The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 120, October, 1867.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by Ticknor and Fields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

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

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.

CHAPTER XXVII.

MINE AND COUNTERMINE.

What the nature of the telegram was which had produced such an effect on the feelings and plans of Mr. William Murray Bradshaw nobody especially interested knew but himself. We may conjecture that it announced some fact, which had leaked out a little prematurely, relating to the issue of the great land-case in which the firm was interested. However that might be, Mr. Bradshaw no sooner heard that Myrtle had suddenly left the city for Oxbow Village,—for what reason he puzzled himself to guess,—than he determined to follow her at once, and take up the conversation he had begun at the party where it left off. And as the young poet had received his quietus for the present at the publisher's, and as Master Gridley had nothing specially to detain him, they too returned at about the same time, and our old acquaintances were once more together within the familiar precincts where we have been accustomed to see them.

Master Gridley did not like playing the part of a spy, but it must be remembered that he was an old college officer, and had something of the detective's sagacity, and a certain cunning derived from the habit of keeping an eye on mischievous students. If any underhand contrivance was at work, involving the welfare of any one in whom he was interested, he was a dangerous person for the plotters, for he had plenty of time to attend to them, and would be apt to take a kind of pleasure in matching his wits against another crafty person's,—such a one, for instance, as Mr. Macchiavelli Bradshaw.

Perhaps he caught some words of that gentleman's conversation at the party; at any rate, he could not fail to observe his manner. When he found that the young man had followed Myrtle back to the village, he suspected something more than a coincidence. When he learned that he was assiduously visiting The Poplars, and that he was in close communication with Miss Cynthia Badlam, he felt sure that he was pressing the siege of Myrtle's heart. But that there was some difficulty in the way was equally clear to him, for he ascertained, through channels which the attentive reader will [Pg 386]soon have means of conjecturing, that Myrtle had seen him but once in the week following his return, and that in the presence of her dragons. She had various excuses when he called,—headaches, perhaps, among the rest, as these are staple articles on such occasions. But Master Gridley knew his man too well to think that slight obstacles would prevent his going forward to effect his purpose.

"I think he will get her, if he holds on," the old man said to himself, "and he won't let go in a hurry. If there were any real love about it—but surely he is incapable of such a human weakness as the tender passion. What does all this sudden concentration upon the girl mean? He knows something about her that we don't know,—that must be it. What did he hide that paper for a year ago and more? Could that have anything to do with his pursuit of Myrtle Hazard to-day?"

Master Gridley paused as he asked this question of himself, for a luminous idea had struck him. Consulting daily with Cynthia Badlam, was he? Could there be a conspiracy between these two persons to conceal some important fact, or to keep something back until it would be for their common interest to have it made known?

Now Mistress Kitty Fagan was devoted, heart and soul, to Myrtle Hazard, and ever since she had received the young girl from Mr. Gridley's hands, when he brought her back safe and sound after her memorable adventure, had considered him as Myrtle's best friend and natural protector. These simple creatures, whose thoughts are not taken up, like those of educated people, with the care of a great museum of dead phrases, are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them. Mr. Gridley had met her, more or less accidentally, several times of late, and inquired very particularly about Myrtle, and how she got along at the house since her return, and whether she was getting over her headaches, and how they treated her in the family.

"Bliss your heart, Mr. Gridley," Kitty said to him, on one of these occasions, "it 's ahltogither changed intirely. Sure Miss Myrtle does jist iverythin' she likes, an' Miss Withers niver middles with her at ahl, excip' jist to roll up her eyes an' look as if she was the hid-moorner at a funeril whiniver Miss Myrtle says she wants to do this or that, or to go here or there. It's Miss Badlam that 's ahlwiz after her, an' a-watchin' her,—she thinks she 's cunnin'er than a cat, but there 's other folks that 's got eyes an' ears as good as hers. It's that Mr. Bridshaw that's a puttin' his head together with Miss Badlam for somethin' or other, an' I don't believe there 's no good in it,—for what does the fox an' the cat be a whisperin' about, as if they was thaves an' incind'ries, if there ain't no mischief hatchin'?"

"Why, Kitty," he said, "what mischief do you think is going on, and who is to be harmed?"

"O Mr. Gridley," she answered, "if there ain't somebody to be chated somehow, then I don' know an honest man and woman from two rogues. An' have n't I heard Miss Myrtle's name whispered as if there was somethin' goin' on agin' her, an' they was afraid the tahk would go out through the doors, an' up through the chimbley? I don't want to tell no tales, Mr. Gridley, nor to hurt no honest body, for I 'm a poor woman, Mr. Gridley; but I comes of dacent folks, an' I vallies my repitation an' charácter as much as if I was dressed in silks and satins instead of this mane old gown, savin' your presence, which is the best I 've got, an' niver a dollar to buy another. But if iver I hears a word, Mr. Gridley, that manes any kind of a mischief to Miss Myrtle,—the Lard bliss her soul an' keep ahl the divils away from her!—I 'll be runnin' straight down here to tell ye ahl about it,—be right sure o' that, Mr. Gridley."

"Nothing must happen to Myrtle," he said, "that we can help. If you see anything more that looks wrong, you had better come down here at once, and let me know, as you say you will.[Pg 387] At once, you understand. And, Kitty, I am a little particular about the dress of people who come to see me, so that if you would just take the trouble to get you a tidy pattern of gingham or calico, or whatever you like of that sort for a gown, you would please me; and perhaps this little trifle will be a convenience to you when you come to pay for it."

Kitty thanked him with all the national accompaniments, and trotted off to the store, where Mr. Gifted Hopkins displayed the native amiability of his temper by tumbling down everything in the shape of ginghams and calicos they had on the shelves, without a murmur at the taste of his customer, who found it hard to get a pattern sufficiently emphatic for her taste. She succeeded at last, and laid down a five-dollar bill as if she were as used to the pleasing figure on its face as to the sight of her own five digits.

Master Byles Gridley had struck a spade deeper than he knew into his first countermine, for Kitty had none of those delicate scruples about the means of obtaining information which might have embarrassed a diplomatist of higher degree.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MR. BRADSHAW CALLS ON MISS BADLAM.

"What 's the meaning of that, Kitty? Here is the third time within three days you 've told me I could n't see her. She saw Mr. Gridley yesterday, I know; why won't she see me to-day?"

"Y' must ask Miss Myrtle what the rason is,—it 's none o' my business, Mr. Bridshaw. That 's the order she give me."

"Bedad," said Kitty Fagan to herself, "the cat an' the fox is goin' to have another o' thim big tahks togither, an' sure the old hole for the stove-pipe has niver been stopped up yet."

Mr. Bradshaw and Miss Cynthia went into the parlor together, and Mistress Kitty retired to her kitchen. There was a deep closet belonging to this apartment, separated by a partition from the parlor. There was a round hole high up in this partition through which a stove-pipe had once passed. Mistress Kitty placed a stool just under this opening, upon which, as on a pedestal, she posed herself with great precaution in the attitude of the goddess of other people's secrets, that is to say, with her head a little on one side, so as to bring her liveliest ear close to the opening. The conversation which took place in the hearing of the invisible third party began in a singularly free-and-easy manner on Mr. Bradshaw's part.

"That's more than I can tell you, Mr. Bradshaw. I can watch her goings on, but I can't account for her tantrums."

"You say she has had some of her old nervous whims,—has the doctor been to see her?"

"No indeed. She has kept to herself a good deal, but I don't think there's anything in particular the matter with her. She looks well enough, only she seems a little queer,—as girls do that have taken a fancy into their heads that they 're in love, you know,—absent-minded,—does n't seem to be interested in things as you would expect after being away so long."

Mr. Bradshaw looked as if this did not please him particularly. If he was the object of her thoughts she would not avoid him, surely.

"I don't believe there is an hour we can't account for,—Kitty and I between us."

["Depind on Kitty, is it? O, an' to[Pg 388] be sure ye can depind on Kitty to kape watch at the stove-pipe hole, an' to tell all y'r plottin's an' contrivin's to them that 'll get the cheese out o' y'r mousetrap for ye before ye catch any poor cratur in it." This was the inaudible comment of the unseen third party.]

"Of course I can depend on her as far as I trust her. All she knows is that she must look out for the girl to see that she does not run away or do herself a mischief. The Biddies don't know much, but they know enough to keep a watch on the—"

["An' on the foxes, an' the cats, an' the wazels, and the hen-hahks, an' ahl the other bastes," added the invisible witness, in unheard soliloquy.]

"I ain't sure whether she's quite as stupid as she looks," said the suspicious young lawyer. "There's a little cunning twinkle in her eye sometimes that makes me think she might be up to a trick on occasion. Does she ever listen about to hear what people are saying?"

"Don't trouble yourself about Kitty Fagan, for pity's sake, Mr. Bradshaw. The Biddies are all alike, and they 're all as stupid as owls, except when you tell 'em just what to do, and how to do it. A pack of priest-ridden fools!"

The hot Celtic blood in Kitty Fagan's heart gave a leap. The stout muscles gave an involuntary jerk. The substantial frame felt the thrill all through, and the rickety stool on which she was standing creaked sharply under its burden.

Murray Bradshaw started. He got up and opened softly all the doors leading from the room, one after another, and looked out.

"I thought I heard a noise as if somebody was moving, Cynthia. It's just as well to keep our own matters to ourselves."

"If you wait till this old house keeps still, Mr. Bradshaw, you might as well wait till the river has run by. It's as full of rats and mice as an old cheese is of mites. There's a hundred old rats in this house, and that's what you hear."

"I told you, Cynthia, I must be off on this business to-morrow. I want to know that everything is safe before I go. And, besides, I have got something to say to you that's important,—very important, mind you."

He got up once more and opened every door softly and looked out. He fixed his eye suspiciously on a large sofa at the other side of the room, and went, looking half ashamed of his extreme precaution, and peeped under it, to see if there was any one hidden there to listen. Then he came back and drew his chair close up to the table at which Miss Badlam had seated herself. The conversation which followed was in a low tone, and a portion of it must be given in another place in the words of the third party. The beginning of it we are able to supply in this connection.

"Look here, Cynthia; you know what I am going for. It's all right, I feel sure, for I have had private means of finding out. It's a sure thing; but I must go once more to see that the other fellows don't try any trick on us. You understand what is for my advantage is for yours, and, if I go wrong, you go overboard with me. Now I must leave the—you know—behind me. I can't leave it in the house or the office: they might burn up. I won't have it about me when I am travelling. Draw your chair a little more this way. Now listen."

["Indade I will," said the third party to herself. The reader will find out in due time whether she listened to any purpose or not.]

In the mean time Myrtle, who for some reason was rather nervous and restless, had found a pair of half-finished slippers which she had left behind her. The color came into her cheeks when she remembered the state of mind she was in when she was working[Pg 389] on them for the Rev. Mr. Stoker. She recollected Master Gridley's mistake about their destination, and determined to follow the hint he had given. It would please him better if she sent them to good Father Pemberton, she felt sure, than if he should get them himself. So she enlarged them somewhat, (for the old man did not pinch his feet, as the younger clergyman was in the habit of doing, and was, besides, of portly dimensions, as the old orthodox three-deckers were apt to be,) and worked E. P. very handsomely into the pattern, and sent them to him with her love and respect, to his great delight; for old ministers do not have quite so many tokens of affection from fair hands as younger ones.

What made Myrtle nervous and restless? Why had she quitted the city so abruptly, and fled to her old home, leaving all the gayeties behind her which had so attracted and dazzled her?

She had not betrayed herself at the third meeting with the young man who stood in such an extraordinary relation to her,—who had actually given her life from his own breath,—as when she met him for the second time. Whether his introduction to her at the party, just at the instant when Murray Bradshaw was about to make a declaration, saved her from being in another moment the promised bride of that young gentleman, or not, we will not be so rash as to say. It looked, certainly, as if he was in a fair way to carry his point; but perhaps she would have hesitated, or shrunk back, when the great question came to stare her in the face.

She was excited, at any rate, by the conversation, so that, when Clement was presented to her, her thoughts could not at once be all called away from her other admirer, and she was saved from all danger of that sudden disturbance which had followed their second meeting. Whatever impression he made upon her developed itself gradually,—still, she felt strangely drawn towards him. It was not simply in his good looks, in his good manners, in his conversation, that she found this attraction, but there was a singular fascination which she felt might be dangerous to her peace, without explaining it to herself in words. She could hardly be in love with this young artist; she knew that his affections were plighted to another,—a fact which keeps most young women from indulging unruly fancies; yet her mind was possessed by his image to such an extent that it left little room for that of Mr. William Murray Bradshaw.

Myrtle Hazard had been just ready to enter on a career of worldly vanity and ambition. It is hard to blame her, for we know how she came by the tendency. She had every quality, too, which fitted her to shine in the gay world; and the general law is, that those who have the power have the instinct to use it. We do not suppose that the bracelet on her arm was an amulet, but it was a symbol. It reminded her of her descent; it kept alive the desire to live over the joys and excitements of a bygone generation. If she had accepted Murray Bradshaw, she would have pledged herself to a worldly life. If she had refused him, it would perhaps have given her a taste of power that might have turned her into a coquette. This new impression saved her for the time. She had come back to her nest in the village like a frightened bird; her heart was throbbing, her nerves were thrilling, her dreams were agitated; she wanted to be quiet, and could not listen to the flatteries or entreaties of her old lover.

It was a strong will and a subtle intellect that had arrayed their force and skill against the ill-defended citadel of Myrtle's heart. Murray Bradshaw was perfectly determined, and not to be kept back by any trivial hindrances, such as her present unwillingness to accept him, or even her repugnance to him, if a freak of the moment had carried her so far. It was a settled thing: Myrtle Hazard must become Mrs. Bradshaw; and nobody could deny that, if he gave her his name, they had a chance, at least, for a brilliant future.[Pg 390]

CHAPTER XXIX.

MISTRESS KITTY FAGAN CALLS ON MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY.

"I'd like to go down to the store this marnin', Miss Withers, plase. Sure I 've niver a shoe to my fut, only jist these two that I 've got on, an' one other pair, and thim is so full of holes that whin I 'm standin' in 'em I 'm outside of 'em intirely."

Thereupon Kitty Fagan proceeded to array herself in her most tidy apparel, including a pair of shoes not exactly answering to her description, and set out straight for the house of the Widow Hopkins. Arrived at that respectable mansion, she inquired for Mr. Gridley, and was informed that he was at home. Had a message for him,—could she see him in his study? She could if she would wait a little while. Mr. Gridley was busy just at this minute. Sit down, Kitty, and warm yourself at the cooking-stove.

Mistress Kitty accepted Mrs. Hopkins's hospitable offer, and presently began orienting herself, and getting ready to make herself agreeable. The kind-hearted Mrs. Hopkins had gathered about her several other pensioners besides the twins. These two little people, it may be here mentioned, were just taking a morning airing in charge of Susan Posey, who strolled along in company with Gifted Hopkins on his way to "the store."

Mistress Kitty soon began the conversational blandishments so natural to her good-humored race. "It's a little blarney that 'll jist suit th' old lady," she said to herself, as she made her first conciliatory advance.

"An' sure an' its a beautiful kitten you 've got there, Mrs. Hopkins. An' it's a splindid mouser she is, I 'll be bound. Does n't she look as if she 'd clane the house out o' them little bastes,—bad luck to 'em!"

Mrs. Hopkins looked benignantly upon the more than middle-aged tabby, slumbering as if she had never known an enemy, and turned smiling to Mistress Kitty. "Why, bless your heart, Kitty, our old puss would n't know a mouse by sight, if you showed her one. If I was a mouse, I 'd as lieves have a nest in one of that old cat's ears as anywhere else. You could n't find a safer place for one."

"Indade, an' to be sure she 's too big an' too handsome a pussy to be after wastin' her time on them little bastes. It 's that little tarrier dog of yours, Mrs. Hopkins, that will be after worryin' the mice an' the rats, an' the thaves too, I 'll warrant. Is n't he a fust-rate-lookin' watch-dog, an' a rig'lar rat-hound?"

Mrs. Hopkins looked at the little short-legged and short-winded animal of miscellaneous extraction with an expression of contempt and affection, mingled about half and half. "Worry 'em! If they wanted to sleep, I rather guess he would worry 'em! If barkin' would do their job for 'em, nary a mouse nor rat would board free gratis in my house as they do now. Noisy little good-for-nothing tike,—ain't you, Fret?"

Mistress Kitty was put back a little by two such signal failures. There was another chance, however, to make her point, which she presently availed herself of,—feeling pretty sure this time that she should effect a lodgement. Mrs. Hopkins's parrot had been observing Kitty, first with one eye and then with the other, evidently preparing to make a remark, but awkward with a stranger. "That's a beautiful par't y've got there," Kitty said, buoyant with the certainty that she was on safe ground this time; "and tahks like a book, I 'll be bound. Poll! Poll! Poor Poll!"

She put forth her hand to caress the intelligent and affable bird, which, instead of responding as expected, "squawked," as our phonetic language has it, and, opening a beak imitated from a tooth-drawing instrument of the good old days, made a shrewd nip at Kitty's forefinger. She drew it back with a jerk.[Pg 391]

"Talks, bless you, Kitty! why, that parrot has n't said a word this ten year. He used to say Poor Poll! when we first had him, but he found it was easier to squawk, and that 's all he ever does now-a-days,—except bite once in a while."

"Well, an' to be sure," Kitty answered, radiant as she rose from her defeats, "if you 'll kape a cat that does n't know a mouse when she sees it, an' a dog that only barks for his livin', and a par't that only squawks an' bites an' niver spakes a word, ye must be the best-hearted woman that 's alive, an' bliss ye, if ye was only a good Catholic, the Holy Father 'd make a saint of ye in less than no time."

So Mistress Kitty Fagan got in her bit of Celtic flattery, in spite of her three successive discomfitures.

"You may come up now, Kitty," said Mr. Gridley, over the stairs. He had just finished and sealed a letter.

"Well, Kitty, how are things going on up at The Poplars? And how does our young lady seem to be of late?"

Mr. Bradshaw's lessons had not been thrown away on his attentive listener. She opened every door in the room, "by your lave," as she said. She looked all over the walls to see if there was any old stove-pipe hole or other avenue to eye or ear. Then she went, in her excess of caution, to the window. She saw nothing noteworthy except Mr. Gifted Hopkins and the charge he convoyed, large and small, in the distance. The whole living fleet was stationary for the moment, he leaning on the fence with his cheek on his hand, in one of the attitudes of the late Lord Byron; she, very near him, listening, apparently, in the pose of Mignon aspirant au ciel, as rendered by Carlo Dolce Scheffer.

Kitty came back, apparently satisfied, and stood close to Mr. Gridley, who told her to sit down, which she did, first making a catch at her apron to dust the chair with, and then remembering that she had left that part of her costume at home.—Automatic movements, curious.

Mistress Kitty began telling in an undertone of the meeting between Mr. Bradshaw and Miss Badlam, and of the arrangements she made for herself as the reporter of the occasion. She then repeated to him, in her own way, that part of the conversation which has been already laid before the reader. There is no need of going over the whole of this again in Kitty's version, but we may fit what followed into the joints of what has been already told.

"He cahled her Cynthy, d' ye see, Mr. Gridley, an' tahked to her jist as asy as if they was two rogues, and she knowed it as well as he did. An' so, says he, I 'm goin' away, says he, an' I 'm goin to be gahn siveral days, or perhaps longer, says he, an' you 'd better kape it, says he."

"Keep what, Kitty? What was it he wanted her to keep?" said Mr. Gridley, who no longer doubted that he was on the trail of a plot, and meant to follow it. He was getting impatient with the "says he's" with which Kitty double-leaded her discourse.

"An' to be sure ain't I tellin' you, Mr. Gridley, jist as fast as my breath will let me? An' so, says he, you 'd better kape it, says he, mixed up with your other paäpers, says he," (Mr. Gridley started,) "an' thin we can find it in the garret, says he, whinever we want it, says he. An' if it ahl goes right out there, says he, it won't be lahng before we shall want to find it, says he. And I can dipind on you, says he, for we 're both in the same boat, says he, an' you knows what I knows, says he, an' I knows what you knows, says he. And thin he taks a stack o' papers out of his pocket, an' he pulls out one of 'em, an' he says to her, says he, that 's the paper, says he, an' if you die, says he, niver lose sight of that day or night, says he, for its life an' dith to both of us, says he. An' then he asks her if she has n't got one o' them paäpers—what is 't they cahls 'em?—divilops, or some sich kind of a name—that[Pg 392] they wraps up their letters in; an' she says no, she has n't got none that 's big enough to hold it. So he says, give me a shate o' paäper says he. An' thin he takes the paäper that she give him, an' he folds it up like one o' them—divilops, if that 's the name of 'em; and then he pulls a stick o' salin'-wax out of his pocket, an' a stamp, an' he takes the paäper an' puts it into th' other paäper, along with the rest of the paäpers, an' thin he folds th' other paäper over the paäpers, and thin he lights a candle, an' he milts the salin'-wax, and he sales up the paäper that was outside th' other paäpers, an' he writes on the back of the paäper, and thin he hands it to Miss Badlam."

"Did you see the paper that he showed her before he fastened it up with the others, Kitty?"

"I did, indade, Mr. Gridley. It was a longish kind of a paäper, and there was some blotches of ink on the back of it,—an' they looked like a face without any mouth, for, says I, there 's two spots for the eyes, says I, and there 's a spot for the nose, says I, and there 's niver a spot for the mouth, says I."

This was the substance of what Master Byles Gridley got out of Kitty Fagan. It was enough,—yes, it was too much. There was some deep-laid plot between Murray Bradshaw and Cynthia Badlam, involving the interests of some of the persons connected with the late Malachi Withers; for that the paper described by Kitty was the same that he had seen the young man conceal in the Corpus Juris Civilis, it was impossible to doubt. If it had been a single spot on the back of it, or two, he might have doubted. But three large spots—"blotches" she had called them, disposed thus ·.·—would not have happened to be on two different papers, in all human probability.

After grave consultation of all his mental faculties in committee of the whole, he arrived at the following conclusion,—that Miss Cynthia Badlam was the depositary of a secret involving interests which he felt it his business to defend, and of a document which was fraudulently withheld and meant to be used for some unfair purpose. And most assuredly, Master Gridley said to himself, he held a master-key, which, just so certainly as he could make up his mind to use it, would open any secret in the keeping of Miss Cynthia Badlam.

He proceeded, therefore, without delay, to get ready for a visit to that lady, at The Poplars. He meant to go thoroughly armed, for he was a very provident old gentleman. His weapons were not exactly of the kind which a house-breaker would provide himself with, but of a somewhat peculiar nature.

Weapon number one was a slip of paper with a date and a few words written upon it. "I think this will fetch the document," he said to himself, "if it comes to the worst.—Not if I can help it,—not if I can help it. But if I cannot get at the heart of this thing otherwise, why, I must come to this. Poor woman!—Poor woman!"

Weapon number two was a small phial containing spirits of hartshorn, sal volatile, very strong, that would stab through the nostrils, like a stiletto, deep into the gray kernels that lie in the core of the brain. Excellent in cases of sudden syncope or fainting, such as sometimes require the opening of windows, the dashing on of cold water, the cutting of stays, perhaps, with a scene of more or less tumultuous perturbation and afflux of clamorous womanhood.

So armed, Byles Gridley, A. M., champion of unprotected innocence, grasped his ivory-handled cane and sallied forth on his way to The Poplars.

CHAPTER XXX.

MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY CALLS ON MISS CYNTHIA BADLAM.

Miss Cynthia Badlam was seated in a small parlor which she was accustomed[Pg 393] to consider her own during her long residences at The Poplars. The entry stove warmed it but imperfectly, and she looked pinched and cold, for the evenings were still pretty sharp, and the old house let in the chill blasts, as old houses are in the habit of doing. She was sitting at her table with a little trunk open before her. She had taken some papers from it, which she was looking over, when a knock at her door announced a visitor, and Master Byles Gridley entered the parlor.

As he came into the room, she gathered the papers together and replaced them in the trunk, which she locked, throwing an unfinished piece of needlework over it, putting the key in her pocket, and gathering herself up for company. Something of all this Master Gridley saw through his round spectacles, but seemed not to see, and took his seat like a visitor making a call of politeness.

A visitor at such an hour, of the male sex, without special provocation, without social pretext, was an event in the life of the desolate spinster. Could it be—No, it could not—and yet—and yet! Miss Cynthia threw back the rather common-looking but comfortable shawl which covered her shoulders, and showed her quite presentable figure, arrayed with a still lingering thought of that remote contingency which might yet offer itself at some unexpected moment; she adjusted the carefully plaited cap, which was not yet of the lasciate ogni speranza pattern, and as she obeyed these instincts of her sex, she smiled a welcome to the respectable, learned, and independent bachelor. Mr. Gridley had a frosty but kindly age before him, with a score or so of years to run, which it was after all not strange to fancy might be rendered more cheerful by the companionship of a well-conserved and amiably disposed woman,—if any such should happen to fall in his way.

That smile came very near disconcerting the plot of Master Byles Gridley. He had come on an inquisitor's errand, his heart secure, as he thought, against all blandishments, his will steeled to break down all resistance. He had come armed with an instrument of torture worse than the thumb-screw, worse than the pulleys which attempt the miracle of adding a cubit to the stature, worse than the brazier of live coals brought close to the naked soles of the feet,—an instrument which, instead of trifling with the nerves, would clutch all the nerve-centres and the heart itself in its gripe, and hold them until it got its answer, if the white lips had life enough left to shape one. And here was this unfortunate maiden lady smiling at him, setting her limited attractions in their best light, pleading with him in that natural language which makes any contumacious bachelor feel as guilty as Cain before any single woman. If Mr. Gridley had been alone, he would have taken a good sniff at his own bottle of sal volatile; for his kind heart sunk within him as he thought of the errand upon which he had come. It would not do to leave the subject of his vivisection under any illusion as to the nature of his designs.

"Good evening, Miss Badlam," he said, "I have come to visit you on a matter of business."

What was the internal panorama which had unrolled itself at the instant of his entrance, and which rolled up as suddenly at the sound of his serious voice and the look of his grave features? It cannot be reproduced, though pages were given to it; for some of the pictures were near, and some were distant; some were clearly seen, and some were only hinted; some were not recognized in the intellect at all, and yet they were implied, as it were, behind the others. Many times we have all found ourselves glad or sorry, and yet we could not tell what thought it was that reflected the sunbeam or cast the shadow. Look into Cynthia's suddenly exalted consciousness and see the picture, actual and potential, unroll itself in all its details of the natural, the ridiculous, the selfish, the pitiful, the human. Glimpses, hints, echoes, suggestions,[Pg 394] involving tender sentiments hitherto unknown, we may suppose, to that unclaimed sister's breast,—pleasant excitement of receiving congratulations from suddenly cordial friends; the fussy delights of buying furniture and shopping for new dresses,—(it seemed as if she could hear herself saying, "Heavy silks,—best goods, if you please,")—with delectable thumping down of flat-sided pieces of calico, cambric, "rep," and other stuffs, and rhythmic evolution of measured yards, followed by sharp snip of scissors, and that cry of rending tissues dearer to woman's ear than any earthly sound until she hears the voice of her own first-born,—(much of this potentially, remember,)—thoughts of a comfortable settlement, an imposing social condition, a cheerful household, and by and by an Indian summer of serene widowhood,—all these, and infinite other involved possibilities had mapped themselves in one long swift flash before Cynthia's inward eye, and all vanished as the old man spoke those few words. The look on his face, and the tone of his cold speech, had instantly swept them all away, like a tea-set sliding in a single crash from a slippery tray.

What could be the "business" on which he had come to her with that solemn face? she asked herself, as she returned his greeting and offered him a chair. She was conscious of a slight tremor as she put this question to her own intelligence.

"Are we like to be alone and undisturbed?" Mr. Gridley asked. It was a strange question,—men do act strangely sometimes. She hardly knew whether to turn red or white.

"Yes, there is nobody like to come in at present," she answered. She did not know what to make of it. What was coming next,—a declaration, or an accusation of murder?

"My business," Mr. Gridley said, very gravely, "relates to this. I wish to inspect papers which I have reason to believe exist, and which have reference to the affairs of the late Malachi Withers. Can you help me to get sight of any of these papers not to be found at the Registry of Deeds or the Probate Office?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Gridley, but may I ask you what particular concern you have with the affairs of my relative, Cousin Malachi Withers, that's been dead and buried these half-dozen years?"

"Perhaps it would take some time to answer that question fully, Miss Badlam. Some of these affairs do concern those I am interested in, if not myself directly."

"May I ask who the person or persons may be on whose account you wish to look at papers belonging to my late relative, Malachi Withers?"

"You can ask me almost anything, Miss Badlam, but I should really be very much obliged if you would answer my question first. Can you help me to get a sight of any papers relating to the estate of Malachi Withers, not to be found at the Registry of Deeds or the Probate Office,—any of which you may happen to have any private and particular knowledge?"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gridley; but I don't understand why you come to me with such questions. Lawyer Penhallow is the proper person, I should think, to go to. He and his partner that was—Mr. Wibird, you know—settled the estate, and he has got the papers, I suppose, if there are any, that ain't to be found at the offices you mention."

Mr. Gridley moved his chair a little, so as to bring Miss Badlam's face a little more squarely in view.

"Does Mr. William Murray Bradshaw know anything about any papers, such as I am referring to, that may have been sent to the office?"

The lady felt a little moisture stealing through all her pores, and at the same time a certain dryness of the vocal organs, so that her answer came in a slightly altered tone which neither of them could help noticing.

"You had better ask Mr. William Murray Bradshaw yourself about that,"[Pg 395] she answered. She felt the hook now, and her spines were rising, partly with apprehension, partly with irritation.

"Has that young gentleman ever delivered into your hands any papers relating to the affairs of the late Malachi Withers, for your safe keeping?"

"What do you mean by asking me these questions, Mr. Gridley? I don't choose to be catechised about Murray Bradshaw's business. Go to him, if you please, if you want to find out about it."

"Excuse my persistence, Miss Badlam, but I must prevail upon you to answer my question. Has Mr. William Murray Bradshaw ever delivered into your hands any papers relating to the affairs of the late Malachi Withers, for your safe keeping?"

"Do you suppose I am going to answer such questions as you are putting me because you repeat them over, Mr. Gridley? Indeed I sha' n't. Ask him, if you please, whatever you wish to know about his doings."

She drew herself up and looked savagely at him. She had talked herself into her courage. There was a color in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eye; she looked dangerous as a cobra.

"Miss Cynthia Badlam," Master Gridley said, very deliberately, "I am afraid we do not entirely understand each other. You must answer my question precisely, categorically, point-blank, and on the instant. Will you do this at once, or will you compel me to show you the absolute necessity of your doing it, at the expense of pain to both of us? Six words from me will make you answer all my questions."

"You can't say six words, nor sixty, Mr. Gridley, that will make me answer one question I do not choose to. I defy you!"

"I will not say one, Miss Cynthia Badlam. There are some things one does not like to speak in words. But I will show you a scrap of paper, containing just six words and a date,—not one more nor one less. You shall read them. Then I will burn the paper in the flame of your lamp. As soon after that as you feel ready, I will ask the same question again."

Master Gridley took out from his pocket-book a scrap of paper, and handed it to Cynthia Badlam. Her hand shook as she received it, for she was frightened as well as enraged, and she saw that Mr. Gridley was in earnest and knew what he was doing.

She read the six words, he looking at her steadily all the time, and watching her as if he had just given her a drop of prussic acid.

No cry. No sound from her lips. She stared as if half stunned for one moment, then turned her head and glared at Mr. Gridley as if she would have murdered him if she dared. In another instant her face whitened, the scrap of paper fluttered to the floor, and she would have followed it but for the support of both Mr. Gridley's arms. He disengaged one of them presently, and felt in his pocket for the sal volatile. It served him excellently well, and stung her back again to her senses very quickly. All her defiant aspect had gone.

"Look!" he said, as he lighted the scrap of paper in the flame. "You understand me, and you see that I must be answered the next time I ask my question."

She opened her lips as if to speak. It was as when a bell is rung in a vacuum,—no words came from them,—only a faint gasping sound, an effort at speech. She was caught tight in the heart-screw.

"Don't hurry yourself, Miss Cynthia," he said, with a certain relenting tenderness of manner. "Here, take another sniff of the smelling-salts. Be calm, be quiet,—I am well disposed towards you,—I don't like to give you trouble. There, now, I must have the answer to that question; but take your time,—take your time."

"Give me some water,—some water!" she said, in a strange hoarse whisper. There was a pitcher of water and a tumbler on an old marble sideboard near by. He filled the tumbler, and Cynthia emptied it as if she had[Pg 396] just been taken from the rack, and could have swallowed a bucketful.

"I wish to know all that you can tell me about a certain paper, or certain papers, which I have reason to believe Mr. William Murray Bradshaw committed to your keeping."

"There is only one paper of any consequence. Do you want to make him kill me? or do you want to make me kill myself?"

"Neither, Miss Cynthia, neither. I wish to see that paper, but not for any bad purpose. Don't you think, on the whole, you have pretty good reason to trust me? I am a very quiet man, Miss Cynthia. Don't be afraid of me; only do what I ask,—it will be a great deal better for you in the end."

She thrust her trembling hand into her pocket, and took out the key of the little trunk. She drew the trunk towards her, put the key in the lock, and opened it. It seemed like pressing a knife into her own bosom and turning the blade. That little trunk held all the records of her life the forlorn spinster most cherished;—a few letters that came nearer to love-letters than any others she had ever received; an album, with flowers of the summers of 1840 and 1841 fading between its leaves; two papers containing locks of hair, half of a broken ring, and other insignificant mementos which had their meaning, doubtless, to her,—such a collection as is often priceless to one human heart, and passed by as worthless in the auctioneer's inventory. She took the papers out mechanically, and laid them on the table. Among them was an oblong packet, sealed with what appeared to be the office-seal of Messrs. Penhallow and Bradshaw.

"Will you allow me to take that envelope containing papers, Miss Badlam?" Mr. Gridley asked, with a suavity and courtesy in his tone and manner that showed how he felt for her sex and her helpless position.

She seemed to obey his will as if she had none of her own left. She passed the envelope to him, and stared at him vacantly while he examined it. He read on the back of the package: "Withers Estate—old papers—of no account apparently. Examine hereafter."

"Have pity on me, Mr. Gridley,—have pity on me. I am a lost woman if you do not. Spare me! for God's sake, spare me! There will no wrong come of all this, if you will but wait a little while. The paper will come to light when it is wanted, and all will be right. But do not make me answer any more questions, and let me keep this paper. O Mr. Gridley! I am in the power of a dreadful man—"

"Has there not been some understanding between you that he should become the approved suitor of Miss Myrtle Hazard?"

Cynthia wrung her hands and rocked herself backward and forward in her misery, but answered not a word. What could she answer, if she had plotted with this "dreadful man" against a young and innocent girl, to deliver her over into his hands, at the risk of all her earthly hopes and happiness?

Master Gridley waited long and patiently for any answer she might have the force to make. As she made none, he took upon himself to settle the whole matter without further torture of his helpless victim.

"This package must go into the hands of the parties who had the settlement of the estate of the late Malachi Withers. Mr. Penhallow is the survivor of the two gentlemen to whom that business was intrusted.—How long is Mr. William Murray Bradshaw like to be away?"

"Perhaps a few days,—perhaps weeks,—and then he will come back and kill me,—or—or—worse! Don't take that paper, Mr. Gridley,—he isn't like you; you wouldn't—but he would—he[Pg 397] would send me to everlasting misery to gain his own end, or to save himself. And yet he is n't every way bad, and if he did marry Myrtle she 'd think there never was such a man,—for he can talk her heart out of her, and the wicked in him lies very deep and won't ever come out, perhaps, if the world goes right with him." The last part of this sentence showed how Cynthia talked with her own conscience; all her mental and moral machinery lay open before the calm eyes of Master Byles Gridley.

His thoughts wandered a moment from the business before him; he had just got a new study of human nature, which in spite of himself would be shaping itself into an axiom for an imagined new edition of "Thoughts on the Universe,"—something like this,—The greatest saint may be a sinner that never got down to "hard pan."—It was not the time to be framing axioms.

"Poh! poh!" he said to himself; "what are you about, making phrases, when you have got a piece of work like this in hand?" Then to Cynthia, with great gentleness and kindness of manner: "Have no fear about any consequences to yourself. Mr. Penhallow must see that paper,—I mean those papers. You shall not be a loser nor a sufferer if you do your duty now in these premises."

Master Gridley, treating her, as far as circumstances permitted, like a gentleman, had shown no intention of taking the papers either stealthily or violently. It must be with her consent. He had laid the package down upon the table, waiting for her to give him leave to take it. But just as he spoke these last words, Cynthia, whose eye had been glancing furtively at it while he was thinking out his axiom, and taking her bearings to it pretty carefully, stretched her hand out, and, seizing the package, thrust it into the sanctuary of her bosom.

"Mr. Penhallow must see those papers, Miss Cynthia Badlam," Mr. Gridley repeated calmly. "If he says they or any of them can be returned to your keeping, well and good. But see them he must, for they have his office seal and belong in his custody, and, as you see by the writing on the back, they have not been examined. Now there may be something among them which is of immediate importance to the relatives of the late deceased Malachi Withers, and therefore they must be forthwith submitted to the inspection of the surviving partner of the firm of Wibird and Penhallow. This I propose to do, with your consent, this evening. It is now twenty-five minutes past eight by the true time, as my watch has it. At half past eight exactly I shall have the honor of bidding you good evening, Miss Cynthia Badlam, whether you give me those papers or not. I shall go to the office of Jacob Penhallow, Esquire, and there make one of two communications to him; to wit, these papers and the facts connected therewith, or another statement, the nature of which you may perhaps conjecture."

There is no need of our speculating as to what Mr. Byles Gridley, an honorable and humane man, would have done, or what would have been the nature of that communication which he offered as an alternative to the perplexed woman. He had not at any rate miscalculated the strength of his appeal, which Cynthia interpreted as he expected. She bore the heart-screw about two minutes. Then she took the package from her bosom, and gave it with averted face to Master Byles Gridley, who, on receiving it, made her a formal but not unkindly bow, and bade her good evening.

"One would think it had been lying out in the dew," he said, as he left the house and walked towards Mr. Penhallow's residence.

THEMISTOCLES.

So! Ye drag me, men of Athens,
Hither to your council-hall,
Armed with judges and informers,
That your doom on me may fall,—
Doom that Athens oft hath levelled
On her noblest sons of yore,—
Doom that made her foes triumphant,
And each heart that loved her sore.
Oft, as I have seen her heroes
Brought to this ignoble end,
Have I pondered,—when should Fortune
To my lips the cup commend?

Read the foul indictment, falsehood
After falsehood rolling on;
Far away my thoughts shall wander,
Thinking of the moments gone,
When with tears and prayers ye dragged me
Hither to your council-hall,
Young and old, and wives and children,
Echoing one despairing call,—
"Speak some word of comfort, Archon,
Ere the Persian dig our grave!
Speak, Themistocles, and save us,—
Thou alone hast power to save!"

Is it over? Let me hear it,—
Let me hear once more the end,—
"For Themistocles betrays us,
And is sworn the Persian's friend—"
No, not that! Take back the falsehood!
Curse the hand that wrote the lie;
Charge what deadly crime it lists you,
'Tis no dreadful thing to die.
But shall all my free devotion,
All my care for Athens' weal,
Turn to treason and corruption,
Stamped with such a lying seal?
Was 't for Persia then I led you
Up to proud Athena's height,—
Bade you view this barren country,
And the sea to left and right,—
Bade you leave your plain and mountain,—
Save to dig their shining ore,—
Bade you grasp the ocean's sceptre,
Spoil the wealth of every shore,
Spread your white sails to the breezes,
Unrestrained like them and free,
[Pg 399] Lords of no contracted city,
But the monarchs of the sea!

Persia's friend! Have ye forgotten
How the lord of Persia came,
Bridging seas, and cleaving mountains,
With the terrors of his name,—
How he burst through Tempe's portal,
Trod the dauntless Spartan down,
Dragged the vile Bœotian captive,
Dared e'en Delphi's sacred crown?
And the craven wail of terror
Rang through Athens' every street;
Then ye came and begged for counsel,
Kneeling, clinging to my feet.
Then I bade you leave your city,
Leave your temples and your halls,
Trusting, as the god gave answer,
To your country's wooden walls.
And the Persian, entering proudly,
Found a city of the dead;
Athens' corpse his only victim,
Her immortal soul had fled!

Was 't for Persia in the council
With your false allies I toiled,
Bade the Spartan, "Strike, but hear me,"
Ere my country should be spoiled?
Or that all that night their galleys
In the narrow strait I kept?
For we felt the Persian closing,
And no son of Athens slept.
But when broke the golden dawning
O'er Pentelicus afar,
Rose the glad Hellenic pæan,
Bursting with the morning star.
For we saw the Persian squadrons
Ship on ship in thousands pour,
And we knew the pass was narrow
'Twixt the island and the shore.
Calmly, as no foe were near us,
All our morning tasks we wrought,
Lying there in silent order,
As though fight we never fought.
But we grasped our oars all eager
Till the tough pine burned each hand,
Watching till the steersman's signal
For the onset gave command.
Then we smote the sea together,
And our galleys onward flew,
While from all the Hellenic navy,
As we dashed along the blue,
[Pg 400] Pealed one loud, triumphant war-cry,—
"Now, ye sons of Hellas, come,
Conquer freedom for your country,
Freedom each one for his home,
Freedom for your wives and children,
For the altars where ye bow,
For your fathers' honored ashes,
For them all ye 're fighting now!"[1]

On the mountain height the tyrant
Bade them set his golden throne,
And in pitch of pride surveyed them,—
All the fleet he called his own,—
Heard the war-cry far resounding,
Heard the oars' responsive dash,
And the shock of squadrons smiting
Beak to beak with sudden clash,—
Saw them locked in wild confusion,
Prow on prow and keel on keel,—
Heard the thundering crash of timbers,
And the ring of clanging steel,—
Saw his ponderous ships entangled
In the close and narrow strait,
And our light-winged galleys darting
Boldly in the jaws of fate,—
Saw the mad disorder seize them,
As we grappled fast each prow,
Leaped like tigers on the bulwarks,
Hurled them to the depths below,—
Saw his bravest on the island
Slaughtered down in deadly fight,
Whom he fondly placed to crush us,
If perchance we turned to flight,—
Saw one last despairing struggle,—
Then the shout that all was lost,
And his matchless navy turning,
Fleeing from the hated coast,—
Saw them stranded on the island,
Rent and shattered on the main,—
Heard the shrieks of myriads wounded,
Saw the heaps of thousands slain,
While the sea was red with carnage,
And the air with shouts was wild,
"Woe to Persia's slaves and tyrant!
Hail to Athens, ocean's child!"

No, ye have not all forgotten,
All your hearts have not grown cold,
When of Athens' countless triumphs,
This, the noblest tale, is told.
[Pg 401]

Oft perchance my acts have wronged you,
But ye dare not charge me this,
That the Persian is my master,
When ye think of Salamis.
More I might; but it sufficeth,—
Here I wait the word of doom;
Strike! But think that I, the culprit,
Raised your city from the tomb.

*....*....*....*

Guilty! Well! The fate of others
Now at length descends on me;
Envy strikes the loftiest ever,
As the lightning on the tree.
Banished! Athens aye hath willed it
For her truest souls of yore;
Now I know thee, Aristides,
As I never knew before.
O forgive me, gallant rival,
If I e'er have wrought thee ill;
Think but of the glorious morning
When we stood on yonder hill,
When Miltiades arrayed us
In the central ranks to stand,
When we charged adown the mountain
On the motley Persian band,
When the shouting wings swept forward,
And we stood, like sea-cliffs fast,
Smiling to behold the nations
Break in foam upon us cast;
When we chased them to the galleys,
Slaughtered thousands by the wave,
Sent them back in rout to Susa,
Heaped the mound above our brave,
And forever through the ages
Sounds our glory, rolling on,
For Miltiades and Athens,
For ourselves and Marathon.

Men of Athens! By your sentence
I am banished from your state;
Humbly to that doom I bow me,
And I leave you to your fate.
Not to me thine awful ending,
Athens, shall the years unfold;
Long shall night have closed these eyelids
Ere that ruin men behold.
Still, when I am long forgotten,
Shall thy haughty sway extend,
Isles and cities, lords and kingdoms,
Forced to court, to sue, to bend,
[Pg 402] As, from year to year increasing,
Still thy marts new wealth enclose,
And thy far-resplendent treasures
Dazzle e'en thy fiercest foes.
Wider ports and swifter navies,
Broader fields and richer mines,
Deadlier fights and braver armies,
Statelier halls and fairer shrines,
Loftier accents poured in council,
Nobler thoughts in sweeter song,
Loud proclaim the crown of Hellas
Doth of right to thee belong;
Till thy heart be drunk with glory,
And thy brain be crazed with power,
And the gods o'erhear thy boasting
In some mad, triumphant hour.

Then, when one by one thy subjects
Turn and beard thee in despair,
Calling Sparta to the rescue,
In thy death and spoil to share,—
When thy vines and groves lie desert,
And within thy crowded wall
Pest and famine slay thy chosen,
Slay the foremost chief of all,—
When thy armies throng the dungeons,
And thy shipwrecks heap the strand,—
When thine ancient strain of heroes
Gives no more the proud command,
But thy wisest heads turn faithless,
And thy truest hearts grow dull,
Making all thy counsel folly,
All thy desperate valor null,—
When each fond and mad endeavor,
Clutching at thy fallen crown,
Deeper in the roaring whirlpool
Of perdition sucks thee down,
When at last thy foes surround thee,
Dig the trench, and hem thee in,—
When the dreadful word is spoken,
Which to whisper were a sin,—
When at length, in vile subjection,
Unto Sparta thou shalt sue,
Swearing thou wilt humbly serve her,
Will she but thy life renew,—
In that hour of keenest torture,
When thy star is sunk in night,
Think!—but not of me, whose valor
Thou so foully didst requite;—
Think not of thine outraged heroes,
But of her who banished these,
Think of Athens, false and fickle,
Think not of Themistocles.
[Pg 403]

But if e'er, in after ages,
Once again thy star should rise,—
If some noble son should save thee,
Like a god that left the skies,
If thy shackles should be broken,
And thou leap to new renown,
Then remember me, my darling,
City of the violet crown!
Then shall endless shouts of triumph
Sound the glories of thy name,
And the songs of generations
All thy matchless gifts proclaim;
Then be every wrong forgotten,
Then be every debt repaid,
And the wreath of every hero
On Athena's altar laid.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The foregoing description is nearly a translation from the Persæ of Æschylus.

BEN JONSON.

Authors are apt to be popularly considered as physically a feeble folk,—as timid, nervous, dyspeptic rhymers or prosers, unfitted to grapple with the rough realities of life. We shall endeavor, in the following pages, to present our readers with the image of one calculated to reverse this impression,—the image of a stalwart man of letters, who lived two centuries and a half ago, in the greatest age of English literature,—who undeniably had brawny fists as well as forgetive faculties,—one who could handle a club as readily as a pen, hit his mark with a bullet as surely as with a word, and, a sort of cross between the bully and the bard, could shoulder his way through a crowd of prize-fighters to take his seat among the tuneful company of immortal poets. This man, Ben Jonson, commonly stands next to Shakespeare in a consideration of the dramatic literature of the age of Elizabeth; and certainly, if the "thousand-souled" Shakespeare may be said to represent mankind, Ben as unmistakably stands for English-kind. He is "Saxon" England in epitome,—John Bull passing from a name into a man,—a proud, strong, tough, solid, domineering individual, whose intellect and personality cannot be severed, even in thought, from his body and personal appearance. Ben's mind, indeed, was rooted in Ben's character; and his character took symbolic form in his physical frame. He seemed built up, mentally as well as bodily, out of beef and sack, mutton and Canary; or, to say the least, was a joint product of the English mind and the English larder, of the fat as well as the thought of the land, of the soil as well as the soul of England. The moment we attempt to estimate his eminence as a dramatist, he disturbs the equanimity of our judgment by tumbling head-foremost into the imagination as a big, bluff, burly, and quarrelsome man, with "a mountain belly and a rocky face." He is a very pleasant boon companion as long as we make our idea of his importance agree with his own; but the instant we attempt to dissect his intellectual pretensions, the living animal becomes a dangerous subject,—his countenance flames, his great hands double up, his thick lips begin to twitch with impending[Pg 404] invective; and while the critic's impression of him is thus all the more vivid, he is checked in its expression by a very natural fear of the consequences. There is no safety but in taking this rowdy leviathan of letters at his own valuation; and the relation of critics towards him is as perilous as that of the juries towards the Irish advocate, who had an unpleasant habit of challenging them to personal combat whenever they brought in a verdict against any of his clients. There is, in fact, such a vast animal force in old Ben's self-assertion, that he bullies posterity as he bullied his contemporaries; and while we admit his claims to rank next to Shakespeare among the dramatists of his age, we beg our readers to understand that we do it under intimidation.

The qualities of this bold, racy, and brawny egotist can be best conveyed in a biographical form. He was born in 1574, the grandson of a gentleman who, for his religion, lost his estate, and for a time his liberty, in Queen Mary's time, and the son of a clergyman in humble circumstances, who died about a month before his "rare" offspring was born. His mother, shortly after the death of her husband, married a master-bricklayer. Ben, who as a boy doubtless exhibited brightness of intellect and audacity of spirit, seems to have attracted the attention of Camden, who placed him in Westminster School, of which he was master. Ben there displayed so warm a love of learning, and so much capacity in rapidly acquiring it, that, at the age of sixteen, he is said to have been removed to the University of Cambridge, though he stated to Drummond, long afterwards, that he was "master of arts in both the Universities, by their favor, not his studie." His ambition at this time, if we may believe some of his biographers, was to be a clergyman; and had it been gratified, he would probably have blustered his way to a bishopric, and proved himself one of the most arrogant, learned, and pugnacious disputants of the English Church Militant,—perhaps have furnished the type of that peculiar religionist compounded of bully, pedant, and bigot which Warburton was afterwards, from the lack of models, compelled to originate. But after residing a few months at the University, Ben, deserted by his friends and destitute of money, found it impossible to carry out his design; and he returned disappointed to his mother's house. As she could not support him in idleness, the stout-hearted student adopted the most obvious means of earning his daily bread, and for a short time followed the occupation of his father-in-law, going to the work of bricklaying, according to the tradition, with a trowel in one hand, but with a Horace in the other. His enemies among the dramatists did not forget this when he became famous, but meanly sneered at him as "the lime-and-mortar poet." When we reflect that in the aristocratic age of good Queen Bess, play-writing, even the writing of Hamlets and Alchymists, was, if we may trust Dr. Farmer, hardly considered "a creditable employ," we may form some judgment of the position of the working classes, when a mechanic was thus deemed to have no rights which a playwright "was bound to respect."

We have no means of deciding whether or not Ben was foolish enough to look upon his trade as degrading; that it was distasteful we know from the fact that he soon exchanged the trowel for the sword; and we hear no more of his dealing with bricks, if we may except his questionable habit of sometimes carrying too many of them in his hat. At the age of eighteen he ran away to the Continent, and enlisted as a volunteer in the English army in Flanders, fully intending, doubtless, that, as fate seemed against his being a Homer or an Aristotle, to try if fortune would not make him an Alexander or a Hannibal. As ill-luck would have it, however, his abundant vitality had little scope in martial exercise. He does not appear to have been in any general engagement, though he signalized his personal prowess in a manner which[Pg 405] he was determined should not be forgotten through any diffidence of his own. Boastful as he was brave, he was never weary of bragging how he had encountered one of the enemy, fought with him in presence of both armies, killed him, and triumphantly "taken opima spolia from him."

After serving one campaign, our Ajax-Thersites returned, at the age of nineteen, to England, bringing with him, according to Gifford, "the reputation of a brave man, a smattering of Dutch, and an empty purse." To these accomplishments he probably added that of drinking; for, as "our army in Flanders" ever drank terribly as well as "swore terribly," it may be supposed that Ben there laid, deep and wide, the foundation of his bacchanalian habits. Arrived in London, and thrown on his own resources for support, he turned naturally to the stage, and became an actor in a minor play-house, called the Green Curtain. Though he was through life a good reader, and though at this time he was not afflicted with the scurvy, which eventually so punched his face as to make one of his satirists compare it, with witty malice, to the cover of a warming-pan, he still never rose to any eminence as an actor. He had not been long at the Green Curtain when a quarrel with one of his fellow performers led to a duel, in which Jonson killed his antagonist, was arrested on a charge of murder, and, in his own phrase, was brought "almost at the gallowes,"—an unpleasant proximity which he hastened to increase by relieving the weariness of imprisonment in discussions on religion with a Popish priest, also a prisoner, and by being converted to Romanism. As the zealous professors of the old faith had passed, in Elizabeth's time, from persecutors into martyrs, Ben, the descendant of one of Queen Mary's victims, evinced more than his usual worldly prudence in seizing this occasion to join their company, as he could reasonably hope that, if he escaped hanging on the charge of homicide, he still might contrive to be beheaded on a charge of treason. In regard, however, to the original cause of his imprisonment, it would seem that, on investigation, it was found the duel had been forced upon him, that his antagonist had taken the precaution of bringing into the field a sword ten inches longer than his own, and thus, far from intending to be the victim of murder, had not unsagaciously counted on committing it. Jonson was released; but, apparently vexed at this propitious turn to his fortunes, instead of casting about for some means of subsistence, he almost immediately married a woman as poor as himself,—a wife whom he afterwards curtly described as "a shrew, yet honest." A shrew, indeed! As if Mrs. Jonson must not often have had just occasion to use her tongue tartly!—as if her redoubtable Ben did not often need its acrid admonitions! They seem to have lived together until 1613, when they separated.

Absolute necessity now drove Jonson again to the stage, probably both as actor and writer. He began his dramatic career, as Shakespeare began his, by doing job-work for the managers; that is, by altering, recasting, and making additions to old plays. At last, in 1596, in his twenty-second year, he placed himself at a bound among the famous dramatists of the time, by the production, at the Rose Theatre, of his comedy of "Every Man in his Humor." Two years afterwards, having in the mean time been altered and improved, it was, through the influence of Shakespeare, accepted by the players of the Blackfriars' Theatre, Shakespeare himself acting the characterless part of the Elder Knowell.

Among the writers of the Elizabethan age, an age in which, for a wonder, there seemed to be a glut of genius, Ben is prominent more for racy originality of personal character, weight or understanding, and quickness of fancy, than for creativeness of imagination. His first play, "Every Man in his Humor," indicates to a great extent the quality and the kind of power with which he was endowed. His prominent[Pg 406] characteristic was will,—will carried to self-will, and sometimes to self-exaggeration almost furious. His understanding was solid, strong, penetrating, even broad, and it was well furnished with matter derived both from experience and books; but, dominated by a personality so fretful and fierce, it was impelled to look at men and things, not in their relations to each other, but in their relations to Ben. He had reached that ideal of stormy conceit in which, according to Emerson, the egotist declares, "Difference from me is the measure of absurdity." Even the imaginary characters he delineated as a dramatist were all bound, as by tough cords, to the will that gave them being, lacked that joyous freedom and careless grace of movement which rightfully belonged to them as denizens of an ideal world, and had to obey their master Ben, as puppets obey the show-man. His power of external observation was pitilessly keen and searching, and it was accompanied by a rich, though somewhat coarse and insolent vein of humor; but his egotism commonly directed his observation to what was below, rather than above himself, and gave to his humor a scornful, rather than a genial tone. He huffs even in his hilarity; his fun is never infectious; and his very laughter is an assertion of superior wisdom. He has none of that humanizing humor which, in Shakespeare, makes us like the vagabonds we laugh at, and which insures for Dogberry and Nick Bottom, Autolychus and Falstaff, warmer friends among readers than many great historic dignities of the state and the camp can command.

In regard to the materials of the dramatist, Jonson, in his vagrant career, had seen human nature under many aspects; but he had surveyed it neither with the eye of reason, nor the eye of imagination. His mind fastened on the hard actualities of observation, without passing to what they implied or suggested. Deficient thus in philosophic insight and poetic insight, his shrewd, contemptuous glance rarely penetrated beneath the manners and eccentricities of men. His attention was arrested, not by character, but by prominent peculiarities of character,—peculiarities which almost transformed character into caricature. To use his own phrase, he delineated humors rather than persons, that is, individuals under the influence of some dominant affectation, or whim, or conceit, or passion, that drew into itself, colored, and mastered the whole nature,—"an acorn," as Sir Thomas Browne phrases it, "in their young brows, which grew to an oak in their old heads." He thus inverts the true process of characterization. Instead of seeing the trait as an offshoot of the individual, he individualizes the trait. Every man is in his humor, instead of every humor being in its man. In order that there should be no misconception of his purpose, he named his chief characters after their predominant qualities, as Morose, Surly, Sir Amorous La Fool, Sir Politic Would Be, Sir Epicure Mammon, and the like; and, apprehensive even then that his whole precious meaning would not be taken in, he appended to his dramatis personæ further explanations of their respective natures.

This distrust of the power of language to lodge a notion in another brain is especially English; but Ben, of all writers, seems to have been most impressed with the necessity of pounding an idea into the perceptions of his countrymen. His mode resembles the attempt of that honest Briton, who thus delivered his judgment on the French nation: "I hate a Frenchman, sir. Every Frenchman is either a puppy or a rascal, sir." And then, fearful that he had not been sufficiently explicit, he added, "Do you take my idea?"

With all abatements, however, the comedy of "Every Man in his Humor" is a remarkable effort, considered as the production of a young man of twenty-three. The two most striking characters are Kitely and Captain Bobadil. Give Jonson, indeed, a peculiarity to start with, and he worked it out with logical exactness. So intense was his conception of it, that he clothed it in[Pg 407] flesh and blood, gave it a substantial existence, and sometimes succeeded in forcing it into literature as a permanent character.

Bobadil, especially, is one of Ben's masterpieces. He is the most colossal coward and braggart of the comic stage. He can swear by nothing less terrible than "by the body of Cæsar," or "by the foot of Pharaoh," when his oath is not something more terrific still, namely, "by my valor"! Every schoolboy knows the celebrated passage in which the boasting Captain offers to settle the affairs of Europe by associating with himself twenty other Bobadils, as cunning i' the fence as himself, and challenging an army of forty thousand men, twenty at a time, and killing the whole in a certain number of days. Leaving out the cowardice, we may say there was something of Bobadil in Jonson himself; and it may be shrewdly suspected that his conceit of destroying an army in this fashion came into his head in the exultation of feeling which followed his own successful exploit, in the presence of both armies, when he was a soldier in Flanders. Old John Dennis described genius "as a furious joy and pride of school at the conception of an extraordinary hint." Ben had this "furious joy and pride," not only in the conception of extraordinary hints, but in the doing of extraordinary things.

Jonson followed up his success by producing the plays of "Every Man out of his Humor," and "Cynthia's Revels," dramatic satires on the manners, follies, affectations, and vices of the city and the court. One good result of Jonson's egotism was, that it made him afraid of nothing. He openly appeared among the dramatists of his day as a reformer, and, poor as he was, refused to pander to popular tastes, whether those tastes took the direction of ribaldry, or blasphemy, or bombast. He had courage, morality, earnestness; but then his courage was so blustering, his morality so irascible, and his devotion to his own ideas of art so exclusive, that he was constantly defying and insulting the persons he proposed to teach. Other dramatists said to the audience, "Please to applaud this"; but Ben said, "Now, you fools, we shall see if you have sense enough to applaud this!" The stage, to be sure, was to be exalted and improved, but it was to be done by his own works, and the glory of literature was to be associated with the glory of Master Benjamin. This conceit, by making him insensible to Shakespeare's influence, made him next to Shakespeare perhaps the most original dramatist of the time. He differed from his brother dramatists not in degree, but in kind. He felt it was not for him to imitate, but to produce models for imitation; not for him to catch the spirit of the age, but to originate a better. In short, he felt and taught belief in Ben; and, high as posterity rates the literature of the age of Elizabeth, it would be supposed from his prologues and epilogues that he conceived his fat person to have fallen on evil days.

In "Every Man out of his Humor" and "Cynthia's Revels," he is in a raging passion throughout. His verse groans with the weight of his wrath. "My soul," he exclaims,

"Was never ground into such oily colors
To flatter vice and daub iniquity.
But with an arméd and resolvéd hand
I 'll strip the ragged follies of the time
Naked as at their birth,
... and with a whip of steel
Print wounding lashes on their iron ribs."

But though he exhausts the whole rhetoric of railing, invective, contempt, and scorn, we yet find it difficult to feel any of the indignation he labors to excite. Admiration, however, cannot be refused to Jonson's prose style in these as in his other plays. It is terse, sharp, swift, biting,—every word a die that stamps its object in a second. Occasionally the author's veins, to use his own apt expression, seem to "run quicksilver," and "every phrase comes forth steeped in the very brine of conceit, and sparkles like salt in fire." Yet, though we have whole scenes in which there is brightness in every sentence, the result[Pg 408] of the whole is something like dulness, as the object of the whole is to exalt himself and depress others. But in these plays, in strange contrast with their general character, we have a few specimens of that sweetness of sentiment, refinement of fancy, and indefinite beauty of imagination, which, occupying some secluded corner of his large brain, seemed to exist apart from his ordinary powers and passions. Among these, the most exquisite is this Hymn to Diana, which partakes of the serenity of the moonlight, whose goddess it invokes.

"Queen and huntress chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep.
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright!

"Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close.
Bless us, then, with wishéd sight,
Goddess excellently bright.

"Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal-gleaming quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe how short soever,—
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright."

If, as Jonson's adversaries maliciously asserted, "every line of his poetry cost him a cup of sack," we must, even in our more temperate days, pardon him the eighteen cups which, in this melodious lyric, went into his mouth as sack, but, by some precious chemistry, came out through his pen as pearls.

It was inevitable that the imperious attitude Jonson had assumed, and the insolent pungency of his satire, should rouse the wrath of the classes he lampooned, and the enmity of the poets he ridiculed and decried. Among those who conceived themselves assailed, or who felt insulted by his arrogant tone, were two dramatists, Thomas Dekkar and John Marston. They soon recriminated; and as Ben was better fitted by nature to dispense than to endure scorn and derision, he in 1601 produced "The Poetaster," the object of which was to silence forever, not only Dekkar and Marston, but all other impudent doubters of his infallibility. The humor of the thing is, that, in this elaborate attempt to convict his adversaries of calumny in taxing him with self-love and arrogance, he ostentatiously exhibits the very qualities he disclaims. He keeps no terms with those who profess disbelief in Ben. They are "play-dressers and plagiaries," "fools or jerking pedants," "buffoon barking wits," tickling "base vulgar ears with beggarly and barren trash," while his are

"The high raptures of a happy Muse,
Borne on the wings of her immortal thought,
That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel,
And beats at heaven's gate with her bright hoofs."

Dekkar retorted in a play called "Satiromastrix; or, the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet"; but, though the scurrility is brilliantly bitter, it is less efficient and hearted than Jonson's. This literary controversy, conducted in acted plays, had to the public of that day a zest similar to that we should enjoy if the editors of two opposing political newspapers should meet in a hall filled with their subscribers, and fling their thundering editorials in person at each other's heads. The theatre-goers seem to have declared for Dekkar and Marston; and Ben, disgusted with such a proof of their incapacity of judgment, sulked and growled in his den, and for two years gave nothing to the stage. He had, however, found a patron, who enabled him to do this without undergoing the famine of insufficient meat, and the still more dreadful drought of insufficient drink; for, in a gossiping diary of the period, covering these two years, we are informed, "B. J. now lives with one Townsend, and scorns the world." While, however, pleasantly engaged in this characteristic occupation, for which he had a natural genius, he was meditating a play which he thought would demonstrate to all judging spirits his possession equally of the acquirements of the scholar and the talents of the dramatist. In the conclusion[Pg 409] of the Apologetic Dialogue which accompanies "The Poetaster," he had hinted his purpose in these energetic lines:—

"Once I 'll say,—
To strike the ears of Time in these fresh strains,
As shall, beside the cunning of their ground,
Give cause to some of wonder, some despite,
And more despair to imitate their sound.
I that spend half my nights and all my days
Here in a cell, to get a dark, pale face,
To come forth with the ivy and the bays,
And in this age can hope no better grace,—
Leave me! There 's something come into my thought,
That must and shall be sung high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof!"

Accordingly, in 1603, he produced his weighty tragedy of "Sejanus," at Shakespeare's theatre, The Globe,—Shakespeare himself acting one of the inferior parts. Think of Shakespeare laboriously committing to memory the blank verse of Jonson!

Though "Sejanus" failed of theatrical success, its wealth of classic knowledge and solid thought made it the best of all answers to his opponents. It was as if they had questioned his capacity to build a ship, and he had confuted them with a man-of-war. To be sure, they might reiterate their old charge of "filching by translation," for the text of "Sejanus" is a mosaic; but it was one of Jonson's maxims that he deserved as much honor for what he made his own by Jonsonizing the classics as for what he originated. Indeed, in his dealings with the great poets and historians of Rome, whose language and whose spirit he had patiently mastered, he acted the part, not of the pickpocket, but of the conqueror. He did not meanly crib and pilfer in the territories of the ancients: he rather pillaged, or, in our American phrase, "annexed" them. "He has done his robberies so openly," says Dryden, "that one sees he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch, and what would be theft in any other poet is only victory in him."

One incident connected with the bringing out of "Sejanus" should not be omitted. Jonson told Drummond that the Earl of Northampton had a mortal enmity to him "for beating, on a St. George's day, one of his attenders"; and he adds, that Northampton had him "called before the Councell for his Sejanus," and accused him there both of "Poperie and treason."

Jonson's relations with Shakespeare seem always to have been friendly; and about this time we hear of them as associate members of the greatest of literary and the greatest of convivial clubs,—the club instituted by Sir Walter Raleigh, and known to all times as the "Mermaid," so called from the tavern in which the meetings were held. Various, however, as were the genius and accomplishments it included, it lacked one phase of ability which has deprived us of all participation in its wit and wisdom. It could boast of Shakespeare, and Jonson, and Raleigh, and Camden, and Beaumont, and Selden, but, alas! it had no Boswell to record its words,

"So nimble, and so full of subtile flame."

There are traditions of "wit-combats" between Shakespeare and Jonson; and doubtless there was many a discussion between them touching the different principles on which their dramas were composed; and then Ben, astride his high horse of the classics, probably blustered and harangued, and graciously informed the world's greatest poet that he sometimes wanted art and sometimes sense, and candidly advised him to check the fatal rapidity and perilous combinations of his imagination,—while Shakespeare smilingly listened, and occasionally put in an ironic word, deprecating such austere criticism of a playwright like himself, who accommodated his art to the humors of the mob that crowded the "round O" of The Globe. There can be no question that Shakespeare saw Ben through and through, but he was not a man to be intolerant of foibles, and probably enjoyed the hectoring egotism of his friend as much as he appreciated his[Pg 410] real merits. As for Ben, the transcendent genius of his brother dramatist pierced through even the thick hide of his self-sufficiency. "I did honor him," he finely says, "this side of idolatry, as much as any other man."

On the accession of James of Scotland to the English throne, Jonson was employed by the court and city to design a splendid pageant for the monarch's reception; and, with that absence of vindictiveness which somewhat atoned for his arrogance, he gave his recent enemy, Dekkar, three fifths of the job. About the same time he was reconciled to Marston; and in 1605 assisted him and Chapman in a comedy called "Eastward Hoe!" One passage in this, reflecting on the Scotch, gave mortal offence to James's greedy countrymen, who invaded England in his train, and were ravenous and clamorous for the spoils of office. Captain Seagul, in the play, praises what was then the new settlement of Virginia, as "a place without sergeants, or courtiers, or lawyers, or intelligencers, only a few industrious Scots perhaps, who indeed are dispersed over the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on 't, in the world, than they are; and, for my own part, I would a hundred thousand of them were there, for we are all one countrymen now, ye know, and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here." This bitter taunt, which probably made the theatre roar with applause, was so represented to the king, that Marston and Chapman were arrested and imprisoned. Jonson nobly insisted on sharing their fate; and as he had powerful friends at court, and was esteemed by James himself, his course may have saved his friends from disgraceful mutilations. A report was circulated that the noses and ears of all three were to be slit and Jonson tells us, that, in an entertainment he gave to Camden, Selden, and other friends after his liberation, his old mother exhibited a paper full of "lustie strong poison," which she said she intended to have mixed in his drink, in case the threat of such a shameful punishment had been officially announced. The phrase "his drink" is very characteristic; and, whatever liquid was meant, we may be sure that it was not water, and that the good lady would have daily had numerous opportunities to mix the poison with it.

The five years which succeeded his imprisonment carried Jonson to the height of his prosperity and glory. During this period he produced the three great comedies on which his fame as a dramatist rests,—"The Fox," "The Silent Woman," and "The Alchymist,"—and also many of the most beautiful of those Masques, performed at court, in which the ingenuity, delicacy, richness, and elevation of his fancy found fittest expression. His social position was probably superior to Shakespeare's. He was really the Court Poet long before 1616, when he received the office, with a pension of a hundred marks. We have Clarendon's testimony to the fact that "his conversation was very good, and with men of the best note." Among his friends occurs the great name of Bacon.

In 1618, when "Ben Jonson" had come to be familiar words on the lips of all educated men in the island, he made his celebrated journey on foot to Scotland, and was hospitably entertained by the nobility and gentry around Edinburgh. Taylor, the water poet, in his "Pennylesse Pilgrimage" to Scotland, has this amiable reference to him. "At Leith," he says, "I found my long approved and assured good friend, Master Benjamin Jonson, at one Master John Stuart's house. I thank him for his great kindness; for, at my taking leave of him, he gave me a piece of gold of two-and-twenty shillings' value, to drink his health in England." One object of Jonson's journey was to visit Drummond of Hawthornden. He passed three or four weeks with Drummond at Hawthornden, and poured out his mind to him without reserve or stint. The finical and fastidious poet was somewhat startled at this irruption[Pg 411] of his burly guest into his dainty solitude; took notes of his free conversation, especially when he decried his contemporaries; and further carried out the rites of hospitality by adding a caustic, though keen, summary of his qualities of character. Thus, according to his dear friend's charitable analysis, Ben "was a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of others; given rather to losse a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him (especiallie after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth); a dissembler of ill parts which raigne in him, a bragger of some good that he wanteth; thinketh nothing well bot what either he himself or some of his friends and countrymen have said or done; he is passionately kynde and angry; careless either to gaine or keep; vindictive, but, if he be well answered, at himself." It is not much to the credit of Jonson's insight, that, after flooding his pensively taciturn host with his boisterous and dogmatic talk, he parted with him under the impression that he was leaving an assured friend. Ah! your demure listeners to your unguarded conversation,—they are the ones that give the fatal stabs!

A literal transcript of Drummond's original notes of Jonson's conversations, made by Sir Robert Sibbald about the year 1710, has been published in the collections of the Shakespeare Society. This is a more extended report than that included in Drummond's works, though still not so full as the reader might desire. The stoutness of Ben's character is felt in every utterance. Thus he tells Drummond that "he never esteemed of a man for the name of a lord,"—a sentiment which he had expressed more impressively in his published epigram on Burleigh:—

"Cecil, the grave, the wise, the great, the good,
What is there more that can ennoble blood?"

He had, it seems, "a minde to be a churchman, and, so he might have favour to make one sermon to the King, he careth not what thereafter sould befall him; for he would not flatter though he saw Death." Queen Elizabeth is the mark of a most scandalous imputation, and the mildest of Ben's remarks respecting her is that she "never saw herself, after she became old, in a true glass; they painted her, and sometymes would vermilion her nose." "Of all styles," he said, "he most loved to be named Honest, and hath of that one hundreth letters so naming him." His judgments on other poets were insolently magisterial. "Spenser's stanzas pleased him not, nor his matter"; Samuel Daniel was a good honest man, but no poet; Donne, though "the first poet in the world in some things," for "not keeping of accent, deserved hanging"; Abram Fraunce, "in his English hexameters, was a foole"; Sharpham, Day, and Dekkar were all rogues; Francis Beaumont "loved too much himself and his own verses." Some biographical items in the record of these conversations are of interest. It seems that the first day of every new year the Earl of Pembroke sent him twenty pounds "to buy bookes." By all his plays he never gained two hundred pounds. "Sundry tymes he hath devoured his bookes," that is, sold them to supply himself with necessaries. When he was imprisoned for killing his brother actor in a duel, in the Queen's time, "his judges could get nothing of him to all their demands but I and No. They placed two damn'd villains, to catch advantage of him, with him, but he was advertised by his keeper"; and he added, as if the revenge was as terrible as the offence, "of the spies he hath ane epigrame." He told a few personal stories to Drummond, calculated to moderate our wonder that Mrs. Jonson was a shrew; and, as they were boastingly told, we must suppose that his manners were not so austere as his verse. But perhaps the most characteristic image he has left of himself, through these conversations, is this: "He hath consumed a whole night in lying looking to his great toe, about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks,[Pg 412] Romans and Carthaginians, feight in his imagination."

Jonson's fortunes seem to have suffered little abatement until the death of King James, in 1625. Then declining popularity and declining health combined their malice to break the veteran down; and the remaining twelve years of his life were passed in doing battle with those relentless enemies of poets,—want and disease. The orange—or rather the lemon—was squeezed, and both court and public seemed disposed to throw away the peel. In the epilogue to his play of "The New Inn," brought out in 1630, the old tone of defiance is gone. He touchingly appeals to the audience as one who is "sick and sad"; but, with a noble humility, he begs they will refer none of the defects of the work to mental decay.

"All that his weak and faltering tongue doth crave
Is that you not refer it to his brain;
That 's yet unhurt, although set round with pain."

The audience were insensible to this appeal. They found the play dull, and hooted it from the stage. Perhaps, after having been bullied so long, they took delight in having Ben "on the hip." Charles the First, however, who up to this time seems to have neglected his father's favorite, now generously sent him a hundred pounds to cheer him in his misfortunes; and shortly after he raised his salary, as Court Poet, from a hundred marks to a hundred pounds, adding, in compliment to Jonson's known tastes, a tierce of Canary,—a wine of which he was so fond as to be nicknamed, in ironical reference to a corpulence which rather assimilated him to the ox, "a Canary bird." It is to this period, we suppose, we must refer his testimony to his own obesity in his "Epistle to my Lady Coventry."

"So you have gained a Servant and a Muse:
The first of which I fear you will refuse,
And you may justly; being a tardy, cold,
Unprofitable chattel, fat and old,
Laden with belly, and doth hardly approach
His friends, but to break chairs or crack a coach.
His weight is twenty stone, within two pound;
And that 's made up, as doth the purse abound."

As his life declined, it does not appear that his disposition was essentially modified. There are two characteristic references to him in his old age, which prove that Ben, attacked by palsy and dropsy, with a reputation perceptibly waning, was Ben still. One is from Sir John Suckling's pleasantly malicious "Session of the Poets":—

"The first that broke silence was good old Ben,
Prepared before with Canary wine,
And he told them plainly he deserved the bays,
For his were called works where others were but plays.

*....*....*....*

Apollo stopped him there, and bade him not go on;
'T was merit, he said, and not presumption,
Must carry 't; at which Ben turned about,
And in great choler offered to go out."

That is a saucy touch,—that of Ben's rage when he is told that presumption is not, before Apollo, to take the place of merit, or even to back it!

The other notice is taken from a letter from Howel to Sir Thomas Hawk, written the year before Jonson's death:—

"I was invited yesternight to a solemn supper by B. J., where you were deeply remembered. There was good company, excellent cheer, choice wines, and jovial welcome. One thing intervened which almost spoiled the relish of the rest,—that B. began to engross all the discourse, to vapor extremely by himself, and, by vilifying others, to magnify his own Muse. For my part, I am content to dispense with the Roman infirmity of Ben, now that time has snowed upon his pericranium."

But this snow of time, however it may have begun to cover up the solider qualities of his mind, seems to have left untouched his strictly poetic faculty. That shone out in his last hours, with more than usual splendor, in the beautiful pastoral drama of "The Sad Shepherd"; and it may be doubted if, in his whole works, any other passage can be found so exquisite in sentiment, fancy, and expression as the opening lines of this charming product of his old age:—

"Here she was wont to go! and here! and here!
Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow:[Pg 413]
The world may find the Spring by following her;
For other print her airy steps ne'er left:
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk!
But like the soft west-wind she shot along,
And where she went the flowers took thickest root,
As she had sowed them with her odorous foot!"

Before he completed "The Sad Shepherd," he was struck with mortal illness; and the brave old man prepared to meet his last enemy, and, if possible, convert him into a friend. As early as 1606 he had returned to the English Church, after having been for twelve years a Romanist; and his penitent death-bed was attended by the Bishop of Winchester. He died in August, 1637, in his sixty-fourth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The inscription on the common pavement stone which was laid over his grave still expresses, after a lapse of two hundred years, the feelings of all readers of the English race,—

"O rare Ben Jonson!"

It must be admitted, however, that this epithet is sufficiently indefinite to admit widely differing estimates of the value of his works. In a critical view, the most obvious characteristic of his mind is its bulk; but its creativeness bears no proportion to its massiveness. His faculties, ranged according to their relative strength, would fall into this rank:—first, Ben; next, understanding; next, memory; next, humor; next, fancy; and last and least, imagination. Thus, in the strictly poetic action of his mind, his fancy and imagination being subordinated to his other faculties, and not co-ordinated with them, his whole nature is not kindled, and his best masques and sweetest lyrics give no idea of the general largeness of the man. In them the burly giant becomes gracefully petite; it is Fletcher's Omphale "smiling the club" out of the hand of Hercules, and making him, for the time, "spin her smocks." Now the greatest poetical creations of Shakespeare are those in which he is greatest in reason, and greatest in passion, and greatest in knowledge, as well as greatest in imagination,—his poetic power being

"Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,
Binding all things with beauty."

His mind is "one entire and perfect chrysolite," while Jonson's rather suggests the pudding-stone. The poet in Ben, being thus but a comparatively small portion of Ben, works by effort, rather than efficiency, and leaves the impression of ingenuity rather than inventiveness. But in his tragedies of "Sejanus" and "Catiline," and especially in his three great comedies of "The Fox," "The Alchymist," and "The Silent Woman," the whole man is thrust forward, with his towering individuality, his massive understanding, his wide knowledge of the baser side of life, his relentless scorn of weakness and wickedness, his vivid memory of facts and ideas derived from books. They seem written with his fist. But, though they convey a powerful impression of his collective ability, they do not convey a poetic impression, and hardly an agreeable one. His greatest characters, as might be expected, are not heroes or martyrs, but cheats or dupes. His most magnificent cheat is Volpone, in "The Fox"; his most magnificent dupe is Sir Epicure Mammon, in "The Alchymist"; but in their most gorgeous mental rioting in imaginary objects or sense, the effect is produced by a dogged accumulation of successive images, which are linked by no train of strictly imaginative association, and are not fused into unity of purpose by the fire of passion-penetrated imagination.

Indeed, it is a curious psychological study to watch the laborious process by which Jonson drags his thoughts and fancies from the reluctant and resisting soil of his mind, and then lays them, one after the other, with a deep-drawn breath, on his page. Each is forced into form by main strength, as we sometimes see a pillar of granite wearily drawn through the street by a score of straining oxen. Take, for example, Sir Epicure Mammon's detail of the luxuries he will revel in when his possession of the philosopher's stone shall have[Pg 414] given him boundless wealth. The first cup of Canary and the first tug of invention bring up this enormous piece of humor:—

"My flatterers
Shall be the pure and gravest of divines
That I can get for money."

Then another wrench of the mind, and, it is to be feared, another inlet of the liquid, and we have this:—

"My meat shall all come in in Indian shells,
Dishes of agate, set in gold, and studded
With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies."

"My shirts
I 'll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light
As cobwebs; and for all my other raiment,
It shall be such as might provoke the Persian,
Were he to teach the world riot anew."

And then, a little heated, his imagination is stung into action, and this refinement of sensation flashes out:—

"My gloves of fishes' and birds' skins perfumed
With gums of Paradise and Eastern air."

"I will have all my beds blown up, not stuffed;
Down is too hard."

But all this patient accumulation of particulars, each costing a mighty effort of memory or analogy, produces no cumulative effect. Certainly, the word "strains," as employed to designate the effusions of poetry, has a peculiar significance as applied to Jonson's verse. No hewer of wood or drawer of water ever earned his daily wages by a more conscientious putting forth of daily labor. Critics—and among the critics Ben is the most clamorous—call upon us to admire and praise the construction of his plays. But his plots, admirable of their kind, are still but elaborate contrivances of the understanding, all distinctly thought out beforehand by the method of logic, not the method of imagination; regular in external form, but animated by no living internal principle; artful, but not artistic; ingenious schemes, not organic growths; and conveying the same kind of pleasure we experience in inspecting other mechanical contrivances. His method is neither the method of nature nor the method of art, but the method of artifice. A drama of Shakespeare may be compared to an oak; a drama by Jonson, to a cunningly fashioned box, made of oak-wood, with some living plants growing in it. Jonson is big; Shakespeare is great.

Still we say, "O rare Ben Jonson!" A large, rude, clumsy, English force, irritable, egotistic, dogmatic, and quarrelsome, but brave, generous, and placable; with no taint of a malignant vice in his boisterous foibles; with a good deal of the bulldog in him, but nothing of the spaniel, and one whose growl was ever worse than his bite;—he, the bricklayer's apprentice, fighting his way to eminence through the roughest obstacles, capable of wrath, but incapable of falsehood, willing to boast, but scorning to creep, still sturdily keeps his hard-won position among the Elizabethan worthies as poet, playwright, scholar, man of letters, man of muscle and brawn; as friend of Beaumont and Fletcher and Chapman and Bacon and Shakespeare; and as ever ready, in all places and at all times, to assert the manhood of Ben by tongue and pen and sword.

UNCHARITABLENESS.

I wondered once where all the disconsolate came from,—where all the human wrecks tossed up by the waves of misfortune received their injuries, and what became of those who sailed from port in early youth and were never heard of more. I marvelled, too, that there were so many unhappy bachelors, so many forlorn maids, so many neither wife nor maid; but at all these things I wonder no longer. I have solved the problem I set myself. Society makes them all.

I am not going to analyze society to please any one. I make mine own. Hyacinth, I dare swear, makes his. Why shall I paint it? It is you, it is I, it is both of us, and many more. Can I sketch the figures in a kaleidoscope ere they change? If I could, I might say what society is or was. To-day members of circles marry, or are given in marriage. Disease comes and war decimates; foul tongues asperse, and the unity that was perfect is so no longer. The whole world is society, and I believe there was not so much confusion at the Tower of Babel after all. Men speak in different tongues, but their motives are the same in all climes.

I love or I hate my Celtic friend. The sea rolls between us, but from afar the same sun warms us. If he does a good deed, I shall applaud it; or, if he is mean, shall I not smite him? The world looks on, and puts us all to the test alike. We love or we hate.

Are there no Procrustean couches in these days? If my neighbor is too short, what shall I do but stretch him? if he is too long, I am the one who shall hack off his superfluous inches.

Ah! believe me, sceptic, there is a mote in thine eye, but in mine there is no beam. It is I who am immaculate. "The king can do no wrong." I am a king unto myself; but, whether king or commoner, how lenient I am to my own faults,—how intensely alive to my neighbor's!

If Kubla Khan decide to build his pleasure dome,—nay, if he but hint at it,—I set myself to wonder where he can possibly have obtained the funds. Not in commerce surely. Not in that vulgar little furnishing-store in which he has toiled early and late for twenty years. He is doubtless a spy of the government,—a detective of some kind; and, now that I recall it, he certainly was away some time during the Rebellion. In short, there are many ways by which he may have procured this money dishonestly. Rather than believe my neighbor quite honest and beyond reproach, I discuss the topic of his supposed fall from virtue with our mutual neighbors, until at last I bring them to the conclusion I have long ago arrived at, which is, if the truth were known, that Kubla Khan is no better than the law compels him to be.

I do this, of course, solely from a regard for virtue, from a sense of duty. The times, I say in my discussions, are such that one must know his associates thoroughly; and so I believe, or profess to believe, K. K. to be a rogue rather than an honest, upright man.

I have a right to my opinion, have I not? Most unquestionably. While this tongue and beard can wag, I will assert the privilege of free speech. But have I a right to traduce my neighbor? What business is it of mine if he has money, and sees fit to build a house with it? Am I his banker, that I give heed to his concerns? Why cannot I look on with delight, and even help select the site of the future edifice? All of his previous life has been blameless and without reproach; but now I suddenly discover that my neighbor is not trustworthy. Is this charity?

Perhaps I do not touch upon Kubla Khan and his prospective chateau at[Pg 416] all. My neighbors in the house adjoining engross my attention. Come! let us watch for the butcher and the baker, that we may see what our neighbors' fare is. I will engage that I can fix to a shilling the amount of their weekly bills. Such meanness are some people guilty of, that they live upon a sum that would not keep my boy in tarts. I am certain that our neighbors take ice but every other day in the summer, and if the milk they buy is not swill-fed, then I am no judge. The steaks are not porter-house, but rump-steaks. Last Saturday night I saw Pater-familias bring home a smoked shoulder,—not a ham, because that is much dearer; and—will it be believed?—the bonnets the girls wear are revamped from those of last year. Young Threadpaper dances attendance upon them, and I am sure of all low things a man milliner is the lowest. Two weeks ago Pater-familias rode down town with me, and I saw upon his shoe an immense patch, while his hat was so shiny, with frequent caressings from a silk handkerchief, that it seemed to be varnished and polished.

His clothes are very unfashionable, too. He is invariably a year behind the style; and how can one respect a person who does not wear garments of the prevalent cut?

There must be something mysterious about this man. If there is, I am the one to ferret it out. Let me see. His manner is reticent. From this I deduce the fact that he has at some time been a convict. All men who have been incarcerated are just so quiet. I was once in a jail in Massachusetts, with other persons, and one poor fellow, taking advantage of our presence, whispered to his neighbor, whereat the jailer swore awfully, and punished him; but the rest were very quiet, just like my neighbor. It is certainly suspicious.

He is economical, too. Ah! that follows quite naturally. Remorse has seized him, and he is now endeavoring to pay off his indebtedness, or do something else which I cannot fathom just now; thus making his family suffer doubly for his misdeed.

O, I cry in the pride of my heart, truly "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children," and I not only fix the nature of my neighbor's transgression, but the very jail in which he was incarcerated.

Fool and blind that I am! If I had but a tithe of that intuition I boast, I might have discerned that my neighbor was one of those rare individuals we sometimes read of in tracts, but seldom meet in the flesh,—one of those heroes who fight daily battles with trial, temptation, suffering, and privation in many shapes, that he may live honorably before men, and leave a heritage of honor to his children when he goeth to his long home. I might have seen that this man worked early and late without complaint, that he might pay debts his dead father incurred for his education, and that the poor decrepit old lady whom no physician can cure is his mother. She costs him a pretty penny for her support, I warrant me, and accuses him in her dotage with harboring a desire to get rid of her. What wonder if he is reticent to the world? Look in his eye. It is the eye of an honest man. Take his hand. 'T is a true palm, and many a beggar shall be refused at Dives's door, but not at his.

But he is poor; he looks downcast. Come, let us beslime him with the breath of suspicion. Let us gossip about him. Let us look askance at him, and direct our children to avoid his,—when they play their little hour, to run swiftly past that wretched abode of silence.

Silence! said I. Ah! that is a queer silence which reigns in my neighbor's dwelling. When he comes to his family there are shouts and laughter, and rosy-mouthed roisterers stand ready to pillage the plethoric pockets laden to the flaps with bananas and oranges he has starved himself to procure. I do not hear that he discusses his neighbor's affairs, or that he distils into his oolong one drop of bitter scandal by way of flavor. Nay, I am certain that[Pg 417] I might lose five hundred dollars per diem, and the world would be none the wiser through him.

How sharply we see things which have no existence! How quickly we discern faults in our neighbors, but how slow we are to find out our own!

Now I look at it, there is a grievous rent in my neighbor's doublet; but look at mine own. How it fits! Is it not immaculate? I have a suit of character in which I am triply armed,—a coat of mail of reputation which I defy slander to pierce. The man who wrote

"He that is down need fear no fall,
He that is up no pride,
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide,"

knew nothing about human nature. I fancy I could teach that genius a thing or two. The springs of human action are not concealed to me. Ah, no! I see them all, in my own conceit, and no mean motive of other people escapes me.

But how shall my neighbor fare at my hands in argument? Well, I trust, if he agree with me. That is, provided he sees things as I do. If he sees the shield to be gold, and I see it so also, what sagacity he has! what judgment! "A man of fine talents," I say to my son. "See that you emulate him. Mark how quickly he grasps the same points that I did,—with what nice discrimination he avoids irrelevant matters, and treats only the main idea." Next to myself, I say in my heart, there is no one but my neighbor who could have solved this riddle so quickly.

But let him dare to disagree with me,—let him say the shield is gold when I say it is silver, or brass if I like,—and what depth of stultification is too deep for him,—what pit of error too dark for him to stumble in? He is a sophisticator, a casuist; he chases every paltry side-issue until his brains are so muddled that he cannot tell what he does think; he is a mole, an owl, a bat; he is a blockhead, to boot.

What! differ from me?—the idiot! I say the shield is silver; how can it be gold? Is it not white? doth it not glisten? hath it not lustre? what else can it be?

My neighbor suggests sportively that it is tin; whereupon I impugn my neighbor's good-sense; and that is a logical conclusion of the controversy. It does not occur to me that a man may differ in opinion from his fellows, and yet not be a convicted felon or a disturber of the peace. His views are his; foolish, perhaps, from my standpoint; yet, because he is not so wise as I, is he any the less entitled to courtesy, to consideration and charity,—is he the less a fond father, a patriot, or an honorable man? Why insist that of all the world I am sagest and always right?

Why shall I break the images men set up? Iconoclast that I am, reflection would show me what long years ago my copy-book told me, Humanum est errare,—and that violence, intolerance, and discourtesy are poor weapons to fight prejudice and bigotry with. Come! let us throw them aside hereafter; let none be persecuted or derided in social circles for their opinions' sake. There are more forcible arguments than vituperation and personality, and if we cannot convince, let us be content.

The world is made for all. When my Uncle Toby took the fly and let him out, he did as men should to others who differ in opinion. Go! I say to the sceptic, the world is wide enough for thee and me.

At the commencement of this paper, I said it was no mystery where the disconsolate came from,—society made them; and I reassert it as my conviction that the supply is far ahead of the demand. I say too many in society are hollow and false, and not true to themselves, nor to the instinct planted in every human breast.

By word or deed I convey to my vis-à-vis in the crowded salon my opinion that our host's daughter is a failure; the money spent upon her education is thrown away. She has no air, no manner,[Pg 418] no tone. My vis-à-vis understands me, and, taking her cue, goes to the cherished of her heart, and straightway repeats the slander, and we smile and smile and are villains.

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, saith the Preacher," and I say after him, Is there nothing but nettles in the world's garden,—nothing but noxious weeds? Have we no traits and sentiments which are lofty and ennobling? Why cannot we see these and talk about them? But whoever went to a party where the guests talked of virtue?

Here is Straitlace. His wife is in the country; he will therefore bear watching. Come! let us invent and suppose, let us pry and peek. Ah, ha! I see a letter,—a billet-doux, a delicately scented one, and he is so close to me in the cars that, by the merest accident I assure you, I am able to read the beginning,—"Dearest of my soul."

There, that is quite enough. Dearest of her soul, indeed! Do wives begin letters in that way? Not many. Shocking! Dreadful! And then my comrades and I roll the sweet morsel under our tongues, when, after all, the model husband was only reading his model wife's letter.

Or look at this phase of uncharitableness. What a happy faculty my countrymen have for finding out each other's business. I move into some country village, where a small but select community meet and agitate various topics for the moral regeneration of all. I am from the city, and therefore have some ways easily noticed. I am unquestionably "stuck up," and am hardly settled in my place before a tea-party is held, not to do me honor, but to sit in inquest upon me and my family.

Are our virtues discussed at the inquest? Have we any good qualities? Are we not almost outcasts? How we drawl our words, for example. We wear white skirts, when balmorals are good enough for most folks. We starve our children, too, because they get only bread and milk for tea, and no pies or cakes. In short, how very far below our neighbors we are in social standing!

Go to, ye shallow dissemblers, retailers of scandal, disturbers of the peace! Leave us in peace, and possess your souls in patience. We are human, and frail even as you are. We have faults and virtues. Why not extend the hand of friendship to us? Why not be courteous, instead of making us detest your presence,—instead of souring our tempers, and making us feel as though every one's hand was against us?

There is that Abigail, whom I have often seen lounging at the next door below. She snuffeth scandal from afar. She heareth the whisperings and innuendoes of them that traffic in reputations, and she loseth little time ere she adorns the secret meetings of the conspirators with her presence. Away with her to the scaffold! she is chiefest among the malefactors. Offer her up a sacrifice to charity, and let none say nay!

Suppose I stand by when the tale-bearer begins his monotonous song, what am I to lose by keeping silent, as he tears my neighbor to pieces?

There were two maidens, saith the fable, one of whom was lovely to look upon, while the other was plain; but when the former spake, toads and serpents fell from her lips, while from the unlovely lips came diamonds and pearls. I know which I should have wooed, and I hope won, for I value more a quiet life than false lips and a tongue that speaketh lies.

"Speech is silvern, but silence is golden." I shall be silent when the detractor begins his tale.

"Teach me to hide the faults I see,
And feel for others' woe,"

saith the poet, and, though he may be accused of uttering a platitude, I subscribe to it. I am willing to forgive and forget, instead of enlarging upon all the flaws, all the weaknesses, of human nature. I shall not thunder on the roof of some hapless wretch who has stumbled, fallen by the wayside, and cry, "Come out! come out! thou villain, and[Pg 419] do penance for thy sin." I will rather give him my hand and help him arise. I will set him up again, and I will back him against all takers that he never slips again.

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," saith another poet; but he meant good, not bad nature, for he knew full well how to set communities by the ears with his sharp sayings.

To-day it is the sister against her brother, the son against his father, and the world is so full of evil, if we might believe the scandal-mongers, that no good will ever exist again in it.

"Let those who dance pay the piper," says Worldly-mindedness, and he chuckles as he says it for a sharp thing. But there are some who like dancing that have not the wherewithal, and to those I offer my purse. If a man fall down, I am not going to jump upon his back and jeer him. He has danced, and cannot pay now; but what of that? Some day he will.

Here is one hand and one heart that shall never betray. Come to me, ye scandal-torn and society-ridden. Come to me, ye whom venomous tongues have harried, and ye whose characters hang in shreds about you, come also. Ye have faults, and so have I. Somewhere ye have good traits, and these are what I respect.

Let us defy the "they-says," and as for those whose shibboleth is, "I have it upon good authority," we will give them the go-by.

We will laugh to see the tribulation of them that sit in council, and hold foul revelry over their neighbors' shortcomings; they shall read of our resolutions, and there shall be no comfort in the cup of tea any more which Tabbies sip delectably, while they tear Miss Bright-eyes to pieces. There shall lurk a maggot in the shreds of dried beef which these modern ghouls rend, as they rend my fair name; and may the biscuits be as heavy upon their stomachs as tale-bearing shall one day be upon their consciences.

If I am unlike you, gentle reader, guiltless of this crying sin, I know you will not condemn me, will not decry me, make little of me, or seek to poison men's minds against me. You will have that charity for me which is not puffed up; and where I err, or you are ignorant of my motive, hold your peace.

To-day there are dear ones in exile, or in the bonds of sin, for this very practice. There are lives hopelessly lost to virtue, and others imbittered forever. Families are separated, and high hopes and aspirations crushed, while the fountains of affection which should be filled to the brim afford only a trickling stream, or, worse still, foul lees which never will subside. There are shadows in many homes, and empty chairs that never will be filled. The child on the floor misses its playfellow, the wife her husband, the mother her son, the betrothed her lover, and still the tale-bearers go upon their rounds, and their feet never, never rest.

THE ROSE ROLLINS.

PART I.

There lived a few years ago in one of the small seaport towns of New England a solitary, friendless man, of the name of John Chidlaw,—a gray-headed, stoop-shouldered, hollow-chested person of about fifty years of age at the time our story begins. He was sober, steady, and industrious, and always had been so since his first appearance in the place, but somehow he never got ahead. He was thriftless, people used to say, and they got in the habit of calling him "Johnny," and then "Old Johnny," until nobody called him anything else, unless it were here and there some poor child or sympathetic woman, who said "Uncle Johnny," with that sort of gentle kindness that is never bestowed on the prosperous.

He did not resent anything, even pity, but took his hard fortune as a matter of course, and the heavier the burden, why, the more he bent his shoulders, but he did not complain. Nobody had ever asked his history,—the history of a man who has patches at his knees, and whose elbows are out, is not, by those more fortunate persons who have no patches at their knees, and whose elbows are not out, generally supposed to be of an interesting character. John Chidlaw was, therefore, never bothered with questions.

Could he lift a heavy log? Could he tend a saw-mill? Could he drive a team, or carry a hod of bricks? These, and the like, were the questions that were asked him mostly; and as he could say yes to any and all of these, and as people did not require him to say more, he seldom did say more, but lifted the log, or drove the team, as the case might be, in silence.

He looked a good deal older than he was,—not that his head was so gray, and not that his shoulders bent so much, but the rather that there was an utter absence of buoyancy, an indurated and inflexible style and expression about the whole man, as if, in fact, he had been born old. You could not think of him as having ever been a boy, with cherry cheeks, and laughing eyes, and steps that were careless and fleet as the wind, but he had had his boyhood and his boyhood's dream, as will appear by and by.

It had happened to him at one time that a saw had gone into his hand, and left a jagged and ugly scar across the back; another time it had happened that his horse had run away, upsetting his cart, and breaking one of his legs, so that he limped thereafter, and was disabled from some of the harder kinds of work he had been used to do. He had been dismissed by one and another, in consequence of his inability to make a full day's work, and was sitting one day on a pile of bricks in the outer edge of the town where he lived, quite down-hearted, and chewing, not the cud of sweet and bitter fancies, but, instead thereof, a bit of pine stick, which he held partly in and partly out of his mouth.

His eyes looked solemnly out from under his gray eyebrows as now and then a whistling teamster drove by, throwing a whole cloud of hot, suffocating dust over him. Sometimes a pedler, or some stroller with a monkey on his shoulder and an organ on his back, would nod to him as he passed; but the pedler did not think of exhibiting his wares, nor the organman of grinding out a tune, or of setting his monkey to playing tricks, for the like of old Johnny. The sun was growing large toward the setting, and nothing had turned up, when all at once there was a wild whirl of wheels, and a crying and shouting and holding up of hands by all the men and[Pg 421] boys along the road. A horse was running away. On he came, galloping furiously, while the old heavy-topped buggy to which he was attached rattled and creaked and swayed from side to side frightfully,—frightfully, because it was in imminent danger of being crushed all to pieces; and sitting still and solemnly upright, swaying with the buggy, and in imminent danger of being crushed to pieces too, was a child,—a beautiful little girl, with a cloud of yellow curls rippling down her bare shoulders. Her white dress fluttered in the wind, and her hat was swimming on the pond half a mile in the rear; but still she sat, sober and quiet as though she had been on her mother's knees, and not so much as puckering her pretty lip for all the tumult and fright.

A dozen men were in the road, some with rails in their arms, with which they no doubt intended to intercept the mad creature; but the best intentions fail sometimes, and the men with rails in their arms threw them down, and got themselves out of the way, as soon as the danger came near them.

John Chidlaw went into the road among the rest, but without a rail in his arms. He did not, however, get himself out of the way,—not he. He threw himself with might and main upon the neck of the frightened beast, and there he held, and was dragged along,—half the time, as it seemed, under his very feet.

"That's you, Johnny!" "Go it!" "Good for you!" were the cheers and calls of encouragement that followed him. The horse was valuable, and he was in danger of breaking his neck; and what matter about John Chidlaw! He had no friends!

He required not to be thus stimulated, if they had but known it: he had been stimulated sufficiently already, by the tossing hair and fair face of the little girl, to peril his life, and he was not the man to look back when he had his hand to the plough.

The blood besmeared his face, and streamed down his neck, and wet his shirt-bosom and sleeves, and still the voices cried, "Hold on, Johnny!" They thought he was being battered to death, though the blood was from the mouth of the horse, for the entire weight of the man was being dragged by the bit.

At the toll-gate an old woman ran out with a broom,—she could have shut the gate, but did not,—and when Johnny had stopped the horse, which he did a little farther on, she told him that but for his being in the way she could have stopped the beast at once, and that, if he was as badly battered as he seemed, she would be at the pains of getting the poor-house cart, and seeing that he was carted away! The old carriage was surrounded in a few minutes, and the child lifted out, and kissed and coaxed, and petted and praised, and fed with candies and cakes, and handed from the arms of one to another; and the feet and legs of the horse were carefully examined, and he was dashed with cool water, and combed and rubbed, and petted and patted, and given a variety of either grand or endearing names; but nobody looked after Johnny, and the only kindness shown him was that of the old woman with the broom.

But even Fortune tires of frowning at last, and the time of her relenting toward John Chidlaw was at hand.

He was washing the blood from his face in a wayside puddle, when the man who owned the horse and buggy came breathlessly up. "My good friend," he said, slapping him on the shoulder, "you have saved my child's life!" And then his hand slipped from shoulder to waist, and he positively hugged the astonished Johnny, who was almost awe-struck at first, for the hugger was well to do, and he that was hugged was exceeding poor, as the reader knows.

"My name," he said, introducing himself, "is Hilton, David Hilton, and I keep the ferry at the lower end of the town; should n't wonder if I could put business in your way! You can[Pg 422] turn your hand to a'most anything, I reckon,—a man of your build mostly can."

A fortnight later, and John Chidlaw was the master of a little black sailboat not much bigger than a canoe, and his business was to carry butchers' meat, bread, poultry, and vegetables from the market-town in which he lived to the great hotels situated on the hills above the opposite shore. His boat had, therefore, in his eyes, somewhat the dignity of a merchantman; and as he was entitled to a part of the profits of the trade he carried on, he was at once a proud and a happy man. He had christened his boat "The Rose Rollins," and kept her as neat and trim as she could be. He wore a sailor's jacket, from professional pride, and used all the nautical phrases he could muster. His shoulders got the better of their stoop, and his chest of its hollowness, in a wonderfully short time; and one day, when he was asked about the scar on his hand, he answered that he had been bitten by a whale when he was a young man at sea. It will be perceived that he was gaining confidence, and growing in worldly wisdom. The questioner was a very timid person, but she said she guessed she could trust herself with an old sailor like that, and at once went aboard. She was a milliner, laden with boxes for the ladies in the opposite hotels, and was the first female passenger the master of the Rose had had;—for his legitimate trade was merchandise, and not the transportation of men and women; but occasionally, as his confidence grew, he had taken a passenger or two across the ferry, on his own hook, as he phrased it.

"I took such a wiolent fancy to the name o' your wessel," says the milliner, "and that is how I come to take passage with you. Ain't she a nice little thing, though?"

"Trim as a gal o' sixteen!" says John. "But had n't you better unlade yourself o' your merchandise, and fix to enjoy the sail some?"—and he began taking the boxes from her lap.

"O sir, you 're wery good!" says the milliner, quite blushing. And then she adjusted her skirts, and flirted them about as she adjusted them, and then she untied her bonnet-strings and knotted them up again, for nothing in the world but the pleasure of tying knots in ribbon apparently; but John Chidlaw thought he had never in his life seen such a graceful and enchanting performance. He brought his jacket directly, and offered to spread it over the board on which she was sitting.

"Oh, you 're wery good, wery good, I am sure, sir,—but I 'm a-givin' you too much trouble!"—and, saying so, she partly rose and allowed the seat to be cushioned as proposed. The wind caught the bright ribbons, and fluttered them in the man's face as he was thus employed.

"Oh!" says the milliner, with a little start; and then she says, "The nasty winds have such a wulgar way of catchin' up a body's things"; and she pulls back the innocent strings and holds them against her bosom by main force.

"Pray, miss, don't haul 'em round that way on my account; they did n't hurt me none! Why, I thought 't was a butterfly at fust, and then I thought 't was a hummin'-bird, and them was allers pleasin' things to me, both on 'em."

The woman was flattered. In the first place she was not young,—not much younger than he, in fact,—and he had addressed her as "miss"; and in the next place his comparing her ribbons to butterflies and humming-birds seemed the same as a personal compliment.

"O Captain!" she says, coloring up, "did you think so, werily?"—and then she changes the subject, and talks about the appearance of the clouds, and the prospect of rain. "I suppose you old sailors can tell, purty much," she says, "whether it 's a-goin' to rain, or whether the clouds will ewaporate into[Pg 423] mist; and I should really walue your judgment, for if my things should git wet, you see, it would cost me a wery considerable sum!"

"I'll just take an obserwation!" says John; and he set his foot on a bread-basket, and cocked up one eye. He had never given the sound of w to his v before, but he had noticed that his fair passenger did so, and he adopted the pronunciation, partly in gallantry, partly because it struck him as elegant. While he was taking the observation, a bright thought came to him. "I guess we shall have foul weather afore long," says he. "When the clouds hev sich disjinted shapes as they hev this mornin', it 's generally portentous; but I can knock up a canvas kiver in a minute, and if it still looks like fur rain when we go into port, why, I would adwise you just to stay aboard,—it sha'n't cost you a cent more, not if you make a dozen trips!"

"I 'm sure I 'm wery much obliged, Captain, and I 'll take your adwice when we come to port, and if the weather still looks wacillating, I won't wenter ashore. It would n't be worth while to risk my goods,—some of 'em welwets, too, of great walue!"

"The keepin' on 'em aboard sha'n't cost you nothin'," says John, "if that 'll be any object to you."

He wished to convey the idea, that, to a person of her fabulous wealth, dealing in velvets and the like, a fare more or less could not possibly be an object, and at the same time to show a magnanimous disposition on his own part.

"Money is money," says the milliner, "there is no denying of that; and it has its adwantages, on account o' which I set a certain walue upon it; but just for its own sake I can't say that I do walue it,—not over and above!"

"I hev n't hed no great on 't," says John, "but I 've hed enough, sense I 've come into business, to know that if I hed to keep it a-chinkin' into my pocket I should n't value it much."

"I 'll tell you how money is waluable to me," says the milliner, "if I may wenter so far?"

"Most certainly!" exclaimed John. "You could n't venter nothin' that would n't be to your credit,—I 'll vouch a fippenny bit on that!"

Then he repeated himself, substituting wenter, and wouch, in the places of the words previously used.

"Dear me! I should become wain o' myself if I thought your compliment was walid," says the milliner, dropping her eyes; but the next moment she gives her bonnet-strings a little flirt, and goes on in the sprightliest way about a hundred trifles,—one of which had no connection with another.

"You 've forgot what you sot out on!" says John, interrupting her at last; "and you kerried me away so, I was a-forgittin' on 't too. Howsever, it 's no odds, as I know on,—you make whatever you touch so interestin'!"

"O Captain! how you do warnish me up! I shall certainly wacate the premises when we come to port, if you don't stop sich things!—that is, if there's a single westige o' clear sky. But we were talking of the walue of money, was n't we?" She cast down her eyes again, and spoke with a sweet seriousness. "I walue money," she says, "when I see I can make another happy with it." And then she says her lot in life has been a wery lonely and sad one,—wersatile, but on the whole lonely, sometimes to the wery werge of despair!

"You don't say?" says John. "I certainly should n't 'a' thought it possible! Why, you don't mean to say you 've allers been alone in the world?"

Then she tells him how she thought she fell in love, at seventeen, with a green-grocer that turned out to be a miserable wagabond, inwesting all her earnings in whiskey and rum, and drinking them himself.

"The villain!" cried John;—and then, finding that he had not done justice to his feelings, he repeated, with great stress of indignation, "The willain! the black-hearted willain! But[Pg 424] he never dared to lay violent—wiolent, I mean—hands onto you!"

"Dear me, how my heart wibrates!" says the woman,—"not so much with the memory of what I have suffered as that—that anybody should manifest such a—such a wery kind feeling toward me now!"

"How anybody that seen you should 'a' helpt from doin' on 't," says the boatman, "is awful curus to me!"

"Law mercy, how selfish I am, never offering you a seat all this while!" says the artful woman. And she hitched along, and smoothed out the jacket.

He turned toward her as he spoke, and the wind once more fluttered the gay ribbons in his face. She lifted her hand to draw them back. "Don't you be a-mindin' on 'em," says John; "they're just as sweet as rose-leaves, and I like to hev em a-blowin' over me so."

You may smile, reader, if you will, but you would not smile if you had seen the soul yearning in the eyes of the man, if you had heard the pleading in the sad sincerity of his tone. He was fifty years old now, and I dare say a woman's ribbon had never touched him till then. He was wrinkled and gray, and old to look upon, but his heart in its tender sentiment was as fresh and young as a boy's.

So, with the ribbons fluttering on his cheek, and his boat drifting as it would, John Chidlaw listened to the story of the woman's life, and as Desdemona loved the Moor for the dangers he had passed, so he loved her for the sorrows she had borne.

"Yes, Captain," she says, "my troubles is over now, pretty much. I've been a widder this ten year,"—(he hitched a little closer,)—"I 've been a widder, and I 've had peace o' mind, and I 've laid up money; but, law me when a body has nobody to lay up for, what 's the use?"

And then she says, if anybody had ever showed a warm heart toward her, she 'd 'a' been a different woman to what she is.

"A different woman!" says John. "How different to what you be?" He could not conceive of the possibility of a difference for the better.

"Why, I would 'a' been ten year younger and ten year smarter," says the widow, "and then may be somebody might 'a' took a notion to me! Who knows? We women never cease to hope, you know!"

"What a saucy Captain you are, to ask me such questions!"—and she put him gently back with her white hand. "But here we are almost ashore!"—and she began gathering up her band-boxes and paper parcels with great energy.

"I thought you said you was a-goin' to take my advice?" says John, with a soft reproach in his voice.

"Did I? O, then I will!" she answers, with the most innocent air possible, and leaning quite across his knee to replace one of her boxes. "What is your adwice, now? But you must bear in mind the walue of the welwets. I 've one bonnet in the lot, of a wermilion color, that's worth a wast deal; and you know welwet, when it 's once wet, looks just like a drownded cat. No dressing can make anything of it. Some ladies wears it, but my ladies does n't."

"I never knew clouds look like them," says John, "when it did n't pour; and, if you take my adwice, you 'll stay just where you be."

"I 'll take your adwice," says the widow, touching his hand lightly with her soft fingers, and smiling upon him with that unpremeditated coquetry that always makes a woman charming. It was especially charming to this man,[Pg 425] for no woman had ever smiled upon him like that; and then to think she had asked and accepted his advice, withal! It was enough to turn his head, and it did.

"I'll take your adwice, Captain," she says, "and keep the welwets dry, for it would cost a pretty penny to replace that wermilion, to be sure! I shall lose some time by it; and time is money. But what 's money but wanity and wexation, when nobody has a warm heart toward us?"

John Chidlaw sighed a long, long sigh, and then he turned his boat about and they sailed back again. By and by, as if to push him toward his fate, there flashed down a few big drops of rain. The sun was shining all the while, but he bestirred himself, and worked with a will, and the widow lent her little hindering help, and directly the canvas was spread and securely drawn down, and they were sitting beneath it, side by side, cosey as could be. She became more communicative now, and told him in what street she was born and who her father was.

"What! not —— Street, of our town here? And your father's name Peter Rollins, too?"

"Yes, Peter Rollins, coffin-maker, satin-lined and silver-screwed! The wery tiptop. None but quality come to him. When I was a little girl, I used to get into 'em, when we played hide and seek. Why, if you believe me, I 've been into many a hundred-dollar one, and had my head into the satin piller of it! That's the way I happened to cultiwate a taste for satins and welwets and the like, I guess."

She did not heed the intimation of her companion that he had known her father, but went on for half an hour without once stopping to take breath.

"Ah, Captain," she says, "I 've been dethroned in the world! I was born to riches and a proud position, but I married beneath me, a poor green-grocer that turned out a wagabond; and in my trials with him, I lost all my good looks; for I may say, without wanity, that I was good-looking in my girlish days, and lost all my wiwacity, and come to be the sober, staid old woman you see me."

"Old woman, to be sure!" says John. "Why, nobody would think o' callin' you old. You look a'most like a girl o' sixteen to me!"

"O Captain!" says the widow; and then she says his sight must be failing, though his eyes do look so uncommon bright; and then she says, with a little sigh, that she is upwards of forty.

She had observed John's wrinkled face, and her confession was not without method, though she might have added five to the forty years, if she had chosen to be very accurate.

"Up'ards o' forty!" says John, charmed alike with her sincerity and her well-preserved beauty. "Why, I snum, you might marry a man o' twenty-five any day, if you had a mind."

"Ah, Captain, but I have n't the mind. I want a man—that is, if I ever wenter to marry agin—who is older than myself,—say from ten to fifteen year older. I would n't be so wery particular." And then she says to John,—for a possibility crosses her mind,—"Does your family live hereabouts?"

John blushed up to his eyes. "Family!" says he. "I never was so fortinate as to hev one."

"Cause nobody 'd hev me, miss; and to say truth, I never thought on 't much till sense we 've been a-takin' this voyage"; and he glanced at her slyly, and touched the ends of her ribbon.

"Can you ask me that in airnest?" says John, still holding the ribbons as for dear life. "Then I must tell you to just look into the glass, and you 'll see what."

"O Captain, you ought to be ashamed to plague a poor lone woman like me[Pg 426] that way; it 's wery bad of you, wery, and I 've a great mind to box your ears!" and she put out her little hand to him in a sweetly menacing manner.

John seized the hand and kissed it, and then, frightened at himself, ran to the other end of the boat and looked hard at the clouds.

"O, come back! come back!" screamed the widow; "the boat 'll upset, with me at one end and you at the other!"

"Sure enough!" says John, and he went sheepishly back, and again seated himself by her side.

She gave him a little tap on the ear, and asked him if he would promise never to run away and frighten her so again.

John said he would promise her anything in the world that was in his power to grant; and he looked at her with such adoration that the woman overcame the coquette, or the coquette the woman,—which shall I say?—and she went as far from the "dangerous edge of things" as possible, and told him demurely that the only promise she exacted was, that he should listen to the long and techin' story of her life. It all came back upon her, and she felt as if she must tell it to somebody. "May be, though, you don't want to hear it?" says she.

"May be I don't want to hear it! How can you?" says John, edging up. And she began:—

"I told you, Captain, that I had been dethroned, and I have,—wilely dethroned, and brought low, by my own woluntary act."

"Dear heart!" says John, "so much the worse, if it was woluntary, so few pities you."

"Ah, that 's it," says the widow; "nobody pities me,—nobody in the wide world has got a warm heart toward me." She broke quite down, and the tears came to her eyes.

"What may your name be?" says John, seizing both her hands and gazing tenderly in her face.

"Why do you ask? I 'm but a transient wisitor to your boat; you can't have no interest in me; and, besides, my name is hateful to me."

"Well, then, inwent a name. My maiden name reminds me of the royal hours when my father's position gave me rank, and before the wicissitudes of fortune brought me low; I cannot therefore consent to be called by that; and my married name is the name of a wagabond, and I despise it. O sir, inwent a name, for mercy's sake!"

"I 'll inwent it for love's sake," says John, slipping his arm round her waist, and drawing her close to him; "and I 'll call you my dove, coz you see you 've got all the timidity and gentleness o' that lovely bird, and your voice is sweeter than the turtle's, I 'm sure."

"O Captain, my woice is n't a nice woice now-a-days,—my woice went with the rest of my attractions when I was dethroned. I had a nice woice once. If we could have met then!"

"My dove!" says John, "whatever your woice hes ben, I would n't hev it no sweeter than what it is now; it kerries me back to the years that hed hope in 'em,—the years when I was a boy, and in love."

"Say no more," says the widow; "my heart already tells me that you love another,"—and she began to pout.

"Lord bless us!" says John; "our boat is aground. I was so took up with you, Rose, that I did n't see she was driftin' down stream, and here we be, high and dry, and a storm a-comin' on; but you can't blame me so ha'shly, my dear Rose, as what I blame myself. Can you forgive me?"

"Forgive you?" cries the widow, reproachfully. "Can you forget that I am an undertaker's daughter?"

This speech did not convey any very clear meaning to the mind of John Chidlaw; but he attributed that to his own dulness, and as this struck him as being very great, somehow or other, though he could not tell how, he bowed his head in shamefaced silence.

In spite of what he had said about being in love in his youth, the widow took great courage. He had said "our[Pg 427] boat" instead of "my boat," and he had called her Rose,—her real name,—how should he know that? She could not tell, but somehow she augured favorably from it; besides, they were aground, and must wait for the rising of the tide, and in the intervening time who knew what might be done? She would tell all her story; and its pathos, she fancied, must subjugate the most obdurate heart.

"Yes," she renewed, "I am, or rather was, an undertaker's daughter, with the most brilliant prospects before me that ever allured a wile wagabond of a fortune-hunter, for such he was who stole me from the satin pillers my young head had played among, and give me a piller of husks, and cold wittles, and wulgar lodgings."

"The wretch!" cries John. "The wile wretch! if he yet lived, I would wow myself to wengeance!" And, like Jacob of old, he lifted up his voice and wept.

"Don't take on so," says the widow. "I would not cause you a moment's sorrow for the world."

"To think any man should have abused the like o' you!" says John. "But surely he never laid wiolent hands ont' you? I think I shall lose my senses if you say that."

"That touch is wivifying," says John; "so, dear Rose, you may go on and tell the wust on 't."

Then the widow came to the worst; for after all the trials she had with the old wagabond, she said, she could have put up with him but for one nasty habit,—he walked into his sleep! "And now a man that walks into his sleep," says she, "is a trial and a torment to his wife which there is no tongue can tell it."

"Ah, to be sure," says John, "you ought to hev been divorced, and to have recovered big damages into the bargain. To think that the willain dared to walk into his sleep, and frighten a poor timid dove like you! But the hearts o' some does seem manufactured o' flints, and his'n was one on 'em, I guess."

"Yes, as you say wisely, some is flint," says the widow; "but then some is n't!" And she dropped her eyes, and gave his hand a confiding little squeeze. And then she says that, once married, diworce is n't got for the asking,—"you are tied for good and all." And then she says, that brings her to the p'int.

"To be dethroned was bad enough," says she; "and then to see my royal dowery conwerted into whiskey, which it was dewoured by him, the same being took continual; but what was most intolerable of all was that he walked into his sleep! I tried every way to contrawene the wile habit that could be inwented. I coaxed and I scolded, and I got up late, and I give him hot winegar with a little whiskey into it,—he would swaller anything that had a drop of whiskey into it,—and I prewailed on him to sing psalms, and, that failing, I prewailed onto him to inwest into a wiolin and play onto that till late into the midnight, thinking by that means his witality would be exhausted, and he would lie into his bed like any other man; but lo and behold! he inwested into the wiolin a-Monday, and a-Monday night he played till along towards ten o'clock, and I got clean wore out, and, says I, 'Do leave off playing onto that wiolin,' says I, 'for my head aches like all possess'; and with that he up and went to bed, and after a while I hears something fingering the latch, and I riz onto my elbow, and says, in a whisper, 'Dan'l, there 's a man a-trying to break in, as sure as you 're alive!' He did n't answer, and thinks says I, the wiolin has done it, and he is a-sleeping with a wengeance, and then I feels along, and says I, 'Dan'l, Dan'l!' but still no answer; then I felt for the piller, and there was no head onto it, and I scraped a match, and it went out, and I scraped another, and it went out, and I scraped another, and a leetle blue flame just started and flickered, and before I could see what it was a-fumbling at the door, it went[Pg 428] out. Thinks says I, I 'll make sure work now; and I took two of the nasty things into my hand and scraped so hard I crushed them all up together, and they flashed out and seared my finger-ends and burnt a hole into my nightgownd-sleeve, and, seeing I was like to burn up, I slapped my arm with all my might, and at last I slapped the flame down, and at last, by persewerance, I slapped it out; and yet I had n't seen a thing, but I could feel the hole into my nightgownd-sleeve, and my arm all burnt into a light blister. 'Dan'l!' says I again; but Dan'l did n't answer, and then I was full sure it was him, and I scraped with a steadier hand, and the match—it was one of them nasty lucifers, may be you know—"

And the wretched woman went on: "It was one of them nasty lucifers, and it choked me so I could not find the candle; and though I could just see a ghostly object at the door, I could not tell at all whether it was Dan'l or not, for he never looked like himself when he walked into his sleep; and the match—they are nothing but splinters, you know—was burning closer and closer to my fingers, and I just dabs it wiolently into the washbowl, and puts it out. And then says I, 'Dan'l! Dan'l!' again; and this time he answers, and says he, 'You wixen,' says he, 'shut up your mouth!'

"There was no mistaking that, and all in the dark I wentered after him, and grabbed and ketched him by the end of his neck-tie, and hild with all my might; and at that he began to wociferate at the top of his woice, and, thinks says I, better than rouse all the neighbors and have them broke o' their rest, I 'll just let him go and walk into his sleep till he 's satisfied. I took the key out of the door, and then I tried to find my way back, for, thinks says I, I 'll retire and take my rest anyhow, and, if you believe it, I was so turned round I could n't find the piller! So I went feeling here and there, and every minute I come back to him, and every time I touched him he wociferated at the top of his woice; and then I 'd say, 'Dan'l, it was n't woluntary!' and then I 'd feel and feel by the chairs and the wall, and by one thing and another, as a body will when they can't see, and the first thing I 'd know I 'd be right back to him agin. My blistered arm, meantime, was a-burning like fire, but, thinks says I, it 's no use, I can 't find the water-pitcher, I 'm so turned round; and I just sot down where I was, and there I sot till daylight, blowing all my breath away onto my arm, and the minute I could see I made for the pitcher; but, happening to take it by the snout instead of the handle, away it went, and spilt all the water, and broke the pitcher past all mending,—and a fine pitcher, too!—one that my own father give me in cholera times, when his business was at the best."

"I declare," says John Chidlaw, "it 's enough to make a body's blood run cold!" And then he says he does n't wonder she 's agin matrimony!

Now the widow had said nothing of the sort, and stoutly protested that she had not, but that, on the contrary, she thought it an adwantage to any woman to be married, prowided she could find an indiwidual that had a warm heart toward her; to which John replied that she had found such a one; and she answered, "How you do go on!" and resumed her story.

"Well, a-Tuesday night he took to the wiolin again, and played and played and played and played all the old dancing tunes in creation, and I sot by and never said a word till 'leven o'clock come, and then till twelve o'clock come, and then till one o'clock come, and then till two o'clock come, and at last, thinks says I, my brain will go wild, and says I, 'Dan'l, I ain't a bit sleepy, but I do feel some as if I could go to sleep if you 'd just keep on a-playing; I 've got kind o' used to it, and I don't believe I can go to sleep without it.' With this he flung the[Pg 429] wiolin into the cradle,—my father had presented me with a cradle that he had made out of some boards that had been used once and rejected on account of knots, but just as good, you know,—and then he flounced into bed, and he never walked into his sleep that night!"

"You cunnin' little thing!" cries John, overcome with her smartness, and hugging her close. "Who but you would ever 'a' thought on 't? Such a sleek deception!"

"Well, a-Wednesday night he would n't touch his wiolin, and that night, or rather along towards morning, he walked into his sleep, and a-Thursday night he would n't play a stroke agin; in wain I put the wiolin into his sight; and that night he just dewoted himself to walking,—making himself wisible to the neighbors, even. So thinks says I, this won't do; and a-Friday night, says I, I says to him, says I, 'I hate the old wiolin,' says I; 'and I 've a good notion to burn it up!'

"'You just wenter!' says he, and he takes it up and slants it agin his shoulder, and turns his head kind a sideways, all the time a-keeping his eye onto me, and he seesaws and seesaws till I falls asleep into my chair, and then he seesaws and seesaws till I wakes and rubs my eyes, and still his head is kind a sideways, and his wiolin agin his shoulder, aslant like, just as if he had n't moved; and then I pertends to sleep, and I pertends and pertends and pertends, and at last pertence is clear wore out, and I wakes up like, and I says, says I, 'Dan'l, it must be a'most ten o'clock, ain't it?'—I knew it was daylight. And all at once his wisage changed, and the wiolin fairly dropt from his shoulder, and he hild up his head that had been kind a sideways all that while, and went to bed peaceable as a lamb, he did, and for the rest of the night he did n't walk into his sleep at all!"

"Just wait," says the widow; "there's something a-coming that 'll make you open your eyes. A-Saturday night says I, 'I feel like dancing,' says I; 'so, Dan'l, give us one of your liveliest tunes!' and with that I began to hop about like a lark. Of course he was took in, and the wiolin was n't touched; but O how he did walk into his sleep! Wisible to everybody! In wain I argued that walking into sleep was wulgar, in wain I coaxed, and in wain I cried,—though tears will sometimes prewail when nothing else will, that is, if they ain't too woluntary. Some women seems to shed 'em woluntary, and then they are not so prewailing, which it was never my case, Captain, never! I cried for sheer spite and for nothing else; it was always the way with me, especially after I was dethroned; and when tears did n't prewail, thinks says I, I must take adwice, which I took it,—adwice here and adwice there,—and one adwised one thing and one another; but the adwice I took was adwice that it liked to have landed me where I never should have seen the light of this blessed day, nor seen, nor seen, nor seen—you!"

John put both arms round her instead of one, and held her fast, lest she might vanish like a phantom.

"You seem so like a sweet wision of the night!" he said. And then he asked her what was the wicious adwice.

"I do feel as if I 'd wanish, sure enough," says the widow, "if it was n't for your wine-like arms a-holding me up so nice, for I never can repeat this part of my sufferings without being quite wanquished,—just a leetle closer, if you please; now your shoulder, so that it will catch my head if it should happen to fall. You have wisely called the adwice which I was adwised to wicious," says she; "but what will you say when you hear the adwice which I was adwised? Nerve yourself up, Captain, but don't let go of me, not the least bit, I am so liable to be wanquished by my feelings. There, that 'll do,—the dear knows it 's all because of my fear. Well, the[Pg 430] adwice I was adwised was, as you wisely said, wicious,—indeed it was wery wicious,—and yet the woman that she adwised the adwice was a woman of wast experience,—the wife of a wiolent drinker, and the mother of fourteen children. More than this, her father had been constable once, and she wore French thread-lace altogether! Would you suppose, Captain, considering her adwantages, especially as regards her father and her laces, that she could have adwised me with adwice that it was unadwisable?"

"No, I should n't a-dreampt on 't," says the Captain; "but what was the adwice that she adwised you that warn't adwisable?"

"I really can't get my consent to tell," says the widow, "now that I 've sot out, for I never expected to reweal it to anybody, unless it was to—well, to some one that either was, or was like to be, my husband. Dear me, I've undertook too much!"

"Try, for my sake!" says the Captain, "it 's so interestin'. You 've undertook a good deal, but whatever consarns you consarns me."

"Well, I won't wacillate no more,—not if it plagues you!" And the widow looked fondly in his face, and then, quite supporting herself upon his arm, she drooped her eyelids modestly and resumed.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.

There is an American lady living at Hartford, in Connecticut, whom the United States has permitted to be robbed by foreigners of $200,000. Her name is Harriet Beecher Stowe. By no disloyal act has she or her family forfeited their right to the protection of the government of the United States. She pays her taxes, keeps the peace, and earns her livelihood by honest industry; she has reared children for the service of the Commonwealth; she was warm and active for her country when many around her were cold or hostile;—in a word, she is a good citizen.

More than that: she is an illustrious citizen. The United States stands higher to-day in the regard of every civilized being in Christendom because she lives in the United States. She is the only woman yet produced on the continent of America to whom the world assigns equal rank in literature with the great authoresses of Europe. If, in addition to the admirable talents with which she is endowed, she had chanced to possess one more, namely, the excellent gift of plodding, she had been a consummate artist, and had produced immortal works. All else she has,—the seeing eye, the discriminating intelligence, the sympathetic mind, the fluent word, the sure and happy touch; and these gifts enabled her to render her country the precise service which it needed most. Others talked about slavery: she made us see it. She showed it to us in its fairest and in its foulest aspect; she revealed its average and ordinary working. There never was a fairer nor a kinder book than "Uncle Tom's Cabin"; for the entire odium of the revelation fell upon the Thing, not upon the unhappy mortals who were born and reared under its shadow. The reader felt that Legree was not less, but far more, the victim of slavery than Uncle Tom, and the effect of the book was to concentrate wrath upon the system which[Pg 431] tortured the slave's body and damned the master's soul. Wonderful magic of genius! The hovels and cotton-fields which this authoress scarcely saw she made all the world see, and see more vividly and more truly than the busy world can ever see remote objects with its own unassisted eyes. We are very dull and stupid in what does not immediately concern us, until we are roused and enlightened by such as she. Those whom we call "the intelligent," or "the educated," are merely the one in ten of the human family who by some chance learned to read, and thus came under the influence of the class whom Mrs. Stowe represents.

It is not possible to state the amount of good which this book has done, is doing, and is to do. Mr. Eugene Schuyler, in the preface to the Russian novel which he has recently done the public the service to translate, informs us that the publication of a little book in Russia contributed powerfully to the emancipation of the Russian serfs. The book was merely a collection of sketches, entitled "The Memoirs of a Sportsman"; but it revealed serfdom to the men who had lived in the midst of it all their lives without ever seeing it. Nothing is ever seen in this world, till the searching eye of a sympathetic genius falls upon it. This Russian nobleman, Turgenef, noble in every sense, saw serfdom, and showed it to his countrymen. His volume was read by the present Emperor, and he saw serfdom; and he has since declared that the reading of that little book was "one of the first incitements to the decree which gave freedom to thirty millions of serfs." All the reading public of Russia read it, and they saw serfdom; and thus a public opinion was created, without the support of which not even the absolute Czar of all the Russias would have dared to issue a decree so sweeping and radical.

We cannot say as much for "Uncle Tom's Cabin," because the public opinion of the United States which permitted the emancipation of the slaves was of longer growth, and was the result of a thousand influences. But when we consider that the United States only just escaped dismemberment and dissolution in the late war, and that two great powers of Europe were only prevented from active interference on behalf of the Rebellion by that public opinion which "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had recently revived and intensified, we may at least believe, that, if the whole influence of that work could have been annihilated, the final triumph of the United States might have been deferred, and come only after a series of wars. That book, we may almost say, went into every household in the civilized world which contained one person capable of reading it. And it was not an essay; it was a vivid exhibition;—it was not read from a sense of duty, nor from a desire to get knowledge; it was read with passion; it was devoured; people sat up all night reading it; those who could read read it to those who could not; and hundreds of thousands who would never have read it saw it played upon the stage. Who shall presume to say how many soldiers that book added to the Union army? Who shall estimate its influence in hastening emancipation in Brazil, and in preparing the amiable Cubans for a similar measure? Both in Cuba and Brazil the work has been read with the most passionate interest.

If it is impossible to measure the political effect of this work, we may at least assert that it gave a thrilling pleasure to ten millions of human beings,—an innocent pleasure, too, and one of many hours' duration. We may also say, that, while enjoying that long delight, each of those ten millions was made to see, with more or less clearness, the great truth that man is not fit to be trusted with arbitrary power over his fellow. The person who afforded this great pleasure, and who brought home this fundamental truth to so many minds, was Harriet Beecher Stowe, of Hartford, in the State of Connecticut, where she keeps[Pg 432] house, educates her children, has a book at the grocery, and invites her friends to tea. To that American woman every person on earth who read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" incurred a personal obligation. Every individual who became possessed of a copy of the book, and every one who saw the story played in a theatre, was bound, in natural justice, to pay money to her for service rendered, unless she expressly and formally relinquished her right,—which she has never done. What can be clearer than this? Mrs. Stowe, in the exercise of her vocation, the vocation by which she lives, performs a professional service to ten millions of people. The service is great and lasting. The work done is satisfactory to the customer. What can annul the obligation resting upon each to render his portion of an equivalent, except the consent of the authoress "first had and obtained"? If Mrs. Stowe, instead of creating for our delight and instruction a glorious work of fiction, had contracted her fine powers to the point of inventing a nutcracker or a match-safe, a rolling-pin or a needle-threader, every individual purchaser could have been compelled to pay money for the use of her ingenuity, and everybody would have thought it the most natural and proper thing in the world so to do. There are fifty American inventions now in use in Europe from which the inventors derive revenue. Revenue!—not a sum of money which, once spent, is gone forever, but that most solid and respectable of material blessings, a sum per annum! Thus we reward those who light our matches. It is otherwise that we compensate those who kindle our souls.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin," like every other novelty in literature, was the late-maturing fruit of generations. Two centuries of wrong had to pass, before the Subject was complete for the Artist's hand, and the Artist herself was a flower of an ancient and gifted family. The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher has made known this remarkable family to the public. We can all see for ourselves how slowly and painfully this beautiful genius was nourished,—what a narrow escape it had from being crushed and extinguished amid the horrors of theology and the poverty of a Connecticut parsonage,—how it was saved, and even nurtured, by that extraordinary old father, that most strange and interesting character of New England, who could come home, after preaching a sermon that appalled the galleries, and play the fiddle and riot with his children till bedtime. A piano found its way into the house, and the old man, whose geniality was of such abounding force that forty years of theology could not lessen it, let his children read Ivanhoe and the other novels of Sir Walter Scott. Partly by chance, partly by stealth, chiefly by the force of her own cravings, this daughter of the Puritans obtained the scanty nutriment which kept her genius from starving. By and by, on the banks of the Ohio, within sight of a slave State, the Subject and the Artist met, and there, from the lips of sore and panting fugitives, she gained, in the course of years, the knowledge which she revealed to mankind in "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

When she had done the work, the United States stood by and saw her deprived of three fourths of her just and legitimate wages, without stirring a finger for her protection. The book sold to the extent of two millions of copies, and the story was played in most of the theatres in which the English language is spoken, and in many French and German theatres. In one theatre in New York it was played eight times a week for twelve months. Considerable fortunes have been gained by its performance, and it is still a source of revenue to actors and managers. We believe that there are at least three persons in the United States, connected with theatres, who have gained more money from "Uncle Tom's Cabin" than Mrs. Stowe. Of all the immense sums which the exhibition of this story[Pg 433] upon the stage has produced, the authoress has received nothing. When Dumas or Victor Hugo publishes a novel, the sale of the right to perform it as a play yields him from eighty thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand francs. These authors receive a share of the receipts of the theatre,—the only fair arrangement,—and this share, we believe, is usually one tenth; which is also the usual percentage paid to authors upon the sale of their books. If a French author had written "Uncle Tom's Cabin," he would have enjoyed,—1. A part of the price of every copy sold in France; 2. A share of the receipts of every theatre in France in which he permitted it to be played; 3. A sum of money for the right of translation into English; 4. A sum of money for the right of translation into German. We believe we are far within the truth when we say, that a literary success achieved by a French author equal to that of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" would have yielded that author half a million dollars in gold; and that, too, in spite of the lamentable fact, that America would have stolen the product of his genius, instead of buying it.

Mrs. Stowe received for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" the usual percentage upon the sale of the American edition; which may have consisted of some three hundred thousand copies. This percentage, with some other trifling sums, may have amounted to forty thousand dollars. From the theatre she has received nothing; from foreign countries nothing, or next to nothing. This poor forty thousand dollars—about enough to build a comfortable house in the country, and lay out an acre or two of grounds—was the product of the supreme literary success of all times! A corresponding success in sugar, in stocks, in tobacco, in cotton, in invention, in real estate, would have yielded millions upon millions to the lucky operator. To say that Mrs. Stowe, through our cruel and shameful indifference with regard to the rights of authors, native and foreign, has been kept out of two hundred thousand dollars, honestly hers, is a most moderate and safe statement. This money was due to her as entirely as the sum named upon a bill of exchange is due to the rightful owner of the same. It was for "value received." A permanently attractive book, moreover, would naturally be more than a sum of money; it would be an estate; it would be an income. This wrong, therefore, continues to the present moment, and will go on longer than the life of the authoress. While we are writing this sentence, probably, some German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, or English bookseller is dropping into his "till" the price of a copy of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the whole of which he will keep, instead of sending ten per cent of it to Hartford on the 1st of January next.

We have had another literary success in these years,—Mr. Motley's Histories of the Dutch Republic and of the United Netherlands. As there are fifteen persons in the world who can enjoy fiction to one that will read much of any other kind of literary production, the writers of fiction usually receive some compensation for their labors. Not a fair nor an adequate compensation, but some. This compensation will never be fair nor adequate until every man or woman in the whole world who buys a copy of a novel, or sees it played, shall, in so doing, contribute a certain stipulated sum to the author. Nevertheless, the writers of fiction do get a little money, and a few of them are able to live almost as well as a retired grocer. Now and then we hear of an author who gets almost as much money for a novel that enthralls and enchants two or three nations for many months, as a beardless operator in stocks sometimes wins between one and two P. M. It is not so with the heroes of research, like Motley, Buckle, Bancroft, and Carlyle. Upon this point we are ready to make a sweeping assertion, and it is this. No well-executed work, involving original research, can pay expenses, unless the author is protected[Pg 434] in his right to the market of the world. This is one of the points to which we particularly wish to call attention. Give us international copyright, and it immediately becomes possible in the United States for a man who is not rich to devote his existence to the production of works of permanent and universal value. Continue to withhold international copyright, and this privilege remains the almost exclusive portion of men of wealth. For, in the United States, there is scarcely any such thing as honest leisure in connection with business or a salaried office.

Now, with regard to Mr. Motley, whose five massive volumes of Dutch History are addressed to the educated class of all nations,—before that author could write the first sentence of his work he must have been familiar with six languages, English, Latin, Dutch, French, German, and Spanish, besides possessing that general knowledge of history, literature, and science which constitutes what is called culture. He must also have spent five laborious years in gaining an intimate knowledge of his subject, in the course of which he must have travelled in more than one country, and expended large sums in the purchase of books and documents, and for copies of manuscripts. Living in the cheap capitals of Continental Europe, and managing his affairs with economy, he may have accomplished his preparatory studies at an expenditure of ten thousand dollars,—two thousand dollars a year. The volumes contain in all about three thousand five hundred large pages. At two pages a day, which would be very rapid work, and probably twice as fast as he did work, he could have executed the five volumes, and got them through the press (a year's hard labor in itself), in seven years. Here are twelve years' labor, and twenty-four thousand dollars' necessary expenditure. Mr. Motley probably expended more than twelve years, and twice twenty-four thousand dollars; but we choose to estimate the work at its necessary cost. Two other items must be also considered:—1. The talents of the author, which, employed in another profession, would have brought large returns in money and honor; 2. The intense and exhausting nature of the labor. The production of a work which demands strict fidelity to truth, as well as excellence in composition,—which obliges the author, first, to know all, and, after that, to impart the essence of his knowledge in an agreeable and striking manner,—is the hardest continuous work ever done by man. It is at times a fierce and passionate joy; it is at times a harrowing anxiety; it is at times a vast despair; but it is always very hard labor. The search after a fact is sometimes as arduous as the chase after a deer, and it may last six weeks, and, after all, there may be no such fact, or it may be valueless. And when all is done,—when the mountain of manuscript lies before the author ready for the press,—he cannot for the life of him tell whether his work is trash or treasure. As poor Charlotte Brontë said, when she had finished Jane Eyre, "I only know that the story has interested me." Finally comes the anguish of having the work judged by persons whose only knowledge of the subject is derived from the work itself.

No matter for all that: we are speaking of money. This work, we repeat, cost the author twenty-four thousand dollars to produce. Messrs. Harper sell it at fifteen dollars a copy. The usual allowance to the author is ten per cent of the retail price, and, as a rule, it ought not to be more. Upon works of that magnitude, however, it often is more. Suppose, then, that Mr. Motley receives two dollars for every copy of his work sold by his American publishers. A meritorious work of general interest, i. e. a book not addressed to any class, sect, or profession, that costs fifteen dollars, is considered successful in the United States if it sells three thousand copies. Five thousand is decided success. Seven thousand is brilliant success. Ten thousand copies, sold in the lifetime of the author, is all[Pg 435] the success that can be hoped for. Ten thousand copies would yield to the author twenty thousand dollars, which is four thousand dollars less than it cost him.

But Mr. Motley's work is of universal interest. It does not concern the people of the United States any more than it does the people of England, France, and Germany, nor as much as it does the people of Spain and Holland. Wherever, in the whole world, there is an intelligent, educated human being, there is a person who would like to read and possess Motley's Histories, which relate events of undying interest to all the few in every land who are capable of comprehending their significance. Give this author the market of the world, and he is compensated for his labor. Deny him this right, and it is impossible he should be. England buys a greater number of fifteen-dollar books than the United States, because, in England, rich men are generally educated men, and in the United States the class who most want such books cannot buy them. Our clergy are poor; our students are generally poor; our lawyers and doctors are not rich, as a class; our professors and schoolmasters are generally very poor; our men of business, as a class, read little but the daily paper; and our men of leisure are too few to be of any account. Nor have we yet that universal system of town and village self-sustaining libraries, which will, by and by, abundantly atone for the ignorance and indifference of the rich, and make the best market for books the world has ever seen. England would readily "take" ten thousand copies of a three-guinea book of first-rate merit and universal interest. A French translation of the same would sell five thousand in France, and, probably three thousand more in other Continental countries. A German translation would place it within the reach of nations of readers, and a few hundreds in each of those nations would become possessors of the work. Or, in other words, an International Copyright would multiply the gains of an author like Mr. Motley by three, possibly by four. 20,000 × 3 = 60,000.

We are far from thinking that sixty thousand dollars would be a compensation for such work as Mr. Motley has done. We merely say, that the reasonable prospect of even such a partial recompense as that would make it possible for persons not rich to produce in the United States works of universal and permanent value. The question is, Are we prepared to say that such works shall be attempted here only by rich men, or by men like Noah Webster, who lived upon a Spelling-Book while he wrote his Dictionary? Generally, the acquisition of an independent income is the work of a lifetime, and it ought to be. But the production of a masterpiece, involving original research, is also the work of a lifetime. Not one man in a thousand millions can do both. Give us International Copyright, and there are already five publishers in the United States who are able and willing to give an author the equivalent of Gibbon's sixteen hundred pounds a year, or of Noah Webster's Spelling-Book, or Prescott's thousand dollars a month; i. e. maintenance while he is doing that part of his work which requires exclusive devotion to it. Besides, a man intent upon the execution of a great work can contrive, in many ways, to exist—just exist—for ten years, provided he has a reasonable prospect of moderate reward when his task is done. There are fifty men in New England alone who would deem it an honor and a privilege "to invest" in such an enterprise.

Mr. Bancroft's is another case in point. Mr. Buckle remarks, that there is no knowledge until there is a class who have conquered leisure, and that, although most of this class will always employ their leisure in the pursuit of pleasure, yet a few will devote it to the acquisition of knowledge. These few are the flower of their species,—its ornaments and benefactors,—for the flower issues in most precious fruit, which finally nourishes and exalts the whole. We are such idle and pleasure-loving[Pg 436] creatures, and civilization places so many alluring delights within the reach of a rich man, that it must ever be accounted a merit in one of this class if he devotes himself to generous toil for the public good. George Bancroft has spent thirty years in such toil. His History of the United States has stood to him in the place of a profession. His house is filled with the most costly material, the spoils of foreign archives and of domestic chests, the pick of auction sales, the hidden treasure of ancient bookstores, and the chance discoveries of dusty garrets. His work has been eminently "successful," and he has received for it about as much as his material cost, and perhaps half a dollar a day for his labor. When the third volume of the work was about to appear, a London publisher offered three hundred pounds for the advance sheets, which were furnished, and the money was paid. The same sum was offered and paid for the advance sheets of the fourth volume. Then the London publisher discovered that "the courtesy of the trade" would suffice for his purpose, and he forbore to pay for that which he could get for nothing. Six hundred pounds, therefore, is all that this American author has received from foreign countries for thirty years' labor. His work has been translated into two or three foreign languages, and it is found in all European libraries of any completeness, whether public or private; but this little sum is all that has come back to him. Surely, there cannot be one reader of this periodical so insensible to moral distinctions as not to feel that this is wrong. The happy accident of Mr. Bancroft's not needing the money has nothing to do with the right and wrong of the matter. No man is so rich that he does not like to receive money which he has honestly earned; for money honestly earned is honor as well as reward, and it is not for us, the benefited party, to withhold his right from a man because he has been generous to us. And the question again occurs, Shall we sit down content with an arrangement which obliges us to wait for works of permanent and universal interest until the accident occurs of a rich man willing and able to execute them? It is not an accident, but a most rare conjunction of accidents. First, the man must be competent; secondly, he must be willing; thirdly, he must be rich. This fortunate combination is so little likely to occur in a new country, that it must be accounted honorable to the United States that in the same generation we have had three such men,—Bancroft, Motley, and Prescott. Is it such persons that should be singled out from the mass of their fellow-citizens to be deprived of their honest gains? Besides, riches take to themselves wings. A case has occurred among us of a rich man devoting the flower of his days to the production of excellent works, and then losing his property.

It will be of no avail to adduce the instance of Dr. J. W. Draper. We have had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Draper relate the history of his average day. Up at six. Breakfast at seven. An hour's ride to the city. Busy at the New York University from nine to one. Home in cars to dinner at three. At four P. M. begins his day's literary work, and keeps steadily on till eleven. Then, bed. Not one man in many millions could endure such a life, and no man, perhaps, ought to endure it. Dr. Draper happens to possess a most sound and easy-working constitution of body and mind, and he has acquired a knowledge of the laws which relate to its well-being. But, even in his case, it is questionable whether it is well, or even right, to devote so large a part of his existence to labor. It is probable, too, that an International Copyright would, ere this, have released him from the necessity of it, or the temptation to it.

Few of us are aware of the extent to which American works are now reprinted in England. We noticed, the other day, in an English publication, a page of advertisements containing the titles of thirteen volumes announced to be sold at "1s." or "1s. 6d." Twelve of the thirteen were American. Among[Pg 437] them, we remember, were Mrs. Stowe's "Little Foxes," Dr. Holmes's "Humorous Poems," and Mr. Lowell's "Biglow Papers." The cheap publication stores of Great Britain are heaped with such reprints, the sale of which yields nothing to the authors. We have even seen in England a series of school writing-books, the invention of a Philadelphia writing-master, the English copies of which betrayed no trace of their origin. Nor have we been able, after much inquiry, to hear of one instance in which an English publisher has paid an American author, resident in America, for anything except advance sheets. Mr. Longfellow, whose works are as popular in England as in America, and as salable, has derived, we believe, considerable sums for advance sheets of his works; but, unless we are grossly misinformed, even he receives no percentage upon the annual sale of his works in Great Britain.

And the aggravating circumstance of all this spoliation of the men and women who are the country's ornament and boast is, that it is wholly our fault. We force the European publishers to steal. England is more than willing, France is more than willing, Germany is quite willing, Sweden, Denmark, and Russia are willing, to come at once into an international arrangement which shall render literary property as sacred and as safe in all civilized lands as tobacco and whiskey. All the countries we have named are now obliged to steal it, and do steal it. Who would have expected to find the Essays of Mr. Emerson a topic in the interior of Russia? We find them, however, familiarly alluded to in the Russian novel "Fathers and Sons," recently translated. If authors had their rights, a rill of Russian silver would come trickling into Concord, while a broad and brimming river of it would inundate a certain cottage in Hartford. How many modest and straitened American homes would have new parlor carpets this year, if henceforth, on the first days of January and July, drafts to their address were to be dropped in the mail in every capital of the world which the work done in those homes instructs or cheers! Nor would new carpets be all. Many authors would be instantly delivered from the fatal necessity of over-production,—the vice that threatens literature with annihilation.

There is another aggravating circumstance,—most aggravating. The want of an International Copyright chiefly robs our best and brightest! A dull book protects itself; no foreigner wants it. An honest drudge, who compiles timely works of utility, or works which appease a transient curiosity, and which thousands of "agents" put under the nose of the whole population, can make a fortune by one or two lucky hits. There are respectable gentlemen not far off, who, with pen and scissors, in four months, manufactured pieces of merchandise, labelled "Life of Abraham Lincoln," of which a hundred thousand copies each were sold in half a year, and which yielded the manufacturer thirty thousand dollars. This sum is probably more than twice as great as the sum total of Mr. Emerson's receipts from his published works,—the fruit of forty years of study and meditation. It is chiefly our dear Immortals and our best Ephemerals who need this protection from their country's justice. It is our Emersons, our Hawthornes, our Longfellows, our Lowells, our Holmeses, our Bryants, our Curtises, our Beechers, our Mrs. Stowes, our Motleys, our Bancrofts, our Prescotts, whom we permit all the world to plunder. We harmless drudges and book-makers are protected by our own dulness. We are panoplied in our insignificance. The stupidest set of school-books we ever looked into has yielded, for many years, an annual profit of one hundred thousand dollars, and is now enriching its third set of proprietors. No one, therefore, need feel any concern for us. We can do pretty well if only we are stupid enough, and "study to please." But, O honorable members, spare the few who redeem and exalt the country's name, and who keep alive the all but extinguished celestial fire! If American[Pg 438] property abroad must be robbed, let cotton and tobacco take a turn, and see how they like it. Invite Manchester to come to the Liverpool Docks and help itself. Let there be free smoking in Europe. Summon the merchants of London to a scramble for American bills of exchange. Select for spoliation anything but the country's literature.

The worst remains to be told. It is bad to have your pocket picked; but there is something infinitely worse,—it is to pick a pocket. Who would not rather be stolen from, than steal? Who would not rather be murdered, than be a murderer? Nevertheless, in depriving foreign authors of their rights, it is still ourselves whom we injure most. The great damage to America, and to American literature, from the want of an international copyright law, is not the thousands of dollars per annum which authors lose. This is, in fact, the smallest item that enters into the huge sum total of our loss.

It maims or kills seven tenths of the contemporary literature that must be translated before it is available for publication here. Charles Reade, in that gallant and brilliant little book of his, "The Eighth Commandment," quotes from a letter written in Cologne, in 1851, the following passage:—

"About thirty years ago the first translations from English were brought to the German market. The Waverley Novels were extensively circulated, and read with avidity by all classes. Next came Bulwer, and after him Dickens and other writers. Rival editions of the same works sprang up by the half-dozen; the profits decreased, and the publishers were obliged to cut down the pay of the translators. I know that a translation-monger at Grimm pays about £6 for a three-volume novel.

"These works, got up in a hurry, and printed with bad type on wretched paper, are completely flooding the market; and, as they are much cheaper than original works, they are a serious obstacle to our national literature. Thus much for our share in the miseries of free trade [2] in translations.

"Now for yours. There are able men in Germany, who, were it made worth their while, could and would put the master works of your novelists and historians into a decent German garb. But under the present system these men are elbowed out of the field."

Change a few names in this passage, and it describes, with considerable exactness, the state of the translation market in the United States. Works, which in France charm the boudoir and amuse the whole of the educated class, sink, under the handling of hasty translators and enterprising publishers, into what we call "Yellow-Covered Literature," which is to be found chiefly upon the wharves. Respectable publishers have a well-founded terror of French and German translations; since, after incurring the expense of translation, they have no protection against the publication of another version except "the courtesy of the trade,"—a code of laws which has not much force in the regions from which the literature of the Yellow Cover emanates. We are not getting half the good we ought from the contemporary literature of France, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Holland, Italy, and we never shall, until American publishers can acquire property in it by fair purchase, which the law will protect. The business of furnishing the American public with good translations from the French would of itself maintain two or three great publishing houses. There is a mine of wealth there waiting for the removal of the squatters and the recognition of the rightful title-deeds. What would California have been worth to us, or to itself, or to anybody, if its treasures had been left to the hurried scratchings over the surface of uncapitalled prospecters? Capital and skill wait until the title is clear. Then they go in, with their ponderous engines, and pound the[Pg 439] rocks till the gold glitters all over the heap.

Messrs. Appleton, of New York, have recently ventured to publish good translations and good editions of Madame Mühlbach's historical novels. The name of this lady being new to America, the enterprise was a risk,—a risk of many thousand dollars,—a risk which only a wealthy house would be justified in assuming. The great expense of such an undertaking is incurred in making the new name known, in advertising it, in shouting it into the ears of a public deafened with a thousand outcries. An enormous sum of money may easily be spent in this way, when advertising costs from twenty cents to two dollars a line. Suppose the efforts of the publishers are successful, see how beautifully the present system works! The more successful they are, the more perilous their property becomes! It is safe only as long as it is worthless. Just as soon as they have, by the expenditure of unknown thousands, created for the works of this German lady a steady demand, which promises to recompense them, they are open to the inroads of the Knights of the Yellow Cover! See, too, the effects upon the Berlin authoress. Playing such a dangerous and costly game as this, the American publisher dare not, cannot treat with her in the only proper and honorable way,—open a fair bargain, so much for so much. Messrs. Appleton did themselves the honor, the other day, to send her a thousand dollars, gold, which was an act as wise as it was right. We enjoyed an exquisite pleasure in looking upon the lovely document, duly stamped and authenticated, which has ere this given her a claim upon a Berlin banker; and we have also a prodigious happiness in committing the impropriety of making the fact public. Nevertheless, it is not thus that authors should be paid for their own. All we can say of it is, that it is better than nothing to her, and the best a publisher can do under the circumstances.

This business of publishing books is the most difficult one carried on in the world. It demands qualities so seldom found in the same individual, that there has scarcely ever been an eminent and stable publishing house which did not consist of several active and able men. Failure is the rule, success the rare exception. The shores of the business world are strewn thick with the wrecks of ventures in this line that gave every promise of bringing back a large return. It has been proved a task beyond the wisdom of mortals, to decide with any positive degree of certainty whether a heap of blotted manuscript is the most precious or the most worthless of all the productions of human industry. Young publishers think they can tell: old publishers know they cannot. This is so true, that for a publisher to have a knowledge of the commodity in which he deals is generally a point against his success as a publisher; and it will certainly ruin him, unless he has a remarkably sound judgment, or a good, solid, unlearned partner, whose intuitive sense of what the public wants is unbiased by tastes of his own.

It is this terrible uncertainty as to the value of the commodity purchased, which renders publishing a business so difficult, precarious, and unprofitable; and the higher the character of the literature, the greater the difficulty becomes. Publishers who confine themselves chiefly to works of utility and necessity, or to works professional and sectarian, have an easy task to perform, compared with that of a publisher who aims to supply the public with pure science and high literature. If any business can claim favorable consideration from those who have in charge the distribution of the public burdens, surely it is this. If in any way its perils can be justly diminished by law, surely that protection ought not to be withheld. We believe it could be shown that the business of publishing what the trade calls "miscellaneous books," i. e. books which depend solely upon their intrinsic interest or merit, yields a smaller return for the capital and talent invested in it than any other.[Pg 440] The Harpers have a grand establishment,—one of the wonders of America. Any one going over that assemblage of enormous edifices, and observing the multitude of men and women employed in them, the vast and far-reaching enterprises going forward,—some of which involve a large expenditure for years before any return is possible,—the great numbers of men of ability, learning, and experience who are superintending the various departments, and the amazing quantities of merchandise produced, the mere catalogue of which is a large volume,—any one, we say, observing these things, would naturally conclude, that the proprietors must be in the receipt of Vanderbiltian incomes. The same amount of capital, force, experience, and talent employed in any other branch of business could not fail to put the incomes of the proprietors high up among those which require six figures for their expression. Compare the returns of these monarchs of the "trade" with those of our dry-goods magnates, and our mighty men in cotton, tobacco, and railroads. A dealer in dry-goods in the city of New York has returned as the income of a single year a sum half as large as the whole capital invested in the establishment of the Harpers. If the signal successes of publishing—successes which are the result of the rarest conjunctions of talent, capital, experience, and opportunity—are represented by incomes of twenty and thirty thousand paper dollars a year, what must be the general condition of the trade? But it is the difficulty of conducting the business at all, not the slenderness of its profits, upon which we now desire the reader to reflect. That difficulty, we repeat, arises from the fact that a publisher buys his pig in a poke. He generally knows not, and cannot know, whether what he buys is worth much, little, or nothing.

But there is one branch of his business which does not present this difficulty,—the reprinting of works previously published in a foreign country. He has the advantage of holding in his hand the precise article which he proposes to reproduce,—a printed volume, which he can read with ease and rapidity; and this is nearly as great an advantage as a manager has who sees a play performed before buying it. He has the still greater advantage of a public verdict upon the book. It has been tried upon a public; and it is a rule almost without exception, that a book which sells largely in one country will not fail in another. Dickens, Thackeray, Reade, Miss Mulock, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Dumas, Hugo, George Sand, have in all foreign countries a popularity which bears a certain proportion to that which they enjoy in their own; and even the Chinese novel published some years ago in England was a safe speculation, because it was universally popular in China. The Russian novel before alluded to was a prudent enterprise, because Russia had previously tasted and enjoyed it. Literature of high character is always pervaded with the essence of the nationality which produced it, but it is, for that very reason, the more interesting to other nations. Don Quixote has more Spain in it than all the histories of Spain; but in the library of the German collector of Cervantes, whose death has been recently announced, there were more than twice as many foreign editions as Spanish. According to the Pall Mall Gazette, there were 400 editions in Spanish, 168 in French, 200 in English, 87 in Portuguese, 96 in Italian, 70 in German, 4 in Russian, 4 in Greek, 8 in Polish, 6 in Danish, 13 in Swedish, and 5 in Latin. Poor Cervantes! How eloquently this list pleads for International Copyright!

It is, then, in the republication of foreign works that our publishers ought to find an element of certainty, which cannot appertain to the publication of original and untried productions. But it is precisely here that chaos reigns. In the issue of native works, there is but a single uncertainty; in the republication of foreign, there are many. No man knows what his rights are; nor whether he has any rights; nor whether[Pg 441] there are any rights; nor, if he has rights, whether they will be respected. This chaos has taken to itself the pleasant and delusive name of "Courtesy of the Trade." Before the "reign of law" is established in any province of human affairs, we generally see men feeling their way to it, trying to find something else that will answer the purpose, endeavoring to reduce the chaos of conflicting claims to some kind of rule. The publishers of the United States have been doing this for many years, and the result is the unwritten code called the Courtesy of the Trade,—a code defective in itself, with neither judge to expound it, jury to decide upon it, nor sheriff to execute it. This code consisted at first of one rule,—If a publisher issues a foreign work, no other American publisher shall issue it. But it often happened that two or three publishers began or desired to begin the printing of the same book. To meet this and other cases, other laws were added, until at present the code, as laid down by the rigorists, consists of the following rules:—

1. If a publisher issues an edition of a foreign work, he has acquired an exclusive right to it for a period undefined.

2. If a publisher is the first to announce his intention to publish a foreign work, that announcement gives him an exclusive right to publish it.

3. If a publisher has already issued a work of a foreign author, he has acquired thereby an exclusive right to the republication of all subsequent works by the same author.

4. The purchase of advance sheets for publication in a periodical gives a publisher the exclusive right to publish the same in any other form.

5. All and several of these rights may be bought and sold, like any other kind of property.

There is a kind of justice in all these rules. If we could concede that a foreign author has no ownership of the coinage of his brain,—if anything but that author's free gift or purchased consent could convey that property to another,—if foreign literature is the legitimate spoil of America,—then some such code as this would be the only method of preventing the business from degenerating into a game of unmitigated grab. In its present ill-defined and most imperfect state, this system of "courtesy" scarcely mitigates the game at all; and, accordingly, in "the trade," instead of the friendly feeling that would naturally exist among honorable men in the highest branch of business, we find feuds, heart-burnings, and a grievous sense of wrongs unredressed and unredressable. Some houses "announce" everything that is announced on the other side of the Atlantic, so as to have the first choice. Smaller firms, seeing these announcements, dare not undertake any foreign work, even though the great house never decides to publish the book upon which the smaller had fixed its attention. It is only under the reign of law that the rights of the weak have any security. In the most exquisitely organized system of piracy, no man can rely upon the enjoyment of a right which he is not strong enough personally to defend. It is not every house that can crush a rival edition by selling thousands of expensive books at half their cost. Between the giant houses that tower above him, and the yellow-covered gentry that prowl about his feet, an American publisher of only ordinary resources has a game to play which is really too difficult for the limited capacities of man. Who can wonder that most of them lose it?

One effect of this courtesy system is, that many excellent works, which it would be a public benefit to have reprinted here are not reprinted. Another is, that corrected or improved editions cannot be given to the American reader without bringing down upon the publisher the enmity or the vengeance of a rival. It is not common in Europe for the first editions of important works to be stereotyped; but in America they always are. The European author frequently makes extensive additions and valuable emendations in each successive edition; until,[Pg 442] in the course of years, his work is essentially different from, and far superior to, the first essay. We cannot have the advantage of the improved version. There is a set of old and worn stereotype plates in the way, the proprietor of which will not sacrifice them, nor permit another publisher to produce the corrected edition, which would as completely destroy their value as though they were melted into type metal. Who can blame him? No one likes to have a valuable property suddenly rendered valueless. "It is not human nature." Mr. Lewes is not justified in so bitterly reproaching Messrs. Appleton for their cold entertainment of his offer to them of the enlarged version of his "History of Philosophy."

"I felt," says Mr. Lewes, "that Messrs. Appleton, of New York, had, in courtesy, a prior claim, on the ground of their having reprinted the previous edition in 1857. Accordingly I wrote to them, through their London agent, stating that I considered they had a claim to the first offer, and stating, further, that the new edition was substantially a new book. [As this is an important element in the present case, allow me to add, that the edition of 1857 was in one volume 8vo, published at sixteen shillings, whereas the new edition is in two volumes 8vo, published at thirty shillings; and the work is so considerably altered and enlarged that a new title has been affixed to it, for the purpose of marking it off from its predecessors.] Questions of courtesy are, however, but ill understood by some people, and by Messrs. Appleton so ill understood that they did not even answer my letter. After waiting more than three months for an answer, I asked a friend to see their London agent on the subject, and thus I learned that Messrs. Appleton—risum teneatis, amici?—'considered they had a right to publish all future editions of my work without payment,' because ten years ago they had given the magnificent sum of twenty-five pounds to secure themselves against rivals for the second edition."

The omission to answer the author's letter, we may assume, was accidental. It is not correct to say that the publishers founded their claim to issue the new edition upon their payment of twenty-five pounds. The real difficulty was, that Messrs. Appleton possessed the plates of the first edition, and could not issue the enlarged edition without, first, destroying a property already existing, and, secondly, creating a new property at an expenditure about four times as great as the sum originally invested. The acceptance of Mr. Lewes's offer would have involved an expenditure of several thousand dollars, at a time when, for a variety of reasons, works of that character could hardly be expected to return the outlay upon them. The exclusive and certain ownership of the work might well justify its republication, even now, when it costs exactly three times as much to manufacture a book in the United States as it did seven years ago. But nothing short of this would warrant a publisher in undertaking it. The real sinners, against whom Mr. Lewes should have launched his sarcasm, are the people of the United States, who permit their instructors, both native and foreign, to be robbed of their property with impunity. Thus we see that a few hundred pounds of metal are likely to bar the entrance among us of a work which demonstrates, in the clearest and most attractive manner, the inutility of all that has hitherto gone by the name of "metaphysics," and which also indicates the method of investigation from which good results are to be rationally hoped for.

It is the grossest injustice to hold American publishers responsible for the system of ill-regulated plunder which they have inherited, and which injures them more immediately and palpably than any other class, excepting alone the class producing the commodity in which they deal. There are no business men more honorable or more generous than the publishers of the United States, and especially honorable and considerate are they toward authors. The relation usually[Pg 443] existing between author and publisher in the United States is that of a warm and lasting friendship,—such as that which subsisted for so many years between Irving and Putnam, and which now animates and dignifies the intercourse between the literary men of New England and Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, and which gathers in the well-known room of the Harpers a host of writers who are attached friends of the "House." The relation, too, is one of a singular mutual trustfulness. The author receives his semiannual account from the publisher with as absolute a faith in its correctness as though he had himself counted the volumes sold; and the publisher consigns the manuscript of the established author to the printer almost without opening it, confident that, whether it succeeds or fails, the author has done his best. We have heard of instances in which a publisher had serious cause of complaint against an author, but never have we known an author to be intentionally wronged by a publisher. We have known a publisher, in the midst of the ruin of his house, to make it one of the first objects of his care to save authors from loss, or make their inevitable losses less. How common, too, it is in the trade for a publisher to go beyond the letter of his bond, and after publishing five books without profit, to give the author of the successful sixth more than the stipulated price! Let every one speak of the market as he finds it. For our part, after fifteen years of almost daily intercourse with publishers, we have no recollections of them that are not agreeable, and can call to mind no transaction in which they did not show themselves to be men of honor as much as men of business. We have not the least doubt that Mr. Peterson honestly thought he had acquired a right, by fair purchase, to sell the property of Charles Dickens in the United States as long as he should continue in business, and then to dispose of that right to his successor. We are equally confident that Messrs. Harper felt themselves completely justified in endeavoring to crush the Diamond Edition of Thackeray. All this chaos and uncertainty, all these feuds and enmities, have one and the same cause,—the existence in the world of a kind of property which is at once the most precious, the easiest stolen, and the worst protected.

Almost to a man, our publishers are in favor of an International Copyright. We have been able to hear of but one exception, and this is the publisher of but one book,—Webster's Dictionary,—the work of all others now in existence that would profit most from just protection in foreign countries. There is an impression in many circles that the Harpers are opposed to it. We are enabled to state, upon the authority of a member of that great house, that this is not now, and never has been, the case. Messrs. Harper comprehend, as well as we do, that they would gain more from the measure than any other house in the world; because it is the natural effect of law, while it protects the weak, to legitimate and establish the dominion of the strong. International Copyright would benefit every creature connected with publishing, but it would benefit most of all the great and wealthy houses. The Harpers have spent tens of thousands in enforcing the observance of the courtesy of the trade, but they cannot enforce it. It is a work never done and always beginning. It cost them four hundred of our ridiculous dollars for the advance sheets of each number of Mr. Dickens's last novel; and within forty-eight hours of the publication of the Magazine containing it, two other editions were for sale under their noses. The matter for "Harper's Magazine" often costs three or four thousand dollars a number; can any one suppose that the proprietors like to see Blackwood and half a dozen other British magazines sold all over the country at a little more than the cost of paper and printing? They like it as little as the proprietors[Pg 444] of Blackwood like it. This is a wrong which injures two nations and benefits one printer; and that printer would himself do better if he could obtain exclusive rights by fair purchase. No; Messrs. Harper, we are happy to state, are decidedly in favor of an International Copyright, and so is every other general publishing house in the country of which we have any knowledge.

Consider the case of our venerable and beloved instructor, "The North American Review," conducted with so much diligence, energy, and tact by the present editors. Not a number of it has appeared under their management which has not been a national benefit; and no country more needs such a periodical than the United States, now standing on the threshold of a new career. The time has passed when a review could consist chiefly of the skilfully condensed contents of interesting books, which men could execute in the intervals of professional duty, and think themselves happy in receiving one dollar for a printed page, extracts deducted. At the present time, a review must initiate as well as criticise, and do something itself as well as comment upon the performances of others. We believe that no number of the North American Review now appears, the matter of which costs as little as a thousand dollars. But it has to compete, not only with the four British Reviews sold here at the price of paper and printing, but with several periodicals made up of selections from the reviews and magazines of Europe. Nor is this all. A public accustomed to buy books and periodicals at a price into which nothing enters but manual labor and visible material is apt to pause and recoil when it is solicited to pay the just value of those commodities. A man who buys a number of the Westminster Review for half a dollar is likely to regard a dollar and a half as an enormous price for a number of the North American, though he gets for his money what cost a thousand dollars before the printer saw it. For forty years or more we have all been buying our books and reviews at thieves' prices,—prices in which everybody was considered except the creators of the value; and the consequence is, that we turn away when a proper price is demanded for a book, and regard ourselves as injured beings. How monstrous for a volume of Emerson to be sold for a dollar! In England and France, when the price is to be fixed upon works of that nature, the mere cost of paper and printing is hardly considered at all. Such trifles are felt, and rightly felt, to have little to do with the question of price. The publisher knows very well that he has to dispose of one of those rare and beautiful products which only a very few thousands of his countrymen will care to possess, or could enjoy if it were thrust upon them. He fixes the price with reference to the facts of the case,—the important facts as well as the trivial, the rights of the author as well as the little bill of the printer,—and that price is half a guinea. The want of an International Copyright, besides lowering and degrading all literature, has demoralized the public by getting it into the habit of paying for books the price of stolen goods. And hence the North American Review, which would naturally be a most valuable property, has never yielded a profit corresponding to its real value. People stand aghast at the invitation to pay six dollars a year for an article, the mere unmanufactured ingredients of which cost a thousand times six dollars.

Good contemporary books cannot be very cheap, unless there is stealing somewhere, for a good book is one of the most costly products of nature. Fortunately, they need not be cheap, for it is not necessary to own many of them. As soon as an International Copyright has given tone to the business of writing and publishing books, and has restored the prices of them to the just standard, we shall see a great increase of those facilities for purchasing[Pg 445] the opportunity to read a book without buying it, which have placed the whole literature of the world at the command of an English farmer who can spare a guinea or two per annum. It is not necessary, we repeat, to possess many new books; it is only necessary to read them, get the good of them, and give a hearty support to the library from which we take them. The purchase of a book should be a serious and well-considered act, not the hasty cramming of a thin, double-columned pamphlet into a coat-pocket, to be read and cast aside at the bottom of a book-case. It is an abominable extravagance to buy a great and good novel in a perishable form for a few cents; it is good economy to pay a few dollars for one substantially bound, that will amuse and inform generations. A good novel, play, or poem can be reread every five years during a long life. When a book is to be selected out of the mass, to become thenceforth part and parcel of a home, let it be well printed and well bound, and, above all, let it be of an edition to which the author has set the seal of his consent and approbation. No one need fear that the addition of the author's ten per cent to the price of foreign books will make them less accessible to the masses of the people. It will make them more accessible, and it will tend to make them better worth keeping.

When we consider the difficulties which now beset the publication of books in the United States, we cannot but wonder at the liberality of American publishers toward foreign authors,—a liberality which has met no return from publishers in Europe. The first money that Herbert Spencer ever received in his life from his books was sent to him in 1861 by the Appletons as his share of the proceeds of his "Essays upon Education"; and every year since he has received upon all his works republished here the percentage usually paid to native authors. This is so interesting a case, and so forcibly illustrates many aspects of our subject, that we will dwell upon it for a moment.

It will occasionally happen that an author is produced in a country who is charged with a special message for another country. There will be something in the cast of his mind, or in the nature of his subject, which renders his writings more immediately or more generally suitable to the people of a land other than his own. We might cite as an example Washington Irving, who, though a sound American patriot, was essentially an English author, and whose earlier works are so English that many English people read them to this day, we are told, who do not suspect that the author was not their countryman. Washington Irving owed his literary career to this fact! His seventeen years' residence abroad enabled him to enjoy part of the advantage which all great authors would derive from an International Copyright, that is to say, he derived revenue from both countries. During the first half of his literary career, he drew the chief part of his income from England; during the second half, when his Sketch-Book vein was exhausted, and he was again an American resident, he derived his main support from America. If he had never resided abroad, we never should have had a Washington Irving; if he had not returned home, he would have been sadly pinched in his old age. Alone among the American authors of his day or of any day, he had the market of the world for his works; and he only, of excellent American authors, has received anything like a compensation for his labor. The entire proceeds of his works during his lifetime were $205,383, of which about one third came to him from England. His average income, during the fifty years of his authorship, was about four thousand dollars a year. Less than any other of our famous authors he injured his powers by over-production, and it was only the unsteadiness of his income, the occasional failure of his resources, or the dread of a failure, that ever induced him to take up his pen when exhausted nature cried, Forbear! Cooper, on the contrary, who was read[Pg 446] and robbed in every country, wrote himself all out, and still wrote on, until his powers were destroyed and his name was a by-word.

A case similar in principle to that of Irving was Audubon, the indefatigable and amiable Audubon. The exceeding costliness of his "Birds of America" protected that work as completely as an International Copyright could; and, but for this, we never could have had it. Audubon enjoyed the market of the world! The price of his wonderful work was a thousand dollars, and, at that period, neither Europe nor America could furnish purchasers enough to warrant him in giving it to the press. But Europe and America could! Europe and America did,—each continent taking about eighty copies. The excellent Audubon, therefore, was not ruined by his brave endeavor to honor his country and instruct mankind. He ended his days in peace in that well-known villa on the banks of the Hudson, continuing his useful and beautiful labors to the last, and leaving to his sons the means of perfecting what he left incomplete.

But to return to Herbert Spencer, the author of "Social Statics"; or, as we call it, Jeffersonian Democracy, illustrated and applied. Unconnected with the governing classes of his own country, escaping the universities, bred to none of the professions, and inheriting but a slender patrimony, he earned a modest and precarious livelihood by contributing to the periodicals, and wrung from his small leisure the books that England needed, but would not buy. An American citizen, Professor Youmans, felt all their merit, and perceived how adapted they were to the tastes and habits of the American mind, and how skilfully the ideas upon which America is founded were developed in them. He also felt, as we have heard him say, that, next to the production of excellent works, the most useful thing a man can do in his generation is to aid in giving them currency. Aided by other lovers of his favorite author, he was soon in a position to bear part of the heavy expense of stereotyping Mr. Spencer's works; and thus Messrs. Appleton were enabled, not only to publish them, but to afford the author as large a share of the proceeds as though he had been a resident of the United States. Thus Herbert Spencer, by a happy accident, enjoys part of the advantage which would accrue to all his brethren from an International Copyright; and we have the great satisfaction of knowing, when we buy one of his volumes, that we are not defrauding our benefactor.

Charles Scribner habitually pays English authors a part of the profit derived from their republished works. Max Müller, Mr. Trench, and others who figure upon his list, derive revenue from the sale of their works in America. Mr. Scribner considers it both his duty and his interest to acquire all the right to republish which a foreign author can bestow; and he desires to see the day when the law will recognize and secure the most obvious and unquestionable of all rights, the right of an author to the product of his mind.

We trust Messrs. Ticknor and Fields will not regard it as an affront to their delicacy if we allude here to facts which recent events have in part disclosed to the public. This house, on principle, and as an essential part of their system, send to foreign authors a share of the proceeds of their works, and this they have habitually done for twenty-five years. The first American edition of the Poems of Mr. Tennyson, published by them in 1842, consisted of one thousand copies, and it was three years in selling; but upon this edition a fair acknowledgment in money was sent to the poet. Since that time, Mr. Tennyson has received from them a certain equitable portion of the proceeds of all the numerous editions of his works which they have issued. Mr. Fields, with great labor and some expense, collected from periodicals and libraries a complete set of the works of Mr. De Quincey, which the house published in twenty-two volumes, the sale of which was barely[Pg 447] remunerative; but the author received, from time to time, a sum proportioned to the number of volumes sold. Mr. Fields has been recently gathering the "Early and Late Papers" of Mr. Thackeray, one volume of which has been published, to the great satisfaction of the public. Miss Thackeray has already received a considerable sum for the sale of the first edition. Mr. Browning, Mr. Hughes, Mr. Reade, the Country Parson, Mr. Kingsley, Mr. Matthew Arnold, Dr. John Brown, Mr. Mayne Reid, Mr. Dickens, have been dealt with in a similar manner; some of them receiving copyright, and others a sum of money proportioned to the sale or expected sale of their works. Nor has the appearance of rival editions been allowed to diminish the author's share of the profits realized upon the editions published with their consent. Mr. Tennyson counts upon the American part of his income with the same certainty as upon that which he derives from the sale of his works in England, although he cannot secure his Boston publishers the exclusive market of the United States. We dare not comment upon these facts, because, if we were to indulge our desire to do so, the passage would be certain "to turn up missing" upon the printed page, since Messrs. Ticknor and Fields live two hundred miles nearer the office of the Atlantic Monthly than we do. Happily, comment is needless. Every man who has either a conscience or a talent for business will recognize either the propriety or the wisdom of their conduct. Upon this rock of fair-dealing the eminent and long-sustained prosperity of this house is founded.

Complaints, then, are made of American publishers! This is pleasant. We say again, that, after diligent inquiry, we cannot hear of one instance of an English publisher sending money to an American author for anything but advance sheets. Mr. Longfellow is as popular a poet in England as Mr. Tennyson is in America, and he has, consequently, as before remarked, received considerable sums for early sheets, but nothing, we believe, upon the annual sale of his works, nothing from the voluntary and spontaneous justice of his English publishers. We have no right, perhaps, to censure men for not going beyond the requirements of law; but still less can we withhold the tribute of our homage to those who are more just than the law compels, and this tribute is due to several publishers on this side of the Atlantic. But then there remains the great fact against us, that England is willing to-day, and we are not, to throw the protection of international law around this most sacred interest of civilization.

Would that it were in our power to give adequate expression to the mighty debt we owe, as a people, to the living and recent authors of Europe! But who can weigh or estimate the invisible and widely diffused influence of a book? There are sentences in the earlier works of Carlyle which have regenerated American souls. There are chapters in Mill which are reforming the policy of American nations. There are passages in Buckle which give the key to the mysteries of American history. There are lines in Tennyson which have become incorporated into the fabric of our minds, and flash light and beauty upon our daily conversation. There are characters in Dickens which are extinguishing the foibles which they embody, and pages of Thackeray which kill the affectations they depict. What[Pg 448] a colossal good to us is Mr. Grote's "History of Greece"! Miss Mulock, George Eliot, Charles Reade, Charlotte Brontë, Kinglake, Matthew Arnold, Charles Kingsley, Ruskin, Macaulay,—how could we spare the least of them? Take from our lives the happiness and the benefit which we have derived from the recent authors of Europe; take from the future the silent, ceaseless working of their spirits,—so antidotal to all that remains in us of colonial, provincial, and superstitious,—and what language could state, ever so inadequately, the loss we and posterity should experience? And let us not lay the mean unction to our souls that money cannot repay such services as these. It can! It can repay it as truly and as fully as sixpence pays for a loaf of bread that saves a shipwrecked hero's life. The baker gets his own; he is satisfied, and holy justice is satisfied. This common phrase, "making money," is a poor, mean way of expressing an august and sacred thing; for the money which fairly comes to us, in the way of our vocation, is, or ought to be, the measure of our worth to the community we serve. It is honor, safety, education, leisure, children's bread, wife's dignity and adornment, pleasant home, society, an independent old age, comfort in dying, and solace to those we leave behind us. Money is the representative of all the substantial good that man can bestow on man. And money justly earned is never withheld without damage to the withholder and to the interest he represents.

We often think of the case of Dion Boucicault, the one man now writing the English language who has shown a very great natural aptitude for telling a story in the dramatic form. For thirty years we have been witnessing his plays in the United States. A fair share of the nightly receipts of the theatres in which they were played would have enriched him in the prime of his talent, or, in other words, have delivered him from that temptation to over-production which has wellnigh destroyed his powers. He never received any revenue from us until he came here and turned actor. He gets a little money now by associating with himself an American friend, who writes a few sentences of a play, then brings it to New York and disposes of it to managers as their joint production. But what an exquisite shame it is for us to compel an artist to whom we owe so many delightful hours to resort to an artifice in order to be able to sell the product of his talent! Our injustice, too, damages ourselves even more than it despoils him; for if we had paid him fairly for "London Assurance" and "Old Heads and Young Hearts," if he had found a career in the production of plays, he might not have been lured from his vocation, and might have written twenty good plays, instead of a hundred good, bad, indifferent, and atrocious. We cheat him of our part of the just results of his lifetime's labor, and he flings back at us his anathema in the form of a "Flying Scud." Think of Sheridan Knowles, too, deriving nothing from our theatres, in which his dramas have been worn threadbare by incessant playing! To say that they are trash is not an infinitesimal fraction of an excuse; for it is just as wrong to steal paste as it is to steal diamonds. We liked the trash well enough to appropriate it. Besides, he really had the knack of constructing a telling play, which, it seems, is one of the rarest gifts bestowed upon man, and the one which affords the most intense pleasure to the greatest number of people.

Why, we may ask in passing, did the English stage languish for so many years? It was because the money that should have compensated dramatists enriched actors; because the dramatist that wrote "Black-eyed Susan" was paid five pounds a week, and the actor that played William received four thousand pounds during the first run of the play. In France, where the drama flourishes, it is the actor who gets five pounds a week, and the dramatist who gets the[Pg 449] thousands of pounds for the first run; and this just distribution of profits is infinitely the best, in the long run, for actors.

There is still an impression prevalent in the world, that there is no connection between good work and good wages in this kind of industry. There was never a greater mistake. A few great men, exceptional in character as in circumstances, blind like Milton, exiled like Dante, prisoners like Bunyan and Cervantes, may have written for solace, or for fame, or from benevolence; but, as a rule, nothing gets the immortal work from first-rate men but money. We need only mention Shakespeare, for every one knows that he wrote plays simply and solely as a matter of business, to draw money into the treasury of his theatre. He was author and publisher, actor as well, and thus derived a threefold benefit from his labors. Molière, too, the greatest name in the literature of France, and the second in the dramatic literature of the world, was author, actor, and manager. Play-writing was the career of these great men. It was their business and vocation; and it is only in the way of his business and vocation that we can, as a rule, get from an artist the best and the utmost there is in him. Common honesty demands that a man shall do his best when he works for his own price. His honor and his safety are alike involved. All our courage and all our cowardice, all our pride and all our humility, all our generosity and all our selfishness, all that can incite and all that can scare us to exertion, may enter into the complex motive that is urging us on when we are doing the work by which we earn our right to exist. Nothing is of great and lasting account,—not religion, nor benevolence, nor law, nor science,—until it is so organized that honest and able men can live by it. Then it lures talent, character, ambition, wealth, and force to its support and illustration. The whole history of literature, so far as it is known, shows that literature flourishes when it is fairly rewarded, and declines when it is robbed of its just compensation. Mr. Reade has admirably demonstrated this in his "Eighth Commandment," a little book as full of wit, fact, argument, eloquence, and delicious audacity as any that has lately appeared.

There has been but one country in which literature has ever succeeded in raising itself to the power and dignity of a profession, and it is the only country which has ever enjoyed a considerable part of the market of the world for its literary wares. This is France, which has a kind of International Copyright in its language. Educated Russia reads few books that are not French, and in every country of Christendom it is taken for granted that an educated person reads this language. Wherever in Europe or America or India or Australia many books are sold, some French books are sold. Here in New York, for example, we have had for many years an elegant and well-appointed French bookstore, in which the standard works of French literature are temptingly displayed, and the new works are for sale within three weeks after their publication in Paris. Many of our readers, too, must have noticed the huge masses of French books exhibited in some of the second-hand bookstores of Nassau Street. French books, in fact, form a very considerable part of the daily business of the bookstores in every capital of the world. Nearly one hundred subscribers were obtained in the United States for the Nouvelle Biographie in forty-six volumes, the total cost of which, bound, was more than two hundred of our preposterous dollars. Besides this large and steady sale of their works in every city on earth, French authors enjoy a protection to their rights at home which is most complete, and they address a public accustomed to pay for new books a price, in determining which the author was considered. Mr. Reade informs us that a first-rate dramatic success in Paris is worth to the author six thousand pounds sterling, and that this six thousand pounds is very frequently drawn from the theatre[Pg 450] after a larger sum has been obtained for the same work in the form of a novel.

What is the effect? Literature in France, as we have said, is one of the liberal professions. Literary men are an important and honorable order in the state. The press teems with works of real value and great cost. The three hundred French dramatists supply the theatres of Christendom with plays so excellent, that not even the cheat of "adaptation" can wholly conceal their merit. Great novels, great histories, great essays and treatises, important contributions to science, illustrated works of the highest excellence, compilations of the first utility, marvellous dictionaries and statistical works, appear with a frequency which nothing but a universal market could sustain. In whatever direction public curiosity is aroused, prompt and intelligent efforts are made to gratify it. Nothing more surprises an American inquirer than the excellent manner in which this mere task-work, these "booksellers' jobs," as we term them, are executed in Paris. That Nouvelle Biographie of which we have spoken is so faithfully done, and is so free from any perverseness or narrowness of nationality, that it would be a good enterprise in any of the reading countries to publish a translation of it just as it stands. French literature follows the general law, that, as the volume of business increases, the quality of the work done improves. The last French work which the pursuit of our vocation led us to read was one upon the Mistresses of Louis XV., by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. We need not say how such a subject as this would be treated by the cheated hirelings of the Yellow Cover. This work, on the contrary, is an intelligent historical study of a period when mistresses governed France; and the passages in the work which touch upon the adulterous tie which gave fair France over to these vampires are managed with a delicacy the most perfect. The present hope of France is in her literature. Her literary men are fast educating that interesting and virtuous people to the point when they will be able to regain their freedom and keep it safe from nocturnal conspirators. They would have done it ere now, but for the woful fact that only half of their countrymen can read, and are thus the helpless victims of a perjured Dutchman and his priests.

What the general knowledge of the French language has done for French literature, all of that, and more than that, an International Copyright law would do for the literature of Great Britain and the United States. Here are four great and growing empires, Great Britain, the United States, the Dominion of Canada, and the states of Australia, in which the same language is spoken and similar tastes prevail. In all these nations there is a spirit abroad which will never rest content until the whole population are readers, and those readers will be counted by hundreds of millions. Already they are so numerous, that one first-rate literary success, one book excellent enough to be of universal interest, would give the author leisure for life, if his rights were completely protected by international law. What a field for honorable exertion is this! And how can these empires fail to grow into unity when the cultivated intelligence of them all shall be nourished from the same sources, and bow in homage to the same commanding minds? Wanting this protection, the literature of both countries languishes. The blight of over-production falls upon immature genius, masterpieces are followed by labored and spiritless repetitions, and men that have it in them to inform and move mankind grind out task-work for daily bread. One man, one masterpiece, that is the general law. Not one eminent literary artist of either country can be named who has not injured his powers and jeoparded his fame by over-production. We do not address a polite note to Elias Howe, and ask him how much he would charge for a "series" of inventions equal in importance to the sewing-machine. We[Pg 451] merely enable him to demand a dollar every time that one conception is used. Imagine Job applied to for a "series" of Books of Job. Not less absurd is it to compel an author to try and write two Sketch-Books, two David Copperfields, two Uncle Toms, two Jane Eyres, or two books like "The Newcomes." When once a great writer has given such complete expression of his experience as was given in each of those works, a long time must elapse before his mind fills again to a natural overflow. But, alas! only a very short time elapses before his purse empties.

It was the intention of the founders of this Republic to give complete protection to intellectual property, and this intention is clearly expressed in the Constitution. Justified by the authority given in that instrument, Congress has passed patent laws which have called into exercise an amount of triumphant ingenuity that is one of the great wonders of the modern world; but under the copyright laws, enacted with the same good intentions, our infant literature pines and dwindles. The reason is plain. For a labor-saving invention, the United States, which abounds in everything but labor, is field enough, and the inventor is rewarded; while a great book cannot be remunerative unless it enjoys the market of the whole civilized world. The readers of excellent books are few in every country on earth. The readers of any one excellent book are usually very few indeed; and the purchasers are still fewer. In a world that is supposed to contain a thousand millions of people, it is spoken of as a marvel that two millions of them bought the most popular book ever published,—one purchaser to every five hundred inhabitants.

We say, then, to those members of Congress who go to Washington to do something besides make Presidents, that time has developed a new necessity, not indeed contemplated by the framers of the Constitution, yet covered by the Constitution; and it now devolves upon them to carry out the evident intention of their just and wise predecessors, which was, to secure to genius, learning, and talent the certain ownership of their productions. We want an international system which shall protect a kind of property which cannot be brought to market without exposing it to plunder,—property in a book being simply the right to multiply copies of it. We want this property secured, for a sufficient period, to the creator of the value, so that no property in a book can be acquired anywhere on earth unless by the gift or consent of the author thereof. There are men in Congress who feel all the magnitude and sacredness of the debt which they owe, and which their country owes, to the authors and artists of the time. We believe such members are more numerous now than they ever were before,—much more numerous. It is they who must take the leading part in bringing about this great measure of justice and good policy; and, as usual in such cases, some one man must adopt it as his special vocation, and never rest till he has conferred on mankind this immeasurable boon.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Upon this expression Mr. Reade justly remarks: "This is a foolish and inapplicable phrase. Free trade is free buying and selling, not free stealing."

THE FLIGHT OF THE GODDESS.

A man should live in a garret, I think,
And have few friends, and be poorly clad,
With an old hat stopping the wind in the chink,
To keep the Goddess constant and glad.

Of old, when I walked on a rugged way,
And gave much work for but little bread,
The Goddess dwelt with me night and day,
Sat at my table, haunted my bed.

The narrow, mean attic, I see it now!—
Its window o'erlooking the city's tiles,
The sunset's fires, and the clouds of snow,
And the river wandering miles and miles.

Just one picture hung in the room,
The saddest story that Art can tell,—
Dante and Virgil in lurid gloom
Watching the Lovers float through Hell.

Wretched enough was I sometimes,
Pinched, and harassed with vain desires;
But thicker than clover sprung the rhymes
As I dwelt like a sparrow among the spires.

Midnight filled my slumbers with song;
Music haunted my dreams by day:
Now I listen and wait and long,
But the Delphian airs have died away!

I wonder and wonder how it befell:
Suddenly I had friends in crowds;
I bade the house-tops a long farewell;
"Good by," I cried, "to the stars and clouds!

"But thou, rare soul, that hast dwelt with me,
Spirit of Poesy! thou divine
Breath of the morning, thou shalt be,
Goddess! for ever and ever mine."

And the woman I loved was now my bride,
And the house I wanted was my own;
I turned to the Goddess satisfied,—
But the Goddess had somehow flown!

Flown, and I fear she will never return!
I'm much too sleek and happy for her,
Whose lovers must hunger, and waste, and burn,
Ere the beautiful heathen heart will stir!
[Pg 453]

I call,—but she does not stoop to my cry;
I wait,—but she lingers, and ah! so long!
It was not so in the years gone by,
When she touched my lips with chrism of song.

I swear I will get me a garret again,
And let the wee wife see the sunset's fires,
And lure the Goddess, by vigil and pain,
Up with the sparrows among the spires!

For a man should live in a garret aloof,
And have few friends, and be poorly clad,
With an old hat stopping the chink in the roof,
To keep the Goddess constant and glad!

THE THRONE OF THE GOLDEN FOOT.

Early on the morning of the 13th of September, 1855, a most fantastic and picturesque procession—in which the formal and arrogant simplicities of a nice Western civilization, and the grotesque and insolent ostentations of a crude Oriental barbarism, with all the splendid riddles of its far-fetched type-and-symbolry, were blended in a rich bizarreness—formed in the main street of the western suburb of "the Immortal City" of Amarapoora, and moved toward the palace of "him who reigns over the kingdoms of Thunaparanta, Tampadépa, and all the great umbrella-bearing chiefs of the Eastern countries,"—the Lord of Earth and Water, King of the Rising Sun, Lord of the Sacred White Elephant and of all white elephants, Master of the Celestial Weapon, and Great Chief of Life and Righteousness,—called, "for short," Mendoon-men, King of Ava. An imposing deputation of Woons and other grandees, with their respective "tails," were escorting the newly arrived Envoy of the Governor-General of India, and his suite, from their Residency on the south shore of the lake Toung-ah-mah-Eing below the city, to the Hall of the Throne of the Golden Foot, there to have audience of that great, glorious, and most excellent Majesty, whose dominions are bounded only by the imagination—and here and there a British customhouse; and whose excursions of dreadful power are stayed only by the forbearing fiat of Boodh—and now and then some British bayonets.

The escort was illustrious: there were the old Nan-ma-dau-Phra Woon, or Lord-Governor of the Queen's Palace; the Woondouk Mhoung Mhon, a minister of the second order in the High Court and Council; and the Tara-Thoogyi, or Chief Judge of Amarapoora; besides other magnificos of less note, but all very fine in their heavy, wide-sleeved court robes of crimson velvet, laced with a broad edging of Benares brocade. On their heads they wore high mitres, also of crimson velvet, curving backward in a volute, and encircled at the base with a coronet of tinsel spear-heads. It is the ton at court to wear these mitres excessively tight, and to carry a little ivory blade, modelled like a shoe-horn, with which the cap of honor is drawn on, and all "vagrom" locks of hair "comprehended."[Pg 454] The tsalwé (a Burman badge of nobility, derived from the Brahminical triple cord, and having three, six, nine, or even twelve threads, according to the distinction conferred on the wearer), and a trumpet-shaped ear-tube of gold, complete the official costume.

The royal presents from England, guarded by the British-Indian cavalry escort, had been sent forward over a long bridge which spanned the southern end of the Toung-ah-mah, to await on the other side the arrival of the Envoy. There was a superb carriage for the King, which, being too wide to pass the bridge, was towed across the lake on a raft.

That was a brilliant scene, the passage of the lake; and the picturesque elements almost surpassed the fantastic;—the jolly-boats of the steamers, leading the way with the men of her Majesty's 84th, followed by the Zenobia's gig, bearing the Governor-General's letter, with the Honorable East India Company's jack saucily flaunting at the bow; then other gigs and cutters, with the Envoy's suite; and, lastly, a gorgeously gilded war-boat, carrying the Envoy and the Woons, with fifty Burman oarsmen rowing to a wild chant. The white spire and pinnacles of the Ananda temple, with its grove of noble cotton-trees and tall palms, sharply defined against the boldly diversified ranges of the Shan Mountains, formed the background of the picture, which derived rich color and grotesque action from the Burmese soldiers of the Envoy's guard lining the banks, and the hurly-burly of half-naked, splashing villagers, waist-deep in the lake,—salvages coupés.

First in the procession went the cases of royal presents, borne by Burmese porters on bamboo litters, and followed by four Arab horses and an English carriage for the King; next came the cavalry and infantry of the Envoy's Anglo-Indian escort, preceded by a band; behind these, the Secretary of the mission on an elephant, with the Governor-General's letter under the Company's jack; the Envoy (Major Phayre) in a tonjon, attended by the Nan-ma-dau Woon and the Woondouk on elephants; the British superintending surgeon in Pegu, and the Tara-Thoogyi; a British special deputy commissioner for the frontier, and one of the Tsa-re-dau-gyis, or Royal Scribes; and all the rest of the British officials, each paired with a Burmese thoo-gyi or "great man," in a Burmese howdah.[3]

The route lay through the street called Ambassador's Row,—the very one by which the Chinese Envoys entered Amarapoora sixty years before,—toward the western central gate of the city. From lake to palace the way was fenced with troops; but such troops!—fishermen and convicts, old men and boys,—probably old women too, and girls,—the he and she Warts, Mouldys, Shadows, Feebles, and Bullcalfs of the Immortal City. At every cross street were officers on elephants, "men in gilt Mambrino helmets and mountebank costumes, decked out with triple buckram capes, and shoulder lappets, and paltry embroidery." But there were men in red jackets and papier-maché helmets accompanying the procession, who appeared to be more at home with their arms than these motley musketeers. Inside the city the streets were flooded with water from a heavy rain the night before, and here the soldiers were propped on little stools of bamboo, to keep them out of the mud, while the officers occupied higher perches, each with his spittoon and his box of betel. A great rabble of spectators, of whom many were women,—not all uncomely or shabbily attired,—peeped through the endless white lattice, or thronged the cross-streets,—all still and silent, with wonder or suspicion.

Just as the escort, with fixed bayonets and martial music, turned up the street leading to the eastern gate of the palace, and, halting, faced inward for the party to pass, the procession[Pg 455] of the Ein-shé-men, or heir apparent, (Lord of the Eastern Palace,) came suddenly up from another road, and crossed before them to enter the enclosure,—a stale trick of Burmese jealousy and insolence to keep them waiting at the palace gate. Precedent, which is a god in Burmah, has bestowed a sort of respectability upon this exploit in bad manners, every British envoy having been treated so, from Fleetwood to Phayre. The prince himself was conspicuous in a massive gilded litter, borne by many sturdy fellows elaborately tattooed, while eight long-shafted gold umbrellas flashed over his head. When he had entered the gate, and it was closed behind him, his retinue, consisting of several hundred soldiers, performed some intricate and tedious evolutions, countermarching round an open circle, with the manifest purpose of magnifying the apparent strength of the force, as well as of prolonging the detention of the unwelcome strangers.

When Colonel Burney, who was sent as Resident to Ava in 1830, was detained by the same manœuvre at the stockade which encircles the palace wall, some of his party were sharp enough to discover that many of the retainers, as well as of the elephants and bands of music, after passing in the suite of one prince, made a sly circuit to the rear, and appeared as part of the tail of another prince.

As the Envoy and his suite dismounted, noon was struck by alternate strokes on a great bell and a great drum, mounted on a square tower within the gate called "Ywé-dau-yoo-Taga," or the Royal Gate of the Chosen, because it is guarded by picked troops. By this gate they entered; but first the Envoy took the Governor-General's letter from the Secretary, and carried it himself. The Nan-ma-dau-Phra Woon and his august colleagues now threw off their shoes, and the Woondouk strove ineffectually to induce the representative of Great Britain to follow their loyal example. At four different points, as they advanced to the inner gate, they even dropped on their knees, and shikhoed, with their faces in the dust, toward the palace; and again Burmah pressed Bull to take part in the pious services, but the obstinate infidel Kalá[4] would not; for you see the world has moved, and Anglo-Saxon backbones have stiffened, since Fleetwood wrote, in 1695: "As the palace gates were opened we fell down upon our knees, and made three bows (shikhos), which done, we entered the garden, the presents following; and having gone about half-way from the gate to the place where the king was seated, we made three bows again as before. When we got within fifteen yards of the king, we made three bows again, and were ordered to sit down." Between Fleetwood and Phayre are two wars, several annexations, "a lot" of custom-houses, and "no end" of bomb-shells.

The gilded colonnade, and the many-storied spire, conspicuous from all sides of the city; the great inner court, with its groups of tumblers, jugglers, and dancers, performing in the corners for the entertainment of privileged spectators; the dirty grand-staircase, where, to their lively disgust, the distinguished strangers, Envoy and all, had to leave their shoes; the long wings of the structure, curiously resembling the transepts of a cathedral; the choir-like centre; the altar-like throne; the tall, lacquered columns, picked out in red at the base, and all ablaze with gilding;—by these the great Hall of Audience was known; and here, on a carpet in the centre, facing the throne, the Envoy and his party seated themselves, doubling their legs behind them.

On a broad dais blazed the high throne, in all its barbaric gorgeousness of carving and gilding,—competing in splendor with the awful seats of Guadma in the temples, and surpassing the glory of the pulpit from which the High Poonghyi [5] chants the beatitudes of the Boodh. On the top it was luxuriously mattressed with crimson velvet,[Pg 456] and on the left was a tall elbow-cushion for the king. A carved portal, with gilded lattice doors, opened from behind to the top level of the throne, which was wrought in a sort of mosaic of gold, silver, and mirror-work. A few small figures, representing the progenitors of the human race, occupied niches in the central band, while on the edge of the dais stood five royal emblems, in the shape of gilded shafts, with small gilt labels or scrolls, like flags, attached to them.

On each side of the dais were pew-like recesses, with railings; and rows of expanded white umbrellas, fringed with muslin valances, (the royal insignia,) were displayed along the walls behind the throne. The central hall or aisle, in which the gentlemen of the mission sat, was laid with velvet-pile carpet of Axminster or Lasswade; elsewhere there was matting merely, except where the more distinguished officers of the court had their separate carpets. A double row of young princes, in surcoats of gold and silver brocade, with gay silk putsos, occupied the centre aisle in front of the Envoy;—on the right, four sons of the King; on the left, four sons of the Crown Prince. Farther forward, near the steps of the dais, the Ein-shé-men himself was installed, in a sort of couch or carved litter, scarcely raised above the floor. In his robes of Benares gold brocade, and his superb mitre set with precious stones, he sat still as an effigy, never turning round, but betraying his curiosity by the use he slyly made of a small looking-glass. Behind the pillars on each side, and a little in advance of the Englishmen, were the Woongyis, or principal minister of state, constituting the Hlwot-dau, the High Court and Council; and nearer to the steps of the dais were several elderly princes of the blood, "men of sensual aspect and heavy jowl, like the heads of some of the burlier Cæsars,—or, with their stiff robes and jewelled tiaras, perhaps recalling certain of the old Popes."[6] Close to the Envoy's party were two of the Atwen-woons, or Ministers of the Interior (Household) Council, and some Nekhan-daus, "Royal Ears," besides other officers of the Palace and Hlwot-dau.

The Envoy, on taking his seat, had deposited the salver with the Governor-General's letter on a gilt stool covered with muslin, which had been placed there to receive it. Little gilt stands, containing trays of tobacco, pawn, hlapet, or pickled tea, and other curious confections, neatly set out in golden cups and saucers, together with water-goglets and gold drinking-cups, were then laid before the Kalá guests, the water being faintly perfumed with musk.

At last, from some mysterious inner court of the palace came a burst of music. From the verandas behind the throne a party of musketeers filed in, and, taking position between the pillars on each side of the centre aisle, knelt down, with their double-barrelled pieces between their knees, and their hands clasped before them in an attitude of prayer.

As the last man entered the golden lattice doors, the doors rolled back into the wall, and the King was seen, mounting a stair leading from a chamber behind to the summit of the throne. He ascended slowly, using his golden-sheathed dhar as a staff to his laboring steps; and no wonder, for his jewelled robe alone weighed one hundred pounds. Having dusted the gudhi with his own hand, by means of a small chowree, or fly-flapper, he had brought with him, he took his seat on the left side of the throne, resting his elbow on the velvet cushion, which had been covered with a napkin. Then the Queen, who had followed him closely, seated herself by his side,—on the right, and a little behind him,—where she received from the hands of female attendants, who showed themselves but for a moment, the golden spittoon and other ungraceful conveniences, which, on all occasions and in all places, must be at the elbow of every Burmese dignitary. Next, she fanned herself for a few moments, and then she fanned the[Pg 457] King; and finally, having been served with a lighted cheroot by the shy fingers of some mysterious maid of honor, she smoked in silent expectation.

The Lord of White Elephants and Righteousness is a portly man, with refined features, an agreeable and intelligent expression, and delicate hands. He wore a sort of long tunic, or surcoat, so thickly set with jewels that the material, a kind of light-colored silk, was overlaid and almost hidden. Tha-ra-poo, the crown, is a round tiara of similar material, in shape like an Indian morion, surmounted by a spire-like ornament several inches high, and expanding in flaps or wings over each ear.

The Queen, who, like all her predecessors, is her husband's half-sister, wore a perfectly close cap, covering hair and ears, and forming, as it rose, a conical crest, with the point curved forward in a volute, like the horn of a rhinoceros, or the large nipper of a crab's claw; close lappets hung over the cheeks. The rest of her Majesty's dress was oddly Elizabethan; the sleeves and skirt in "successive overlapping scalloped lappets"; around the throat a high collar, also scalloped or vandyked, and continued in front to the waist, where blazed a stomacher, or breast-plate, of great gems. Both cap and robe were stiff with diamonds. The Queen's name is Tsoo-phragyi, and she is the eldest daughter of her husband's father, King Tharawadi.

On a pedestal between their Majesties, in front of the throne, stood a great golden figure of the Henza, or Sacred Goose,—the national emblem.

When the awful pair had fairly entered, the Englishmen for the first time took off their hats; but the entire audience of subjects bowed their faces to the earth, and clasped their hands before them. "The two rows of little princes, who lay in file, doubled over one another like fallen books on a shelf, and the two Atwen-woons, grovelled forward, in their frog-like attitude, to a point about half-way to the throne."

Then some eight or ten Brahmins (two of whom are court astrologers), in white stoles, and white mitres encircled with gold leaves, entered the screened pew-like recesses near the throne, and struck up a choral chant in Sanscrit; which done, one of them immediately followed in a solo hymn in Burmese, which is thus translated by the Envoy, Major Phayre:—

1. "May the dangers and enmity which arise from the Ten Points be calmed and subdued! May the affliction of disease never attach itself to thee; and in accordance with the blessings declared in the sacred Pali, mayest thou be continually victorious! May thy life be prolonged for more than a hundred years, and may thy glory continue till the end of the world! Mayest thou enjoy whatever is propitious, and may all evil be far from thee,—O King!

2. "Thy glorious reputation diffuses itself like the scent of the sandal-wood, and exceeds the refulgence of the moon! Lord of the Celestial Elephant,—of the Excellent White Elephant! Master of the Celestial Weapon! Lord of Life, and Great Chief of Righteousness! Lineal descendant of Mahatha-mada and Mahadha-mayadza! Like unto the Kings of the Universe, who governed the four great islands of the solar system, and were versed in charms and spells of fourteen descriptions, may thy glory be prolonged, and thy life be extended, to more than a hundred years! Mayest thou enjoy whatever is propitious, and may all evil be far from thee,—O King!

3. "Great Chief of Righteousness! whose fame spreads like the fragrance of sandal-wood, and exceeds the glorious light of the moon,—in whom is concentrated all glory and honor,—who, with her Majesty, the Queen, the lineal descendant of anointed kings, happily governest all,—may thy rule extend, not only to the great Southern Island (the earth), which is tens of thousands of miles in extent, but to all the four grand and five hundred smaller Islands! May it equal the stability of the mountains Yoo-gan-toh, Myen-mo, and Hai-ma-garee; and until the end[Pg 458] of the world mayest thou and thy descendants continue in unbroken line, unto the royal son and royal great-grandson, that thy glory may endure for countless ages! And may thy royal life be prolonged for more than a hundred years,—O King!

4. "May our king be continually victorious! When the divine Buddha ascended the golden throne, all created beings inhabiting millions of worlds became his subjects, and he overcame all enemies. So may kings by hundreds and thousands, and tens of thousands, come with offerings of celestial weapons, white elephants, flying horses, virgins, and precious stones of divers sorts, and do homage to the Golden Feet, which resemble the germs of the lotos,—O KING!"

Now, even for an exploit in poetical license, that is sublimely cool, considering that a mere yesterday of thirty years has sufficed to strip the Throne of the Golden Foot of dominions which were the gradual acquisition of more than two bloody centuries of drunken lust, and that the dread Lord of Life and Master of the Celestial Weapon well knew that day that he no longer had access to the sea save through many leagues of British territory,—considering that the chronicle of the Burmese kings is one of the bloodiest chapters in the book of Time, a record of hell-engendered monsters, conceived in incest, brought forth in insanity, trained to the very sport of slaughter, and doomed to quick assassination or the most summary deposition and disgrace,—considering that even this "just and humane" Mendoon-men himself had deposed his cock-fighting brother, the Pagán-men, and sacked and burned his capital, and that even now he held him a close prisoner, poor and despised, in a corner of the fortified city,—and finally, that even as that pæan of infatuation ascends to the besotted ears of the King, given up of God to believe lies, his own brother, the Ein-shé-men, possessed of a devil of precedent, crouches like a tiger below the dais, and plots assassination and usurpation in his cunning bit of looking-glass.

The chants concluded, the Tara-Thoogyi read from a parabeik, or black note-book, an address to the King, stating that the offerings his Majesty purposed making to certain pagodas at the capital were ready. "Let them be dedicated!" said one of the officials solemnly; and the music was renewed. This dedication, the chant of the Brahmins, and the singular ceremony of A-beit-theit (literally, a pouring out of water on a solemn occasion), together constitute the formal inauguration of a royal sitting. Then the Governor-General's letter was drawn from its cover, and read aloud by a Than-daugan, or Receiver of the Royal Voice, who also read the list of presents for the King and Queen. A railway model, contributed by Sir Macdonald Stephenson, was immediately produced and exhibited in the Hall,—the only one of the presents uncovered there,—and excited lively interest among the Burmese. All the readings were intoned in a high recitative, like the English Cathedral service; and the long-drawn "Phrá-á-á-á!" (My Lord!) was delivered like the "Amen" of the Liturgy.

After this, his Majesty, without moving his lips, but speaking by an Atwen-woon, who discharged for that occasion the function of Royal Tongue, condescended to address to the Envoy three formal questions, prescribed by custom and precedent, thus:—

Receiver of the Royal Voice (in a loud tone). "By reason of your Majesty's great glory and excellence, the English ruler is well; and therefore, with obeisance, I represent the same to your Majesty."

Envoy. "It is now fifty-five days since we left Bengal, and have arrived, and lived happily, at the Royal City."

Receiver of the Royal Voice. "By reason of your Majesty's great glory and[Pg 459] excellence it is fifty-five days since the Envoy left the English country, and he has now happily arrived at the Golden Feet. Therefore, with obeisance," &c., &c.

Royal Tongue. "Are the rain and air propitious, so that the people live in happiness and ease?"

Receiver of the Royal Voice. "By reason of your Majesty's great glory and excellence, the rain and air are propitious, and the people live in happiness."

And here the awful conversation came to a profound close. Gifts were presently bestowed on all the officers of the mission;—to the Envoy a gold cup embossed with the zodiacal signs, a fine ruby, a tsalwé of nine cords, and a handsome putso; to other officers, a plain gold cup, ring, and putso, or a ring and putso only.

Then the King rose to depart, the Queen assisting him to rise, and afterward using the royal dhar to help herself up. "They passed through the gilded lattice, the music played again, the doors rolled out from the wall, and we were told that we might retire."

On the twenty-first, Major Phayre had a private interview, by appointment, with the King. The reception was almost en famille. As the Envoy approached the palace, he found the assembled court under a circular temporary building, called a Mandat, where music and dancing were going on,—the King half reclined on a kind of sofa in a room raised several feet above the level of the mandat. The Envoy was led forward and shown to a place among the ministers, who, as well as all the rest of the company, were seated on the ground,—only the dancers standing. Outside squatted guards in red jackets, with red papier-maché helmets, and muskets with the buts resting between their legs. Eight couples of men and women were dancing. The King did not speak to Major Phayre, but, on the contrary, retired as he entered, and sent him word that he would see him in another room; where again he found his Majesty reclining on a sofa, no longer in imperial costume, but the ordinary garb of the country,—a silk putso, or waist-cloth, of gay colors, a white cotton jacket, reaching a little below the hips, and a single fillet of book-muslin twisted round his head. On his left, at a little distance, were some half-dozen of his sons, "of all ages up to sixteen years," crouching on the ground, with their chins touching it. A band of girls in fantastic court-dresses were in an anteroom, discoursing soft music on stringed instruments. One of the Atwen-woons, with several other officers of the court, and a few pages, had followed the Envoy, and now sat together near the end of the room. The King held up his hand, and the music ceased. He then requested the Envoy to notice some large imitation lotos-flowers in a vase; and as he spoke, the buds, which had been closed, suddenly expanded, and out of one of them flew a solitary sparrow. The king smiled, and one of the company said, "Each bud had a bird imprisoned, but they managed to escape, all but this one."

The Envoy did not; so the King repeated some of the precepts of this summary of beatitude,—a sermon of Guadma's, containing thirty rules of life, against pride, anger, evil associates, and the like.

Then followed much talk about a treaty which the Envoy was anxious to procure; but the King, with diplomatic adroitness, put him off; for the Burmese hate treaties, and always break them. Said his Majesty, very dryly: "I have heard a great deal of[Pg 460] you, and that you are wise and well disposed. I should not have taken the same pains to receive every one; I should have done according to custom. You have commenced well. But in a man's life, and in every transaction, there is a beginning, a middle, and an end,"—illustrating the remark by running his finger along the hilt of his dhar of state, which lay on a stand before him.

"I did, your Majesty, and have brought a singing-bird box, as a token of my thanks."

Here a ring, half sapphire and half topaz, was brought in, and presented to the Envoy.

The King expressed a wish to engage some one to take charge of his ruby mines, and especially his lively desire to procure a model of a human skeleton, made of wood, and so arranged that the action of the joints in sitting and rising should be shown. The Envoy promised to attend to this. Some trays of cakes and sweetmeats were then brought in, and the King, having particularly recommended one or two of the dishes to the Envoy, retired. During the interview his Majesty behaved with much courtesy and kindness. One of his children, about eighteen months old, ran in two or three times, naked as he was born, and climbed up on the couch; the young sons now and then lighted the King's cheroot, and gave him water to drink.

On the 2d of October the Envoy is again with the King in the small pavilion; about a hundred persons are present, including two Atwen-woons, the Nan-ma-dau-Phra Woon, and several Shan Tsaub-was, but none of the Woongyis. The King asked the Envoy if he had been to the Pyee-Kyoung to see the Tshaya-dau, or Royal Teacher, Patriarch or Bishop of all the Monks.

"What length of time, according to your books, is a Kamba?" (A complete revolution of nature, a geological period, it might almost be called.)

"Well, we say that in a Kamba the life period of man gradually advances from the limit of ten years to an Athenkhya,[8] and then gradually diminishes from that down to ten years again. When that has been repeated sixty-four times it constitutes a period, which again is repeated sixty-four times; and when four such compound periods have been repeated, the whole era is called a Kamba, or a grand revolution of the universe. The world is then destroyed, and a new era commences."

The King then entered into a long discourse on the history of the Mahan-Zat, or life of Guadma in one of his former births, the gist of which was that a king who had a wise minister could get anything he set his heart upon. After which he related the story of a king of Benares, who had three birds' eggs brought to him; one produced a parrot, one an owl, and the other a mainah; and to each of these, in course of time, a department of the state was intrusted, but the highest, politics, fell to the parrot.

"I believe," to the Envoy, ironically, "your English kings have existed for two hundred years or more. Have they not?"

"The English nation, your Majesty, have had kings to reign over them for fifteen hundred years."

"My ancestors have come in regular descent from King Mahatha-mada" (the[Pg 461] first king who established government on the earth,—many millions of years ago, at the beginning of the present Kamba, in fact).

Envoy (to one of the Atwen-woons, to show that he knew that no such king had ever reigned in Burmah). "Which of the royal cities did Mahatha-mada build?"

"O," said the quick-witted Woondouk, "that king reigned in Myit-tshe-ma-detha [the Middle land, India]."

King. "Our race once reigned in all the countries you hold. Now the Kalás have come close up to us."

"Well, I will present you with a complete copy, and also a copy of the 550 Zats, and the Mahan-Zats; and when you come again I shall expect to find that you have studied them. I should like to have a copy of your Radza-Weng [History of Kings]."

"It is only right, and the part of a wise man, to gather instruction from the records of the past and the works of sages. By the study of these books you will be enabled to divine people's thoughts from their appearance, and may aspire to the most difficult of all attainments,—the discerning of which is the greater principle, matter or spirit."

The King then inquired if the Envoy had visited the Royal Tanks, at Oungben-lé and other places, which had been recently constructed.

"I have caused ninety-nine tanks and ancient reservoirs to be dug, or repaired, and sixty-six canals, whereby a great deal of rice land will be made available. In the reign of Naurabha-dzyai 9999 tanks and canals were constructed. I purpose renewing them."

"Ninety-nine" in Burmese signifies a large number merely. Thus, Captain Hannay was told that there were ninety-nine jheels, or lakes, in the district of Tagoung. An ancient king of Aracan is said to have founded ninety-nine cities on each side of the Aracan River. The Burmese speak of the ninety-nine towns of the Shan country. Duttagamini, king of Ceylon, is said to have built ninety-nine great temples. The Buddhist physiology reckons ninety-nine joints and ninety-nine thousand pores of the human body.[9]

At a later interview, the Envoy took particular note of the personal appearance of this royal barbarian. His skin was smooth and clear, and his bright black eyes twinkled, and displayed a true Chinese obliquity when he laughed, as he did every two or three minutes. His mustache was good, his throat and jaws were very massive, his chest and arms remarkably well developed, and his hands clean and small. The retreating forehead, which marked him as a descendant of Alompra, was especially conspicuous.

He reclined, in a characteristic attitude, on a splendid sofa, wrought in mosaic of gilding and looking-glass, spread with a rich yellow velvet mattress, bordered with crimson; and a corresponding rug, of crimson bordered with yellow, was spread below for the regalia. These consisted of a fantastic gilded ornament, "in size and shape much like a pair of stag's antlers," festooned with a muslin scarf, and intended to receive the royal dhar; and of the large golden Henza, set with precious stones. Other royal paraphernalia, such as the golden spittoon and salver, and the stand for the water-goglet, with its conical golden cover set with gems, were brought in and deposited on the rug when his Majesty appeared. Dancing-women were performing in the central aisle before the throne, to the music of a[Pg 462] group of female minstrels, gayly attired, and crowned with pagoda-shaped tiaras, like those worn by the princes in the plays.

Speaking of the Maha-Radza-Weng, and other books which he had ordered to be brought for the Envoy, the King said: "The mass of earth, water, and air which composes the Great Island [the earth] and Mount Myen-mo is vast, but learning is more stupendous still, and great labor is necessary to acquire it. Do you [the Envoy] know how many elements there are in a man's body?"

"The body consists of a great number of particles, small as flour or dust. One hair of the head appears like a single fibre, yet it is made up of a great number of smaller fibres; just as one of the long ropes you sound the depth of water with is composed of many short fibres. Of the elements, earth enters into the bones, and water into the hair."

In this connection, Captain Yule has an interesting note to the first chapter of his narrative:—"There seems to turn up now and then in the science of the Buddhists a very curious parody, as it were, or chance suggestion, of some of the great truths or speculations of modern science; just as there are circumstances of their religion which seem to run parallel with circumstances and forms of Christianity or Christian churches, and which made the old Jesuit fathers think that the Devil had, of malice aforethought, prepared these travesties of Christian rites and mysteries among the heathen, in order to cast ridicule on the Church, and bar her progress. An example of what I allude to is found here, as regards electricity, in their apparent knowledge of the non-conducting power of glass. In the Buddhist theory of the universe, we have an infinity of contemporary systems, each provided with its sun and planets, analogous to the commonly received opinion of the plurality of worlds. We have also their infinite succession of creations and destructions by fire or water, analogous to a formerly popular geological theory. They hold the circulation of the blood, after a fashion. The King's conversations at Amarapoora indicated his belief in the atomic constitution of the body, and of the existence of a microscopic world, though his illustrations were not accurate. And when Mr. Crawfurd published his account of fossil elephant bones from the Irrawaddi, Colonel Burney tells us that the Burmese philosophers expressed much satisfaction at the discovery, as establishing the doctrine of their books. These taught that in former times there were ten species of elephants, but that the smallest species alone survived."

Woondouk. "There are Captain Yule, the Secretary to the Mission (Letya Bogyee, or right-hand chief); Dr. Forsyth (Tshaya Woon, or supreme over the teachers); Professor Oldham, the geologist (Kyouk Tshaya, or rock teacher); and Major Allan (Meaday Woon and Mhan Byoung Bo, telescope officer)."

"Not so much as the Envoy, I suppose. He should study. Parrots, by diligence, learn languages. Have you parrots that can speak English?"

"And we have parrots that even understand writing. What stones is the Rock Teacher acquainted with?"

"In my country there are mountains, along the side of which if horses, elephants, or men go, a green shadow is cast on their bodies. Your black coat would appear green there. How does he explain this?"

"No, it cannot be that, as the copper[Pg 463] is not seen. I think it results from emeralds below."[10]

"But suppose the element on which the issues of the body depend were to be destroyed, could the man survive?"

"That is true. It is proper for every physician to be conversant with the elementary substances. There are a great number of books on the subject of medicine in the Burmese language,—books so deep,"—raising his hand above his head.

Envoy. "I have received from your Majesty a fossil alligator's head, which is very much prized by the Rock Teacher; and I have heard there are Biloos'[11] (monsters') bones in some parts of the country."

King. "There are Biloos' bones in the Yau district, and you can have as many as you choose, or a whole Biloo even." (To the Woondouk,) "See that this is attended to." (To the Atwen-woons,) "These people cannot sit long thus without being cramped."

His Majesty then flung himself brusquely off the sofa, turned his back, put on his shoes, and strode away without any leave-taking. His manner was easy and full of good-humor; but he chewed betel to almost disgusting excess; the golden pawn-box was never out of his hand, and he played with it as he talked.

When he was gone, refreshments were brought in,—pancakes filled with spiced meats, jellies of rice-starch, in various colors, and other viands. But the most Oriental and by no means the least palatable dish consisted of fried locusts, stuffed with spiced meat. They were brought in "hot-and-hot," in relays of saucers, and tasted like fried shrimps.

In the large audience-hall, adjoining the pavilion, ten or twelve richly dressed dancing-girls slowly circled to passionate music, brandishing in both hands bunches of peacock's feathers, throwing themselves into a variety of difficult and curious attitudes, and chanting all the while in a pleasing chorus, which singularly resembled the psalmody of a choir in an English parish church.

A few days later the Envoy called, pour prendre congé, on the Ein-shé-men, whose physiognomy he describes as that of a strong-willed, boisterous, passionate, and energetic man, with but little intellect or refinement, but not, perhaps, without kindly impulses. He was full of questions,—among others, "What nation first made gunpowder?"

Envoy. "I am not quite sure, your Highness, whether it was first made in England or Germany. Our books say that it was known from an earlier period in China."[Pg 464]

"Ah!" interposed the sly old Woondouk. "You won't say where gunpowder was first made, because you want it to appear that it was in England."

"I cannot tell you. The first use of cannon on record was by the English, some five hundred years ago."

"America, your Highness. The steam-engine was invented in England, and an American adapted it to ships."

Woondouk. "Those are the people who went out from you, and you could not govern them, and they set up for themselves."

Envoy. "Precisely. Just as the people of Aracan, of your own race and religion, settled in that country, and had a king of their own, and you lost dominion over them." (Much good-humored laughter at this reply.)

Speaking of the friendly relations between England and France, the Envoy explained that communication is kept up constantly between the two countries by means of the electric telegraph. (To the Woondouk.) "You have seen the telegraph in Bengal, and will be able to inform his Highness about it."

Woondouk. "They put a wire on posts above the ground, or bury it underneath, carrying it over mountains and through rivers; and at certain stations apart there are magnetic needles, which shake to denote the letters of the words of a message that is sent. Thus they converse together, though they are hundreds of miles apart."

This Woondouk, Moung Mhon, was a very astute and ingenious man. When he accompanied the old Dalla-Woon on a mission to the Governor-General, he was taken on one occasion, by Major Phayre and Colonel Baker, to make a short excursion on the East India Railway. When his attention was called to the great speed at which they were travelling, he made no remark, except to ask the interval between two telegraph posts on the line; and then, counting the beats of his own pulse, and making a mental estimate of the rapidity with which he passed those intervals, he quietly said, "Yes, we are going very fast."

Envoy. "I believe the discovery was nearly contemporaneous in England and America."

Envoy. "In Europe, where men of science are engaged in a great variety of studies, and publish their views and opinions, similar discoveries are frequently made about the same time in different countries."

The visits of ceremony to the four Woongyis, and to old Moung Pathee, the Nan-ma-dau Woon, were marked by circumstances of peculiar interest. At the house of the Magwé Menghi (Great Prince of Magwé), the most intellectual and influential of the Woongyis, the floor was laid with carpets, and chairs for the visitors were set at a long table. The large silk curtain which separated the reception-room from the women's apartment was partly raised at one corner; and there, on carpets, were seated all the ladies of the family. Breakfast was served, at first in English fashion, with bread and butter, muffins and tarts. But presently the hospitable Woongyi called out cheerily, "Come, come! they know an English breakfast well enough; let us have Burmese dishes now." Then came sweetmeats and dainties of various kinds, and in profusion,—in all, fifty-seven dishes. After the breakfast the usual Burmese dessert of betel-nut, pawn, pickled tea,[12] salted ginger in small strips, fried garlic, walnuts without the shells, roasted groundnuts, &c.,[Pg 465] on little gold and silver dishes; and, last of all, cheroots.

The Woongyi led in his wife, and would have her attempt an English chair, next the Envoy; but the old lady, after several amiable efforts to reconcile herself to the foreign situation, bravely tucked in her scanty robes, and doubled her legs under her.

From the Magwé Menghi's they passed to the houses of the Mein-loung, the Myo-doung, and the Pakhán Menghi, (all Woonghis,) and of the venerable Nan-ma-dau Woon,—breakfasting at each. At the residence of the Pakhán Menghi several ladies joined the party at table; these were the Woongyi's wife, who had been one of Tharawadi's queens, with her mother and two sisters,—all really lady-like and self-possessed, fairer than the generality of Burmese women, and of delicate and graceful figures, though not pretty. They wore the usual tawein, or narrow petticoat of gorgeously striped silk, polka jackets of thin white muslin, and ornaments of extraordinary brilliancy. Their ear-cylinders were gold; but instead of being open tubes, as commonly worn at the capital, they were closed in front, and set with one large cut diamond, ruby, or emerald, surrounded by smaller brilliants. The necklace consisted of a narrow chain of gold, plain, or set with pearls, and bearing table diamonds in two rows, one fixed and the other pendent. They also wore superb rings, in which were rubies of noble size.

Among the ladies seated on the ground were two strongly resembling one another, and with the receding forehead which marks all the descendants of Alompra. These were daughters of the Mekhara-men, that uncle of King Tharawadi who used to translate articles from Rees's Cyclopædia into Burmese, and who assisted Mr. Lane, a merchant of Ava, in the compilation of the English and Burmese Dictionary which bears the name of the latter.

For a Kalá at Amarapoora not to know the Lord White Elephant is to argue himself unknown. Consequently a presentation to that Buddhistic demi-god in bleached and animated India-rubber was a crowning ceremonial, essential, in a political as well as religious point of view, to the success of the embassy. He "receives" in his "palace," a little to the north of the Hall of Audience. On the south are sheds for the vulgar monsters of his retinue, and brick godowns, in which the state carriages, and the massive and gorgeous golden litters, are stowed.

Captain Yule says the present white elephant is the very one mentioned by Padre Sangermano as having been caught in 1806,—to the great joy of the king, who had just lost the preceding incumbent, a female, which died after a year's captivity. "He is very large, almost ten feet high, with a noble head and pair of tusks. But he is long-bodied and lank, and not otherwise handsome for an elephant. He is sickly too, and out of condition, being distempered for five months in the year, from April to August. His eye, the iris of which is yellow, with a reddish outer annulus, and a small, clear, black pupil, has an uneasy glare, and his keepers evidently mistrust his temper. The annulus round the iris is pointed out as resembling a circle of the nine gems. His color is almost uniform,—about the ground-tint of the mottled or freckled part of the trunk and ears of common elephants, perhaps a little darker. He also has pale freckles on the same parts. On the whole, he is well entitled to his appellation."

His royal paraphernalia are magnificent. The driving-hook is three feet long, the stem a mass of small pearls, girt at frequent intervals with bands of rubies, and the hook and handle of crystal, tipped with gold. The headstall is of fine red cloth, plentifully studded with choice rubies, and near the extremity are some precious diamonds. Fitting over the bumps of the forehead are circles of the nine gems, which are supposed to be charms against malign influences.

When caparisoned, he also wears on[Pg 466] the forehead, like other Burmese dignitaries, including the king himself, a golden plate inscribed with his titles, and a gold crescent set with circles of large gems between the eyes. Large silver tassels hang in front of his ears, and he is harnessed with bands of gold and crimson set with large bosses of pure gold. He is a regular estate of the realm, having a Woon, or minister, of his own, four gold umbrellas, the white umbrellas which are peculiar to royalty, and a suite of thirty attendants. The Burmese remove their shoes on entering his palace. He has an appanage, or territory, assigned to him to "eat," like other princes of the Empire. In Burney's time it was the rich cotton district of Taroup Myo.

The present king never rides the white elephant; but his uncle used to do so frequently, acting as his own mahout, which was one of the royal accomplishments of the ancient Indian kings.

"The importance attached to the possession of a white elephant," says Captain Yule, "is traceable to the Buddhist system. A white elephant of certain wonderful endowments is one of the seven precious things the possession of which marks the Maha chakravartti Raja, 'the great wheel-turning king,' the holy and universal sovereign, a character who appears once in a cycle, at the period when the waxing and waning term of human life has reached its maximum of an asanhkya in duration. Hence the white elephant is the ensign of universal sovereignty."

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Narrative of a Mission to the Court of Ava, in 1855. By Captain Henry Yule, Secretary to the Envoy.

[4] Western foreigner.

[5] Priest; literally, "Great Glory."

[6] Yule's Narrative.

[7] 1. Charity; 2. Religious Observances; 3. Self-denial; 4. Learning; 5. Diligence; 6. Patience; 7. Truth; 8. Perseverance; 9. Friendship; 10. Impartiality.

[8] Athenkhya is a corruption, or Burmese pronunciation, of asankhya, Sanscrit, from the negative a and sankhya, "number,"—literally, "innumerable"; but as a Buddhist period, it is expressed by a unit and one hundred and forty ciphers. Yule.

[9] Yule's Narrative.

[10] "Amid lovely prospects of rich valleys, and wooded hills, and winding waters, almost every rock bore on its surface the yellow gleam of gold. True, according to the voyager, the precious metal was itself absent; but Sir Walter [Raleigh], on afterward showing the stones to a Spaniard of the Caracas, was told by him that they were madre del oro, mother of gold, and that the mine itself was further in the ground."—Hugh Miller.

[11] A sort of demon-monkeys, grotesquely hideous and fearfully funny,—generally depicted as black Calibans, with tusks. Judson defines them as "monsters which devour human flesh, and possess certain superhuman powers." According to a Buddhist legend, Guadma, when he attempted to land at Martaban, was stoned by the Nats and Biloos, who then inhabited that country, as well as Tavoy and Mergui; and Captain Yule imagines there may be some dim tradition here of an alien and savage race of aborigines (akin, perhaps, to the quasi-negroes of the Andamans), who have become the Biloos, or Ogres, of Burman legend, "just as our Ogres took their name, probably, from the Ugrians of Northeastern Europe." The description of the Andaman negroes by the Mohammedan travellers of the ninth century, as quoted by Prichard, would answer well for the Biloos of Burmah: "The people eat human flesh quite raw; their complexion is black, their hair frizzled, their countenance and eyes frightful; their feet are almost a cubit in length, and they go quite naked." The comic element, however, always enters into the Burmese conception of a Biloo. On the pavement of a royal monastery at Amarapoora is a set of bas-reliefs representing Biloos in all sorts of impish attitudes and antics.

[12] Hlapet, or pickled tea, made up with a little oil, salt, and garlic, or assafœtida, is eaten in small quantities by the Burmese, after dinner, as we eat cheese. They say it promotes digestion, and they cannot live in comfort without it. Hlapet is also passed around on many ceremonial occasions, and on the conclusion of lawsuits.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A QUACK.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART I.

At this present moment of time I am what the doctors call an interesting case, and am to be found in bed No. 10, Ward II. Massachusetts General Hospital. I am told that I have what is called Addison's Disease,—and that it is this pleasing malady which causes me to be covered with large blotches of a dark mulatto tint, such as I suppose would make me peculiarly acceptable to a Massachusetts constituency, if my legs were only strong enough to enable me to run for Congress. However, it is a rather grim subject to joke about, because, if I believe the doctor who comes around every day and thumps me, and listens to my chest with as much pleasure as if I was music all through,—I say, if I believed him, I should suppose I was going to die. The fact is, I don't believe him at all. Some of these days I shall take a turn and get about again, but meanwhile it is rather dull for a stirring, active person to have to lie still and watch myself getting big brown and yellow spots all over me, like a map that has taken to growing.

The man on my right has consumption, smells of cod-liver oil, and coughs all night. The man on my left is a Down-Easter, with a liver which has struck work; looks like a human pumpkin; and how he contrives to whittle jack-straws all day, and eat as he does, I can't understand. I have tried reading and tried whittling, but they don't either of them satisfy me, so that yesterday I concluded to ask the doctor if he could n't suggest some other amusement.

I waited until he had gone through the ward, and then I seized my chance, and asked him to stop a moment.[Pg 467]

He thought a little, and then replied: "I'll tell you what to do; I think if you were to write out a plain account of your life, it would be pretty well worth reading, and perhaps would serve to occupy you for a few days at least. If half of what you told me last week be true, you must be about as clever a scamp as there is to be met with, and I suppose you would just as lief put it on paper as talk it."

After he left I lay awhile thinking over the matter. I knew well enough that I was what the world calls a scamp, and I knew also that I had got little good out of the fact. If a man is what people call virtuous, and fails in life, he gets credit at least for the virtue; but when a man is a rascal, and breaks down at the trade, somehow or other people don't credit him with the intelligence he has put into the business,—and this I call hard. I never had much experience of virtue being its own reward; but I do know that, when rascality is left with nothing but the contemplation of itself for comfort, it is by no means refreshing. Now this is just my present position; and if I did not recall with satisfaction the energy and skill with which I did my work, I should be nothing but disgusted at the melancholy spectacle of my failure. I suppose that I shall at least find occupation in reviewing all this, and I think, therefore, that I shall try to give a plain and straightforward account of the life I have led, and the various devices by which I have sought to get my share of the money of my countrymen.

I want it to be clearly understood, at the beginning, that in what I may have to say, I shall stick severely to the truth, without any overstrained regard for my neighbors' feelings. In fact, I shall have some little satisfaction when I do come a little heavy on corn or bunyon, because for the past two years the whole world appears to have been engaged in trotting over mine with as much certainty as if there were no other standing-room left in creation.

I shall be rather brief about my early life, which possesses little or no interest.

I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and am therefore what those dreary Pennsylvanians call a Jersey Yankee, and sometimes a Spaniard, as pleases them best. My father was a respectable physician in large practice, too busy to look after me. My mother died too early for me to remember her at all. An old aunt who took her place as our housekeeper indulged me to the utmost, and I thus acquired a taste for having my own way and the best of everything, which has stuck to me through life. I do not remember when it was that I first began to pilfer, but it must have been rather early in life. Indeed, I believe I may say that, charitably speaking, which is the only way to speak of one's self, I was what the doctors call a kleptomaniac,—which means that, when I could not get a thing in any other way, I took it. As to education, I took very little of that, but I had, notwithstanding, a liking for reading, and especially for light literature. At the age of sixteen I was sent to Nassau Hall, best known as Princeton College; but, for reasons which I need not state very fully, I did not remain beyond the close of the Junior year. The causes which led to my removal were not the usual foolish scrapes in which college lads indulge. Indeed, I never have been guilty of any of those wanton pieces of wickedness which injure the feelings of others while they lead to no useful result. When I left to return home, I set myself seriously to reflect upon the necessity of greater caution in following out my inclinations, and from that time forward I have steadily avoided the vulgar vice of directly possessing myself of objects to which I could show no legal title. My father was justly indignant at the results of my college career; and, according to my aunt, his sorrow had some effect in shortening[Pg 468] his life, which ended rather suddenly within the year.

I was now about nineteen years old, and, as I remember, a middle-sized, well-built young fellow, with large, dark eyes, a slight mustache, and, I have been told, with very good manners, and a somewhat humorous turn. Besides these advantages, my guardian held in trust for me about three thousand dollars. After some consultation between us, it was resolved that I should study medicine.

Accordingly I set out for Philadelphia, with many good counsels from my aunt and guardian. I look back upon this period as a turning-point in my life. I had seen enough of the world already to know that, if you can succeed honestly, it is by far the pleasantest way; and I really believe that, if I had not been endowed with such a fatal liking for all the good things of life, I might have lived along as reputably as most men. This, however, is, and always has been, my difficulty, and I suppose that I am not therefore altogether responsible for the incidents to which it gave rise. Most men also have some ties in life. I had only one, a little sister, now about ten years of age, for whom I have always had more or less affection, but who was of course too much my junior to exert over me that beneficial control which has saved so many men from evil courses. She cried a good deal when we parted, and this, I think, had a very good effect in strengthening my resolution to do nothing which could get me into trouble.

The janitor of the College to which I went directed me to a boarding-house, where I engaged a small, third-story room, which I afterwards shared with Mr. Chaucer of Jawjaw, as he called the State which he had the honor to represent.

In this very remarkable abode I spent the next two winters; and finally graduated, along with two hundred more, at the close of my two years of study. I should also have been one year in a physician's office as a student, but this regulation is very easily evaded. As to my studies, the less said the better. I attended the quizzes, as they call them, pretty closely, and, being of quick and retentive memory, was thus enabled to dispense, for the most part, with the six or seven lectures a day which duller men found it necessary to follow.

Dissecting struck me as a rather nasty business for a gentleman, and on this account I did just as little as was absolutely essential. In fact, if a man takes his teckers, and pays the dissection fees, nobody troubles himself as to whether or not he does any more than this. A like evil exists as to graduation; whether you merely squeeze through, or pass with credit, is a thing which is not made public, so that I had absolutely nothing to stimulate my ambition.

The astonishment with which I learned of my success was shared by the numerous Southern gentlemen who darkened the floors, and perfumed with tobacco the rooms of our boarding-house. In my companions, during the time of my studies so called, as in other matters in life, I was somewhat unfortunate. All of them were Southern gentlemen, with more money than I. They all carried great sticks, usually sword-canes, and most of them bowie-knives; also they delighted in dress-coats, long hair, felt hats, and very tight boots, swore hideously, and glared at every woman they met as they strolled along with their arms affectionately over the shoulders of their companion. They hated the "Nawth," and cursed the Yankees, and honestly believed that the leanest of them was a match for any half-dozen of the bulkiest of Northerners. I must also do them the justice to say that they were quite as ready to fight as to brag, which, by the way, is no meagre statement. With these gentry, for whom I retain a respect which has filled me with regret at the recent course of events, I spent a good deal of my large leisure. We were what the more respectable students of both sections called a hard crowd; but[Pg 469] what we did, or how we did it, little concerns us here, except that, owing to my esteem for chivalric blood and breeding, I was led into many practices and excesses which cost my guardian much distress and myself a good deal of money.

At the close of my career as a student, I found myself aged twenty-one years, and owner of twelve hundred dollars,—the rest of my small estate having disappeared variously within the last two years. After my friends had gone to their homes in the South, I began to look about me for an office, and finally settled upon a very good room in one of the down-town localities of the Quaker City. I am not specific as to number and street, for reasons which may hereafter appear. I liked the situation on various accounts. It had been occupied by a doctor; the terms were reasonable; and it lay on the skirts of a good neighborhood; while below it lived a motley population, amongst whom I expected to get my first patients and such fees as were to be had. Into this new home I moved my medical text-books, a few bones, and myself. Also I displayed in the window a fresh sign, upon which was distinctly to be read:—

"Dr. Elias Sandcraft.
Office hours, 7 to 9 a. m., 3 to 6
p. m., 7 to 9 p. m."

I felt now that I had done my fair share towards attaining a virtuous subsistence, and so I waited tranquilly, and without undue enthusiasm, to see the rest of the world do its part in the matter. Meanwhile I read up on all sorts of imaginable cases, stayed at home all through my office hours, and at intervals explored the strange section of the town which lay to the south of my office. I do not suppose there is anything like it elsewhere. It was then, and still is, a nest of endless grog-shops, brothels, slop-shops, and low lodging-houses. You may dine here for a penny off of soup made from the refuse meats of the rich, gathered at back gates by a horde of half-naked children, who all tell varieties of one woful tale. Here, too, you may be drunk at five cents, and lodge for three, with men, women, and children of all colors lying about you. It is this hideous mixture of black and white and yellow wretchedness which makes the place so peculiar. The blacks predominate, and have mostly that swollen, reddish, dark skin, the sign in this race of habitual drunkenness. Of course only the lowest whites are here,—rag-pickers, pawnbrokers, old-clothes-men, thieves, and the like. All of this, as it came before me, I viewed with mingled disgust and philosophy. I hated filth, but I understood that society has to stand on somebody, and I was only glad that I was not one of the undermost and worst-squeezed bricks.

You will hardly believe me, but I had waited a month without having been called upon by a single patient. At last the policeman on the beat brought me a fancy man, with a dog bite. This patient recommended me to his brother, the keeper of a small pawnbroking shop, and by very slow degrees I began to get stray patients who were too poor to indulge in uptown doctors. I found the police very useful acquaintances; and, by a drink or a cigar now and then, I got most of the cases of cut heads and the like at the next station-house. These, however, were the aristocrats of my practice; the bulk of my patients were soap-fat-men, rag-pickers, oystermen, hose-house bummers, and worse, with other and nameless trades, men and women, white, black, or mulatto. How they got the levies and quarters with which I was reluctantly paid, I do not know; that indeed was none of my business. They expected to pay, and they came to me in preference to the dispensary doctor two or three squares away, who seemed to me to live in the lanes and alleys about us. Of course he received no pay except experience, since the dispensaries in the Quaker City, as a rule, do not give salaries to their[Pg 470] doctors; and the vilest of the poor will prefer a pay doctor, if he can get one, to one of these disinterested gentlemen who are at everybody's call and beck. I am told that most young doctors do a large amount of poor practice, as it is called; but, for my own part, I think it better for both parties when the doctor insists upon some compensation being made to him. This has been usually my own custom, and I have not found reason to regret it.

Notwithstanding my strict attention to my own interests, I have been rather sorely dealt with by fate, upon several occasions, where, so far as I could see, I was vigilantly doing everything in my power to keep myself out of trouble or danger. I may as well relate one of them, merely as an illustration of how little value a man's intellect may be, when fate and the prejudices of the mass of men are against him.

One evening late, I myself answered a ring at the bell, and found a small black boy on the steps, a shoeless, hatless little wretch, with curled darkness for hair, and teeth like new tombstones. It was pretty cold, and he was relieving his feet by standing first on one and then on the other. He did not wait for me to speak.

"Hi, sah, Missy Barker she say to come quick away, sah, to Numbah 709 Bedford Street."

The locality did not look like pay, but it was hard to say in this quarter, because sometimes you found a well-to-do "brandy-snifter,"—local for gin-shop,—or a hard-working "leather-jeweller,"—ditto for shoemaker,—with next door, in a house no better or worse, dozens of human rats for whom every police trap in the city was constantly set.

With a doubt, then, in my mind as to whether I should find a good patient or some mean nigger, I sought out the place to which I had been directed. I did not like its looks; but I blundered up an alley, and into a back room, where I fell over somebody, and was cursed and told to lie down and keep easy, or somebody, meaning the man stumbled over, would make me. At last I lit on a staircase which led into the alley, and, after some inquiry, got as high as the garret. People hereabouts did not know one another, or did not want to know, so that it was of little avail to ask questions. At length I saw a light through the cracks in the attic door, and walked in. To my amazement, the first person I saw was a woman of about thirty-five, in pearl-gray Quaker dress,—one of your calm, good-looking people. She was seated on a stool beside a straw mattress, upon which lay a black woman. There were three others crowded close around a small stove, which was red-hot,—an unusual spectacle in this street. Altogether a most nasty den.

As I came in, the little Quaker woman got up, and said, "I took the liberty of sending for thee to look at this poor woman. I am afraid she has the small-pox. Will thee be so kind as to look at her?" And with this she held down the candle towards the bed.

"Good gracious!" said I hastily, seeing how the creature was speckled, "I did n't understand this, or I would not have come. Best let her alone, miss," I added, "there 's nothing to be done for these cases."

Upon my word, I was astonished at the little woman's indignation. She said just those things which make you feel as if somebody had been calling you names or kicking you. Was I a doctor? Was I a man? and so on. However, I never did fancy the small-pox, and what could a fellow get by doctoring wretches like these? So I held my tongue and went away. About a week afterwards, I met Evans, the Dispensary man.

"Halloa!" says he. "Doctor, you made a nice mistake about that darky at No. 709 Bedford Street the other night. She had nothing but measles after all."

"Of course I knew," said I, laughing; "but you don't think I was going into dispensary trash, do you?"

I learned afterwards that this Miss Barker had taken an absurd fancy to[Pg 471] the man because he had doctored the darky, and would not let the Quakeress pay him. The end was, that when I wanted to get a vacancy in the Southwark Dispensary, where they do pay the doctors, Miss Barker was malignant enough to take advantage of my oversight by telling the whole story to the board; so that Evans got in, and I was beaten.

You may be pretty sure that I found rather slow the kind of practice I have described, and began to look about for chances of bettering myself. In this sort of location these came up now and then; and as soon as I got to be known as a reliable man, I began to get the peculiar sort of practice I wanted. Notwithstanding all my efforts, however, I found myself at the close of three years with all my means spent, and just able to live meagrely from hand to mouth, which by no means suited a person of my luxurious turn. Six months went by, and I was worse off than ever,—two months in arrears of rent, and numerous other debts to cigar-shops and liquor-dealers. Now and then, some good job, such as a burglar with a cut head, helped me up for a while; but on the whole, I was like Slider Downeyhylle in poor Neal's Charcoal Sketches, and "kept going downer and downer the more I tried not to." Something must be done.

One night, as I was debating with myself as to how I was to improve my position, I heard a knock on my shutter, and, going to the door, let in a broad-shouldered man with a white face and a great hooked nose. He wore a heavy black beard and mustache, and looked like the wolf in the pictures of Red Riding-Hood which I had seen as a child.

"Your name 's Sandcraft?" said the man, shaking the snow over everything. "Set down, want to talk to you."

The man looked around the room rather scornfully, at the same time throwing back his coat, and displaying a red neckerchief and a huge garnet pin. "Guess you 're not overly rich," he said.

"Can't say I do," said I. Simon was a burglar who had blown off two fingers when mining a safe, and whom I had attended while he was hiding.

"Well, you can lie, and no mistake. Come now, Doctor, Simon says you 're safe, and I want to do a leetle plain talk with you." With this he laid ten eagles on the table; I put out my hand instinctively.

"Let 'em alone," cried the man sharply. "They 're easy earned, and ten more like 'em."

The man paused a moment, looked around him, eyed me furtively, and finally loosened his cravat with a hasty pull. "You 're the coroner," said he.

"Yes, you,—the coroner, don't you understand?" and so saying he shoved the gold pieces towards me.

"And being the coroner," said he, "you get this note, which requests you to call at No. 9 Blank Street to examine the body of a young man which is supposed—only supposed, you see—to have—well, to have died under suspicious circumstances."

"No," he returned, "not till I know how you like it. Stagers and another knows it; and it would n't be very safe for you to split, besides not making nothing out of it; but what I say is this. Do you like the business of coroner?"

Now I did not like it, but two hundred in gold was life to me just then; so I said, "Let me hear the whole of it first."

"That 's square enough," said the man; "my wife 's got"—correcting himself with a little shiver—"my wife had a brother that 's been cuttin' up rough, because, when I 'd been up too late, I handled her a leetle hard now[Pg 472] and again. About three weeks ago, he threatened to fetch the police on me for one or two little things Stagers and I done together. Luckily, he fell sick with a typhoid just then; but he made such a thunderin' noise about opening safes, and what he done, and I done, and so on, that I did n't dare to have any one about him. When he began to mend, I gave him a little plain talk about this business of threatening to bring the police on us, and next day I caught him a saying something to my wife about it. The end of it was, he was took worse next morning, and—well he died yesterday. Now what does his sister do, but writes a note, and gives it to a boy in the alley to put in the post. Luckily, Stagers happened to be round; and after the boy got away a bit, Bill bribes him with a quarter to give him the note, which was n't no less than a request to the coroner to come to our house to-morrow and make an examination, as foul play was suspected."

Here he paused. As for myself, I was cold all over. I was afraid to go on, and afraid to go back, besides which I did not doubt that there was a good deal of money in the case. "Of course," said I, "it's all nonsense; only I suppose you don't want the officers about, and a fuss, and that sort of thing."

"Exactly," said my friend, "you 're the coroner; you take this note and come to my house. Says you, 'Mrs. File, are you the woman that wrote this note? because in that case I must examine the body.'"

"I see," said I; "she need n't know who I am, or anything else. But if I tell her it's all right, do you think she won't want to know why there ain't a jury, and so on?"

"Bless you," said the man, "the girl is n't over seventeen, and does n't know no more than her baby."

"I 'll do it," said I, suddenly, for, as I saw, it involved no sort of risk; "but I must have three hundred dollars."

With this the man buttoned about him a shaggy gray overcoat, and took his leave without a single word in addition.

For the first time in my life I failed that night to sleep. I thought to myself at last that I would get up early, pack a few clothes, and escape, leaving my books to pay, as they might, my arrears of rent. Looking out of the window, however, in the morning, I saw Stagers prowling about the opposite pavement, and, as the only exit except the street door was an alleyway, which opened alongside of the front of the house, I gave myself up for lost. About ten o'clock I took my case of instruments, and started for File's house, followed, as I too well understood, by Stagers.

I knew the house, which was in a small street, by its closed windows and the craped bell, which I shuddered as I touched. However, it was too late to draw back, and I therefore inquired for Mrs. File. A young and haggard-looking woman came down, and led me into a small parlor, for whose darkened light I was thankful enough.

"I did," said the woman, "if you 're the coroner. Joe, he 's my husband, he 's gone out to see about the funeral. I wish it was his, I do."

"I 'll tell you," she returned, in a whisper. "I think he was made away with. I think there was foul play. I think he was poisoned. That 's what I think."

"You shall see it," she replied; and, following her, I went up stairs to a front chamber, where I found the corpse.

"Get it over soon," said the woman, with a strange firmness. "If there ain't no murder been done, I shall have to run for it. If there is," and her face set hard, "I guess I 'll stay." With this she closed the door, and left me with the dead.[Pg 473]

If I had known what was before me, I never should have gone into the thing at all. It looked a little better when I had opened a window, and let in plenty of light; for, although I was, on the whole, far less afraid of dead than living men, I had an absurd feeling that I was doing this dead man a distinct wrong, as if it mattered to the dead, after all. When the affair was over, I thought more of the possible consequences than of its relation to the dead man himself; but do as I would at the time, I was in a ridiculous tremor, and especially when, in going through the forms of a post-mortem dissection, I had to make the first cut through the skin. Of course, I made no examination of the internal organs. I wanted to know as little as possible about them, and to get done as soon as I could. Unluckily, however, the walls of the stomach had softened and given way, so that I could not help seeing, among the escaped contents of the stomach, numerous grains of a white powder, which I hastened to conceal from my sight by rapidly sewing up the incisions which I had made.

I am free to confess now that I was careful not to uncover the man's face, and that when it was over I backed to the door, and hastily escaped from the room. On the stairs opposite to me Mrs. File was seated, with her bonnet on, and a small bundle in her hand.

"Well," said she, rising as she spoke, and with a certain eagerness in her tones, "what killed him? Was it arsenic?"

"Arsenic, my good woman!" said I; "when a man has typhoid fever, he don't need poison to kill him."

"And you mean to say he was n't poisoned," said she, with more than a trace of disappointment in her voice,—"not poisoned at all?"

"No more than you are," said I. "If I had found any signs of foul play, I should have had a regular inquest. As it is, the less said about it the better; and the fact is, it would have been much wiser to have kept quiet at the beginning. I can't understand why you should have troubled me about it at all."

"Neither I would," said she, "if I had n't been pretty sure. I guess now the sooner I leave, the better for me."

"As to that," I returned, "it is none of my business; but you may rest certain that you are mistaken about the cause of your brother's death."

As I left the house, whom should I meet but Dr. Evans. "Why, halloa!" said he; "called you in, have they? Who 's sick?"

You may believe I was scared. "Mrs. File," said I, remembering with horror that I had forgotten to ask whether at any time the man had had a doctor.

"Bad lot," returned Evans; "I was sent for to see the brother when he was as good as dead."

"As bad as dead," I retorted, with a sickly effort at a joke. "What killed him?"

"I suppose one of the ulcers gave way, and that he died of the consequences. Perforation, you know, and that sort of thing. I thought of asking File for a post, but I did n't."

I was greatly alarmed at this new incident, but my fears were somewhat quieted that evening when Stagers and the wolf appeared with the remainder of the money, and I learned that Mrs. File had fled from her home, and, as File thought likely, from the city also. A few months later, File himself disappeared, and Stagers found his way into the Penitentiary.

I felt, for my own part, that I had been guilty of more than one mistake, and that I had displayed throughout a want of intelligence for which I came near being punished very severely. I should have made proper inquiries before venturing on a matter so dangerous, and I ought also to have got a good fee from Mrs. File on account of my services as coroner. It served me, however, as a good lesson, but it was several months before I felt quite easy in mind. Meanwhile, money became[Pg 474] scarce once more, and I was driven to my wit's end to devise how I should continue to live as I had done. I tried, among other plans, that of keeping certain pills and other medicines, which I sold to my patients; but on the whole I found it better to send all my prescriptions to one druggist, who charged the patient ten or twenty per cent over the correct price, and handed this amount to me.

In some cases I am told the percentage is supposed to be a donation on the part of the apothecary; but I rather fancy the patient pays for it in the end. It is one of the absurd vagaries of the profession to discountenance the practice I have described, but I wish, for my part, I had never done anything worse or more dangerous. Of course it inclines a doctor to change his medicines a good deal, and to order them in large quantities, which is occasionally annoying to the poor; yet, as I have always observed, there is no poverty so painful as your own, so that in a case of doubt I prefer equally to distribute pecuniary suffering among many, rather than to concentrate it on myself.

About six months after the date of my rather annoying adventure, an incident occurred which altered somewhat, and for a time improved, my professional position. During my morning office-hour an old woman came in, and, putting down a large basket, wiped her face with a yellow cotton handkerchief first, and afterwards with the corner of her apron. Then she looked around uneasily, got up, settled her basket on her arm with a jerk, which decided the future of an egg or two, and remarked briskly, "Don't see no little bottles about; got to the wrong stall I guess. You ain't no homœopath doctor, are you?"

With great presence of mind, I replied, "Well, ma'am, that depends upon what you want. Some of my patients like one, and some like the other." I was about to add, "You pays your money and you takes your choice," but thought better of it, and held my peace, refraining from classical quotation.

"Being as that 's the case," said the old lady, "I 'll just tell you my symptoms. You said you give either kind of medicine, did n't you?"

"Clams or oysters, whichever opens most lively, as my Joe says. Perhaps you know Joe,—tends the oyster-stand at stall No. 9."

They proved to be numerous, and included a stunnin' in the head, and a misery in the side, and a goin' on with bokin' after victuals.

I proceeded of course to apply a stethoscope over her ample bosom, though what I heard on this or similar occasions I should find it rather difficult to state. I remember well my astonishment in one instance, where, having unconsciously applied my instrument over a large chronometer in the watch-fob of a sea-captain, I concluded for a brief space that he was suffering from a rather remarkable displacement of the heart. As to the old lady, whose name was Checkers, and who kept an apple-stall near by, I told her that I was out of pills just then, but would have plenty next day. Accordingly I proceeded to invest a small amount at a place called a Homœopathic Pharmacy, which I remember amused me immensely.

A stout little German, with great silver spectacles, sat behind a counter containing numerous jars of white powders labelled concisely, Lach., Led., Onis., Op., Puls., etc., while behind him were shelves filled with bottles of what looked like minute white shot.

"Vell, ve gifs you a case, mit a pooks";—and thereupon produced a large box containing bottles of small pills and powders, labelled variously[Pg 475] with the names of diseases, so that all you required was to use the headache or colic bottle in order to meet the needs of those particular maladies.

I was struck at first with the exquisite simplicity of this arrangement; but before purchasing, I happened luckily to turn over the leaves of a book, in two volumes, which lay on the counter, and was labelled, "Jahr—Manual." Opening at page 310, Vol. I., I lit upon Lachesis, which, on inquiry, proved to be snake-venom. This Mr. Jahr stated to be indicated in upwards of a hundred maladies. At once it occurred to me that Lach. was the medicine for my money, and that it was quite needless to waste cash on the box. I therefore bought a small jar of Lach. and a lot of little pills, and started for home.

My old woman proved a fast friend; and as she sent me numerous patients, I by and by altered my sign to "Homœopathic Physician and Surgeon," whatever that may mean, and was regarded by my medical brethren as a lost sheep, and by the little-pill doctors as one who had seen the error of his ways.

In point of fact, my new practice had decided advantages. All the pills looked and tasted alike, and the same might be said of the powders, so that I was never troubled by those absurd investigations into the nature of the remedies which some patients are prone to make. Of course I desired to get business, and it was therefore obviously unwise to give little pills of Lach. or Puls. or Sep., when a man distinctly needed full doses of iron, or the like. I soon discovered, however, that it was only necessary to describe cod-liver oil, for instance, as a diet, in order to make use of it where required. When a man got impatient over an ancient ague, I usually found, too, that I could persuade him to let me try a good dose of quinine; while, on the other hand, there was a distinct pecuniary advantage in those cases of the shakes which could be made to believe that it was "best not to interfere with nature." I ought to add, that this kind of faith is uncommon among folks who carry hods or build walls.

For women who are hysterical, and go heart and soul into the business of being sick, I have found the little pills a most charming resort, because you cannot carry the refinement of symptoms beyond what my friend Jahr has done in the way of fitting medicines to them, so that, if I had been disposed honestly to practise this droll style of therapeutics, it had, as I saw, certain conveniences.

Another year went by, and I was beginning to prosper in my new mode of life. The medicines (being chiefly milk-sugar, with variations as to the labels) cost next to nothing; and, as I charged pretty well for both these and my advice, I was now able to start a gig, and also to bring my sister, a very pretty girl of fourteen years old, to live with me in a small house which I rented, a square from my old office.

This business of my sister's is one of the things I like the least to look back upon. When she came to me she was a pale-faced child, with large, mournful gray eyes, soft, yellow hair, and the promise of remarkable good looks. As to her attachment to me, it was something quite ridiculous. She followed me to the door when I went out, waited for me to come in, lay awake until she heard my step at night, and, in a word, hung around my neck like a kind of affectionate mill-stone.

WRITINGS OF T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

"I Am indebted to you for a knowledge of life in the old cathedral towns of England,—of the ecclesiastical side of society, so minute and authentic that it is like a personal experience." Thus I replied to Anthony Trollope's declaration that he lacked an essential quality of the novelist,—imagination. "Ah," he replied, "when you speak of careful observation and the honest and thorough report thereof, I am conscious of fidelity to the facts of life and character; but," he added, with that bluff heartiness so characteristic of the man, "my brother is more than an accurate observer: he is a scholar, a philosopher as well, with historical tastes and cosmopolitan sympathies,—a patient student. You should read his books";—and he snatched a pencil, and wrote out the list for me.[13] Only two of Thomas Adolphus Trollope's volumes have been republished in this country,—one a novel of English life, in tenor and traits very like his brother's, the other a brief memoir of a famous and fair Italian.[14] This curious neglect on the part of American publishers induces us to briefly record this industrious and interesting author's claims to grateful recognition, especially on the part of those who cherish fond recollections of Italian travel, and enjoy the sympathetic and intelligent illustration of Italian life and history.

In a literary point of view "An Englishman in Italy," in the last century, would be suggestive of a classical tour like that of Addison and Eustace,—a field of study and speculation quite apart from the people of the country, who, except for purposes of deprecatory contrast, would probably be ignored; and, in our own times, the idea is rather identified with caricature than sympathy,—we associate these insular travellers with exclusiveness and prejudice. As a general rule, they know little and care less for the fellow-creatures among whom they sojourn, holding themselves aloof, incapable of genial relations, and owning no guide to foreign knowledge but Murray and the Times. Farce and romance have long made capital out of this obtuse and impervious nationality; and it is the more refreshing, because of the general rule, to note a noble exception,—to see an Englishman, highly educated, studious, domestic, and patriotic, yet dwelling in Italy, not to despise and ignore, but to interpret and endear the country and people,—making his hospitable dwelling, with all its Italian trophies and traits, the favorite rendezvous for the best of his countrymen and the native society,—there discussing the principles and prospects of civic reform, doing honor to men of genius and aspiration, irrespective of race,—blending in his salon the scholarly talk of Landor with the fervid pleas of "Young Italy," giving equal welcome to English radical, Piedmontese patriot, American humanitarian, and Tuscan dilettante,—and thus, as it were, recognizing the free and faithful spirit of modern progress and brotherhood amid the old armor, bridal chests, parchment tomes, quaintly carved chairs, and other mediæval relics of a Florentine palazzo.

But this cosmopolitan candor, so rare as a social phenomenon among the English in Italy, is no less characteristic of Adolphus Trollope as a writer. As he entertained, in his pleasant, antique reception-room or garden-terrace, disciples of Cavour, of Mazzini, and of Gioberti, with men and women of varied genius and opposite convictions from England and the United[Pg 477] States, extending kindly tolerance or catholic sympathy to all, so he sought, in the history of the past and the facts of the present in the land of his love and adoption, evidences of her vital worth and auspicious destiny. Long residence abroad liberalized, and long study enriched, a mind singularly just in its appreciation, and a heart naturally kind and expansive. All his friends recognize in Adolphus Trollope that rare union of rectitude and reflection which constitutes the genuine philosopher. Mrs. Browning aptly called him Aristides. Thus living in the atmosphere of broad social instincts, and sharing the literary faculty and facility of his family, this Englishman in Italy set himself deliberately to study the country of his sojourn, in her records, local memorials, and social life, and, having so studied, to reproduce and illustrate the knowledge thus gleaned, with the fidelity of an annalist and the tact of a raconteur. It was a noble and pleasant task, and has been nobly and pleasantly fulfilled. Let us note its chief results, and honor the industry, truth, and humane wisdom manifest therein.

The range of Mr. Trollope's investigations may be appreciated by the fact that, while he is the author of "A History of Florence from the Earliest Independence of the Commune to the Fall of the Republic in 1531," he has also given to the press the most clear and reliable account of the revolution of our own day, under the title of "Tuscany in 1849"; thus supplying the two chronicles of the past and the present which together reveal the origin, development, and character of the state and its people. In the Preface to the former work he suggests this vital connection between the ancient republic and the modern city. "It contains," he observes, "such an exposition of the old Guelph community as sufficiently demonstrates the fitness of this culmination of the grand old city's fortunes." It is this liberal and comprehensive tone, this "looking before and after," which, united to careful research and patient narration, renders the author so well equipped and inspired for his task. He has brought together the essential social and political facts of the past, and, associating them with local traits and transitions, enabled us to realize the rise, progress, and alternations of the Italian state, as it is next to impossible for the Anglo-Saxon reader to do while exploring the partial, prejudiced, and complicated annals of the native historians. This is a needful, a timely, and a gracious service, for which every intelligent and sympathetic traveller who has learned to love the Tuscan capital, and grown bewildered over the complex story of her civil strifes, will feel grateful, while his obligations are renewed by the moderate but candid statement of those later movements, which, culminating in a childlike triumph, were followed by a reaction whose hopelessness was more apparent than real, and has subsequently proved an auspicious trial and training for the discipline and privileges of constitutional liberty.

The "History of Florence" is remarkable for the skilful method whereby the author has arranged, in luminous sequence, a long and confused series of political events. He has confined his narrative to the essential points of an intricate subject, omitting what is of mere casual or local interest, and aiming to elucidate the civic growth of the little city on the banks of the Arno. It is an admirable illustration of the conservative principles of free municipal institutions in the Middle Ages, notwithstanding their limited sway and frequent perversion. There is no attempt at rhetorical display, but great precision and authenticity of statement, and a conscientious citation of authorities; the style often lapses into colloquial freedom, not inappropriate to the familiar discussion of some of the curious details involved in the theme; and there are episodes of judicious and philosophical comment, with apt historical parallels, not a few of which come home to our recent national experience.[Pg 478] The author's previous studies in Italian history, and intimate familiarity with the scene of his chronicle, give him a grasp and an insight which render his treatment at once thorough, sensible, and facile. But it is upon the more special subjects of Italian history that Mr. Trollope has expended his time and talents to the best advantage,—subjects chosen with singular judgment and imbued with fresh local and personal interest.

The scope and method of these historical studies are such as at once to embody and illustrate what is normally characteristic in time, place, and individual, while completeness of treatment is secured, and a person and period made suggestive of a comprehensive historical subject. Thus in "The Girlhood of Catharine de' Medici" we have the key to her mature and relentless bigotry, the logical origin of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, while, at the same time, the discipline of a convent and the intrigues of a ruling family in the Middle Ages are elaborately unfolded. Grouped around and associated with so remarkable an historical woman, they have a definite significance to the modern reader, otherwise unattainable; the Palazzo Medici, the Convents of St. Mark, Santa Lucia, and Murate, become scenes of personal interest; the Cardinal Clement and Alessandro, in their relation to the young Catharine, grow more real in their subtlety, family ambitions, and unscrupulous tyranny; and the surroundings, superstition, fanaticism, and domestic despotism which attended the forlorn girl until she became the wife of Henry of France, explain her subsequent career and execrated memory. Incidentally the life of mediæval Tuscany is also revealed with authentic emphasis. In "Paul the Pope and Paul the Friar," all the singular circumstances whereby a priest of Rome became the instrument of striking the first effectual blow at her absolute spiritual dominion are narrated with precision and tact. The prolonged quarrel between the Vatican and the Republic of Venice, the ecclesiastical and civic power, then opened the way to human freedom, and Sarpi is truly exhibited as the pioneer reformer. His liberal studies, foreign friends, and independent and intrepid mind rendered him admirably fitted for the task he undertook, and the Papal government only added infamy to despotism by the baffled attempt to assassinate him. It is difficult to imagine a better introduction to the subsequent history of free thought and spiritual emancipation, which culminated in the Reformation, than this biographical sketch, where a great historical development is made clear and dramatic by the carefully told story of the lives of the two chief actors and agents therein.

There is a power in the state, unofficial, but essential, and therefore more intimately blended with its welfare and identified with its fortunes than pope, emperor, or prince,—and that is the Banker. Even in modern times the life of such a financier as Lafitte is part of the social and political history of France; but in mediæval times, when "the sinews of war" and the wages of corruption so often turned the scale of ambition and success, the rich bankers of the Italian cities were among the most efficient of their social forces and fame. In writing the memoirs of Filippo Strozzi, Mr. Trollope struck the key-note of local associations in the Tuscan capital. The least observant or retrospective stranger is impressed with the sight of the massive walls and grated windows of the Strozzi Palace, and is attracted by such a monument of the past to the story of its founder. A standard drama and novel were long since made to illustrate those annals,[15] but it was reserved for an Englishman in Italy to record, in a well-digested and authentic narrative, the career of Filippo, whose immense wealth, marriage to a Medici, family ambition, scholarship, political and social distinction, enterprise, and luxury, and[Pg 479] especially his financial relations with both rulers and ruled, make him one of those central figures of an historic group that serve as expositors of the time. He was indeed, by his accomplishments and his profligacy, his intrigues and associations, his alliances and enmities, his domestic and his political life, a representative man, whose character and career aptly embody and illustrate a most stirring era of European and Italian history. He escorted Catharine de' Medici on her bridal journey from Florence, talked philosophy at Medicean banquets, was closeted with popes and kings, was the boon companion of reigning dukes, a courtier to princes and people, a magnificent entertainer, a fugitive, exile, prisoner, sceptic, scholar, and suicide,—typifying in his life the luxury and lawlessness, the culture and the crime, the splendor and the degradation, the manners and morals, of his country and his age,—and hence a most instructive biographical study, which Mr. Trollope has treated with equal fulness, insight, and authenticity.

But the most felicitous of the series is the "Decade of Italian Women." The idea of this work is worthy of a philosopher, and its execution, of a humane scholar. It has long been an accepted theory, that, to understand the talent and pervasive spirit of an age or country, we must look to the influence and character of the women. A subtile social atmosphere exhales from their presence and power in the state and the family; and the dominant elements of faith, as well as the tone of manners and the tendencies of character, find in the best endowed and most auspiciously situated of the sex, an embodiment and inspiration which are the most authentic, because the most instinctive, test and trait of the life of the time. Shakespeare has, with exquisite insight and memorable skill, illustrated this representative function of woman by creating types of female character which, while they modify and mould persons and events, preserve intact their essential quality of sex, and yet represent none the less the spirit and manners of their respective epochs. Scott has done the same thing in an historical direction, that Shakespeare realized in a psychological way. We regard it, therefore, as a most judicious experiment to indicate the characteristics of mediæval Italy by delineating her representative women. They inevitably lead us to the heart of things,—to the palace, the convent, the court, the vigil of battle, and the triumph of art,—to the loves of warrior, statesman, and priest,—to the inmost domestic shrine,—to the festival and the funeral; and all this we behold, not objectively, but through our vivid interest in a noble, persecuted, saintly, impassioned, or gifted woman, and thus partake, as it were, of the life of the age, realize its inspiration, recognize its meaning, in a manner and to a degree impossible to be derived from the formal narrative of events, without a central figure or a consecutive life which serves as a nucleus and a link, giving vital unity and personal significance to the whole.

The period of time embraced in these female biographies extends from the birth of St. Catherine of Siena, in 1347, to the death of the celebrated improvvisatrice Corilla, in 1800. With the career of each is identified a salient phase of Italian history, manners, or character; incident to the experience of all are special localities, political and social conditions, relations of art, of faith, of culture, of rule, and of morals, whereby we obtain the most desirable glimpses of the actual life and latent tendencies of Italy, considered as the focus of European civilization. We gaze upon a woman's portrait, but beyond, beside, and around her are the warriors, statesmen, prelates, poets, and people of her time. Through her triumphs and trials, her renown or degradation, her love, ambition, sorrows, virtues, or sins, we feel, as well as see, the vital facts of her age and country. Nor is this all: each character is not only full[Pg 480] of interest in itself, but is essentially typical and representative. Thus we have the fair saint of the Middle Ages, the energetic and sagacious ruler, the gracious reformer, the artist, the near kinswoman of prince or ecclesiastic, the poetess, the châtelaine, the nun, the profligate, the powerful, the beautiful, and the base,—all the forms and forces of womanly influence as modified by the life of the time and country. They move before us a grand procession, now awakening admiration and now pity, here ravishing in beauty or genius and there forlorn in disaster or disgrace, yet always bearing with them the strong individuality and attractive expression which, to the imagination, so easily transforms the heroines of history into the ideals of the drama, or the characters of romance. And yet in these delineations the author has indulged in no rhetorical embellishments: he has arrived simply, and sometimes sternly, at the clear statement of facts, and left them to convey their legitimate impression to the reader's mind. The lives of many of these women have been written before, some of them elaborately; but they are here grouped and contrasted as illustrative of national life, and hence gain a fresh charm and suggestiveness, especially as the fruits of research and the method of a disciplined raconteur are blent with the light and life of personal observation as to scenes and memorials,—the land where they once dwelt, its natural aspect and ancient trophies, being fondly familiar to the biographer. Eloquent memoirs of female sovereigns have become popular through the genial labors of Agnes Strickland and Mrs. Jameson, while Shakespeare's women furnish a perpetual challenge to psychological critics; but the "Decade of Italian Women" has a certain unity of aim and relative interest which makes it, as a literary record, analogous to a complete, though limited, gallery of family portraits, inasmuch as, however diverse the characters, they own a common bond of race and nationality, and are memorable exemplars thereof. First in the list is Catherine of Siena, the Saint,—an accurate mediæval religious delineation which all who have visited the old city where her relics are preserved and her name reverenced will value. Then we have Catherine Sforza,—the fair representative of one of those powerful and princely families whose history is that of the state they rule. Next comes the noblest and most gifted woman of the Middle Ages, the friend of Michel Angelo, the ideal of a wife, and a lady of culture, genius, and patriotism,—Vittoria Colonna. The Bishop of Palermo's illegitimate daughter—a famous poetess, Tullia d' Arragona—precedes the learned, pure, intrepid Protestant, Olimpia Morata, who takes us to the court of Ferrara in its palmy days, to show how "like a star that dwells apart" is a woman of rectitude and wisdom and faith amid the shallow, the sensual, and the bigoted. The renowned Paduan actress, Isabella Adrieni, gives us a striking illustration of the influence, traits, and triumphs of histrionic genius in Italy of old; while among the prone towers and gloomy arcades of Bologna we become intimate with the chaste and charming aspirations and skill of Elisabetta Sirani, whose pencil was the pride of the city, and whose character hallows her genius. Of La Corilla it is enough to say, that she was the original of Madame de Staël's "Corinne"; and no woman could have been more wisely selected to represent the fascination, subtlety, force of purpose, ambition, resources, passion, and external success of an unprincipled patrician Italian beauty of the Middle Ages than Bianca Capello.

With such a basis of research it is easy to infer how authentic, as a picture of life, would be the superstructure of romantic fiction by an author adequately equipped. Accordingly, the Italian novels of Thomas Adolphus Trollope are most accurate and detailed reflections of local characteristics; they are full of special information; and, while they enlighten the novice as[Pg 481] to the domestic economy, habits, ways of thinking, costume, and social traditions of the people, they revive, with singular freshness, to the mind of one who has sojourned in Italy, every particular of his experience,—not only the corso, the opera, and the carnival, but the meals, the phraseology, the household arrangements,—all that is most individual in a district, with all that is most general as nationally representative. Indeed, not a fact or trait of modern Tuscan life seems to have escaped the author's vigilant observation and patient record; the life of the effete noble, the frugal citizen, the shrewd broker, the pampered, ecclesiastic, the peasant, and the artist is revealed with the most precise and graphic detail. We are taken to the promenade and the caffè, to the piazza and the church, to the farm-house and the palazzo; and there we see and hear the actual everyday intercourse of the people. The Tuscan character is drawn to the life, without exaggeration, and even in its more evanescent, as well as normal traits; its urbanity, gossip, thrift, geniality, self-indulgence, and latent courage are admirably delineated; its superior refinement, sobriety, love of show, and class peculiarities are truly given; the old feudal manners that linger in modern civilization are accounted for and illustrated, especially in the relation of dependants "occupying every shade of gradation between a common servant and a bosom friend." The author's ecclesiastic portraits are as exact, according to our observation, as his brother's. Each class of Italian priests is portrayed with discrimination, and no writer has better exemplified the paralyzing and perverting influence of Romanism upon the integrity of domestic life, and the purity and power of political aspirations. The women, too, are typical,—remarkably free from fanciful embellishment, eloquent of race, instinct with nature. Their limited culture, social prejudices, artless charms, frugal lives, naïve or reticent characters, as modified by town and country, patrician or popular influences, we recognize at once as identical with what we have known in the households or social circles of Florence. Mr. Trollope, in all this, is a Flemish artist, and, as much of the interest of his pictures depends on their truthfulness, perhaps they are really appreciated only by those who have enjoyed adequate opportunities of becoming intimate with the original scenes, situations, and personages depicted. In the fidelity of his art he abstains from all attempts at brilliancy, and ignores the intense and highly dramatic, finding enough of wholesome interest in the real life around him, and well satisfied to reproduce it with candor and sympathy; now and then indulging in a philosophical suggestion or a judicious comment, and thus gradually, but securely, winning the grateful recognition of his reader.

"La Beata" as completely takes those familiar with its scene into the life and moral atmosphere of Florence, as does "The Vicar of Wakefield" into the rural life of England before the days of railways and cheap journalism. The streets, the dwellings, the people and incidents are so truly described, the perspective is so correct, and the foreground so elaborate, that, with the faithful local coloring and naïve truth of the characters, we seem, as we read, to be lost in a retrospective dream,—the more so as there is an utter absence of the sensational and rhetorical in the style, which is that of direct and unpretending narrative. The heroine is a saintly model, though at the same time a thoroughly human girl,—such a one as the artistic, superstitious, frugal, and simple experience of her class and of the place could alone have fostered; the artist-hero is no less characteristic,—a selfish, clever, amiable, ambitious, and superficial Italian; while the old wax-candle manufacturer, with his domicile, daughter, and church relations, is a genuine Florentine of his kind. The life of the studio, then and there, is drawn from reality. The peculiar and traditional customs, social experience, church ceremonials, popular fêtes, home and heart life, have a[Pg 482] minute fidelity which renders the picture vivid and winsome to one who well knows and wisely loves the Tuscan capital. An English family delineated without the least exaggeration, and with the striking contrasts such visitors always present to the native scene and people of Italy, adds to and emphasizes the salient traits of the story. Among the subjects described and illustrated with remarkable tact and truth is that most interesting charitable fraternity, the Misericordia, of which every stranger in Florence has caught impressive glimpses, but of whose social influence and real significance few are aware. Add to this the description of Camaldoli, with its famous pines, its Dantesque associations, and its remorseful convent, and we have a scope and detail in the scene and spirit of this little local romance which concentrate the points of interest in Florentine life and bring into view all that is most familiar and characteristic in the place and people. We see the gay boats on St. John's eve from the bridges of the Arno, the procession of the black Madonna, the interior of the studios, the ceremonies, the saintly traffic and social subterfuge and naïve manners,—the tradesman, painter, devotee, priest,—pride, piety, and passion,—whereof even the casual observation of a traveller's sojourn had given us so curious or attractive an idea, that, thus expanded and defined, they seem like a personal experience. There is singular pathos in the character and career of La Beata, as there is in the expression of Santa Filomena for which she was the recognized and inspired model. The integrity of her sentiment is as Southern-European as is her lover's falsehood and voluntary expiation. That absolute ignorance of the world and childlike trust, which we rarely meet except in Shakespeare's women, is a moral fact of which the stranger in Italy, who has grown intimate with families of the middle class, is cognizant, and which he is apt to recall as one of those elemental and primitive phases of human nature which justify the most pure and plaintive creations of the poet. Herein the author has shown an insight as honest and suggestive as his keen and patient observation and candid record thereof.

"Marietta" is the genuine embodiment of that local attachment and ancestral pride so remarkable in the mediæval Florentines, and still manifest in an exceptional class of their descendants. The modern life of a decayed branch of the Tuscan nobility in the nineteenth century, the process and method of its decadence, the charm of "a local habitation and a name," once identified with the vital power of the old republic, and the sad, effeminate, yet not unromantic sentiment incident to its passing away, through the prosperous encroachments of new men, with whom money is the power once only attached to birth, are most aptly described. The thrifty farmer of the Apennine, and his slow and handsome son, are capital types of the frugal and shrewd fattore and rustic proprietor of Tuscany; and his more astute and polished brother is equally typical of the old money-lender and goldsmith of the Ponte Vecchio. Simon Boccanera well represents the tasteful artificer of Florence, and the Gobbo the feudal devotee, whose political faith has been expanded by French ideas. In the bon vivant, the amateur musician, the amiable and easy Canonico Lunardi, what a true portrait of the priestly epicure, the self-indulgent but kindly churchman of the most urbane of Italian communities, and in the Canon of San Lorenzo, how faithful a picture of the elegant and unscrupulous aspirant and intriguer! The two girls of the story are veritable specimens, in looks, dress, talk, domestic aspect and aptitudes, not only of Italian maidenhood, but of that of the state and city of their birth,—such maidens as are only encountered on the banks of the Arno. This pleasant story takes us into one of those massive old Florentine palaces, with its lofty loggia overlooking mountain, river, olive orchard and vineyard, dome and tower,—its adjacent church with the family chapel and ancestral effigies,—its[Pg 483] several floors let out as lodgings,—its heavy portal, stone staircase, faded frescos, barred windows, paved court-yard, moss-grown statues, and damp green garden. We recognize the familiar elements of the local life,—the frugal dinner, the wine flask, the coal-brazier, the antique lamp, the violin, the snuff-box, the ample coarse cloak, the frugality, bonhommie, shrewdness, proverbs, greetings, grace, cheerfulness, chat, rural and city traits, prejudices, pride, and pleasantness of Tuscan life and character. These all appear in suggestive contrast, and with accurate detail, woven into a tale which breathes the very atmosphere of the place.

"Giulio Malatesta," on the other hand, opens with distinctive glimpses of an old Italian university town; initiates us into the prolonged and patient political conspiracies of Romagna and the ideal hopes of Gioberti's disciples. Its hero is a student at Pisa, and one of the brave champions of Italy who led the Tuscan volunteers to patriotic martyrdom, in 1848, at Curtone. Nowhere have we read so graceful and graphic a picture of that noble episode in the history of Tuscany, which redeemed her character and proved the latent manliness of her children. There is a touching similarity between the description of the march of the Corpo Universitario from Pisa to the Mincio,—the fight at the mill, and the death of the generous and lovely boy, Enrico Palmieri,—and recent scenes in our own civil war, wherein appeared the same youthful enthusiasm and utter inexperience, the same hardships and fortitude, valor and faith. In striking contrast with, these scenes of battle and self-sacrifice, including the tragic incidents attending the third anniversary of the Tuscan martyrs in the church of Santa Croce at Florence, three years later, are the episodes of fashionable and carnival life in that delightful capital. The Cascine and the Pergola are reproduced with all their gay life and license; the Contessa Zenobia and her cavalier servente, so comical, yet true, are but slight exaggerations of what many of us have witnessed and wondered at. Provincial and conventual life in Italy is photographed in this story; fresh forms and phases of the ecclesiastical element are incarnated from careful observation; and the political feeling, faith, and transitions of the period are vividly illustrated. Carlo, the young noble, is a true portrait of the kindly, genial, but shallow and pleasure-seeking Florentine youth of the day, such as we have loitered with on the promenade and chatted beside at the Caffè Doney,—without convictions, playful, always half in love, with a little stock of philosophy and a lesser one of religion, yet alert to do a kindness,—full of tact, charming in manner, tasteful and tolerant, with no higher aim than being agreeable and ignoring care,—impatient of duty, fond of pastime, utterly incapable of giving pain or attempting hard work. His friend Giulio Malatesta, on the other hand, adequately personifies the earnest, thoughtful, and patriotic Italian, to whom Viva l' Italia! means something,—who is ready to suffer for his country, and who knows her poets by heart, believes in her unity, and has boundless faith in her future. Francesca Varini is described with an exactitude which defines her peculiar charms and traits to any reader who has fondly noted the modifications of female beauty and character incident to race and locality in Italy; and old Marta Varini is such a stoical, acute, and persistent woman as signalized the days of the Carbonari; while Stella and Madalina are local heroines with characteristic national traits.

In "Beppo the Conscript" we are transported to "the narrow strip of territory shut in between the Apennines and the Adriatic, to the south of Bologna and the north of Ancona," where European civilization once centred, Tasso sung and raved, and the Dukes of Urbino flourished. But not to revive their past glories are we beguiled to the decayed old city of Fano, and the umbrageous valleys that[Pg 484] nestle amid the surrounding hills; it is the normal, primitive, agricultural life and economy of the region, and the late political and social condition of the inhabitants, which this story illustrates. The means and methods of rural toil,—the "wine, corn, and oil" of Scriptural and Virgilian times; the avarice, the pride, the love, the industry, and the superstition of the Contadini of the Romagna; a household of prosperous rustics, their ways and traits; and the subtle and prevailing agency of priest-craft in its secret opposition to the new and liberal Italian government,—are all exhibited with a quiet zest and a graphic fidelity which take us into the heart of the people, and the arcana, as well as the spectacle, of daily life as there latent and manifest. The domestic, peasant, and provincial scenes and characters are drawn with fresh and natural colors and faithful outlines.

The scene of the last-published domestic novel [16] of the series is laid at Siena; and, although the story is based upon one of those impassioned tragedies of love and jealousy which can only be found in the family chronicles of Italy, the still-life, social phases, and local traits of the romance are delineated with the same quiet simplicity and graphic truth which constitute the authenticity of the author's previous delineations of modern Italian life. The grave, conservative, and old-fashioned Tuscan city reappears, with its mediæval aspect and traditional customs. Convent education, the homes of the patrician and the citizen, the little gig of the fattore, with the small, wiry ponies of the region, the local antiquarian and doctor, the letter-carrier, family servant, lady-superior, pharmacist, the noble and plebeian, the costumes, phrases, and natural language characteristic of that non-commercial and isolated Tuscan city before the days of railroads and annexation, are drawn with emphasis and significant detail. Shades and causes of character are finely discriminated; the old mediæval festa peculiar to Siena, with all its original features and social phenomena, is vividly enacted in the elaborate description of the "Palio" on the 15th of August; while the insalubrious and picturesque Maremma is portrayed, from the Etruscan crypts of the ravines to the desolate streets of Savona, by an artistic and philosophic hand. Incidentally the solidarity of families and the antagonism of contrade, dating from the Middle Ages, are defined in explanation of modern traits. We pace the bastions of the fortress built by Cosmo de' Medici for "the subjection of his newly conquered subjects"; we haunt the cabinet of a numismatic enthusiast, and the forlorn palace-chamber of a baffled and beautiful scion of the old, fierce Orsini race; we overhear the peasants talk, and watch the exquisite gradations of color at sunset on the adjacent mountains, across the lonely plains, or gaze down upon St. Catherine's house in the dyers' quarter, and muse in deserted church, urban garden, and precipitous street, consciously alive the while to the aspect and atmosphere, not only of the Siena we have visited or imagined, but of mediæval Tuscany, and its language and life of to-day, as they are incidentally reflected in the experience of a few distinctly individualized and harmoniously developed characters,—true to race, period, and locality, and far more complete and authentic, as a record and revelation, than dry annals on the one hand, or superficial travel-sketches on the other.

The justice which these writings display, in revealing the latent goodness in things evil, the instinctive and spiritual graces as well as the social perversions of the Italian character, is quite as refreshing as the correct observation of external traits and the true record of historical causes. A generous and intelligent sympathy imparts "a precious seeing to the eye" of the agreeable story-teller, who has thus patiently and fondly explored the past, delineated the present, and hailed the future of Italy, in a spirit of liberal wisdom and true humanity.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] A History of Florence, in four volumes; Paul the Pope and Paul the Friar; Filippo Strozzi; The Girlhood of Catharine de' Medici; A Decade of Italian Women; Tuscany in 1849; La Beata; Marietta; Giulio Malatesta; Beppo the Conscript. London: Chapman and Hall. 1856-1865.

[14] Lindisfarn Chase. Harper and Brothers, 1863. Life of Vittoria Colonna. Sheldon & Co., 1859.

[15] Filippo Strozzi, Tragedia par G. B. Niccolini. Luisa Strozzi, Romanzo par G. Rossini.

[16] Gemma. A Novel in three volumes. London: Chapman and Hall. 1866.

A NATIVE OF BORNOO.

Nicholas Said, at the time of his enlistment in the army of the Union, during the third year of the great Rebellion, was about twenty-eight years of age, of medium height, somewhat slenderly built, with pleasing features, not of the extreme negro type, complexion perfectly black, and quiet and unassuming address.

He became known to the writer while serving in one of our colored regiments; and attention was first directed to his case by the tattooing on his face, and by the entry in the company descriptive book, which gave "Africa" as his birthplace.

Inquiry showed that he was more or less acquainted with seven different languages, in addition to his native tongue; that he had travelled extensively in Africa and Europe, and that his life had been one of such varied experience as to render it interesting both on that account and also on account of the mystery which surrounds, notwithstanding recent explorations, the country of his birth.

At the request of those who had been from time to time entertained by the recital of portions of his history, he was induced to put it in writing. The narrative which follows is condensed from his manuscript, and his own language has been retained as far as possible.

Reader, you must excuse me for the mistakes which this article will contain, as you will bear in mind that this language in which I am now trying to write is not my mother tongue; on the other hand, I never had a teacher, nor ever was at school for the purpose of acquiring the English. The only way I learned what little of the language I know was through French books.

I was born in the kingdom of Bornoo, in Soodan, in the problematic central part of Africa, so imperfectly known to the civilized nations of Europe and America.

Soodan has several kingdoms, the country of the Fellatahs and Bornoo being the most powerful,—the territorial extent of the latter being some 810,000 square miles.

These nations are strict Mohammedans, having been converted some two or three centuries ago by the Bedouin Arabs and those from Morocco, who, pushed by want of riches, came to Soodan to acquire them. Different languages are found in each nation, some written and some not; but the Arabic is very much in use among the higher class of people, as the Latin is used by the Catholic priests. Especially the Koran is written in Arabic, and in my country no one is allowed to handle the Sacred Book unless he can read it and explain its contents.

Bornoo, my native country, is the most civilized part of Soodan, on account of the great commerce carried on between it and the Barbary States of Fezzan, Tunis, and Tripoli. They export all kinds of European articles to Central Africa, and take gold-dust, ivory, &c., in return.

Bornoo has had a romantic history for the last one hundred years. The whole of Soodan, more than two thousand miles in extent, was once under the Maïs of Bornoo; but by dissensions and civil wars nearly all the tributaries north of Lake Tchad were lost. In 1809 a shepherd arose from the country of the Fellatahs and assumed the title of Prophet. He said to the ignorant portion of his countrymen, that Allah had given him orders to make war with the whole of Soodan, and had promised him victory. They believed his story, and the legitimate king was dethroned and the false prophet, Otman Danfodio, was proclaimed Emperor of the Fellatahs. The impostor went at once to work, and in less than two years conquered almost the whole of Soodan, excepting[Pg 486] Kanem, a tributary to my country. Bornoo, after a manly effort, was compelled by force of arms to submit to the yoke of the Fellatahs.

In 1815 Bornoo arose from its humiliating position, to shake off the yoke of Danfodio. Mohammed el Anim el Kanemy, the Washington of Bornoo, was the man who undertook to liberate his country and restore her former prestige. This immortal hero could collect from the villages of Bornoo but a few hundreds of horsemen; but in Kanem he got eight hundred men, and accepted an engagement with the enemy. He gained the first victory, and took such good advantage of his success, that in the space of two months he won forty battles, drove the enemy entirely out of Bornoo, and captured a great many places belonging to the Fellatahs.

At the close of the war, El Kanemy found himself at the head of twenty-eight thousand horsemen, and the real ruler of Bornoo. Like all great men, he refused the sceptre, and, going to the legitimate heir of the throne, Maïs Barnoma, told him he was at his disposal. Barnoma, notwithstanding the noble actions of El Kanemy, was jealous of his fame, and tried a plan to dispose of him, which he thought would be best, and of which the public would not suspect him. Accordingly he wrote to the king of Begharmi, promising to pay the expenses of his troops, and some extra compensation beside, if he would make as though he were really at war with Bornoo. He agreed to the proposal, and crossed with his army the great river Shary, the natural frontier of the two kingdoms. El Kanemy was then in the city of Kooka, which he had built for himself. He heard finally of the war between Bornoo and Begharmi, and, hastily calling out his ancient veterans, he reported to Engornoo, where the king resided. The combined forces numbered some forty thousand men. El Kanemy knew nothing of the infamous act of the king; but Allah, who protects the innocent and punishes the guilty, was smiling over him. The armies pitched their camps opposite to each other; and the king of Begharmi sent a messenger with a letter to Maïs Barnoma, informing him that the heaviest assault would be made upon the left, and that, if he would give El Kanemy command there, the bravest of the assailants would surround and kill him at once. This letter the messenger carried to El Kanemy instead of the king, who, at once seeing the plot, immediately answered the important document, signing the name of Barnoma, and loading the messenger with presents of all descriptions for his master. The next morning El Kanemy went to the king and told him that the heaviest assault would be made on the right, and that he should not expose his precious life there. As Barnoma got no letter from the king of Begharmi, he thought El Kanemy was right, and acted accordingly.

The battle finally began, and the Sycaries of Begharmi, attacking the left where they thought El Kanemy was, surrounded Maïs Barnoma and killed him, supposing him El Kanemy. The battle, however, went on, and the king of Begharmi found out before long that he had killed the wrong lion. His army, in spite of their usual courage, were beaten, and obliged to recross the river Shary, at that place more than two miles wide, with a loss of half their number. The victorious army of El Kanemy also crossed the river, and, pursuing the retreating forces, captured Mesna, the capital of Begharmi, and drove the king into the country of Waday.

El Kanemy now found himself the absolute ruler of Bornoo, nor had that kingdom ever any greater ruler. Under his reign the nation prospered finely. He encouraged commerce with Northern and Eastern Africa, and, building a fleet of small vessels, sailed with a strong force against a tribe who inhabited the main islands of Lake Tchad, and who used to commit depredations upon the neighboring sections of Bornoo, and chastised them severely. These islanders are the finest type of the African race, possessing regular[Pg 487] features, and large, expressive eyes, though they are the darkest of all Africans. El Kanemy also subdued many of the surrounding tribes and nations, until the population of Bornoo and its provinces amounted to nearly fifteen millions.

My father was the descendant of a very illustrious family. He was the first man who had a commission under El Kanemy when he went to Kanem to recruit his forces. He was made a Bagafuby, or captain of one hundred cavalry, and was in every engagement which El Kanemy went through. The name by which my father was known was Barca Gana.[17] My great-grandfather was from Molgoi. He established himself in Bornoo many years ago, and was greatly favored by the monarchs of that country. My mother was a Mandara woman, the daughter of a chief. I was born in Kooka, a few years after the Waday war of 1831. We were in all nineteen children, twelve boys and seven girls. I was the ninth child of my mother. All my brothers were well educated in Arabic and Turkish. Two of them, Mustapha and Abderahman, were very rich, having acquired their wealth by trading in ivory and gold-dust. Both had been to Mecca as pilgrims. My father himself was rich, but when he was killed, our elder brother seized the greater part, and those who were not eighteen years of age had to leave their share in their mother's hands. Five cleared farms and a considerable amount of gold fell to my share. I do not know how much the gold amounted to, but my mother used to tell me, that, when I got to be twenty years of age, I would have as much as either of my elder brothers.

After my father's death I was given to a teacher to be instructed in my native tongue, and also in Arabic. In the space of three years I could read and write both languages. I was tried in my native tongue, and passed; but I could not pass in Arabic, and my mother and uncle returned me to the teacher for eighteen months. I stayed the required time, and then was tried and passed.

I was then old enough to be circumcised. Three hundred boys went through the ceremony at once, and were then dressed in white clothes, and received according to custom a great many presents. Fifteen days we ate the best that Kooka had, the king himself giving us the best he had in his palace. This generally happens only to the sons of those who have distinguished themselves in the army, or, to explain myself better, to those of the military aristocracy. At the end of this time all of us went home. For my part, this was the first time I had slept in my father's house for four years and seven months. I was very much welcomed by my mother, sisters, and brothers, and was a pet for some time.

After returning from school to my father's house, I judge about four or five years afterwards, I was invited, in company with three of my brothers, by the eldest son of the governor of the province of Yaoori and Laree, who lived in the town of the latter name, to visit him. This part of the province is very charming. The forests are full of delicious game, and the lake of fish and beautiful aquatic birds; while in the dry seasons the woods and uncultivated plains are worthy to be called the garden of Eden. In my childhood I had quite a passion for hunting, one of my father's great passions also. In spite of the efforts of my elder brothers to check me in it, I would persuade the other boys to follow me into the thick woods, to the danger of their lives and mine. My worthy mother declared several times that I would be captured by the Kindils, a wandering tribe of the desert. Her prophecy was fulfilled after all, unhappily for myself, and perhaps more so for those I had persuaded with me. While on the visit just spoken of, one day,—it was a Ramadan day, anniversary of the Prophet's day,—I persuaded a great number of boys, and we went into the woods a great way[Pg 488] from any village. We came across nests of Guinea fowl, and gathered plenty of eggs, and killed several of the fowl. We made fire by rubbing two pieces of dry stick together, and broiled the chickens and eggs. Then we proceeded farther, and came across a tree called Agoua, bearing a delicious kind of fruit. We all went up the tree, eating fruit and making a great deal of noise. We frolicked on that tree for many hours. Presently several of the boys told me they heard the neighing of horses. We then all agreed not to make so much noise, but we were just too late. In about a quarter of an hour we were startled by the cry, "Kindil! Kindil!" The boys who were nearest to the ground contrived to hide themselves in the thicket. It happened that I was higher than any one, and while coming down with haste, I missed my hold and fell, and lay senseless. When I opened my eyes, I found myself on horseback behind a man, and tied to him with a rope. Out of forty boys, eighteen of us were taken captive. I wished then that it was a dream rather than a reality, and the warnings of my mother passed through my mind. Tears began to flow down my cheeks; I not only lamented for myself, but for those also whom I persuaded into those wild woods. Meanwhile, our inhuman captors were laughing and talking merrily, but I could not understand them. About six hours' ride, as I suppose, brought us to their camp. The tents were then immediately taken down, the camels loaded, and we started again, travelling night, and day for three long days, until we came to a temporary village where their chief was. After we got there we were all chained together, except four, who were taken pity upon, on account of their age and birth. It was then night, and nearly all the camp was under the influence of hashish, an intoxicating mixture made of hemp-seed and other ingredients, which when too much is eaten will intoxicate worse than whiskey, or even spirits of wine. While the robbers were drunk, we boys were consulting and plotting to run away. We succeeded in breaking the chains, and four of the oldest boys took their captors' arms, cut their throats, jumped on their horses, and succeeded in making their escape. When it was found out, they gave each of us fifteen strokes in the hollows of our feet, because we did not inform them.

A little while after our comrades' escape we started on again. This time we had to go on foot for five days, until we reached a town called Kashna, belonging to the Emperor of the Fellatahs, but situated in the country of Houssa, where we were all dispersed to see each other no more. Fortunately, none of my brothers were with me in the woods.

My lot was that of an Arab slave, for I was bought by a man named Abd-el-Kader, a merchant of Tripoli and Fezzan. He was not an Arabian, however, but a brown-skinned man, and undoubtedly had African blood in his veins. He had at this time a large load of ivory and other goods waiting for the caravan from Kano and Sacca-too. This caravan soon came, and with it we started for Moorzook, capital of the pachalic of Fezzan. Although we numbered about five hundred, all armed except slaves who could not be trusted, a lion whom we met after starting, lying in our path, would not derange himself on our account, and we had to attack him. Twelve men fired into him. Four men he killed, and wounded five or six, and then escaped. He was hit somewhere, as they found blood where he lay, but it was not known where. When he roared, he scared all the horses and camels composing the caravan. Abd-el-Kader was one of those who attacked the lion, but he was not hurt.

Five days after we left Kashna, we came to the first oasis. Here the plains were all barren and sandy, but full of gazelles, antelopes, and ostriches. The principal tree growing here was the date-palm, and the water was very bad, tasting salty.

As the caravan travelled toward the east, the ground rose by degrees. If[Pg 489] I am not mistaken, we passed five oases before we came into the country of Tibboo, a mountainous region between Bornoo and Fezzan, the inhabitants of which suffer considerably from the Kindils, though they are also robbers themselves. The capital of Tibboo is Boolma, built on a high mountain. I was disappointed when I saw the city, for I had heard that it was quite a large place. Laree, the smallest town in Bornoo, is a place of more importance. The people of Tibboo are of dark-brown complexion, and are noted in Soodan for their shrewdness. The day that the caravan happened to be at Boolma, two parties were in a warlike attitude about a fair maid whom each wished their chief to have for a wife. We did not stay long enough to see the issue of the fight, and two days' journey took us out of the kingdom of Tibboo.

As soon as the oasis of Tibboo was left, the country became very rocky,—the rock being a kind of black granite; and the Arabs had to make shoes for both their camels and slaves, for the rocks were very sharp, and if this precaution had not been taken, in a few hours their feet would have been so cut that they could not have proceeded farther. Some Arabs would rather lose four or five slaves than a single camel. They rode very seldom. In a journey of ten or twelve weeks I saw Abd-el-Kader ride but once, and the majority never rode at all.

In these rocky regions of the desert a great amount of salt is found also,—what is called in our language Kalboo, and I believe, in English, carbonate of soda. Soodan is supplied by the Moors and Kindils with salt from the desert. Sea-shells are also occasionally found in this region. After we left Tibboo fire was never allowed, even in the oases, but I do not know for what reason.

The mountainous regions of the desert passed, we came to a more level country, but it was not long before we saw other mountains ahead. As we passed over the last of them, we found them very dangerous from their steepness, and a few camels were lost by falling into the ravines. After passing this dangerous place, a sign of vegetation was seen, oases were more frequent, and at last forests of date-palm, the fruit of which forms the principal food of both the inhabitants of Fezzan and their camels, became abundant.

El Kaheni is the first town or human habitation seen after leaving Tibboo. It is a small walled town, like all other places in Fezzan. Here I first saw the curious way in which the Fezzaneers cultivate their land by irrigation. Each farm has a large well, wide at the top and sloping toward the bottom, out of which water is drawn by donkeys, and poured into a trough, from which it runs into small ditches. This process is renewed every few days until the crop no longer needs watering.

The people of El Kaheni were very courteous. I had a long talk with a young man, who gave me a description of the capital, Moorzook, but his story did not agree with that which Abd-el-Kader told me. I afterwards found that the young man's story was correct. We left El Kaheni the next day, taking a large load of dates, superior to those of Soodan in size and sweetness. After three days' journey we could see in the distance a large flag on a long pole, on the top of the English Consulate, the largest house in the metropolis of Fezzan. We passed several villages of trifling importance, and at about noon arrived within the walls of Moorzook. There the caravan dissolved, and each man went to his own house.

I found Moorzook to be not larger than a quarter of my native town of Kooka; but the buildings were in general better, every house being of stone, though of course very poorly built in comparison with European dwellings. The city has four gates, one toward each cardinal point of the compass. The northern is the one by which the caravan entered; the eastern is a ruin; the southern, which is behind the Pacha's palace, has mounted[Pg 490] by it two guns of large calibre; while the western, and the best of all, is situated near the barracks, which are fine buildings, larger even than the Pacha's palace. The pachalic of Fezzan is a tributary of the Ottoman Porte, and the Pacha, a Turk, is very much hated by the Bedouins.

After reaching Abd-el-Kader's house, I found that he was a poor man. The reader can form some idea from his living in the capital, and having but one wife, all his property consisting of a piece of land about two and a half miles from the city, a few donkeys, ten camels, old and young, an Arab slave, and myself. While I was yet with him he bought also a young Fellatah girl. As soon as we arrived, he sent me with Hassan, his slave, to the farm, where I worked some fifteen days. I told him then that I was not used to such work, and prayed him to sell me to some Turk or Egyptian. He asked me what my father used to do, and I told him that he was a warrior and also traded in gold-dust and ivory. On hearing my father's name he opened his eyes wide, and asked me why I did not tell him that in Soodan. He had known my father well, but had not seen him for fifteen rainy seasons. From that day Abd-el-Kader was very kind to me, and said he had a great notion to take me back. He, however, sold me after all to a young Turkish officer named Abdy Agra, an excellent young man, full of life and fun. This officer was always with the Pacha, and I believe was one of his aides. His wife was a Kanowry woman. He used to bring home money every night and often gave me some. After he had dressed me up, I accompanied him to the Pacha's every day. He spoke my language very correctly, only with an accent, like all strangers trying to speak Kanowry, and he began to teach me Turkish. Strange to say, in Fezzan the Bornoo tongue is in great vogue, rich and poor speaking Kanowry. I stayed with Abdy Agra more than three months; but one day he told me that he had to send me to his father in Tripoli. So long as I had to be a slave, I hated to leave so excellent a man, but I had to go. Accordingly, when the caravan was to start, he sent me in charge of Abd-el-Kader, the man from whom he had bought me. Before leaving the city we went to a house that I had never seen before, and had our names registered in a book by a very benevolent-looking man, who wore spectacles on his eyes, something I had never seen before, and which made me afraid of him. As we passed out of the city gate we were counted one by one by an officer.

On our arrival at Tripoli, Abd-el-Kader took me to an old house in a street narrow and dirty beyond description, where we passed the night. The next morning he went with me to my new master, Hadji Daoud, the father of Abdy Agra. When we found him he was sitting on a divan of velvet, smoking his narghile. He looked at that time to be about forty-five years old, and was of very fine appearance, having a long beard, white as snow. Abd-el-Kader seemed well acquainted with him, for they shook hands and drank coffee together. After this we proceeded to the Turkish Bazaar, where I found that he was a merchant of tobacco, and had an extensive shop, his own property. Hadji Daoud had three wives; the principal one was an Arabian, one was a native of my country, and one, and, to do her justice, the best looking of them all, was a Houssa girl. He believed in keeping a comfortable table, and we had mutton almost daily, and sometimes fowls. He had but one son, and he was far away. He told me that he intended to treat me as a son, and every day I went to the shop with him. He treated me always kindly, but madam was a cross and overbearing woman.

About this time my master started on his third pilgrimage to Mecca, leaving a friend in charge of his store, and taking me with him. We went by sail from Tripoli to Alexandria, touching at Bengazi. From Alexandria we went by cars to Ben Hadad, thence to Saida[Pg 491] and Cairo, the capital of Egypt. From Cairo we travelled to Kartoom, at the forks of the Nile, and thence to Gondar, the capital of Abyssinia, where we stayed only twenty-four hours, my master being in continual fear of his life from the natives, who differed from him in belief, and then started for Zela, a port on the Red Sea. From Zela we sailed to Muscat, and thence proceeded to Mecca. I had not come of my own free will and for the express purpose of a pilgrimage, and therefore I was not permitted to go with Daoud to the grave of the Prophet, and was obliged to content myself without the title of Hadji, which is one much respected among the Mohammedans. We had returned as far as Alexandria on our way home, when my master was informed that his store and a great deal of property, in fact, all his goods and money, had been destroyed by fire. This made the good man almost crazy. He did not hesitate to tell me that he should have to sell me; but said that he would take care that I should have a rich and good master, a promise which he kept. The next day, with the present of a good suit of clothes, I was put on board a vessel bound for Smyrna and Constantinople. I was to be landed at the former city. On this vessel was a young man of eighteen, one of the crew, who spoke my own language. I have heard it only twice, I think, since that time.

At Smyrna I was sold to a Turkish officer, Yousouf Effendi, a very wealthy man, and brother-in-law to the celebrated Reschid Pacha, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He had a great many houses in Smyrna, as well as Constantinople. We sailed the next day for the latter city in a man-of-war steamer, the Abdul Medjid. My duty was that of a Tchidboudji, which consists in filling and cleaning the pipes and narghiles. This was all that I had to do, while I was well dressed in cloths and silks, and had plenty of leisure time. After a service of eighteen months with Yousouf Effendi, he gave me to his younger brother, Yousouf Kavass, less wealthy than himself. This brother was, however, a very kind-hearted man, and treated his slaves, a Nubian, a native of Sennar, and myself, very kindly. While in this service I became known to Prince Mentchikoff, the Envoy Extraordinary of Russia at Constantinople, and was finally sold to him by my master. At the declaration of the Crimean war, after sending his things on board the Russian steamer Vladimir, the Prince started with despatches for his august master, via Corfu, Athens, Zara, Trieste, Vienna, Cracow, and Warsaw, to St. Petersburg. I accompanied him on the journey, and, as the despatches were of the utmost importance, we travelled with the greatest speed.

The house of my master, to which we went, in St. Petersburg, was situated on the Nevskoi Prospekt, the Broadway of the city, and was built of granite, in the Doric style, and very spacious. His family consisted of his wife, one son, and three daughters, while his servants numbered about thirty. The Prince, however, was not so immensely rich as some Russian aristocrats of his standing. Shortly after his arrival at St. Petersburg, Prince Mentchikoff was assigned to command in the army of the Crimea, and he hastened there, leaving me in St. Petersburg. After his departure, not being satisfied with the way in which the head servant treated me, I engaged service with Prince Nicholas Troubetzkoy.

This family, better known as Le Grand Troubetzkoy, are descendants of the Grand Duke of Lithuania. The Prince's father was noted for skill and bravery in the war of 1828. The Troubetzkoys claim relationship with the Emperor of France, the Duc de Morny, the half-brother of the Emperor, having married the daughter of Prince Serges Troubetzkoy.

Prince Nicholas was the youngest of five sons, and lived with his brother André, not far from the Italian theatre, both of them being single.

While in this service, I was baptized[Pg 492] in St. Petersburg, November 12, 1855, into the Greek Church, my name being changed from Mohammed-Ali-Ben-Said to Nicholas Said. Prince Nicholas was my godfather. I shall always feel grateful, so long as I live, for Prince Nicholas's kindness to me; but I cannot help thinking that the way I was baptized was not right, for I think that I ought to have known perfectly well the nature of the thing beforehand. Still, it was a good intention the Prince had toward my moral welfare. After I was baptized he was very kind to me, and he bought me a solid gold cross to wear on my breast, after the Russian fashion. I was the Prince's personal servant, going always in the carriage with him.

As the Czar Nicholas was godfather to the Prince, he had free access to the palace. Though he had several chances to become minister at some European court, he always refused, preferring to live a life of inaction. His health, however, was not very good, and he was very nervous. I have seen him faint scores of time in Russia; but when he left Russia, his health began to improve very much.

Everybody acquainted with Russia knows that Czar Nicholas used to make all the aristocracy tremble at his feet. No nobleman, to whatever rank he might belong, could leave the country without his consent, and paying a certain sum of money for the privilege. This measure of the Czar was not very well liked by the nobility, but his will was law, and had to be executed without grumbling.

Prince Troubetzkoy had several times made application for permission to travel, but without success, so long as Czar Nicholas lived; for he hated liberal ideas, and feared some of his subjects might, in the course of time, introduce those ideas from foreign countries into Russia.

The Prince passed the summer season outside of the city, a distance of about twenty-five versts, at a splendid residence of his own, a marble house about the size of the Fifth Avenue Hotel of New York City. Adjoining it was a small theatre, or glass house, containing tropical fruits, and a menagerie, where I first saw a llama, and the interior of the palace was lined with pictures and statues. It was a magnificent building, but was getting to be quite old, and the Prince used to talk of repairing it, though he remarked it would cost many thousand roubles. This estate contained many thousand acres, and four good-sized villages, and was about eight miles square. I had here some of the happiest days of my life.

About this time I went with the Prince to Georgia,—his brother-in-law, a general in that department, having been wounded by the Circassians under Schamyl. We reached Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, in January, and remained there until after the capture of Kars by the English and Turks. While in the Caucasus, the Prince visited some of the neighboring parts of Persia, including Teheran and some smaller towns, and he returned to Russia by way of Novgorod.

After the death of Czar Nicholas, Alexander, his successor, gave the Prince permission to travel where he chose, without limit of time, and on the 24th of February he started, going first to Warsaw, and thence, via Cracow, to Vienna. Here I remained for two months, in charge of his effects, while he visited a sister in Pesth, in Hungary. On his return we went to Prague, and thence to Dresden. At this place, I was greatly bothered by the children. They said that they had never seen a black man before. But the thing which most attracted them was my Turkish dress, which I wore all the time in Europe. Every day, for the three weeks we remained in Dresden, whenever I went to take my walk I was surrounded by them to the number of several hundred. To keep myself from them, I used to ride in a carriage or on horseback, but this was too expensive. I thought the way I could do best was to be friendly with them. So I used to sit in the garden and[Pg 493] speak with them,—that is, those who could understand French. They took a great liking to me, for I used sometimes to buy them fruits, candies, and other things, spending in this way a large amount. Prince Troubetzkoy had a brother, Prince Vladimir, living in Dresden, a very handsome and a very excellent man, but suffering from consumption. He treated me very kindly, and when we left gave me several very interesting books, both religious and secular.

From Dresden we went to Munich, thence to Baden-Baden, Wiesbaden, Coblenz, Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Brussels, and Ostende; then, returning to Brussels, visited the field of Waterloo, and proceeded to Switzerland, passing through Berne, Interlachen, over the Jura and St. Gothard's, to Zurich. From Zurich we went to Como in Lombardy, where the Prince's eldest brother, Alexander, had a villa on the borders of the lake. After a short stay here, we went on to Verona, and then to Milan, where I was left while the Prince made a short visit to Venice. Here, while left alone, I did not behave as well as I might have done, sometimes drinking too much, and spending my money foolishly. Here also I saw, for the first time since leaving Africa, a countryman. He was named Mirza, and was born about thirty-five miles from Kooka, my native place. He was considerably older than I, and had been away from Africa some fifteen years. He was waiting on a Venetian Marquis whose name I have forgotten.

After a stay of four weeks in Milan, we started, via Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa, for Florence. Here I attended my master at two levees,—one at the palace of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, where I believe I had a better time than the Prince, and the other at Prince Demidoff's. This latter gentleman is a very wealthy Russian, and is very widely known. He is not a nobleman in Russia, however, but has his title from the Grand Duke. He is well known for the disagreeable propensity he has for beating his servants. While he was in Vienna he was worsted in an attempt to chastise a Hungarian footman, but he would not quit the practice, and has paid several fines imposed by law in consequence.

Our next stopping-place was Rome, where the Prince remained for the winter, making meanwhile a short visit to Naples, and leaving in the spring for Paris. We were in Paris when the Prince Imperial was born, and stayed until his christening, which was a very important day there. I remember well the wonder of a young Russian servant-girl, that France should have still so many soldiers as appeared in the procession,—a fraction only, of course, of her army,—after losing so many in the Crimea. The Prince always took a great pride in dress, both for himself and his servants, and particularly here. I was always dressed in Turkish costume, embroidered with gold, and never costing less than two or three hundred dollars.

After a three months' stay in Paris we went to London, where the Prince took rooms at a first-class boarding-house; but he was invited almost all the time to different country seats, where I had very gay times, for the English servants live better than any in Europe.

At the conclusion of his English visit, the Prince returned to Baden-Baden, this time renting a house. While there Napoleon III. passed through the place on his way to meet the Czar Alexander; and Prince Troubetzkoy was summoned to Frankfort-on-the-Main to attend on the latter. Here I was one day told by the Prince to dress myself in my best, and go to the Russian Ambassador's to wait on the Emperor at dinner. There were present beside the two Emperors, the King of Wurtemberg, the Grand Dukes of Baden, Hesse Darmstadt, and Nassau, the Ministers of France and Belgium, the Burgomaster of Frankfort, Messrs. Rothschild, and many others. A splendid dinner was served at six o'clock, the usual Russian dinner-hour, and was followed[Pg 494] by a ball, which continued until two in the morning. A day previous to the monarch's departure Prince Gortchakoff handed my master thirty thalers as a present for me.

About this time I began to think of the condition of Africa, my native country, how European encroachments might be stopped, and her nationalities united. I thought how powerful the United States had become since 1776, and I wondered if I were capable of persuading the kings of Soodan to send several hundred boys to learn the arts and sciences existing in civilized countries. I thought that I would willingly sacrifice my life, if need be, in realizing my dreams. I cried many times at the ignorance of my people, exposed to foreign ambition, who, however good warriors they might be, could not contend against superior weapons and tactics in the field. I prayed earnestly to be enabled to do some good to my race. The Prince could not but see that I was very sober, but I never told him my thoughts.

We stayed at Baden-Baden all summer and part of the fall, and then left for Paris. The Prince made this journey to visit his niece, who had just been married to the Duc de Morny, formerly the French Ambassador to Russia. She was a most beautiful person, only seventeen years of age. I was taken to see her, and kiss her hand, according to custom. She at first hesitated to give me her hand, undoubtedly being afraid. I had never seen her in Russia, as she was at the Imperial University, studying. After two weeks we again left Paris for Rome, via Switzerland, again passed the summer at Baden-Baden, again visited Paris, and various other points, until the year 1859 found the Prince again in London.

My desire to return to my native country had now become so strong, that I here told the Prince I must go home to my people. He tried to persuade me to the contrary, but I was inflexible in my determination. After he found that I was not to be persuaded, he got up with tears in his eyes, and said: "Said, I wish you good luck; you have served me honestly and faithfully, and if ever misfortune happens to you, remember I shall always be, as I always have been, interested in you." I, with many tears, replied that I was exceedingly thankful for all he had bestowed on me and done in my behalf, and that I should pray for him while I lived. I felt truly sorry to leave this most excellent Prince. As I was leaving, he gave me as a present two fifty-pound bills. It was many days before I overcame my regret. Often I could hardly eat for grief.

I now went to board at the Strangers' Home, at the West India Dock, five miles from where the Prince stopped. Here I waited for a steamer for Africa. Hardly had I been there two weeks, when a gentleman from Holland proposed to me a situation to travel with him in the United States and West India Islands. I had read much about these countries, and my desire to see them caused me to consent, and we left Liverpool soon after New Year's, 1860.

With this gentleman I went via Boston and New York to New Providence, Long Keys, Inagua, Kingston, Les Gonaives, St. Marc, Demerara, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and then back to New Providence, and from there by steamer to New York. We remained in New York two months, and then visited Niagara, Hamilton, Toronto, Kingston, Montreal, Quebec, and Ottawa, until, finally, at a small village called Elmer, my employer's funds gave out, and I lent him five hundred dollars of my own money. Of this five hundred I received back only three hundred and eighty, and this failure compelled me to remain in this country and earn my living by work to which I was unaccustomed.

At this point the written narrative of Nicholas ends, at some date during the year 1861. He afterward went to Detroit, and taught a school for those of his own color, meeting there, I believe, a clergyman whom he had seen years before in Constantinople, while a servant[Pg 495] to Prince Mentchikoff. At Detroit he enlisted in a colored regiment in the summer of 1863. He served faithfully and bravely with his regiment as corporal and sergeant in the Department of the South, and near the close of the war was attached, at his own request, to the hospital department, to acquire some knowledge of medicine. He was mustered out with the company in which he served, in the fall of 1865. But, alas for his plans of service to his countrymen in his native land! like many a warrior before him, he fell captive to woman, married at the South, and for some time past the writer, amidst the changes of business, has entirely lost sight of him.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Barca Gana is alluded to in the Encyclopædia Britannica (Vol. V. p. 54) as the general of the Scheik of Bornoo.—Eds.

BY-WAYS OF EUROPE.

FROM PERPIGNAN TO MONTSERRAT.

"Out of France and into Spain," says the old nursery rhyme; but at the eastern base of the Pyrenees one seems to have entered Spain before leaving France. The rich vine-plains of Roussillon once belonged to the former country; they retain quite as distinct traces of the earlier Moorish occupancy, and their people speak a dialect almost identical with that of Catalonia. I do not remember the old boundaries of the province, but I noticed the change immediately after leaving Narbonne. Vine-green, with the grays of olive and rock, were the only colors of the landscape. The tower, massive and perched upon elevations, spoke of assault and defence; the laborers in the fields were brown, dark-haired, and grave, and the semi-African silence of Spain seemed already to brood over the land.

I entered Perpignan under a heavy Moorish gateway, and made my way to a hostel through narrow, tortuous streets, between houses with projecting balconies, and windows few and small, as in the Orient. The hostel, though ambitiously calling itself an hotel, was filled with that Mediterranean atmosphere and odor which you breathe everywhere in Italy and the Levant,—a single characteristic flavor, in which, nevertheless, you fancy you detect the exhalations of garlic, oranges, horses, cheese, and oil. A mild whiff of it stimulates the imagination, and is no detriment to physical comfort. When, at breakfast, red mullet came upon the table, and oranges fresh from the tree, I straightway took off my Northern nature as a garment, folded it and packed it neatly away in my knapsack, and took out, in its stead, the light beribboned and bespangled Southern nature, which I had not worn for some eight or nine years. It was like a dressing-gown after a dress-coat, and I went about with a delightfully free play of the mental and moral joints.

There were four hours before the departure of the diligence for Spain, and I presume I might have seen various historical or architectural sights of Perpignan; but I was really too comfortable for anything else than a lazy meandering about the city, feeding my eyes on quaint houses, groups of people full of noise and gesture, the scarlet blossoms of the pomegranate, and the glitter of citron-leaves in the gardens. A one-legged fellow, seven feet high, who called himself a commissionnaire, insisted on accompanying me, and I finally accepted him, for two reasons;—first, he knew nothing whatever about the city; and secondly, tourists are so rare that he must have been very poor. His wooden leg, moreover, easily kept pace with my loitering steps, and though, as a matter of conscience, he sometimes volunteered a little information, he took[Pg 496] my silence meekly and without offence. In this wise, I gained some pleasant pictures of the place; and the pictures which come with least effort are those which remain freshest in memory.

There was one point, however, where my limping giant made a stand, and set his will against expostulation or entreaty. I must see the avenue of sycamores, he said; there was plenty of time; France, the world, had no such avenue; it was near at hand; every stranger went to see it and was amazed;—and therewith he set off, without waiting for my answer. I followed, for I saw that otherwise he would not have considered his fee earned. The avenue of sycamores was indeed all that he had promised. I had seen larger trees in Syria and Negropont, but here was a triple avenue, nearly half a mile in length, so trained and sculptured that they rivalled the regularity of masonry. Each trunk, at the height of ten or twelve feet, divided into two arms, which then leaned outwards at the same angle, and mingled their smaller boughs, fifty feet overhead. The aisles between them thus took the form of very slender pyramids, truncated near the top. If the elm gives the Gothic, this was assuredly the Cyclopean arch. In the beginning, the effect must have been artificially produced, but the trees were now so old, and had so accustomed themselves to the forms imposed, that no impression of force or restraint remained. Through the roof of this superb green minster not a beam of sunshine found its way. On the hard gravel floor groups of peasants, soldiers, nurses, and children strolled up and down, all with the careless and leisurely air of a region where time has no particular value.

We passed a dark-haired and rather handsome gentleman and lady. "They are opera-singers, Italians," said my companion, "and they are going with you in the diligence." I looked at my watch and found that the hour of departure had nearly arrived, and I should have barely time to procure a little Spanish money. When I reached the office, the gentleman and lady were already installed in the two corners of the coupé. My place, apparently, was between them. The agent was politely handing me up the steps, when the gentleman began to remonstrate; but in France the regulations are rigid, and he presently saw that the intrusion could not be prevented. With a sigh and a groan he gave up his comfortable corner to me, and took the middle seat, for which I was booked! "Will you have your place?" whispered the agent. I shook my head. "You get the best seat, don't you see?" he resumed, "because—" But the rest of the sentence was a wink and a laugh. I am sure there is the least possible of the Don Juan in my appearance; yet this agent never lost an opportunity to wink at me whenever he came near the diligence, and I fancied I heard him humming to himself, as we drove away,—

"Ma—nella Spagna—mille e tre!"

I endeavored to be reasonably courteous, without familiarity, towards the opera-singers, but the effect of the malicious winks and smiles made the lady appear to me timid and oppressed, and the gentleman an unexploded mine of jealousy. My remarks were civilly if briefly answered, and then they turned towards each other and began conversing in a language which was not Italian, although melodious, nor French, although nasal. I pricked up my ears and listened more sharply than good manners allowed,—but only until I had recognized the Portuguese tongue. Whomsoever I may meet, in wandering over the world, it rarely happens that I cannot discover some common or "mutual" friend, and in this instance I determined to try the experiment. After preliminaries, which gently led the conversation to Portugal, I asked:—

"Very well!" was the reply. "He[Pg 497] is one of the most distinguished young men of science in Portugal."

The ice was thereupon broken, and the gentleman became communicative and agreeable. I saw, very soon, that the pair were no more opera-singers than they were Italians; that the lady was not timid, nor her husband jealous; but he had simply preferred, as any respectable husband would, to give up his comfortable seat rather than have a stranger thrust between himself and his wife.

Once out of Perpignan, the Pyrenees lay clear before us. Over bare red hills, near at hand, rose a gray mountain rampart, neither lofty nor formidable; but westward, between the valleys of the Tech and the Tet, towered the solitary pyramid of the Canigou, streaked with snow-filled ravines. The landscapes would have appeared bleak and melancholy, but for the riotous growth of vines which cover the plain and climb the hillsides wherever there is room for a terrace of earth. These vines produce the dark, rich wine of Roussillon, the best vintage of Southern France. Hedges of aloes, clumps of Southern cypress, poplars by the dry beds of winter streams, with brown tints in the houses and red in the soil, increased the resemblance to Spain. Rough fellows, in rusty velvet, who now and then dug their dangling heels into the sides of the mules or asses they rode, were enough like arrieros or contrabandistas to be the real article. Our stout and friendly coachman, even, was hailed by the name of Moreno, and spoke French with a foreign accent.

At the post-station of Le Boulou, we left the plain of Roussillon behind us. At this end of the Pyrenean chain there are no such trumpet-names as Roncesvalles, Fontarabia, and the Bidassoa. Hannibal, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and the Saracens have marched through these defiles, and left no grand historic footprint, but they will always keep the interest which belongs to those natural barriers and division walls whereby races and histories were once separated. It was enough for me that here were the Pyrenees, and I looked forward, perhaps, with a keener curiosity, to the character and forms of their scenery, than to the sentiment which any historic association could produce. A broad and perfect highway led us through shallow valleys, whose rocky sides were hung with rows of olive-trees, into wilder and more abrupt dells, where vegetation engaged in a struggle with stone, and without man's help would have been driven from the field. Over us the mountains lifted themselves in bold bastions and parapets, disforested now, if those gray upper plateaus ever bore forests, and of a uniform slaty-gray in tone, except where reddish patches of oxidation showed like the rust of age.

But, like "all waste and solitary places," the scenery had its own peculiar charm. Poussin and Salvator Rosa would have seated themselves afresh at every twist of the glen, and sketched the new picture which it unfolded. The huge rocks, fallen from above, or shattered in the original upheaval of the chain, presented a thousand sharp, forcible outlines and ragged facets of shadow, and the two native growths of the Pyrenees—box and cork-oak—fringed them as thickets or overhung them as trees, in the wildest and most picturesque combinations. Indeed, during this portion of the journey, I saw scores of sketches waiting for the selected artist who has not yet come for them,—sketches full of strength and beauty, and with a harmony of color as simple as the chord of triple tones in music. When to their dark grays and greens came the scarlet Phrygian cap of the Catalonian, it was brighter than sunshine.

The French fortress of Bellegarde, crowning a drum-shaped mass of rock, which blocked up the narrow valley in front, announced our approach to the Spanish frontier. The road wound back and forth as it climbed through a stony wilderness to the mouth of a gorge under the fortress, and I saw, before we entered this last gateway into[Pg 498] Spain, the peak of the Canigou touched with sunset, and the sweep of plain beyond it black under the shadow of storm-clouds. On either side were some heaps of stone, left from forts and chapels of the Middle Ages, indicating that we had already reached the summit of the pass, which is less than a thousand feet above the sea-level. In ten minutes the gorge opened, and we found ourselves suddenly rattling along the one street of the gay French village of Perthus. Officers from Bellegarde sat at the table in front of the smart café, and drank absinthe; soldiers in red trousers chatted with the lively women who sold tobacco and groceries; there were trees, little gardens, arbors of vine, and the valley opened southwards, descending and broadening towards a cloudless evening sky.

At the end of the village I saw a granite pyramid, with the single word "Gallia" engraved upon it; a few paces farther two marble posts bore the half-obliterated arms of Spain. Here the diligence paused a moment, and an officer of customs took his seat beside the coachman. The telegraph-pole behind us was of barked pine, the next one in front was painted gray; the vente de tabac became estanco nacional, and the only overlapping of the two nationalities which I observed—all things else being suddenly and sharply divided—was that some awkward and dusty Spanish soldiers were walking up the street of Perthus, and some trim, jaunty French soldiers were walking down the road, towards the first Spanish wine-shop. We also went down, and swiftly, in the falling twilight, through which, erelong, gardens and fields began to glimmer, and in half an hour drew up in the little Spanish town of La Junquera, the ancient "place of rushes." Here there was a rapid and courteous examination of baggage, a call for passports, which were opened and then handed back to us without visé or fee being demanded, and we were declared free to journey in Spain. Verily, the world is becoming civilized, when Spain, the moral satrapy of Rome, begins to pull down her barriers and let the stranger in!

I inspected our "insides," as they issued forth, and found, in addition to a priest and three or four commercial individuals with a contraband air, a young French naval officer, and an old German who was too practical for a professor and too stubborn in his views to be anything else. He had made fifteen journeys to Switzerland, he informed me, knew Scotland from the Cheviots to John o' Groat's, and now proposed the conquest of Spain. Here Moreno summoned us to our places, and the diligence rolled onward. Past groups of Catalans, in sandals and scarlet bonnets, returning from the harvest fields; past stacks of dusky grain and shadowy olive-orchards; past open houses, where a single lamp sometimes flashed upon a woman's head; past a bonfire, turning the cork-trees into transparent bronze, and past the sound of water, plunging under the idle mill-wheel, in the cool, delicious summer air,—we journeyed on. The stars were beginning to gather in the sky, when square towers and masses of cubic houses rose against them, and the steady roll of our wheels on the smooth highway became a dreadful clatter on the rough cobble-stones of Figueras.

The Pyrenees were already behind us; the town overlooks a wide, marshy plain. But the mountains make their vicinity felt in a peculiar manner. The north-wind, gathered into the low pass of Bellegarde and drawn to a focus of strength, blows down the opening valley with a force which sometimes lays an embargo on travel. Diligences are overturned, postilions blown out of their saddles, and pedestrians carried off their feet. The people then pray to their saints that the tramontana may cease; but, on the other hand, as it is a very healthy wind, sweeping away the feverish exhalations from the marshy soil, they get up a grand annual procession to some mountain-shrine of the Virgin, and pray that it may blow. So, when the Virgin takes them at their word, the saints are invoked on the[Pg 499] other side, and the wonder is that both parties don't get out of patience with the people of Figueras.

The diligence drew up at the door of a fonda, and Moreno announced that we were to take supper and wait until midnight. This was welcome news to all; but the old German drew me aside as we entered the house, and whispered, "Now our stomachs are going to be tried." "Not at all," I answered, "we shall find very good provender." "But the guide-book says it is very bad," he persisted. And he looked despondent, even with a clean table-cloth and a crisp roll of bread before him, until the soup steamed under his nose. His face brightened at the odor, grew radiant at the flavor, and long before we reached the roast pullet and salad he expressed his satisfaction with Spanish cookery. With the dessert came a vino rancio, full of summer fire, and the tongues of the company were loosened. From the weather and the Paris Exposition we leaped boldly into politics, and, being on Spanish soil, discussed France and the Mexican business. The French officer was silent and annoyed: he was a pleasant fellow, and I, for one, had a little sympathy with his annoyance, but I could not help saying that all Americans (except the Rev. ——) considered the action of France as an outrage and an impertinence, and were satisfied with her miserable failure. The Spanish passengers nodded and smiled.

I should not have spoken, had I foreseen one consequence of my words. The German snatched the reins of conversation out of our hands, and dashed off at full speed, trampling France and her ruler under his feet. At the first pause, I said to him, in German: "Pray don't be so violent in your expressions,—the gentleman beside me is a naval officer." But he answered: "I don't care,—I must speak my mind, which I could not do in Paris. France has been the curse of Spain, as well as of all Europe, and there will be no peace until we put a stop to her pretensions!" Thereupon he said the same thing to the company; but the Spaniards were too politic to acquiesce openly. The officer replied, "France has not injured Spain, but, on the contrary, has protected her!" and he evidently had not the slightest suspicion that there was anything offensive in his words. The Spaniards still remained silent, but another expression came into their eyes. It was time to change the subject; so the principle of non-intervention, in its fullest, most literal sense, was proposed and accepted. A grave Majorcan gentleman distributed cigars; his daughter, with her soft, melodious voice, was oil to the troubled waters, and before midnight we were all equally courteous and cosmopolitan.

Of the four ensuing hours I can give no account. Neither asleep nor awake, hearing with closed eyes, or seeing with half-closed senses, one can never afterwards distinguish between what is seen and what is dreamed. This is a state in which the body may possibly obtain some rest, but the mind becomes inexpressibly fatigued. One's memory of it is a blurred sketch, a faded daguerreotype. I welcomed that hour when

"The wind blows cold
While the morning doth unfold,"

for it blew away this film, which usurped the place of the blessed mantle of sleep. Chill, even here in African Spain, where the pale pearl of the dawn foretold a burning noon, and where, in May, the harvests were already reaped, the morning brightened; but we were near the end of the journey. At sunrise, the towers of Giron stood fast and firm over the misty level of the shimmering olive-groves; then the huge dull mass of the cathedral, the walls and bastions of the hill-forts, which resisted a siege of seven months during the Peninsular war, and finally the monotonous streets of the lower town, through which we drove.

The industrious Catalans were already awake and stirring. Smokes from domestic hearths warmed the cool morning air; cheerful noises of men, animals, and fowls broke the silence; doors were open as we entered the town, and the women were combing[Pg 500] and twisting their black hair in the shadows within. At the post some brown grooms lounged about the door. A priest passed,—a genuine Don Basilio, in inky gown and shovel-hat; and these graceless grooms looked after him, thrust their tongues into their cheeks, and made an irreverent grimace. The agent at Perpignan came into my mind; I winked at the fellows, without any clear idea wherefore, but it must have expressed something, for they burst into a laugh and repeated the grimace.

The lower town seemed to be of immense length. Once out of it, a superb avenue of plane-trees received us, at the end of which was the railway-station. In another hour the train would leave for Barcelona. Our trunks must be again examined. When I asked the reason why this annoying regulation, obsolete elsewhere in Europe, is here retained, the Spaniards gravely informed me that, if it were abolished, a great many people would be thrown out of employment. Not that they get much pay for the examination,—but they are constantly bribed not to examine! There was a café attached to the station, and I advised my fellow-passengers to take a cup of the delicious ropy chocolate of Spain, after which one accepts the inevitable more patiently.

I found the landscapes from Giron to Barcelona very bright and beautiful. Our locomotive had fallen into the national habit: it was stately and deliberate, it could not be hurried, its very whistle was subdued and dignified. We went forward at an easy pace, making about fifteen miles an hour, which enabled me to notice the patient industry of the people, as manifested on every plain and hillside. The Catalans are called rough and ungraceful; beside the sprightly Andalusians they seem cold and repellent; they have less of that blue blood which makes the beggar as proud as the grandee, but they possess the virtue of labor, which, however our artistic tastes may undervalue it, is the basis from which all good must spring. When I saw how the red and rocky hills were turned into garden-terraces, how the olive-trees were pruned into health and productiveness, how the wheat stood so thick that it rolled but stiffly under the breeze, I forgot the jaunty majos of Seville, and gave my hearty admiration to the strong-backed reapers in the fields of Catalonia.

The passengers we took up on the way, though belonging to the better class, and speaking Spanish whenever it was necessary, all seemed to prefer the popular dialect. Proprietors of estates and elegant young ladies conversed together in the rough patois of the peasants, which to me was especially tantalizing, because it sounded so familiar, and yet was so unintelligible. It is in reality the old langue limousine of France, kindred to the Provençal, and differs very slightly from the dialect spoken on the other side of the Pyrenees. It is terse, forcible, and expressive, and I must confess that the lisping Spanish, beside it, seems to gain in melody at the expense of strength.

We approached Barcelona across the wide plain of the Llobregat, where orange-gardens and factory chimneys, fountains "i' the midst of roses" and machine-shops full of grimy workmen, succeed each other in a curious tangle of poetry and greasy fact. The Mediterranean gleams in a blue line on the left, the citadel of Montjoi crowns a bluff in front; but the level city hides itself behind the foliage of the plain, and is not seen. At the station you wait half an hour, until the baggage is again deposited on the dissecting-tables of the customs officers; and here, if, instead of joining the crowd of unhappy murmurers in the anteroom, you take your station in the doorway, looking down upon porters, pedlers, idlers, and policemen, you are sure to be diverted by a little comedy acted in pantomime. An outside porter has in some way interfered with the rights of a station-porter; a policeman steps between the two, the latter of whom, lifting both hands to heaven in a wild appeal,[Pg 501] brings them down swiftly and thrusts them out before him, as if descending to earthly justice. The outsider goes through the same gestures, and then both, with flashing eyes and open mouths, teeth glittering under the drawn lips, await the decision. The policeman first makes a sabre-cut with his right arm, then with his left; then also lifts his hands to heaven, shakes them there a moment, and, turning as he brings them down, faces the outside porter. The latter utters a passionate cry, and his arms begin to rise; but he is seized by the shoulder and turned aside; the crowd closes in, and the comedy is over.

We have a faint interest in Barcelona for the sake of Columbus; but, apart from this one association, we set it down beside Manchester, Lowell, and other manufacturing cities. It was so crowded within its former walls, that little space was left for architectural display. In many of the streets I doubt whether four persons could walk abreast. Only in the Rambla, a broad central boulevard, is there any chance for air and sunshine, and all the leisure and pleasure of the city is poured into this one avenue. Since the useless walls have been removed, an ambitious modern suburb is springing up on the west, and there will in time be a new city better than the old.

This region appears to be the head-quarters of political discontent in Spain,—probably because the people get to be more sensible of the misrule under which they languish, in proportion as they become more active and industrious. Nothing could have been more peaceable upon the surface than the aspect of things; the local newspapers never reported any disturbance, yet intelligence of trouble in Catalonia was circulating through the rest of Europe, and something—I could not ascertain precisely what it was—took place during my brief visit. The telegraph-wires were cut, and some hundreds of soldiers were sent into the country; but the matter was never mentioned, unless two persons whom I saw whispering together in the darkest corner of a café were discussing it. I believe, if a battle had been fought within hearing of the cannon, the Barcelonese would have gone about the streets with the same placid, unconcerned faces. Whether this was cunning, phlegm, or the ascendency of solid material interests over the fiery, impulsive nature of the Spaniard, was not clear to a passing observer. In either case it was a prudent course.

If, in the darkened streets—or rather lanes—of Barcelona, I saw some suggestive pictures; if the court-yard of the cathedral, with its fountains and orange-trees, seemed a thousand miles removed from the trade and manufacture of the city; if the issuing into sunshine on the mole was like a blow in the eyes, to which the sapphire bloom of the Mediterranean became a healing balm; and if the Rambla, towards evening, changed into a shifting diorama of color and cheerful life,—none of these things inclined me to remain longer than the preparation for my further journey required. Before reaching the city, I had caught a glimpse, far up the valley of the Llobregat, of a high, curiously serrated mountain, and that old book of the "Wonders of the World," (now, alas! driven from the library of childhood,) opened its pages and showed its rough woodcuts, in memory, to tell me what the mountain was. How many times has that wonderful book been the chief charm of my travels, causing me to forget Sulpicius on the Ægean Sea, Byron in Italy, and Humboldt in Mexico!

To those who live in Barcelona, Montserrat has become a common-place, the resort of Sunday excursions and picnics, one fourth devotional, and three fourths epicurean. Wild, mysterious, almost inaccessible as it stands in one's fancy, it sinks at this distance into the very material atmosphere of railroad and omnibus; but, for all that, we are not going to give it up, though another "Wonder of the World" should go by the board. Take the Tarragona train then with me, on a cloudless afternoon.[Pg 502] In a few minutes the scattered suburban blocks are left behind, and we enter the belt of villas, with their fountained terraces and tropical gardens. More and more the dark red earth shows through the thin foliage of the olives, as the hills draw nearer, and it finally gives color to the landscapes. The vines covering the levels and lower slopes are wonderfully luxuriant; but we can see how carefully they are cultivated. Hedges of aloe and cactus divide them; here and there some underground cavern has tumbled in, letting down irregular tracts of soil, and the vines still flourish at the bottom of the pits thus made. As the plain shrinks to a valley, the hills on either side ascend into rounded summits, which begin to be dark with pine forests; villages with square, brown church-towers perch on the lower heights; cotton-mills draw into their service the scanty waters of the river, and the appearance of cheerful, thrifty labor increases as the country becomes rougher.

All this time the serrated mountain is drawing nearer, and breaking into a wilder confusion of pinnacles. It stands alone, planted across the base of a triangular tract of open country,—a strange, solitary, exiled peak, drifted away in the beginning of things from its brethren of the Pyrenees, and stranded in a different geological period. This circumstance must have long ago impressed the inhabitants of the region,—even in the ante-historic ages. When Christianity rendered a new set of traditions necessary, the story arose that the mountain was so split and shattered at the moment when Christ breathed his last on the cross of Calvary. This is still the popular belief; but the singular formation of Montserrat, independent of it, was sufficient to fix the anchoretic tastes of the early Christians. It is set apart by Nature, not only towering above all the surrounding heights, but drawing itself haughtily away from contact with them, as if conscious of its earlier origin.

At the station of Martorel I left the train, and took a coach which was in waiting for the village of Collbató, at the southern base of the mountain. My companion in the coupé was a young cotton-manufacturer, who assured me that in Spain the sky and soil were good, but the entresol (namely, the human race) was bad. The interior was crowded with country women, each of whom seemed to have four large baskets. I watched the driver for half an hour attempting to light a broken cigar, and then rewarded his astonishing patience with a fresh one, whereby we became good friends. Such a peaceful light lay upon the landscape, the people were so cheerful, the laborers worked so quietly in the vineyards, that the thought of a political disturbance the day before seemed very absurd. The olive-trees, which clothed the hills wherever their bony roots could find the least lodgement of soil, were of remarkably healthy and vigorous growth, and the regular cubic form into which they were pruned marked the climbing terraces with long lines of gray light, as the sun slanted across them.

"You see," said the Spaniard, as I noticed this peculiarity, "the entresol is a little better in this neighborhood than elsewhere in Spain. The people cut the trees into this shape in order that they may become more compact and produce better; besides which, the fruit is more easily gathered. In all those orchards you will not find a decayed or an unhealthy tree; they are dug up and burned, and young ones planted in their place."

At the village of Esparaguerra the other passengers left, and I went on towards Collbató alone. But I had Montserrat for company, towering more grandly, more brokenly, from minute to minute. Every change in the foreground gave me a new picture. Now it was a clump of olives with twisted trunks; now an aloe, lifting its giant candelabrum of blossoms from the edge of a rock; now a bank of dull vermilion earth, upon which goats were hanging. The upper spires of the mountain disappeared behind its basal buttresses of[Pg 503] gray rock, a thousand feet in perpendicular height, and the sinking sun, as it crept westward, edged these with sharp lines of light. Up, under the tremendous cliffs, and already in shadow, lay Collbató, and I was presently set down at the gate of the posada.

Don Pedro, the host, came forward to meet and welcome me, and his pretty daughter, sitting on the steps, rose up and dropped a salute. In the entrance hall I read, painted in large letters on the wall, the words of St. Augustine: "In necessariis unitas; in dubiis libertas; in omnibus, caritas." (If these sayings are not St. Augustine's, somebody will be sure to correct me.) Verily, thought I, Don Pedro must be a character. I had no sooner comfortably seated myself in the doorway to contemplate the exquisite evening landscape, which the Mediterranean bounded in the distance, and await my supper, than Don Pedro ordered his daughter to bring the guests' book, and then betook himself to the task of running down a lean chicken. In the record of ten years I found that Germans were the most frequent visitors; Americans appeared but thrice. One party of the latter registered themselves as "gentlemen," and stated that they had seen the "promanent points,"—which gave occasion to a later Englishman to comment upon the intelligence of American gentlemen. The host's daughter, Pepita, was the theme of praise in prose and raptures in poetry.

"Are you Pepita?" I asked, turning to the girl, who sat on the steps before me, gazing into the evening sky with an expression of the most indolent happiness. I noticed for the first time, and admired, her firm, regular, almost Roman profile, and the dark masses of real hair on her head. Her attitude, also, was very graceful, and she would have been, to impressible eyes, a phantom of delight, but for the ungraceful fact that she inveterately scratched herself whenever and wherever a flea happened to bite.

"No, señor," she answered; "I am Carmen. Pepita was married first, and then Mariquita. Angelita and myself are the only ones at home."

"I see there is also a poem to Angelita," I remarked, turning over the last leaves.

"O, that was a poet!" said she,—"a funny man! Everybody knows him: he writes for the theatre, and all that is about some eggs which Angelita fried for him. We can't understand it all, but we think it's good-natured."

Here the mother came, not as duenna, but as companion, with her distaff and spindle, and talked and span until I could no longer distinguish the thread against her gray dress. When the lean chicken was set before me, Don Pedro announced that a mule and guide would be in readiness at sunrise, and I could, if I chose, mount to the topmost peak of San Geronimo. In the base of the mountain, near Collbató, there are spacious caverns, which most travellers feel bound to visit; but I think that six or seven caves, one coal mine, and one gold mine are enough for a lifetime, and have renounced any further subterranean researches. Why delve into those dark, moist, oppressive crypts, when the blessed sunshine of years shows one so little of the earth and of human life? Let any one that chooses come and explore the caverns of Montserrat, and then tell me (as people have a passion for doing), "You missed the best!" The best is that with which one is satisfied.

Instead of five o'clock, when I should have been called, I awoke naturally at six, and found that Don Pedro had set out for San Geronimo four hours before, while neither guide nor mule was forthcoming. The old woman pointed to some specks far up in the shadow of the cliffs, which she assured me were travellers, and would arrive with mules in fifteen minutes. But I applied the words in dubiis libertas, and insisted on an immediate animal and guide, both of which, somewhat to my surprise, were produced. The black mule was strong, and the lank old Catalan shouldered my heavy valise and walked off without a murmur. The sun was already hot;[Pg 504] but once risen above the last painfully constructed terrace of olives, and climbing the stony steep, we dipped into the cool shadow of the mountain. The path was difficult but not dangerous, winding upward through rocks fringed with dwarf ilex, box, and mastic, which made the air fragrant. Thyme, wild flax, and aconite blossomed in the crevices. The botany of the mountain is as exceptional as its geology; it includes five hundred different species.

The box-tree, which my Catalan guide called bōsch in his dialect, is a reminiscence, wherever one sees it, of Italy and Greece,—of ancient culture and art. Its odor, as Holmes admirably says, suggests eternity. If it was not the first plant that sprang up on the cooling planet, it ought to have been. Its glossy mounds, and rude, statuesque clumps, which often seem struggling to mould themselves into human shape, cover with beauty the terrible rocks of Montserrat. M. Delavigne had warned me of the dangers of the path I was pursuing,—walls on one side, and chasms a thousand feet deep on the other,—but the box everywhere shaped itself into protecting figures, and whispered as I went by, "Never fear; if you slip, I will hold you!"

The mountain is an irregular cone, about thirty-five hundred feet in height, and cleft down the middle by a torrent which breaks through its walls on the northeastern side. It presents a perpendicular face, which seems inaccessible, for the shelves between the successive elevations, when seen from below, appear as narrow fringes of vegetation, growing out of one unbroken wall. They furnish, indeed, but scanty room for the bridle-path, which at various points is both excavated and supported by arches of masonry. After nearly an hour, I found myself over Collbató, upon the roofs of which, it seemed, I might fling a stone. At the next angle of the mountain, the crest was attained, and I stood between the torn and scarred upper wilderness of Montserrat on the one hand, and the broad, airy sweep of landscape, bounded by the sea, on the other. To the northward, a similar cape thrust out its sheer walls against the dim, dissolving distances, and it was necessary to climb along the sides of the intervening gulf, which sank under me into depths of shadow. Every step of the way was inspiring, for there was the constant threat, without the reality, of danger. My mule paced securely along the giddy brinks; and though the path seemed to terminate fifty paces ahead, I was always sure to find a loop-hole or coigne of vantage which the box and mastic had hidden from sight. So in another hour the opposite foreland was attained, and from its crest I saw, all along the northern horizon, the snowy wall of the Pyrenees.

Here a path branched off to the peak of San Geronimo,—a two hours' clamber through an absolute desert of rock. My guide, although panting and sweating with his load, proposed the ascent; but in the film of heat which overspread the land I should have only had a wider panorama in which all distinct forms were lost,—vast, no doubt, but as blurred and intangible as a metaphysical treatise. I judged it better to follow the example of a pious peasant and his wife whom we had overtaken, and who, setting their faces toward the renowned monastery, murmured an Ave from time to time. Erelong, on emerging from the thickets, we burst suddenly upon one of the wildest and most wonderful pictures I ever beheld. A tremendous wall of rock arose in front, crowned by colossal turrets, pyramids, clubs, pillars, and ten-pin shaped masses, which were drawn singly, or in groups of incredible distortion, against the deep blue of the sky. At the foot of the rock, the buildings of the monastery, huge and massive, the church, the houses for pilgrims, and the narrow gardens completely filled and almost overhung a horizontal shelf of the mountain, under which it again fell sheer away, down, down into misty depths, the bottom of which was hidden from sight. I dropped from the mule,[Pg 505] sat down upon the grass, and, under pretence of sketching, studied this picture for an hour. In all the galleries of memory I could find nothing resembling it.

The descriptions of Montserrat must have made a powerful impression upon Goethe's mind, since he deliberately appropriated the scenery for the fifth act of the Second Part of Faust. Goethe was in the steadfast habit of choosing a local and actual habitation for the creations of his imagination; his landscapes were always either painted from nature, or copied from the sketch-books of others. The marvellous choruses of the fifth act floated through my mind as I drew; the "Pater Ecstaticus" hovered in the sunny air, the anchorites chanted from their caves, and the mystic voices of the undeveloped child-spirits came between, like the breathing of an Æolian harp. I suspect that the sanctity of the mountain really depends as much upon its extraordinary forms, as upon the traditions which have been gradually attached to it. These latter, however, are so strange and grotesque, that they could only be accepted here.

The monastery owes its foundation to a miraculous statue of the Virgin, sculptured by St. Luke, and brought to Spain by no less a personage than St. Peter. In the year 880, some shepherds who had climbed the mountain in search of stray goats heard celestial harmonies among the rocks. This phenomenon coming to the ears of Bishop Gondemar, he climbed to the spot, and was led by the music to the mouth of a cave, which exhaled a delicious perfume. There, enshrined in light, lay the sacred statue. Gondemar and his priests, chanting as they went, set out for Manresa, the seat of the diocese, carrying it with them; but on reaching a certain spot, they found it impossible to move farther. The statue obstinately refused to accompany them,—which was taken as a sign that there, and nowhere else, the shrine should be built. Just below the monastery there still stands a cross, with the inscription, "Here the Holy Image declared itself immovable, 880."

The chapel when built was intrusted to the pious care of Fray Juan Garin, whose hermitage is pointed out to you, on a peak which seems accessible only to the eagle. The Devil, however, interfered, as he always does in such cases. He first entered into Riquilda, the daughter of the Count of Barcelona, and then declared through her mouth that he would not quit her body except by the order of Juan Garin, the hermit of Montserrat. Riquilda was therefore sent to the mountain and given into the hermit's charge. A temptation similar to that of St. Anthony followed, but with exactly the opposite result. In order to conceal his sin, Juan Garin cut off Riquilda's head, buried her, and fled. Overtaken by remorse, he made his way to Rome, confessed himself to the Pope, and prayed for a punishment proportioned to his crime. He was ordered to become a beast, never lifting his face towards heaven, until the hour when God himself should signify his pardon.

Juan Garin went forth from the Papal presence on his hands and knees, crawled back to Montserrat, and there lived seven years as a wild animal, eating grass and bark, and never lifting his face towards heaven. At the end of this time his body was entirely covered with hair, and it so happened that the hunters of the Count snared him as a strange beast, put a chain around his neck, and took him to Barcelona. In the mansion of the Count there was an infant only five months old, in its nurse's arms. No sooner had the child beheld the supposed animal, than it gave a loud cry and exclaimed: "Rise up, Juan Garin; God has pardoned thee!" Then, to the astonishment of all, the beast arose and spoke in a human tongue. He told his story, and the Count set out at once with him to the spot where Riquilda was buried. They opened the grave and the maiden rose up alive, with only a rosy mark, like a thread, around her neck. In[Pg 506] commemoration of so many miracles, the Count founded the monastery.

At present, the monks retain but a fragment of their former wealth and power. Their number is reduced to nineteen, which is barely enough to guard the shrine, perform the offices, and prepare and bless the rosaries and other articles of devotional traffic. I visited the church, courts, and corridors, but took no pains to get sight of the miraculous statue. I have already seen both the painting and the sculpture of St. Luke, and think him one of the worst artists that ever existed. Moreover, the place is fast assuming a secular, not to say profane air. There is a modern restaurant, with bill of fare and wine list, inside the gate, ticket-office for travellers, and a daily omnibus to the nearest railway station. Ladies in black mantillas lounge about the court-yards, gentlemen smoke on the balconies, and only the brown-faced peasant pilgrims, arriving with weary feet, enter the church with an expression of awe and of unquestioning faith. The enormous wealth which the monastery once possessed—the offering of kings—has disappeared in the vicissitudes of Spanish history, the French, in 1811, being the last pillagers. Since then, the treasures of gold and jewels have not returned; for the crowns offered to the Virgin by the city of Barcelona and by a rich American are of gilded silver, set with diamonds of paste!

I loitered for hours on the narrow terraces around the monastery, constantly finding some new and strange combination of forms in the architecture of the mountain. The bright silver-gray of the rock contrasted finely with the dark masses of eternal box, and there was an endless play of light and shade as the sun burst suddenly through some unsuspected gap, or hid himself behind one of the giant ten-pins of the summit. The world below swam in dim red undulations, for the color of the soil showed everywhere through its thin clothing of olive-trees. In hue as in form, Montserrat had no fellowship with the surrounding region.

The descent on the northern side is far less picturesque, inasmuch as you are perched upon the front seat of an omnibus, and have an excellent road—a work of great cost and labor—the whole way. But, on the other hand, you skirt the base of a number of the detached pillars and pyramids into which the mountain separates, and gain fresh pictures of its remarkable structure. There is one isolated shaft, visible at a great distance, which I should judge to be three hundred feet in height by forty or fifty in diameter. At the western end, the outline is less precipitous, and here the fields of vine and olive climb much higher than elsewhere. In an hour from the time of leaving the monastery, we were below the last rampart, rolling through dust in the hot valley of the Llobregat, and tracing the course of the invisible road across the walls of Montserrat, with a feeling of incredulity that we had really descended from such a point.

At the village of Montrisol, on the river, there is a large cotton factory. The doors opened as we approached, and the workmen came forth, their day's labor done. Men and women, boys and girls, in red caps and sandals, or bareheaded and barefooted, they streamed merrily along the road, teeth and eyes flashing as they chatted and sang. They were no pale, melancholy factory slaves, but joyous and light-hearted children of labor, and, it seemed to me, the proper successors of the useless idlers in the monastery of Montserrat. Up there, on the mountain, a system, all-powerful in the past, was swiftly dying; here, in the valley, was the first life of the only system that can give a future to Spain.

DINNER SPEAKING.

A LETTER TO MY NEPHEW.

So you did not enjoy your first Phi Beta dinner, dear Tom, because you were afraid all the time that the new members would be toasted, and then "the fellows" had said you must reply for them. That is a pity. As, after all, the fellows were not toasted, it is a great pity. I am glad you write to me about it, however, and now it is for me to take care that this never happens to you again.

My first Phi Beta dinner was, like yours, my first public dinner. It was on the day, which this year everybody remembered who was old enough, when Mr. Emerson delivered his first Phi Beta oration at Cambridge. How proudly he has the right to look back on the generation between, all of which he has seen, so much of which he has been! Well, he is no older this day, to all appearance, than he was then,—and your uncle, my dear boy, though older to appearance, is not older in reality. What is it dear G—— Q—— sings,—who sat behind me that early day at Phi Beta?

"When we 've been there ten million years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We 'll have more days
To sing God's praise,
Than when we first begun!"

Remember that, my dear oldest nephew, as the ten million years go by,—and, remembering it, keep young or grow young.

Mr. Edward Everett was young. He was then Governor,—and, I think, presided, certainly spoke, at that Phi Beta dinner. By the almanac he must have been that year forty-five years old,—just as old, dear Tom, as some other people are this year by the almanac. He had been pretty much everything, had gone most everywhere, had seen almost all the people that were worth seeing, and remembered more than all the rest of us had forgotten. And he was very young. To those who knew him he always was. The day he died he was about the youngest man in most things that I knew.

And so it happened that he made the first dinner speech that I remember. We were all in the South Commons Hall of University, now used as somebody's lecture-room, say, at a guess, Professor Lovering's. And he gave some charming reminiscences of Charles Emerson, brother of the philosopher, too early lost, and everywhere loved,—and then, speaking of the oration of the day, and of the new philosophy to which it belonged, and of which the orator was, is, and will be the prophet, he said, in his gracious, funny, courtly, and hearty way, that he always thought of its thunders as he did of the bolts of Jupiter himself! Could one have complimented an orator more than to compare him to Jupiter? And then he went on to verify the comparison, by quoting the description,—

"Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri,"—

"Three ports were raging fire, and three the whelming waves!
But three were thirsty cloud, and three were empty wind!"

Ah well, my boy! You do not remember what all the world, except a few of the elect, then said of "Transcendentalism." So you cannot imagine the scream of fun and applause which saluted this good-natured analysis of its thunder.

And I,—I was delighted at this[Pg 508] aptness of quotation. Should I ever bring my capping lines to such a market? Here was a hit as good as the famous parliamentary retorts, which were so precious to us in the I. O. H. and in the Harvard Union. Should I ever live to see the happy day when I should find that it was wise, witty, and just the thing to say,

"Tu quoque litoribus nostris Æneia nutrix"?

"Tityre dum redeo, brevis est via, pasce capellas,"

"Æsopus auctor quam materiam reperit,"

"Æacus ingemuit, tristique ita voce locutus,"

Now it happened that, in the vacation following, a French steamer, I think the Geryon, came to Boston. And there was, perhaps a civic dinner, certainly an excursion down the harbor, to persuade her officers, and through them Louis Philippe, for this was in the early age of stone, that Boston Harbor was the best point for the projected line of French packets to stop at,—and somebody invited me to go. And it turned out that few of the Frenchmen spoke English, and few of the Common Councilmen spoke French, so that poor little I came to some miserable use as a half-interpreter. I remember telling a Lieutenant de Vaisseau that the "Centurion" rock was called so because the 74 Centurion was lost there; and that an indignant civic authority, guessing out my speech, told me they did not want the Frenchmen to know anything was ever lost in Boston Harbor! Perhaps that was the reason the French packets never came. Well, by and by there was the inevitable collation in the cabin. (A collation, dear boy, is a dinner where you have nothing to eat.) And we went down stairs to collate. I began to think of the speeches. Suppose they should call on the youngest of the interpreters, what could he say? What Latin quotation that would answer? Not Tityrus certainly! No. Nor Æneas's nurse certainly, for she went overboard,—bad luck to her!—or was she buried decently? Bad omen that! But—yes! certainly—what better than the thunderbolts of Jove? Steam-navigation forever,—Robert Fulton, Marquis of Worcester, madman in the French bedlam,—bolts of heaven secured for service of earth,—Franklin,—the great alliance,—steam-navigation uniting the world! Was not the whole prefigured, messieurs, quand le grand poète forged the very thunderbolts of the Dieu des Cieux?

"Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri."

What better description of the power which at that moment was driving us along,—

"Three rays of writhen rain, of fire three more,
Of winged southern winds, and cloudy store,
As many parts the dreadful mixture frame"?

Could anything have been more happy? And fortunately no member of Phi Beta was present but myself. But, unfortunately, there was no speaking, and for the moment I lost my opportunity.

But not my preparation, dear Tom. And for this purpose have I written this long story, to show you how, in thirty happy years since, when I have had nothing else to say, "Tres imbris torti radios" has always stood me in stead. One good quotation makes an after-dinner speaker the match of the whole world. And if you have it in Latin, the people who understand that language enjoy it especially, and those who do not always appear to enjoy it more especially. Perhaps they do. There is also the advantage of slight variations in the translation. Note the difference between Mr. Everett's above, and John Dryden's.

Imagine yourself, for instance, an invited guest at a Cincinnati dinner in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, my dear boy, none of your ancestors rose even to the rank of drummer in the army of the Revolution. Your great-grandfather's brother had Chastellux to dinner[Pg 509] one day. If you can, make your speech out of that. But I do not think you can. Still, you are called up to speak: "Our friend from New England,"—"Connecticut,—Israel Putnam,—Bunker Hill,—Groton,—Wooster," &c., &c. What will you do, my boy? You must do something, and you must not disgrace old Wooster. Do! You have your thunderbolts.

"This army,"—"gathered from North and South and East and West,"—"like another army,"—"whose brave officers still linger among us,—cheer us," &c., &c.,—"this army,"—"combining such various elements of power, endurance, and wisdom,—this army, always when I think of it,—more than ever to-day, sir, when I see these who represent it in another generation,—when I think of Manly coming from the yeasty waves of the outstretched Cape,—of Ethan Allen descending from the cloudy tops of the Green Mountains,—of Knox, sweaty and black from the hot furnace work of Salisbury, where

'He created all the stores of war,'—

all meeting at the same moment with the Morgans, and Marions, and the one Washington from the distant South,—this army always seems to me to be the prefigured thunderbolt which the Cyclops forged for Jupiter.

'Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri.'

'Three from the sultry South, three from the storm-beat shore,
Three parts from distant mountains' cloudy store,
While raging heat fused all with three parts more!'"

You see, dear Tom, these audiences are always good-natured, and by no means critical of your version.

Why, at the only time I was ever at a regimental dinner on the Plains, long before the war, you know, when to the untaught mind it did seem as if there was no reason why we were there, and no pretence for mutual congratulation, I remember when poor Pendergrast called me up to represent science, (I was at that time in the telegraph business,) the dear old quotation came to my relief like an inspiration. I got round to the Flag. Do you remember how safe General Halleck always found it to allude to the Flag?

"The Flag, gentlemen,"—"colors,"—"rainbow of our liberties,"—"Liberty everywhere." "Blue, white, and red of Low Countries,"—"Red, white, and blue of France,"—"English Constitution,"—"Puritan fathers, Cavaliers," &c., &c.

"Does it seem too much to say, gentlemen, that, with the divine instinct of poetry, the unequalled bard of the court of Augustus, looking down the ages beyond the sickly purple of the palace, to the days when armies should be the armies of freemen, and not the Prætorian guards of a tyrant,—that he veiled the glad prophecy of the future in the words in which he describes even the thunderbolt itself? The white crest of the foam, the blue of the sky, the red of the fiery furnace, are all tossed together, and play together, and rejoice together, there in the smiles or in the rage of the very breeze of Heaven.

'Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri.'

'Three parts of white the crested billows lent,
Three parts of blue the heavens themselves had sent,
Three parts of fiery red with these were blent,
And on the free-born wind across the world they went.'"

You are not old enough, my dear nephew, to remember the great consistory which the Pope held at Somerville, when for a moment he thought that the churches of the world had recognized that Union which in fact does make them one, and were willing to offer one front to the Devil, instead of fighting, as they always had done, on ten thousand hooks of their own. You understand, it was not this pope, Pius IX. It was the pope who came after Gregory XVII. and before Pius IX. Well, at that immense dinner-table, which had been built on the plan of John O'Groat's, so that each of[Pg 510] the eleven thousand six hundred and thirty popes present might sit at the head,—I was fortunate enough to be appointed to represent the Sandemanian clergy,—the only body, as I will venture to say to you, which really preserves the simplicity of Gospel institutions, or in the least carries into our own time the spirit and life of fundamental Christianity. Now you may imagine the difficulty of speaking on such an occasion. I had thought it proper to speak in Latin. The difficulty was not so much in the language as in what to say, that one might be at once brave as a Sandemanian, and at the same time tolerant, and catholic as a Christian. Now it is not for me to say how well I acquitted myself. If you want to see my speech, you had better look in the Annales de Foi; and, if it is there, you will certainly find it. I did not think it amiss, certainly, that I was able to close by comparing the great agencies which the United Church would be able to employ to the thunderbolt itself. We had there present bishops from England of perpetual rain, from Sitka of perpetual cloud, from the eternal fires of the torrid zone, and from the farthest south of Patagonia. When we selected our sacred twelve, it was easy for us to take them, as if we were forging thunders.

"Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri."

Now, my dear Tom, I am sure my lesson needs no moral. Of course I do not think you had better start in life with my quotation. To tell you the truth, I am still young. I am a life-member of many societies, and, as they outlive other usefulness, the more frequently do they dine together. I may therefore have some other occasion when I may be reminded of the Cyclops. But if, at your dinner, I had happened to be called upon, I think,—I do not know, but I think that, seeing such men as you describe, I should have been irresistibly led to consider the varied gifts which the University every year scatters over the land, and the exquisite harmony by which, from such different callings, different homes, and different destinies, they unite in the merriment or in the wisdom of her festivities. The men of practice who have been taming the waterfall, and made it subservient; the men of the gentle ministries of peace, whose blessings distil upon us like the very dews of heaven; and the men of the spoken word,—of the spirit of truth, of which, like the wind itself, no man knoweth whence it cometh or whither it goeth,—these, and the men of war who have passed through its fires to give us the free America of to-day, all were around you. Surely in such a union I should have been reminded of the divine harmony by which elements the most diverse were welded into the bolts of Jove.

"Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
Addiderant, tres rutili ignis, tres alitis Austri."

"Three parts like dews from heaven, three from the wave-beat shore,
Three from the soft-winged breeze, and three from blood-red war."

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

The fear, or hope, that photography will supersede tourists, and at last take travel out of literature, scarcely concerns this admirable book and the books of its kind. The class is as yet small, but it increases; and it is probable that in travel, which is a sort of contemporary history, there will be more and more works devoted to a single phase of European life, as studied in a particular city or province; just as, in the history of the past, the tendency is toward the illustration of certain periods, or even episodes, in the lives of nations.

The chief topic Mr. Tomes discusses is the manufacture of champagne wines; but his book is also descriptive of life in Rheims and the adjacent country, as he knew it during two years' residence in that ancient city. Indeed, it is only when the reader remembers his former ignorance of everything concerning champagne, excepting its pop and sparkle and flavor, that he realizes how thoroughly instructive Mr. Tomes's agreeable pages are. In them an intelligent sympathy follows the grape through all the processes of its change to wine;—through the vintage, when it is gathered by the yeomen of La Champagne, from their own land, and sold to the great champagne lords of Rheims; through the expression of its juice in presses obedient to the trained and sensitive touch of hands which give neither more nor less strength than is adequate to the extraction of the most delicate flavor; through the season of its first fermentation in casks, and its second in bottles; through its "marriage" with the kindred juices, whose united offspring is champagne; through the crisis when it is doctored with the cordial that bestows a life-long sweetness; through its final corking and sale in every civilized country. As Mr. Tomes's style is light and easy, and as he has a quick, unforced sense of humor, his information is as delightful as it is honest. He counts nothing alien to him that concerns champagne, and he sketches with a pleasant and graphic touch the champagne lords and their history, beginning with the great Clicquot (whose widow, after inheriting him so many years, died only the other day), and bringing down the list with the Heidsiecks, the Roederers, Moët and Chandon, the Mumms, and De St. Marceaux, last but not least of the great champagne houses. As appears from their names, most of these are Germans, and, according to Mr. Tomes, most of the business of Rheims is conducted by Germans, who far excel the French in capacity for commerce. They are the agents and chief clerks even in French houses; it is some German of enormous physique and iron constitution who is selected as commis-voyageur to sell the wines and attract custom, by pouring them out and convivially drinking them wherever he goes. Mr. Tomes's conviction is, that this commercial traveller leads a difficult and precarious life, for he cannot eject the wine when once taken into the mouth, as is the custom of the more fortunate dealers in selling to buyers at the manufactories.

It is around the wine-trade, the great central feature of life in Rheims, that Mr. Tomes groups notices of the city's minor traits, and gossips of its cathedral and ecclesiastical history, its picturesqueness, its antiquities, its dulness, its contented and prosperous ignorance, its luxury and depravity. His pictures are always artistic, and have an air of fidelity, and we may believe that they reflect with sufficient truth provincial society under the second French Empire. Society it is not, of course, in our sense, and perhaps civilization is the better word. Many of its characteristics are those common to all Latin Europe,—a religion and an atheism alike immoral, an essential rudeness under a polished show of good-breeding, an inviolable conventionality, and an unbounded license. But to these the Empire has added some traits of its own,—an intellectual apathy to be matched nowhere else, a content and pride in mere material success, an enjoyment of none but sensual delights. The government seems to have besotted the provinces in the same degree that it has corrupted Paris.

Mr. Tomes treats an unworn topic with freshness and authentic skill, and we welcome his bright and candid book as a more valuable contribution to literature than most contemporary novels and poems.[Pg 512]

The author of this book assures us that it is in no sense a criticism of either of the two remarkable works which have lately agitated the religious and philosophical world; that it is a reply neither to "Ecce Deus" nor to "Ecce Homo," but that its title is rather descriptive of the belief which inspired it, than indicative of a controversial purpose. Indeed, it is a notably calm and uncontroversial statement of the Swedenborgian idea of Christ's life and character, and presents with great clearness and simplicity the doctrines of the very earnest sect to which its author belongs. The author fully accepts the fact of Swedenborg's illumination, but the reader is only asked to consider the reasonableness of his philosophy, as applied to the elucidation of all Scriptural truth, and more particularly the acts and essence of Christ. The people of the New Church (as the followers of Swedenborg call themselves) affirm the divinity of Christ with an emphasis which excludes from the Godhead any other personality than his; and it is in the light of this creed that Mr. Parsons regards his character, and discusses the facts of his birth, his sojourn in Egypt, his temptations, his death, the miracles, the parables, the supper, the Apostles. Naturally, the author has frequent recourse to that science of correspondences by which Swedenborg interprets Scripture, and so far there is an air of mysticism in his work; but it is on the whole a most intelligible declaration of the main Swedenborgian ideas. As such, it must have an interest for all candid thinkers; and it appears fortunately at this time, when the life of Swedenborg has been made the subject of fresh inquiry, as well as the Life which Swedenborg's philosophy is here employed to illustrate.

The best thing in this book is that brief sketch of travel, called "Up the Rhine," in which the British tourist is presented with a delightful fidelity. Eyes that have once beheld him never forget him, and it is good to gaze upon him here in his extraordinary travelling-costume, with all his sightseer's panoply upon him. It affects one like a personal recollection, when he addresses the American and says:—

"'Moy, sir, Moy!' rapping vehemently on the red cover of my guide-book that lay on the table, 'I say Moy for Switz'land.'

This is a touch of nature; and nothing else in the book is done with a hand so free and artistic. Doctor Bushwhacker is passably entertaining in his talk of tea and coffee and chocolate and wine and salad; but when he comes to speak of literature, he makes us suspect that the latest thing in criticism which his professional duties have left him leisure to read is E. A. Poe's "American Literati." He discourses of "Accidental Resemblances" between Mr. Longfellow and other poets, defends the venerable Halleck from the charge of copying "Don Juan" in his "Fanny," and pronounces Joseph Rodman Drake the only original American poet.

Among the contributions to these "Sayings" by other learned men than Dr. Bushwhacker, the most admirable are the two imitations of Macaulay by the late Colonel Porter; of their kind they are nowhere surpassed. But the editor of the book has left the retiring muse of criticism little to say of these productions of his collaborateurs. In his Preface he efficiently praises them all, specifying one as "sparkling," and another as "excellent," and others as coming from persons who have exquisite taste for true humor, and assemble in themselves great moral, religious, and literary merits; and finally offers his thanks to the gentleman who indefatigably urged him to publish the collection.

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