ashamed to make you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you something I have in my desk that would probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine idea; illustrated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious it is that we always consider solemnity and the absence of all gay surprises and encounter of wits as essential to the idea of the future life of those whom we thus deprive of half their faculties and then call blessed! There are not a few who, even in this life, seem to be preparing themselves for that smileless eternity to which they look forward, by banishing all gayety from their hearts and all joyousness from their countenances. I meet one such in the street not unfrequently, a person of intelligence and education, but who gives me (and all that he passes) such a rayless and chilling look of recognition,—something as if he were one of Heaven's assessors, come down to "doom" every acquaintance he met,—that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a violent cold, dating from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off, if he caught her playing with it. Please tell me, who taught her to play with it?

No, no!—give me a chance to talk to you, my fellow-boarders, and you need not be afraid that I shall have any scruples about entertaining you, if I can do it, as well as giving you some of my serious thoughts, and perhaps my sadder fancies. I know nothing in English or any other literature more admirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne: "EVERY MAN TRULY LIVES, SO LONG AS HE ACTS HIS NATURE, OR SOME WAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES OF HIMSELF."

——I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is one very sad thing in old friendships, to every mind that is really moving onward. It is this: that one cannot help using his early friends as the seaman uses the log, to mark his progress. Every now and then we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a string of thought tied to him, and look—I am afraid with a kind of luxurious and sanctimonious compassion—to see the rate at which the string reels off, while he lies there bobbing up and down, poor fellow! and we are dashing along with the white foam and bright sparkle at our bows;—the ruffled bosom of prosperity and progress, with a sprig of diamonds stuck in it! But this is only the sentimental side of the matter; for grow we must, if we outgrow all that we love.

Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way of saying that we cannot avoid measuring our rate of movement by those with whom we have long been in the habit of comparing ourselves; and when they once become stationary, we can get our reckoning from them with painful accuracy. We see just what we were when they were our peers, and can strike the balance between that and whatever we may feel ourselves to be now. No doubt we may sometimes be mistaken. If we change our last simile to that very old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the harbor and sailing in company for some distant region, we can get what we want out of it. There is one of our companions;—her streamers were torn into rags before she had got into the open sea, then by and by her sails blew out of the ropes one after another, the waves swept her deck, and as night came on we left her a seeming wreck, as we flew under our pyramid of canvas. But lo! at dawn she is still in sight,—it may be in advance of us. Some deep ocean-current has been moving her on, strong, but silent,—yes, stronger than these noisy winds that puff our sails until they are swollen as the cheeks of jubilant cherubim. And when at last the black steam-tug with the skeleton arms, that comes out of the mist sooner or later and takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes off panting and groaning with her, it is to that harbor where all wrecks are refitted, and where, alas! we, towering in our pride, may never come.

So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of old friendships, because we cannot help instituting comparisons between our present and former selves by the aid of those who were what we were, but are not what we are. Nothing strikes one more, in the race of life, than to see how many give out in the first half of the course. "Commencement day" always reminds me of the start for the "Derby," when the beautiful high-bred three-year olds of the season are brought up for trial. That day is the start, and life is the race. Here we are at Cambridge, and a class is just "graduating." Poor Harry! he was to have been there too, but he has paid forfeit; step out here into the grass back of the church; ah! there it is:—

"HUNC LAPIDEM POSUERUNT SOCII MOERENTES."

But this is the start, and here they are,—coats bright as silk, and manes as smooth as eau lustrale can make them. Some of the best of the colts are pranced round, a few minutes each, to show their paces. What is that old gentleman crying about? and the old lady by him, and the three girls, all covering their eyes for? Oh, that is their colt that has just been trotted up on the stage. Do they really think those little thin legs can do anything in such a slashing sweepstakes as is coming off in these next forty years? Oh, this terrible gift of second-sight that comes to some of us when we begin to look through the silvered rings of the arcus senilis!

Ten years gone. First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. Cassock, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. Meteor has pulled up.

Twenty years. Second corner turned. Cassock has dropped from the front, and Judex, an iron-gray, has the lead. But look! how they have thinned out! Down flat,—five,—six,—how many? They lie still enough! they will not get up again in this race, be very sure! And the rest of them, what a "tailing off"! Anybody can see who is going to win,—perhaps.

Thirty years. Third corner turned. Dices, bright sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins to make play fast; is getting to be the favorite with many. But who is that other one that has been lengthening his stride from the first, and now shows close up to the front? Don't you remember the quiet brown colt Asteroid, with the star in his forehead? That is he; he is one of the sort that lasts; look out for him! The black "colt," as we used to call him, is in the background, taking it easy in a gentle trot. There is one they used to call the Filly, on account of a certain feminine air he had; well up, you see; the Filly is not to be despised, my boy!

Forty years. More dropping off,—but places much as before.

Fifty years. Race over. All that are on the course are coming in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the winning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf where there is no more jockeying or straining for victory! Well, the world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter very little, if they have run as well as they knew how!

——Did I not say to you a little while ago that the universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and analogies? I will not quote Cowley, or Burns, or Wordsworth, just now, to show you what thoughts were suggested to them by the simplest natural objects, such as a flower or a leaf; but I will read you a few lines, if you do not object, suggested by looking at a section of one of those chambered shells to which is given the name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not trouble ourselves about the distinction between this and the Paper Nautilus, the Argonauta of the ancients. The name applied to both shows that each has long been compared to a ship, as you may see more fully in Webster's Dictionary, or the "Encyclopedia," to which he refers. If you will look into Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you will find a figure of one of these shells, and a section of it. The last will show you the series of enlarging compartments successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the shell, which is built in a widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in this?

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,—
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

* * * * *

BÉRANGER.

Béranger is certainly the most popular poet there has ever been in France; there was convincing proof of it at the time of and after his death. He had not printed anything since 1833, the epoch when he published the last collection of his poems; when he died, then, on the 16th of July, 1857, he had been silent twenty-four years. He had, it is true, appeared for a moment in the National Assembly, after the Revolution of February, 1848; but it was only to withdraw again almost immediately and to resign his seat. In spite of this long silence and this retirement, in which he seemed a little forgotten, no sooner did the news of his last illness spread and it was known that his life was in danger, than the interest, or we should rather say the anxiety, of the public was awakened. In the ranks of the people, in the most humble classes of society, everybody began inquiring about him and asking day by day for news; his house was besieged by visitors; and as the danger increased, the crowd gathered, restless, as if listening for his last sigh. The government, in charging itself with his obsequies and declaring that his funeral should be celebrated at the cost of the State, may have been taking a wise precaution to prevent all pretext for disturbance; but it responded also to a public and popular sentiment. At sight of the honors paid to this simple poet, with as much distinction as if he had been a Marshal of France,—at sight of that extraordinary military pomp, (and in France military pomp is the great sign of respectability, and has its place whenever it is desired to bestow special honor,) no one among the laboring population was surprised, and it seemed to all that Béranger received only what was his due.

And since that time there has been in the French journals nothing but a succession of hymns to the memory of Béranger, hymns scarcely interrupted by now and then some cooler and soberer judgments. People have vied with each other in making known his good deeds done in secret, his gifts,—we will not call them alms,—for when he gave, he did not wish that it should have the character of alms, but of a generous, brotherly help. Numbers of his private letters have been printed; and one of his disciples has published recollections of his conversations, under the title of Mémoires de Béranger. The same disciple, once a simple artisan, a shoemaker, we believe, M. Savinien Lapointe, has also composed Le petit Évangile de la Jeunesse de Béranger. M. de Lamartine, in one of the numbers of his Cours familier de Littérature, has devoted two hundred pages to an account of Béranger and a commentary on him, and has recalled curious conversations which he had with him in the most critical political circumstances of the Revolution of 1848. In short, there has been a rivalry in developing and amplifying the memory of the national songster, treating him as Socrates was once treated,—bringing up all his apophthegms, reproducing the dialogues in which he figured,—going even farther,—carrying him to the very borders of legend, and evidently preparing to canonize in him one of the Saints in the calendar of the future.

What is there solid in all this? How much is legitimate, and how much excessive? Béranger himself seems to have wished to reduce things to their right proportions, having left behind him ready for publication two volumes: one being a collection of his last poems and songs; the other an extended notice, detailing the decisive circumstances of his poetic and political life, and entitled "My Biography."

The collection of his last songs, let us say it frankly, has not answered expectation. In reading them, we feel that the poet has grown old, that he is weary. He complains continually that he has no longer any voice,—that the tree is dead,—that even the echo of the woods answers only in prose,—that the source of song is dried up; and says, prettily,—

"If Time still make the clock run on,
He makes it strike no longer."

And unhappily he is right. We find here and there pretty designs, short felicitous passages, smiling bits of nature; but obscurity, stiffness of expression, and the dragging in of Fancy by the hair continually mar the reading and take away all its charm. Even the pieces most highly lauded in advance, and which celebrate some of the most inspiring moments in the life of Napoleon,—such as his Baptism, his Horoscope cast by a Gypsy, and others,—have neither sparkle nor splendor. The prophet is not intoxicated, and wants enthusiasm. On the theme of Napoleon, Victor Hugo has done incomparably better; and as to the songs, properly so called, of this last collection, there are at this moment in France numerous song-writers (Pierre Dupont and Nadaud, for instance) who have the ease, the spirit, and the brilliancy of youth, and who would be able easily to triumph over this forced and difficult elevation of the Remains of Béranger, if one chose to institute a comparison. We may well say that youth is youth; to write verses, and especially songs, when one is old, is to wish still to dance, still to mount a curvetting horse; one gains no honor by the experiment. Anacreon, we know, succeeded; but in French, with rhyme and refrain, (that double butterfly-chase,) it seems to be more difficult.

But in prose, in the Autobiography, the entire Béranger, the Béranger of the best period, the man of wit, freshness, and sense, is found again; and it is pleasant to follow him in the story of his life, till now imperfectly known. He was born at Paris, on the 19th of August, 1780; and he glories in being a Parisian by birth, saying, that "Paris had not to wait for the great Revolution of 1789 to be the city of liberty and equality, the city where misfortune receives, perhaps, the most sympathy." He came into the world in the house of a tailor, his good old grandfather, in the Rue Montorgueil,—one of the noisiest of the Parisian streets, famous for its restaurants and the number of oysters consumed in them. "Seeing me born," he says, "in one of the dirtiest and noisiest streets, who would have thought that I should love the woods, fields, flowers, and birds so much?" It is true that Béranger loved them,—but he loved them always, as his poems show, like a Parisian and child of the Rue Montorgueil. A pretty enclosure, as many flowers and hedges as there are in the Closerie des Lilas, a little garden, a courtyard surrounded by apple-trees, a path winding beside wheat-fields,—these were enough for him. His Muse, we feel, has never journeyed, never soared, never beheld its first horizon in the Alps, the ocean, or the illimitable prairie. Lamartine, born in the country, amid all the wealth of the old rural and patriarchal life, had a right to oppose him, to put his own first instincts as poet in contrast with his, and to say to him, "I was born among shepherds; but you, you were born among citizens, among proletaries." Béranger loved the country as people love it on a Sunday at Paris, in walks just without the suburbs. How different from Burns, that other poet of the people, with whom he has sometimes been compared! But, on the other hand, Béranger loved the dweller in the city, the mechanic, the ouvrier, industrious, intellectual, full of enthusiasm and also of imprudence, passionate, with the heart of a soldier, and with free, adventurous ideas. He loved him even in his faults, aided him in his poverty, consoled him with his songs. Before all things he loved the street, and the street returned his love.

His father was a careless, dissipated man, who had tried many employments, and who strove to rise from the ranks of the people without having the means. His mother was a pretty woman, a dress-maker, and thorough grisette, whom his father married for her beauty, and who left her husband six months after their marriage and never gave a thought to her child. The little Béranger, born with difficulty and only with the aid of instruments, put out to nurse in the neighborhood of Auxerre, and forgotten for three years, was the object of no motherly cares. He may be said never to have had a mother. His Muse always showed traces of this privation of a mother's smile. The sentiment of home, of family, is not merely absent from his poems,—it is sometimes shocked by them.

Returning to his grandparents in Paris, and afterwards sent to a school in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where, on the 14th of July, 1789, he saw the Bastille taken, he pursued his primary studies very irregularly. He never learned Latin, a circumstance which always prejudiced him. Later in life, he sometimes blushed at not knowing it, and yet mentioned the fact so often as almost to make one believe he was proud of it. The truth is, that this want of classical training must have been felt more painfully by Béranger than it would have been by almost any other person; for Béranger was a studied poet, full of combinations, of allusion and artifice, even in his pleasantry,—a delicate poet, moreover, of the school of Boileau and Horace.

The pension in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, even, was too much for the narrow means of his father. He was taken away and sent to Péronne, in Picardy, to an aunt who kept an inn in one of the suburbs, at the sign of the Royal Sword. It was while he was with this excellent person, who had a mind superior to her condition, that he began to form himself by the reading of good French authors. His intelligence was not less aroused by the spectacle of the events which were passing under his eyes. The Terror, the invasion by the armies of the Coalition, the roar of cannon, which could be heard at this frontier town, inspired him with a patriotism which was always predominant in him, and which at all decisive crises revived so strongly as even to silence and eclipse for the moment other cherished sentiments which were only less dear.

"This love of country," said he, emphatically, "was the great, I should say the only, passion of my life." It was this love which was his best inspiration as poet,—love of country, and with it of equality. Out of devotion to these great objects of his worship, he will even consent that the statue of Liberty be sometimes veiled, when there is a necessity for it. That France should be great and glorious, that she should not cease to be democratic, and to advance toward a democracy more and more equitable and favorable to all,—such were the aspirations and the programme of Béranger. He goes so far as to say that in his childhood he had an aversion, almost a hatred, for Voltaire, on account of the insult to patriotism in his famous poem of La Pucelle; and that afterwards, even while acknowledging all his admirable qualities and the services he rendered to the cause of humanity, he could acquire only a very faint taste for his writing. This is a striking singularity, if Béranger does not exaggerate it a little; it is almost an ingratitude,—for Voltaire is one of his nearest and most direct masters.

There is, indeed, a third passion which disputes with those for country and equality the heart of Béranger, and which he shares fully with Voltaire,—the hatred, namely, we will not say of Christianity, but of religious hypocrisy, of Jesuitic Tartufery. What Voltaire did in innumerable pamphlets, facetioe, and philosophic diatribes, Béranger did in songs. He gave a refrain, and with it popular currency to the anti-clerical attacks and mockeries of Voltaire; he set them to his violin and made them sing with the horsehair of his bow. Béranger was in this respect only the minstrel of Voltaire.

Bold songs against hypocrites, the Reverend Fathers and the Tartufes, so much in favor under the Restoration, and some which carry the attack yet higher, and which sparkle with the very spirit of buffoonery, like Le Bâtard du Pape; beautiful patriotic songs, like Le vieux Drapeau; and beautiful songs of humanity and equality, like Le vieux Vagabond;—these are the three chief branches which unite and intertwine to make the poetic crown of Béranger in his best days, and they had their root in passions which with him were profound and living,—hatred of superstition, love of country, love of humanity and equality.

His aunt at Péronne was superstitious, and during thunder-storms had recourse to all kinds of expedients, such as signs of the cross, holy-water, and the like. One day the lightning struck near the house and knocked down young Béranger, who was standing on the door-step. He was insensible for some time, and they thought him killed. His first words, on recovering consciousness, were, "Well, what good did your holy-water do?"

At Péronne he finished his very irregular course of study at a kind of primary school founded by a philanthropic citizen. During the Directory, attempts were made all over France to get up free institutions for the young, on plans more or less reasonable or absurd, by men who had fed upon Rousseau's Émile and invented variations upon his system. On leaving school, Béranger was placed with a printer in the city, where he became a journeyman printer and compositor, which has occasioned his being often compared to Franklin,—a comparison of which he is not unworthy, in his love for the progress of the human race, and the piquant and ingenious turn he knew how to give to good sense. From this first employment as printer Béranger acquired and retained great nicety in language and grammar. He insisted on it, in his counsels to the young, more than seems natural in a poet of the people. He even exaggerated its importance somewhat, and might seem a purist.

Béranger's father reappeared suddenly during the Directory and reclaimed his son, whom he carried to Paris. The father had formed connections in Brittany with the royalists. He had become steward of the household of the Countess of Bourmont, mother of the famous Bourmont who was afterwards Marshal of France and Minister of War. Bourmont himself, then young, was living in Paris, in order the better to conspire for the restoration of the Bourbons. The elder Béranger was neck-deep in these intrigues, and was even prosecuted after the discovery of one of the numerous conspiracies of the day, but acquitted for want of proof. He was the banker and money-broker of the party,—a wretched banker enough! The narrative of the son enables us to see what a miserable business the father was engaged in. This near view of political intriguers, of royalists driven to all manner of expedients and standing at bay, of adventurers who did not shrink from the use of any means, not even the infernal-machine, did not dispose the young man already imbued with republican sentiments to change them, and this initiation into the secrets of the party was not likely to inspire him with much respect for the future Restoration. He had too early seen men and things behind the scenes. His father, in consequence of his swindling transactions, made a bankruptcy, which reduced the son to poverty and filled him with grief and shame.

He was now twenty years old; he had courage and hope, and he already wrote verses on all sorts of subjects,—serious, religious, epic, and tragic. One day, when he was in especial distress, he made up a little packet of his best verses and sent them to Lucien Bonaparte, with a letter, in which he set forth his unhappy situation. Lucien loved literature, and piqued himself on being author and poet. He was pleased with the attempts of the young man, and made him a present of the salary of a thousand or twelve hundred francs to which he was entitled as member of the Institute. It was Béranger's first step out of the poverty in which he had been plunged for several years, and he was indebted for the benefit to a Bonaparte, and to the most republican Bonaparte of the family. He was always especially grateful for it to Lucien, and somewhat to the Bonapartes in general.

Receiving a small appointment in the bureau of the University through the intervention of the Academician Arnault, a friend of Lucien Bonaparte, Béranger lived gayly during the last six years of the Empire. He managed to escape the conscription, and never shouldered a musket. He reserved himself to sing of military glory at a later day, but had no desire to share in it as soldier. He was elected into a singing club called The Cellar, all of whose members were songwriters and good fellows, presided over by Désaugiers, the lord of misrule and of jolly minstrels. Béranger, after his admission to the Caveau, at first contended with Désaugiers in his own style, but already a ground of seriousness and thought showed through his gayety. He wrote at this time his celebrated song of the Roi d'Yvetot, in which, while he caricatured the little play-king, the king in the cotton nightcap, he seemed to be slyly satirizing the great conquering Emperor himself.

The Empire fell, and Béranger hesitated for some time to take part against the Bourbons. It was not till after the battle of Waterloo and the return of Louis XVIII. under convoy of the allied armies, that he began to feel the passion of patriotism blaze up anew within him and dictate stinging songs which soon became darts of steel. Meanwhile he wrote pretty songs, in which a slight sentiment of melancholy mingled with and heightened the intoxication of wine and pleasure. La bonne Vieille is his chef-d'oeuvre in this style. He arranged the design of these little pieces carefully, sketching his subjects beforehand, and herein belongs to the French school, that old classic school which left nothing to chance. He composed his couplets slowly, even those which seem the most easy. Commonly the song came to him through the refrain;—he caught the butterfly by the wings;—when he had seized the refrain, he finished at intervals, and put in the nicer shadings at leisure. He wrote hardly ten songs a year at the time of his greatest fecundity. It has since been remarked that they smell of the lamp here and there; but at first no one had eyes except for the rose, the vine, and the laurel.

The Bourbons, brought back for the second time in 1815, committed all manner of blunders: they insulted the remains of the old grande armée; they shot Marshal Ney and many others; a horrible royalist reaction ensanguined the South of France. The Jesuit party insinuated itself at Court, and assumed to govern as in the high times of the confessors of Louis XIV. It was hoped to conquer the spirit of the Revolution, and to drive modern France back to the days before 1789; hence thousands of hateful things impossible to be realized, and thousands of ridiculous ones. Towards 1820 the liberal opposition organized itself in the Chambers and in the press. The Muse of Béranger came to its assistance under the mask of gay raillery. He was the angry bee that stung flying, and whose stings are not harmless; nay, he would fain have made them mortal to the enemy. He hated even Louis XVIII., a king who was esteemed tolerably wise, and more intelligent than his party. "I stick my pins," said Béranger, "into the calves of Louis XVIII." One must have seen the fat king in small-clothes, his legs as big as posts and round as pin-cushions, to appreciate all the point of the epigram.

Béranger had been very intimate since 1815 with the Deputy Manuel, a man of sense and courage, but very hostile to the Bourbons, and who, for words spoken from the Tribune, was expelled from the Chamber of Deputies and declared incapable of reëlection. Though intimate with many influential members of the opposition, such as Laffitte the banker, and General Sebastiani, it was only with Manuel that Béranger perfectly agreed. It is by his side, in the same tomb, that he now reposes in Père la Chaise, and after the death of Manuel he always slept on the mattress upon which his friend had breathed his last. Manuel and Béranger were ultra-inimical to the Restoration. They believed that it was irreconcilable with the modern spirit of France, with the common sense of the new form of society, and they accordingly did their best to goad and irritate it, never giving it any quarter. At certain times, other opposition deputies, such as General Foy, would have advised a more prudent course, which would not have rendered the Bourbons impossible by attacking them so fiercely as to push them to extremes. However this might have been, poetry is always more at home in excess than in moderation. Béranger was all the more a poet at this period, that he was more impassioned. The Bourbons and the Jesuits, his two most violent antipathies, served him well, and made him write his best and most spirited songs. Hence his great success. The people, who never perceive nice shades of opinion, but love and hate absolutely, at once adopted Béranger as the singer of its loves and hatreds, the avenger of the old army, of national glory and freedom, and the inaugurator or prophet of the future. The spirit prisoned in these little couplets, these tiny bodies, is of amazing force, and has, one might almost say, a devilish audacity. In larger compositions, breath would doubtless have failed the poet,—the greater space would have been an injury to him. Even in songs he has a constrained air sometimes, but this constraint gave him more force. He produces the impression of superiority to his class.

Béranger had given up his little post at the University before declaring open war against the government. He was before long indicted, and in 1822 condemned to several months' imprisonment, for having scandalized the throne and the altar. His popularity became at once boundless; he was sensible of it, and enjoyed it. "They are going to indict your songs," said some one to him. "So much the better!" he replied,—"that will gilt-edge them." He thought so well of this gilding, that in 1828, during the ministry of M. Martignac, a very moderate man and of a conciliatory semi-liberalism, he found means to get indicted again and to undergo a new condemnation, by attacks which some even of his friends then thought untimely. Once again Béranger was impassioned; he declared his enemies incurable and incorrigible; and soon came the ordinances of July, 1830, and the Revolution in their train, to prove him right.

In 1830, at the moment when the Revolution took place, the popularity of Béranger was at its height. His opinion was much deferred to in the course taken during and after "the three great days." The intimate friend of most of the chiefs of the opposition who were now in power, of great influence with the young, and trusted by the people, it was essential that he should not oppose the plan of making the Duke of Orleans King. Béranger, in his Biography, speaks modestly of his part in these movements. In his conversations he attributed a great deal to himself. He loved to describe himself in the midst of the people who surrounded the Hôtel of M. Laffitte, going and coming, listening to each, consulted by all, and continually sent for by Laffitte, who was confined to his armchair by a swollen foot. Seeing the hesitation prolonged, he whispered in Laffitte's ear that it was time to decide, for, if they did not take the Duke of Orleans for King pretty soon, the Revolution was in danger of turning out an émeute. He gave this advice simply as a patriot, for he was not of the Orleans party. When he came out, his younger friends, the republicans, reproached him; but he replied, "It is not a king I want, but only a plank to get over the stream." He set the first example of disrespect for the plank he thought so useful; indeed, the comparison itself is rather a contemptuous one.

He afterwards behaved, however, with great sense and wisdom. He declined all offices and honors, considering his part as political songster at an end. In 1833 he published a collection in which were remarked some songs of a higher order, less partisan, and in which he foreshadowed a broader and more peaceful democracy. After this he was silent, and as he was continually visited and consulted, he resolved upon leaving Paris for some years, in order to escape this annoyance. He went first to the neighborhood of Tours, and then to Fontainebleau; but the free, conversational life of Paris was too dear to him, and he returned to live in seclusion, though always much visited by his troops of friends, and much sought after. In leaving Paris during the first years of Louis Philippe's reign, and closing, as he called it, his consulting office, his chief aim was to escape the questions, solicitations, and confidences of opposite parties, in all of which he continued to have many friends who would gladly have brought him over to their way of thinking. He did not wish to be any longer what he had been so much,—a consulting politician; but he did not cease to be a practical philosopher with a crowd of disciples, and a consulting democrat. Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Lamartine,—the chiefs of parties at first totally opposed to his own,—came to seek his friendship, and loved to repose and refresh themselves in his conversation. He enjoyed, a little mischievously, seeing one of them (Chateaubriand) lay aside his royalism, another (Lamennais) abjure his Catholicism, and the third (Lamartine) forget his former aristocracy, in visiting him. He looked upon this, and justly, as a homage paid to the manners and spirit of the age, of which he was the humble but inflexible representative.

When the Revolution of 1848 burst unexpectedly, he was not charmed with it,—nay, it made him even a little sad. Less a republican than a patriot, he saw immense danger for France, as he knew her, in the establishment of the pure republican form. He was of opinion that it was necessary to wear out the monarchy little by little,—that with time and patience it would fall of itself; but he had to do with an impatient people, and he lamented it. "We had a ladder to go down by," said he, "and here we are jumping out of the window!" It was the same sentiment of patriotism, mingled with a certain almost mystical enthusiasm for the great personality of Napoleon, nourished and augmented with growing years, which made him accept the events of 1851-2 and the new Empire.

The religion of Béranger, which was so anti-Catholic, and which seems even to have dispensed with Christianity, reduced itself to a vague Deism, which in principle had too much the air of a pleasantry. His Dieu des bonnes gens, which he opposed to the God of the congregation and the preachers, could not be taken seriously by any one. Nevertheless, the poet, as he grew older, grew more and more attached to this symbol of a Deity, indulgent before all else, but very real and living, and in whom the poor and the suffering could put their trust. What passed in the days preceding his death has been much discussed, and many stories are told about it. He received, in fact, some visits from the curate of the parish of Saint Elizabeth, in which he lived. This curate had formerly officiated at Passy,—a little village near Paris, where Béranger had resided,—and was already acquainted with the poet. The conversations at these visits, according to the testimony of those best informed, amounted to very little; and the last time the curate came, just as he was going out, Béranger, already dying, said to him, "Your profession gives you the right to bless me; I also bless you;—pray for me, and for all the unfortunate!" The priest and the old man exchanged blessings,—the benedictions of two honest men, and nothing more.

Béranger had one rare quality, and it was fundamental with him,—obligingness, readiness to perform kind offices, humanity carried to the extent of Charity. He loved to busy himself for others. To some one who said that time lay heavy on his hands, he answered, "Then you have never occupied yourself about other people?" "Take more thought of others than of yourself" was his maxim. And he did so occupy himself,—not out of curiosity, but to aid, to succor with advice and with deeds. His time belonged to everybody,—to the humblest, the poorest, the first stranger who addressed him and told him his sorrows. Out of a very small income (at most, four or five thousand francs a year) he found means to give much. He loved, above all, to assist poor artisans, men of the people, who appealed to him; and he did it always without wounding the fibre of manhood in them. He loved everything that wore a blouse. He had, even stronger than the love of liberty, the love of equality, the great passion of the French.

He spent the last years of his life with an old friend of his youth by the name of Madame Judith. This worthy person died a few months before him, and he accompanied her remains to the church. He was seventy-seven years old when he died.

Estimating and comparing chiefly literary and poetic merits, some persons in France have been astonished that the obsequies of Béranger should have been so magnificently celebrated, while, but a few months before, the coffin of another poet, M. Alfred de Musset, had been followed by a mere handful of mourners; yet M. de Musset was capable of tones and flights which in inspiration and ardor surpassed the habitual range of Béranger. Without attempting here to institute a comparison, there is one thing essential to be remarked: in Béranger there was not only a poet, but a man, and the man in him was more considerable than the poet,—the reverse of what is the case with so many others. People went to see him, after having heard his songs sung, to tell him how much they had been applauded and enjoyed,—and, after the first compliments, found that the poet was a man of sense, a good talker on all subjects, interested in politics, a wonderful reasoner, with great knowledge of men, and characterizing them delicately with a few fine and happy touches. They became sincerely attached to him; they came again, and delighted to draw out in talk that wisdom armed with epigram, that experience full of agreeable counsels. His passions had been the talent of the poet; his good sense gave authority to the man. Even by those least willing to accept popular idols, Béranger will always be ranked as one of the subtilest wits of the French school, and as something more than this,—as one of the acutest servants of free human thought.

A TIFFIN OF PARAGRAPHS.

How runs the Hindoo saw? "Are we not to milk when there is a cow?" When India is giving down generous streams of paragraphy to all the greedy buckets of the press, shall we not hold our pretty pail under? As our genial young friend, Ensign Isnob, of the "Sappies and Minors," would say,—"I believe you, me boy!"

Then come with us to Cossitollah, and we'll have a tiffin of talk; some cloves of adventure, with a capsicum or two of tragic story, shall stand for the curry; the customs of the country may represent the familiar rice; a whiff of freshness and fragrance from the Mofussil will be as the mangoes and the dorians; in the piquancy and grotesqueness of the first pure Orientalism that may come to hand we shall recognize the curious chow-chow of the chutney; and as for the beer,—why, we will be the beer ourselves.

"Kitmudgar, remove that scorpion from the punka, before it drops into the Sahib's plate.—Hold, miscreant! who told you to kill it?

"'Take it up tenderly,
Lift it with care,—
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!'

"For know, O Kitmudgar, that there is one beauty of women, and another beauty of scorpions; and if the beauty of scorpions be to thee as the ugliness of women, the fault is in thy godless eye.

"'Only a crawling kafir,' sayest thou, O heathen! and straightway goest about to stick a fork into a political symbol? Verily, the hapless wretch shall be sacrificed unto Agnee, god of Fire, that a timely warning may enter into thy purblind soul!

"Here, take this bottle of brandy,—'Sahib brandy,' you perceive,—genuine old 'London Dock,'—and pour a cordon of ardent spirits on the table, to 'weave a circle round him thrice.' So! that's for British Ascendency!

"Now drop your subjugated brother into the midst thereof. See how, in his senseless, drunken rage, he wriggles and squirms,—then desperately dashes, and venomously snaps! That's Indian Revolt!

"Quickly, now! light the train; so!—What think you of Anglo-Saxon power and hereditary pride?

"Oho, my Kitmudgar! you begin to understand!—the living fable is not lost on you!

"But watch your Great Mogul! Barrackpore, Meerut, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Delhi,—five imposing plunges, but impotent; for at every point the Sahib's fatal fire, fire, fire, fire, fire!—insurmountable, all-subduing 'destiny'!

"Maimed, discomfited, dismayed, shivering, at wits' end, a crippled wriggler, in the midst of the exulting flames,—there lies your Great Mogul!

"But see!—the scorpion, brave wretch! with a gladiator's fortitude, loosens the shameful coil in which its last agonies have twisted it, fiercely erects its head once more, lashes defiantly with its tail, and then—_click! click! click!—_stings itself to death.

"And with that ends our figure of speech; for only the pitifulness of the defeat is the Great Mogul's; the sublimity of suicide is proper to the scorpion alone.

"Take away the fable, Kitmudgar!"

I lay in bed this morning half an hour after the sun had risen, watching my Parsee neighbor on his house-top, and thereby lost my drive on the Esplanade. But I console myself with imagining that the pretty Chee-chee spinster who comes every morning from Raneemoody Gully in a green tonjon, and makes romantic eyes at me through the silk curtains, missed the Boston gentleman with the gray moustache, and was lonesome.

My Parsee neighbor is quite as fat, but by no means as saucy, as ever. Last week his youngest boy died,—little Kirsajee Samsajee Bonnarjee, a contemplative young fire-worshipper, with eyes as profound as the philosophy of Zoroaster. I saw the dismal procession depart from the house, and my heart ached for the little Gheber.

Four awful creatures, that were like ghosts, clad all in white, solemnly dumb and veiled, bore him away on an iron bier. When they arrived at the drawbridge, great sheets of copper were spread before them, and they crossed upon those; for wood is sacred to their adored Element, and the touch of "them on whose shoulders the dead doth ride" would pollute it.

So they carried little Kirsajee to Golgotha, their Place of Skulls, which is a dreary, treeless field, encompassed round about with a blank wall; and they laid him naked in a stone trough on the edge of a great pit, and left him there, betaking them, still solemnly veiled and mute, to their homes again.

All but my Parsee neighbor; he went and sat him down, like Hagar in the wilderness, over against the dead Kirsajee, "a good way off, as it were a bowshot"; and he lifted up his voice, and wept for the lad that was dead. But still he waited there, till the crows and the Brahminee kites should come to perform the last horrid rites; for to Parsee custom the sepulture most becoming to men and most acceptable to God is in the stomachs of the fowls of the air, in the craws of ghoulish vultures and sacrilegious crows.

And presently there came a great Pondicherry eagle, sniffing the feast from afar; and he came alone. Swiftly sailing, poised on silent wings, he circled over Golgotha, circle within circle, circle below circle, over the child sleeping naked, over the father watching veiled.

One moment he flutters, as for a foothold on the pinnacle of his purpose; then

"Like a thunderbolt he falls."

Sitting solemnly on the breast of the dead boy, the "grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird" peers with sidelong glance into his face, gloating; and then—

Immediately my Parsee neighbor uprises in his place, throws aside his veil, and, shouting, runs forward. The Pondicherry eagle soars screaming to the clouds, and the sorrow-stricken Gheber bends over the dear corpse. Is it Heaven or Hell? the right eye or the left? Alas, the left!

He beats his breast, he falls upon his knees, and cries with frantic gestures to the setting Sun; but the sullen god only draws a cloud before his face, and leaves his poor worshipper to despair. Then my Parsee neighbor arises and girds up his loins, muffles his haggard face more closely than before, and with dishevelled beard, and chin sadly sunk upon his breast, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, and meeting no man's gaze, wends silently homeward.

To-morrow he will take his wife and go to Bombay, to feed with consecrated sandal-wood and oil the Sacred Flame the Magi brought from Persia, when they were driven thence with all their people to Ormuz. But the name of little Kirsajee will cross their lips no more; his memory is a forbidden thing in the household; he is as if he never had been.

When Brahminee kite, and adjutant, and white-breasted crow have done their ghoulish office on little Kirsajee, his bones shall lie bleaching under the pitiless eye of his people's blazing god, till the rains come, and fill the pit, and carry the waste of Gheber skeletons by subterraneous sewers down to the sea. But the Pondicherry eagle took the left eye first; wherefore the most pious deeds of merit, to be performed by my Parsee neighbor,—even a hospital for maimed dogs, or feeding the Sacred Flame with great store of sandal-wood and precious gums, or tilling the earth with a diligence equivalent to the efficacy of ten thousand prayers,—can hardly suffice to save the soul of little Kirsajee, the Forbidden!

* * * * *

There is a blood-feud of three months' standing between two members of our household.

One day, Lootee, the chuprassey's cat, took Tchoop, the khansamah's monkey, unawares, as he was sunning himself on the house-top, and with scratching and spitting, sudden and furious, so startled him, that he threw himself over the parapet into the crowded Cossitollah, and would have been killed by the fall, had he not chanced to alight on the voluminous turban of a dandy hurkaru from the Mint. As it was, one of his arms sustained a compound fracture, and his nerves suffered so frightful a shock, that it was only by a miracle of surgery, and the most patient nursing, that he was ever restored to his wonted agility and sagacity.

But the day of retribution has arrived; Lootee has had kittens. There were five of them in the original litter; but only one remains. Tchoop tossed two of them from the house-top when no dandy hurkaru from the Mint was below to soften the fall; the old adjutant-bird, that for three years has stood on one leg on the Parsee's godown, gobbled up another as it lay choked in the south veranda; while the dismayed sirdar found the head of a fourth jammed inextricably in the neck of his sacred lotah, wherewith he performs his pious ablutions every morning at the ghaut.

On the other hand, Lootee has made prize of about three inches of Tehoop's tail, and displays it all over the house for a trophy.—It is a blood-feud, fierce and implacable as any between Afghans, and there's no knowing where it will all end.

In Europe the monkey is a cynic, in South America an overworked slave, in Africa a citizen, but in India an imp,—I mean to the eye of the Western stranger, for in the estimation of the native he is mythologically a demigod, and socially a guest. At Ahmedabad, the capital of Guzerat, there are certainly two—Mr. De Ward says three—hospitals for sick and lame monkeys, who are therein provided with salaried physicians, apothecaries, and nurses.

In the famous Hindoo epic, the "Ramayana" of Valmiki,—"by singing and hearing which continually a man may attain to the highest state of enjoyment, and be shortly admitted to fraternity with the gods,"—the exploits of Hoonamunta, the Divine Monkey, are gravely related, with a dramatic force and figurativeness that hold a street audience spell-bound; but to the European imagination the childish drollery of the plot is irrestistible.

Boodhir, the Earth, was beset by giants, demons, and chimeras dire; so she besought Vishnu, with many tears, and vows of peculiar adoration, to put forth his strength of arms and arts against her abominable tormentors, and rout them utterly. The god was gracious; whence his nine avatars, or incarnations,—as fish, as tortoise, as boar, as man-lion, as dwarf Brahmin, as Pursuram,—the Brahmin-warrior who overthrew the Kshatriya, or soldier-caste; the eighth avatar appeared in the person of Krishna, and the ninth in that of Boodh.

But the seventh incarnation was the avatar of Rama, and it is this that the "Ramayana" celebrates.

Vishnu proceeds to be born unto Doosurath, King of Ayodhya, (Oude,) as the Prince Rama, or Ramchundra. Nothing remarkable occurs thereupon until Rama has attained the marriageable age, when he espouses Seeta, daughter of the King of Mithili.

Immediately old Mrs. Mithili, our hero's mother-in-law, being of an intriguing turn of mind, applies herself to the amiable task of worrying the poor old King of Ayodhya out of his crown or his life; and so well does she succeed, that Doosurath, for the sake of peace and quietness, would fain abdicate in favor of his son.

But Rama will have none of his royalty. Was it for bored kings and mischief-making mothers-in-law, he asks, speaking with the ante-natal memories of Vishnu, that he came among the sons of men? Not at all! he has a mission, and he bides his time. For the present he will take his wife Seeta, whose will is his, and go out into the wilderness, there to build him a hut of bamboos and banian-boughs and palmyra-leaves, and be—Seeta and he—two jolly yogees, that is, religious gypsies,—living on grass-roots, wild rice, and white ants, and being dirty and devout to their heart's content.

So they went; and for a little while they enjoyed, undisturbed, their yogeeish ideas of a good time. But by-and-by tidings came to Rawunna—the giant with ten heads and twice ten arms, that was King of Lunka (Ceylon)—of the plots of Mrs. Mithili, the disgust of old Doosurath, the distraction of the kingdom of Ayodhya, and the whimsical adventure of Rama and Seeta.

And immediately Rawunna, the giant, is seized in all his heads and arms with a great longing to know what manner of man this Rama may be, that he should prefer the yogee's breech-cloth to the royal purple, a hut of leaves, with only his Seeta, to a harem of a hundred wives, white ants and paddy to the white camel's flesh and golden partridges of Ayodhya's imperial repasts. Especially is he curious as to the charms of Seeta, as to the mighty magic wherewithal she renders monogamy acceptable to an Ayodhyan prince.

By Indra! he will see for himself! So, pleading exhaustion from the cares of state, and ten headaches of trouble and dyspepsia, he announces his intention to make an excursion a few hundred coss into the country for the benefit of his health; and taking twenty carpet-bags in his hands, he sets out, in his monstrous way, for Ayodhya, leaving his kingdom in the care of a blue dwarf with an eye in the back of his neck.

With seven-coss strides he comes to Ayodhya, and straightway finds the banian hut in the forest, where Rama dwells with Seeta in the devout dirtiness of their jolly yogeery.

The god has gone abroad in search of a dinner, and is over the hills to the sandy nullahs, where the white ants are fattest; while that greasy Joan, Seeta, "doth keel the pot" at home.

Then Rawunna, the giant, assuming the shape of a pilgrim yogee rolling to the Caves of Ellora,—with Gayntree, the mystical text, on his lips, and the shadow of Siva's beard in his soul,—rolls to Rama's door, and cries, "Alms, alms, in the name of the Destroyer!"

And Seeta comes forth, with water in a palm-leaf and grass-roots in the fold of her saree; and when she beholds the false yogee her heart blooms with pity, so that her smile is as the alighting of butterflies, and her voice as the rustling of roses.

But, behold you, as she bends over the prostrate yogee, and, saying, "Drink from the cup of Vishnu!" offers the crisp leaf to his dusty lips, a great spasm of desire impels the impostor; and, flinging off the yogee, he leaps erect, Rawunna, the Abhorred!

With ten mouths he kisses her; with twenty arms he clasps her; and away, away to Lunka! while yet poor Seeta gasps with fear.

When Rama returned and found no Seeta, his soul was seized with a mighty horror; and a blankness, like unto the mystery of Brahm, fell upon his heart. He shed not a tear, but the sky wept floods; he uttered not a groan, but Earth shook from her centre, and the mountains fell on their faces. But Rama, stupefied, stood stock still where he was stricken, and stared, till his eyelids stiffened, at the desolate hut, at the desolate hearth.

Then all the angels in heaven, who had witnessed the crime of Rawunna, and his flight, passed into the forms of monkeys; and a million of them made a monkey chain, that the rest of the celestial host might descend into the banian-groves of Ayodhya. The tails glide swiftly through each glowing hand, and quick as lightning on the trees they stand.

And Hoonamunta, their chief, prostrated himself before Rama, and said, "Behold, my Lord, we are here! I and all my host are yours,—command us!"

But Rama spoke not; he only stood where he was stricken, and stared at his desolation.

Then Hoonamunta turned him to his host, and said, "Bide here till I come, and be silent; break not the quiet of divine sorrow." And he went forth with mighty bounds.

That night he came to Lunka. But the city slept; if Seeta yet lived, she, too, was silent; no cry of sorrow rose on the night; no stir, as of an unusual event, disturbed the stillness and the gloom.

So Hoonamunta took upon himself the form of a rat, and sped nimbly through the huts of dwarfs and the towers of giants, through the hiding-places of misery and the high seats of power, through the places of trouble and the places of ease; till at last he came to an ivory dome, hard by the silver palace of Rawanna, the Monstrous; and there lay Seeta, buried in a profound trance of despair.

Hoonamunta bit, very tenderly, her slender white finger; but she stirred not, she made no sign.

Then he whispered softly in her ear, "Rama comes!" and Seeta started from her death-sleep, and sat erect; her eyes were open, and she cried, "My Lord, I am here!"

So Hoonamunta spake to her, bidding her be of good cheer, for Brahm was with her, and the Omnipotent Three,—bade her be of good heart and wait. And Seeta's smile was as the alighting of many butterflies, and her voice of murmured joy was as the rustling of all the roses of Ayodhya.

Then Hoonamunta took counsel with his cunning; and he said unto himself, "I will arouse the sleepers; I will take the strength of the city; I will count the heads of Rawunna, and the arms of him."

So straightway he resumed his monkey shape, and went forth into the streets, by the tanks and through the bazaars, among the places of the oppressed and the places of the powerful.

And he bit the ears of the Pariah dogs, so that they howled; he twisted the tails of the Brahmin bulls, so that they rushed, bellowing, down to the ghauts; he plucked the beards of gorged adjutants, till they snapped their great beaks with a terrible clatter.

He made a great splashing in the tanks; he ran through the bazaars, banging the gongs of the bell-makers, and smashing the brittle wares of the potters; he tore holes in the roofs of houses, and threw down tiles upon them that were buried in slumber; he cried with a loud voice, "Siva, Siva, the Destroyer, cometh!"

So that the city awoke with a great outcry and a din, with all its torches and all its dogs. And the multitude filled the streets, and the compounds, and the open places round about the tanks; and all cried, "Siva, Siva!"

But when they beheld Hoonamunta, how he tore off roofs, and pelted them with tiles,—how he climbed to the tops of pagodas, and jangled the sacred bells,—how he laid his shoulder to the city walls and overthrew them, so that the noise of their fall was as the roar of the breakers on the far-off coast of Lunka when the Typhoon blows,—then they cried, "A demon! a fiend from the halls of Yama!" and they gave chase with a mighty uproar,—the gooroos, and the yogees, and the jugglers going first.

Then Hoonamunta took counsel with his cunning; and he came down and stood in the midst of the angry people, and asked, "What would you with me? and where is this demon you pursue?"

But they cried, "Hear him, how he mocks us! Hear him, how he flouts us!" and they dragged him into the presence of Rawunna, the king.

And when the giant would have questioned him, who he was, and whence he came, and what his mission, he only mocked, and mimicked the fee-faw-fumness of Rawunna's tones, and said, "Lo! This beggar goes a-foot, but his words ride in a palanquin!"

And the king said, "I have been foolish, I have been weak, to waste words on this kafir. Am not I a mighty monarch? Am not I a terrible giant? Let him be cast out!"

And again Hoonamunta mocked him, saying, "His insanity is past! fetch him the rice-pounder that he may gird himself! fetch him the gong that he may cover his feet!"

And Hoonamunta would have sat on the throne, on Rawunna's right hand; but Rawunna thrust him off, and cursed him.

So Hoonamunta took his tail in his hand, and pulled and pulled; and the tail grew, and grew,—a fathom, a furlong, a whole coss.

And Hoonamunta coiled it on the floor, a lofty coil, on the right hand of the throne, higher and higher, till it overlooked the golden cushion of the king; and Hoonamunta laughed.

Then Rawunna turned him to his counsellors, and said, "What shall we do with this audacious fellow?"

And with one voice all the counsellors cried, "Burn his tremendous tail!"

And the king commanded:—

"Let all the dwarfs of Lunka
Bring rags from near and far;
Call all the dwarfs of Lunka
To soak them all in tar!"

So they went, and brought as many rags as ten strong giants could lift, and a thousand maunds of tar.

And they soaked the rags in the tar, even as Kawunna had commanded, and bound them all at once on the tremendous tail of Hoonamunta.

And when they had done this, the king said, "Lead him forth, and light him!"

And they led him forth into the great Midaun, hard by the triple pagoda; and they lighted his tail with a torch. And immediately the flames leaped to the skies, and the smoke filled all the city.

Then Hoonamunta broke away from his captors, and with a loud laugh started on his fiery race,—over house-tops and hay-ricks, through close bazaars and dry rice-fields, through the porticoes of palaces and the porches of pagodas,—kindling a roaring conflagration as he went.

And all the people pursued him, screaming with fear, imploring mercy, imploring pardon, crying, "Spare us, and we will make you our high-priest! Spare us, and you shall be our king!"

But Hoonamunta staid not, till, having laid half the city in flames, he ascended to the top of a lofty tower to survey his work with satisfaction.

Thither the great men of Lunka followed him,—the princes, and the Brahmins, and the victorious chieftains, the strong giants, and the cunning dwarfs.

And when they were all gathered underneath the tower, and in the porch of it, he shook it, till it fell and crushed a thousand of the first citizens.

Then Hoonamunta sped away northward to Ayodhya, extinguishing his tail in the sea as he went.

And when he came to where his army lay, he found them all waiting in silence. When he entered the hut of Rama, the bereaved one still lay on his face. But Hoonamunta spake softly in his ear: "My Lord, arise! for Seeta calls you, and her heart sickens within her that you come not!"

Immediately Rama uprose, and stood erect, and all the god blazed in his eyes; and he grew in the sight of Hoonamunta until his stature was as the stature of Rawunna, the giant, and his countenance was as the countenance of Indra, King of Heaven.

And he went forth, and stood at the head of Hoonamunta's monkey host, and called for a sword; and when they gave him one, it became alive in his hand, and was a sword of flame; and when they gave him a spear, lo! it became his slave, flying whithersoever he bade it, and striking where he listed.

So Rama and Hoonamunta, with all their monkey host, took up their march for Lunka.

When they came to the sea (which is the Gulf of Manaar) there was no bridge; but Rama mounted the back of Hoonamunta, and called to the host to follow him; and all the monkeys leaped across.

Then immediately they fell upon Lunka; and Rama slew Rawunna, the
Monster, and rescued the delighted Seeta.

And now those three sit together on a throne in heaven,—Seeta, the faithful wife, on the left hand of Rama,—and Hoonamunta on his right hand, the shrewd and courageous friend.

Who would not be a monkey in Hindostan?

* * * * *

THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW.

Oh, that last day in Lucknow fort!
We knew that it was the last,
That the enemy's lines crept surely on,
And the end was coming fast.

To yield to that foe was worse than death,
And the men and we all worked on;
It was one day more of smoke and roar,
And then it would all be done.

There was one of us, a corporal's wife,
A fair, young, gentle thing,
Wasted with fever in the siege,
And her mind was wandering.

She lay on the ground, in her Scottish plaid,
And I took her head on my knee:
"When my father comes hame frae the pleugh," she said,
"Oh! then please wauken me."

She slept like a child on her father's floor
In the flecking of woodbine-shade,
When the house-dog sprawls by the open door,
And the mother's wheel is staid.

It was smoke and roar and powder-stench,
And hopeless waiting for death;
And the soldier's wife, like a full-tired child,
Seemed scarce to draw her breath.

I sank to sleep; and I had my dream
Of an English village-lane,
And wall and garden;—but one wild scream
Brought me back to the roar again.

There Jessie Brown stood listening
Till a sudden gladness broke
All over her face, and she caught my hand
And drew me near, as she spoke:—

"The Hielanders! Oh! dinna ye hear
The slogan far awa?
The McGregor's? Oh! I ken it weel;
It's the grandest o' them a'!

"God bless thae bonny Hielanders!
We're saved! we're saved!" she cried;
And fell on her knees; and thanks to God
Flowed forth like a full flood-tide.

Along the battery-line her cry
Had fallen among the men,
And they started back;—they were there to die;
But was life so near them, then?

They listened for life; the rattling fire
Far off, and the far-off roar,
Were all; and the colonel shook his head,
And they turned to their guns once more.

But Jessie said, "The slogan's done;
But winna ye hear it noo,
The Campbells are comin'? It's no a dream;
Our succors hae broken through!"

We heard the roar and the rattle afar,
But the pipes we could not hear;
So the men plied their work of hopeless war,
And knew that the end was near.

It was not long ere it made its way,—
A shrilling, ceaseless sound:
It was no noise from the strife afar,
Or the sappers under ground.

It was the pipes of the Highlanders!
And now they played Auld Lang Syne;
It came to our men like the voice of God,
And they shouted along the line.

And they wept and shook one another's hands,
And the women sobbed in a crowd;
And every one knelt down where he stood,
And we all thanked God aloud.

That happy time, when we welcomed them,
Our men put Jessie first;
And the general gave her his hand, and cheers
Like a storm from the soldiers burst.

And the pipers' ribbons and tartans streamed,
Marching round and round our line;
And our joyful cheers were broken with tears
As the pipes played Auld Lang Syne.

NEW ENGLAND MINISTERS.

Dr. Sprague, of Albany, has added to the literature of our country two large octavo volumes, containing biographical accounts of the Congregational clergy of New England, from its earliest settlement until the year 1841. The book has been for the most part compiled from letters furnished by different individuals, who, either through personal knowledge or through tradition, had the most intimate acquaintance with the subjects of which they wrote.

The characters here sketched, though perfectly individual, are in so great a degree the result of peculiar political influences, that it would be difficult to suppose their existence elsewhere than in New England. We have therefore chosen this book as a kind of standpoint from which to take a glance at the New England clergy and pulpit.

The earliest constitution of government in New England was a theocracy; it was the realization of Arnold's idea of the identity of Church and State. Under it the clergy had peculiar powers and privileges, which, it is but fair to say, they turned to the advantage of the Commonwealth more than has generally been the case with any privileged order.

A time, however, came when the democratic element, which these men themselves had fostered, worked out its logical results, by depriving them of all special immunities, and leaving them, like any other citizens, to make their way by pure force of character, and to be rated, like other men, simply for what they were and what they could do.

It is creditable to the intelligence and shrewdness of this body of men that the more far-sighted among them received this change with satisfaction; that they were such uncommonly fair logicians as to be willing to accept the direct inference from principles which they had been foremost to inculcate, and, like men of strong mind and clear conscience, were not afraid to rest their claim to influence and deference on the manfulness with which they should strive to deserve them.

Dr. Sprague's book contains pictures of life under both the old régime and the new. The following extract from the venerable Josiah Quincy's recollections of the Rev. Mr. French, of Andover, is interesting, as an illustration of the olden times.

"Mrs. Dowse, my maternal aunt, has often related to me her pride and delight at visiting at the Rev. Mr. Phillips', her paternal grandfather's house, when a child; which was interesting as a statement of the manners of those early times in Massachusetts, before the sceptre of worldly power, which the first settlers of the Colony had placed in the hands of the clergy, had been broken. The period was about between 1760 and the Revolution. The parsonage at Andover was situated about two or three hundred rods from the meeting-house, which was three stories high, of immense dimensions, far greater, I should think, than those of any meeting-houses in these anti-church-going, degenerate times. It was on a hill, slightly elevated above the parsonage, so that all the flock could see the pastor as he issued from it.

"Before the time of service, the congregation gradually assembled in early season, coming on foot or on horseback, the ladies behind their lords or brothers or one another, on pillions, so that before the time of service the whole space before the meeting-house was filled with a waiting, respectful, and expecting multitude. At the moment of service the pastor issued from his mansion with Bible and manuscript sermon under his arm, with his wife leaning on one arm, flanked by his negro man on his side, as his wife was by her negro woman, the little negroes being distributed according to their sex by the side of their respective parents. Then followed every other member of the family according to age and rank, making often, with family visitants, somewhat of a formidable procession. As soon as it appeared, the congregation, as if moved by one spirit, began to move towards the door of the church; and before the procession reached it, all were in their places.

"As soon as the pastor entered the church, the whole congregation rose and stood until the pastor was in the pulpit and his family seated,—until which was done the whole assembly continued standing. At the close of the service the congregation stood until he and his family had left the church, before any one moved towards the door.

"Forenoon and afternoon the same course of proceeding was had, expressive of the reverential relation in which the people acknowledged that they stood towards their clergyman.

"Such was the account given me by Mrs. Dowse in relation to times previous to my birth, and which I relate as her narrative, and not as part of my recollections. The procession from the parsonage, the disappearance of the people on the appearance of the procession, and that their pastor was received with every mark of decorum and respect, I well remember, but of their rising at his entrance and standing after the service until he had departed, I have no recollection; my time was almost twenty years after that narrated by Mrs. Dowse. During that period the Revolution had commenced."

Some might think it an advantage, if more of the decorum and reverence of such a state of society had been preserved to our day; for this respect paid to the minister was but part of a general and all-pervading system. Children were more reverential to their parents, scholars to their teachers, the people to their magistrates. A want of reverence threatens now to become the besetting sin of America, whether young or old.

The clergy of New England have, as a body, been distinguished for a rare union of the speculative and the practical. In both points they have been so remarkable, that in observing the great development of either of these qualities by itself one would naturally suppose that there was no room for the other.

Generally speaking, they were rural pastors,—living on salaries so small as to afford hardly a nominal support; and in order to bring up their families and give their sons a college education, it was necessary to understand fully the practical savoir faire. Accordingly, they farmed and gardened, and often took young people into their families to educate, and in these ways eked out a subsistence. It is related of the venerable Moses Hallock, that he educated in his own family, during his ministerial lifetime, three hundred young people, of whom thirty were females. One hundred and thirty-two of these he fitted for college; fifty became ministers, and six foreign missionaries.

Some of the clergy gained such an acquaintance with the practice of medicine as to be able sometimes to unite the offices of physician of the body and of the soul; and not unfrequently a general knowledge of law enabled the pastor to be the worldly as well as the spiritual counsellor of his people. A striking case in point is that of the venerable Parson Eaton, who resided in a lonely seafaring district on the coast of Maine, and preached to a congregation who lived the amphibious life of farmers and fishermen. The town of Harpswell, where he ministered,—

"is a narrow projection of ten miles southward into Casco Bay, on both sides of which it comprises within its incorporated limits several islands, some of them of considerable size and well inhabited. In his pastoral visits and labors, the clergyman was often obliged to ride several miles, and then cross the inlets of the sea, to preach a lecture or to minister comfort or aid to some sick or suffering parishioner. In addition to his clerical duties, Mr. Eaton, having experience and discernment in the more common forms of disease, was generally applied to in sickness; and he usually carried with him a lancet and the more common and simple medicines. If a case was likely to baffle his skill, he advised his patient to send for a regular physician. His admirable sense, moreover, and his education fitted him to render aid and counsel in matters of controversy; so that he often acted as an umpire, and very often to the settling of disputes. Seldom did his people consult a lawyer; and it is even said, that, at the time of his death, most of the wills in the town were in his handwriting."

It is a singular thing, that the preaching and the bent of mind of a set of men so intensely practical should have been at the same time intensely speculative. Nowhere in the world, unless perhaps in Scotland, have merely speculative questions excited the strong and engrossing interest among the common people that they have in New England. Every man, woman, and child was more or less a theologian. The minister, while he ground his scythe or sharpened his axe or laid stone-fence, was inwardly grinding and hammering on those problems of existence which are as old as man, and which Christian and heathen have alike pondered. The Germans call the whole New England theology rationalistic, in distinction from traditional.

There are minds which are capable of receiving certain series of theological propositions without even an effort at comparison,—without a perception of contradiction or inconsequency,—without an effort at harmonizing. Such, however, were not the New England ministers. With them predestination must be made to harmonize with freewill; the Divine entire efficiency with human freedom; the existence of sin with the Divine benevolence;—and at it they went with stout hearts, as men work who are not in the habit of being balked in their undertakings. Hence the Edwardses, the Hopkinses, the Emmonses, with all their various schools and followers, who, leviathan-like, have made the theological deep of New England to boil like a pot, and the agitation of whose course remains to this day.

It is a mark of a shallow mind to scorn these theological wrestlings and surgings; they have had in them something even sublime. They were always bounded and steadied by the most profound reverence for God and his word; and they have constituted in New England the strong mental discipline needed by a people who were an absolute democracy. The Sabbath teaching of New England has been a regular intellectual drill as well as a devotional exercise; and if one does not see the advantage of this, let him live awhile in France or Italy, and see the reason why, with all their aspirations after liberty, there is no capability of self-government in the masses; put the tiller of the Campagna, or the vine-dresser of France, beside the theologically trained, keen, thoughtful New England farmer, and see which is best fitted to administer a government.

Another leading characteristic of the New England clergy was their great freedom of original development. The volumes before us are full of indications of the most racy individuality. There was no such thing as a clerical mould or pattern; but each minister, particularly in the rural districts, grew and flourished as freely and unconventionally as the apple-trees in his own orchard, and was considered none the worse for that, so long as he bore good fruit of the right sort. Thus we find among them all stamps and kinds of men,—men of decorum and ceremony, like Dr. Emmons and President Edwards, and men who, aiming after the real, despised the form, kept no order, and revered no ceremony; yet all flourished in peace, and were allowed to do their work in their own way.

We find here and there records of pleasant little encounters of humor among them on these points. Parson Deane, of Portland, was a precise man, and always appeared in the clerical regalia of the times, with powdered wig, cocked hat, gown, bands. Parson Hemmenway went about with just such clothes as he happened to find convenient, without the least regard to the conventional order.

Being together on a council. Dr. Deane playfully remarked,—

"The ferryman, Brother Hemmenway, as we came over, hadn't the least idea you were a clergyman. Now I am particular always to appear with my wig on."

"Precisely," said Dr. Hemmenway; "I know it is well to bestow more abundant honor on the part that lacketh."

It is a curious illustration of the times and people to see how quietly the personal eccentricities of a good minister were received.

One Mr. Moody, who flourished in the State of Maine, was one of those born oddities whose growth of mind rejects every outward rule. Brilliant, original, restless, he found it impossible to bring his thoughts to march in the regular platoon and file of a properly written sermon. It is told of him, that, moved by the admiration of his people for the calm and orderly performances of one of his neighboring brethren of the name of Emerson, he resolved to write a sermon in the same style. After the usual introductory services, he began to read his performance, but soon grew weary, stumbled disconsolately, and at last stopped, exclaiming,—"Emerson must be Emerson, and Moody must be Moody! I feel as if I had my head in a bag! You call Moody a rambling preacher;—it is true enough; but his preaching will do to catch rambling sinners, and you are all runaways from the Lord."

His clerical brethren at a meeting of the Association once undertook to call him to account for his odd expressions and back-handed strokes. He stepped into his study and produced a record of some twenty or thirty cases of conversions which had resulted from some of his exceptional sayings. As he read them over with the dates, they looked at each other with surprise, and one of them very sensibly remarked, "If the Lord owns Father Moody's oddities, we must let him take his own way."

His son, Joseph Moody, furnished the original incident which Hawthorne has so exquisitely worked up in his story of "The Minister's Black Veil." Being of a singularly nervous and melancholic temperament, he actually for many years shrouded his face with a black handkerchief. When reading a sermon he would lift this, but stood with his back to the audience so that his face was concealed,—all which appears to have been accepted by his people with sacred simplicity. He was known in the neighborhood by the name of Handkerchief Moody.

It is recorded also of the venerable and eccentric Father Mills, of Torringford, that, on the death of his much beloved wife, he was greatly exercised as to how a minister who always dressed in black could sufficiently express his devotion and respect for the departed by any outward change of dress. At last he settled the question to his own satisfaction, by substituting for his white wig a black silk pocket-handkerchief, with which head-dress he officiated in all simplicity during the usual term of mourning.

We think it one result of their great freedom from any strait-laced conventional ideas, that no point of character is more frequently noticed in the subjects of these sketches than wit and humor. New England ministers never held it a sin to laugh; if they did, some of them had a great deal to answer for; for they could scarce open their mouths without dropping some provocation to a smile. An ecclesiastical meeting was always a merry season; for there never were wanting quaint images, humorous anecdotes, and sharp flashes of wit, and even the driest and most metaphysical points of doctrine were often lit up and illuminated by these corruscations.

A panel taken out of the house of the Rev. John Lowell, of Newbury, is still preserved, representing the common style of an ecclesiastical meeting in those days. The divines, each in full wig and gown, are seated around a table, smoking their pipes, and above is the well-known inscription: In necessariis, Unitas: in non necessariis, Libertas: in utrisque Charitas.

In that delightfully naïve and simple journal of the Rev. Thomas Smith, the first minister settled in Portland, Maine, in the year 1725, we find the following entries.

"July 4, 1763. Mr. Brooks was ordained. A multitude of people from my parish. A decent solemnity."

"January 16, 1765. Mr. Foxcroft was ordained at New Gloucester. We had a pleasant journey home. Mr. L. was alert and kept us all merry. A jolly ordination. We lost sight of decorum."

This Mr. L., by the by, who was so alert on this occasion, it appears by a note, was Stephen Longfellow, the great-grandfather of the poet. Those who enjoy the poet's acquaintance will probably testify that the property of social alertness has not evaporated from the family in the lapse of so many years.

It is recorded of Dr. Griffin, that, when President of the Andover Theological Seminary, he convened the students at his room one evening, and told them he had observed that they were all growing thin and dyspeptical from a neglect of the exercise of Christian laughter, and he insisted upon it that they should go through a company-drill in it then and there. The Doctor was an immense man,—over six feet in height, with great amplitude of chest and most magisterial manners. "Here," said he to the first, "you must practise; now hear me!" and bursting out into a sonorous laugh, he fairly obliged his pupils, one by one, to join, till the whole were almost convulsed. "That will do for once," said the Doctor, "and now mind you keep in practice!"

New England used to be full of traditions of the odd sayings of Dr. Bellamy, one of the most powerful theologians and preachers of his time. His humor, however, seems to have been wholly a social quality, requiring to be struck out by the collision of conversation; for nothing of the peculiar quaintness and wit ascribed to him appears in his writings, which are in singularly simple, clear English. One or two of his sayings circulated about us in our childhood. For example, when one had built a fire of green wood, he exclaimed, "Warm me here! I'd as soon try to warm me by star-light on the north side of a tombstone!" Speaking of the chapel-bell of Yale College, he said, "It was about as good a bell as a fur cap with a sheep's tail in it."

A young minister, who had made himself conspicuous for a severe and denunciatory style of preaching, came to him one day to inquire why he did not have more success. "Why, man," said the Doctor, "can't you take a lesson of the fisherman? How do you go to work, if you want to catch a trout? You get a little hook and a fine line, you bait it carefully and throw it in as gently as possible, and then you sit and wait and humor your fish till you can get him ashore. Now you get a great cod-hook and rope-line, and thrash it into the water, and bawl out, 'Bite or be damned!'"

The Doctor himself gained such a reputation as an expert spiritual fisherman, that some of his parishioners, like experienced old trout, played shy of his hook, though never so skilfully baited.

"Why, Mr. A.," he said to an old farmer in his neighborhood, "they tell me you are an Atheist. Don't you believe in the being of a God?"

"No!" said the man.

"But, Mr. A., let's look into this. You believe that the world around us exists from some cause?"

"No, I don't!"

"Well, then, at any rate, you believe in your own existence?"

"No, I don't!"

"What! not believe that you exist yourself?"

"I tell you what, Doctor," said the man, "I a'n't going to be twitched up by any of your syllogisms, and so I tell you I don't believe anything,—and I'm not going to believe anything!"

A collection of the table-talk of the clergy whose lives are sketched in Dr. Sprague's volumes would be a rare fund of humor, shrewdness, genius, and originality. We must say, however, that as nothing is so difficult as to collect these sparkling emanations of conversation, the written record which this work presents falls far below that traditional one which floated about us in our earlier years. So much in wit and humor depends on the electric flash, the relation of the idea to the attendant circumstances, that people often remember only how they have laughed, and can no more reproduce the expression than they can daguerreotype the heat-lightning of a July night.

The doctrine that a minister is to maintain some ethereal, unearthly station, where, wrapt in divine contemplation, he is to regard with indifference the actual struggles and realities of life, is a sickly species of sentimentalism, the growth of modern refinement, and altogether too moonshiny to have been comprehended by our stout-hearted and very practical fathers. With all their excellences, they had nothing sentimental about them; they were bent on reducing all things to practical, manageable realities. They would not hear of churches, but called them meeting-houses; they would not be called clergymen, but ministers or servants,—thereby signifying their calling to real, tangible work among real men and things.

As we have already said, in the beginnings of New England, the Church and State were identical, and the clergy ex officio the main counsellors and directors of the Commonwealth; and when this especial prerogative was relinquished, they naturally retained something of the bent it had given them.

An interesting portion of these sketches comprises the lives of ministers during our Revolutionary struggle, showing how ardently and manfully at that time the clergy headed the people. Many of them went into the army as chaplains; one or two, more zealous still, even took up temporal arms; while the greater number showered the enemy with sermons, tracts, and pamphlets.

Some of the more zealous politicians among them did not scruple to bring their sentiments even into the prayers of the church. We recollect an anecdote of a stout Whig minister of New Haven, who, during the occupation of the town by the British, was ordered to offer public prayers for the King, which he did as follows: "O Lord, bless thy servant, King George, and grant unto him wisdom; for thou knowest, O Lord, he needs it."

So afterwards, in the time of the Embargo, Parson Eaton, of Harpswell, a Federalist, is recorded to have introduced his prayer for the President in a formula which might be recommended at the present day for the use of the people of Kansas. "Forasmuch as thou hast commanded us to pray for our enemies, we pray for the President of these United States, that his heart may be turned to just counsels," etc.

This same Parson Eaton distinguished himself also for his patriotic enthusiasm in Revolutionary times. When the British had burned Falmouth, (Portland,) a messenger came to Harpswell to beat up for recruits to the Continental forces. Not succeeding to his mind, he went to Parson Eaton, one Sunday morning, and begged him to say something for him in the course of the day's services. "It is my sacramental Sabbath," said the valiant Doctor, "and I cannot. But at the going down of the sun I will speak to my people." And accordingly, that very evening, Bible in hand, on the green before the meeting-house, Dr. Eaton addressed the people, denouncing the curse of Meroz on those who came not up to the help of the country, and recruits flowed in abundantly.

The pastors of New England were always in their sphere moral reformers. Profitable and popular sins, though countenanced by long-established custom, were fearlessly attacked. No sight could be more impressive than that of Dr. Hopkins—who with all his power of mind was never a popular preacher, and who knew he was not popular—rising up in Newport pulpits to testify against the slave-trade, then as reputable and profitable a sin as slave-holding is now. He knew that Newport was the stronghold of the practice, and that the probable consequence of his faithfulness would be the loss of his pulpit and of his temporal support; but none the less plainly and faithfully did he testify. Fond as he was of doctrinal subtilties, keen as was his analysis of disinterested benevolence, he did not, like some in our day, confine himself to analyzing virtue in the abstract, but took upon himself the duty of practicing it in the concrete without fear of consequences,—well knowing that there is no logic like that of consistent action.

We should do injustice to our subject, if we did not add a testimony to the peculiarly religious character and influence of the men of whom we speak. Shrewd, practical, capable, as they were, in the affairs of this life, perfectly natural and human as were their characters, still they were in the best sense unworldly men. Religion was the deep underlying stratum on which their whole life was built. Like the granite framework of the earth, it sunk below all and rose above all else in their life. No Acta Sanctorum contain more pathetic pictures of simple and all-absorbing godliness than were displayed by the subjects of these sketches. However they may have differed among themselves as to the metaphysical adjustment of the Calvinistic system, all agreed in so presenting it as to make God all in all.

Doctor Arnold says it is necessary for the highest development of the soul that it should have somewhere an object of entire reverence enthroned above all possibility of doubt or criticism. Now a radically democratic system, like that of New England, at once sweeps all factitious reliances of this kind from the soul. No crown, no court, no nobility, no ritual, no hierarchy,—the beautiful principles of reverence and loyalty might have died out of the American heart, had not these men by their religious teachings upborne it as on eagles' wings to the footstool of the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible. Hence we see why what was commonly called among them the "Doctrine of Divine Sovereignty" acquired so prominent a place in their preaching and their hearts. They were men of deep reverence and profound loyalty of nature, from whom every lower object for the repose of these qualities had been torn away,—who concentrated on God alone those sentiments of faith and fealty which in other lands are divided with Church and King. Hence, more than that of any other clergy, their preaching contemplated God as King and Ruler. Submission to him without condition, without limit, they both preached and practised. Unconditional submission was as constantly on their lips God-ward as it was sparingly uttered man-ward.

No picture of the "good parson" that was ever drawn could exceed in beauty that of the Rev. Jeremiah Hallock, whose life and manners had that indescribable beauty, completeness, and sacredness, which religion sometimes gives when shining out through a peculiarly congenial natural temperament,—yet we must confess we are as much interested and impressed with its effects in those wilder and more erratic temperaments, such as Bellamy, Backus, and Moody, where genius and passion were so combined as to lead to many inconsistencies. This book is a record of how manfully many such men battled with themselves, repairing the faults of their hasty and passionate hours by the true and honest humility of their better ones, so that, as one has said of our Pilgrim Fathers, we feel that they may have been endeared to God even by their faults.

The pastoral labors of these ministers were abounding. Two and sometimes three services on the Sabbath, and a weekly lecture, were only the beginning of their labors. Multitudes of them held circuit meetings, to the number of two or three a week, in the outskirts of their parishes; besides which they labored conversationally from house to house with individuals.

Gradual, indefinite, insensible amelioration of character was not by any means the only or the highest aim of their preaching. They sought to make religion as definite and as real to men as their daily affairs, and to bring them, as respects their spiritual history, to crises as marked and decided as those to which men are brought in temporal matters. They must become Christians now, today; the change must be immediate, all-pervading, thorough.

Such a style of preaching, from men of such power, could not be without corresponding results, especially as it was based always upon strong logical appeals to the understanding. From it resulted, from time to time, periods which are marked in these narratives as revivals of religion,—seasons in which the cumulative force of the instructions and power of the pastor, recognized by that gracious assistance on which he always depended, reached a point of outward development that affected the whole social atmosphere, and brought him into intimate and confidential knowledge of the spiritual struggles of his flock. The preaching of the pastor was then attuned and modified to these disclosures, and his metaphysical system shaped and adapted to what he perceived to be the real wants and weaknesses of the soul. Hence arose modifications of theology,—often interfering with received theory, just as a judicious physician's clinical practice varies from the book. Many of the theological disputes which have agitated New England have arisen in the honest effort to reconcile accepted forms of faith with the observed phenomena and real needs of the soul in its struggles heavenward.

* * * * *

A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE KANSAS USURPATION.

If it had been the avowed intention of the dominant party in this country to disgust the people by a long and systematic course of wrong-doing,—if it had wished to prove that it was indissolubly wedded to injustice, inconsistency, and error, it could not have chosen a better method of doing so than it has actually pursued, in the entire management of the Kansas question. From the beginning to the end, that has been both a blunder and a crime. Nothing more atrocious,—nothing more perverse,—nothing more foolish, as a matter of policy,—and we might add, but for the seriousness of the subject, nothing more ludicrous,—has occurred in our history, than the attempt, which has now been persisted in for several years, to force the evils of Slavery upon a people who cannot and will not endure them.

We say, to force the evils of slavery upon an unwilling people,—because such has been and is the only end of this protracted endeavor. The authors of the scheme have scarcely shown the ordinary cunning of rogues, which conceals its ulterior purposes. Disdaining the advice of Mrs. Peachum to her daughter Polly, to be "somewhat nice" in her deviations from virtue, they have advanced bravely and flagrantly to their nefarious object. They have been reckless, defiant, aggressive; but, unfortunately for them, they have not been sagacious. The thin disguise of principle under which they masked their designs at the outset—as it were a bit of oiled paper—was soon torn away; the plot betrayed its inherent wickedness from step to step; the instruments selected to execute it have one after another abandoned the task, as quite impracticable for any honest mortal; and now these whilom advocates of "Popular Sovereignty" stand exposed to the scorn and derision of the country, as nothing less than what their opponents all along declared them to be,—the sworn champions of Slavery-Extension. All the movements and changes of their external policy find their explication in the single phrase, the actual and the political advancement of the interests of Slavery.

It is humiliating to an American citizen to cast his eyes back, even for a moment, to the history of this Kansas plot,—humiliating in many ways; but in none more so than in the revelation it makes of the depth and extent of party-servility in the Northern mind. Throughout the proceedings of the "Democracy" towards the unhappy settlers of Kansas, it is difficult to place the finger on a single act of large, just, or generous policy; every step in it appears to have developed some new outrage or some new fraud; and yet, every step in it has also elicited new shouts of approval from the echoing lieges and bondmen of "the Party." We should willingly, therefore, turn away from the theme, but that we believe the end is not yet come; a review of its past may instruct us as to its future. For it is not always true, as Coleridge says, that experience, like the stern-lights of a ship, illuminates only the track it has left; the lights may be hung upon the bows, and the spectator be enabled to discern, by means of them, no less, the way in which it is going.

A "Territory," viewed in connection with the political system of the United States, must be confessed to be a somewhat erratic and embarrassing member. Few or no specific provisions are made for it in the Organic Law, which applies primarily, and quite exclusively, to "States." The word is mentioned there but once,—in the clause empowering Congress to "make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States,"—and here it occurs in a somewhat doubtful sense. Judging by the mere letter or obvious import of the Constitution, the right of acquiring and governing territory would seem to be a casus omissus, or a power overlooked. Accordingly, Mr. Webster went so far as to assert that the framers of it never contemplated its extension beyond the original limits of the country;[A] but this we can scarcely believe of men so far-seeing and sagacious. It were a better opinion, which Mr. Benton has recently urged, that the acquisition and control of territories are necessary incidents of the sovereign and proprietary character of the government created by the Constitution.[B] But be this as it may, whatever the theoretic origin of the right to acquire territory,—whatever the origin of the right to govern it,—whether the former be derived from the war-making power, which implies conquest, or from the treaty-making power, which implies purchase,—and whether the latter be derived from an express grant or is involved as necessary to the execution of other grants, both questions were definitively settled by long and universally accepted practice. Under the actual legislation of Congress, running over a period of sixty years,—a legislation sanctioned by all administrations, by all departments of the government, by all the authorities of the individual States, by all statesmen of all parties, and by frequent popular recognitions,—prescription has taken the force of law, and that which might once be theoretically doubtful became forever practically valid and legitimate.

[Footnote A: Works, Vol. V. p. 306.]

[Footnote B: See his late pamphlet on the Dred Scott decision, which we may say, without adopting its conclusions, every statesman ought to read.]

It was not till within the last few years that the right of Congress over the Territories was questioned. Certain classes of politicians then discovered that the whole of our past statesmanship had been a mistake, and that the time had come to propound a new doctrine. No! they said, it is not Congress, not the Federal Government, which is entitled to govern the Territories, but the Territories themselves,—which means the handful of their original occupants. The real sovereignty resides in the squatters, and Squatter Sovereignty is the charm which dispels all difficulties. Alas! it was rather like the ingredients mingled by Macbeth's hags, only "a charm of powerful trouble." Overlooking the fact that the Territories were Territories precisely because they were not States, this absurd theory proposed to confer the highest character of an organized political existence upon a society wholly inchoate. As land, the Territories were the property of the United States, to be disposed of and regulated by the will of Congress; as collections of men, they were yet immature communities, having in reality no social being, and in that light also wisely and benevolently subjected to the will of Congress; but Squatter Sovereignty elevated them, willy nilly, to an independent self-subsistence. They were declared full-formed and fledged before they were out of the shell. A mere conglomeration of emigrants, Indian traders, and half-breeds was invested with all the functions of a mature and ripened civilization. Long ere there were people enough in any Territory to furnish the officers of a regular government,—before they possessed any of the apparatus of court-houses, jails, legislative chambers, etc., essential to a regular government,—before they lived near enough to each other, in fact, to constitute a respectable town-meeting,—before they could pay the expenses or gather the means of their own defence from the Indians, these wonderful entities were held to be endowed with the right of entering into the most complicated relations and of forming the most important institutions for themselves,—and not only for themselves, but for their posterity.

This puerile dogma was asserted ostensibly in the interest of Slavery, in order to get rid of the power of Congress over that subject; but the real source of it was the cowardice of those invertebrate and timorous politicians who desired to evade the responsibility of expressing opinions concerning this power. General Cass was the putative father of it, and it might well have come from one of his pliancy and calibre; but as Slavery itself, embodied in the person of Calhoun, scouted the feeble bantling, there was soon no one so mean as to confess the paternity. Abandoned of its begetters, Squatter Sovereignty wandered the streets like a squalid and orphaned outcast, begging anybody and everybody to take it in, and finding no creditable welcome anywhere.

Calhoun and his friends, no less anxious than Cass and his friends to rescue Slavery from the discretion of Congress, though for other reasons, contrived to find a more respectable excuse for such a policy. As California and New Mexico—both free soil—had lately been acquired, they contended that the moment new territories attached to the United States, the same moment the Constitution attached to them; and inasmuch as the Constitution guarantied the existence of Slavery, presto, Slavery must be regarded as existing under it in the Territories! This, we say, was more respectable ground than Squatter Sovereignty, because it met the question more fairly in the face; yet, considered either as dialectics or history, it was not one whit less absurd. We do not wonder that Webster, and all the other sound lawyers of the nation, heard such an announcement of Constitutional hermeneutics with utter surprise and astonishment. It was enough to astound even the veriest tyro in the law. The Constitution—and especially by all the premises of the State-Rights school—is a mere compact between the States; it confers no powers but delegated and enumerated powers, and such as are indispensable to the execution of these; and nowhere is there a clause or letter in it extending its operation beyond the States. Even in respect to acknowledged powers, these are inoperative until carried into effect by a special act of Congress; they have no vitality in themselves,—they are only dead provisions or forms till Congress has breathed into them the breath of life; and thence to argue that of their own energy they may leap into or embrace the Territories is to argue that a corpse may on its own motion rise and walk.

But granting this caoutchouc property, this migratory power, in the Constitution, the inference that it would take Slavery with it is a still more monstrous error than the original premises. Slavery as such is not recognized or guarantied by the Federal Constitution. Whatever the five slave-holding judges of the Supreme Court may seek to maintain, they cannot upset the universal logic of the law, nor extinguish the fundamental principles of our political system. Slavery exists only by the local or municipal usage of the States in which it exists; it is there universally defined as a right of property in man; whereas the Constitution of the United States, in all its prohibitions and provisions, designates and acts upon human beings only as persons. Whatever their characters or relations under the laws of the States, they are, under the Federal Constitution, MEN. Nowhere in that immortal paper is there an iota or tittle which gives countenance to the idea that human beings may be held as property. It speaks of "persons held to service or labor," as apprentices, for instance,—and of persons other than free, i.e. not politically citizens, as Indians and some negroes; but it does not speak of Slaves or of Slavery; on the contrary, in every part, it legislates for men solely as men. The laws of each State, and the relations of the various inhabitants of each State, it of course recognizes as valid within each State; but it recognizes them as resting exclusively on the municipal authority of the State, and not on its own authority. Against nothing did the framers of the Constitution more strenuously contend than against the admission of any phrase sanctioning the tenure of man as property. They refused even to allow of the use of the word servitude, so much did they hate the thing; and Madison expressed their almost unanimous sentiment when he exclaimed, "We intend this Constitution to be THE GREAT CHARTER OF HUMAN LIBERTY to the unborn millions who shall yet enjoy its protection, and who should not see that such an institution as Slavery was ever known in our midst." In that spirit was the instrument framed, and in that spirit was it administered, while its framers lived.

Nevertheless, under the twofold pretence we have cited,—the one reconciling the conscience with the cowardice of the North, and the other conceding the arrogant pretensions of the South,—the negation of the power of the central government over Slavery was carried into effect. By a legislative hocus-pocus, known as the Compromise Measures of 1850, Congress, contrary to the uniform tendency of bodies entrusted with a discretion, vacated instead of enlarging its powers. Its sovereign function of territorial legislation was abdicated, in favor of that wretched and ragged pretender, Squatter Sovereignty; and silly or misguided people everywhere, who professed to regard as dangerous that political excitement and agitation which are the life of republics, hailed the accession of King Log as a glorious triumph of legitimacy. In the remanding of a delicate question from the central to a local jurisdiction, in the conversion of a general into a topical inflammation, they affected to see an end of the difficulty, a cure to the disease. But no expectation could have been less wise. It was a transfer, and a possible postponement, but not a settlement of the trouble. Had they looked deeper, they would have discerned that the dispute in regard to Slavery is involved in the very structure of our government, which links two incompatible civilizations under the same head, which compels a struggle for political power between the diverse elements by the terms and conditions of their union, and which, if the contest is suppressed at one time or place, forces it to break out at another, and will force it to break out incessantly, until either Freedom or Slavery has achieved a decisive triumph.

The principle of the non-interference of Congress with the Territories once secured, there yet stood in the way of its universal application the time-honored agreement called the Missouri Compromise. Down to the year 1820, Congress had legislated to keep Slavery out of the Territories; but at that disastrous era, a weak dread of civil convulsion led to the surrender of a single State (Missouri) to this evil,—under a solemn stipulation and warrant, however, that it should never again be introduced north of a certain line. Originating with the Slave-holders, and sustained by the Slave-holders, this compact was sacredly respected by them for thirty-three years; it was respected until they had got out of it all the advantages they could, and until Freedom was about to reap her advantages,—when they began to denounce it as unconstitutional and void. A Northern Senator—whose conduct then we shall not characterize, as he seems now to be growing weary of the hard service into which he entered—was made the instrument of its overthrow. That hallowed landmark, which had lifted its awful front against the spread of Slavery for more than an entire generation, was obliterated by a quibble, and the morning sun of the 22d of May, 1854, rose for the last time "on the guarantied and certain liberties of all the unsettled and unorganized region of the American Continent." Everything there was of honor, of justice, of the love of truth and liberty, in the heart of the nation, was smitten by this painful blow; the common sense of security felt the wound; the consoling consciousness that the faith of men might be relied upon was removed by it; and to the general imagination, in fact, it seemed as if some mighty charm, which had stayed the issue of untold calamities, were suddenly and wantonly broken.

Thus, after the Constitution had been perverted in its fundamental character,—after Congress had been despoiled of one of its most important functions,—after a compact, made sacred by the faith, the feelings, and the hopes of the third of a century, was torn in pieces,—the road was clear for the organization of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories. It was given out, amid jubilations which could not have been louder, if they had been the spontaneous greetings of some real triumph of principle, that henceforth and forever the inhabitants of the Territories would be called to determine their "domestic institutions" for themselves. Under this theory, and amid these shouts, Kansas was opened for settlement; and it was scarcely opened, before it became, as might have been expected, the battleground for the opposing civilizations of the Union, to renew and fight out their long quarrel upon. From every quarter of the land settlers rushed thither, to take part in the wager of battle. They rushed thither, as individuals and as associations, as Yankees and as Corn-crackers, as Blue Lodges and as Emigrant Aid Societies; and most of them went, not only as it was their right, but as it was their duty to do. Congress had invited them in; it had abandoned legitimate legislation in order to substitute for it a scramble between the first comers; and it had said to every man who knew that Slavery was more than a simple local interest, that it was in fact an element of the general political power, "Come and decide the issue here!"

Whatever the consequences, therefore, the cowardly action of Congress was the original cause. But what were the consequences? First, a protracted anarchy and civil war among the several classes of emigrants;—second, a murderous invasion of the Territory by the borderers of a neighboring State, for the purpose of carrying the elections against the bonâ-fide settlers;—third, the establishment of a system of terrorism, in which outrages having scarcely a parallel on this continent were committed, with a view to suppress all protest against the illegality of those elections, and to drive out settlers of a particular class;—fourth, the commission of a spurious legislative assembly, in the enforced absence of protests against the illegal returns of votes;—fifth, the enactment of a series of laws for the government of the Territory, the most tyrannical and bloody ever devised for freemen,—laws which aimed a fatal blow at the four corner-stones of a free commonwealth,—freedom of speech, of the press, of the jury, and of suffrage;—sixth, the recognition of Slavery as an existing fact, and the denunciation of penalties, as for felony, against every attempt to question it in word or deed;—and, finally, the dismissal of the Territorial Governor, (Reeder,) who had exhibited some signs of self-respect and conscience in resisting these wicked schemes, and who was compelled to fly the Territory in disguise, under a double menace of public prosecution and private assassination.

These were the scenes of the first act, in a drama then commenced; and those of the next were not unlike. A second Governor (Shannon) having been procured,—a Governor chosen with a double fitness to the use,—on the ground of his sympathy with whatever was vulgar in border-ruffian habits and with whatever was obsequious in Presidential policy,—the deliberate game of forcing the settlers to submit to the infamous usurpation of the Missourians was opened. But, thank Heaven! those brave and hardy pioneers would not submit! There was enough of the blood of the Puritans and of the Revolutionary Sires coursing in their veins, to make them feel that submission, under such circumstances, would have been a base betrayal of liberty, a surrender of honor, and a sacrifice of every honest sentiment of justice and self-respect. "Come," they said to the marauders,—"come, hack this flesh from our limbs, and scatter these bones to bleach with those of so many of our friends and brothers, already strewn upon the unshorn and desolate fields,—but do not ask us to submit to wrongs so daring or to frauds so foul!" The marauders took them at their word, and hewed and hacked them with shameless cruelty; yet, with a singular forbearance, the friends of freedom did not hastily resent the outrages with which they had been visited. They loved freedom, but they loved law too; and they proceeded in a legal and peaceful spirit to procure the redress of their grievances,—in the first place by an appeal to Congress, and in the second, by the organization of a State government of their own. Both of these methods they had an indisputable right to adopt; for the first is guarantied to every citizen, even the meanest,—and the second, though informal, was not illegal, and had, time and again, been sanctioned by the highest political tribunals of the land.

Congress had dismissed the subject of Territorial Government; and here it was again, in a more troublesome guise than it had ever before assumed. The ghost of the murdered Banquo would not down at its bidding. Nearly the entire session of 1856 was consumed in heated and virulent debates on Kansas. The House, fresh from the affections of the people, was disposed to do justice to the sufferers; it confirmed, by the investigations of its committees, the verity of every complaint, and it was not willing to allow a trivial technicality to stand in the way of the great cause of truth and right. But the Senate was dogmatic and hard,—full of whims, and scruples, and hair-splitting difficulties,—ever straining at gnats and swallowing camels; of the few there inclined to bear a manly part, one was overpowered by the club of a bully, and the others by the despotism of numbers and of party drill. As for the Executive, it was bound hand and foot to the Slave Power, and had no option but to let loose its minions, its judges, its sheriffs, its vagabonds, and its dragoons upon the poor Free-State men, whose only crime was a refusal to submit to the most outrageous abuses. Their towns were burned, their presses destroyed, their assemblies dispersed, and their wives and children brutally insulted. The debauched and imbecile Governor, who represented the Federal Power, hounded on the miscreants of the border to the work of destruction, so long as he was able; but he happily became in the end too weak even for this perfunctory labor; and he gradually sank into deliquium, till his final withdrawal into the obscurities whence he had emerged gave a momentary peace to the distracted and baffled settlers.

We pass over the administration of Geary, the third of the Kansas Governors,—a period in which the ravages of the marauders were continued, but under meliorated circumstances. The great uprising of the Northern masses, in the Presidential election, had impressed upon the most desperate of the Pro-Slavery faction the necessity of a restrained and moderated zeal. Geary went to the Territory with some desire to deal justly with all parties. He fancied, from the promises made to him, that he would be sustained in this honorable course by the President. It was no part of his conception of his task, that he should be called upon to screen assassins, to justify perjury. But he had reckoned without knowledge of what he had undertaken. He was soon involved with the self-styled judiciary of Kansas, whose especial favorites were the promoters of outrage; his correspondence was intercepted, his plans thwarted, his motives aspersed, his life menaced; and he resigned his thankless charge, in a feeling of profound contempt and bitter disappointment,—of contempt for the restless knot of villains who circumvented all conciliatory action, and of disappointment towards superiors at Washington who betrayed their promises of countenance and support.

With the advent of Mr. Buchanan to the Presidency a new era was expected, because a new era had been plainly prescribed by the entire course and spirit of the Presidential campaign. All through that heated and violent contest, it was loudly promised on one side, as it was loudly demanded on the other, that the affairs of Kansas should be honestly and equitably administered. As the time had then come, in the progress of population, when the Territory might be considered competent to determine its political institutions,—the period of its immaturity and pupilage being past,—the election turned upon the single issue of Justice to Kansas. Mr. Buchanan and his party,—their conventions, their orators, and their newspapers,—in order to quell the storm of indignation swelling the Northern heart, were voluble in their pledges of a fair field for a fair settlement of all its difficulties. In the name of Popular Sovereignty,—or of the indisputable right of every people, that is a people, to determine its political constitution for itself,—they achieved a hard-won success. On no other ground could they have met the gallant charge of their opponents, and on no other ground did they retain their hold of the popular support. In his inaugural address, Mr. Buchanan foreshadowed a complete and final adjustment of every element of discord. He selected, for the accomplishment of his policy, a statesman of national reputation, experienced in politics, skilful in administration, and of well-known principles and proclivities in the practical affairs of government. Mr. Walker accepted the place of Territorial Governor, under the most urgent entreaties, and on repeated and distinct pledges on the part of the President that the organization of Kansas as a State should be unfettered and free. His personal sympathies were strongly on the side of the party which had so long ruled with truculent hand in the affairs of the Territory; but he was none the less resolved that the fairly ascertained majority should have its way.

Under assurances to that effect, the Free-State men, for the first time since the great original fraud which had disfranchised them, consented to enter into an electoral contest with their foes and oppressors. The result was the return of a Free-State delegate to Congress, and a Free-State legislature, by a majority which, after the rejection of a series of patent and wretched frauds, was more than ten to one; and yet the desperate game of conquest and usurpation was not closed. For, in the mean time, a convention of delegates to frame a State Constitution had been summoned to assemble at Lecompton. It was called by the old spurious legislature, which represented Missouri, and not Kansas; it was called by a legislature, which, even if not spurious, had no authority for making such a call; it was called under provisions for a census and registry of voters which in more than half the Territory were not complied with; and it was elected by a small proportion of a small minority, the Free-State men and others refusing to enter into a contest under proceedings unauthorized at best, and as they believed illegal. Let it be added, also, that a large number of its members were pledged to submit the result of their doings to a vote of the people,—according to what Mr. Buchanan, in his instructions to Governor Walker, and Governor Walker himself, on the strength of those instructions, had proclaimed as the policy of "the party."

This Convention, in the prosecution of its gratuitous task, devised the scheme of a Constitution wholly in the interest of its members and of the meagre minority they represented,—and so objectionable in many respects, that not one in twenty of the voters of the Territory, as Governor Walker informed the writer of this, could or would approve it. Recognizing Slavery as an existing fact, and perpetuating it in every event, it yet purported to submit the question of Slavery to a determining vote of the people. This was, however, a mere pretence; for the method proposed for getting at the sense of the people was nothing but a pitiful juggle, according to which no one could vote on the Slavery question who did not at the same time vote for the Constitution. No alternative or discretion was allowed to the citizens whose Constitution it purported to be; if they voted at all on the vast variety of subjects usually embraced in an organic law, they must vote in favor of the measures concocted by the Convention. The entire conduct of the election and the final adjudication of the returns, moreover, were taken out of the hands of the officers, and from under the operation of the laws, already established by the Territorial authorities, to be vested exclusively in one of the Convention's own creatures,—a reckless and unprincipled politician, whose whole previous career had been an offence and a nuisance to the majority of the inhabitants. Had the Convention been legitimately called and legitimately chosen, this audacious abrogation of the Territorial laws and of the functions of the Territorial officers would in itself have been sufficient to vitiate its authority; but being neither legitimately called, nor legitimately chosen, and outraging the sentiments of nineteen twentieths of the community, the illegal election provided for can be regarded only as the crowning atrocity of the long series of atrocities to which Kansas has been subjected.

The most surprising thing, however, could anything surprise us in these Kansas proceedings, is, that the President, eating all his former promises, adopts the Lecompton Convention as a legitimate body, and commends its swindling mode of submission as a "fair" test of the popular will! Yet, it is sad to say, this is only following up the line of precedents established from the beginning. The plot against the freedom of Kansas was conceived in a Congressional breach of faith; it was inaugurated by invasion, bloodshed, and civil war; it was prosecuted for two years through a series of unexampled violences; and it would be strange, if it had not been consummated at Lecompton and Washington by a series of corresponding frauds. It seems to have been impossible to touch the business without perpetrating some iniquity, great or small; and Mr. Buchanan, cautious, circumspect, timorous, as he is, tumbles into the fatal circle headlong.

And how do we know all this? Upon what kind and degree of evidence do we rest these heavy accusations? Upon the hasty opinions of those who are unfriendly to the principles and purposes of the dominant party? Not at all; but upon the voluntary confessions of the distinguished and chosen agents of that party, these agents being themselves eyewitnesses of the facts to which they testify. For proof of the original invasion and usurpation, with all its frauds and outrages, we appeal to the testimony of Governor Reeder; for proof of the continued ravages and persistent malignity of the border ruffians, we appeal to the testimony of Governor Geary; and for proof of the illegal and swindling character of the late Constitutional movement, we appeal to Governor Walker;—all these witnesses being original friends of the Kansas-Nebraska bill and policy; all the original coadjutors of the Slave Power; all its carefully selected instruments; all strongly prejudiced at the outset against the cause and the men of the Free-State Party; and yet, each one of them, as soon as he has fairly entered the field of his operations, offering such loud rebuke of the plans and projects of his own party as to provoke his speedy removal!—no strength of party attachment, no pliability of conscience, no hope of future favor, no dread of instant punishment, being sufficient to prevent him from turning against his own masters and colleagues! Even the Senators of the party catch the spirit of revolt; and the very godfather of the Kansas scheme,—its most efficient advocate,—the leading and organizing mind of it,—has become the strongest opponent and bitterest denouncer of the policy which directs its execution.

In this view of the case, may we not ask whether this base and cruel attempt at subduing Kansas has not gone far enough? Have not the circumstances shown that it is as impracticable as it is base and cruel? Or are we to see the despotism of the New World as insanely obstinate as the despotisms of the Old? Is there no warning, no instruction, to be derived from the examples of those older nations? An eloquent historian has recently depicted for us, in scenes which the memory can never lose, the mad attempts of the House of Stuart to Romanize England, to the loss of the most magnificent dominion the world ever saw; and another historian, scarcely less eloquent, has drawn a series of fearfully interesting pictures of the stern efforts of the Spaniards to impose a detested State and a more detested Church upon the burghers of the Netherlands. The spirit of James II., and the spirit of Philip II., was the same spirit which is now striving to force Slavery and Slave Law upon Kansas; and though the field of battle is narrower, and the scene less conspicuous, the consequences of the struggle are hardly of less moment. Kansas is the future seat of empire; she will yet give tone and law to the entire West; and they who are fighting there, in behalf of humanity and justice, do not fight for themselves alone, but for a large posterity.

* * * * *

SONNET.

The brave old Poets sing of nobler themes
Than the weak griefs which haunt men's coward souls.
The torrent of their lusty music rolls
Not through dark valleys of distempered dreams,
But murmurous pastures lit by sunny streams;
Or, rushing from some mountain height of Thought,
Swells to strange music, that our minds have sought
Vainly to gather from the doubtful gleams
Of our more gross perceptions. Oh, their strains
Nerve and ennoble Manhood!—no shrill cry,
Set to a treble, tells of querulous woe;
Yet numbers deep-voiced as the mighty Main's
Merge in the ringdove's plaining, or the sigh
Of lovers whispering where sweet streamlets flow.

ART.

THE BRITISH GALLERY IN NEW YORK.

To speak of English Art was, ten years ago, to speak of something formless, chaotic, indeed, so far as any order or organization of principles was concerned,—a mass of individual results, felt out, often, under the most glorious artistic inspiration, but much oftener the expression of merely ignorant whim, or still more empty academic knowledge,—a waste of uncultivated, unpruned brushwood, with here and there a solitary tree towering into unapproachable and inexplicable symmetry and beauty. Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Turner are great names in Art-history; but to deduce their development from the English culture of Art, one must use the same processes as in proving Cromwell to have been called up by the loyalty of Englishmen. They towered the higher from contempt for the abasement around them. If there was greatness in measure in English Art, it was greatness subjected to tradition and conventionalism. The three artists we have just named were the only great freemen, in the realm of Art England had known down to the close of the first half of the nineteenth century; and of these, Turner alone has left his impress on the Art succeeding his.

With the commencement of the present half-century there began a systematic movement in revolt from the degradation of Art in England, which, unfortunately, so far as significance was concerned, assumed the name of Pre-Raphaelitism. It extended itself rapidly, absorbing most of the young painters of any force or earnestness, and attracting some who already held high places in public esteem. Being something new, it was sure of its full measure of derision while it was considered unimportant, and of bitter and violent antagonism when it became evident that it was strong enough to make its way. This hostility, beaten down for the moment by the rhetoric of Ruskin and the inherent earnestness of the new Art, is, however, as sure to prevail again as the English character is at once conservative of old forms, reverential of authorities, and subject to enthusiasms for new things, whose very extravagance tends to reaction. If Pre-Raphaelitism now holds its own in England, it is simply because it is neither thoroughly understood nor completely defined. It is an absolutely revolutionary movement, and must, therefore, be rejected by the English mind when seen as such,—and this all the more certainly and speedily because Ruskin with his imaginative enthusiasm has raised it to a higher position than it really deserves at present. That cause is unfortunate which retains as its advocate one whose rhetoric persuades all, while his logic convinces none; and the too readily believing converts of his enthusiasm and splendid diction, their sympathetic fire abated, revert with an implacable bitterness to their former traditions. With all our respect for Ruskin, we think that he has asserted many things, but proved next to nothing. He has utterly misunderstood and misstated Pre-Raphaelitism, which will thus be one day the weaker for his support.

But, pending this inevitable decline in favor at home, Pre-Raphaelitism colonizes. During the past year, some lovers of Art in England organized an association, having as its purpose the introduction of English Art to the American public,—partly, it was to be expected, with the view of opening this El Dorado to the English painter, but still more with the desire to extend the knowledge of what was to them a new and important revelation of Art. In its inception the plan was almost exclusively Pre-Raphaelite, but extended itself, on after-consideration, so far as to admit the worthiest artists of the conventional stamp. We have the first fruits of the undertaking in an exhibition which has achieved a success in New York, and which will probably visit the principal cities of the Union before its return home in the spring to make way for a second which will open in the autumn.

It is not as a collection of pictures merely that we purpose to notice this exhibition. Out of nearly four hundred pictures, the great proportion are mere conventionalisms,—many of them choice, but most of them in no wise to be compared with the pictures of the same class by French and German painters, since neither just drawing nor impressive color redeems their inanity of conception. There are some curious water-color drawings by Lance, remarkable mainly as forcibly painted, some exquisite color-pieces by William Hunt, and a number of fine examples of the matter-of-fact common-place which forms the great mass of pictures in the London exhibitions. Two drawings deserve especial, though brief, notice; one a coast bit by Copley Fielding,—a sultry, hazy afternoon on the seashore, where sea and sky, distance and foreground, are fused into one golden, slumberous silence, in which neither wave laps nor breeze fans, and only the blinding sun moves, sinking slowly down to where heaven and ocean mingle again in a happy dream of their old unity before the waters under the firmament were divided from the waters above the firmament, and the stranded ships lie with sails drooping and listless on a beach from which the last tide seems to have ebbed, leaving the ooze glistening and gleaming in the sunlight,—a picture of rare sentiment and artistic refinement;—the other is a waterfall by Nesfield,—a dreamy, careless, wayward plunge of waters over ledge after ledge of massive rock, the merry cascade enveloping itself in a robe of spray and mist, on the skirt of which flashes the faintest vision of a rainbow, which wavers and flits, almost, as you look at it, while the jets of foam plash up from the pool at the foot of the fall, a tranquil pause of the waters in a depth of uncertain blue, in which a suggestion of emerald flashes, and from which they dance on in less frantic mood over the brown and water-worn boulders to follow their further whims; everything that is most charming and spirituelle in the water-fall is given, and with a delicacy of color and subtilty of execution fitting the subject. These are not the only good drawings, but there is in them a simplicity and singleness of purpose, a total subordination of all minor matters to the great impression, which makes them points of poetic value in the collection. There are some drawings by Finch, scarcely less noticeable for their rendering of solemn twilight, tender and touching as the memory of a loved one long dead. The water-color representation is, indeed, complete and interesting; but we have only present use with five of these drawings, by Turner, and from different stages of his progress.

Ruskin, in his pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism, has drawn such a comparison between Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites as to make them only different manifestations of the same spirit in Art. Nothing, it seems to us, could be more mistaken than this; for, in all that concerns either the end of Art or its paths of approach, its purposes or its methods, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites are diametrically opposed. Turner was intensely subjective,—the Pre-Raphaelites are as intensely objective. There is no evidence whatever in Turner's works that he ever made the slightest attempt to reproduce Nature in such guise as the Pre-Raphaelites paint her in; on the contrary, the early drawings of Turner are as inattentive to absolute truth of detail as they could well be. His course of study was one of memory. He commenced by expressing in his drawing such palpable facts and truths as were most strongly retained, and in which he conveyed the great impression of the scene, with the most complete indifference to all facts not essential to the telling of his story. From this, as his memory grew stronger and his perception more minute and comprehensive, he widened his circle of ideas and facts, always working from feeling rather than from what Nature set before him. His mind thus sifting his perceptions, retaining always only those which constituted the essential features of the impression, and with a distinctness proportioned to their relative importance, there necessarily resulted a subjective unity like that of an absolute creation. The Pre-Raphaelites, on the other hand, endeavor to paint everything that they see just as they see it; and doing this without permitting the slightest liberty of choice to their feeling, where they have feeling, their Art is, of course, in all its early stages, destitute of that singleness of purpose which marked Turner's works from the beginning. Turner felt an emotion before Nature, and used the objects from which he had received the emotion as symbols to convey it again;—the Pre-Raphaelites look at Nature as full of beautiful facts, and, like children amid the flowers, they gather their hands full, "indifferent of worst or best," and when their hands are full, crowd their laps and bosoms, and even drop some already picked, to make room for others which beckon from their stems,—insatiable with beauty. This is delightful,—but childlike, nevertheless. Turner was, above all, an artist; with him Art stood first, facts secondary;—with the Pre-Raphaelites it is the reverse; it is far less important to them that their facts should be broadly stated and in keeping in their pictures, than that they should be there and comprehensible. To him a fact that was out of keeping was a nuisance, and he treated it as such; while any falsehood that was in keeping was as unhesitatingly admitted, if he needed it to strengthen the impression of his picture. Turner would put a rainbow by the side of the sun, if he wanted one there;—a Pre-Raphaelite would paint with a stop-watch, to get the rainbow in the right place. In brief, Turner's was the purely subjective method of study, a method fatal to any artist of the opposite quality of mind;—that of the Pre-Raphaelites is the purely objective, absolutely enslaving to a subjective artist, and no critic capable of following out the first principles of Art to logical deductions could confound the two. The one leads to a sentimental, the other to a philosophic Art; and the only advice to be given to an artist as to his choice of method is, that, until he knows that he can trust himself in the liberty of the subjective, he had better remain in the discipline of the objective. The fascination of the former, once felt, forbids all return to the latter. If he be happy in the Pre-Raphaelite fidelity, let him thank the Muse and tempt her no farther.

There can be no more valuable lesson in Art given than that series of Turner drawings in the British collection, both as concerns its progression in the individual and those subtile analogies between painting (color) and music,—analogies often hinted at, but never, that we are aware, fully followed out. Color bears the same relation to form that sound does to language. If a painter sit down before Nature and accurately match all her tints, we have an absolute but prosaic rendering of her; and the analogy to this in music would be found in a passage of ordinary conversational language written down, with its inflections and pauses recorded in musical signs. Both are transcripts of Nature, but neither is in any way poetic, or, strictly speaking, artistic; we cannot, by any addition or refinement, make them so. Now mark that in the two early drawings of Turner we have white and black with only the slightest possible suggestion of blue in the distance;—the corresponding form in language is verse, with its measure of time for measure of space, and just so much inflection of voice as these drawings have of tint,—enough not to be absolutely monotonous. We have in both cases left the idea of mere imitation of Nature, and have entered on Art. Verse grows naturally into music by simple increase of the range of inflection, as Turner's color will grow more melodic and finally harmonic. And in thus beginning Turner has placed his works above the level of prosaic painting of Nature, just as verse is placed above prose by the unanimous consent of mankind. From these simple presages of Art we may diverge and follow his development as a poet by his engravings, without ever making reference to him as a colorist. But beside being a poet, he was a great color-composer. If, leaving poetry as recited, we take the ballad, or poetry made fully melodic, we have the single voice, passing through measured inflections and with measured pauses. Correspondingly, the next in the series of Turner drawings, the "Aysgarth Force," shows no attempt to give the real color of Nature, but a single color governing the whole drawing, a golden brown passing in shadow into its exact negative. There is an absolute tint, full, and inflected through every shade of its tones to the bottom of the scale. The strict analogy is broken in this case by a dash of delicate gray-blue in the sky and gray-red in the figures, the slightest possible accompaniment to his golden-brown melody; but these were not needed, and we find earlier drawings which adhere to the strict monochrome. In the drawing next in date, the "Hastings from the Sea," we have the further step from monochrome to polychrome; we have the distinct trio, the golden yellow in the sky, the blue in the sea, and the red in the figures in the boats,—as in a vocal trio we have the only three possible musical sounds of the human voice, the soprano, the basso, and the falsetto of the child's voice. All these colors are distinctly asserted and perfectly harmonized in a most exquisite play of tints, but it is still no more like Nature than the trio in "I Puritani" is like conversation. Turner never dreamed of painting like Nature, and no sane man ever saw or can see, in this world, Nature in the colors in which he has painted her, any more than he will find men conducting business in operatic notes.

One step farther, and we leave the analogy. In the "Swiss Valley," one of his last works, we are from the first conscious that his harmonies have run away with his theme. In Ole Bull's "Niagara" we have almost as much of matter-of-fact Nature as in Turner's "Swiss Valley." The eye untrained by study of Turner's works finds nothing but a blaze of color with no intelligible object, just as we have, in opera, music of which the words are inaudible;—both are there for practised ear and eye, but in neither case as of primary importance. Turner has even gone farther, and given us pictures of pure color, as in the illustration of Goethe's theory of colors,—a fantasie of the palette. And why shall Turner not orchestrate color as well as Verdi sound? why not give us his synchromies as well as Beethoven his symphonies? You prefer common sense,—Harding and Fripp, Stanfield and Creswick? Well, suppose you like better to hear some familiar voice talking of past times than to hear "Robert le Diable" ever so well sung, or Hawthorne's prose better than Browning's verse,—it proves nothing, save that you do not care for music and poetry so well as some others do.

But after all, Turner was one of the old school of artists. Claude was the first landscape painter of the line, Turner the last; subjective poets both,—the one a child, the other a mighty man. But the poets no longer govern the world as in times past; they give place to the philosophers. The race is no longer content with its inspirations and emotions, but must see and understand. The old school of Art was one of sentiment, the new is one of fact; and out of that English mind from whose seeming common-place level of untrained, unschooled intellect have burst so many of the loftiest souls the world has known,—from that mind more inspired in its want of academic greatness, more self-educated in its wild liberty, than the best-trained nations of Europe, this new school has fittingly had its origin.

We speak of it as a School, though yet in its rudiments, because it has a distinctive character, a real purpose,—and because it is the embodiment of the new-age spirit of truth-seeking, of the spirit of science, rather than that of song. Among the pictures contributed to the English exhibition by the Pre-Raphaelites, there are very few which do not convey the distinct impression of a determined effort to realize certain truths. There are few which succeed entirely; but this is so far from astonishing, that we have only to think that the oldest of these artists has hardly passed his first decade of recognized artistic existence, and that their aims are new in Art, to wonder that so much of fresh and subtile truth is given. There are two respects in which nearly all the works of the school agree, and which have come to be regarded by superficial students of Art as its characteristics, namely, that they are very deficient in drawing and devoid of grace. Both deficiencies are such as might have been expected from the circumstances. Young men filled with earnestness and enthusiasm, and with an artistic purpose full in view, will spend little time in acquiring academic excellences, or trouble themselves much with methods or styles of drawing. They dash at once to their purpose, and let technical excellence follow, as it ought, in the train of the idea of their work. Of course they do not compare, as draughtsmen and technists, with men who have spent years in getting a knowledge of the proportions of the human figure, and the best methods of applying color; but, on the other hand, they are safe from that most alluring and fatal course of study which makes the subject only a lay figure to display artistic capacity on. Of all the pictures of the school, in the collection of which we speak, there is but one of academic excellence in drawing,—the "King Lear" of Ford Madox Brown. All the others have errors, and some of them to a ludicrous degree; but wherever refined drawing is needed to convey the idea of the picture, no school can furnish drawing more subtile and expressive. The head of the "Light of the World" is worthy in this respect to be placed beside Raphael and Da Vinci; and the "Ophelia" of Hughes, though inexcusably incorrect in the figure, has a refinement of drawing in the face, and especially in the lines of the open, chanting mouth, which no draughtsman of the French school can equal. It is where the idea guides the hand that the Pre-Raphaelites are triumphant; everywhere else they fail. But this is a fault which will correct itself as they learn the significance and value of things they do not now understand. They paint well that which they love, and devotion grows and widens its sphere the longer it endures, taking in, little by little, all things which bear relation to the thought or thing it clings to; and the man who draws because he has something to tell, and draws that well, is certain of finally drawing all things well. This very deficiency of Pre-Raphaelitism, then, points to its true excellence, and indicates that singleness of purpose which is an element in all true Art. The want of grace, which is made almost a synonyme with Pre-Raphaelitism, has its origin in the same resolute clinging to truth as the artist comprehends it, and uncompromising determination to express it as perfectly as he has the power,—a feeling which never permits him to think whether his work be graceful, but whether it be just; so that his tremulous and almost fearful conscientiousness—tremulous with desire to see all, and fearful lest some line should wander by a hair's breadth from its fullest expressiveness—makes him lose sight entirely of grace and repose. No form that has the appearance of being painfully drawn can ever be a graceful one; and so the Pre-Raphaelite, until he has something of a master's facility and decision, can never be graceful. The artist who prefers grace to truth will never be remarkable either for grace or truth, while the one who clings to truth at all sacrifices will finally reach the expression of the highest degree of beauty which his soul is capable of conceiving; for the lines of highest beauty and supremest truth are coincident. The Ideal meets the Actual finally in the Real.

If there be one point of feeling in which the Pre-Raphaelites can be said to be more than in all others antagonistic to the schools of painting which preceded them, it would be that indicated by this distinction,—that the new school is one which in all cases places truth before beauty, while the old esteems beauty above truth. The tendency of the one is towards a severe and truth-seeking Art, one in all its characteristics essentially religious in the highest sense of the term, holding truth dearer than all success in popular estimation, or than all attractions of external beauty, reverent, self-forgetting, and humble before Nature; that of the other is towards an Art Epicurean and atheistic, holding the truth as something to be used or neglected at its pleasure, and of no more value than falsehood which is equally beautiful,—making Nature, indeed, something for weak men to lean on and for superstitious men to be enslaved by. This distinction is radical; it cuts the world of Art, as the equator does the earth, with an unswerving line, on one side or the other of which every work of Art falls, and which permits no neutral ground, no chance of compromise;—he who is not for the truth is against it. We will not be so illiberal as to say that Art lies only on one side of this line; to do so were to shut out works which have given us exceeding delight;—so neither could we exclude Epicurus and his philosophy from the company of doers of good;—but the distinction is as inexorable as the line Christ drew between his and those not his; it lies not in the product, which may be mixed good and evil, but in the motive, which is indivisible.

Pre-Raphaelitism must take its position in the world as the beginning of a new Art,—new in motive, new in methods, and new in the forms it puts on. To like it or to dislike it is a matter of mental constitution. The only mistake men can make about it is to consider it as a mature expression of the spirit which animates it. Not one, probably not two or three generations, perhaps not so many centuries, will see it in its full growth. It is a childhood of Art, but a childhood of so huge a portent that its maturity may well call out an expectation of awe. In all its characteristics it is childlike,—in its intensity, its humility, its untutored expressiveness, its marvellous instincts of truth, and in its very profuseness of giving,—filling its caskets with an unchoosing lavishness of pearl and pebble, rose and may-weed, all treasures alike to its newly opened eyes, all so beautiful that there can scarcely be choice among them.

To suppose that a revolution so complete as this could take place without a bitter opposition would be an hypothesis without any justification in the world's experience; for, be it in whatever sphere or form, when a revolution comes, it offends all that is conservative and reverential of tradition in the minds of men, and arouses an apparently inexplicable hostility, the bitterness of which is not at all proportionate to the interest felt by the individual in the subject of the reform, but to his constitutional antipathy to all reform, to all agitation. The conservative at heart hates the reformer because he agitates, not because he disturbs him personally. This is clearly seen in the hostility with which the new Art has been met in England, where conservatism has built its strongest batteries in the way of invading reform. For the moment, the English mind, bending in a surprised deference to the stormy assault of the enthusiasts of the new school, partly carried away by its characteristic admiration of the heroism of their attack and the fiery eloquence of their champion, Ruskin, and perhaps not quite assured of its final effect, forgets to unmask its terrible artillery. But to upset the almost immovable English conservatism, to teach the nation new ways of thought and feeling, in a generation! Cromwell could not do it; and this wave of reform that now surges up against those prejudices, more immovable than the white cliffs of Albion, will break and mingle with the heaving sea again, as did that of the republicanism of the Commonwealth, whose Protector never sat in his seat of government more firmly than Ruskin now holds the protectorate of Art in England. When political reform moved off to American wildernesses for the life it could not preserve in England, it but marked the course reform in Art must follow. The apparent ascendency which it has obtained over the old system will as certainly turn out to be temporary as there is logic in history; because an Art, like a political system, to govern a nation, must be in accordance with its character as a nation,—must, in fact, be the outgrowth of it. The only unfailing line of kings and protectors is the people; with them is no interregnum; and when the English people become fitted by intellectual and moral progress to be protectors of a new and living Art, it will return to them just as surely as republicanism will one day return from its exile,—

"And all their lands restored to them again,
That were with it exiled."

The philosophic Art will find a soil free from Art-prejudices and open to all seeds of truth; it will find quiet and liberty to grow, not without enemies or struggles, but with no enemies that threaten its safety, nor struggles greater than will strengthen it. The appreciation and frank acceptance it has met on its first appearance here, the number of earnest and intelligent adherents it has already found, are more than its warmest friends hoped for so soon. But in England, while its appreciating admirers will remain adherents to its principles, it will pass out of existence as an independent form of Art, and the elements of good in it will mingle with the Art of the nation, as a leaven of nonconformity and radicalism, breeding agitations enough to keep stagnation away and to secure a steady and irresistible progress. Its truest devotees will remain in principle what they are, losing gradually the external characteristics of the school as it is now known,—while the great mass of its disciples, unthinking, impulsive, will sink back into the ranks of the old school, carrying with them the strength they have acquired by the severe training of the system, so that the whole of English Art will be the better for Pre-Raphaelitism. But with Ruskin's influence ceases the Commonwealth of Art; for Ruskin governs, not represents, English feeling,—governs with a tyranny as absolute, an authority as unquestioned, as did Oliver Cromwell.

Of the men now enlisted in the reform, few are of very great value individually. Millais will probably be the first important recusant. He is a man of quick growth, and his day of power is already past; the reaction will find in him an ally of name, but he has no real greatness. William Holman Hunt and Dante Rosetti are great imaginative artists, and will leave their impress on the age. Ford Madox Brown, as a rational, earnest painter, holds a noble and manly position. But then we have done with great names. Much seed has sprung up on stony ground; but, having little soil, when the sun shines, it will die. The slow growth is the sure one.

* * * * *

LITERARY NOTICES.

History of the Republic of the United States of America, as traced in the Writings of Alexander Hamilton and his Contemporaries. By John C. HAMILTON Vol. I. New York: D. Appleton & Co., Broadway. 1857.

Comic Histories have never been to our taste. The late Mr. Gilbert à Beckett, we always thought, might have employed his vis comica, or force of fun, better than in linking ludicrous images and incongruous associations with the heroes of ancient and modern times. The department of Comic Biography, we believe, has received few contributions, if any, from the frolic quills of wicked wags. The cure, however, of this defect in our literature, if any there be, may be looked upon as begun in the work whose title stands at the head of this notice. The author, indeed, had not the settled purpose of the facetious writers we have just dispraised, of making game of the subject of his book, no more than he has the wit and cleverness which half redeem their naughtinesses. The absence of these latter qualities is supplied in his case by the self-complacent good faith in which he puts forth his monstrous assumptions and the stolid assurance with which he maintains them. But the effect of his labors, as of theirs, is to throw an atmosphere of ludicrous ideas around the memory of a great man, painful to all persons of good taste and correct feelings.

Filial piety is a virtue to which much should be forgiven. And the son of such a father as Alexander Hamilton might well be pardoned for even an undue estimate of his services, if it were kept within the decent bounds of moderate exaggeration. But when he undertakes to make his father the incarnation of the Revolution and of the Republic, and to concentrate all the glories of that heroic age in him as the nucleus from which they radiate, he must pardon us, if we think, that, by long contemplation of the object of his filial admiration, his mental sight has become morbid and distorted, and sees things which are not to be seen. Beginning his book with the assumption that Hamilton was the first to conceive the idea, of "the Union of the People of the United States,"—an assumption which we can by no means admit, though supported (as we learn from a foot note) by the opinion of Mr. George Ticknor Curtis,—the author proceeds "to trace in his life and writings the history of the origin and, early policy of this GREAT REPUBLIC." Through the whole volume, "THE REPUBLIC" stands rubric over the left hand page, and "HAMILTON" over the right, and the identity of the two is sought to be established from the beginning to the end. Now, deep as is the sense we entertain of the services of Hamilton to his country, and scarcely less than filial as is the veneration we have been taught from our earliest days to feel for his memory, we must pronounce this pretension to be as absurd and futile in itself as it is unjust and ungenerous to the other great men of that pregnant period.

We do not know whether or not Mr. John C. Hamilton is of opinion, that, had his illustrious father lived and died a trader in the island of Nevis, the American Revolution would never have taken place, nor the American Republic been founded; but he plainly considers that the great contest began to assume its most momentous gravity from the time Hamilton first entered upon the scene, as an haranguer at popular meetings in New York, as a writer on the earnest topics of the day, as a spectator of the broadside fired by the Asia on the Battery, as a captain of artillery at White Plains, and especially as the aide-de-camp and secretary of Washington. This part of the history of Hamilton, and particularly the testimony about his selection by Washington for this great confidence when scarcely twenty years of age, bears to his eminent qualities, one would think, honor enough to satisfy the most pious of sons. But from this moment, according to the innuendoes, if not the broad assertion of Mr. Hamilton, Washington was chiefly of use to sign the letters and papers prepared by his military secretary, and to carry out the plans he had conceived. On the theatre of the world's history, from this time forth, Washington is to be presented, like Mr. Punch on the ledge of his show-box, squeaking and jerking as the strings are pulled from below by the hand of his boy-aide-de-camp. He writes letters to Congress, to all and singular the American Generals, to the British Generals, to the Governors of States, and to all whom it may concern, "over the signature of Washington," (which detestable Americanism Mr. Hamilton invariably uses,) the whole credit of the correspondence being coolly passed over to the account of the secretary! That Hamilton did his duty excellently well there is no question, but it was a purely ministerial one. He furnished the words and the sentences, but Washington breathed into them the breath of their life. As well might the confidential clerk of Mr. John Jacob Astor claim his estate, in virtue of having written, under the direction of his principal, the business letters by which it was acquired. If we are not mistaken, this Mr. Hamilton some time since included Washington's Farewell Address in the collection of his father's works. Perhaps Mr. Jefferson owes it to the accidents of time and distance, that the Declaration of Independence is not reclaimed as another of Hamilton's estrays. We forbear to characterize this attempt to transfer the credit of the correspondence of Washington from the heart to the hand, in the terms which we think it deserves; for we apprehend the mere statement of the case will enable every right-judging man to form a very competent opinion of it for himself.

Though we cannot conscientiously say, judging from this book, that Mr. Hamilton has inherited the literary skill of his father, it is very clear that he is the faithful depositary of his political antipathies. At the earliest possible moment the hereditary rancor against John Adams bursts forth, and it bubbles up again whenever an opening occurs or can be made. His patriotism, his temper, his manners, his courage, are all in turn made the theme of bitter, and of what is meant for strong denunciation. His journeys from Philadelphia to Braintree, though with the permission of Congress, are "flights"; his not taking the direct road, which would bring him in dangerous vicinity to the enemy, is a proof of cowardice! His free expression of opinion as to the conduct of the campaign in the Jerseys—made before the seal of success had certified to its wisdom—was rancorous hostility to Washington, if not absolute conspiracy against him; and so on to the end of the chapter. As this volume only brings the history of the Republic, as contained in that of Hamilton, then in the twenty-second year of his age, to 1779, we tremble to think of what yet awaits the Second President, as the twain in one grow together from the gristle into the bone. What we have here we conceive to be the mere sockets of the gallows of fifty cubits' height on which this New England Mordecai is to be hanged up as an example to all malefactors of his class. We make no protest against this summary procedure, if the Biographer of the Republic think it due to the memory of his father; but we would submit that he has begun rather early in the day to bind the victim doomed to deck the feralia of his hero.

The literary execution of this book is not better than its substantial merits deserve. The style is generally clumsy, often obscure, and not unseldom harsh and inflated. Take an instance or two, picked out absolutely at random.—"The disaffected, who held throughout the contest the seaboard of the State in abeyance, driven forth, would have felt in their wanderings there would be no parley with them." p. l27. Again, "It became the policy of the Americans, while holding the enemy in check, to draw him into separate detachments, in successive skirmishes to profit of their superior aim and activity, and of their better knowledge of the country, and to keep up its confidence by a system of short and gradual retreats from fastness to fastness,—from river beyond river." p. l29.—These sentences, taken at hap-hazard from two consecutive leaves, are not unfair specimens of the literary merits of this intrepid attempt to convert the history of the nation, at its most critical period, into a collection of Mémoires pour servir to the biography of General Hamilton.

We are very sure that Mr. Hamilton has undertaken a task for which he has neither the necessary talent nor materials, and which can only end, as it has begun, in a ridiculous failure. If we could hope that our words would reach or influence him, we would entreat him to be content with the proud heritage of fame which his father left to his children, without seeking to increase it by encroachments on that left behind them by his great contemporaries. The fame of Hamilton, indeed, is no peculiar and personal property of his descendants. It belongs to us all, and neither the malice of his enemies nor the foolish fondness of his son can separate it from us. Notwithstanding the amusement we could not help deriving from the perusal of this volume, and sure as we are that the book must grow more and more diverting, in its way, as it goes on, we cannot but feel that the entertainment will be dearly purchased at the cost of even the shadow of just ridicule resting, even for a moment, on so illustrious and venerable a name as that of ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

Parthenia: or the Last Days of Paganism. By ELIZA BUCKMINSTER LEE, Author of "Naomi," "Life of Jean Paul," "Lives of the Buckminsters," etc., etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1858. 12mo. pp. 420.

The true gauge of any civilization, whether of a race, a nation, or a district, is to be found in the character and position of its women. Slaves, toys, idols, companions, they rise with every ascending grade of culture until they have won the natural place so long denied them. The feminine string rings a true octave with the masculine, and makes a perfect concord, when left to vibrate in its entire length. But the lower forms of social humanity are constantly shortening it, and so producing occasional harmonies at the expense of frequent discords.

We hold such a book as "Parthenia" to have a wide significance to all who read thoughtfully. It is the work of a thoroughly cultivated woman, who, in her nobleness of aim, in her generosity of sentiment, in her purity of thought and style, may be considered a worthy representative of our best type of educated womanhood. Mrs. Lee's former writings have made her name honored and cherished in both hemispheres. Thomas Carlyle said of her "Lives of the Buckminsters," "that it gave an insight into the real life of the highest natures,"—"that it had given him a much better account of character in New England than anything he had seen since Franklin."

We hail a production like this, so scholarlike and serene, so remote from the trivialities and vulgarities of ambitious book-makers, with pleasure and pride. We are thankful—let us add in a whisper—for a story, with love and woman in it, which does not rustle with crinoline; that most useful of inventions for ladies with limited outlines, and literary man-milliners with scanty brains; which has filled more than half the space in our drawing-rooms, and nearly as large a part of some of our periodicals, since the Goddesses of Grace and of Dulness united to bestow the precious gift on Beauties and Boeotians.

A story deals with human nature and time. All that is truly human is interesting, however abstractly stated; but it requires the mordant of specific circumstance, involving some historical period, to make it stain permanently. Everything that belongs to Time, as his private property,—everything temporary, using that word in its ordinary sense,—is uninteresting, except so far as it serves to fix the colors of that humanity which we always love to contemplate. The statuary, who cares nothing about Time, loves to drop his costuming, trumpery altogether. The cheap story, written for the day, is dressed in all the fashionable articles that can be laid upon it, like the revolving lady in a shop window. The real story, which alone outlives the modíste's bonnets and shawls, may drape itself as it pleases; for it does not depend on its peplos, or stola, on its stomacher, or basque,—or crinoline, for its effect.

"Parthenia" is a tale of the fourth century, but it tells the experience of lofty souls in all centuries. The particular period chosen is one of the deepest interest,—that of the conflict of expiring Paganism with growing Christianity, under Julian the Apostate. Julian's character, as drawn in the story, may be considered as a true historical study. The "grand conservative of the fourth century," as Mrs. Lee calls him, is painted as a violent and arbitrary man, but always sincere and noble in his delusions. He never loses our respect, and we admire as often as pity him. When people, professing to believe that a few sestertia invested in papyri and sent to their barbarian neighbors would be sure to save hundreds or thousands of fellow-creatures from an eternity of inconceivable agony, do, notwithstanding, expend great sums on "snow-white mules and golden harness," to carry them to the Basilica, or on any other selfish gratification whatsoever, we cannot wonder that Julian, or anybody else, is ready to take up the pleasant "creed outworn" which Wordsworth half yearns after in his famous sonnet, as preferable to that base system of psychophagy prevailing in the church of Antioch.

Parthenia, the heroine of the story, is drawn with great power and feeling. She comes before us at first with the classic charms of an Athenian beauty; she leaves us resplendent with the aureola of a Christian saint. The change is gradually and naturally wrought; a Christian maid-servant wins her love and reverence, and her proud and restless heart finds peace in the simple faith taught by the little slave, Areta.

We cannot in this brief notice follow the incidents of the tale, which will be found full of interest. A remarkably graceful style and a harmonious arrangement of scenery and incident make the chapters flow on like a series of gliding pictures. The pleasure afforded by the beauty of the story will, perhaps, be enough for most readers; but those who read carefully will perceive that it furnishes matter for deep reflection to the student of history and of theology.

The Life of Michael Angelo Buonarotti, with Translations of many of his Poems and Letters. Also Memoirs of Savonarola, Raphael, and Victoria Colonna. By JOHN S. HARFORD, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S., etc., etc. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1857.

Autobiographies are not the only memoirs in which there is scope for the display of vanity. Some men flatter themselves by connecting their names on a title-page with the name of some great character of the past. Self-love quickens their admiration of their hero, and admiration for their hero gratifies their self-love. Mr. Harford belongs to this class of biographers. The title and the appearance of his volumes excite expectations which acquaintance with them disappoints. The book is not a mere harmless piece of literary presumption; it is a positive evil, as cumbering ground which might be better occupied, and as giving such authority as it may acquire to false views of Art and to numerous errors of fact. There was need of a good biography of Michel Angelo, and Mr. Harford has made a bad one. The defects of the book are both external and essential. Mr. Harford's mind is of the commonplace order, and incapable of a true appreciation either of the character or the works of such a man as Michel Angelo. He has no sympathetic insight into the depths of human nature. Nor has he the method and power of arrangement, such as may often be found in otherwise second-rate biographers, which might enable him to set forth the external facts of a life in such lucid and intelligible order as to exhibit the force of circumstances and position in moulding the character. His learning, of which there is a considerable display, appears on examination shallow and superficial, and his style of writing is often clumsy, and never elegant.

Michel Angelo, like all great men of genius, is the reflex and express image of many of the ruling characteristics and tendencies of his time. The strongest natures receive the strongest impressions, and the most marked individuality pervades the character which is yet the clearest and best defined type of its own age. The decline of religious faith, the vagueness of the prevailing religious philosophy, and the approach of the Reformation, are all to be predicated from the "Last Judgment" in the Sistine Chapel; the impending fall of Art is to be read in the form of the "Moses" of San Pietro in Vincoli; the luxury and pomp of the Papal Court and Church are manifest in the architecture of St. Peter's, whose dome is swollen with earthly pride; the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel betrays the recoil toward heathenism from the vices and corruptions that then hung round Christianity; and the Sacristy of San Lorenzo is the saddest and grandest exhibition that those days afforded of the infidelity into which the best men were forced.

Vasari and Condivi are the great providers of facts in relation to Michel Angelo, and they have left little to be desired in this respect. The garrulous fondness of Vasari leads him into delightful Boswellian details, and gives us more than a mere outline narrative. Mr. Harford has transferred much of Vasari's writing to his own pages, but has succeeded in translating or mistranslating all vitality out of it.

Mr. Harford has attempted, by giving sketches of the chief characters of Florence and of Rome during Michel Angelo's life, to show some of the personal influences which most affected him. But his bricks all lie separate; they are not built up with mortar that holds them together. A superficial account of the Platonic Academy is inserted to show the effect of the fashionable philosophy of Florence upon the youthful artist; but it is so done that we learn little more from it than that the Academy existed, that Michel Angelo was a member of it, and that he wrote some poems in which some Platonic ideas are expressed. There is no philosophic analysis of the individual Platonism which is apparent, not only in his poems, but in some of his paintings,—no exhibition of its connection with the other portions of his intellectual development. Michel Angelo's ideas of beauty, of the relation of the arts, of the connection between Art and Religion, deserve fuller investigation than they have yet received. His tremendous power has exerted such a control over sensitive, imaginative, and weak minds, that even his errors have been accepted as models, and his false ideas as principles of authority. Mr. Harford's book will do little to assist in the formation of a true judgment upon these and similar points.

But we will not confine our notice to assertions; we will exhibit at least some of the minor faults upon which our assertions are based,—for it would demand larger space than we could give to enter upon the illustration of the principal faults of the book. First, then, for inaccuracies of statement,—which are the less to be excused, as Mr. Harford had ample opportunity for correctness. For instance, in the description of the tombs of the Medici, Mr. Harford writes of the famous figures of Aurora and Twilight, Day and Night: "The four figures that adorn the tombs are allegorical; and they are specially worthy of notice, because they first set the example of connecting ornamental appendages of this description with funereal monuments. Introduced by so great an authority, this example was quickly followed throughout the whole of Europe." The carelessness of this assertion is curious. The custom of connecting allegorical figures with funereal monuments had prevailed in Italy for a long time before Michel Angelo. Perhaps the most striking and familiar instance, and one with which Mr. Harford must have been acquainted, is that afforded by the tombs of the Scaligeri at Verona, where, on the monument to Can Signorio, of the latter part of the fourteenth century, appear Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence, and other allegorical figures.

Again, in speaking of the old basilica of St. Peter's, he speaks of the unusual Orientalism of this the principal church of Western Europe, whose entrance is towards the east and the altar to the west. Now this Orientalism is by no means unusual in the churches at Rome. Indeed, it seems to have been the rule of building for the early churches,—and Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni Laterano, San Sebastiano, San Clemente, and innumerable others, exhibit it in their construction. The priest, officiating at the altar, which stood advanced into the church, looked toward the east.

Again, Mr. Harford says, "The pencil of Giotto was employed by Benedict
XII. in the year 1340"; but he does not tell us how the pencil answered
the purpose for which it was employed in a hand other than its master's.
Giotto died in 1336.

Such are specimens of errors of statement. We can give but a very few examples of the numerous mistranslations we have marked,—mistranslations of such a nature as to throw a doubt over the statements in every portion of the book. In a letter to Luca Martini, thanking him for a copy of Varchi's commentary on one of his own sonnets, Michel Angelo says: "Since I perceive by his words and praises that I am esteemed by the author to be that which I am not, I pray you to offer such words to him from me as befit such love, affection, and courtesy." This Mr. Harford translates as follows: "And since I am almost persuaded by the praises and commendations of its author to imagine myself to be that which I am not, I must entreat you to convey to him some expressions from me appropriate to such love, affection, and courtesy."—Again, writing to Benvenuto Cellini, to express his pleasure in a portrait bust of his execution, which he had just seen, he says: "Bindo Altoviti took me to see it—I had great pleasure in it, but it vexed me much that it was put in a bad light." Mr. Harford renders: "Bindo Altoviti recently showed me his own portrait, which delighted me, but he little understood me, for he had placed it in a very bad light."[A]—Again, in another letter, Michel Angelo says: "Teaching him that which I know that his father wished he should learn," which Mr. Harford transforms into, "I will teach him all that I know, and all that his father wished him to learn." Rather a considerable promise!—In another letter, Mr. Harford makes Michel Angelo say, "I thank you for everything you say on the subject, as far as I can foresee the future." Michel Angelo did say: "For which news I thank you heartily," or, to translate literally and to show the origin of Mr. Harford's error, "I thank you as much as I know how I can,"—quanto so e posso.

[Footnote A: Here Mr. Harford shows his ignorance of the common Italian idiom, e' mi seppe molto male,—"it vexed" or "displeased me much." He tries to render the words literally, and makes nonsense.]

One would have supposed that a consciousness of an imperfect acquaintance with the Italian language might at least have deterred Mr. Harford from attempting poetical translations from it. But he has notwithstanding rendered many of Michel Angelo's poems into English verse. Of these poems Wordsworth said, "So much meaning has been put by Michel Angelo into so little room, and that meaning sometimes so excellent in itself, that I found the difficulty of translating him insurmountable. I attempted at least fifteen of the sonnets, but could not anywhere succeed." How Mr. Harford has succeeded where Wordsworth failed, we will leave our readers to infer.

We wish that dissatisfaction with Mr. Harford's volumes might lead some better qualified person to attempt the biography of Michael Angelo.

* * * * *

*** The continuation of the story, "Akin by Marriage," is unavoidably deferred, owing to the severe illness of the author. It will be resumed as soon as his health shall permit.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 01, NO. 04, FEBRUARY, 1858 ***

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Table of Contents

- A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

- THE GREAT FAILURE.

- THE BUSTS OF GOETHE AND SCHILLER.

- THE LIBRARIAN'S STORY.

- DAYLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

- SOMETHING ABOUT PICTURES.

- CRETINS AND IDIOTS:

- AMOURS DE VOYAGE.

- I.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

- II.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

- III.—GEORGINA TREVELLYN TO LOUISA ——-.

- IV.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

- V.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

- VI.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

- VII.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

- VIII.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

- IX.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

- X.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

- XI.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

- XII.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

- XIII.—GEORGINA TREVELLYN TO LOUISA ——-

- MY AQUARIUM.

- THE QUEEN OF THE RED CHESSMEN.

- DAYBREAK.

- TEA.

- THE OLD BURYING-GROUND.

- THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

- THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

- BÉRANGER.

- A TIFFIN OF PARAGRAPHS.

- THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW.

- NEW ENGLAND MINISTERS.

- A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE KANSAS USURPATION.

- SONNET.

- ART.

- LITERARY NOTICES.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE