The Project Gutenberg eBook, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861, by Various

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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861

Author: Various

Release Date: March 3, 2004 [eBook #11415]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 8, ISSUE 49, NOVEMBER, 1861***

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. VIII.—NOVEMBER, 1861.—NO. XLIX.

GEORGE SAND.

  "Deduci superbo
  Non humilis mulier triumpho."

These words are applied by Horace to the great Cleopatra, whose heroic end he celebrates, even while exulting in her overthrow. We apply them to another woman of royal soul, who, capitulating with the world of her contemporaries, does not allow them the ignoble triumph of plundering the secrets of her life. They have long clamored at its gates, long shouted at its windows, in defamation and in glorification. Ready now for their admission, she lets the eager public in; but what they were most intent to find still eludes them. In the "Histoire de ma Vie" are the records of her parentage, birth, education. Here are detailed the subtile influences that aided or hindered Nature in one of her most lavish pieces of work; here are study, religion, marriage, maternity, authorship, friendship, travel, litigation: but the passionate loving woman, and whom she loved, are not here. To the world's triumph they belong not, and we honor the decency and self-respect which consign them to oblivion. Nor shall we endeavor to lift the veil which she has thus thrown over the most intimate portion of her private life. We will not ask any Chronique Scandaleuse, of which there are plenty, to supply any hiatus in the dramatis personae of her life. We shall take her as she gives herself to us, bringing out the full significance of what she says, but not interpolating with it what other people say. For she has been generous in telling us all that it imports us most to know. The itching curiosity of the spiteful or the vicious must seek its gratification at other hands than ours: we will not be its ministers. With all this, we are not obliged to shut our eyes to the true significance of what she tells us, or to assume that in the account she gives us of herself there is necessarily less self-deception than self-judgment generally exhibits. If she mistakes the selfish for the heroic, exalts a gratification into a duty, and preaches to her sex as from the standpoint of a morality superior to theirs, we shall set it down as it seems to us. But, for the sake of manhood as well as of womanhood, we would not that any mean or malignant hand should endeavor to show where she failed, and how.

Was she not to all of us, in our early years, a name of doubt, dread, and enchantment? Did not all of us feel, in our young admiration for her, something of the world's great struggle between conservative discipline and revolutionary inspiration? We knew our parents would not have us read her, if they knew. We knew they were right. Yet we read her at stolen hours, with waning and still entreated light; and as we read, in a dreary wintry room, with the flickering candle warning us of late hours and confiding expectations, the atmosphere grew warm and glorious about us,—a true human company, a living sympathy crept near us,—the very world seemed not the same world after as before. She had given us a real gift; no criticism could take it away. The hands might be sinful, but the box they broke contained an exceeding precious ointment.

At a later day we saw these things rather differently. The electric intoxication over, which book or being gives but once to the same person, its elements were viewed with some distrust. Passing from ideal to real life, as all pass, who live on, we shook our heads over the books, sighed, ceased to read them. Grown mothers ourselves, we quietly removed them as far as possible from the young hands about us, and would rather have deprived them of the noble French language altogether than have allowed it to bring them such lessons as Jacques and Valentine. Yet we retain the old love for her; the world of literature still seems brighter for her footsteps; and should we live to learn her death, tears must follow it, and the sense of void left by the loss of a true friend, noble and loyal-hearted, if mistaken. With this confession of sympathy with the woman, we begin the critical consideration of the memoirs of herself she has given to the world.

These memoirs begin at the earliest possible period, including the lives of her parents and grandparents. The latter were illustrious on one side, obscure on the other. She tells us that by her paternal grandmother she was allied to the kings of France, and by her maternal grandfather to the lowest of the people. The grandmother in question was the natural daughter of the famous Maréchal de Saxe, recognized and educated, but finally left with slender resources, and married to M. Dupin de Francueil, an accomplished person of good family and fortune, greatly her senior. To him she bore one child, a son named Maurice, after the great soldier. As might have been expected, her widowhood was early and long, for her aged partner soon dropped from her side, beloved and regretted. George tells us that her grandmother was wont to insist that an old man can be more agreeable in the marital relation than a young one, and that M. Dupin de Francueil, elegant, accomplished, and devoted to her happiness, had in his life left nothing for her imagination to desire or her heart to regret.

As this lady is one of the heroines of the "Histoire de ma Vie," we cannot do it justice without lingering a little over her portraiture. She is described as tall, fair, and of a Saxon type of beauty. Her manners would seem to have been de haute école, and her culture was on a large and noble scale. Austere in her morals, her faith was the deistic philosophy of the ante-revolutionary period; but, like other people of noble mind, instead of making doubt a pretext for license, she brought up virtue to justify the latitude of her creed, that the solid results of conscience should entitle her to the free interpretation of doctrine. She was chaste, benevolent, and sincere. Her mother had been a singer of merit and celebrity, and she, the daughter, had both inherited her musical talent, and had received one of those thorough musical educations which alone make the possession of the art a pleasure and resource. It must often occur to those who hear our young ladies sing and play, that the accomplishment is little valued by them, save as an outward social adornment.

Hence those ambitious and perfectly uninteresting performances with which we are constantly bored in the fashionable musical world. It is self-love which gives us those flat, empty adagios, those cold, keen runs and embellishments. Love of the art has more modesty in the undertaking, and more warmth in the execution. George says that she has heard all the greatest singers of modern times, but that her grandmother, in her old age, singing fragments of the operas of her own time in a cracked and trembling voice, and accompanying herself on an old harpsichord with three fingers of a palsied hand, always remained to her a type of art above all others.

The first volume of these memoirs gives interesting notice of the friendships which surrounded Madame Dupin during her married life. These embraced various celebrities, historical and literary. Her husband was the congenial friend of the best minds of the day, and was able, among other things, to procure her the difficult pleasure of an interview with Jean Jacques Rousseau, then living near her in great spleen and retirement. We cannot do better than to give the relation of this in her own words, as preserved by her grand-daughter. It is highly characteristic of the parties and of the times.

"Before I had seen Rousseau, I had read the 'Nouvelle Héloïse' in one breath, and at the last pages I found myself so overcome that I wept and sobbed. My husband gently rallied me for this; but that day I could only cry from morning till evening. During this, M. de Francueil, with the address and the grace which he knew how to put into everything, ran to find Jean Jacques. I do not know how he managed it, but he carried him off, he brought him, without having communicated to me his intention.

"I, unconscious of all this, was not hastening my toilet. I was with Madame d'Esparbès de Lussan, my friend, the most amiable woman in the world, and the prettiest, though she squinted a little, and was slightly deformed. M. de Francueil had come several times to see if I was ready. I did not observe any marks of haste in my husband, and did not hurry myself, never suspecting that he was there, the sublime Bear, in my parlor. He had entered, looking partly foolish and partly cross, and had seated himself in a corner, showing no other impatience than that about dinner, in order to get away very soon.

"Finally, my toilet finished, and my eyes still red and swollen, I go to the parlor. I see a little man, ill-dressed and scowling, who rose clumsily, who chewed out some confused words. I look, and I guess who it is,—I try to speak,—I burst into tears. Francueil tries to put us in tune by a pleasantry, and bursts into tears. We could not say anything to each other. Rousseau pressed my hand without addressing me a single word. We tried to dine, to cut short all these sobs. But I could eat nothing. M. de Francueil could not be witty that day, and Rousseau escaped directly on leaving the table, without having said a word,—displeased, perhaps, with having found a new contradiction to his claim of being the most persecuted, the most hated, and the most calumniated of men."

The simplicity of this narration justifies its quotation here, as illustrative of the taste and manners that prevailed a hundred years ago. The lively emotion provoked by the "Nouvelle Héloïse" is scarcely more foreign to our ideas and experience than the triangular fit of weeping in the parlor, and the dinner, silent through excess of feeling, that followed it.

M. Dupin de Francueil lived with great, but generous extravagance, and, as his widow averred, "ruined himself in the most amiable manner in the world." He died, leaving large estates in great confusion, from which his widow and young son were compelled to "accept the poverty" of seventy-five thousand livres of annual income,—a sum which the Revolution, at a later day, greatly reduced. Till its outbreak, Madame Dupin lived in peace and affluence, though not on the grand scale of earlier days,—devoting herself chiefly to the care and education of her son, Maurice, in which latter task she secured the services of a young abbé, who afterwards prudently became the Citizen Deschartres, and who continued in the service of the family during the rest of a tolerably long life. This personage plays too important a part in the memoirs to be passed over without special notice. He continued to be the faithful teacher and companion of Maurice, until the exigencies of military life removed the latter from his control. He was also the man of business of Madame Dupin, and, at a later day, the preceptor of George herself, who, with childish petulance, bestowed on him the sobriquet of grand homme, in consequence, she tells us, of his omnicompétence and his air of importance. "My grandmother," she says, "had no presentiment, that, in confiding to him the education of her son, she was securing the tyrant, the saviour, and the friend of her whole remaining life." We would gladly give here in full George's portrait of her tutor; but if we should stop to sketch all the admirable photography of this work, our review would become a volume. We can only borrow a trait or two, and pass on to the consideration of other matters.

"He had been good-looking; but I am sure that no one, even in his best days, could have looked at him without laughing, so clearly was the word pedant written in all the lines of his face and in every movement of his person. To be complete, he should have been ignorant, gourmand, and cowardly. But, far from this, he was very learned, temperate, and madly courageous. He had all the great qualities of the soul, joined to an insufferable disposition, and a self-satisfaction which amounted almost to delirium. But what devotion, what zeal, what a tender and generous soul!"

In the intervals of his necessary occupations he studied medicine and surgery, in the latter of which he attained considerable skill. In the many subsequent years of his country life, he made these accomplishments very useful to the village folk. No stress of weather or unseasonableness of hours could detain him from attending the sick, when summoned; but being obliged, as George says, to be ridiculous as well as sublime in all things, he was wont to beat his patients when they were bold enough to offer him money for their cure, and even made missile weapons of the poultry and game which they brought him in acknowledgment of his services, assailing them with blows and harder words, till they fled, amused or angry. Maurice, his first pupil, was a delicate and indolent child, and showed little robustness of character till his early manhood, when the necessity of a career forced him into the ranks of the great army.

The first threatenings of the Revolution found in Madame Dupin an unalarmed observer. As a disciple of Voltaire and Rousseau, she could not but detest the abuses of the Court; she shared, too, the general personal alienation of the aristocracy from the German woman, as they called Marie Antoinette. She admired, in turn, the probity of Necker and the genius of Mirabeau; but the current of disorder finally found its way to her, and swept away her household peace among the innumerable wrecks that marked its passage. Implicated as the depository of some papers supposed to be of treasonable character, she was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, her son and Deschartres being officially separated from her and detained at Passy. The imprisonment lasted some months, and its tedium was beguiled by the most fervent love-letters between the boy of sixteen and his mother. The sorrow of this separation, George says, metamorphosed the sickly, spoiled child into a fervent and resolute youth, whose subsequent career was full of courage and self-denial. Of the Revolution she writes:—

"In my eyes, it is one of the phases of evangelical life: a tumultuous, bloody life, terrible at certain moments, full of convulsions, of delirium, and of sobbing. It is the violent contest of the principle of equality preached by Jesus, and passing, now like a radiant light, now like a burning torch, from hand to hand, to our own days, against the old pagan world, which is not destroyed, which will not be for a long time yet, in spite of the mission of Christ, and so many other divine missions, in spite of so many stakes, scaffolds, and martyrs. What is there, then, to astonish us in the vertigo which seized all minds at the period of the inextricable mêlée into which France precipitated herself in '93? When everything went by retaliation, when every one became, by deed or intention, victim and executioner in turn, and when between the oppression endured and the oppression exercised there was no time for reflection or liberty of choice, how could passion have abstracted itself in action, or impartiality have dictated quiet judgments? Passionate souls were judged by others as passionate, and the human race cried out as in the time of the ancient Hussites,—'This is a time of mourning, of zeal, and of fury.'"

The tone of our author concerning this and subsequent revolutions which have come within her own observation is throughout temperate, hopeful, and charitable. The noblest side of womanhood comes out in this; and however her fiery youth might have counselled, in the pages now under consideration she appears as the apologist of humankind, the world's peacemaker.

George loves to linger over the details of her father's early life. They are, indeed, all she possesses of him, as she was still in early childhood when he died. So much and such charming narrations has she to give us of his military life, his musical ability, his courage and disinterestedness, that she herself does not manage to get born until nearly the end of the third volume, and that through a series of concatenations which we must hastily review.

The imprisonment of Madame Dupin was not long; after some months of detention, she was allowed to rejoin her son at Passy, and the whole family-party speedily removed to Nohant, in the heart of Berry, which henceforth figures as the homestead in the pages of these volumes. But Maurice is soon obliged to adopt a profession. His mother's revenues have been considerably diminished by the political troubles. He feels in himself the power, the determination, to carve out a career for himself, and gallantly enters, as a simple soldier, the armies of the Republic,—Napoleon Bonaparte being First Consul. Although he soon saw service, his promotion seems to have been slow and difficult. He was full of military ardor, and laborious in acquiring the science of his profession; but there were already so many candidates for every smallest distinction, and Maurice was no courtier, to help out his deserts with a little fortunate flattery. He complains in his letters that the tide has already turned, and that even in the army diplomacy fares better than real bravery. Still, he soon rose from the ranks, served with honor on the Rhine and in Italy, and became finally attached to the personnel of Murat, during the occupation of the Peninsula. His title of grandson of the Maréchal de Saxe was sometimes helpful, sometimes hurtful. In the eyes of his comrades it won him honor; but Napoleon, on hearing his high descent urged as a claim to consideration, is said to have replied, brusquely,—"I don't want any of those people." In his letters to his mother, he recounts his adventures, military and amorous, with frankness, but without boasting; but his confidences soon become very partial, and before she knows it the poor mother has a dangerous rival. We will let him give his own account of the origin of this new relation.

"You know that I was in love in Milan. You guessed it, because I did not tell you of it. At times I fancied myself beloved in return, and then I saw, or thought I saw, that I was not. I wished to divert my thoughts; I went away, desiring to think no more of it.

"This charming woman is here, and we have hardly spoken to each other. We scarcely exchanged a look. I felt a little vexation, though that is scarcely in my nature. She was proud towards me, although her heart is tender and passionate. This morning, during breakfast, we heard distant cannon. The General ordered me to mount at once, and go to see what it was. I rise, take the staircase in two bounds, and run to the stable. At the very moment of mounting my horse I turned and saw behind me this dear woman, blushing, embarrassed, and casting on me a lingering look, expressive of fear, interest, love."

This fatal look, as the experienced will readily conceive, did the business. The young soldier dreamed only of a love affair like twenty others which had made the pastime of his oft-changing quarters; but this "dear woman," Sophie Victoire Antoinette Delaborde, daughter of an old bird-fancier, was destined to become his wife, and the mother of his daughter, Aurore Dupin, whom the world knows as George Sand. The circumstances of her youth had been untoward. She was at this period already the mother of one child, born out of marriage, and seems to have been making the campaign of Italy under the so-called protection of some rich man, whose name is not given us. This protection she hastened to leave, following thenceforward with devotion the precarious fortunes of the young soldier, and gaining her own subsistence, until their marriage, by the toil of the needle, to which she had been bred. Of course, Maurice's confidences to his mother under this head soon cease. An amour with a person in Victoire's position could be admitted; but a serious, solid affection, leading to marriage, this would break his mother's heart, and indeed not without reason. The reader must remember that this is a chapter out of French society, on which account we suppress all hysterical comment upon a state of things universally received and acknowledged therein. Maurice's trivial, and we should say, unprincipled pursuit of Victoire would be considered perfectly legitimate in the sphere which made the world to him. The sequel, perhaps, would not have been considered differently here and there; for, however we may recognize the sacredness of true affection, a marriage so unequal and with such sinister antecedents would be regarded in all society with little approbation, or hope of good. His mother soon grew alarmed, as various symptoms of an enduring and carefully concealed attachment became evident to her keen observation. In the years that followed, she left no means untried to break off this dangerous connection;—her remonstrances were by turns tender and violent,—her reasonings, no doubt, in great part just; but Maurice defended the woman of his choice from all accusations, from every annoyance, on the ground of her devoted and honorable attachment to him. After four years of continued trouble and irresolution, in which, George tells us, he had again and again made the endeavor to sacrifice Victoire to his mother's happiness, and after the birth of several children, who soon ceased to live, he wedded her by civil rite. The birth of his daughter soon followed. "And thus it was," says George, "that I was born legitimate."

"My mother had on a pretty pink dress that day, and my father was playing some contredanses on his faithful Cremona (I have it yet, that old instrument by the sound of which I first saw the light). My mother left the dance and passed into her own room. As she went out very quietly, the dance continued. At the last chassez all round, my Aunt Lucy went into my mother's room, and immediately cried,—

"Come, come here, Maurice! You have a daughter!"

"She shall be named Aurore, for my poor mother, who is not here to bless her, but who will bless her one day," said my father, receiving me in his arms.

"She was born in music and in pink," said my aunt. "She will be happy."

Not eminent, perhaps, has been the realization of this augury.

The young couple were so poor, at this moment of their marriage, that a slender thread of gold was forced to serve for the nuptial ring; it was not until some days later that they were able to expend six francs in the purchase of that indispensable ornament. The act once consummated, Maurice gave himself up to some hours of bitter suffering, made inevitable by what he considered a grave act of disobedience against the best of mothers. His conscience, however, on the whole, justified him. He had obeyed the Scripture precept, forsaking the old for the inevitable new relation, and surrounding her who was really his wife with the immunities of civil recognition. The marriage was concealed for some months from his mother,—who at a subsequent period left no stone unturned to prove its nullity. The religious ceremony, which Catholicism considers as the indissoluble tie, had not yet been performed, and Mme. Dupin hoped to prove some informality in the civil rite. In this, however, she did not succeed, and after long resistance, and ill-concealed displeasure, she concluded by acknowledging the unwelcome alliance. It was the little Aurore herself whose unconscious hand severed the Gordian knot of the family difficulties. Introduced by a stratagem into her grandmother's presence, and seated in her lap as the child of a stranger, the family traits were suddenly recognized, and the little one (eight months old) effected a change of heart which neither lawyer nor priest could have induced. St. Childhood is fortunately always in the world, working ever these miracles of reconciliation.

George speaks with admirable candor of the inevitable relations between these two women. She does full justice to the legitimacy of the grandmother's objections to the marriage, and her fears for its result, which were founded much more on moral than on social considerations. At the same time she nobly asserts her mother's claim to rehabilitation through a passionate and disinterested attachment, a faithful devotion to the duties of marriage and maternity, and a widowhood whose sorrow ended only with her life. She says,—"The doctrine of redemption is the symbol of the principle of expiation and of rehabilitation"; but she adds,—"Our society recognizes this principle in religious theory, but not in practice; it is too great, too beautiful for us." She says farther,—"There still exists a pretended aristocracy of virtue, which, proud of its privileges, does not admit that the errors of youth are susceptible of atonement. This condemnation is the more absurd, because, for what is called the World, it is hypocritical. It is not only women of really irreproachable life, nor matrons truly respected, who are called upon to decide upon the merits of their misled sisters. It is not the company of the excellent of the earth who make opinion. That is all a dream. The great majority of women of the world is really a majority of lost women." We must understand these remarks as applying to French society, in respect even of which we are not inclined to admit their truth. Yet there is a certain justice in the inference that women are often most severely condemned by those who are no better than themselves; and this insincerity of uncharity is far more to be dreaded than the over-zeal of virtuous hearts, which oftenest helps and heals where it has been obliged to wound.

At the risk of unduly multiplying quotations, we will quote here what George says of her mother in this, the flower of her days. At a later day, the ill-regulated character suffered and made others suffer with its own discords, which education and moral training had done nothing to reconcile. The manly support, too, of the nobler nature was wanting, and the best half of her future and its possibilities was buried in the untimely grave of her husband. Here is what she was when she was at her best:—

"My mother never felt herself either humiliated or honored by the company of people who might have considered themselves her superiors. She ridiculed keenly the pride of fools, the vanity of parvenus, and, feeling herself of the people to her very finger-ends, she thought herself more noble than all the patricians and aristocrats of the earth. She was wont to say that those of her race had redder blood and larger veins than others,—which I incline to believe; for, if moral and physical energy constitute in reality the excellence of races, we cannot deny that this energy is compelled to diminish in those who lose the habit of labor and the courage of endurance. This aphorism is certainly not without exception, and we may add that excess of labor and of endurance enervates the organization as much as the excess of luxury and idleness. But it is certain, in general, that life rises from the bottom of society, and loses itself in measure as it rises to the top, like the sap in plants.

"My mother was not one of those bold intrigantes whose secret passion is to struggle against the prejudices of their time, and who think to make themselves greater by clinging, at the risk of a thousand affronts, to the false greatness of the world. She was far too proud to expose herself even to coldness. Her attitude was so reserved that she passed for a timid person; but if one attempted to encourage her by airs of protection, she became more than reserved, she showed herself cold and taciturn. With people who inspired her with respect, she was amiable and charming; but her real disposition was gay, petulant, active, and, above all, opposed to constraint. Great dinners, long soirées, commonplace visits, balls themselves, were odious to her. She was the woman of the fireside or of the rapid and frolicking walk; but in her interior, as in her goings abroad, intimacy, confidence, relations of entire sincerity, absolute freedom in her habits and the employment of her time, were indispensable to her. She, therefore, always lived in a retired manner, more anxious to avoid unpleasant acquaintances than eager to make advantageous ones. Such, too, was the foundation of my father's character, and in this respect never was couple better assorted. They were never happy out of their little household. And they have bequeathed me this secret sauvagerie, which has always rendered the [fashionable] world insupportable to me, and home indispensable."

In referring back to these volumes, we are led into continual loiterings by the way. The style of our heroine is so magical, that we are constantly tempted to let her tell her own story, and to give to the gems of hers which we insert in these pages the slightest possible setting of our own. But it is not our business to anticipate for any one a reading from which no student of modern literature, or, indeed, of modern mind, will excuse himself. We must give only so much as shall make it sure that others will seek more at the fountain-head; but for this purpose we must turn less to the book, and trust for our narration to a sufficiently recent perusal still vividly remembered.

Aurore could scarcely have passed out of her third year when she accompanied her mother to Madrid, where her father was already in attendance upon Murat. She remembers their quarters in the palace, magnificently furnished, and the half-broken toys of the royal children, whose destruction she was allowed to complete. To please his commander-in-chief, her father caused her to assume a miniature uniform, like those of the Prince's aide-de-camps, whose splendid discomfort she still recalls. This would seem a sort of prophecy of that assuming of male attire in later years which was to constitute a capital circumstance in her life. The return from the Peninsula was weary and painful to the mother and child, and made more so by the disgust with which the Spanish roadside bill-of-fare inspired the more civilized French stomach. They were forced to make a part of the journey in wagons with the common soldiery and camp-retainers, and Aurore in this manner took the itch, to her mother's great mortification. Arrived at Nohant, however, the care of Deschartres, joined to a self-imposed régime of green lemons, which the little girl devoured, skins, seeds, and all, soon healed the ignominious eruption. Here the whole family passed some months of happy repose, too soon interrupted by the tragical death of Maurice. He had brought back from Spain a formidable horse, which he had christened the terrible Leopardo, and which, brave cavalier as he was, he never mounted without a certain indefinable misgiving. He often said, "I ride him badly, because I am afraid of him, and he knows it." Dining with some friends in the neighborhood, one day, he was late in returning. His wife and mother passed the evening together, the first jealous and displeased at his protracted absence, the second occupied in calming the irritation and rebuking the suspicions of her companion. The wife at last yielded, and retired to rest. But the mother's heart, more anxious, watched and watched. Towards midnight, a slight confusion in the house augmented her alarm. She started at once, alone and thinly dressed, to go and meet her son. The night was dark and rainy; the terrible Leopardo had fulfilled the prophetic forebodings of his rider. The poor lady, brought up in habits of extreme inactivity, had taken but two walks in all her life. The first had been to surprise her son at Passy, when released from the Revolutionary prison. The second was to meet and escort back his lifeless body, found senseless by the roadside.

We have done now with Aurore's ancestry, and must occupy our remaining pages with accounts of herself. Much time is given by her to the record of her early childhood, and the explanation of its various phases. She loves children; it is perhaps for this reason that she dwells longest on this period of her life, describing its minutest incidents with all the poetry that is in her. One would think that her childhood seemed to her that actual flower of her life which it is to few in their own consciousness. Despite the loss of her father, and the vexed relations between her mother and grandmother which followed his death, her infancy was joyous and companionable, passed mostly with the country surroundings and out-door influences which act so magically on the young. It soon became evident that she was to be confided chiefly to her grandmother's care; and this, which was at first a fear, soon came to be a sorrow. Still her mother was often with her, and her time was divided between the plays of her village-friends and the dreams of romantic incident which early formed the main feature of her inner life. Already at a very early age her mother used to say to those who laughed at the little romancer,—"Let her alone; it is only when she is making her novels between four chairs that I can work in peace." This habit of mind grew with her growth. Her very dolls played grandiose parts in her child-drama. The paper on the wall became animated to her at night, and in her dreams she witnessed strange adventures between its Satyrs and Bacchantes. Soon she imagined for herself a sort of angel-companion, whose name was Corambé. His presence grew to be more real to her than reality itself, and in her quiet moments she wove out the mythology of his existence, as Bhavadgheetas and Mahabraatus have been dreamed. In process of time, she built, or rather entwisted, for him a little shrine in the woods. All pretty things the child could gather were brought together there, to give him pleasure. But one day the foot of a little playmate profaned this sanctuary, and Aurore sought it no more, while still Corambé was with her everywhere.

Although she seems to have always suffered from her mother's inequalities of temper, yet for many years she clung to her, and to the thought of her, with jealous affection. The great difference of age which separated her from her grandmother inspired fear, and the grand manners and careful breeding of the elder lady increased this effect. When left with her, the child fell into a state of melancholy, with passionate reactions against the chilling, penetrating influence, which yet, having reason on its side, was destined to subdue her. "Her chamber, dark and perfumed, gave me the headache, and fits of spasmodic yawning. When she said to me, 'Amuse yourself quietly,' it seemed to me as if she shut me up in a great box with her." What sympathetic remembrances must this phrase evoke in all who remember the gêne of similar constraints! George draws from this inferences of the wisdom of Nature in confiding the duties of maternity to young creatures, whose pulses have not yet lost the impatient leap of early pleasure and energy, and to whom repose and reflection have not yet become the primal necessities of life. This want of the nearness and sympathy of age she was to experience more, as, by the consent of both parties, her education was to be conducted under the superintendence of her grandmother, from whom the mother derived her pension, and whose estate the child was to inherit. The separation from her mother, gradually effected, was the great sorrow of her childhood. She revolted from it sometimes openly, sometimes in secret; and the project of escaping and joining her mother in Paris, where, with her half-sister Caroline, they would support themselves by needle-work, was soon formed and long cherished. For the expenses of this intended journey, the child carefully gathered and kept her little treasures, a coral comb, a ring with a tiny brilliant, etc., etc. In contemplating these, she consoled many a heartache; as who is there of us who has not often effectually beguiled ennui and privation by dreams of joys that never were to have any other reality? The mother seems to have entered into this plan only for the moment; it soon escaped her remembrance altogether, and the little girl waited and waited to be sent for, till finally the whole vision faded into a dream.

Deschartres, the tutor of Maurice, and of Hippolyte, his illegitimate son, became also the instructor of the little Aurore. With all her passion for out-door life, she felt always, she tells us, an invincible necessity of mental cultivation, and perpetually astonished those who had charge of her by her ardor alike in work and in play. Her grandmother soon found that the child was never ill, so long as sufficient freedom of exercise was permitted; so she was soon allowed to run at will, dividing her time pretty equally between the study and the fields. Thus she grew in mind and body from seven to twelve, promising to be tall and handsome, though not in after-years fulfilling this promise; for of her stature she tells us that it did not exceed that of her mother, whom she calls a petite femme,—and of her appearance she simply says that in her youth "with eyes, hair, and a robust organization," she was neither handsome nor ugly. At the age of twelve, a social necessity compelled her to go through the form of confession and the first communion. Her grandmother was divided between the convictions of her own liberalism, and the desire not to place her cherished charge in direct opposition to the imperious demands of a Catholic community. The laxity of the period allowed the compromise to be managed in a merely formal and superficial manner. The grandmother tried to give the rite a certain significance, at the same time imploring the child "not to suppose that she was about to eat her Creator." The confessor asked none of those questions which our author simply qualifies as infamous, and, with a very mild course of catechism and slight dose of devotion, that Rubicon of maturity was passed. Not far beyond it waited a terrible trial, perhaps as great a sorrow as the whole life was to bring. Aurore's diligence in her studies was marred by the secret intention, long cherished, of escaping to her mother, and adopting with her her former profession of dress-maker. Having one day answered reproof with a petulant assertion of her desire to rejoin her mother at all hazards, the grandmother determined to put an end to such projects by a severe measure. Aurore was banished from her presence during a certain number of days. Neither friend nor servant spoke to her. She describes naturally enough this lonely, uncomforted condition, in which, more than ever, she meditated upon the wished-for return to her mother, and the beginning with her of a new life of industry and privation. Summoned at last to her grandmother's bedside, and kneeling to ask for reconciliation, she is forced to stay there, and to listen to the most cruel and literal account of her mother's life, its early errors, and their inevitable consequences.

"All that she narrated was true in point of fact, and attested by circumstances whose detail admitted of no doubt. But this terrible history might have been unveiled to me without injury to my respect and love for my mother, and, thus told, it would have been much more probable and more true. It would have sufficed to tell all the causes of her misfortunes,—loneliness and poverty from the age of fourteen years, the corruption of the rich, who are there to lie in wait for hunger and to blight the flower of innocence, the pitiless rigorism of opinion, which allows no return and accepts no expiation. They should also have told me how my mother had redeemed the past, how faithfully she had loved my father, how, since his death, she had lived humble, sad, and retired. Finally, my poor grandmother let fall the fatal word. My mother was a lost woman, and I a blind child rushing towards a precipice."

The horror of this disclosure did not work the miracle anticipated. Aurore submitted indeed outwardly, but a spell of hardness and hopelessness was drawn around her young heart, which neither tears nor tenderness could break. The blow struck at the very roots of life and hope in her. Self-respect was wounded in its core. If the mother who bore her was vile, then she was vile also. All object in life seemed gone. She tried to live from day to day without interest, without hope. From her dark thoughts she found refuge only in extravagant gayety, which brought physical weariness, but no repose of mind. She, who had been on the whole a docile, manageable child, became so riotous, unreasonable, and insupportable, that the only alternative of utter waste of character seemed to be the discipline and seclusion of the convent. She was accordingly taken to Paris, and received as a pensionnaire in the Convent des Anglaises, which had been, in the Revolution, her grandmother's prison. To Aurore it was rather a place of refuge than a place of detention. The chords of life had been cruelly jarred in her bosom, and the discords in her character thence resulting agonized her more than they displeased others. As for the extraordinary communication which had led to this disorder of mind, we do not hesitate, under the circumstances, to pronounce it an act of gratuitous cruelty. Of all pangs that can assail a human heart, none transcends that of learning the worthlessness of those we love; and to lay this burden, which has crushed and crazed the strongest natures, upon the tender heart of a child, was little less than murderous. Nor can the motive assigned justify an act so cruel; since modern morality increasingly teaches that the means must justify themselves, as well as the end. In spite of these odious revelations, the child felt that her love for her mother was undiminished, and a pitying comprehension of the natural differences between the two nearest to her on earth slowly arose in her mind, allowing her to do justice to the intentions of both.

Aurore wandered at first about the convent with only a vague feeling of loneliness. The young girls, French and English, who composed its classes, surveyed her in the beginning with distrust. Soon the youngest and wildest set, called Diables, accorded her affiliation, and in their company she managed to increase tolerably the anxieties and troubles of the under-mistresses.

She was early initiated into the great secret, the traditionary legend of the convent. This pointed at the existence, in some subterranean dungeon, of a wretched prisoner, or perhaps of several, cut off from liberty and light; and to deliver the victim became the object of a hundred wild expeditions, by day and by night, through the uninhabited rooms and extensive vaults of the ancient edifice. The little ladies hoarded with care their candle-ends,—they tumbled up and down ruinous staircases, listened for groans and complaints, tried to undermine walls and partitions, fortunately with little success. The victim was never found, but her story was bequeathed from class to class, and her deliverance was always the object and excuse of the Diables.

After much time wasted in these pursuits, attended by a mediocre progress in the ordinary course of study and what the French call leçons d'agrément, and we accomplishments, a critical moment came for Aurore. She was weary of frolic and mischief,—she had tormented the nuns to her heart's content. She knew not what new comedy to invent. She thought of putting ink in the holy water,—it had been done already; of hanging the parrot of the under-mistress,—but they had given her so many frights, there would be nothing new in that. She saw, one evening, the door of the little chapel open;—its quiet, its exquisite cleanliness and simplicity attracted her. She had followed thither to mock at the awkward motions of a little hunch-backed sister at her devotions,—but once within she forgot this object. A veiled nun was kneeling in her stall at prayer,—a single lamp feebly illuminated the white walls,—a star looked in at her through the dim window. The nun slowly rose and departed. Aurore was left alone. A calm, such as she had never known, took possession of her,—a sudden light seemed to envelop her,—she heard the mystical sentence vouchsafed to Saint Augustin: "Toile, lege!" Turning to see who whispered it, she found herself alone.

"I cherished no vain illusion. I did not believe in a miraculous voice. I understood perfectly the sort of hallucination into which I had fallen. I was neither elated nor frightened at it. Only, I felt that Faith was taking possession of me, as I had wished, through the heart. I was so grateful, in such delight, that a torrent of tears inundated my face. 'Yes, yes, the veil is torn!' I said, 'I see the light of heaven! I will go! But, before all, let me render thanks. To whom? how? What is thy name?' said I to the unknown God who called me to him. 'How shall I pray to thee? What language worthy of thee and capable of expressing its love can my soul speak to thee? I know not; but thou readest my heart,—thou seest that I love thee!'"

From this moment, Aurore gave herself up to the passion of devotion, which, in natures like hers, is often the first to unclose. There are all sorts of religious experiences,—some poor and shallow, some rich and deep, with every variety of shade between. But wherever Love is capable of being heroic, Religion will also find room to work its larger miracles. Aurore's devotion was not likely to be a frigid recognition of doctrine, nor to consist in the minute care of an infinitesimal soul, whose salvation could be of small avail to any save its possessor. Her religion could only be a sympathetic and contagious flame, running from soul to soul, as beacon-fires catch at night and illuminate a whole tract of country. From this time she became patient, thorough, and laborious in all the duties of her age and place. A closer sympathy now drew her to the nuns, with several of whom she formed happy and intimate relations. The convent life became for the time her ideal of existence, and she formed the plan, so common among young girls educated in this manner, of taking the veil herself, when such a step should become possible. This hidden purpose she carried with her, when, at the age of sixteen, she quitted the convent with bitter regret, fearing the strange world, fearing a conventional marriage, and looking back to the pleasant restraints of tutelage, whose thorn hedges are always in blossom when we view them from the dusty ways and traffic of real, responsible life.

Aurore exchanged her convent for a life of equal retirement; for her grandmother, fearing lest the pietistic influences to which she had been subjected should awake too dominant a chord in the passionate nature of her pupil, brought her to Nohant at once, where, for a few days, she realized the delight of a greater freedom from rule and surveillance. It was pleasant for once, she says, to sleep into la grasse matinée, to wear a bright gingham instead of her dress of purple serge, and to comb her hair without being reminded that it was indecent for a young girl to uncover her temples. The projects of marriage which had alarmed her were abandoned for the present, and she was left to enjoy, unmolested, the pleasure of finding again the friends and playmates of her youth. It soon appeared, however, that the convent education had left many a lacune, and the grandmother felt that the result of the three years' claustration in nowise corresponded to its expense. Aurore set herself to work to fill up, in secret, the many blanks left by her preceptresses,—wishing, as she says, to conceal, as far as she could, their want of faith or of thoroughness. She sat at her books half the night, being gifted, according to her own account, with a marvellous power of sacrificing sleep to any other necessity. At this time she learned to ride on horseback, her first exploit being to tame a colt of four years, the after-companion of many a wild scramble, who grew old and died in her service. Her grandmother becoming soon after disabled by a paralytic stroke, the alternation of this new exercise enabled Aurore to bear the fatigues of the sick-room without serious inconvenience. Of this period of her life our heroine speaks as follows:—

"Had my destiny caused me to pass immediately from my grandmother's control to that of a husband, or of a convent, it is possible that, subjected always to influences already accepted, I should never have been myself. But it was decided by Fate that at the age of seventeen years I should experience a suspension of external authority, and that I should belong wholly to myself for nearly a year, to become, for good or evil, what I was to be for nearly all the rest of my life."

Passing much of her time at the bedside of the invalid, now incapable of giving any further direction to the young life so dear to her, Aurore plunged into many studies which opened to her new worlds of thought and observation. She read Châteaubriand with delight. The "Genie du Christianisme" proved to her rather an intellectual than a religious stimulant, and under its impulse she proceeded, as she says, to encounter without ceremony the French and other authors most quoted at that time, to wit: Locke, Bacon, Montesquieu, Leibnitz, Pascal, La Bruyère, Pope, Milton, Dante, and others not below these in difficulty. She studied them in a crude and hurried manner; but that wonderful alembic of youth, with its fiery heat of ardor, enabled her to compose these far and hastily gathered ingredients into a certain homogeneity of knowledge. "The brain was young," she says, "the memory always fugitive; but the sentiment was quick, and the will ever tense." From these pursuits, interrupted by the cares of nursing, she broke loose only to mount her favorite Colette, and accompany Deschartres in his hunting expeditions. She attempted also to acquire some knowledge of Natural History, Mineralogy, and so on; but science was always less congenial to her than literature, and of Leibnitz, the "Théodicée" is the only work of which she speaks with any familiarity. For convenience in riding and hunting, she adopted, on occasion, the dress of a boy, a blouse, cap, and trousers, to the great scandal of the neighborhood, already indisposed towards her by reason of her eccentric reputation; since, as one can imagine, a small French province is the last place in the world where a young girl can display the lone-star banner of individuality with impunity.

Aurore had promised her aged relative that she would not read Voltaire before the age of thirty; but her literary wanderings soon brought her across the path of Rousseau.

The French make the reading of the "Nouvelle Héloïse" one of the epochs in the life of woman. According to its motto, "The mother will not allow the daughter to read it," this critical act is by common consent adjourned till after marriage, when, we suppose, it appears something in the light of a Bill of Rights, a coming to the knowledge of what women can do, if they will. But as all Julie's divagations occur before marriage, and as her subsequent life becomes a model of Puritanic duty and piety, one does not understand the applicability of her example to French life, in which this progress is reversed. In this, as in all works of true genius, people of the most opposite ways of thinking take what is congenial to themselves,—the ardent and passionate fling themselves on the swollen stream of Saint Preux's stormy love, the older and colder justify Julie's repentance, and the slow but certain rehabilitation of her character. With all its magnificences, and even with the added zest of a forbidden book, the "Nouvelle Héloïse" would be very slow reading for our youth of today. Its perpetual balloon voyage of sentiment was suited to other times, or finds sympathy to-day with other races. With all this, there is a great depth of truth and eloquence in its pages,—and its moral, which at first sight would seem to be, that the blossom of vice necessarily contains the germ of virtue, proves to be this wiser one, that you can tell the tree only by its fruits, which slowly ripen with length of life. As a novel, it is out of fashion,—for novels have fashion; as a development of the individuality of passion, it has perhaps no equal. Be sure that Aurore saw in it its fullest significance. It was strange reading for the disciple of the convent, but she had laid her bold hand upon the tree of the knowledge of good and of evil. She was not to be saved like a woman, through ignorance, but like a man, through the wisdom which has its heavenly and its earthly side. "Émile," the "Contrat Social," and the rest of the series succeeded each other in her studies; but she does not speak of the "Confessions," a book most cruel to those who love the merits of the author, and to whom the nauseating vulgarity of his personal character is a disgust scarcely to be recovered from. Taken at his best, however, Rousseau was the Saint John of the Revolutionary Gospel, though the bloody complement of its Apocalypse was left for other hands than his to trace. To Aurore, stumbling almost unaided through fragmentary studies of science and philosophy, his glowing, broad, synthetic statement was indeed a revelation. It made an epoch in her life. She compared him to Mozart. "In politics," she says, "I became the ardent disciple of this master, and I followed him long without restriction. As to religion, he seemed to me the most Christian of all the writers of his time. I pardoned his abjuration of Catholicism the more easily because its sacraments and title had been given to him in an irreligious manner, well calculated to disgust him with them." But with Aurore, too, the day of Catholicism was over,—its rites were become "heavy and unhealthy" to her. Her faith in things divine was unshaken; but the confessional was empty, the mass dull, the ceremonial ridiculous to her. She was glad to pray alone, and in her own words. Hers was a nature beyond forms. By a rapid intuition, she saw and appropriated what is intrinsic in all religions,—faith in God and love to man. However wild and volcanic may have been her creed in other matters, she has never lost sight of these two cardinal points, which have been the consolation of her life and its redemption. The year comprising these studies and this new freedom ended sadly with the death of her grandmother.

And now, her real protectress being removed, the discords of life broke in upon her, and asserted themselves. Scarcely was the beloved form cold, when Aurore's mother arrived, to wake the echoes of the chateau with wild abuse of its late mistress. By testamentary disposition, Madame Dupin had made Aurore her heir, and had named two of her own relatives as guardians; but the mother now insisted on her own rights, and, after much acrimonious dispute and comment, carried Aurore from her beloved solitudes to her own quarters in Paris,—a journey of sorrow, and the beginning of sorrows. In her childhood Aurore had often longed for this mother's breast as her natural refuge, and the true home of her childish affections. But it "was one of those characters of self-will and passion which deteriorate in later life, and in which no new moral beauties spring up to replace the impulsive graces of youth. Regarding Aurore now as the work of another's hands, she made her the victim of ceaseless and causeless petulance. Her gross abuse of her mother-in-law gave Aurore many tears to shed in private, while her persecution of poor Deschartres drove her daughter to the expedient of shielding him—with a lie. The poor tutor had administered the affairs of Nohant for some time. He was now called to account for every farthing with the most malignant accuracy, and a sum of money, lost by ill-management, not being satisfactorily accounted for, his new tormentor threatened him with prison and trial. As he muttered to his late pupil that he would not survive this disgrace, she stepped forward and shielded him after the fashion of Consuelo.

"I have received this money," said she.

"You? Impossible! What have you done with it?"

"No matter, I have received it."

Deschartres was saved, and Aurore had only availed herself of the first of a Frenchwoman's privileges. Nor will we reckon with her too harshly for this lie, so benevolent in intention, so merciful in effect. A lie sometimes seems the only refuge of the oppressed; but there is always something better than a lie, if we could only find it out. Here is her account of the scene itself:—

"To have gone through a series of lies and of false explanations would not, perhaps, have been possible for me. But from the moment that it was only necessary to persist in a 'yes' to save Deschartres, I thought that I ought not to hesitate. My mother insisted:—

"'If M. Deschartres has paid you eighteen thousand francs, we can easily find it out. You would not give your word of honor?'

"I felt a shudder, and I saw Deschartres ready to speak out.

"'I would give it!' I cried out

"'Give it, then,' said my aunt.

"'No, Mademoiselle,' said my mother's lawyer, 'don't give it.'

"'She shall give it!' cried my mother, to whom I could scarcely pardon this infliction of torture.

"'I give it,' I replied;' and God is with me against you in this matter.'

"'She has lied! she lies!' cried my mother. 'A bigot, a _philosophailleuse.' She is lying and defrauding herself.'

"'Oh, as to that,' said the lawyer, laughing, 'she has the right to do it, since she robs only herself.'

"'I will take her with her Deschartres before the justice of the peace,' said my mother. 'I will make her take oath by Christ, by the Gospel!'

"'No, Madame,' said the lawyer, 'you will go no further in this matter; and as for you, Mademoiselle, I beg your pardon for the annoyance I have given you. Charged with your interests, I felt obliged to do so.'"

Eternal shame to those who make use of any authority to force the secrets of a generous heart, cutting off from it every alternative but that of a loathed deceit, or still more hateful, and scarcely less guilty, betrayal!

Aurore now found herself in the hands of a woman of the people, ennobled for a time by beauty and a true affection, but sinking, her good inspiration gone, into the bitterest ill-temper and most vulgar uncharity. Detesting her superiors in rank and position, she soon managed to cut off Aurore from all intercourse with her father's family, and thus to frustrate every prospect of her marriage in the sphere for which she had been so carefully educated. She was even forbidden to visit her old friends at the convent, and was eventually placed by her mother with a family nearly unknown to both, whose pity had been excited by her friendless condition and unhappy countenance. Aurore's mother seems to us, du reste, the perfect type of a Parisian lorette, the sort of woman so keenly attractive with the bloom of youth and the eloquence of passion,—but when these have passed their day, the most detestable of mistresses, the most undesirable of companions. Men of all ranks and ages acknowledge their attraction, endure their tyranny, and curse the misery it inflicts. Marriage and competency had protected this one from the deteriorations which almost inevitably await those of her class, but they could not save her from the natural process of an undisciplined mind, an ungoverned temper, and a caprice verging on insanity. This self-torment of caprice could be assuaged only by constant change of circumstance and surroundings; her only resource was to metamorphose things about her as often and as rapidly as possible. She changed her lodgings, her furniture, her clothes, retrimmed her bonnets continually, always finding them worse than before. Finally, she grew weary of her black hair, and wore a blond periwig, which disgusting her in turn, she finished by appearing in a different head of hair every day in the week.

Aurore's new friends proved congenial to her, and the influence of their happy family-life dispersed, she says, her last dreams of the beatitudes of the convent. It was in their company that she first met the man destined to become her husband. Most of us would like to know the impression he made upon her at first sight. We will give it in her own words.

"We were eating ices at Tortoni's, after the theatre, when my mother
Angèle [her new friend] said to her husband,—'See, there is Casimir.'

"A slender young man, rather elegant, with a gay aspect and military bearing, came to shake hands with them. He seated himself by Madame Angèle, and asked her in a low voice who I was.

"'It is my daughter,' she replied.

"'Then,' whispered he, 'she is my wife. You know that you have promised me the hand of your eldest daughter. I thought it would have been Wilfrid; but as this one seems of an age more suitable to mine, I accept her, if you will give her to me.'

"Madame Angèle laughed at this, but the pleasantry proved a prediction."

Aurore had given her new protectors the titles of Mother Angèle and Father James, and they in turn called her their daughter. The period of her residence with them at Plessis appears in her souvenirs as an ideal interval of happiness and repose, a renewal of the freedom and insousiance of childhood, with the added knowledge of their value, a suspension of the terrible demands and interests of life. Would that this ideal period could be prolonged for women!—but the exigencies of the race, or perhaps the fears of society, do not permit it. The two-faced spectre of marriage awaits her, for good or ill. The aphelion of a woman's liberty is soon reached, the dark organic forces bind her to tread the narrow orbit of her sex, and if, at the farthest bound of her individual progress, the attraction could fail, and let her slip from the eternal circle, chaos would be the result.

Uninvited, therefore, but unrepulsed, Hymen approached our heroine in the form of Casimir Dudevant, the illegitimate, but acknowledged son and heir of Colonel Dudevant, an officer of good standing and reasonable fortune. The only feeling he seems to have inspired in the bosom of his future wife was one of mild good-will. His only recommendation was a decent degree of suitableness in outward circumstances. For the true wants of her nature he had neither fitness nor sympathy; but she did not know herself then,—she was not yet George Sand. From the stand-point of her later development, her marriage would seem to us a low one; but we must remember that she started only from the plane, and not the highest plane, of French society, in which a marriage of some sort is the first necessity of a woman's life, and not the crowning point of her experience. To compensate the rigor of such a requisition, a French marriage, though civilly indissoluble, has yet a hundred modifications which remove it far from the Puritan ideal which we of the Protestant faith cherish. Hence the French novel, whose strained sentiment and deeply logical immorality have wakened strange echoes among us of the stricter rule and graver usage.

Without passion, then, or tender affection on either side, but with a tolerable harmony of views for the moment, and after long and causeless opposition on the part of Aurore's mother, this marriage took place. Aurore was but eighteen; her bridegroom was of suitable age. With dreams of a peaceful family existence, and looking forward to maternity as the great joy and office of the coming years, she brought her husband to Nohant, whose inheritance had been settled by contract upon the children of this marriage.

But these dreams were not to be realized. Aurore was not born to be the companion of a dull, narrow man, nor the Lady Bountiful of a little village in the heart of France. Would she not have had it so? She tells us that she would; and as honesty is one of her strong points, we may believe her. She knew not the stormy ocean of life, nor the precious freight she carried, when she committed the vessel of her fortunes to so careless a hand as that of M. Dudevant. She throws no special blame or odium upon him, nor does he probably deserve any.

The recital of the events spoken of above brings us well into the eighth volume of the "Histoire de ma Vie"; and as there are but ten in all, the treatment of the things that follow is pursued with much less detail, and with many a gap, which the malevolent among our author's contemporaries would assure us that they know well how to fill up. Between the extreme reserve of the last two volumes and the wild assertions of so many we would gladly keep the juste milieu, if we could; but we wish only truth, and it is not at the hands of the scandalmongers of any society—is it?—that we seek that commodity. The decree of the court which at a later day gave her the guardianship of her children, and the friendship of many illustrious and of some irreproachable men, must be accepted in favor of her of whom we write,—and the known fanaticism of slander, and the love of the marvellous, which craves, in stories of good or evil, such monstrous forms for its gratification, cause us, on the other side, to deduct a large average from the narrations current against her. But we anticipate.

Aurore, at first, was neither happy nor unhappy in her marriage. Her surroundings were friendly and pleasant, and the birth of a son, a third Maurice, soon brought to her experience the keenest joy of womanhood. Before this child numbered two years, however, she began to feel a certain blank in her household existence, an emptiness, a discouragement as to all things, whose cause she could not understand. In this ennui, she tells us, her husband sympathized, and by common consent they strove to remedy it by frequent changes of abode. They visited Paris, Plessis, returned to Nohant, made a journey in the Pyrenees, a visit to Guillery, the château of Colonel Dudevant. Still the dark guest pursued them. Aurore does not pretend that there was any special cause for her suffering. It was but the void which her passionate nature found in a conventional and limited existence, and for which as yet she knew no remedy. The fervor of Catholic devotion had, as we have seen, long forsaken her; her studies did not satisfy her; her children—she had by this time a daughter—were yet in infancy; her husband was not unkind, but indifferent, and the object of indifference. She occupied herself with the business of her estate, and with the wants of the neighboring poor; but she was unsuccessful in administering her expenses, and her narrow revenue did not allow her to give large satisfaction to her charitable impulses. After some years of seclusion and effort, she began to dream of liberty, of wealth,—in a word, of trying her fortunes in Paris. She felt a power within her for which she had found no adequate task. She speaks vaguely, too, of a Being platonically loved, and loving in like manner, absent for most of the year, and seen only for a few days at long intervals, whose correspondence had added a new influence to her life. This attenuated relation was, however, broken before she made her essay of a new life. Her half-brother, Hippolyte, brought to Nohant a habit of joviality which soon degenerated into chronic intemperance; and though she does not accuse her husband of participation in this vice, or, indeed, of any wrong towards her, she yet makes us understand that an occasional escape from Nohant became to her almost a matter of necessity. She, therefore, made arrangements, with her husband's free consent, to pass alternately three months in Paris and three months at home, for an indefinite period; and leaving Maurice in good hands, and the little Solange, her daughter, for a short time only, she came to Paris in the winter with the intention of writing.

Her hopes and pretensions were at first very modest. It had been agreed that her husband should pay her an annual pension of fifteen hundred francs. She would have been well satisfied to earn a like sum by her literary efforts. She established herself in a small mansarde, a sort of garret, and managed by great economy to furnish it so that Solange could be made comfortable. She washed and ironed her fine linen with her own hands. Not finding literary employment at once, and her slender salary running very low, she adopted male attire for a while, as she says, because she was too poor to dress herself suitably in any other. The fashion of the period was favorable to her design. Men wore long square-skirted overcoats, down to the heels. With one of these, and trousers to match, with a gray hat and large woollen cravat, she might easily pass for a young student.

"I cannot express the pleasure my boots gave me. I would gladly have slept with them on. With these little iron-shod heels, I stood firm on the pavement. I flew from one end of Paris to the other. I could have made the circuit of the world, thus attired. Besides, my clothes did not fear spoiling. I ran about in all weathers, I came back at all hours, I went to the pit of every theatre. No one paid me any attention, or suspected my disguise. Besides that, I wore it with ease; the entire want of coquetry in my costume and physiognomy disarmed all suspicion. I was too ill-dressed, and my manner was too simple, to attract or fix attention. Women know little how to disguise themselves, even upon the stage. They are unwilling to sacrifice the slenderness of their waists, the smallness of their feet, the prettiness of their movements, the brilliancy of their eyes; and it is by all these, nevertheless, it is especially by the look, that they might avoid easy detection. There is a way of gliding in everywhere without causing any one to turn round, and of speaking in a low, unmodulated tone which does not sound like a flute in the ears which may hear you. For the rest, in order not to be remarked as a man, you must already have the habit of not making yourself remarked as a woman."

This travesty, our heroine tells us, was of short duration;—it answered the convenience of some months of poverty and obscurity. Its traditions did not pass away so soon;—ten years later, her son, in his beardless adolescence, was often taken for her, and sometimes amused himself by indulging the error in those who accosted him. But in the greatly changed circumstances in which she soon found herself, the disguise became useless and unavailing. Its economy was no longer needed, and the face of its wearer was soon too well known to be concealed by hat or coat-collar.

We would not be understood as relaxing in any degree the rigor of repudiation which such an act deserved. Yet it is imaginable, even to an undepraved mind, that a woman might sometimes like to be on the other side of the fence, to view the mad bull of publicity in its own pasture, and feel that it cannot gore her. Poor George! running about in the little boots, and wearing a great ugly coat and woollen choker,—it was not through vanity that you did this. Strange sights you must have seen in Paris!—none, perhaps, stranger than yourself! The would-be nun of the English convent walking the streets in male attire, and even, as you tell us, with your hands in your pockets! Yet when little Solange came to live with you, as we understand, you put on your weeds of weakness again;—your little daughter made you once more a woman!

For she was George Sand now. Aurore Dupin was civilly dead, Aurore Dudevant was uncivilly effaced. She had taken half a name from Jules Sandeau,—she had wrought the glory of that name herself. Yes, a glory, say what you will. Elizabeth Browning's hands were not too pure to soothe that forehead, chiding while they soothed; and these hands, not illustrious as hers, shall soil themselves with no mud flung at a sister's crowned head.

Every one knows the story of the name: how she and Jules Sandeau wrote a novel together, and sought a nom de plume which should represent their literary union,—how soon she found that she could do much better alone, and the weak work of Carl Sand was forgotten in the strong personality of George Sand. Of Jules Sandeau she speaks only as of the associate of a literary enterprise;—the world accords him a much nearer relation to her; but upon this point she cannot, naturally, be either explicit or implicit. One thing is certain: she was a hard worker, and did with her might what her hand found to do. She wrote "Indiana," "Lelia," "Valentine," and had fame and money at will. Neither, however, gave her unmixed pleasure. The éclat of her reputation soon destroyed her incognito, while the sums of money she was supposed to receive for her works attracted to her innumerable beggars and adventurers of all sorts. To ascertain the real wants and character of those who in every imaginable way claimed her assistance became one of the added labors of her life. She visited wretched garrets or cellars, and saw miserable families,—discovering often, too late, that both garret and family had been hired for the occasion. It was now that she first saw the real plagues and ulcers of society. Her convent had not shown her these, nor her life amid the peasantry of Berry. Only great cities produce those unhealthy and unnatural human growths whose monstrosities are their stock in trade, whose power of life lies in their depravation. She tells us that these horrors weighed upon her, and caused her to try various solutions of the ills that are, and are permitted to be. She was never tempted to become an atheist, never lost sight of the Divine in life, yet the necessity of a terrible fatalism seemed to envelop her. With her numerous friends, she sought escape from the dilemma through various theories of social development; and they often sat or walked half through the night, discussing the fortunes of the race, and the intentions of God. With her most intimate set, this sometimes led to a jest, and "It is time to settle the social question" became the formula of announcing dinner. These considerations led the way to her adoption of socialistic theories in later years, of which she herself informs us, but hints at the same time at many important reservations in her acceptance of them.

In process of time she visited Italy with Alfred de Musset. The fever seized on her at Genoa, and she saw the wonders of the fair land through half-shut eyes, alternately shivering and burning. In the languor of disease, she allowed the tossing of a coin to decide whether she should visit Rome or Venice. Venice came uppermost ten times, and she chose to consider it an affair of destiny. Her long stay in this city suggested the themes of several of her romances, and the "Lettres d'un Voyageur" might almost be pages from her own journal. Her companion was here seized with a terrible illness. She nursed him day and night through all its length, being so greatly fatigued at the time of his recovery that she saw every object double, through want of sleep. Yet De Musset went forth from his sick-room with a heart changed towards her. Hatred had taken the place of love. Some say that this cruel change was the punishment of as cruel a deception; others call it a mania of the fever, perpetuating itself thenceforth in a brain sound as to all else. The world does not know about this, and she herself tells us nothing. In the "Lettres d'un Voyageur," however, she gives us to understand that constancy is not her forte, and a sigh escapes with this confession, "Prie pour moi, ô Marguerite Le Conte!"

George Sand was now launched,—with brilliant success, in the world of letters, unheeding the conventional restraints of domestic life. The choicest spirits of the day gathered round her. She was the luminous centre of a circle of light. She did not hold a salon, the mimic court of every Frenchwoman of distinction,—nor were the worldly wits of fashion her vain and supercilious satellites. But De Lamennais climbed to her mansarde, and unfolded therein his theories of saintly and visionary philosophy. Liszt and Chopin bound her in the enchantment of their wonderful melodies. De Balzac feasted her in his fantastic lodgings, and lighted her across the square with a silver-gilt flambeau, himself attired in a flounced satin dressing-gown, of which he was extremely proud. Pierre Leroux instructed her in the old and the new religions, and taught her the history of secret societies. Louis Blanc, Cavaignac, and Pauline Garcia were bound to her by ties of intimacy. She knew Lablache, Quinet, Miekiewiez, whom she calls the equal of Lord Byron. Her intimates in her own province were men of high character and intelligence, nor were friends wanting among her own sex. Good-will and sympathy, therefore, not ill-will and antipathy, inspired her best works. Her views of parties were charitable and conciliatory, and her revolutionism more reconstructive than destructive. Yet, with all this array of good company, we cannot accord her a miraculous immunity from the fatalities of her situation. Of the guilt we are not here called upon to judge; of the suffering many pages in this record of her life bear witness. Little as we know, however, of her own power of self-protection against the tyranny of the selfish and the sensual, we yet feel as if the really base could never have held her in other than the briefest thraldom, and as if her nobler nature must have continually asserted and reasserted itself, with a constant tendency towards that higher liberty which she had sought in the abandonment of outward restraints, but which can never be thus attained. Some great moral safeguards she had in her tireless industry, her love of art, her honesty and geniality of nature, and, above all, in her passionate love for her children. Happily, these deep and solid forces of Nature are calculated to outlast the heyday of the blood, and to redeem its errors.

In connection with her domestic life, she gives some explanations which must not be overlooked. She did not at first quit her husband's roof with an intention of permanent absence, but with the intention of a periodical return thither. In time, however, her presence there became unwelcome, and she found those arrangements of which, as she says, she had no right to complain, but which she could not recognize. Friends intervened, advising an effectual reintegration of the broken marriage; but against this, she says, her conscience, no less than her heart, rebelled. There existed, indeed, no virtual bond between herself and her late husband. Whatever may have been the beginning of their estrangement, it seems certain that he acquiesced in her independence with easy satisfaction. He wrote to her,—"I shall not put up at your lodgings when I come to Paris, because I wish as little to be in your way as I wish to have you in mine." At the same time, by visiting her there, and appearing with her in public, he had given a certain recognition to her position. There was, therefore, no room for penitence on the one side, for forgiveness on the other, and, through these, for a renewable moral relation between the two. The law took cognizance of these facts, when, some years later, M. Dudevant brought an action for civil divorce, wishing to recover possession of his children. His complicity in what had taken place, and the amicable nature of the separation, were so fully established, that the court, recognizing in the parties neither husband nor wife, followed the pleadings of Nature, and bestowed the children where, in the present instance, they were likely to find the warmest cherishing. Under this decision, she gave up the estate of Nohant to M. Dudevant, who, becoming weary of its management, returned it to her, by a later compromise, in exchange for other property, and the home of her childhood now shelters her declining years.

For the history draws near its close; more travels, more novels, more successes, more sorrows, much fond talk of her friends, many of whom death has endeared to her, a shadowy sketch of her seven years' intimacy with Chopin, a sob over the untimely grave of her married daughter, and the wonderful book is ended. Surely, it tells its own moral; and we, who have woven into short measure the tissue of its relations, need not appear either as the apologist of a very exceptional woman, or as the vindicator of laws inevitable and universal, the mischief of whose violation no human knowledge can justly fathom. The world knows that the life before us is no example for women to follow; but it also knows, we think, that she who led it was on the whole an earnest and sincere person, of ardent imagination and large heart, loving the good as well as the beautiful, even if often mistaken in both,—and above all, honest in her errors and their acknowledgment. Gross injustice has, no doubt, been done her. The creations of her powerful fancy have been taken for images of herself, and the popular mind, delighting to elevate all things beyond the bounds of Nature, has made her a monster. It is clear, we think, that those who have represented her as plunged headlong in a career of vice and dissipation, the companion of all that is low and trivial, have slandered alike her acts and her intentions. Like the rest of us, she is the child of her antecedents and surroundings. Her education was as exceptional as her character. Her marriage brought no moral influence to bear upon her. Her separation opened before her a new and strange way, never to be trodden by any with impunity. Yet we do not believe, that, in the most undesirable circumstances of her life, she ever long lost sight of its ideal object. We do not doubt that her zeal for human progress, her sympathy for the wrongs of the race, and her distrust of existing institutions were deep and sincere. We do not doubt that she was devoted in friendship, disinterested in love, ardent in philanthropy. She has seen the poverty and insincerity of society; she has quarrelled with what she calls the shams of sacred things, the merely conventional marriage, the God of bigotry and hypocrisy, the government of oppression and fraud; but she ends by recognizing and demanding the marriage of heart, the God of enlightened faith, the government of order and progress. Responding to the dominant chord of the nineteenth century, she strove to exalt individuality above sociality, and passion above decorum and usage. Nor would she allow any World's Congress of morals to settle the delicate limits between these opposing vital forces, between what we owe to ourselves and what we owe to others. If there be a divine of passion for which it is noble to suffer and sacrifice, there is also a deeper divine of duty, far transcending the other both in sacrifice and in reward. To this divine, too often obscured to all of us, her later life increasingly renders homage; and to its gentle redemption, our loving, pitying hearts—the more loving, the more pitying for her story—are glad to leave her.

Ave, thou long laborious! Ave, thou worker of wonders, thou embalmer of things most fleeting, most precious, so sealed in thy amber,

  "That Nature yet remembers
  What was so fugitive!"

Thou hast wrought many a picture of wild and guilty passion,—yet methinks thou didst always paint the mean as mean, the generous as generous. Nobler stories, too, thou hast told, and thy Consuelo is as pure as holy charity and lofty art could make her. They complain, that, in the world of thy creations, women are sublime and men weak; may not these things, then, be seen and judged for once through woman's eyes? Much harm hast thou done? Nay, that can only God know. They misquote thee, who veil a life of low intrigue with high-flown dicta borrowed from thy works. Thou art not of their sort,—or, if it be indeed thee they seek to imitate,

"Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile."

Thy faults have attracted them, not the virtues that redeem them. Shake thyself free of such, and with those who have loved much, and to whom much has been forgiven, go in peace! The shades of the Poets will greet thee as they greeted Dante and Virgil, when, thyself a shade, thou goest towards them. The heart that fainted at Francesca's sorrows will not refuse a throb to thine. For there is a gallery of great women, great with and without sin, where thou must sit, between Sappho and Cleopatra, the Magdalen thy neighbor,—nor yet removed wholly out of sight the Mother of the Great Forgiveness of God.

* * * * *

HAIR-CHAINS.

It was really a magnificent ball! The host had determined that his entertainment should minister to all the senses of his guests, and had succeeded so well that there was only room to regret there were but five senses to be gratified. Only five gates in the fortified wall within which the shy soul intrenches itself, where an attack may be made. And even when these are all carried by storm, there are sometimes inner citadels, impregnable to the magic torrent streaming through the Beautiful Gates, where she may survey intruders with calm disdain. In vain floods of delicious intoxication beat against her lofty retreat: she calmly analyzes the sweet poison, (as she thinks it,) separates and retains the solid fact whose solution had enriched the otherwise barren stream, and indifferently suffers the rest to flow by. These are the souls of philosophers and wise men, who never are drowned, never surprised. But the bountiful host had not cared only for these grand super-sensual people, but had striven perfectly to satisfy the eyes, the ears, the noses, the palates of the more numerous throng of weaker folk, whose inner fortifications were not so well defended. Hundreds of wax candles illuminated the far-reaching saloons with soft lustre. The walls were tinted with the most delicate hues, that afforded a pleasant cool background to the blazing rooms, and relieved the rich colors of the pictures. In all the pictures adorning the walls, the eye revelled in the luxurious coloring, careless of the absence of distinctness of form and grand pure outline. Scenes in the dark heart of tropical forests, the dense green foliage here and there startlingly relieved by a bright scarlet flower or the brilliant plumage of a songless bird,—gorgeous sunsets on American prairies, where the rolling purple ground contrasted with the crimson and golden glories of eventide,—vivid sketches along the Mediterranean, the blue sea embracing the twin sky,—vineyards ripening under the mellow Italian sun,—fields of yellow wheat bending to the sickles of English reapers,—and sometimes, half hidden by the folds of a heavy crimson curtain, one was startled to discover the solemn icebergs and everlasting snows of the Arctic regions. The wood-work of all the rooms was of dark oak, so that each appeared with its brilliantly dressed company to be a flashing gem set in a rich casket. A shadow of music wandered through the air, sometimes blended with the sound of the falling fountain in the green-house, sometimes almost absorbed in the fragrance of the flowers.

For two hours the carriages had been steadily streaming under the archway, and pouring their fair occupants, gauzy as summer, into the blazing saloons. The flashing candelabra drew the poor little moths from the outermost corners into the central vortex of light. Dazzled by the hot radiance, they strove to retreat again into the cool conservatories and side-rooms; but at that moment threads of music that had been carelessly winding through the crowd were caught up by an unseen hand and knotted,—and behold! already the moths found themselves imprisoned in a strong net-work of sound, whose intricate meshes entangled the rooms and the company, and the very light itself. The light, however, was too subtile for long confinement; it slipped along the melodious mazes, and melted into the rich odor that exhaled from the roses and jessamines in the conservatory. The light was a welcome visitor to the hyacinths and roses, obliged to hide in torturing silence in the still green-house, pouring out their passionate dumb life in intensity of fragrance. A life just hovering on the borders of the world, and yet forbidden to enter! But, bathed in the glowing effulgence of the light, this invisible fragrance could be born, and enter the visible world as color. For the fragrance is the unborn soul of the flower; color, that soul arrested in its restless wanderings,—embodied fragrance. Then the colors upon the purple hyacinths and white jessamines, and the flashing gems that rested on white bosoms like glittering drops of ice upon a snow-wreath, and the sheen of rustling silks, and the gilded picture-frames, and the florid carpets, and the twinkling feet on the carpets' roses, and the flushing of roses in the dancers' cheeks, and the radiant heads of the white-robed girls, ran into one another, blending into an intensity of color that dimmed itself. And the music still kept spinning and spinning, and finally wove in the color and fragrance and light with its subtile self; and the background of the woof was the hum and murmur of voices, and the continual rustling of feet. No wonder the poor moths were ensnared in such bewilderment!

Do you pity the captives? But it is a delicious imprisonment, and its fullest delights cannot be realized except by prisoners. In the vast halls of Intellect and Reason one may indeed be master, marching (a little chilled perhaps) with firm step and head erect. But on these enchanted grounds there is no medium between a wretched clearness of insight that reduces every curve to a number of straight lines, all clouds to precipitated vapor, all rainbows to an oblique coincidence between a sunbeam and a drop of water, and a total surrender of self to the influences of the flitting moment.

Away with these fellows, who would force their miserable microscopes before the eyes of these happy gauzy moths!—to-night is only the time for spinning cobwebs. Hold your breath, philosopher, lest you sweep them away too rudely! Alas for the airy cobwebs! In that cool anteroom is a philosopher's broom, hard at work, brushing them remorselessly into a perplexing dilemma,—the frightful increase of the human race.

"If," said the philosopher, emphatically, "if there were any prospect of emigrating to the moon, there would be some hope; but in the present state of affairs we shall soon be eating our own heads off, as the proverb says. Europe is almost exhausted, the ultima Thule of arable territory in America has been reached, Asia barely supports her own immense population; nothing is left but Africa, and she presents a merely hopeful prospect for the future. In a hundred years, what will society do for breadstuffs?"

"Live on rice and potatoes," suggested Anthrops.

"Rash boy, and check the advance of civilization! Have you not reflected that the culture of wheat has been an inseparable adjunct to progress and refinement? The difficulties required to be overcome in preparing the ground and sowing the grain promote prudence, foresight, and care."

"It is certainly hard work enough to dig potatoes," quoth Anthrops.

The philosopher passed over the interruption with a dignified wave of the hand, and continued:—

"The watching and waiting, during its progress to maturity, necessarily produce that patience which is so essential to all scientific effort; and the graceful loveliness of the plant in its various stages of growth materially assists in developing that love for the beautiful which is a necessary element in all harmonious individual or social character. Now what aesthetic culture can you evolve from that stubbed, straggling weed you call the potato?"

The discomfited pupil meekly suggested that he had been considering the dietetic, not the aesthetic properties of the despised vegetable.

"Impossible to separate them, Sir!" cried the philosopher. "If, indeed, you could fill the stomach without the intervention of any process of brain or hand, they might be considered apart. But consider the position of the stomach. Like a Persian monarch, it occupies the centre of the system; despotic from its remote situation and the absolute power it exercises, all parts of the external organism are its ministers: the feet must run for its daily food, the hands must prepare that food with cunning devices, the brain must direct the operations of feet and hands. Now, unlearned youth, wilt thou contend that the degree of refinement evinced by attention or indifference to the niceties of cooking, and so forth, has no bearing upon the character of the man and the race? Take as a standard the method of immediately conveying the food to the mouth, as it has progressed from barbarism. First, fingers; then, pieces of bark; then, rough wooden spoons, knives, two-pronged steel forks; and lastly, an epitome of civilization in each one that is used, five-pronged silver forks, evincing both the increased complexity of the nature that devises the extra prongs, and the refinement of taste that insists upon the silver. It is impossible to use wheat in any of its preparations," ("With five-pronged forks," murmured his attentive pupil parenthetically,) "without at least a piece of bark, for mixing and cooking, if not for eating. But in devouring potatoes, we are—I shudder to think of it—each moment upon the brink of being reduced to the absolute savageness of fingers. No, Sir! the moon and wheat both failing us, there is but one method of escaping universal famine,—peremptory reduction of the population."

Anthrops started; in that country murder was a capital offence.

"I do not mean," continued the philosopher, serenely, "by any forcible diminution of the existing populace: unfortunately, the vulgar prejudices in favor of life are so strong, owing to the miserable preponderance of the Egoistic over the Altruistic instincts, that such an expedient would be unadvisable. I refer to the"—

"What splendid hair!" suddenly exclaimed his young companion, starting forward with great animation to gain a nearer glimpse of its beauties. The owner had stopped for a moment in passing the secluded couple, and the rich chestnut head was presented in clear relief against the confused mass of color and light that streamed through the doorway of the saloon. The billows of hair rose from purple depths of shadow into gleaming crests of golden light, and fell away again in long undulations into the whirlpool of the knot.

While Anthrops was feasting his rapt eyes on the lovely picture, some treacherous fastening gave way, and the whole wavy mass overflowed upon the white shoulders. Then there was bustling and officious assistance, then there was flitting of maidens and crowding of men. They did not care that the hair of the Naiads in the waterfall outside of the city floated all day long over the glittering green waters, or that the soughing grass in the marsh stream lazily swayed to and fro always in sleepy ripples, or that the waving tresses of the weeping-willows were even then sweeping dreamily through the colored air: they cared for none of these things; but how eager and anxious were they to gain one glimpse of her,—fairer in her blushing confusion than before in her stately loveliness! She wound up the long tresses in her hand, and was retreating to the dressing-room, when the music, which had paused for a moment, renewed itself in an inspiriting waltz. Anthrops, forgetful of wheat, potatoes, and universal famine, rushed forward to claim her hand for the dance. The lady sighed, the waltz was so lovely, the young man so attractive, but—her hair? She really must arrange that before anything could be determined in any other direction. And she started backwards in her embarrassment to reach the stairs, and slipped into a little anteroom by mistake. There was but one door; so, when Anthrops followed her in, she could not get out, without at least hearing an additional reason for dancing.

"The waltz will be finished," urged Anthrops. "Take this little dagger, and wind your hair around that; it will be a fitting ornament for you."

As he spoke, he drew from his pocket a small dagger, a toy, but richly carved at the hilt, and offered it to the maiden. He had bought it that day for a little nephew, and had happened to leave it in his pocket. Doubtless, had the waltz been less enticing, or the youth less handsome, or the little anteroom less secluded, Haguna would have rejected the odd assistance. But, as it was, she accepted the jewelled toy, and in a few minutes had dexterously hidden the tiny blade with the thick coils of hair, just leaving the curiously carved face on the hilt to emerge from its shadowy nestling-place.

With the readjustment of her tresses, Haguna recovered the marvellously defensive self-possession that had been momentarily disturbed. So subtile and indefinable was the curious atmosphere that surrounded her, that, while it could be almost destroyed by the consciousness of a disordered toilet, yet the keenest eye could not penetrate beneath it, the most confident demeanor could not impress it, once reestablished.

Anthrops did not notice the change that had taken place in her aspect. Was it not enjoyment enough to whirl through the maddening mazes of the dance, into still deeper entanglements in the mysterious web that now had immeshed the saloons, borne irresistibly along the rapid torrent of music, through crowds swept in eddying circles by fresh gusts of sound, like leaves blown about by the west wind,—at first in low, wide, slow rounds, then whirling faster and faster, higher and higher, until the spiral coil suddenly terminated, and the music and motion fell exhausted together?

It was quite another thing to return to his friend the philosopher, who was now in a very bad humor.

"Such fooling!" he cried, when Anthrops came back much exhilarated.
"That woman is the plague of my life! See," he continued, sarcastically,
"I picked up one of the ugly little pins that she fastens her hair with;
perhaps you might like it for a keepsake."

Anthrops snatched eagerly at the little black thing his old friend held contemptuously balanced on his fingers, but dropped it immediately. Such a miserable thing to hold those glorious tresses! His dagger was better. The recollection that it was his dagger that now confined them dispelled the chill which the irate philosopher had thrown over his glowing excitement; he submissively proposed a return to potatoes, piling up famine and wheat over the one little thought that diffused such a delicious warmth through his breast; as charcoal-burners heap dead ashes over their fire, to hide it from the rough intrusion of chilling winds.

The nest day Haguna sent back the dagger, with a little note, thanking the owner in graceful terms.

"Your graceful politeness last evening, Herr Anthrops, saved me much perplexity, and procured me a delightful waltz. One should indeed be well protected by fortune, to find so readily such a courteous little sword," ("She does not know the difference between a sword and a dagger," thought Anthrops, and he was pleased at her ignorance,) "to supply one's awkward deficiencies." (Anthrops slightly winced as he thought of the little black pins.) "The old man on the hilt is really charming. I actually was obliged to kiss him at parting, he looked so kindly and pleasantly at me. Besides, he was my true benefactor; and my grandmother has often told me, that in her day maidens were very properly more expressive in their gratitude than now." (Anthrops fervently longed for a retrogression in the calendar.) "And I really think my old friend must have been alive then, and have been changed into wood, on purpose to preserve his looks till I could see him. It would be a right pleasant destiny, when one begins to grow old and ugly, to be transformed into wood, and carved as one would wish to appear perpetually. And happier fate still, like Philemon and Baucis, to change into living trees, and flourish for hundreds of years in youth and vigor. There are willow-trees growing on the banks of the river that may easily have been girls who wept themselves into trees, because their hair would soon be gray, and they have exchanged it for tresses of green. Near those willow-trees the princely stranger who has lately occupied the castle will next week give a boating fête, to which I am invited; I suppose you also, courteous Sir, will be present, a knight-errant for distressed damsels?

"HAGUNA."

Anthrops kissed the little old man on the dagger's hilt again and again, and made two equally firm, but entirely disconnected resolutions, simultaneously: namely, never to give his nephew the intended present, and by all means to be at the boat-fête the following week.

The day of the fête arrived,—a clear, lovely day in early June. The host had provided for the accommodation of his guests a number of boats of different sizes, holding two, three, or a dozen people, according to the fancy of the voyagers. Anthrops, descending the flight of steps that led to the river, came unexpectedly upon his old friend the philosopher, apparently emerging from the side of the hill.

"I expected you here," said he; "are you going on the river?"

Anthrops replied in the affirmative.

"Haguna is here, and I have come to exact a promise that you will not sail with her. You will repent it, if you do."

"Better than starvation is a feast and repentance," cried the young man, gayly. "What harm is there in the girl? Though, to be sure, I had no particular intention of sailing with her."

"It would be of no use to warn you explicitly," said his friend; "you would not believe me. But you must not go."

"Nay, good father," returned the youth, a little vexed,—"it is altogether too unreasonable to expect me to obey like a child; give me one good reason why I should avoid her as if she had the plague, and I promise to be guided by you."

"All women have some plague-spot," said the philosopher, sententiously.

"Well, then, I may as well be infected by her as by any one," cried Anthrops, lightly, and was rushing down the steps again, when the philosopher caught him by the arm.

"Follow me," he said; "you will not believe, but still you may see."

He led the way down to the river, and, the youth still following, entered one of the gayly trimmed row-boats and pushed from shore. The boat seemed possessed by the will of its master, and, needing no other guide or impetus, floated swiftly into the centre of the channel. Obeying the same invisible helmsman, it there paused and rocked gently backwards and forwards as over an unseen anchor. The philosopher drew from his pocket a small cup and dipped up a little water. He then handed it to the youth, and bade him look at it through a strong magnifying-glass, which he also gave him. Anthrops was surprised to find a white dust in the bottom of the cup.

"Ah!" said his companion, answering his look of inquiry, "it is bone-dust; and now you may see where it comes from."

Anthrops looked through the magnifying-glass, as he was directed, at the river itself, and found he could clearly see the sand at the bottom. He was horrified at seeing the yellow surface strewn with human bones, bleached by long exposure to the running water.

"Alas!" he exclaimed, sorrowfully, "have so many noble youths perished in these treacherous waters? That golden sand might be ruddy with the blood of its numerous victims!"

"Don't be blaming the innocent waters, simple boy!" half sneered the philosopher. "Lay the blame where it is due, upon the artful river-nixes. Since the creation of the world, the stream has flowed tranquilly between these banks; and during that time do you not suppose that these fair alluring sprites have had opportunity to entice such silly boys as you into the cool green water there below?"

Anthrops gazed long into the still, cruel depths of the river, held spell-bound by a horrible fascination; at last he raised his head, and, drawing a long sigh of relief, exclaimed,—

"Thank fortune, Haguna is no water-nix!"

"What!" cried the angry philosopher, "your mind still running upon that silly witch? Can you learn no wisdom from the fate of other generations of fools, but must yourself add another to the catalogue? She is more dangerous than the nixes: the snares which they laid for their victims were cobwebs, compared to the one she is weaving for you. You admire her hair, forsooth! The silk of the Indian corn is a fairer color, spiders' webs are finer, and the back of the earth-mole is softer; yet in your eyes nothing will compare with it."

"The silk of the Indian corn is golden, but coarse and rough; the threads of the spider's web are fine, but dull and gray; the satin hair of the blind mole is lifeless and stiff. Let me go, old man! I care nothing for your fancied dangers. I shall row her to-day; that is pleasure enough." And he attempted to seize the unused oar.

"Once more, pause! Reflect upon what you are leaving: the pleasures of tranquil meditation, the keen excitements of science, the entrancing delights of philosophy. All these you must abandon, if you leave me now."

Anthrops hesitated a moment.

"How so?" he asked.

"He who is devoted to philosophy must share his soul with no other mistress. No restlessness, no longing after an unseen face, no feverish anxiety for the love or approval of an earthly maiden must disturb the balanced calm of his absorbed mind"—

"Herr Anthrops, Herr Anthrops, how you have forgotten your engagement!"

She was in a boat that had pushed up close to them unawares. Some girls and young men occupied the bows. Haguna was leaning over the stern and waving her hand to Anthrops. So suddenly had she appeared, that it was as if she had risen out of the rippling river, and the ripples still seemed to undulate on her sunny hair and laughing dimpled face: so fresh and bright and fair she seemed in that glad June morning. What did it matter whether he reasoned rightly on any subject?

"Let me go!" he exclaimed to his companion. "Farewell, philosophy! farewell, science! I have chosen."

To his surprise, he discovered that he was suddenly quite alone in the boat. The philosopher had disappeared,—whether by waxen wings, or an invisible cap, or any of the other numerous contrivances of many-wiled philosophers, he did not stop to consider, but hastened to join Haguna and her companions.

"You are a welcome addition to our company," said Haguna, graciously reaching out her white hand; "but you choose strange companions. An old gray owl flew out of your boat a moment ago, scared to find himself abroad in such a pleasant sunlight. I confess I don't altogether admire your taste, not being an orni"—

She appealed in pretty perplexity to the student to help her out of the difficulty into which she had fallen by her rash attempt at large words.

—"Thologist," added Anthrops, much wondering at these new tricks of the philosopher,—and then again he so much the more applauded his own wisdom in exchanging for her society the company of an old owl.

So all the day long he stayed by her, all the day long he followed her, rowing or walking or dancing, or sitting by her under the willows on the banks of the river. The soft breeze routed her shining hair from its compact masses; it touched his cheek as he knelt beside her to pull up the tough-rooted columbine that resisted her fingers; her fragrant breath mingled with the odor of the sweet-scented violets that he plucked for her; the trailing tresses of the mournful willow, swaying in the breeze, brushed them both; the murmuring water at their feet heard a new tale as it flowed past her, and babbled it to him, adding delicious nonsense of its own, endless variations upon the same sweet theme. How happy he was that day! It came to an end, of course; but its death scattered the seeds of other days, that sprang up in gracious profusion, yielding dear delights of flower and fruit. All over his garden these bright plants grew, gradually triumphing over and expelling the coarser and ruder vegetables.

Nothing but flowers would he cultivate now,—and cared not even that they should be perennials, if only the present blooming were gay and gladsome.

One June day, Anthrops joined a pleasure-seeking equestrian party, who rode from the town to spend the day in the woods. What a lovely day it was! The pure, fresh air seemed to contain the very essence of the life it inspired, life drained of all impurity and sadness and foulness by the early summer rains, the springing joyous life of the delicate wood-flowers. The strong trees in the leafy woods trembled with happiness in their boughs and tender sprays; the carolling birds poured forth their brimming songs from full hearts. And upon the interlacing greenery of the shrubbery, and the lichens upon the trees, and the soft moss covering with jealous tenderness the bare places in the ground, the slant sunbeams glittered in the early morning dew. As Anthrops rode along silently by the side of Haguna, an inexpressible joyfulness filled his heart; the light, round, white clouds nestling in the deep bosom of the sky, the faint, delicious odor of the woods, the rustling, murmuring presence that forever dwelt there, all made him unspeakably glad and light-hearted. As he rode, he began to sing a little song that he had learned awhile before.

  We rushed from the mountain,
    The streamlet and I,
  Restless, unquiet,
    We scarcely knew why,—
  Till we met a dear maiden,
    Whose beauty divine
  Stilled with great quiet
    This wild heart of mine;
  And awed and astonished
    To peacefulness sweet,
  The fierce mountain-torrent
    Lay still at her feet."

"A right rare power for beauty to possess!" laughed Haguna. "Are you so restless that you need this soothing, fair Sir?"

A deep, sweet smile gushed out from his eyes and illumined his face. He stretched out his arms lovingly into the warm air, as if he thus infolded some rich joy, and answered, musingly,—

"In ordinary action, thought, and feeling,—we are too conscious of ourselves, we are perplexed with the miserable little 'I,' that, by claiming deed and thought for its own work, makes it little and mean. But the wondrous Beautiful comes to us entirely from outside; our very contemplation of it does not belong to us; we are overpowered and conquered by the vast idea that broods over us. And so that contemplation is pure happiness."

Haguna laughed a little, and a little wondered what he meant; then observed, lightly,—

"You must value yourself very modestly, to consider your greatest happiness to consist in losing your self-consciousness,—unless, indeed, like Polycrates, you hope to insure future prosperity by sacrificing your most valuable possession."

"If so, I, like Polycrates, am the gainer by my own precaution; for, in your presence, dear lady, do I first truly find my right consciousness."

She clapped her hands gleefully, wilfully misunderstanding his meaning.

"Most complimentary of monarchs! So I am the haggard old fisherman who replaced the lost bawble in the royal treasury! Pray, Sire, remember the pension with which I should be rewarded!" And she bowed low, in mock courtesy to her companion.

"Nay," rejoined Anthrops, vexed that his earnest compliment should be so mishandled,—"blame your own perversity for such an interpretation. At your side I forget that I live for any other purpose than to look at you, and lavish my whole soul in an intensity of gazing; and then the presumptuous thought, that you like to have me near you, nay, are sometimes even pleased to talk to me, gives my poor self a value in my own eyes, for the kindness you show me."

"I know all that well enough," said Haguna, quietly. "But in the mean while, dear Anthrops, you must remember that it is really impolite to stare so much."

By this time they had ridden deep into the still woods. Following the light current of their talking, they wound in and out among the green trees, under their broad arching boughs,—now following the path, now beating a new track over the short grass mixed with the crisp gray moss. The sunlight glanced shyly through the fluttering leaves, weaving with their delicate shadows a rare tracery on the grass. The pattern was so intricate and yet so suggestive, they were sure that some strange legend was written there in mysterious characters,—something holding a fateful reason for their ride together in the green woods. But just as they had almost deciphered the secret, the broidered shadow disappeared under a bush, leaving them in new perplexity. They looked for the story in the windings of the checkerberry-vine and blue-eyed periwinkle, on the lichens curiously growing on the boles of aged trees; but for all these they had no dictionary. So they strayed on and on, in the endless mazes of the forest, till they became entirely separated from their companions, and lost all clue for recovering the path.

Anthrops looked in some perplexity at Haguna, to see if she were alarmed at this position of affairs. He was rather surprised to find, that, far from being discouraged, she seemed highly to enjoy the dilemma. She leaned forward a little on her horse, her one gloved hand, dropping the reins on his neck, nestled carelessly in his mane, while the forefinger of the other hand rested on her lip, with a comical expression of mock anxiety, as she looked inquiringly at Anthrops.

"I think," finally exclaimed Anthrops, "that we had better push straight through the woods. We cannot go far without discovering some road that will lead us back to the city."

"Nobly resolved, courageous Sir! But first tell me how we shall pass this first barrier that besets our onward march."

And she pointed the end of the riding-whip that hung at her wrist to a mass of brambles which formed an impenetrable wall immediately in their path. Anthrops rubbed his eyes, for he could scarce believe that this thicket had been there before; it seemed to have grown up suddenly while he turned his head. He then tried to retrace his steps, but was thrown into fresh perplexity by discovering that the trees seemed to have closed in around them, so that he could find no opening for a horse.

"It seems evident to me," said Haguna, "that we must dismount, and find our way on foot. If now we could have deciphered the hieroglyphs of the shadows, we might have avoided this misfortune."

As cool water upon the brow of a fevered man, fell the clear tones of her voice upon Anthrops, bewildered and confused by the sudden enchantment. She, indeed, called it a misfortune, but so cheerily and gayly that her voice belied the term; and Anthrops insensibly plucked up heart, and shook off somewhat of that paralyzing astonishment.

He assisted her to dismount, and, leaving the horses to their fate, they together hunted for some opening in the dense thicket. After much search, Anthrops succeeded in discovering a small gap in the brambles, through which he and Haguna crept, but only into fresh perplexity. They gained a path, but with it no prospect of rejoining their companions; for it wound an intricate course between ramparts of vine-covered shrubbery, that shut it in on either side and intercepted all extended view. The way was too narrow to admit of more than one person passing at a time; and as Haguna happened to have emerged first from the thicket, she boldly took the lead, following the path until they emerged into a more open part of the forest, where the undulating ground was entirely free from underbrush, and the eye roamed at pleasure through the wide glades. Haguna followed some unseen waymarks with sure step, still tacitly compelling Anthrops to follow her without inquiry. As she sped lightly over the turf, she began to hum a little song:—

  "Nodding flowers, and tender grass,
  Bend and let the lady pass!
  Lighter than the south-wind straying,
  In the spring, o'er leaves decaying,
  Seeking for his ardent kisses
  One small flower that he misses,
  Will I press your snowy bosoms,
  Dainty, darling little blossoms!"

Singing thus, she descended a little hill, and, gliding round its base, disappeared under a thick grape-vine that swung across it from two lofty elms on either side. A spider in conscious security had woven his web across the archway formed by the drooping festoons of the vine; the untrodden path was overgrown with moss. Haguna lifted up the vine and passed under, beckoning Anthrops to follow. He heard her still singing,—

  "Quick unclasp your tendrils clinging,
  Stealthily the trees enringing!
  I have learnt your wily secret:
  I will use it, I shall keep it!
  Cunning spider, cease your spinning!
  My web boasts the best beginning.
  Yours is wan and pale and ashen:
  After no such lifeless fashion
  Mine is woven. Golden sunbeams
  Prisoned in its meshes, light gleams
  From its shadowest recesses.
  Tell me, spider, made you ever
  Web so strong no knife could sever
  Woven of a maiden's tresses?"

On the other side of the viny curtain, Anthrops discovered the entrance to a large cavern hollowed out in a rock. The cavern was carpeted with the softest moss of the most variegated shades, ranging from faintest green to a rich golden brown. The rocky walls were of considerable height, and curved gracefully around the ample space,—a woodland apartment. But the most remarkable feature in the grotto was a rose-colored cloud, that seemed to have been imprisoned in the farther end, and, in its futile efforts to escape, shifted perpetually into strange, fantastic figures. Now, the massive form of the Israelitish giant appeared lying at the feet of the Philistine damsel; anon, the kingly shoulders of the swift-footed Achilles towered helplessly above the heads of the island girls. The noble head of Marcus Antoninus bowed in disgraceful homage before his wife; the gaunt figure of the stern Florentine trembled at the footsteps of the light Beatrice; the sister of Honorius, from the throne of half the world, saluted the sister of Theodosius, grasping the sceptre of the other half in her slender fingers. Every instance of weak compliance with the whims, of devoted subjection to the power, of destructive attention to the caprices of women by men, since Eve ruined her lord with the fatal apple, was whimsically represented by the rapid configurations of this strange vapor.

Anthrops presently discovered Haguna half reclining on a raised moss-seat, and dreamily running her white fingers through her hair, which now fell unchecked to her feet. He had lost sight of her but a few minutes, yet in that short time a strange change had come over her. Perhaps it was because her rippling hair, which, slightly stirred by the faint air of the cavern, rose and fell around her in long undulations, made her appear as if floating in a golden brown haze. Perhaps it was the familiarity with which she had taken possession of the grotto, as if it had been a palace that she had expected, prepared for her reception. But for some reason she appeared a great way off,—no longer a simple maiden, involved with him in a woodland adventure, but a subtle enchantress, who, through all the seeming accidents of the day, had been pursuing a deep-laid plot, and now was awaiting its triumphant consummation. She did not at first notice Anthrops as he stood in curious astonishment in the doorway; but presently, looking up, she motioned him to another place beside herself.

"This is a pleasant place to rest in for a while before we rejoin our companions," she said; "we are fortunate in finding so pretty a spot."

The natural tone of her frank, girlish voice somewhat dissipated Anthrops's vague bewilderment, and he accepted the proffered seat at her side. He for the first time looked attentively at Haguna, as he had until now been gazing at the shifting diorama behind her. He noticed, to his surprise, a number of bright shining points, somewhat like stars, glistening in her hair, and with some hesitation inquired their nature. Haguna laughed, a low musical laugh, yet with an indescribable impersonality in it,—as if a spring brook had just then leaped over a little hill, and were laughing mockingly to itself at its exploit.

"They are souls," she said.

"Dear me!" exclaimed Anthrops; "are souls no bigger than that?"

"How do you know how large they are?" laughed Haguna, beginning to weave her hair into a curiously intricate braid. "These are but the vital germs of souls; but I hold them bound as surely by imprisoning these."

"But surely every soul is not so weak; all cannot be so cruelly imprisoned."

Again she laughed, that strange laugh.

"Strong and weak are merely relative terms. There is nothing you know of so strong that it may not yield to a stronger, and anything can be captured that is once well laid hold of. I will sing you a song by which you may learn some of the ways in which other things beside souls are caught."

Still continuing her busy weaving, Haguna began to sing. Except the song she had hummed in the woods that afternoon, he had never heard her voice but in speaking, and was astonished at its richness and power; yet it was a simple chant she sang, that seemed to follow the gliding motion of her fingers.

  "Running waters swiftly flowing,
  On the banks fair lilies growing
  Watch the dancing sunbeams quiver,
  Watch their faces in the river.
  Round their long roots, in and out,
  The supple river winds about,—
  Wily, oily, deep designing,
  Their foundations undermining.
  Fall the lilies in the river,
  Smoothly glides the stream forever."

The subtle song crept into Anthrops's brain, and seemed to spin a web over it, which, though of lightest gossamer, confined him helplessly in its meshes. Again she sang:—

  "From the swamp the mist is creeping;
  Fly the startled sunbeams weeping,
  Up the mountain feebly flying,
  Paling, waning, fainting, dying.
  All their cheerful work undoing,
  Crawls the cruel mist pursuing.
  Shrouded in a purple dimness,
  Quenched the sunlight is in shadow;
  Over hill and wood and meadow
  Broads the mist in sullen grimness."

She had already woven a great deal of her shining hair into a curious braid, so broad and intricate as to be almost a golden web. A strange fascination held Anthrops spell-bound; it was as if her song were weaving her web, and her fingers chanting her song, and as if both song and web were made of the wavering cloud that still shifted into endless dioramas. Once more she sang:—

  "Drop by drop the charmed ear tingling,
  Rills of music intermingling,
  Murmuring in their mazy winding,
  All the steeped senses blinding,
  Their intricate courses wending,
  Closer still the streams are blending.
  Down the rapid channel rushing,
  Floods of melody are gushing;
  Flush the tender rills with gladness,
  Drown the listener in sweet madness.
  Onward sweeps the eddying singing,
  Ever new enchantment bringing.
  Break the bubbles on the river,
  Faints the wearied sound in darkness;
  But, as one that always hearkens,
  Floats the charmed soul forever."

As she finished the song, she arose, and threw over the youth the web of her fatal hair. The charmed song had so incorporated itself with the odorous air of the cavern, that every breath he drew seemed to be laden with the subtle music. It oppressed, stifled him; he strove in vain to escape its influence; and as he felt the soft hair brush his cheek, he swooned upon the ground.

The philosopher's study was a very different place from the green wood,—perched up, as it was, on the summit of a bare, bleak mountain. The room was fitted up with the frugality demanded by philosophic indifference to luxury, and the abundance necessitated by a wide range of study. The walls were hung with a number of pictures, in whose subjects an observer might detect a remarkable similarity. A satirical pencil had been engaged in depicting some of the most striking instances of successful manly resistance to female tyranny, of manly contempt for feminine weakness, of manly endurance of woman-inflicted injury. The unfortunate Longinus turned with contemptuous pity from the trembling Zenobia; the valiant Thomas Aquinas hurled his protesting firebrand against the too charming interruption of his scholastic pursuits; the redoubtable Conqueror beat his rebellious sweetheart into matrimony. The flickering light of a wood fire served not merely to illuminate the actual portraits, but almost to discover the sarcastic face of the anonymous artist, smiling in triumph from the background. On the hearth in front of the fire stood the philosopher in earnest conversation with a venerable friend.

"I am provoked beyond measure," exclaimed our friend, in an exceedingly vexed tone. "So much as I had hoped from the boy,—that he, too, could not keep from the silly snare! It is shameful, abominable;—she is always in my way, upsetting all my plans, interfering with everything I undertake. Would you believe it? at the death of one of her sisters, the fools were not content with giving her a funeral good enough for a man, but they must place her hair in the sky for a constellation!"

"That was indeed an insult to Orion," said his sympathizing friend, soothingly.

"My hands are absolutely tied," continued the irate philosopher. "I bestow upon the boys the most careful education, enlarge their minds by the study of the history and destiny of man, of the world, of the stellar system, till I may hope that in the contemplation of the vast universe they have lost their little prejudices and personal preferences. I strengthen their judgment, assiduously exercise their powers of ratiocination, fortify their minds with philosophy, train them to habits of accuracy, patience, and perseverance by long scientific research; and at the moment when I ought to find them useful as philosophers, as seekers after eternal Truth, as lovers of imperishable Wisdom, they degenerate into seekers after eyes and hair and cheeks, and I know not what nonsense, lovers of frail, perishable women, who appear to preserve an astonishing longevity on purpose to plague and thwart rational people."

His friend pondered deeply upon the vexatious problem.

"You say," he remarked, "that this unfortunate attraction exists in spite of philosophical training,—that it is exerted towards the antipodes of their previous associations; that, as they have been trained to yield only to well-grounded syllogisms, it is the illogical mode of assault that vanquishes them unguarded; that their reasonable minds have nothing to say to such, perfectly unreasonable fascinations; that, in short, the enemy succeeds by supplying a vacuum, as the walls of Visibis gave way under the pressure of the dammed-up river?"

"Alas, friend, your observations are too true!"

"Then my way becomes clearer. It surely cannot be unknown to you, sagest of students, that in physical science we oppose a plenum to a vacuum, in medicine we supply a deficiency of saline secretions by the common expedient of salt. Wherefore not apply our knowledge painfully gleaned from lower science to the study of these more complicated phenomena? The coward who would flee the fire of the enemy may be kept at his post by the equal dread of death from his commander. Open a double fire upon these wayward youths. Make the Barbarians enlist in the Roman legions. In short, teach Haguna and the others philosophy. There will then no longer be an opposing force of entirely different nature, but merely an influence of the same kind as he has been accustomed to, though vastly inferior in power."

The philosopher started,—the idea was so new to him.

"But, my friend," he urged, doubtfully, "do you not remember, that, after the Romans had painfully learnt ship-building from the Carthaginians, they vanquished them with their own weapons? Might not some such danger be apprehended in this case?"

His companion reddened with indignation, then spoke in a tone of mildly severe rebuke.

"Are the girls Romans? Do you suppose that in ship-building the silly little things would ever advance beyond scows? We shall have the double advantage of the plenum, by their minds being turned in the same direction as those of our students,—and of the defeat and shipwreck, through fighting in unseaworthy vessels."

"I have another idea also," observed the philosopher. "Even supposing, as I must confess there seems to me a possibility, that in a philosophical tournament, or trial of wits, they should occasionally come off victorious," (his friend shook his head angrily,) "the effect of separation that we desire would still be obtained. Haguna would no longer be able to entangle silly boys in her treacherous hair. Your suggestion is good; I will act upon it."

After some deliberation, they agreed upon the method of procedure, which the philosopher immediately began to put into practice.

Shortly after this conversation, invitations were sent to a select number of the inhabitants of the city to a new kind of entertainment to be given by the recluse philosopher of the mountain. The entertainment was to consist of astronomical and chemical exhibitions; the infinitely great and infinitesimally little were to be conjoined to form an evening's amusement. Such was the programme; and the eager curiosity of the select few who were invited brought them punctually to the philosopher's eyry. Haguna of course was there,—as unconsciously lovely as if the disappearance of the unfortunate Anthrops were as much a mystery to her as to the rest of the wondering citizens. The philosopher, laying aside the brusqueness acquired in his solitude, devoted himself with the utmost courtesy to the amusement of his guests, —opened for them dusty cases of butterflies, shells, and rare stones, which he had collected in his pursuit of the various sciences that made them a specialty,—placed ponderous tomes open at some curious or amusing story of otherwise forgotten ages, to arrest the fancy of elegant literati,—exhibited rare and grotesque curiosities, the glittering mica that he had picked up in his long researches, as toys for these idlers of taste.

The flashing gems and gay dresses of the brilliant assemblage illuminated the dusky old study; the rustling of silks, and the merry laughter, only a trifle subdued by the novelty of the circumstances, the eager chattering, the tripping sound of girlish feet darting in and out of every quaint nook and corner, the varied flow of sprightly conversation, scared the solemn quiet of the library. Looming down grimly from the shelves that lined the walls, stood ponderous volumes, monuments over the graves in which their authors were buried. Oh, the life's blood that had been wrung into those forgotten pages! Oh, the eager hope and sickening disappointment, the vehement aspirations, the intense longings, the bitter hatred, the scorn, the greater than angelic, the human love and benevolence, the fortitude, the courage, the whole strange life of hundreds of dead men, that burned between those thick covers! Often books do not reveal their authors until many years after their death. They are read at first for the mite of fuel that they bring to some blazing controversy; the man is entirely forgotten in his work. But when years, centuries, have passed away, and the fire that threatened to consume the world has died out as quietly as any common bonfire, then the "spirits of the mighty dead" come back calmly to their world-work,—now doubtless seeing its little worth as clearly as their modern critics, but also hallowing their mighty labors with regal authority, as the living garment of a human soul. The marble tombs in graveyards hold empty dust; the real men lie buried alive in quiet libraries.

The philosopher entertained his guests well. But underneath all the polite suavity of his manner could be detected a curious satisfaction at the contrast between the deep sea of still thought usually embosoming his library, and this sparkling, shallow little stream now flowing into it. The prominent popular tricks of science he played off for their amusement, exhibited the standard stars, enlarged upon the most wonder-striking and easily understood facts in the sublime science, and bewildered them with a pleasant enthusiasm of acquisition, by a series of brilliant chemical experiments. The labors of a lifetime were concentrated on a few dazzling results: the long tedium of the means, the painful training, the hard mathematical preparation, the brain-sickness and heart-sickness of these years of solitude were quietly ignored.

But it was round Haguna that he plied the most subtle enchantments,—to her he exhibited the most glittering decoys of Knowledge. She was completely fascinated. Her cheeks grew pale, her large dark eyes deeper and darker, with intense interest. She hung upon every word that fell from the philosopher's lips, pored over the elegant trifles the scholar had collected for the wondering ignorant, and stood abashed before the studied unconsciousness of power,—the power of vast learning, that she felt for the first time. When the guests were departing, she was still reluctant to go,—she timidly followed the watchful philosopher to the mighty telescope that had brought down stars for their playthings that evening.

"My ignorance and weakness overwhelm me," she exclaimed; "would that I could spend my life in this awful library!"

The philosopher repressed his exultation at this confession, and replied,—

"Nothing is easier, Madam, than the gratification of your laudable desire. I am in the habit of receiving pupils, and should be most happy to admit you to my class."

An eager light leaped into her lovely face as she earnestly thanked him for his condescension, and engaged to begin the lessons on the very next day. So, when the guests had all gone, and the scared quiet ventured to brood again over its ancient nestling-place, the wily philosopher threw himself back into his great chair, and laughed a long while with solitary enjoyment.

The next day Haguna wended her lonely way to the bleak hill. It was so stony and bare and treeless,—jutting out against the gray cold sky like a giant sentinel stripped naked, yet still with dogged obstinacy clinging to his post. The hard path pushed up over jagged stones that cut her tender feet, and they left bleeding waymarks on the difficult ascent. Woe, woe to poor trembling Haguna! Uncouth birds whizzed in circles round her head, clanging and clamoring with their shrill voices, striving to beat her back with their flapping wings. The faint sweet fragrance of brier-roses clustering at the foot of the mountain wafted reproachfully upon the chill air an entreaty to return. Once, turning at a sudden bend in the road, she spied a merry party of girls and children crowning each other with quickly fading wreaths of clover-blossoms. A rosy-cheeked child in the centre of the group, enjoying the glory of his first coronation, accidentally pointed his fat fore-finger at her, as if in derision of her undertaking. It was strange, that, although she presently pressed forward eagerly again, she felt glad that none of those laughing girls would leave the sunny valley to follow her example. She had flung her whole soul into the scheme, as is the fashion with girls, and could not recover it again now. It seemed absolutely necessary that somewhere some woman like herself should be compelled to scale this ascent, and she—one of those girls in the valley, for instance, might not be nearly so well able as herself to face this bleakness. Thus she might preserve those sportive triflers in their everlasting childhood by the warning of her sad devotion. Faint shadows of gigantic tasks to be conquered when the hill was surmounted swam through her mind. And somewhat whimsically associated with these, a portrait of the learned Hooker occurred vividly to her imagination,—his face disfigured through his devotion to sedentary pursuits. Involuntarily she smoothed her soft cheek with her little hand. It was still round and velvet as an August peach. Nevertheless she threw this possibility into the burden she was going to assume for humanity, and felt happier as the burden waxed heavier. The innate hunger for sacrifice was gratified, with only the definite prospect of suffering from loss of complexion; a concrete living shape was given to the vague longing that possessed her; and she cheerfully marched on, strong in the hope of the love and reverence she was sure her devotion would gain. Ah, sweet Haguna, Haguna! Sweating enough and toil enough already! Go back, dear child, from a work thou canst not understand, and imprison sunbeams for the panting world in flowery valleys!

By this time she had reached the philosophic hermitage. Her future master met her at the door, and, saluting her with grave courtesy, led the way to a small unfurnished apartment, from whose windows nothing could be seen but the distant sea and sky,—always a solemn monotone of sea and sky.

"And so," he said, with mild irony, "even the maidens must dim their bright eyes with philosophy! Can they leave their dolls so long?"

The hot blood rushed into Haguna's face, as she exclaimed, with intense eagerness,—

"Is it my fault that I am a girl? I come to you to learn, to satisfy the insatiable thirst for knowledge which you have awakened,—and you reproach me with my ignorance! I have just discovered that the one thing I have secretly needed always was to learn to exercise my mind cramped with inaction, to share with you labor and toil."

"Poor child," sighed the philosopher, excited to sudden pity by her ardor, "you know little of the sweat of brain-toil! Do you know that it takes years of painful study to arrive at a single valuable result? that for a distant, doubtful advantage, all your bright, unfettered life must be sacrificed? Each enjoyment must be stinted and weighed,—each day valued only as another step to be climbed in the endless ladder,—all simple, sweet enjoyment of earth and air and sky, the careless, golden halo of each free day, must be given up. Everything must be squared according to an inexorable plan; self must be despised, passions restrained and clarified, till the life becomes thin and attenuated through careful discipline,—all hopes and fears laid aside till the soul becomes accustomed to its chilly atmosphere. Then body and mind must be trained to endure a fearful weariness, to pass the days under such a stern pressure of toil that all loving, graceful interests shall be rooted out of the stony soil. You must be prepared to lose precious truths in a gulf of delusion,—to leave all your old beacon-lights and wander forth in an eternal dark. The troubles that beset weak souls may be dissipated, but new strength brings dreadful trials. Tremendous conflicts, undreamt-of in your innocence, will agitate your adventurous Intellect, penetrating into vast regions of Doubt, where the mind made for belief often reels into madness, goaded by harassing anxiety. Often the lonely night-hours must be spent in sore battle with fearful spectres revived by the roaming soul from their frequent graves. All this and more must he dare who aspires to the lofty service of philosophy."

"All this and more would I gladly suffer," cried Haguna. "There is a fire now in my brain; you have kindled it, and it must be fed. And, moreover, I wish to endure this trial for its own sake; for it is not fitting that men should suffer more than women. Perhaps, too,—am I presumptuous in thinking so?—two workers may so lessen the toil of one that this lonely trial maybe greatly helped by even my assistance."

And her bosom heaved, and glorious tears welled up into her deep blue eyes. The repentant philosopher placed his hand on her lovely head, and lifted a tress of her soft hair.

"Ah, child, child, you know little about it! What! will you sacrifice these glorious tresses to a hard and joyless course of study? For none can study Euclid with me with hair like this."

"Willingly! willingly!" cried Haguna, impetuously, and pulled a pair of scissors from her pocket to immediately make the beautiful offering.

The reluctant philosopher arrested her hand.

"Rash girl! consider yet a moment. You are exchanging a treasure whose value you know for—you know not what. You will bitterly repent."

But Haguna, would not consider. She impatiently tore away her hand, and in a few minutes had closely shorn her head, and the neglected hair lay in rich profusion on the floor. As it lay there, the warm golden brown color faded and faded, and some glittering things entangled in its abundant masses beamed forth for a moment like tiny stars, and then disappeared. And had Haguna stepped into a cloud, that so great a change had come over her? The fine contour of head and forehead, the soft outline of face, the delicate moulding of the chin were the same still,—the dark eyes glowed with even new lustre; but the graceful throat and white arm were hidden in a dark muffling cloak, the delicious blush had faded from the cheek, whose color was now firm and tranquil, the well-cut lips had settled into almost too harsh lines, an air of indescribably voluptuous grace had forever fled. Ah, hapless Haguna!

The philosopher made no further remonstrance, but led her immediately to the library, and, seating her at the table, opened a worn copy of Euclid, and began at "Two straight lines," and so forth.

A few moments after, Anthrops, released from his imprisonment, opened the door of the upper room, walked quietly down-stairs, and returned to the city, much to the joy of his friends and relations, who had long mourned him as lost.

About a year after this, Anthrops strolled into the philosopher's study, to inquire the solution of a certain problem.

"I will refer you," said his old instructor, "to my accomplished pupil"; then raising his voice,—"Haguna!"

Anthrops, startled at hearing her name in such a connection, awaited her entrance with anxious curiosity. She speedily came in obedience to the summons, bowed with an air of grave abstraction to Anthrops, and, seating herself, composedly awaited the commands of her master. Her former captive asked himself, wondering, if this could be the airy, laughing, winsome maiden with whom in days past he had ridden into the green forest. The billows of hair had ebbed away; the short, ungraceful, and somewhat thin remnant was meant for use in covering the head, not for luxurious beauty. All falling laces, all fluttering ribbons, all sparkling jewels were discarded from the severe simplicity of the scholastic gown; and with them had disappeared the glancing ripple that before had sunnily flowed around her, like wavy undulations through a field of corn. Very clear and still were the violet eyes, but their dewy lustre had long ago dried up. Like a flowering tree whose blossoms have been prematurely swept off by a cold wind was the maiden, as she sat there, abstractedly drawing geometrical diagrams with her pencil.

"Now, Sir," said the philosopher, "if you will state your difficulty, I have no doubt my pupil can afford you assistance."

So saying, he withdrew into a corner, that the discussion might have free scope.

Haguna now looking inquiringly at Anthrops. He cleared his throat with a somewhat dictatorial "hem!" and began.

"These circumstances, Madam, are really so unusual, that you must excuse me, if I"—

"Proceed, Sir, to the point."

"When, avoiding the barbarous edict of Justinian, which condemned to a perpetual silence the philosophic loquacity of the Athenian schools, the second heptacle of wise men undertook a perilous journey to implore the protection of Persia, they undoubtedly must at some stages of their travels have passed the night on the road. In this case, the method of so passing the time becomes an interesting object of research. Did the last of the Greeks provide themselves with tents,—effeminately impede their progress with luggage? Did they, skirting the north of the Arabian desert, repose under the scattered palm-trees,—or rather, wandering among the mountains of Assyria, find surer and colder shade? The importance of this inquiry becomes evident upon reflecting that the characters of the great are revealed by their behavior in the incidental events of their lives."

"It is evident to my mind," returned Haguna, thoughtfully, "that the seven sages, joyfully escaping from the frivolous necessities of society, would return to the privileges of the children of eternal Nature, and sleep confidingly under the blue welkin."

"Rheumatism," suggested Anthrops.

"Rheumatism!" echoed Haguna, disdainfully. "What is rheumatism? What are any mere pains of the flesh, to the glorious content of the unshackled spirit revelling in the freedom of its own nature? Thus the cultivated Reason returns, with a touching appreciation of the Beautiful and the Fit, to the simple couch of childish spontaneity. Mankind, after long confinement in marble palaces, sepulchres of their inner being, retrograde to the golden age. The wisdom of the world lies down to sleep under the open sky. Such a beautiful comparison! It must be true."

"Really, Madam, your conclusions, although attained with great rapidity of reasoning, are hardly deducible from the premises. Let me remark"—

"Reduce Camenes to Celarent, and the argument is plainly irrefragable. It requires a mind deeply toned to sympathy with the inner significance of all things to"—

"Contemporary testimony is absolutely necessary, if not suspiciously sullied by credulity or deceit,—in which case, the nearest trustworthy historian, if not more than a hundred years from the specified time, is incomparably preferable. But"—

Haguna again interrupted, her voice a little raised with excitement. The dispute waxed warm, on either side authorities were quoted and rejected, and how it terminated has never been recorded. But the philosopher in the corner rubbed his hands with satisfaction, exclaiming,—

"Thank fortune, we may now have a little peace!"

THE FLOWER OF LIBERTY.

  What flower is this that greets the morn,
  Its hues from heaven so freshly born?
  With burning star and flaming band
  It kindles all the sunset land;—
  O, tell us what its name may be!
  Is this the Flower of Liberty?
      It is the banner of the free,
      The starry Flower of Liberty!

  In savage Nature's far abode
  Its tender seed our fathers sowed;
  The storm-winds rocked its swelling bud,
  Its opening leaves were streaked with blood,
  Till, lo! earth's tyrants shook to see
  The full-blown Flower of Liberty!
      Then hail the banner of the free,
      The starry Flower of Liberty!

  Behold its streaming rays unite
  One mingling flood of braided light,—
  The red that fires the Southern rose,
  With spotless white from Northern snows,
  And, spangled o'er its azure, see
  The sister Stars of Liberty!
      Then hail the banner of the free,
      The starry Flower of Liberty!

  The blades of heroes fence it round;
  Where'er it springs is holy ground;
  From tower and dome its glories spread;
  It waves where lonely sentries tread;
  It makes the land as ocean free,
  And plants an empire on the sea!
      Then hail the banner of the free,
      The starry Flower of Liberty!

  Thy sacred leaves, fair Freedom's flower,
  Shall ever float on dome and tower,
  To all their heavenly colors true,
  In blackening frost or crimson dew,—
  And GOD love us as we love thee,
  Thrice holy Flower of Liberty!
     Then hail the banner of the free,
     The starry FLOWER OF LIBERTY!

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE.

The memory of Alexis de Tocqueville belongs scarcely less to America than to France. His book on "Democracy in America" was the foundation of his fame. As a successful investigation by a foreigner of the nature and working of institutions dissimilar from those of his own country, and in many essential respects different from any which were elsewhere established, it stands quite alone in political literature. It is still further remarkable as the work of a very young man. Its merits were at once acknowledged; and though twenty-six years have passed since it appeared, it has been superseded by no later work. The book has a double character, which has given to it an equal authority on both sides of the Atlantic. For while it is a profound and sagacious analysis of the spirit and methods of the American social and political system, it is intended at the same time—more, however, by implied than open comparison—to exhibit the relations of the principles established here to the development of modern society and government in France and elsewhere in Europe. It is a manual alike for the political theorist and the practical statesman; and whatever changes our institutions may undergo, its value will remain undiminished.

The volumes of Tocqueville's Inedited Works and Correspondence, with a Memoir by his friend M. Gustave de Beaumont, which have lately appeared in Paris, have, therefore, a special claim to the attention of American readers. Their intrinsic interest is great as illustrating the life and character not only of one of the most original and independent thinkers of this generation, but also of a man not less distinguished by the elevation and integrity of his character than by the power of his intellect. The race of such men has seemed of late years to be dying out in France. In the long list of her public characters during the past thirty years, there are few names which can share the honor with Tocqueville's of being those neither of apostates nor of schemers. Men who hold to their principles in the midst of revolutions, who for the sake of honor resist the temptations of power, who have faith in liberty and in progress even when their hopes are overthrown, are rare at all times and in all lands. "France no longer produces such men," said the Duke de Broglie, when he heard of Tocqueville's death.

No book has been published of more importance than this in its exhibition of the condition of thought and of society in France during recent years. None has given more convincing evidence of the suppression of intellectual liberty under the new Imperial rule. The reserves and the omissions to which M. de Beaumont has been forced in the performance of his work as editor display the oppressive nature of the censorship to which the writings of the most honest and superior men are liable, and the burdensome restraints by which such men are controlled and disheartened. M. de Beaumont's notice of the life of Tocqueville, and Tocqueville's own later correspondence, appear to a thoughtful reader as accusations against Imperial despotism, as protests against the wrongs from which freedom is now suffering in France. There is in them a pervading tone of sadness, and, here and there, an expression of bitterness of feeling, all the more effective for being conveyed in restrained and unimpassioned words. There is no place for such men as these in a system like that by which Louis Napoleon governs France. The men of strong character, of incorruptible integrity, of thoughtful moderation, and of fixed principles are more dangerous to the permanence of despotic rule than the Victor Hugos, the Ledru Rollins, or the Orsinis. It is the men with whom the love of liberty is founded upon intellectual and moral convictions, not those with whom it is a hot and reckless passion, that are the most to be feared by a ruler whose power is based on the ignorance, the fears, the selfish ambitions, and the material interests of the people whom he flatters and corrupts.

Tocqueville was born a thinker. His physical organization was delicate, but he had an energy of spirit which led him often to overtask his bodily forces in long-continued mental exertions. Without brilliancy of imagination and with little liveliness of fancy, he possessed the faculty of acute and discriminating observation, and early acquired the rare power of deep and continuous reflection. His mind was large and calm. The candor of his intellect was never stained by passion. He had not the faculties of an original discoverer in the domain of abstract truth, but, as an investigator of the causes of political and social conditions, of the relation between particular facts and general theories, of the influence of systems and institutions upon the life of communities, he has rarely been surpassed. His book on "Democracy in America," and still more his later work on "The Old Régime and the Revolution," display in a remarkable degree the union of philosophic insight and practical good sense, of clearness of thought and condensation of statement.

But, however great the value of his writings may be, a still greater value attaches to the character of the man himself, as it is displayed in these volumes. M. de Beaumont's brief and affectionate memoir of his friend, and Tocqueville's own letters, are not so much narratives of events as evidences of character. His life was, indeed, not marked with extraordinary incidents. It was the life of a man whose career was limited both by his own temperament and by the public circumstances of his times; of one who set more value upon ideas than upon events; who sought intellectual satisfactions and distinctions rather than personal advancement; who affected his contemporaries by his thought and his integrity of principle more than by power of commanding position or energy of resolute will. Although for many years in public life, he made little mark on public affairs. But his influence, though indirect, was perhaps not the less strong or permanent. The course of political affairs is in the long run greatly modified, if not completely guided, by the thinkers of a nation. Tocqueville's convictions kept him for the most part in opposition to the successive governments of France during the period of his public life. But his reputation and the weight of his authority are continually increasing, and of the Frenchmen of the last generation few have done so much as he to extend by his writings the knowledge, and to strengthen by his example the love of those principles by which liberty is maintained and secured, and upon which the real advancement of society depends. The leading facts of his life may be briefly told.

Born in 1805, at Paris, of an old and honorable family, his early years were passed at home. As a youth, he was for some time at the college of Metz; but his education was irregular, and he was not distinguished for scholarship. In 1826 and 1827 he travelled with one of his brothers in Italy and Sicily, and on his return to France was attached to the Court of Justice at Versailles, where his father, the Count de Tocqueville, was then Prefect, in the quality of Juge-Auditeur, an office to which there is none correspondent in our courts. It was at this time that his friendship with M. Gustave de Beaumont began.

For more than two years he performed the duties of this place with marked fidelity and ability. But at the same time he pursued studies less narrow and technical than the law, investigating with ardor the general questions of politics, and laying the foundation of those principles and opinions which he afterward developed in his writings and his public life. He witnessed the Revolution of 1830 with regret, not because he was personally attached to the elder branch of the Bourbons, but because he dreaded the effect of a sudden and violent change of dynasty upon the stability of those constitutional institutions which were of too recent establishment to be firmly rooted in France, but to which he looked as the safeguard of liberty. He gave his adhesion to the new government without hesitation, but without enthusiasm; and having little hope of advancement in his career as magistrate, he applied to the Ministry of the Interior early in 1831 for an official mission to America to examine the system of our prisons, which at that time was exciting attention in France. But the real motive which led him to desire to visit America was his wish to study the democratic institutions of the United States with reference to their bearing upon the political and social questions which underlay the violent changes and revolutions of government in France, and of which a correct appreciation was of continually increasing importance. It was plain that the dominating principle in the modern development of society was that of democratic equality; and this being the case, the question of prime importance presenting itself for solution was, How is liberty to be reconciled with equality and saved from the inevitable dangers to which it is exposed? or in other words, Can equality, which, by dividing men and reducing the mass to a common level, smooths the way for the establishment of a despotism, either of an individual or of the mob, be made to promote and secure liberty? For the study of this question, and of others naturally connected with it, the United States afforded opportunities nowhere else to be found.

Accompanied by M. de Beaumont, Tocqueville passed a year in this country, and the chief results of his visit appeared in the first two volumes of his "Democracy in America," which were published in January, 1835. The success of the book was instant and extraordinary. His publisher, who had undertaken it with reluctance, had ventured on a first edition of but five hundred copies; and in one of his letters, shortly after its publication, Tocqueville tells pleasantly of the bookseller's ingenuous surprise at the interest which the work had excited. "I went yesterday morning to Gosselin's [the publisher]; he received me with the most beaming face in the world, saying to me, 'Well, now, so it seems you have made a chef-d'oeuvre.' Does not that expression paint the complete man of business? I sat down, and we talked of our second edition."

From this time Tocqueville was famous. In the autumn of the same year, 1835, he married an English lady, Miss Mottley, who had long resided in France, and the happiness of his private life was secured at the very moment when he was entering upon the cares and anxieties of a public career. In 1836 the French Academy decreed for his book an extraordinary prize; in 1838 he was elected a member of the Institute; and in 1841, a year after the publication of the last volumes of his work, he was chosen member of the Academy. From 1839 to 1848, Tocqueville, elected and reëlected from Valognes, sat without interruption in the Chamber of Deputies, where he constantly voted with the constitutional opposition. His nature was too sensitive and his health too delicate to enable him to hold a foremost place as orator in the debates of this period. His habits of mind were, moreover, those of a writer rather than of a public speaker. But the firmness and moderation of his principles and the clearness and justice of his opinions secured for him a general respect, and gave weight and influence to his counsels. "In 1839, having been named reporter on the proposition relative to the abolition of slavery in the colonies, he succeeded," says his biographer, "not only in tracing with an able and sure hand the great principles of justice and of humanity which should lead on the triumph of this holy cause, but also, by words full of respect for existing interests and acquired rights, in preparing the government and the public mind for a concession, and the colonists for a compromise." He was frequently intrusted with the duty of reporting on other projects of the first importance; but special labors of this sort did not prevent him from taking broad and large views of the political and moral tendencies of the time, and of forecasting with clear insight the results of the measures of the government and of the influences at work upon the people. On the 27th of January, 1848, he announced the Revolution, which he saw to be at hand. A passage from his speech on this occasion is given by M. de Beaumont. It is striking, when read by the light of subsequent events, for the truth of its inferences, the force of its statements, and its prophetic warnings. After speaking of the opinions and ideas prevalent among the working classes, he said, "When such opinions take root, when they spread themselves so widely, when they strike down deeply into the masses, they must bring about, sooner or later, I do not know when, I do not know how, but they must bring about, sooner or later, the most formidable revolutions…. I believe that at this moment we are asleep upon a volcano. (Dissent.) I am profoundly convinced of it."

Tocqueville, thus anticipating the Revolution, was more afflicted and disappointed than surprised, when it overthrew the monarchy in February. He had comprehended beforehand that its character was to be rather social than simply political. He had determined to accept it as a necessary evil. He measured from the first the risk to which the principles to the maintenance of which he was devoted were exposed, the peril which, threatened liberty itself. Believing that the Republic now afforded the only and perhaps the last chance of liberty in France, and that its downfall would result in throwing power into the hands of an individual ruler, he determined to give all his support to the new government, and to endeavor to work out the good of his country by means which gave little encouragement or hope of success. He took part in the Constituent Assembly, was one of the committee to form the Constitution, and in the autumn of 1848 represented France as plenipotentiary at the Conference held at Brussels, which had for its object the mediation of France and England between Austria and Sardinia. The next year, having just been elected a member of the Legislative Assembly, he was invited by the President of the Republic to take the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in the ministry of M. Barrot. He did not hold office long. The ministry was too honest and too firm to suit the designs of the President, and on the 31st of October Louis Napoleon announced, in a message which took the Assembly by surprise, that it had been dismissed, and a new set of ministers appointed. The President endeavored to retain Tocqueville, and to win him over to his party; but Tocqueville already presaged the fall of the Republic, and witnessed with anxiety and discouragement the approach of the Empire. He remained a member of the Assembly to the last. He was one of the deputies arrested on the 2d of December, 1851, and was confined for a time at Vincennes. "Here ended his political life. It ended with liberty in France."

The remaining years of Tocqueville's life were spent in a retirement which might have been happy, had he not felt too deeply for happiness the despotism which weighed upon France. He engaged in the studies that resulted in his masterly work on "The Old Régime and the Revolution"; but these studies, instead of diverting him from the contemplation of what France had lost, gave poignancy to the sorrow excited by her present condition. All his hopes for the prevalence of the principles which he had sought during life to confirm and establish, all his personal ambitions as a public man, were completely broken down. But, though thus defeated in hope and in desire, he was not overcome in spirit. And the record of the closing years of his life shows, more than that of any other portion of it, the firmness, the strength, and the sweetness of his character.

His health, which had never been vigorous, became from year to year more and more uncertain, and the labor which he gave to the historical work to which he now devoted himself was frequently followed by exhaustion. He passed some time in England, where be had many warm friends, in examining the collections in the British Museum concerning the French Revolution; and in 1855 he made a visit of considerable length to Germany for the purpose of studying the social institutions of the country, so far as they might illustrate the condition of France under the old regime. At the beginning of 1856 the first part of his great work was published. The impression produced by it was extraordinary. It was, as it were, a key that opened to men the secrets of a history with the events of which they were so familiar that it had seemed to them nothing more was to be learned concerning it. The book is one which, though unfinished, is, so far as it advances, complete. It will retain its place as an historical essay of the highest value; for it is a study of the past, undertaken not merely with the intention of elucidating the facts of a particular period of history, but also with the design of investigating and establishing the general principles in politics and government of which facts and events are but the external indications. Tocqueville was too honest to write according to any predetermined theory; but he also penetrated too deeply into the causes of things not to arrive, at length, at definite conclusions as to the meaning and teachings of history.

Tocqueville had now reached the summit of fame as an author. He enjoyed the harvest of success, and his ambition was urged by it to new exertion. But in the summer of 1858 he had an alarming attack of bleeding at the lungs, accompanied with a general prostration of strength. In the autumn, his physicians ordered him to the South, and early in November he arrived at Cannes, where he was to spend the winter. But neither change of climate nor tender nursing was sufficient to prevent his disease from progressing. He suffered much, but he still hoped. He became worse as the spring came on, and on the 16th of April, 1859, he died. He was fifty-four years old, but he had lived a long life, if life be measured by thought and moral progress.

In his domestic life Tocqueville had been most happy, and it was in his own home that his character appeared in its most delightful aspect. In society he was a converser of extraordinary brilliancy. Few men were his rivals in this art, so well practised in Paris. His flow of ideas was not more remarkable than the choiceness and vigor of his expression. But he was not a tyrant in talk, and he was as ready to listen as to seek for listeners. His social powers were at the service of his friends. He was not of a gay temper, but he had a peculiar thoughtfulness for others which gave a charm to his manners far superior to that of careless vivacity. M. de Beaumont speaks of him in his relations to his friends in words full of feeling:—

"I have said that he had many friends; but he experienced a still greater happiness, that of never losing one of them. He had also another happiness: it was the knowing how to love them all so well, that none ever complained of the share he received, even while seeing that of the others. He was as ingenious as he was sincere in his attachments; and never, perhaps, did example prove better than his how many charms good-wit adds to good-will (combien l'esprit ajoute de charmes à la bonté).

"Good as he was," continues M. de Beaumont, "he aspired without ceasing to become better; and it is certain that each day he drew nearer to that moral perfection which seemed to him the only end worthy of man…. Each day he brought into all his sentiments and all his actions something of deeper piety, and stronger gratitude to God…. He was more patient, more laborious, more watchful to lose nothing of that life which he loved so well, and which he had the right to find beautiful, he who made of it so noble a use! Finally, it may be said to his honor, that at an epoch in which each man tends to concentrate his regard upon himself, he had no other aim than that of seeking for truths useful to his fellows, no other passion than that of increasing their well-being and their dignity."—Vol. I. p. 124.

The correspondence of a man about whom such—words may be said without exaggeration has more than a merely literary interest. This book is one of which the literary critic is not the final judge. Tocqueville's letters, like every genuine series of letters written without thought of publication, have the charm and more than the simplicity of autobiography. Their merit lies not so much in grace of style, picturesqueness of description, or familiar freedom of composition, as in their exhibition of power of thought combined with delicacy and refinement of feeling, and in the frequent expression of ardent patriotism and strong personal sympathies with public or with private interests. They are the letters of a man who took a grave view of life, regarding it "as an affair with which we are charged, which must be carried through and ended with honor to ourselves." They are the letters also of a man of strong and faithful affections; and the long series of them addressed during twenty-five years to the Count Louis de Kergorlay has, in addition to its interest from its variety of topics, a special moral value as the record of a close and confidential friendship maintained in spite of the widest divergence of political opinion during a period of unusual political excitement. Few men have the temper or the sentiment requisite for the support of intimate relations under such conditions. But his friendships occupied a very large place in Tocqueville's life. In them he found happiness and repose. To one of his friends he writes in 1844, "The remembrance of you is the more precious to me because it calms in me all those troubles of the soul that politics engender." And thus in the most trying passages of his life, and especially in the discouragement of his later years, the thought of his friends seems to have been constantly with him, and his correspondence with them became almost a necessity for his spirit. His letters, or rather that portion of them which M. de Beaumont has published, and which must some day be succeeded by a fuller collection, have thus a double character: they contain the judgments of a wide and profound thinker on the subjects which interested him, while they show him in the most amiable and attractive light as a generous and constant friend. They are not to be compared in wit or elaborate finish with the brilliant letters of Courier; they have not the striking originality and terse vigor of those of De Maistre, but they have the grace of simple and pure feeling, and the worth of clear, manly, high-toned thought. No one capable of appreciating them can read them without learning to feel toward their author not merely respect, but also a strong personal regard. The two following extracts have a special appropriateness to the present condition of our own country, while at the same time they display the qualities most characteristic of Tocqueville's intellect. They are both from letters addressed to one of the most distinguished correspondents of his later years, Madame de Swetchine.

"There are, it seems to me, two distinct divisions in morals, one as important as the other in the eyes of God, but in which in our days his ministers instruct us with very unequal ardor. One belongs to private life: it embraces the relative duties of mankind as fathers, as sons, as wives, as husbands. The other regards public life: the duties of every citizen toward his country, and toward that human society of which he forms a special part. Am I deceived in believing that the clergy of our time are very much occupied with the first portion of morals, and very little with the second? This appears to me especially observable in the manner in which women think and feel. I see a great number of them who have a thousand private virtues in which the direct and beneficent action of religion manifests itself,—who, thanks to it, are most faithful wives and excellent mothers, who show themselves just and indulgent toward their domestics, charitable to the poor. But as to that portion of duties which is connected with public life, they do not seem to have even the idea of it. Not only they do not practise them themselves, which is natural enough, but they do not seem even to have the thought of inculcating them on those over whom they have influence. It is a side of education that is, as it were, invisible to them. It was not so under that old regime which, in the midst of many vices, developed proud and manly virtues. I have often heard it told, that my grandmother, who was a very religious (très sainte) woman, after impressing upon her young son the exercise of all the duties of private life, failed not to add,—'And then, my child, never forget that a man owes himself above all to his country; that there is no sacrifice that he ought not to make for her; that he cannot remain indifferent to her fate; that God requires of him that he be always ready to consecrate, if need be, his time, his fortune, even his life, to the service of the State and of the king."—Vol. II. p. 341.

"I do not ask of the priests to require of the men whose education is committed to them, or over whom they exercise influence, I do not ask of them to require of these men, as a duty of conscience, to support the republic or the monarchy; but I avow that I desire that they should oftener tell them, that, as they are Christians, so they belong to one of those great human associations which God has established, without doubt in order to render more visible and more sensible the bonds which ought to unite individuals to each other,—associations which are named the people, and whose territory is called the country. I desire that they should cause the fact to penetrate more deeply into the souls of men, that each man owes himself to this collective existence before belonging to himself; that in regard to this existence no man is allowed to be indifferent, still less to make of indifference a sort of feeble virtue which enervates many of the most noble instincts that have been given to us; that all are responsible for what happens to it, and that all, according to their light, are bound to labor constantly for its prosperity, to take care that it be submitted only to beneficent, respectable, and lawful authorities…. This is what I wish should be inculcated on men, and especially on women. Nothing has more struck me, in an experience now of considerable length in public affairs, than the influence that women always exercise in this matter,—influence so much the greater as it is indirect. I do not doubt that it is they above all who give to every nation a certain moral temperament, which shows itself afterwards in politics."—Vol. II. p. 348. Tocqueville's services to France, to liberty, did not end with his life. The example, no less than the writings of such a man, bears fruit in later times. It belongs to no one land. Wherever men are striving in thought or in action to support the cause of freedom and of law, to strengthen institutions founded on principles of equal justice, to secure established liberties by defending the government in which they are embodied, his teachings will be prized, and his memory be honored.

AGNES OF SORRENTO.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MONK'S STRUGGLE.

The golden sunshine of the spring morning was deadened to a sombre tone in the shadowy courts of the Capuchin convent. The reddish brown of the walls was flecked with gold and orange spots of lichen; and here and there, in crevices, tufts of grass, or even a little bunch of gold-blooming flowers, looked hardily forth into the shadowy air. A covered walk, with stone arches, inclosed a square filled with dusky shrubbery. There were tall funereal cypresses, whose immense height and scraggy profusion of decaying branches showed their extreme old age. There were gaunt, gnarled olives, with trunks twisted in immense serpent folds, and boughs wreathed and knotted into wild, unnatural contractions, as if their growth had been a series of spasmodic convulsions, instead of a calm and gentle development of Nature. There were overgrown clumps of aloes, with the bare skeletons of former flower-stalks standing erect among their dusky horns or lying rotting on the ground beside them. The place had evidently been intended for the culture of shrubbery and flowers, but the growth of the trees had long since so intercepted the sunlight and fresh air that not even grass could find root beneath their branches. The ground was covered with a damp green mould, strewn here and there with dead boughs, or patched with tufts of fern and lycopodium, throwing out their green hairy roots into the moist soil. A few half-dead roses and jasmines, remnants of former days of flowers, still maintained a struggling existence, but looked wan and discouraged in the effort, and seemed to stretch and pine vaguely for a freer air. In fact, the whole garden might be looked upon as a sort of symbol of the life by which it was surrounded,—a life stagnant, unnatural, and unhealthy, cut off from all those thousand stimulants to wholesome development which are afforded by the open plain of human existence, where strong natures grow distorted in unnatural efforts, though weaker ones find in its lowly shadows a congenial refuge.

We have given the brighter side of conventual life in the days we are describing: we have shown it as often a needed shelter of woman's helplessness during ages of political uncertainty and revolution; we have shown it as the congenial retreat where the artist, the poet, the student, and the man devoted to ideas found leisure undisturbed to develop themselves under the consecrating protection of religion. The picture would be unjust to truth, did we not recognize, what, from our knowledge of human nature, we must expect, a conventual life of far less elevated and refined order. We should expect that institutions which guarantied to each individual a livelihood, without the necessity of physical labor or the responsibility of supporting a family, might in time come to be incumbered with many votaries in whom indolence and improvidence were the only impelling motives. In all ages of the world the unspiritual are the majority,—the spiritual the exceptions. It was to the multitude that Jesus said, "Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat and were filled,"—and the multitude has been much of the same mind from that day to this.

The convent of which we speak had been for some years under the lenient rule of the jolly Brother Girolamo,—an easy, wide-spread, loosely organized body, whose views of the purpose of human existence were decidedly Anacreontic. Fasts he abominated; night-prayers he found unfavorable to his constitution; but he was a judge of olives and good wine, and often threw out valuable hints in his pastoral visits on the cooking of maccaroni, for which he had himself elaborated a savory recipe; and the cellar and larder of the convent, during his pastorate, presented so many urgent solicitations to conventual repose, as to threaten an inconvenient increase in the number of brothers. The monks in his time lounged in all the sunny places of the convent like so many loose sacks of meal, enjoying to the full the dolce far niente which seems to be the universal rule of Southern climates. They ate and drank and slept and snored; they made pastoral visits through the surrounding community which were far from edifying; they gambled, and tippled, and sang most unspiritual songs; and keeping all the while their own private pass-key to Paradise tucked under their girdles, were about as jolly a set of sailors to Eternity as the world had to show. In fact, the climate of Southern Italy and its gorgeous scenery are more favorable to voluptuous ecstasy than to the severe and grave warfare of the true Christian soldier. The sunny plains of Capua demoralized the soldiers of Hannibal, and it was not without a reason that ancient poets made those lovely regions the abode of Sirens whose song maddened by its sweetness, and of a Circe who made men drunk with her sensual fascinations, till they became sunk to the form of brutes. Here, if anywhere, is the lotos-eater's paradise,—the purple skies, the enchanted shores, the soothing gales, the dreamy mists, which all conspire to melt the energy of the will, and to make existence either a half-doze of dreamy apathy or an awaking of mad delirium.

It was not from dreamy, voluptuous Southern Italy that the religious progress of the Italian race received any vigorous impulses. These came from more northern and more mountainous regions, from the severe, clear heights of Florence, Perugia, and Assisi, where the intellectual and the moral both had somewhat of the old Etruscan earnestness and gloom.

One may easily imagine the stupid alarm and helpless confusion of these easy-going monks, when their new Superior came down among them hissing with a white heat from the very hottest furnace-fires of a new religious experience, burning and quivering with the terrors of the world to come,—pale, thin, eager, tremulous, and yet with all the martial vigor of the former warrior, and all the habits of command of a former princely station. His reforms gave no quarter to right or left; sleepy monks were dragged out to midnight-prayers, and their devotions enlivened with vivid pictures of hell-fire and ingenuities of eternal torment enough to stir the blood of the most torpid. There was to be no more gormandizing, no more wine-bibbing; the choice old wines were placed under lock and key for the use of the sick and poor in the vicinity; and every fast of the Church, and every obsolete rule of the order, were revived with unsparing rigor. It is true, they hated their new Superior with all the energy which laziness and good living had left them, but they every soul of them shook in their sandals before him; for there is a true and established order of mastery among human beings, and when a man of enkindled energy and intense will comes among a flock of irresolute commonplace individuals, he subjects them to himself by a sort of moral paralysis similar to what a great, vigorous gymnotus distributes among a fry of inferior fishes. The bolder ones, who made motions of rebellion, were so energetically swooped upon, and consigned to the discipline of dungeon and bread-and-water, that less courageous natures made a merit of siding with the more powerful party, mentally resolving to carry by fraud the points which they despaired of accomplishing by force.

On the morning we speak of, two monks might have been seen lounging on a stone bench by one of the arches, looking listlessly into the sombre garden-patch we have described. The first of these, Father Anselmo, was a corpulent fellow, with an easy swing of gait, heavy animal features, and an eye of shrewd and stealthy cunning: the whole air of the man expressed the cautious, careful voluptuary. The other, Father Johannes, was thin, wiry, and elastic, with hands like birds' claws, and an eye that reminded one of the crafty cunning of a serpent. His smile was a curious blending of shrewdness and malignity. He regarded his companion from time to time obliquely from the corners of his eyes, to see what impression his words were making, and had a habit of jerking himself up in the middle of a sentence and looking warily round to see if any one were listening, which indicated habitual distrust.

"Our holy Superior is out a good while this morning," he said, at length.

The observation was made in the smoothest and most silken tones, but they carried with them such a singular suggestion of doubt and inquiry that they seemed like an accusation.

"Ah?" replied the other, perceiving evidently some intended undertone of suspicion lurking in the words, but apparently resolved not to commit himself to his companion.

"Yes," said the first; "the zeal of the house of the Lord consumes him, the blessed man!"

"Blessed man!" echoed the second, rolling up his eyes, and giving a deep sigh, which shook his portly proportions so that they quivered like jelly.

"If he goes on in this way much longer," continued Father Johannes, "there will soon be very little mortal left of him; the saints will claim him."

Father Anselmo gave something resembling a pious groan, but darted meanwhile a shrewd observant glance at the speaker.

"What would become of the convent, were he gone?" said Father Johannes. "All these blessed reforms which he has brought about would fall back; for our nature is fearfully corrupt, and ever tends to wallow in the mire of sin and pollution. What changes hath he wrought in us all! To be sure, the means were sometimes severe. I remember, brother, when he had you under ground for more than ten days. My heart was pained for you; but I suppose you know that it was necessary, in order to bring you to that eminent state of sanctity where you now stand."

The heavy, sensual features of Father Anselmo flushed up with some emotion, whether of anger or of fear it was hard to tell; but he gave one hasty glance at his companion, which, if a glance could kill, would have struck him dead, and then there fell over his countenance, like a veil, an expression of sanctimonious humility, as he replied,—

"Thank you for your sympathy, dearest brother. I remember, too, how I felt for you that week when you were fed only on bread and water, and had to take it on your knees off the floor, while the rest of us sat at table. How blessed it must be to have one's pride brought down in that way! When our dear, blessed Superior first came, brother, you were as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke, but now what a blessed change! It must give you so much peace! How you must love him!"

"I think we love him about equally," said Father Johannes, his dark, thin features expressing the concentration of malignity. "His labors have been blessed among us. Not often does a faithful shepherd meet so loving a flock. I have been told that the great Peter Abelard found far less gratitude. They tried to poison him in the most holy wine."

"How absurd!" interrupted Father Anselmo, hastily; "as if the blood of the Lord, as if our Lord himself, could be made poison!"

"Brother, it is a fact," insisted the former, in tones silvery with humility and sweetness.

"A fact that the most holy blood can be poisoned?" replied the other, with horror evidently genuine.

"I grieve to say, brother," said Father Johannes, "that in my profane and worldly days I tried that experiment on a dog, and the poor brute died in five minutes. Ah, brother," he added, observing that his obese companion was now thoroughly roused, "you see before you the chief of sinners! Judas was nothing to me; and yet, such are the triumphs of grace, I am an unworthy member of this most blessed and pious brotherhood; but I do penance daily in sackcloth and ashes for my offence."

"But, Brother Johannes, was it really so? did it really happen?" inquired Father Anselmo, looking puzzled. "Where, then, is our faith?"

"Doth our faith rest on human reason, or on the evidence of our senses, Brother Anselmo? I bless God that I have arrived at that state where I can adoringly say, 'I believe, because it is impossible.' Yea, brother, I know it to be a fact that the ungodly have sometimes destroyed holy men, like our Superior, who could not be induced to taste wine for any worldly purpose, by drugging the blessed cup; so dreadful are the ragings of Satan in our corrupt nature!"

"I can't see into that," said Father Anselmo, still looking confused.

"Brother," answered Father Johannes, "permit an unworthy sinner to remind you that you must not try to see into anything; all that is wanted of you in our most holy religion is to shut your eyes and believe; all things are possible to the eye of faith. Now, humanly speaking," he added, with a peculiarly meaning look, "who would believe that you kept all the fasts of our order, and all the extraordinary ones which it hath pleased our blessed Superior to lay upon us, as you surely do? A worldling might swear, to look at you, that such flesh and color must come in some way from good meat and good wine; but we remember how the three children throve on the pulse and rejected the meat from the king's table."

The countenance of Father Anselmo expressed both anger and alarm at this home-thrust, and the changes did not escape the keen eye of Father Johannes, who went on.

"I directed the eyes of our holy father upon you as a striking example of the benefits of abstemious living, showing that the days of miracles are not yet past in the Church, as some skeptics would have us believe. He seemed to study you attentively. I have no doubt he will honor you with some more particular inquiries,—the blessed saint!"

Father Anselmo turned uneasily on his seat and stealthily eyed his companion, to see, if possible, how much real knowledge was expressed by his words, and then answered on quite another topic.

"How this garden has fallen to decay! We miss old Father Angelo sorely, who was always trimming and cleansing it. Our Superior is too heavenly-minded to have much thought for earthly things, and so it goes."

Father Johannes watched this attempt at diversion with a glitter of stealthy malice, and, seeming to be absorbed in contemplation, broke out again exactly where he had left off on the unwelcome subject.

"I mind me now, Brother Anselmo, that, when you came out of your cell to prayers, the other night, your utterance was thick, and your eyes heavy and watery, and your gait uncertain. One would swear that you had been drunken with new wine; but we knew it was all the effect of fasting and devout contemplation, which inebriates the soul with holy raptures, as happened to the blessed Apostles on the day of Pentecost. I remarked the same to our holy father, and he seemed to give it earnest heed, for I saw him watching you through all the services. How blessed is such watchfulness!"

"The Devil take him!" said Father Anselmo, suddenly thrown off his guard; but checking himself, he added, confusedly,—"I mean"—

"I understand you, brother," said Father Johannes; "it is a motion of the old nature not yet entirely subdued. A little more of the discipline of the lower vaults, which you have found so precious, will set all that right."

"You would not inform against me?" said Father Anselmo, with an expression of alarm.

"It would be my duty, I suppose," said Father Johannes, with a sigh; "but, sinner that I am, I never could bring my mind to such proceedings with the vigor of our blessed father. Had I been Superior of the convent, as was talked of, bow differently might things have proceeded! I should have erred by a sinful laxness. How fortunate that it was he, instead of such a miserable sinner as myself!"

"Well, tell me, then, Father Johannes,—for your eyes are shrewd as a lynx's,—is our good Superior so perfect as he seems? or does he have his little private comforts sometimes, like the rest of us? Nobody, you know, can stand it to be always on the top round of the ladder to Paradise. For my part, between you and me, I never believed all that story they read to us so often about Saint Simon Stylites, who passed so many years on the top of a pillar and never came down. Trust me, the old boy found his way down sometimes, when all the world was asleep, and got somebody to do duty for him meantime, while he took a little something comfortable. Is it not so?"

"I am told to believe, and I do believe," said Father Johannes, casting down his eyes, piously; "and, dear brother, it ill befits a sinner like me to reprove; but it seemeth to me as if you make too much use of the eyes of carnal inquiry. Touching the life of our holy father, I cannot believe the most scrupulous watch can detect anything in his walk or conversation other than appears in his profession. His food is next to nothing,—a little chopped spinach or some bitter herb cooked without salt for ordinary days, and on fast days he mingles this with ashes, according to a saintly rule. As for sleep, I believe he does without it; for at no time of the night, when I have knocked at the door of his cell, have I found him sleeping. He is always at his prayers or breviary. His cell hath only a rough, hard board for a bed, with a log of rough wood for a pillow; yet he complains of that as tempting to indolence."

Father Anselmo shrugged his fat shoulders, ruefully.

"It's all well enough," he said, "for those that want to take this hard road to Paradise; but why need they drive the flock up with them?"

"True enough, Brother Anselmo," said Father Johannes; "but the flock will rejoice in it in the end, doubtless. I understand he is purposing to draw yet stricter the reins of discipline. We ought to be thankful."

"Thankful? We can't wink but six times a week now," said Father Anselmo; "and by-and-by he won't let us wink at all."

"Hist! hush! here he comes," said Father Johannes, "What ails him? he looks wild, like a man distraught."

In a moment more, in fact, Father Francesco strode hastily through the corridor, with his deep-set eyes dilated and glittering, and a vivid hectic flush on his hollow cheeks. He paid no regard to the salutation of the obsequious monks; in fact, he seemed scarcely to see them, but hurried in a disordered manner through the passages and gained the room of his cell, which he shut and locked with a violent clang.

"What has come over him now?" said Father Anselmo.

Father Johannes stealthily followed some distance, and then stood with his lean neck outstretched and his head turned in the direction where the Superior had disappeared. The whole attitude of the man, with his acute glittering eye, might remind one of a serpent making an observation before darting after his prey.

"Something is working him," he said to himself; "what may it be?"

Meanwhile that heavy oaken door had closed on a narrow cell,—bare of everything which could be supposed to be a matter of convenience in the abode of a human being. A table of the rudest and most primitive construction was garnished with a skull, whose empty eyeholes and grinning teeth were the most conspicuous objects in the room. Behind this stood a large crucifix, manifestly the work of no common master, and bearing evident traces in its workmanship of Florentine art: it was, perhaps, one of the relics of the former wealth of the nobleman who had buried his name and worldly possessions in this living sepulchre. A splendid manuscript breviary, richly illuminated, lay open on the table; and the fair fancy of its flowery letters, the lustre of gold and silver on its pages, formed a singular contrast to the squalid nakedness of everything else in the room. This book, too, had been a family heirloom; some lingering shred of human and domestic affection sheltered itself under the protection of religion in making it the companion of his self-imposed life of penance and renunciation.

Father Francesco had just returned from the scene in the confessional we have already described. That day had brought to him one of those pungent and vivid inward revelations which sometimes overset in a moment some delusion that has been the cherished growth of years. Henceforth the reign of self-deception was past,—there was no more self-concealment, no more evasion. He loved Agnes,—he knew it,—he said it over and over again to himself with a stormy intensity of energy; and in this hour the whole of his nature seemed to rise in rebellion against the awful barriers which hemmed in and threatened this passion. He now saw clearly that all that he had been calling fatherly tenderness, pastoral zeal, Christian unity, and a thousand other evangelical names, was nothing more nor less than a passion that had gone to the roots of existence and absorbed into itself all that there was of him. Where was he to look for refuge? What hymn, what prayer had he not blent with her image? It was this that he had given to her as a holy lesson,—it was that that she had spoken of to him as the best expression of her feelings. This prayer he had explained to her,—he remembered just the beautiful light in her eyes, which were fixed on his so trustingly. How dear to him had been that unquestioning devotion, that tender, innocent humility!—how dear, and how dangerous!

We have read of flowing rivulets wandering peacefully without ripple or commotion, so long as no barrier stayed their course, suddenly chafing in angry fury when an impassable dam was thrown across their waters. So any affection, however genial and gentle in its own nature, may become an ungovernable, ferocious passion, by the intervention of fatal obstacles in its course. In the case of Father Francesco, the sense of guilt and degradation fell like a blight over all the past that had been so ignorantly happy. He thought he had been living on manna, but found it poison. Satan had been fooling him, leading him on blindfold, and laughing at his simplicity, and now mocked at his captivity. And how nearly had he been hurried by a sudden and overwhelming influence to the very brink of disgrace! He felt himself shiver and grow cold to think of it. A moment more and he had blasted that pure ear with forbidden words of passion; and even now he remembered, with horror, the look of grave and troubled surprise in those confiding eyes, that had always looked up to him trustingly, as to God. A moment more and he had betrayed the faith he taught her, shattered her trust in the holy ministry, and perhaps imperilled her salvation. He breathed a sigh of relief when he thought of it,—he had not betrayed himself, he had not fallen in her esteem, he still stood on that sacred vantage-ground where his power over her was so great, and where at least he possessed her confidence and veneration. There was still time for recollection, for self-control, for a vehement struggle which should set all right again: but, alas! how shall a man struggle who finds his whole inner nature boiling in furious rebellion against the dictates of his conscience,—self against self?

It is true, also, that no passions are deeper in their hold, more pervading and more vital to the whole human being, than those that make their first entrance through the higher nature, and, beginning with a religious and poetic ideality, gradually work their way through the whole fabric of the human existence.

From grosser passions, whose roots lie in the senses, there is always a refuge in man's loftier nature. He can cast them aside with contempt, and leave them as one whose lower story is flooded can remove to a higher loft, and live serenely with a purer air and wider prospect. But to love that is born of ideality, of intellectual sympathy, of harmonies of the spiritual and Immortal nature, of the very poetry and purity of the soul, if it be placed where reason and religion forbid its exercise and expression, what refuge but the grave,—what hope but that wide eternity where all human barriers fall, all human relations end, and love ceases to be a crime? A man of the world may struggle by change of scene, place, and employment. He may put oceans between himself and the things that speak of what he desires to forget. He may fill the void in his life with the stirring excitement of the battlefield, or the whirl of travel from city to city, or the press of business and care. But what help is there for him whose life is tied down to the narrow sphere of the convent,—to the monotony of a bare cell, to the endless repetition of the same prayers, the same chants, the same prostrations, especially when all that ever redeemed it from monotony has been that image and that sympathy which conscience now bids him forget?

When Father Francesco precipitated himself into his cell and locked the door, it was with the desperation of a man who flies from a mortal enemy. It seemed to him that all eyes saw just what was boiling within him,—that the wild thoughts that seemed to scream their turbulent importunities in his ears were speaking so loud that all the world would hear. He should disgrace himself before the brethren whom he had so long been striving to bring to order and to teach the lessons of holy self-control. He saw himself pointed at, hissed at, degraded, by the very men who had quailed before his own reproofs; and scarcely, when he had bolted the door behind him, did he feel himself safe. Panting and breathless, he fell on his knees before the crucifix, and, bowing his head in his hands, fell forward upon the floor. As a spent wave melts at the foot of a rock, so all his strength passed away, and he lay awhile in a kind of insensibility,—a state in which, though consciously existing, he had no further control over his thoughts and feelings. In that state of dreamy exhaustion his mind seemed like a mirror, which, without vitality or will of its own, simply lies still and reflects the objects that may pass over it. As clouds sailing in the heavens cast their images, one after another, on the glassy floor of a waveless sea, so the scenes of his former life drifted in vivid pictures athwart his memory. He saw his father's palace,—the wide, cool, marble halls,—the gardens resounding with the voices of falling waters. He saw the fair face of his mother, and played with the jewels upon her hands. He saw again the picture of himself, in all the flush of youth and health, clattering on horseback through the streets of Florence with troops of gay young friends, now dead to him as he to them. He saw himself in the bowers of gay ladies, whose golden hair, lustrous eyes, and siren wiles came back shivering and trembling in the waters of memory in a thousand undulating reflections. There were wild revels,—orgies such as Florence remembers with shame to this day. There was intermingled the turbulent din of arms,—the haughty passion, the sudden provocation, the swift revenge. And then came the awful hour of conviction, the face of that wonderful man whose preaching had stirred all souls,—and then those fearful days of penance,—that darkness of the tomb,—that dying to the world,—those solemn vows, and the fearful struggles by which they had been followed.

"Oh, my God!" he cried, "is it all in vain?—so many prayers? so many struggles?—and shall I fail of salvation at last?"

He seemed to himself as a swimmer, who, having exhausted his last gasp of strength in reaching the shore, is suddenly lifted up on a cruel wave and drawn back into the deep. There seemed nothing for him but to fold his arms and sink.

For he felt no strength now to resist,—he felt no wish to conquer,—he only prayed that he might lie there and die. It seemed to him that the love which possessed him and tyrannized over his very being was a doom,—a curse sent upon him by some malignant fate with whose power it was vain to struggle. He detested his work,—he detested his duties,—he loathed his vows,—and there was not a thing in his whole future to which he looked forward otherwise than with the extreme of aversion, except one to which he clung with a bitter and defiant tenacity,—the spiritual guidance of Agnes. Guidance!—he laughed aloud, in the bitterness of his soul, as he thought of this. He was her guide,—her confessor,—to him she was bound to reveal every change of feeling; and this love that he too well perceived rising in her heart for another,—he would wring from her own confessions the means to repress and circumvent it. If she could not be his, he might at least prevent her from belonging to any other,—he might at least keep her always within the sphere of his spiritual authority. Had he not a right to do this?—had he not a right to cherish an evident vocation,—a right to reclaim her from the embrace of an excommunicated infidel, and present her as a chaste bride at the altar of the Lord? Perhaps, when that was done, when an irrevocable barrier should separate her from all possibility of earthly love, when the awful marriage-vow should have been spoken which should seal her heart for heaven alone, he might recover some of the blessed calm which her influence once brought over him, and these wild desires might cease, and these feverish pulses be still.

Such were the vague images and dreams of the past and future that floated over his mind, as he lay in a heavy sort of lethargy on the floor of his cell, and hour after hour passed away. It grew afternoon, and the radiance of evening came on. The window of the cell overlooked the broad Mediterranean, all one blue glitter of smiles and sparkles. The white-winged boats were flitting lightly to and fro, like gauzy-winged insects in the summer air,—the song of the fishermen drawing their nets on the beach floated cheerily upward. Capri lay like a half-dissolved opal in shimmering clouds of mist, and Naples gleamed out pearly clear in the purple distance. Vesuvius, with its cloud-spotted sides, its garlanded villas and villages, its silvery crown of vapor, seemed a warm-hearted and genial old giant lying down in his gorgeous repose and holding all things on his heaving bosom in a kindly embrace.

So was the earth flooded with light and glory, that the tide poured into the cell, giving the richness of an old Venetian painting to its bare and squalid furniture. The crucifix glowed along all its sculptured lines with rich golden hues. The breviary, whose many-colored leaves fluttered as the wind from the sea drew inward, was yet brighter in its gorgeous tints. It seemed a sort of devotional butterfly perched before the grinning skull, which was bronzed by the enchanted light into warmer tones of color, as if some remembrance of what once it saw and felt came back upon it. So also the bare, miserable board which served for the bed, and its rude pillow, were glorified. A stray sunbeam, too, fluttered down on the floor like a pitying spirit, to light up that pale, thin face, whose classic outlines had now a sharp, yellow setness, like that of swooning or death; it seemed to linger compassionately on the sunken, wasted cheeks, on the long black lashes that fell over the deep hollows beneath the eyes like a funereal veil. Poor man! lying crushed and torn, like a piece of rockweed wrenched from its rock by a storm and thrown up withered upon the beach!

From the leaves of the breviary there depends, by a fragment of gold braid, a sparkling something that wavers and glitters in the evening light. It is a cross of the cheapest and simplest material, that once belonged to Agnes. She lost it from her rosary at the confessional, and Father Francesco saw it fall, yet would not warn her of the loss, for he longed to posses something that had belonged to her. He made it a mark to one of her favorite hymns; but she never knew where it had gone. Little could she dream, in her simplicity, what a power she held over the man who seemed to her an object of such awful veneration. Little did she dream that the poor little tinsel cross had such a mighty charm with it, and that she herself, in her childlike simplicity, her ignorant innocence, her peaceful tenderness and trust, was raising such a turbulent storm of passion in the heart which she supposed to be above the reach of all human changes.

And now, through the golden air, the Ave Maria is sounding from the convent-bells, and answered by a thousand tones and echoes from the churches of the old town, and all Christendom gives a moment's adoring pause to celebrate the moment when an angel addressed to a mortal maiden words that had been wept and prayed for during thousands of years. Dimly they sounded through his ear, in that half-deadly trance,—not with plaintive sweetness and motherly tenderness, but like notes of doom and vengeance. He felt rebellious impulses within, which rose up in hatred against them, and all that recalled to his mind the faith which seemed a tyranny, and the vows which appeared to him such a hopeless and miserable failure.

But now there came other sounds nearer and more earthly. His quickened senses perceive a busy patter of sandalled feet outside his cell, and a whispering of consultation,—and then the silvery, snaky tones of Father Johannes, which had that oily, penetrative quality which passes through all substances with such distinctness.

"Brethren," he said, "I feel bound in conscience to knock. Our blessed Superior carries his mortifications altogether too far. His faithful sons must beset him with filial inquiries."

The condition in which Father Francesco was lying, like many abnormal states of extreme exhaustion, seemed to be attended with a mysterious quickening of the magnetic forces and intuitive perceptions. He felt the hypocrisy of those tones, and they sounded in his ear like the suppressed hiss of a deadly serpent. He had always suspected that this man hated him to the death; and he felt now that he was come with his stealthy-tread and his almost supernatural power of prying observation, to read the very inmost secrets of his heart. He knew that he longed for nothing so much as the power to hurl him from his place and to reign in his stead; and the instinct of self-defence roused him. He started up as one starts from a dream, waked by a whisper in the ear, and, raising himself on his elbow, looked towards the door.

A cautious rap was heard, and then a pause. Father Francesco smiled with a peculiar and bitter expression. The rap became louder, more energetic, stormy at last, intermingled with vehement calls on his name.

Father Francesco rose at length, settled his garments, passed his hands over his brow, and then, composing himself to an expression of deliberate gravity, opened the door and stood before them.

"Holy father," said Father Johannes, "the hearts of your sons have been saddened. A whole day have you withdrawn your presence from our devotions. We feared you might have fainted, your pious austerities so often transcend the powers of Nature."

"I grieve to have saddened the hearts of such affectionate sons," said the Superior, fixing his eye keenly on Father Johannes; "but I have been performing a peculiar office of prayer to-day for a soul in deadly peril, and have been so absorbed therein that I have known nothing that passed. There is a soul among us, brethren," he added, "that stands at this moment so near to damnation that even the most blessed Mother of God is in doubt for its salvation, and whether it can be saved at all God only knows."

These words, rising up from a tremendous groundswell of repressed feeling, had a fearful, almost supernatural earnestness that made the body of the monks tremble. Most of them were conscious of living but a shabby, shambling, dissembling life, evading in every possible way the efforts of their Superior to bring them up to the requirements of their profession; and therefore, when these words were bolted out among them with such a glowing intensity, every one of them began mentally feeling for the key of his own private and interior skeleton-closet, and wondering which of their ghastly occupants was coming to light now.

Father Johannes alone was unmoved, because he had long since ceased to have a conscience. A throb of moral pulsation had for years been an impossibility to the dried and hardened fibre of his inner nature. He was one of those real, genuine, thorough unbelievers in all religion and all faith and all spirituality, whose unbelief grows only more callous by the constant handling of sacred things. Ambition was the ruling motive of his life, and every faculty was sharpened into such acuteness under its action that his penetration seemed at times almost preternatural.

While he stood with downcast eyes and hands crossed upon his breast, listening to the burning words which remorse and despair wrung from his Superior, he was calmly and warily studying to see what could be made of the evident interior conflict that convulsed him. Was there some secret sin? Had that sanctity at last found the temptation that was more than a match for it? And what could it be?

To a nature with any strong combative force there is no tonic like the presence of a secret and powerful enemy, and the stealthy glances of Father Johannes's serpent eye did more towards restoring Father Francesco to self-mastery than the most conscientious struggles could have done. He grew calm, resolved, determined. Self-respect was dear to him,—and dear to him no less that reflection of self-respect which a man reads in other eyes. He would not forfeit his conventual honor, or bring a stain on his order, or, least of all, expose himself to the scoffing eye of a triumphant enemy. Such were the motives that now came to his aid, while as yet the whole of his inner nature rebelled at the thought that he must tear up by the roots and wholly extirpate this love that seemed to have sent its fine fibres through every nerve of his being. "No!" he said to himself, with a fierce interior rebellion, "that I will not do! Right or wrong, come heaven, come hell, I will love her; and if lost I must be, lost I will be!" And while this determination lasted, prayer seemed to him a mockery. He dared not pray alone now, when most he needed prayer; but he moved forward with dignity towards the convent-chapel to lead the vesper devotions of his brethren. Outwardly he was calm and rigid as a statue; but as he commenced the service, his utterance had a terrible meaning and earnestness that were felt even by the most drowsy and leaden of his flock. It is singular how the dumb, imprisoned soul, locked within the walls of the body, sometimes gives such a piercing power to the tones of the voice during the access of a great agony. The effect is entirely involuntary, and often against the most strenuous opposition of the will; but one sometimes hears another reading or repeating words with an intense vitality, a living force, which tells of some inward anguish or conflict of which the language itself gives no expression.

Never were the long-drawn intonations of the chants and prayers of the Church pervaded by a more terrible, wild fervor than the Superior that night breathed into them. They seemed to wail, to supplicate, to combat, to menace, to sink in despairing pauses of helpless anguish, and anon to rise in stormy agonies of passionate importunity; and the monks quailed and trembled, they scarce knew why, with forebodings of coming wrath and judgment.

In the evening exhortation, which it had been the Superior's custom to add to the prayers of the vesper-hour, he dwelt with a terrible and ghastly eloquence on the loss of the soul.

"Brethren," he said, "believe me, the very first hour of a damned spirit in hell will outweigh all the prosperities of the most prosperous life. If you could gain the whole world, that one hour of hell would outweigh it all; how much more such miserable, pitiful scraps and fragments of the world as they gain who for the sake of a little fleshly ease neglect the duties of a holy profession! There is a broad way to hell through a convent, my brothers, where miserable wretches go who have neither the spirit to serve the Devil wholly, nor the patience to serve God; there be many shaven crowns that gnash their teeth in hell to-night,—many a monk's robe is burning on its owner in living fire, and the devils call him a fool for choosing to be damned in so hard a way. 'Could you not come here by some easier road than a cloister?' they ask. 'If you must sell your soul, why did you not get something for it?' Brethren, there be devils waiting for some of us; they are laughing at your paltry shifts and evasions, at your efforts to make things easy,—for they know how it will all end at last. Rouse yourselves! Awake! Salvation is no easy matter,—nothing to be got between sleeping and waking. Watch, pray, scourge the flesh, fast, weep, bow down in sackcloth, mingle your bread with ashes, if by any means ye may escape the everlasting fire!"

"Bless me!" said Father Anselmo, when the services were over, casting a half-scared glance after the retreating figure of the Superior as he left the chapel, and drawing a long breath; "it's enough to make one sweat to hear him go on. What has come over him? Anyhow, I'll give myself a hundred lashes this very night: something must be done."

"Well," said another, "I confess I did hide a cold wing of fowl in the sleeve of my gown last fast-day. My old aunt gave it to me, and I was forced to take it for relation's sake; but I'll do so no more, as I'm a living sinner. I'll do a penance this very night."

Father Johannes stood under one of the arches that looked into the gloomy garden, and, with his hands crossed upon his breast, and his cold, glittering eye fixed stealthily now on one and now on another, listened with an ill-disguised sneer to these hasty evidences of fear and remorse in the monks, as they thronged the corridor on the way to their cells. Suddenly turning to a young brother who had lately joined the convent, he said to him,—

"And what of the pretty Clarice, my brother?"

The blood flushed deep into the pale cheek of the young monk, and his frame shook with some interior emotion, as he answered,—

"She is recovering."

"And she sent for thee to shrive her?"

"My God!" said the young man, with an imploring, wild expression in his dark eyes, "she did; but I would not go."

"Then Nature is still strong," said Father Johannes, pitilessly eying the young man.

"When will it ever die?" said the stripling, with a despairing gesture; "it heeds neither heaven nor hell."

"Well, patience, boy! if you have lost an earthly bride, you have gained a heavenly one. The Church is our espoused in white linen. Bless the Lord, without ceasing, for the exchange."

There was an inexpressible mocking irony in the tones in which this was said, that made itself felt to the finely vitalized spirit of the youth, though to all the rest it sounded like the accredited average pious talk which is more or less the current coin of religious organizations.

Now no one knows through what wanton deviltry Father Johannes broached this painful topic with the poor youth; but he had a peculiar faculty, with his smooth tones and his sanctimonious smiles, of thrusting red-hot needles into any wounds which he either knew or suspected under the coarse woollen robes of his brethren. He appeared to do it in all coolness, in a way of psychological investigation.

He smiled, as the youth turned away, and a moment after started as if a thought had suddenly struck him.

"I have it!" he said to himself. "There may be a woman at the bottom of this discomposure of our holy father; for he is wrought upon by something to the very bottom of his soul. I have not studied human nature so many years for nothing. Father Francesco hath been much in the guidance of women. His preaching hath wrought upon them, and perchance among them.—Aha!" he said to himself, as he paced up and down, "I have it! I'll try an experiment upon him!"

CHAPTER XV.

THE SERPENT'S EXPERIMENT.

Father Francesco sat leaning his head on his hand by the window of his cell, looking out upon the sea as it rose and fell, with the reflections of the fast coming stars glittering like so many jewels on its breast. The glow of evening had almost faded, but there was a wan, tremulous light from the moon, and a clearness, produced by the reflection of such an expanse of water, which still rendered objects in his cell quite discernible.

In the terrible denunciations and warnings just uttered, he had been preaching to himself, striving to bring a force on his own soul by which he might reduce its interior rebellion to submission; but, alas! when was ever love cast out by fear? He knew not as yet the only remedy for such sorrow,—that there is a love celestial and divine, of which earthly love in its purest form is only the sacramental symbol and emblem, and that this divine love can by God's power so outflood human affections as to bear the soul above all earthly idols to its only immortal rest. This great truth rises like a rock amid stormy seas, and many is the sailor struggling in salt and bitter waters who cannot yet believe it is to be found. A few saints like Saint Augustin had reached it,—but through what buffetings, what anguish!

At this moment, however, there was in the heart of the father one of those collapses which follow the crisis of some mortal struggle. He leaned on the windowsill, exhausted and helpless.

Suddenly, a kind of illusion of the senses came over him, such as is not infrequent to sensitive natures in severe crises of mental anguish. He thought he heard Agnes singing, as he had sometimes heard her when he had called in his pastoral ministrations at the little garden and paused awhile outside that he might hear her finish a favorite hymn, which, like a shy bird, she sang all the more sweetly for thinking herself alone.

Quite as if they were sung in his ear, and in her very tones, he heard the words of Saint Bernard, which we have introduced to our reader:—

  Jesu dulcis memoria,
  Dans vera cordi gaudia:
  Sed super mel et omnia
  Ejus dulcis praesentia.

  "Jesu, spes poenitentibus,
  Quam pius es petentibus,
  Quam bonus te quaerentibus,
  Sed quis invenientibus!"

Soft and sweet and solemn was the illusion, as if some spirit breathed them with a breath of tenderness over his soul; and he threw himself with a burst of tears before the crucifix.

"O Jesus, where, then, art Thou? Why must I thus suffer? She is not the one altogether lovely; it is Thou,—Thou, her Creator and mine! Why, why cannot I find Thee? Oh, take from my heart all other love but Thine alone!"

Yet even this very prayer, this very hymn, were blent with the remembrance of Agnes; for was it not she who first had taught him the lesson of heavenly love? Was not she the first one who had taught him to look upward to Jesus other than as an avenging judge? Michel Angelo has embodied in a fearful painting, which now deforms the Sistine Chapel, that image of stormy vengeance which a religion debased by force and fear had substituted for the tender, good shepherd of earlier Christianity. It was only in the heart of a lowly maiden that Christ had been made manifest to the eye of the monk, as of old he was revealed to the world through a virgin. And how could he, then, forget her, or cease to love her, when every prayer and hymn, every sacred round of the ladder by which he must climb, was so full of memorials of her? While crying and panting for the supreme, the divine, the invisible love, he found his heart still craving the visible one,—the one so well known, revealing itself to the senses, and bringing with it the certainty of visible companionship.

As he was thus kneeling and wrestling with himself, a sudden knock at his door startled him. He had made it a point, never, at any hour of the day or night, to deny himself to a brother who sought him for counsel, however disagreeable the person and however unreasonable the visit. He therefore rose and unbolted the door, and saw Father Johannes standing with folded arms and downcast head, in an attitude of composed humility.

"What would you with me, brother?" he asked, calmly.

"My father, I have a wrestling of mind for one of our brethren whose case I would present to you."

"Come in, my brother," said the Superior. At the same time he lighted a little iron lamp, of antique form, such as are still in common use in that region, and, seating himself on the board which served for his couch, made a motion to Father Johannes to be seated also.

The latter sat down, eying, as he did so, the whole interior of the apartment, so far as it was revealed by the glimmer of the taper.

"Well, my son," said Father Francesco, "what is it?"

"I have my doubts of the spiritual safety of Brother Bernard," said
Father Johannes.

"Wherefore?" asked the Superior, briefly.

"Holy father, you are aware of the history of the brother, and of the worldly affliction that drove him to this blessed profession?"

"I am," replied the Superior, with the same brevity.

"He narrated it to me fully," said Father Johannes. "The maiden he was betrothed to was married to another in his absence on a long journey, being craftily made to suppose him dead."

"I tell you I know the circumstances," said the Superior.

"I merely recalled them, because, moved doubtless by your sermon, he dropped words to me to-night which led me to suppose that this sinful, earthly love was not yet extirpated from his soul. Of late the woman was sick and nigh unto death, and sent for him."

"But he did not go?" interposed Father Francesco.

"No, he did not,—grace was given him thus far,—but he dropped words to me to the effect, that in secret he still cherished the love of this woman; and the awful words your Reverence has been, speaking to us to-night have moved me with fear for the youth's soul, of the which I, as an elder brother, have had some charge, and I came to consult with you as to what help there might be for him."

Father Francesco turned away his head a moment and there was a pause; at last he said, in a tone that seemed like the throb of some deep, interior anguish,—

"The Lord help him!"

"Amen!" said Father Johannes, taking keen note of the apparent emotion.

"You must have experience in these matters, my father," he added, after a pause,—"so many hearts have been laid open to you. I would crave to know of you what you think is the safest and most certain cure for this love of woman, if once it hath got possession of the heart."

"Death!" said Father Francesco, after a solemn pause.

"I do not understand you," said Father Johannes.

"My son," said Father Francesco, rising up with an air of authority, "you do not understand,—there is nothing in you by which you should understand. This unhappy brother hath opened his case to me, and I have counselled him all I know of prayer and fastings and watchings and mortifications. Let him persevere in the same; and if all these fail, the good Lord will send the other in His own time. There is an end to all things in this life, and that end shall certainly come at last. Bid him persevere and hope in this.—And now, brother," added the Superior, with dignity, "if you have no other query, time flies and eternity comes on,—go, watch and pray, and leave me to my prayers also."

He raised his hand with a gesture of benediction, and Father Johannes, awed in spite of himself, felt impelled to leave the apartment.

"Is it so, or is it not?" he said. "I cannot tell. He did seem to wince and turn away his head when I proposed the case; but then he made fight at last. I cannot tell whether I have got any advantage or not; but patience! we shall see!"

* * * * *

HEALTH IN THE CAMP.

All the world has heard a great deal of the sufferings and mortality of the English and French armies in the late Russian war; and in most countries the story has been heard to some purpose. Reforms and new methods have been instituted in almost every country in Europe,—so strong has been the effect of the mere outline of the case, which is all that has been furnished to the public. The broad facts of the singular mortality first, and the singular healthfulness of the British army afterwards, on the same spot and under the same military circumstances as before, have interested all rulers of armies, and brought about great benefits to the soldier, throughout the length and breadth of Europe. Within these broad outlines there was a multitude of details which were never recorded in a systematic way, or which, for good and sufficient reasons, could not be made public at the time; and these details are the part of the story most interesting to soldiers actually in the field or likely to be called there soon. They are also deeply interesting to every order of persons concerned in a civil war; for such a war summons forth a citizen soldiery to form a system for themselves in regard to the life of the march and the camp, and to do the best they can for that life and health which they have devoted to their country. Under such circumstances it cannot but be interesting to the patriots in the camp and to their families at home to know some facts which they cannot have heard before of the mistakes made at the beginning of the last Russian war, and the repair of those mistakes before the end of it. The prompt and anxious care exercised by the American Sanitary Commission, and the benevolent diligence bestowed on the organization of hospitals for the Federal forces, show that the lesson of the Crimean campaign has been studied in the United States; and this is an encouragement to afford further illustrations of the case, when new material is at command.

I am thinking most of the volunteer forces at this moment, for the obvious reason that their health is in greater danger than that of the professional soldier. The regular troops live under a system which is always at work to feed, clothe, lodge, and entertain them: whereas the volunteers are quitting one mode of life for another, all the circumstances of which had to be created at the shortest notice. To them their first campaign must be very like what it was to British soldiers who had never seen war to be sent to Turkey first, and then to the Crimea, to live a new kind of life, and meet discomforts and dangers which they had never dreamed of. I shall therefore select my details with a view to the volunteers and their friends in the first place.

The enthusiasm which started the volunteers of every Northern State on their new path of duty could hardly exceed that by which the British troops were escorted from their barrack-gates to the margin of the sea. The war was universally approved (except by a clique of peace-men); and there was a universal confidence that the troops would do their duty well, though not one man in a thousand of them had ever seen war. As they marched down to their ships, in the best mood, and with every appearance of health and spirit, nobody formed any conception of what would happen. Parliament had fulfilled the wishes of the people by voting liberal sums for the due support of the troops; the Administration desired and ordered that everything should be done for the soldier's welfare; and as far as orders and arrangements went, the scheme was thoroughly well intended and generous. Who could anticipate, that, while the enemy never once gained a battle or obtained an advantage over British or French, two-thirds of that fine stout British force would perish in a few months? Of the twenty-five thousand who went out, eighteen thousand were dead in a year; and the enemy was answerable for a very small proportion of those deaths. Before me lie the returns of six months of those twelve, showing the fate of the troops for that time; and it furnishes the key to the whole story.

In those six months, the admissions into hospital in the Crimea (exclusive of the Santari Hospital) were 52,548. The number shows that many must have entered the hospitals more than once, as well as that the place of the dead was supplied by new comers from England. Of these, nearly fifty thousand were absolutely untouched by the Russians. Only 3,806 of the whole number were wounded. Even this is not the most striking circumstance. It is more impressive that three-fourths of the sick suffered unnecessarily. Seventy-five per cent. of them suffered from preventable diseases. That is, the naturally sick were 12,563; while the needlessly sick were 36,179. When we look at the deaths from this number, the case appears still more striking. The deaths were 5,359; and of these scarcely more than the odd hundreds were from wounds,—that is, 373. Of the remainder, little more than one-tenth were unavoidable deaths. The natural deaths, as we may call them, were only 521; while the preventable deaths were 4,465. Very different would have been the spirit of the parting in England, if the soldiers' friends had imagined that so small a number would fall by Russian gun or bayonet, or by natural sickness, while the mortality from mismanagement would at one season of the next year exceed that of London in the worst days of the Great Plague.

That the case was really what is here represented was proved by the actual prevention of this needless sickness during the last year of the war. In the same camp, and under the same circumstances of warfare, the mortality was reduced, by good management, to a degree unhoped for by all but those who achieved it. The deaths for the last half year were one-third fewer than at home! And yet the army that died was composed of fine, well-trained troops; while the army that lived and flourished was of a far inferior material when it came out,—raw, untravelled, and unhardened to the military life.

How did these things happen? There can be no more important question for
Americans at this time.

I will not go into the history of the weaknesses and faults of the administration of departments at home. They have been abundantly published already; and we may hope that they bear no relation to the American case. It is more interesting to look into the circumstances of the march and the camp, for illustration of what makes the health or the sickness of the soldier.

Wherever the men were to provide themselves with anything to eat or to wear out of their pay, they were found to suffer. There is no natural market, with fair prices, in the neighborhood of warfare; and, on the one hand, a man cannot often get what he wishes, and, on the other, he is tempted to buy something not so good for him. If there are commissariat stores opened, there is an endless accumulation of business,—a mass of accounts to keep of the stoppages from the men's pay. On all accounts it is found better for all parties that the wants of the soldier should be altogether supplied in the form of rations of varied food and drink, and of clothing varying with climate and season.

In regard to food, which comes first in importance of the five heads of the soldier's wants, the English soldier was remarkably helpless till he learned better. The Russians cut that matter very short. Every man carried a certain portion of black rye bread and some spirit. No cooking was required, and the men were very independent. But the diet is bad; and the Russian regiments were composed of sallow-faced men, who died "like flies" under frequently recurring epidemics. The Turks were in their own country, and used their accustomed diet. The French are the most apt, the most practised, and the most economical managers of food of any of the parties engaged in the war. Their campaigns in Algeria had taught them how to help themselves; and they could obtain a decent meal where an Englishman would have eaten nothing, or something utterly unwholesome. The Sardinians came next, and it was edifying to see how they could build a fire-place and obtain a fire in a few minutes to boil their pot. In other ways both French and Sardinians suffered miserably when the British had surmounted their misfortunes. The mortality from cholera and dysentery in the French force, during the last year, was uncalculated and unreported. It was so excessive as, in fact, to close the war too soon. The Sardinians were ravaged by disease from their huts being made partly under ground. But, so far as the preparation of their food went, both had the advantage of the British, in a way which will never happen again. I believe the Americans and the English are bad cooks in about the same degree; and the warning afforded by the one may be accepted by the other.

At the end of a day, in Bulgaria or the Crimea, what happened was this.

The soldiers who did not understand cooking or messing had to satisfy their hunger any way they could. They were so exhausted that they were sure to drink up their allowance of grog the first moment they could lay hands on it. Then there was hard biscuit, a lump of very salt pork or beef, as hard as a board, and some coffee, raw. Those who had no touch of scurvy (and they were few) munched their biscuit while they poked about everywhere with a knife, digging up roots or cutting green wood to make a fire. Each made a hole in the ground, unless there was a bank or great stone at hand, and there he tried, for one half-hour after another, to kindle a fire. When he got up a flame, there was his salt meat to cook: it ought to have been soaked and stewed for hours; but he could not wait; and he pulled it to pieces, and gnawed what he could of it, when it was barely warm. Then he had to roast his coffee, which he did in the lid of his camp-kettle, burning it black, and breaking it as small as he could, with stones or anyhow. Such coffee as it would make could hardly be worth the trouble. It was called by one of the doctors charcoal and water. Such a supper could not fit a man for outpost duty for the night, nor give him good sleep after the toils of the day.

The Sardinians, meantime, united in companies, some members of which were usually on the spot to prepare supper for the rest. They knew how to look for or provide a shelter for their fire, if only a foot high; and how to cut three or four little trenches, converging at the fire, so as to afford a good draught which would kindle even bad fuel. They had good stews and porridge and coffee ready when wanted. The French always had fresh bread. They carried portable ovens and good bakers. The British had flour, after a time, but they did not know how to make bread; and if men volunteered for the office, day after day, it usually turned out that they had a mind for a holiday, and knew nothing of baking; and their bread came out of the oven too heavy, or sour, or sticky, or burnt, to be eaten. As scurvy spread and deepened, the doctors made eager demands on Government for lime-juice, and more lime-juice. Government had sent plenty of lime-juice; but it was somehow neglected among the stores for twenty-four days when it was most wanted, as was the supply of rice for six weeks when dysentery was raging. All the time, the truth was, as was acknowledged afterwards, that the thing really wanted was good food. The lime-juice was a medicine, a specific; but it could be of no real use till the frame was nourished with proper food.

When flour, and preserved vegetables, and fresh meat were served out, and there were coffee-mills all through the camp, the men were still unable to benefit by the change as their allies did. They could grind and make their coffee; but they were still without good fresh bread and soup. They despised the preserved vegetables, not believing that those little cakes could do them any good. When they learned at last how two ounces of those little cakes were equal, when well cooked, to eight ounces of fresh vegetables, and just as profitable for a stew or with their meat, they duly prized them, and during the final healthy period those pressed vegetables were regarded in the camp as a necessary of life. By that time, Soyer's zeal had introduced good cookery into the camp. Roads were made by which supplies were continually arriving. Fresh meat abounded; and it was brought in on its own legs, so that it was certain that beef was beef, and mutton mutton, instead of goat's flesh being substituted, as in Bulgaria. By that time it was discovered that the most lavish orders at home and the profusest expenditure by the commissariat will not feed and clothe an army in a foreign country, unless there is some agency, working between the commissariat and the soldiers, to take care that the food is actually in their hands in an eatable form, and the clothes on their backs.

It is for American soldiers to judge how much of this applies to their case. The great majority of the volunteers must be handy, self-helping men; and bands of citizens from the same towns or villages must be disposed and accustomed to concerted action; but cooking is probably the last thing they have any of them turned their hand to. Much depends on the source of their food-supply. I fear they live on the country they are in,—at least, when in the enemy's country. This is very easy living, certainly. To shoot pigs or fowls in road or yard is one way of getting fresh meat, as ravaging gardens is a short way of feasting on vegetables. But supposing the forces fed from a regular commissariat department, is there anything to be learned from the Crimean campaigns?

The British are better supplied with the food of the country, wherever they are, than the French, because it is their theory and practice to pay as they go; whereas it is the French, or at least the Bonapartist theory and practice, to "make the war support itself," that is, to live upon the people of the country. In the Peninsular War, the French often found themselves in a desert where they could not stay; whereas, when Wellington and his troops followed upon their steps, the peasants reappeared from all quarters, bringing materials for a daily market. In the Crimea, the faithful and ready payments of the English commissariat insured plenty of food material, in the form of cattle and flour, biscuit and vegetables. The defect was in means of transport for bringing provisions to the camp. The men were trying to eat hard salt meat and biscuit, when scurvy made all eating difficult, while herds of cattle were waiting to be slaughtered, and ship-loads of flour were lying seven miles off. Whole deck-loads of cabbages and onions were thrown into the sea, while the men in camp were pining for vegetable food. An impracticable track lay between; and the poor fellows died by thousands before the road could be made good, and transport-animals obtained, and the food distributed among the tents and huts. Experience taught the officers that the food should be taken entire charge of by departments of the army till it was actually smoking in the men's hands. There were agents, of course, in all the countries round, to buy up the cattle, flour, and vegetables needed. The animals should be delivered at appointed spots, alive and in good condition, that there might be no smuggling in of joints of doubtful character. There should be a regular arrangement of shambles, at a proper distance from the tents, and provided with a special drainage, and means of disposing instantly of the offal. Each company in the camp should have its kitchen, and one or two skilled cooks,—one to serve on each day, with perhaps two assistants from the company. After the regular establishment of the kitchens, there was always food ready and coffee procurable for the tired men who came in from the trenches or outpost duty; and it was a man's own fault, if he went without a meal when off duty.

It was found to be a grave mistake to feed the soldiers on navy salt beef and pork. Corned beef and pork salted for a fortnight have far more nourishment and make much less waste in the preparation than meat which is salted for a voyage of months. After a time, very little of the hard salted meat was used at all. When it was, it was considered essential to serve out peas with the pork, and flour, raisins, and suet, for a pudding, on salt-beef days. In course of time there were additions which made considerable variety: as rice, preserved potatoes, pressed vegetables, cheese, dried fruits and suet for puddings, sugar, coffee properly roasted, and malt liquor. Beer and porter answer much better than any kind of spirit, and are worth pains and cost to obtain. With such variety as this, with portable kitchens in the place of the cumbersome camp-kettle per man, with fresh bread, well-cooked meat and vegetables, and well-made coffee, the soldiers will have every chance of health that diet can afford. Whereas hard and long-kept salt meat, insufficiently soaked and cooked, and hastily broiled meat or fowls, just killed, and swallowed by hungry men unskilled in preparing food, help on diseases of the alimentary system as effectually as that intemperance in melons and cucumbers and unripe grapes and apples which has destroyed more soldiers than all the weapons of all enemies.

So much for the food. Next in order come the clothing, and care of the person.

The newspapers have a great deal to say, as we have all seen, about the badness of much of the clothing furnished to the Federal troops. There is no need to denounce the conduct of faithless contractors in such a case; and the glorious zeal of the women, and of all who can help to make up clothing for the army, shows that the volunteers at least will be well clad, if the good-will of society can effect it. Whatever the form of dress, it is the height of imprudence to use flimsy material for it.

It seems to be everywhere agreed, in a general way, that the soldier's dress should be of an easy fit, in the first place; light enough for hot weather and noon service, with resources of warmth for cold weather and night duty. In Europe, the blouse or loose tunic is preferred to every other form of coat, and knickerbockers or gaiters to any form of trousers. The shoe or boot is the weak point of almost all military forces. The French are getting over it; and the English are learning from them. The number of sizes and proportions is, I think, five to one of what it used to be in the early part of the century, so that any soldier can get fitted. The Duke of Wellington wrote home from the Peninsula in those days,—"If you don't send shoes, the army can't march." The enemy marched away to a long distance before the shoes arrived; and when they came, they were all too small. Such things do not happen now; but it often does happen that hundreds are made footsore, and thrown out of the march, by being ill-shod; and there seems reason to believe that much of the lagging and apparent desertion of stragglers in the marches of the volunteers of the Federal army is owing to the difficulty of keeping up with men who walk at ease. If the Southern troops are in such want of shoes as is reported, that circumstance alone is almost enough to turn the scale, provided the Northern regiments attain the full use of their feet by being accurately fitted with stout shoes or boots. During the darkest days in the Crimea, those who had boots which would stick on ceased to take them off. They slept in them, wet or dry, knowing, that, once off, they could never be got on again. Such things cannot happen in the Northern States, where the stoppage of the trade in shoes to the South leaves leather, skill, and time for the proper shoeing of the army; but it may not yet be thoroughly understood how far the practical value of every soldier depends on the welfare of his feet, and how many sizes and proportions of shoe are needed for duly fitting a thousand men.

As for the rest, the conclusion after the Crimean campaign was that flannel shirts answer better than cotton on the whole. If the shirt is cotton, there must be a flannel waistcoat; and the flannel shirt answers the purpose of both, while it is as easily washed as any material. Every man should have a flannel bandage for the body, in case of illness, or unusual fatigue, or sudden changes of temperature. The make and pressure of the knapsack are very important, so that the weight may be thrown on the shoulders, without pressure on the chest or interference with the arms. The main object is the avoidance of pressure everywhere, from the toe-joints to the crown of the head. For this the head-covering should be studied, that it may afford shelter and shade from heat and light, and keep on, against the wind, without pressure on the temples or forehead. For this the neck-tie should he studied, and the cut of the coat-chest and sleeve, when coats must be worn: and every man must have some sort of overcoat, for chilly and damp hours of duty. There is great danger in the wearing of water-proof fabrics, unless they are so loose as to admit of a free circulation of air between them and the body.

With the clothing is generally connected the care of the person. It is often made a question, With whom rests the responsibility of the personal cleanliness of the soldier? The medical men declare that they do what they can, but that there is nothing to be said when the men are unsupplied with water; and all persuasions are thrown away when the poor fellows are in tatters, and sleeping on dirty straw or the bare ground. The indolent ones, at least, go on from day to day without undressing, combing, or washing, till they are swarming with vermin; and then they have lost self-respect. But if, before it is too late, there is an issue of new shirts, boots, stockings, comforters, or woollen gloves, the event puts spirit into them; they will strip and wash, and throw out dirt and rags from their sleeping-places, and feel respectable again.

Perhaps the first consideration should be on the part of the quartermaster, whose business it is to see to the supply of water; and the sanitary officer has next to take care that every man gets his eight or ten gallons per day. If the soldiers are posted near a stream which can be used for bathing and washing clothes, there ought to be no difficulty; and every man may fairly be required to be as thoroughly washed from head to foot every days and as clean in his inner clothing, as his own little children at home. If on high and dry ground, where the water-supply is restricted, some method and order are needed; but no pains should be spared to afford each man his eight or ten gallons.

This cannot be done, unless the source of supply is properly guarded. When unrestrained access is afforded to a spring-head or pond, the water is fatally wasted and spoiled. In the Crimea, the English officers had to build round the spring-heads, and establish a regular order in getting supplied. Where there is crowding, dirt gets thrown in, the water is muddied, or animals are brought to drink at the source. This ruins everything; for animals will not drink below, when the mouth of horse, mule, or cow has touched the water above. The way is for guardians to take possession, and board over the source, and make a reservoir with taps, allowing water to be taken first for drinking and washing purposes, a flow being otherwise provided by spout and troughs for the animals, and for cleansing the camp. The difference on the same spot was enormous between the time when a British sergeant wrote that he was not so well as at home, and could not expect it, not having had his shoes or any of his clothes off for five months, and the same time the next year, when every respectable soldier was fresh and tidy, with his blood flowing healthfully under a clean skin. The poor sergeant said, in his days of discomfort: "I wonder what our sweethearts would think of us, if they were to see us now,—unshaved, unwashed, and quite old men!" Cut in a year, those who survived had grown young again,—not shaven, perhaps, for their beards were a great natural comfort on winter duty, but brushed and washed, in vigorous health, and gay spirits.

The next consideration is the soldier's abode,—whether tent, or hut, or quarters.

I have shown certain British doctors demanding lime-juice when food was necessary first. In the same way, there was a cry from the same quarter for peat charcoal, instead of preventing the need of disinfectants. Wherever men are congregated in large numbers,—in a caravan, at a fair in the East or a protracted camp-meeting in the far West, or as a military force anywhere, there is always animal refuse which should not be permitted to lie about for a day or an hour. Dead camels among Oriental merchants, dead horses among Western soldiers, are the cause of plague. It is to be hoped that there will never be a military encampment again without the appointment of officers whose business it shall be to see that all carrion, offal, and dirt of every kind is put away into its proper place instantly. For those receptacles, and for stables and shambles, peat charcoal is a great blessing; but it ought not to be needed in or about the abodes of the men. The case is different in different armies. The French have a showy orderliness in their way of settling themselves on new ground,—forming their camp into streets, with names painted up, and opening post-office, cafés, and bazaars of camp-followers; but they are not radically neat in their ways. In a few days or weeks their settlement is a place of stench, turning to disease; and thus it was, that, notwithstanding their fresh bread, and good cookery, and clever arrangements, they were swept away by cholera and dysentery, to an extent unrevealed to this day, while the British force, once well fed and clothed, had actually only five per cent sick from all causes, in their whole force.

The Sardinians suffered, as I have already observed, from their way of making their huts. They excavated a space, to the depth of three or four feet, and used the earth they threw out to embank the walls raised upon the edge of the excavation. This procured warmth in winter and coolness in hot weather; but the interior was damp and ill-ventilated; and as soon as there was any collection of refuse within, cholera and fever broke out. It is essential to health that the dwelling should be above ground, admitting the circulation of air from the base to the ridge of the roof, where there should be an escape for it at all hours of the day and night.

Among volunteer troops in America, the difficulty would naturally seem to be the newness of the discipline, the strangeness of the requisite obedience. Something must be true of all that is said of the scattering about of food, and other things which have no business to lie about on the ground. A soldier is out of his duty who throws away a crust of bread or meat, or casts bones to dogs, or in any way helps to taint the air or obstruct the watercourses or drains. It may be troublesome to obey the requisitions of the sanitary authorities; but it is the only chance for escaping camp-disease.

On the other hand, in fixing on a spot for encampment, it is due to the soldier to avoid all boggy places, and all places where the air is stagnant from inclosure by woods, or near burial-grounds, or where the soil is unfavorable to drainage. The military officer must admit the advice of the sanitary officer in the case, though he may not be always able to adopt it. When no overwhelming military considerations interfere, the soldiers have a right to be placed on the most dry and pervious soil that may offer, in an airy situation, removed from swamps and dense woods, and admitting of easy drainage. Wood and water used to be the quartermaster's sole demands; now, good soil and air are added, and a suitable slope of the ground, and other minor requisites.

It depends on the character of the country whether quarters in towns and villages are best, or huts or tents. In Europe, town quarters are found particularly fatal; and the state of health of the inmates of tents and huts depends much on the structure and placing of either. Precisely the same kind of hut in the Crimea held a little company of men in perfect health, or a set of invalids, carried out one after another to their graves. Nay, the same hut bore these different characters, according to its position at the top of a slope, or half-way down, so as to collect under its floor the drainage from a spring. American soldiers, however, are hardly likely to be hutted, I suppose; so I need say no more than that in huts and tents alike it is indispensable to health that there should be air-holes,—large spaces, sheltered from rain,—in the highest part of the structure, whether the entrance below be open or closed. The sanitary officers no doubt have it in charge to see that every man has his due allowance of cubic feet of fresh air,—in other words, to take care that each tent or other apartment is well ventilated, and not crowded. The men's affair is to establish such rules among comrades as that no one shall stop up air-holes, or overcrowd the place with guests, or taint the air with unwholesome fumes. In the British army, bell-tents are not allowed at all as hospital tents. Active, healthy men may use them in their resting hours; but their condemnation as abodes for the sick shows how pressing is the duty of ventilating them for the use of the strongest and healthiest.

A sound and airy tent being provided, the next consideration is of bedding.

The surgeons of the British force were always on the lookout for straw and hay, after being informed at the outset that the men could not have bedding, though it was hoped there was enough for the hospitals. A few nights in the dust, among the old bones and rubbish of Gallipoli, and then in the Bulgarian marshes, showed that it would be better to bestow the bedding before the men went into hospital, and sheets of material were obtained for some of them to lie upon. A zealous surgeon pointed out to the proper officer that this bedding consisted in fact of double ticking, evidently intended as paillasses, to be stuffed with straw. The straw not being granted, he actually set to work to make hay; and, being well aided by the soldiers, he soon saw them sleeping on good mattresses. It was understood in England, and believed by the Government, that every soldier in camp had three blankets; and after a time, this came true: but in the interval, during the damp autumn and bitter winter, they had but one. Lying on wet ground, with one damp and dirty blanket over them, prepared hundreds for the hospital and the grave. The mischief was owing to the jealousy of some of the medical authorities, in the first place, who would not see, believe, or allow to be reported, the fact that the men were in any way ill-supplied, because these same doctors had specified the stores that would be wanted,—and next, to the absence of a department for the actual distribution of existing stores. With the bedding the case was the same as with the lime-juice and the rice: there was plenty; but it was not served out till too late. When the huts were inhabited, in the Crimea, and the wooden platforms had a dry soil beneath, and every man had a bed of some sort and three blankets, there was no more cholera or fever.

The American case is radically unlike that of any of the combatants in the Crimean War, because they are on the soil of their own country, within reach of their own railways, and always in the midst of the ordinary commodities of life. In such a position, they can with the utmost ease be supplied with whatever they really want,—so profuse as are the funds placed at the command of the authorities. Considering this, and the well-known handiness of Americans, there need surely be no disease and death from privation. This may be confidently said while we have before us the case of the British in the Crimea during the second winter of the war. A sanitary commission had been sent out; and under their authority, and by the help of experience, everything was rectified. The healthy were stronger than ever; there was scarcely any sickness; and the wounded recovered without drawback. As the British ended, the Americans ought to begin.

On the last two heads of the soldier's case there is little to be said here, because the American troops are at home, and not in a perilous foreign climate, and on the shores of a remote sea. Their drill can hardly be appointed for wrong hours, or otherwise mismanaged. In regard to transport, they have not the embarrassment of crowds of sick and wounded, far away in the Black Sea, without any adequate supply of mules and carriages, after the horses had died off, and without any organization of hospital ships at all equal to the demand. Neither do they depend for clothing and medicines on the arrival of successive ships through the storms of the Euxine; and they will never see the dreary spectacle of the foundering of a noble vessel just arriving, in November, with ample stores of winter clothing, medicines, and comforts, which six hours more would have placed in safety. Under the head of transport, they ought to have nothing to suffer.

Having gone through the separate items, and looking at the case as a whole, we may easily perceive that in America, as in England and France and every other country, the responsibility of the soldier's health in camp is shared thus.

The authorities are bound so to arrange their work as that there shall be no hitch through which disaster shall reach the soldiery. The relations between the military and medical authorities must be so settled and made clear as that no professional jealousy among the doctors shall keep the commanding officers in the dark as to the needs—of their men, and that no self-will or ignorance in commanding officers shall neutralize the counsels of the medical men. The military authorities must not depend on the report of any doctor who may be incompetent as to the provision made for the men's health, and the doctor must be authorized to represent the dangers of a bad encampment without being liable to a recommendation to keep his opinion to himself till he is asked for it. These particular dangers are best obviated by the appointment of sanitary officers, to attend the forces, and take charge of the health of the army, as the physicians and surgeons take charge of its sickness. If, besides, there is a separate department between the commissariat and the soldiery, to see that the comforts provided are actually brought within every man's grasp, the authorities will have done their part.

The rest is the soldier's own concern. When cruelly pressed by hardship, the soldiers in Turkey and the Crimea took to drinking; and what they drank was poison. The vile raid with which they intoxicated themselves carried hundreds to the grave as surely as arsenic would have done. When, at last, they were well fed, warm, clean, and comfortable, and well amused in the coffee-houses opened for them, there was an end, or a vast diminution, of the evil of drunkenness. Good coffee and harmless luxuries were sold to them at cost price; and books and magazines and newspapers, chess, draughts, and other games, were at their command. The American soldiery are a more cultivated set of men than these, and are in proportion more inexcusable for any resort to intemperance. They ought to have neither the external discomfort nor the internal vacuity which have caused drunkenness in other armies. The resort to strong drinks so prevalent in the Americans is an ever-lasting mystery to Europeans, who recognize in them a self-governing people, universally educated up to a capacity for intellectual interests such as are elsewhere found to be a safeguard against intemperance in drink. If the precautions instituted by the authorities are well supported by the volunteers themselves, the most fatal of all perils will be got rid of. If not, the army will perish by a veritable suicide. But such a fate cannot be in store for such an army.

There is something else almost as indispensable to the health of soldiers as sobriety, and that is subordination. The true, magnanimous, patriotic spirit of subordination is not more necessary to military achievement than it is to the personal composure and the trustworthiness of nerve of the individual soldier. A strong desire and fixed habit of obedience to command relieve a man of all internal conflict between self-will and circumstance, and give him possession of his full powers of action and endurance. If absolute reliance on authority is a necessity to the great majority of mankind, (which it is,) it is to the few wisest and strongest a keen enjoyment when they can righteously indulge in it; and the occasion on which it is supremely a duty—in the case of military or naval service—is one of privilege. Americans are less accustomed than others to prompt and exact obedience, being a self-governing and unmilitary nation: and they may require some time to become aware of the privileges of subordination to command. But time will satisfy them of the truth; and those who learn the lesson most quickly will be the most sensible of the advantage to health of body, through ease of mind. The abdication of self-will in regard to the ordering of affairs, the repose of reliance upon the responsible parties, the exercise of silent endurance about hardships and fatigues, the self-respect which relishes the honor of cooperation through obedience, the sense of patriotic devotedness which glows through every act of submission to command,—all these elevated feelings tend to composure of the nerves, to the fortifying of brain and limb, and the genial repose and exaltation of all the powers of mind and body. I need not contrast with this the case of the discontented and turbulent volunteer, questioning commands which he is not qualified to judge of, and complaining of troubles which cannot be helped. It is needless to show what wear-and-tear is caused by such a spirit, and how nerve and strength must, in such a case, fail in the hour of effort or of crisis, and give way at once before the assault of disease. By the aid of sobriety and the calm and cheerful subordination of the true military character, the health of the Federal army may be equal to its high mission: and all friends of human freedom, in all lands, must heartily pray that it may be so.

There is another department of the subject which I propose to treat of another month: "Health in the Military Hospital."

"THE STORMY PETREL."

  Where the gray crags beat back the northern main,
  And all around, the ever restless waves,
  Like white sea-wolves, howl on the lonely sands,
  Clings a low roof, close by the sounding surge.
  If, in your summer rambles by the shore,
  His spray-tost cottage you may chance espy,
  Enter and greet the blind old mariner.

  Full sixty winters he has watched beside
  The turbulent ocean, with one purpose warmed:
  To rescue drowning men. And round the coast—
  For so his comrades named him in his youth—
  They know him as "The Stormy Petrel" still.

  Once he was lightning-swift, and strong; his eyes
  Peered through the dark, and far discerned the wreck
  Plunged on the reef. Then with bold speed he flew,
  The life-boat launched, and dared the smiting rocks.

  'T is said by those long dwelling near his door,
  That hundreds have been storm-saved by his arm;
  That never was he known to sleep, or lag
  In-doors, when danger swept the seas. His life
  Was given to toil, his strength to perilous blasts.
  In freezing floods when tempests hurled the deep,
  And battling winds clashed in their icy caves,
  Scared housewives, waking, thought of him, and said,
  "'The Stormy Petrel' is abroad to-night,
  And watches from the cliffs."

                             He could not rest
  When shipwrecked forms might gasp amid the waves,
  And not a cry be answered from the shore.

  Now Heaven has quenched his sight; but when he hears
  By his lone hearth the sullen sea-winds clang,
  Or listens, in the mad, wild, drowning night,
  As younger footsteps hurry o'er the beach
  To pluck the sailor from his sharp-fanged death,—
  The old man starts, with generous impulse thrilled,
  And, with the natural habit of his heart,
  Calls to his neighbors in a cheery tone,
  Tells them he'll pilot toward the signal guns,
  And then, remembering all his weight of years,
  Sinks on his couch, and weeps that he is blind.

A STORY OF TO-DAY.

Margaret stood looking down in her quiet way at the sloping moors and fog. She, too, had her place and work. She thought that night she saw it clearly, and kept her eyes fixed on it, as I said. They plodded steadily down the wide years opening before her. Whatever slow, unending work lay in them, whatever hungry loneliness they held for her heart, or coarseness of deed, she saw it all, shrinking from nothing. She looked at the tense blue-corded veins in her wrist, full of fine pure blood,—gauged herself coolly, her lease of life, her power of endurance,—measured it out against the work waiting for her. The work would be long, she knew. She would be old before it was finished, quite an old woman, hard, mechanical, worn out. But the day would be so bright, when it came, it would atone for all: the day would be bright, the home warm again; it would hold all that life had promised her of good.

All? Oh, Margaret, Margaret! Was there no sullen doubt in the brave resolve? Was there no shadow rose just then, dark, ironical, blotting out father and mother and home, coming nearer, less alien to your soul than these, than even your God?

If any such cold, masterful shadow rose out of years gone, and clutched at the truest life of her heart, she stifled it, and thrust it down. And yet, leaning on the gate, and thinking drearily, vacantly, she remembered a time when God came nearer to her than He did now, and came through that shadow,—when, by the help of that dead hope, He of whom she read to-night came close, an infinitely tender Helper, who, with the human love that was in her heart to-day, had loved his mother and John and Mary. Now, struggle as she would for healthy hopes and warmth, the world was gray and silent. Her defeated woman's nature called it so, bitterly. Christ was a dim ideal power, heaven far-off. She doubted if it held anything as real as that which she had lost.

As if to bring back the old times more vividly to her, there happened one of those curious little coincidences with which Fate, we think, has nothing to do. She heard a quick step along the clay road, and a muddy little terrier jumped up, barking, beside her. She stopped with a suddenness strange in her slow movements. "Tiger!" she said, stroking its head with passionate eagerness. The dog licked her hand, smelt her clothes to know if she were the same: it was two years since he had seen her. She sat there, softly stroking him. Presently there was a sound of wheels jogging down the road, and a voice singing snatches of some song, one of those cheery street-songs that the boys whistle. It was a low, weak voice, but very pleasant. Margaret heard it through the dark; she kissed the dog with a strange paleness on her face, and stood up, quiet, attentive as before. Tiger still kept licking her hand, as it hung by her side: it was cold, and trembled as he touched it. She waited a moment, then pushed the dog from her, as if his touch, even, caused her to break some vow. He whined, but she hurried away, not waiting to know how he came, or with whom. Perhaps, if Dr. Knowles had seen her face as she looked back at him, he would have thought there were depths in her nature which his probing eyes had never reached.

The wheels came close, and directly a cart stopped at the gate. It was one of those little wagons that hucksters drive; only this seemed to be a home-made affair, patched up with wicker-work and bits of board. It was piled up with baskets of vegetables, eggs, and chickens, and on a broken bench in the middle sat the driver, a woman. You could not help laughing, when you looked at the whole turn-out, it had such a make-shift look altogether.

The reins were twisted rope, the wheels uneven. It went jolting along in such a careless, jolly way, as if it would not care in the least, should it go to pieces any minute just there in the road. The donkey that drew it was bony and blind of one eye; but he winked the other knowingly at you, as if to ask if you saw the joke of the thing. Even the voice of the owner of the establishment, chirruping some idle song, as I told you, was one of the cheeriest sounds you ever heard. Joel, up at the barn, forgot his dignity to salute it with a prolonged "Hillo!" and presently appeared at the gate.

"I'm late, Joel," said the weak voice. It sounded like a child's near at hand.

"We can trade in the dark, Lois, both bein' honest," he responded, graciously, hoisting a basket of tomatoes into the cart, and taking out a jug of vinegar.

"Is that Lois?" said Mrs. Howth, coming to the gate. "Sit still, child.
Don't get down."

But the child, as she called her, had scrambled off the cart, and stood beside her, leaning on the wheel, for she was helplessly crippled.

"I thought you would be down tonight. I put some coffee on the stove.
Bring it out, Joel."

Mrs. Howth never put up the shield between herself and this member of "the class,"—because, perhaps, she was so wretchedly low in the social scale. However, I suppose she never gave a reason for it even to herself. Nobody could help being kind to Lois, even if he tried. Joel brought the coffee with more readiness than he would have waited on Mrs. Howth.

"Barney will be jealous," he said, patting the bare ribs of the old donkey, and glancing wistfully at his mistress.

"Give him his supper, surely," she said, taking the hint.

It was a real treat to see how Lois enjoyed her supper, sipping and tasting the warm coffee, her face in a glow, like an epicure over some rare Falernian. You would be sure, from, just that little thing, that no sparkle of warmth or pleasure in the world slipped by her which she did not catch and enjoy and be thankful for to the uttermost. You would think, perhaps, pitifully, that not much pleasure or warmth would ever go down so low, within her reach. Now that she stood on the ground, she scarcely came up to the level of the wheel; some deformity of her legs made her walk with a curious rolling jerk, very comical to see. She laughed at it, when other people did; if it vexed her at all, she never showed it. She had turned back her calico sun-bonnet, and stood looking up at Mrs. Howth and Joel, laughing as they talked—with her. The face would have startled you on so old and stunted a body. It was a child's face, quick, eager, with that pitiful beauty you always see in deformed people. Her eyes, I think, were the kindliest, the hopefullest I ever saw. Nothing but the pale thickness of her skin betrayed the fact that set Lois apart from even the poorest poor,—the taint in her veins of black blood.

"Whoy! be n't this Tiger?" said Joel, as the dog ran yelping about him.
"How comed yoh with him, Lois?"

"Tiger an' his master's good friends o' mine,—you remember they allus was. An' he's back now, Mr. Holmes,—been back for a month."

Margaret, walking in the porch with her father, stopped.

"Are you tired, father? It is late."

"And you are worn out, poor child! It was selfish in me to forget.
Good-night, dear!"

Margaret kissed him, laughing cheerfully, as she led him to his room-door. He lingered, holding her dress.

"Perhaps it will be easier for you tomorrow than it was to-day?" hesitating.

"I am sure it will. To-morrow will be sure to be better than to-day."

She left him, and went away with a slow step that did not echo the promise of her words.

Joel, meanwhile, consulted apart with his mistress.

"Of course," she said, emphatically.—"You must stay until morning,
Lois. It is too late. Joel will toss you up a bed in the loft."

The queer little body hesitated.

"I can stay," she said, at last. "It's his watch at the mill to-night."

"Whose watch?" demanded Joel.

Her face brightened.

"Father's. He's back, mum."

Joel caught himself in a whistle.

"He's very stiddy, Joel,—as stiddy as yuh."

"I am very glad he has come back, Lois," said Mrs. Howth, gravely.

At every place where Lois had been that day she had told her bit of good news, and at every place it had been met with the same kindly smile and "I'm glad he's back, Lois."

Yet Joe Yare, fresh from two years in the penitentiary, was not exactly the person whom society usually welcomes with open arms. Lois had a vague suspicion of this, perhaps; for, as she hobbled along the path, she added to her own assurance of his "stiddiness" earnest explanations to Joel of how he had a place in the Croft Street woollen-mills, and how Dr. Knowles had said he was as ready a stoker as any in the furnace-rooms.

The sound of her weak, eager voice was silent presently, and nothing broke the quiet and cold of the night. Even the morning, when it came long after, came quiet and cool,—the warm red dawn helplessly smothered under great waves of gray cloud. Margaret, looking out into the thick fog, lay down wearily again, closing her eyes. What was the day to her?

Very slowly the night was driven back. An hour after, when she lifted her head again, the stars were still glittering through the foggy arch, like sparks of brassy blue, and the sky and hills and valleys were one drifting, slow-heaving mass of ashy damp. Off in the east a stifled red film groped through. It was another day coming; she might as well get up, and live the rest of her life out;—what else had she to do?

Whatever this night had been to the girl, it left one thought sharp, alive, in the exhausted quiet of her brain: a cowardly dread of the trial of the day, when she would see him again. Was the old struggle of years before coming back? Was it all to go over again? She was worn out. She had been quiet in these—two years: what had gone before she never looked back upon; but it made her thankful for even this stupid quiet. And now, when she had planned her life, busy and useful and contented, why need God have sent the old thought to taunt her? A wild, sickening sense of what might have been struggled up: she thrust it down,—she had kept it down all night; the old pain should not come back,—it should not. She did not think of the love she had given up as a dream, as verse-makers or sham people do; she knew it to be the reality of her life. She cried for it even now, with all the fierce strength of her nature; it was the best she knew; through it she came nearest to God. Thinking of the day when she had given it up, she remembered it with a vague consciousness of having fought a deadly struggle with her fate, and that she had been conquered,—never had lived again. Let it be; she could not bear the struggle again.

She went on dressing herself in a dreary, mechanical way. Once, a bitter laugh came on her face, as she looked into the glass, and saw the dead, dull eyes, and the wrinkle on her forehead. Was that the face to be crowned with delicate caresses and love? She scorned herself for the moment, grew sick of herself, balked, thwarted in her true life as she was. Other women whom God has loved enough to probe to the depths of their nature have done the same,—saw themselves as others saw them: their strength drying up within them, jeered at, utterly alone. It is a trial we laugh at. I think the quick fagots at the stake were fitter subjects for laughter than the slow gnawing hunger in the heart of many a slighted woman or a selfish man. They come out of the trial as out of martyrdom, according to their faith: you see its marks sometimes in a frivolous old age going down with tawdry hopes and starved eyes to the grave; you see its victory in the freshest, fullest lives in the earth. This woman had accepted her trial, but she took it up as an inflexible fate which she did not understand; it was new to her; its solitude, its hopeless thirst were freshly bitter. She loathed herself as one whom God had thought unworthy of every woman's right,—to love and be loved.

She went to the window, looking blankly out into the gray cold. Any one with keen analytic eye, noting the thin muscles of this woman, the childish, scarlet lips, the eyes deep, concealing, would have foretold that she would conquer in the trial, that she would force her soul down,—but that the forcing down would leave the weak, flaccid body spent and dead. One thing was certain: no curious eyes would see the struggle; the body might be nerveless or sickly, but it had the great power of reticence; the calm with which she faced the closest gaze was natural to her,—no mask. When she left her room and went down, the same unaltered quiet that had baffled Knowles steadied her step and cooled her eyes.

After you have made a sacrifice of yourself for others, did you ever notice how apt you were to doubt, as soon as the deed was irrevocable, whether, after all, it were worth while to have done it? How poor seems the good gained! How new and unimagined the agony of empty hands and stifled wish! Very slow the angels are, sometimes, that are sent to minister!

Margaret, going down the stairs that morning, found none of the chivalric unselfish glow of the night before in her home. It was an old, bare house in the midst of dreary moors, in which her life was slowly to be worn out: that was all. It did not matter; life was short: she could thank God for that at least.

She opened the house-door. A draught of cold morning air struck her face, sweeping from the west; it had driven the fog in great gray banks upon the hills, or in shimmering broken swamps into the cleft hollows: a vague twilight filled the space left bare. Tiger, asleep in the hall, rushed out into the meadow, barking, wild with the freshness and cold, then back again to tear round her for a noisy good-morning. The touch of the dog seemed to bring her closer to his master; she put him away; she dared not suffer even that treachery to her purpose: because, in fact, the very circumstances that had forced her to give him up made it weak cowardice to turn again. It was a simple story, yet one which she dared not tell to herself; for it was not altogether for her father's sake she had made the sacrifice. She knew, that, though she might be near to this man Holmes as his own soul, she was a clog on him,—stood in his way,—kept him back. So she had quietly stood aside, taken up her own solitary burden, and left him with his clear self-reliant life,—with his Self, dearer to him than she had ever been. Why should it not be? she thought,—remembering the man as he was, a master among men. He was back again; she must see him. So she stood there with this persistent dread running through her brain.

Suddenly, in the lane by the house, she heard a voice talking to Joel,—the huckster-girl. What a weak, cheery sound it was in the cold and fog! It touched her curiously: broke through her morbid thought as anything true and healthy would have done. "Poor Lois!" she thought, with an eager pity, forgetting her own intolerable future for the moment, as she gathered up some breakfast and went with it down the lane. Morning had come; great heavy bars of light fell from behind the hills athwart the banks of gray and black fog; there was shifting, uneasy, obstinate tumult among the shadows; they did not mean to yield to the coming dawn. The hills, the massed woods, the mist opposed their immovable front, scornfully. Margaret did not notice the silent contest until she reached the lane. The girl Lois, sitting in her cart, was looking, quiet, attentive, at the slow surge of the shadows, and the slower lifting of the slanted rays.

"T' mornin' comes grand here, Miss Marg'et!" she said, lowering her voice.

Margaret said nothing in reply; the morning, she thought, was gray and cold, as her own life. She stood leaning on the low cart; some strange sympathy drew her to this poor wretch, dwarfed, alone in the world,—some tie of equality, which the odd childish face, nor the quaint air of content about the creature, did not lessen. Even when Lois shook down the patched skirt of her flannel frock straight, and settled the heaps of corn and tomatoes about her, preparatory for a start, Margaret kept her hand on the side of the cart, and walked slowly by it down the road. Once, looking at the girl, she thought with a half smile how oddly clean she was. The flannel skirt she arranged so complacently had been washed until the colors had run madly into each other in sheer desperation; her hair was knotted with a relentless tightness into a comb such as old women wear. The very cart, patched as it was, had a snug, cozy look; the masses of vegetables, green and crimson and scarlet, were heaped with a certain reference to the glow of color, Margaret noticed, wondering if it were accidental. Looking up, she saw the girl's brown eyes fixed on her face. They were singularly soft, brooding brown.

"Ye'r' goin' to th' mill, Miss Marg'et?" she asked, in a half whisper.

"Yes. You never go there now, Lois?"

"No, 'm."

The girl shuddered, and then tried to hide it in a laugh. Margaret walked on beside her, her hand on the cart's edge. Somehow this creature, that Nature had thrown impatiently aside as a failure, so marred, imperfect, that even the dogs were kind to her, came strangely near to her, claimed recognition by some subtile instinct.

Partly for this, and partly striving to forget herself, she glanced furtively at the childish face of the distorted little body, wondering what impression the shifting dawn made on the unfinished soul that was looking out so intently through the brown eyes. What artist sense had she,—what could she know—the ignorant huckster—of the eternal laws of beauty or grandeur? Nothing. Yet something in the girl's face made her think that these hills, this air and sky, were in fact alive to her,—real; that her soul, being lower, it might be, than ours, lay closer to Nature, knew the language of the changing day, of these earnest-faced hills, of the very worms crawling through the brown mould. It was an idle fancy; Margaret laughed at herself for it, and turned to watch the slow morning-struggle which Lois followed with such eager eyes.

The light was conquering, growing stronger. Up the gray arch the soft, dewy blue crept gently, deepening, broadening; below it, the level bars of light struck full on the sullen black of the west, and worked there undaunted, tinging it with crimson and imperial purple. Two or three coy mist-clouds, soon converted to the new allegiance, drifted giddily about, mere flakes of rosy blushes. The victory of the day came slowly, but sure, and then the full morning flushed out, fresh with moisture and light and delicate perfume. The bars of sunlight fell on the lower earth from the steep hills like pointed swords; the foggy swamp of wet vapor trembled and broke, so touched, rose at last, leaving patches of damp brilliance on the fields, and floated majestically up in radiant victor clouds, led by the conquering wind. Victory: it was in the cold, pure ether filling the heavens, in the solemn gladness of the hills. The great forests thrilling in the soft light, the very sleepy river wakening under the mist, chorded in with a grave bass to the rising anthem of welcome to the new life which God had freshly given to the world. From the sun himself, come forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, to the flickering raindrops on the road-side mullein, the world seemed to rejoice exultant in victory. Homely, cheerier sounds broke the outlined grandeur of the morning, on which Margaret looked wearily. Lois lost none of them; no morbid shadow of her own balked life kept their meaning from her.

The light played on the heaped vegetables in the old cart; the bony legs of the donkey trotted on with fresh vigor. There was not a lowing cow in the distant barns, nor a chirping swallow on the fence-bushes, that did not seem to include the eager face of the little huckster in their morning greetings. Not a golden dandelion on the road-side, not a gurgle of the plashing brown water from the well-troughs, which did not give a quicker pleasure to the glowing face. Its curious content stung the woman walking by her side. What secret of recompense had this poor wretch found?

"Your father is here, Lois," she said carelessly, to break the silence.
"I saw him at the mill yesterday."

Her face kindled instantly.

"He's home, Miss Marg'et,—yes. An' it's all right wid him. Things allus do come right, some time," she added, in a reflective tone, brushing a fly off Sawney's ear.

Margaret smiled.

"Always? Who brings them right for you, Lois?"

"The Master," she said, turning with an answering smile.

Margaret was touched. The owner of the mill was not a more real verity to this girl than the Master of whom she spoke with such quiet knowledge.

"Are things right in the mill?" she said, testing her.

A shadow came on her face; her eyes wandered uncertainly, as if her weak brain were confused,—only for a moment.

"They'll come right!" she said, bravely. "The Master'll see to it!"

But the light was gone from her eyes; some old pain seemed to be surging through her narrow thought; and when she began to talk, it was in a bewildered, doubtful way.

"It's a black place, th' mill," she said, in a low voice. "It was a good while I was there: frum seven year old till sixteen. 'T seemed longer t' me 'n 't was. 'T seemed as if I'd been there allus,—jes' forever, yoh know. 'Fore I went in, I had the rickets, they say: that's what ails me. 'T hurt my head, they've told me,—made me different frum other folks."

She stopped a moment, with a dumb, hungry look in her eyes. After a while she looked at Margaret furtively, with a pitiful eagerness.

"Miss Marg'et, I think there is something wrong in my head. Did yoh ever notice it?"

Margaret put her hand kindly on the broad, misshapen forehead.

"Something is wrong everywhere, Lois," she said, absently.

She did not see the slow sigh with which the girl smothered down whatever hope had risen just then, nor the wistful look of the brown eyes that brightened into bravery after a while.

"It'll come right," she said, steadily, though her voice was lower than before.

"But the mill,"—Margaret recalled her.

"Th' mill,—yes. There was three of us,—father 'n' mother 'n' me,—'n' pay was poor. They said times was hard. They was hard times, Miss Marg'et!" she said, with a nervous laugh, the brown eyes strangely wandering.

"Yes, hard,"—she soothed her, gently.

"Pay was poor, 'n' many things tuk money." (Remembering the girl's mother, Margaret knew gin would have covered the "many things.") "Worst to me was th' mill. I kind o' grew into that place in them years: seemed to me like as I was part o' th' engines, somehow. Th' air used to be thick in my mouth, black wi' smoke 'n' wool 'n' smells. It 's better now there. I got stunted then, yoh know. 'N' th' air in th' alleys was worse, where we slep'. I think mebbe as 't was then I went wrong in my head. Miss Marg'et!"

Her voice went lower.

"'T isn't easy to think o' th' Master—down there, in them cellars.
Things comes right—slow there,—slow."

Her eyes grew stupid, as if looking down into some dreary darkness.

"But the mill?"

The girl roused herself with a sharp sigh.

"In them years I got dazed in my head, I think. 'T was th' air 'n' th' work. I was weak allus. 'T got so that th' noise o' th' looms went on in my head night 'n' day,—allus thud, thud. 'N' hot days, when th' hands was chaffin' 'n' singin', th' black wheels 'n' rollers was alive, starin' down at me, 'n' th' shadders o' th' looms was like snakes creepin',—creepin' anear all th' time. They was very good to me, th' hands was,—very good. Ther' 's lots o' th' Master's people down there, out o' sight, that's so low they never heard His name: preachers don't go there. But He'll see to't. He'll not min' their cursin' o' Him, seein' they don't know His face, 'n' thinkin' He belongs to th' gentry. I knew it wud come right wi' me, when times was th' most bad. I knew"—

The girl was trembling now with excitement, her hands working together, her eyes set, all the slow years of ruin that had eaten into her brain rising before her, all the tainted blood in her veins of centuries of slavery and heathenism struggling to drag her down. But above all, the Hope rose clear, simple: the trust in the Master: and shone in her scarred face,—through her marred senses.

"I knew it wud come right, allus. I was alone then: mother was dead, and father was gone, 'n' th' Lord thought 't was time to see to me,—special as th' overseer was gettin' me an enter to th' poorhouse. So He sent Mr. Holmes along. Then it come right!"

Margaret did not speak. Even this mill-girl could talk of him, pray for him; but she never must take his name on her lips!

"He got th' cart fur me, 'n' this blessed old donkey, 'n' my room. Did yoh ever see my room, Miss Marg'et?"

Her face lighted suddenly with its peculiar childlike smile.

"No? Yoh'll come some day, surely? It's a pore place, yoh'll think; but it's got th' air,—th' air."

She stopped to breathe the cold morning wind, as if she thought to find in its fierce freshness the life and brains she had lost.

"Ther' 's places in them alleys 'n' dark holes, Miss Marg'et, like th' openin's to hell, with th' thick smells 'n' th' sights yoh'd see."

She went back with a terrible clinging pity to the Gehenna from which she had escaped. The ill of life was real enough to her,—a hungry devil down in those alleys and dens. Margaret listened, waking to the sense of a different pain in the world from her own,—lower deeps from which women like herself draw delicately back, lifting their gauzy dresses.

"Openin's to hell, they're like. People as come down to preach in them think that, 'pears to me,—'n' think we've but a little way to go, bein' born so near. It's easy to tell they thinks it,—shows in their looks. Miss Marg'et!"

Her face flashed.

"Well, Lois?"

"Th' Master has His people 'mong them very lowest, that's not for such as yoh to speak to. He knows 'em: men 'n' women starved 'n' drunk into jails 'n' work-houses, that'd scorn to be cowardly or mean,—that shows God's kindness, through th' whiskey 'n' thievin', to th' orphints or—such as me. Ther 's things th' Master likes in them, 'n' it'll come right," she sobbed, "it'll come right at last; they'll have a chance—somewhere."

Margaret did not speak; let the poor girl sob herself into quiet. What had she to do with this gulf of pain and wrong? Her own higher life was starved, thwarted. Could it be that the blood of these her brothers called against her from the ground? No wonder that the huckster-girl sobbed, she thought, or talked heresy. It was not an easy thing to see a mother drink herself into the grave. And yet—was she to blame? Her Virginian blood was cool, high-bred; she had learned conservatism in her cradle. Her life in the West had not yet quickened her pulse. So she put aside whatever social mystery or wrong faced her in this girl, just as you or I would have done. She had her own pain to bear. Was she her brother's keeper? It was true, there was wrong; this woman's soul lay shattered by it; it was the fault of her blood, of her birth, and Society had finished the work. Where was the help? She was free,—and liberty, Dr. Knowles said, was the cure for all the soul's diseases, and——

Well, Lois was quiet now,—ready with her childish smile to be drawn into a dissertation on Barney's vices and virtues, or a description of her room, where "th' air was so strong, 'n' the fruit 'n' vegetables allus stayed fresh,—best in this town," she said, with a bustling pride.

They went on down the road, through the corn-fields sometimes, or on the riverbank, or sometimes skirting the orchards or barn-yards of the farms. The fences were well built, she noticed,—the barns wide and snug-looking: for this county in Indiana is settled by New England people, as a general thing, or Pennsylvanians. They both leave their mark on barns or fields, I can tell you! The two women were talking all the way. In all his life Dr. Knowles had never heard from this silent girl words as open and eager as she gave to the huckster about paltry, common things,—partly, as I said, from a hope to forget herself, and partly from a vague curiosity to know the strange world which opened before her in this disjointed talk. There were no morbid shadows in this Lois's life, she saw. Her pains and pleasures were intensely real, like those of her class. If there were latent powers in her distorted brain, smothered by hereditary vice of blood, or foul air and life, she knew nothing of it. She never probed her own soul with fierce self-scorn, as this quiet woman by her side did;—accepted, instead, the passing moment, with keen enjoyment. For the rest, childishly trusted "the Master."

This very drive, now, for instance,—although she and the cart and Barney went through the same routine every day, you would have thought it was a new treat for a special holiday, if you had seen the perfect abandon with which they all threw themselves into the fun of the thing. Not only did the very heaps of ruby tomatoes, and corn in delicate green casings, tremble and shine as though they enjoyed the fresh light and dew, but the old donkey cocked his ears, and curved his scraggy neck, and tried to look as like a high-spirited charger as he could. Then everybody along the road knew Lois, and she knew everybody, and there was a mutual liking and perpetual joking, not very refined, perhaps, but hearty and kind. It was a new side of life for Margaret. She had no time for thoughts of self-sacrifice, or chivalry, ancient or modern, watching it. It was a very busy ride,—something to do at every farmhouse: a basket of eggs to be taken in, or some egg-plants, maybe, which Lois laid side by side, Margaret noticed,—the pearly white balls close to the heap of royal purple. No matter how small the basket was that she stopped for, it brought out two or three to put it in; for Lois and her cart were the event of the day for the lonely farm-houses. The wife would come out, her face ablaze from the oven, with an anxious charge about that butter; the old man would hail her from the barn to know "ef she'd thought toh look in th' mail yes'rday"; and one or the other was sure to add, "Jes' time for breakfast, Lois." If she had no baskets to stop for, she had "a bit o' business," which turned out to be a paper she had brought for the grandfather, or some fresh mint for the baby, or "jes' to inquire fur th' fam'ly."

As to the amount that cart carried, it was a perpetual mystery to Lois. Every day since she and the cart went into partnership, she had gone into town with a dead certainty in the minds of lookers-on that it would break down in five minutes, and a triumphant faith in hers in its unlimited endurance. "This cart'll be right side up fur years to come," she would assert, shaking her head. "It's got no more notion o' givin' up than me nor Barney,—not a bit." Margaret had her doubts,—and so would you, if you had heard how it creaked under the load,—how they piled in great straw panniers of apples: black apples with yellow hearts,—scarlet veined, golden pippin apples, that held the warmth and light longest,—russet apples with a hot blush on their rough brown skins,—plums shining coldly in their delicate purple bloom,—peaches with the crimson velvet of their cheeks aglow with the prisoned heat of a hundred summer days.

I wish with all my heart some artist would paint me Lois and her cart! Mr. Kitts, the artist in the city then, used to see it going past his room out by the coal-pits every day, and thought about it seriously. But he had his grand battle-piece on hand then,—and after that he went the way of all geniuses, and died down into colorer for a photographer. He met them, that day, out by the stone quarry, and touched his hat as he returned Lois's "Good-morning," and took a couple of great papaws from her. She was a woman, you see, and he had some of the schoolmaster's old-fashioned notions about women. He was a sickly-looking soul. One day Lois had heard him say that there were papaws on his mother's place in Ohio; so after that she always brought him some every day. She was one of those people who must give, if it is nothing better than a Kentucky banana.

After they passed the stone quarry, they left the country behind them, going down the stubble-covered hills that fenced in the town. Even in the narrow streets, and through the warehouses, the strong, dewy air had quite blown down and off the fog and dust. Morning (town morning, to be sure, but still morning) was shining in the red window-panes, in the tossing smoke up in the frosty air, in the very glowing faces of people hurrying from market with their noses nipped blue and their eyes watering with cold. Lois and her cart, fresh with country breath hanging about them, were not so out of place, after all. House-maids left the steps half-scrubbed, and helped her measure out the corn and beans, gossiping eagerly; the newsboys "Hi-d!" at her in a friendly, patronizing way; women in rusty black, with sharp, pale faces, hoisted their baskets, in which usually lay a scraggy bit of flitch, on to the wheel, their whispered bargaining ending oftenest in a low "Thank ye, Lois!"—for she sold cheaper to some people than they did in the market.

Lois was Lois in town or country. Some subtile power lay in the coarse, distorted body, in the pleading child's face, to rouse, wherever they went, the same curious, kindly smile. Not, I think, that dumb, pathetic eye, common to deformity, that cries, "Have mercy upon me, O my friend, for the hand of God hath touched me!"—a deeper, mightier charm, rather: a trust down in the fouled fragments of her brain, even in the bitterest hour of her bare, wretched life,—a faith, faith in God, faith in her fellow-man, faith in herself. No human soul refused to answer its summons. Down in the dark alleys, in the very vilest of the black and white wretches that crowded sometimes about her cart, there was an undefined sense of pride in protecting this wretch whose portion of life was more meagre and low than theirs. Something in them struggled up to meet the trust in the pitiful eyes,—something which scorned to betray the trust,—some Christ-like power, smothered, dying, under the filth of their life and the terror of hell. Not lost. If the Great Spirit of love and trust lives, not lost!

Even in the cold and quiet of the woman walking by her side the homely power of the poor huckster was not weak to warm or to strengthen. Margaret left her, turning into the crowded street leading to the part of the town where the factories lay. The throng of anxious-faced men and women jostled and pushed, but she passed through them with a different heart from yesterday's. Somehow, the morbid fancies were gone; she was keenly alive; the homely real life of this huckster had fired her, touched her blood with a more vital stimulus than any tale of crusader. As she went down the crooked maze of dingy lanes, she could hear Lois's little cracked bell far off: it sounded like a Christmas song to her. She half smiled, remembering how sometimes in her distempered brain the world had seemed a gray, dismal Dance of Death. How actual it was to-day,—hearty, vigorous, alive with honest work and tears and pleasure! A broad, good world to live and work in, to suffer or die, if God so willed it,—God, the good! She entered the vast, dingy factory; the woollen dust, the clammy air of copperas were easier to breathe in; the cramped, sordid office, the work, mere trifles to laugh at; and she bent over the ledger with its hard lines in earnest good-will, through the slow creeping hours of the long day. She noticed that the unfortunate chicken was making its heart glad over a piece of fresh earth covered with damp moss. Dr. Knowles stopped to look at it when he came, passing her with a surly nod.

"So your master's not forgotten you," he snarled, while the blind old hen cocked her one eye up at him.

Pike, the manager, had brought in some bills.

"Who's its master?" he said, curiously, stopping by the door.

"Holmes,—he feeds it every morning."

The Doctor drawled out the words with a covert sneer, watching the quiet, cold face bending over the desk, meantime.

Pike laughed.

"Bah! it's the first thing he ever fed, then, besides himself. Chickens must lie nearer his heart than men."

Knowles scowled at him; he had no fancy for Pike's scurrilous gossip.

The quiet face was unmoved. When he heard the manager's foot on the ladder without, he tested it again. He had a vague suspicion which he was determined to verify.

"Holmes," he said, carelessly, "has an affinity for animals. No wonder. Adam must have been some such man as he, when the Lord gave him 'dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air.'"

The hand paused courteously a moment, then resumed its quick, cool movement over the page. He was not baffled.

"If there were such a reality as mastership, that man was born to rule. Pike will find him harder to cheat than me, when he takes possession here."

She looked up now, attentive.

"He came here to take my place in the mills,—buy me out,—articles will be signed in a day or two. I know what you think,—no,—not worth a dollar. Only brains and a soul, and he's sold them at a high figure,—threw his heart in,—the purchaser being a lady. It was light, I fancy,—starved out, long ago."

The old man's words were spurted out in the bitterness of scorn. The girl listened with a cool incredulity in her eyes, and went back to her work.

"Miss Herne is the lady,—my partner's daughter. Herne and Holmes they'll call the firm. He is here every day, counting future profit."

Nothing could be read on the cold still face; so he left her, cursing, as he went, men who put themselves up at auction,—worse than Orleans slaves. Margaret laughed to herself at his passion; as for the story he hinted, it was absurd. She forgot it in a moment.

Two or three gentlemen down in one of the counting-rooms, just then, looked at the story from another point of view. They were talking low, out of hearing from the clerks.

"It's a good thing for Holmes," said one, a burly, farmer-like man, who was choosing specimens of wool.

"Cheap. And long credit. Just half the concern he takes."

"There is a lady in the case?" suggested a young doctor, who, by virtue of having spent six months in the South, dropped his r-s, and talked of "niggahs" in a way to make a Georgian's hair stand on end.

"A lady in the case?"

"Of course. Only child of Herne's. He comes down with the dust as dowry. Good thing for Holmes. 'Stonishin' how he's made his way up. If money's what he wants in this world, he's making a long stride now to 't."

The young doctor lighted his cigar, asserting that—

"Ba George, some low people did get on, re-markably! Mary Herne, now, was best catch in town."

"Do you think money is what he wants?" said a quiet little man, sitting lazily on a barrel,—a clergyman, whom his clerical brothers shook their heads when they named, but never argued with, and bowed to with uncommon deference.

The wool-buyer hesitated with a puzzled look.

"No," he said, slowly; "Stephen Holmes is not miserly. I've knowed him since a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither," he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you see,) and would have had him the best office in the State before this, only he was so cursedly indifferent."

"Indifferent, yes. No man cares much for stepping-stones in themselves," said the clergyman, half to himself.

"Great fault of American society, especially in West," said the young aristocrat. "Stepping-stones lie low, as my reverend friend suggests; impudence ascends; merit and refinement scorn such dirty paths,"—with a mournful remembrance of the last dime in his waistcoat-pocket.

"But do you," exclaimed the farmer, with sudden solemnity, "do you understand this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is in this mill, and every dollar of it is going into some castle in the air that no sane man can comprehend."

"Mad as a March hare," contemptuously muttered the doctor.

His reverend friend gave him a look,—after which he was silent.

"I wish to the Lord some one would persuade him out of it," persisted the wool-man, earnestly looking at the quiet face of his listener. "We can't spare old Knowles's brain or heart while he ruins himself. It's something of a Communist fraternity: I don't know the name, but I know the thing."

Very hard common-sense shone out of his eyes just then at the clergyman, whom he suspected of being one of Knowles's abettors.

"There's two ways for 'em to end. If they're made out of the top of society, they get so refined, so idealized, that every particle flies off on its own special path to the sun, and the Community's broke; and if they're made of the lower mud, they keep going down, down together, —they live to drink and eat, and make themselves as near the brutes as they can. It isn't easy to believe, Sir, but it's true. I have seen it. I've seen every one of them the United States can produce. It's facts, Sir; and facts, as Lord Bacon says, are the basis of every sound speculation.'"

The last sentence was slowly brought out, as quotations were not exactly his forte, but, as he said afterwards,—"You see, that nailed the parson."

The parson nodded gravely.

"You'll find no such experiment in the Bible," threw in the young doctor, alluding to "serious things" as a peace-offering to his reverend friend.

"One, I believe," dryly.

"Well," broke in the farmer, folding up his wool, "that's neither here nor there. This experiment of Knowles's is like nothing known since the Creation. Plan of his own. He spends his days now hunting out the gallows-birds out of the dens in town here, and they're all to be transported into the country to start a new Arcadia. A few men and women like himself, but the bulk is from the dens, I tell you. All start fair, level ground, perpetual celibacy, mutual trust, honor, rise according to the stuff that's in them,—pah! it makes me sick!"

"Knowles's inclination to that sort of people is easily explained," spitefully lisped the doctor. "Blood, Sir. His mother was a half-breed Creek, with all the propensities of the redskins to fire-water and 'itching palms.' Blood will out."

"Here he is," maliciously whispered the wool-man. "No, it's Holmes," he added, after the doctor had started into a more respectful posture, and glanced around frightened.

He, the doctor, rose to meet Holmes's coming footstep,—"a low fellah, but always sure to be the upper dog in the fight, goin' to marry the best catch," etc., etc. The others, on the contrary, put on their hats and sauntered away into the street.

So the day broadened hotly; the shadows of the Lombardy poplars curdling up into a sluggish pool of black at their roots along the dry gutters. The old schoolmaster in the shade of the great horse-chestnuts (brought from the homestead in the Piedmont country, every one) husked corn for his wife, composing, meanwhile, a page of his essay on the "Sirventes de Bertrand de Born." The day passed for him as did his life, half in simple-hearted deed, half in vague visions of a dead world, never to be real again. Joel, up in the barn by himself, worked through the long day in the old fashion,—pondering gravely (being of a religious turn) upon a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Clinche, reported in the "Gazette"; wherein that disciple of the meek Teacher invoked, as he did once a week, the curses of the law upon his political opponents, praying the Lord to sweep them immediately from the face of the earth. Which rendering of Christian doctrine was so much relished by Joel, and the other leading members of Mr. Clinche's church, that they hinted to him it might be as well to continue choosing his texts from Moses and the Prophets until the excitement of the day was over. The New Testament was,—well,—hardly suited for the emergency; did not, somehow, chime in with the lesson of the hour. I may remark, in passing, that this course of conduct so disgusted the High-Church rector of the parish, that he not only ignored all new devils, (as Mr. Carlyle might have called them,) but talked as if the millennium, were un fait accompli, and he had leisure to go and hammer at the poor dead old troubles of Luther's time. One thing, though, about Joel: while he was joining in Mr. Clinche's prayer for the "wiping out" of some few thousands, he was using up all the fragments of the hot day in fixing a stall for a half-dead old horse he had found by the road-side. Let us hope, that, even if the listening angel did not grant the prayer, he marked down the stall at least, as a something done for eternity.

Margaret, through the heat and stifling air, worked steadily alone in the dusty office, the cold, homely face bent over the books, never changing but once. It was a trifle then; yet, when she looked back afterwards, the trifle was all that gave the day a name. The room shook, as I said, with the thunderous, incessant sound of the engines and the looms; she scarcely heard it, being used to it. Once, however, another sound came between,—a slow, quiet tread, passing through the long wooden corridor,—so firm and measured that it sounded like the monotonous beatings of a clock. She heard it through the noise in the far distance; it came slowly nearer, up to the door without,—passed it, going down the echoing plank walk. The girl sat quietly, looking out at the dead brick wall. The slow step fell on her brain like the sceptre of her master; if Knowles had looked in her face then, he would have seen bared the secret of her life. Holmes had gone by, unconscious of who was within the door. She had not seen him; it was nothing but a step she heard. Yet a power, the power of the girl's life, shook off all outward masks, all surface cloudy fancies, and stood up in her with a terrible passion at the sound; her blood burned fiercely; her soul looked out from her face, her soul as it was, as God knew it,—God and this man. No longer a cold, clear face; you would have thought, looking at it, what a strong spirit the soul of this woman would be, if set free in heaven or in hell. The man who held it in his power went on carelessly, not knowing that the mere sound of his step had raised it as from the dead. She, and her right, and her pain, were nothing to him now, she remembered, staring out at the taunting hot sky. Yet so vacant was the sudden life opened before her when he was gone, that, in the desperation of her weakness, her mad longing to see him but once again, she would have thrown herself at his feet, and let the cold, heavy step crush her life out,—as he would have done, she thought, choking down the icy smother in her throat, if it had served his purpose, though it cost his own heart's life to do it. He would trample her down, if she kept him back from his end; but be false to her, false to himself, that he would never be!

So the hot, long day wore on,—the red bricks, the dusty desk covered with wool, the miserable chicken peering out, growing sharper and more real in the glare. Life was no morbid nightmare now; her weak woman's heart found it actual and near. There was not a pain nor a want, from the dumb hunger in the dog's eyes that passed her on the street, to her father's hopeless fancies, that did not touch her sharply through her own loss, with a keen pity, a wild wish to help to do something to save others with this poor life left in her hands.

So the hot day wore on in the town and country; the old sun glaring down like some fierce old judge, intolerant of weakness or shams,—baking the hard earth in the streets harder for the horses' feet, drying up the bits of grass that grew between the boulders of the gutter, scaling off the paint from the brazen faces of the interminable brick houses. He looked down in that city as in every American town, as in these where you and I live, on the same countless maze of human faces going day by day through the same monotonous routine. Knowles, passing through the restless crowds, read with keen eye among them strange meanings by this common light of the sun,—meanings such as you and I might read, if our eyes were clear as his,—or morbid, it may be. A commonplace crowd like this in the street without: women with cold, fastidious faces, heavy-brained, bilious men, dapper 'prentices, draymen, prize-fighters, negroes. Knowles looked about him as into a seething caldron, in which the people I tell you of were atoms, where the blood of uncounted races was fused, but not mingled,—where creeds, philosophies, centuries old, grappled hand to hand in their death-struggle,—where innumerable aims and beliefs and powers of intellect, smothered rights and triumphant wrongs, warred together, struggling for victory.

Vulgar American life? He thought it a life more potent, more tragic in its history and prophecy, than any that has gone before. People called him a fanatic. It may be that he was one: yet the uncouth old man, sick in soul from some gnawing pain of his own life, looked into the depths of human loss with a mad desire to set it right. On the very faces of those who sneered at him he found some traces of failure or pain, something that his heart carried up to God with a loud and exceeding bitter cry. The voice of the world, he thought, went up to heaven a discord, unintelligible, hopeless,—the great blind world, astray since the first ages! Was there no hope, no help?

The hot sun shone down, as it had done for six thousand years; it shone on open problems in the lives of these men and women who walked the streets, problems whose end and beginning no eye could read. There were places where it did not shine: down in the fetid cellars, in the slimy cells of the prison yonder: what riddles of human life lay there he dared not think of. God knows how the man groped for the light,—for any voice to make earth and heaven clear to him.

So the hot, long day wore on, for all of them. There was another light by which the world was seen that day, rarer than the sunshine, purer. It fell on the dense crowds,—upon the just and the unjust. It went into the fogs of the fetid dens from which the coarser light was barred, into the deepest mires where a human soul could wallow, and made them clear. It lighted the depths of the hearts whose outer pain and passion men were keen to read in the unpitying sunshine, and bared in those depths the feeble gropings for the right, the loving hope, the unuttered prayer. No kindly thought, no pure desire, no weakest faith in a God and heaven somewhere could be so smothered under guilt that this subtile light did not search it out, glow about it, shine through it, hold it up in full view of God and the angels,—lighting the world other than the sun had done for six thousand years. We have no name for the light: it has a name,—yonder. Not many eyes were clear to see its shining that day; and if they did, it was as through a glass, darkly. Yet it belonged to us also, in the old time, the time when men could "hear the voice of the Lord God in the garden in the cool of the day." It is God's light now alone.

Yet poor Lois caught faint glimpses, I think, sometimes, of its heavenly clearness. I think it was this light that made the burning of Christmas fires warmer for her than for others, that showed her all the love and outspoken honesty and hearty frolic which her eyes saw perpetually in the old warm-hearted world. That evening, as she sat on the step of her brown frame shanty, knitting at a great blue stocking, her scarred face and misshapen body very pitiful to the passers-by, it was this light that gave to her face its homely, cheery smile. It made her eyes quick to know the message in the depths of color in the evening sky, or even the flickering tints of the green creeper on the wall with its crimson cornucopias filled with hot sunshine. She liked clear, vital colors, this girl,—the crimsons and blues. They answered her, somehow. They could speak. There were things in the world that like herself were marred,—did not understand,—were hungry to know: the gray sky, the mud swamps, the tawny lichens. She cried sometimes, looking at them, hardly knowing why: she could not help it, with a vague sense of loss. It seemed at those times so dreary for them to be alive,—or for her. Other things her eyes were quicker to see than ours: delicate or grand lines, which she perpetually sought for unconsciously,—in the homeliest things, the very soft curling of the woollen yarn in her fingers, as in the eternal sculpture of the mountains. Was it the disease of her injured brain that made all things alive to her,—that made her watch, in her ignorant way, the grave hills, the flashing, victorious rivers, look pitifully into the face of some dingy mushroom trodden in the mud before it scarce had lived, just as we should look into human faces to know what they would say to us? Was it the weakness and ignorance that made everything she saw or touched nearer, more human to her than to you or me? She never got used to living as other people do; these sights and sounds did not come to her common, hackneyed. Why, sometimes, out in the hills, in the torrid quiet of summer noons, she had knelt by the shaded pools, and buried her hands in the great slumberous beds of water-lilies, her blood curdling in a feverish languor, a passioned trance, from which she roused herself, weak and tired.

She had no self-poised artist sense, this Lois,—knew nothing of Nature's laws. Yet sometimes, watching the dun sea of the prairie rise and fall in the crimson light of early morning, or, in the farms, breathing the blue air trembling up to heaven exultant with the life of bird and forest, she forgot the poor coarse thing she was, some coarse weight fell off, and something within, not the sickly Lois of the town, went out, free, like an exile dreaming of home.

You tell me, that, doubtless, in the wreck of the creature's brain, there were fragments of some artistic insight that made her thus rise above the level of her daily life, drunk with the mere beauty of form and color. I do not know,—not knowing how sham or real a thing you mean by artistic insight. But I do know that the clear light I told you of shone for this girl dimly through this beauty of form and color; and ignorant, with no words for her thoughts, she believed in it as the Highest that she knew. I think it came to her thus an imperfect language, (not an outward show of tints and lines, as to some artists,)—a language, the same that Moses heard when he stood alone, with nothing between his naked soul and God, but the desert and the mountain and the bush that burned with fire. I think the weak soul of the girl staggered from its dungeon, and groped through these heavy-browed hills, these color-dreams, through even the homely kind faces on the street, to find the God that lay behind. So the light showed her the world, and, making its beauty and warmth divine and near to her, the warmth and beauty became real in her, found their homely shadows in her daily life. So it showed her, too, through her vague childish knowledge, the Master in whom she believed,—showed Him to her in everything that lived, more real than all beside. The waiting earth, the prophetic sky, the coarsest or fairest atom that she touched was but a part of Him, something sent to tell of Him,—she dimly felt; though, as I said, she had no words for such a thought. Yet even more real than this. There was no pain nor temptation down in those dark cellars where she went that He had not borne,—not one. Nor was there the least pleasure came to her or the others, not even a cheerful fire, or kind words, or a warm, hearty laugh, that she did not know He sent it and was glad to do it. She knew that well! So it was that He took part in her humble daily life, and became more real to her day by day. Very homely shadows her life gave of His light, for it was His: homely, because of her poor way of living, and of the depth to which the heavy foot of the world had crushed her. Yet they were there all the time, in her cheery patience, if nothing more. To-night, for instance, how differently the surging crowd seemed to her from what it did to Knowles! She looked down on it from her high wood-steps with an eager interest, ready with her weak, timid laugh to answer every friendly call from below. She had no power to see them as types of great classes; they were just so many living people, whom she knew, and who, most of them, had been kind to her. Whatever good there was in the vilest face, (and there was always something,) she was sure to see it. The light made her poor eyes strong for that.

She liked to sit there in the evenings, being alone, yet never growing lonesome; there was so much that was pleasant to watch and listen to, as the cool brown twilight came on. If, as Knowles thought, the world was a dreary discord, she knew nothing of it. People were going from their work now,—they had time to talk and joke by the way,—stopping, or walking slowly down the cool shadows of the pavement; while here and there a lingering red sunbeam burnished a window, or struck athwart the gray boulder-paved street. From the houses near you could catch a faint smell of supper: very friendly people those were in these houses; she knew them all well. The children came out with their faces washed, to play, now the sun was down: the oldest of them generally came to sit with her and hear a story.

After it grew darker, you would see the girls in their neat blue calicoes go sauntering down the street with their sweethearts for a walk. There was old Polston and his son Sam coming home from the coal-pits, as black as ink, with their little tin lanterns on their caps. After a while Sam would come out in his suit of Kentucky jean, his face shining with the soap, and go sheepishly down to Jenny Ball's, and the old man would bring his pipe and chair out on the pavement, and his wife would sit on the steps. Most likely they would call Lois down, or come over themselves, for they were the most sociable, coziest old couple you ever knew. There was a great stopping at Lois's door, as the girls walked past, for a bunch of the flowers she brought from the country, or posies, as they called them, (Sam never would take any to Jenny but "old man" and pinks,) and she always had them ready in broken jugs inside. They were good, kind girls, every one of them,—had taken it in turn to sit up with Lois last winter all the time she had the rheumatism. She never forgot that time,—never once.

Later in the evening you would see an old man coming along, close by the wall, with his head down,—a very dark man, with gray, thin hair,—Joe Yare, Lois's old father. No one spoke to him,—people always were looking away as he passed; and if old Mr. or Mrs. Polston were on the steps when he came up, they would say, "Good-evening, Mr. Yare," very formally, and go away presently. It hurt Lois more than anything else they could have done. But she bustled about noisily, so that he would not notice it. If they saw the marks of the ill life he had lived on his old face, she did not; his sad, uncertain eyes may have been dishonest to them, but they were nothing but kind to the misshapen little soul that he kissed so warmly with a "Why, Lo, my little girl!" Nobody else in the world ever called her by a pet name.

Sometimes he was gloomy and silent, but generally he told her of all that had happened in the mill, particularly any little word of notice or praise he might have received, watching her anxiously until she laughed at it, and then rubbing his hands cheerfully. He need not have doubted Lois's faith in him. Whatever the rest did, she believed in him; she always had believed in him, through all the dark, dark years, when he was at home, and in the penitentiary. They were gone now, never to come back. It had come right. She, at least, thought his repentance sincere. If the others wronged him, and it hurt her bitterly that they did, that would come right some day too, she would think, as she looked at the tired, sullen face of the old man bent to the window-pane, afraid to go out. They had very cheerful little suppers there by themselves in the odd, bare little room, as homely and clean as Lois herself.

Sometimes, late at night, when he had gone to bed, she sat alone in the door, while the moonlight fell in broad patches over the quiet square, and the great poplars stood like giants whispering together. Still the far sounds of the town came up cheerfully, while she folded up her knitting, it being dark, thinking how happy an ending this was to a happy day. When it grew quiet, she could hear the solemn whisper of the poplars, and sometimes broken strains of music from the cathedral in the city floated through the cold and moonlight past her, far off into the blue beyond the hills. All the keen pleasure of the day, the warm, bright sights and sounds, coarse and homely though they were, seemed to fade into the deep music, and make a part of it.

Yet, sitting there, looking out into the listening night, the poor child's face grew slowly pale as she heard it. It humbled her. It made her meanness, her low, weak life so real to her! There was no pain nor hunger she had known that did not find a voice in its inarticulate cry. She! what was she? All the pain and wants of the world must be going up to God in that sound, she thought. There was something more in it,—an unknown meaning that her shattered brain struggled to grasp. She could not. Her heart ached with a wild, restless longing. She had no words for the vague, insatiate hunger to understand. It was because she was ignorant and low, perhaps; others could know. She thought her Master was speaking. She thought the unknown meaning linked all earth and heaven together, and made it plain. So she hid her face in her hands, and listened while the low harmony shivered through the air, unheeded by others, with the message of God to man. Not comprehending, it may be,—the poor girl,—hungry still to know. Yet, when she looked up, there were warm tears in her eyes, and her scarred face was bright with a sad, deep content and love.

So the hot, long day was over for them all,—passed as thousands of days have done for us, gone down, forgotten: as that long, hot day we call life will be over some time, and go down into the gray and cold. Surely, whatever of sorrow or pain may have made darkness in that day for you or me, there were countless openings where we might have seen glimpses of that other light than sunshine: the light of the great Tomorrow, of the land where all wrongs shall be righted. If we had but chosen to see it,—if we only had chosen!

CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO CARRIED WEIGHT IN LIFE.

WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON THOSE WHO NEVER HAD A CHANCE.

You drive out, let us suppose, upon a certain day. To your surprise and mortification, your horse, usually lively and frisky, is quite dull and sluggish. He does not get over the ground as he is wont to do. The slightest touch of whip-cord, on other days, suffices to make him dart forward with redoubled speed; but upon this day, after two or three miles, he needs positive whipping, and he runs very sulkily with it all. By-and-by his coat, usually smooth and glossy and dry through all reasonable work, begins to stream like a water-cart. This will not do. There is something wrong. You investigate; and you discover that your horse's work, though seemingly the same as usual, is in fact immensely greater. The blockheads who oiled your wheels yesterday have screwed up your patent axles too tightly; the friction is enormous; the hotter the metal gets, the greater grows the friction; your horse's work is quadrupled. You drive slowly home, and severely upbraid the blockheads.

There are many people who have to go through life at an analogous disadvantage. There is something in their constitution of body or mind, there is something in their circumstances, which adds incalculably to the exertion they must go through to attain their ends, and which holds them back from doing what they might otherwise have done. Very probably that malign something exerted its influence unperceived by those around them. They did not get credit for the struggle they were going through. No one knew what a brave fight they were making with a broken right arm; no one remarked that they were running the race, and keeping a fair place in it, too, with their legs tied together. All they do, they do at a disadvantage. It is as when a noble race-horse is beaten by a sorry hack; because the race-horse, as you might see, if you look at the list, is carrying twelve pounds additional. But such men, by a desperate effort, often made silently and sorrowfully, may (so to speak) run in the race, and do well in it, though you little think with how heavy a foot and how heavy a heart. There are others who have no chance at all. They are like a horse set to run a race, tied by a strong rope to a tree, or weighted with ten tons of extra burden. That horse cannot run even poorly. The difference between their case and that of the men who are placed at a disadvantage is like the difference between setting a very near-sighted man to keep a sharp look-out and setting a man who is quite blind to keep that sharp look-out. Many can do the work of life with difficulty; some cannot do it at all. In short, there are PEOPLE WHO CARRY WEIGHT IN LIFE, and there are some WHO NEVER HAVE A CHANCE.

And you, my friend, who are doing the work of life well and creditably,—you who are running in the front rank, and likely to do so to the end, think kindly and charitably of those who have broken down in the race. Think kindly of him who, sadly overweighted, is struggling onwards away half a mile behind you; think more kindly yet, if that be possible, of him who, tethered to a ton of granite, is struggling hard and making no way at all, or who has even sat down and given up the struggle in dumb despair. You feel, I know, the weakness in yourself which would have made you break down, if sorely tried like others. You know there is in your armor the unprotected place at which a well-aimed or a random blow would have gone home and brought you down. Yes, you are nearing the winning-post, and you are among the first; but six pounds more on your back, and you might have been nowhere. You feel, by your weak heart and weary frame, that, if you had been sent to the Crimea in that dreadful first winter, you would certainly have died. And you feel, too, by your lack of moral stamina, by your feebleness of resolution, that it has been your preservation from you know not what depths of shame and misery, that you never were pressed very hard by temptation. Do not range yourself with those who found fault with a certain great and good Teacher of former days, because he went to be guest with a man that was a sinner. As if He could have gone to be guest with any man who was not!

* * * * *

There is no reckoning up the manifold impedimenta by which human beings are weighted for the race of life; but all may be classified under the two heads of unfavorable influences arising out of the mental or physical nature of the human beings themselves, and unfavorable influences arising out of the circumstances in which the human beings are placed. You have known men who, setting out from a very humble position, have attained to a respectable standing, but who would have reached a very much higher place but for their being weighted with a vulgar, violent, wrong-headed, and rude-spoken wife. You have known men of lowly origin who had in them the makings of gentlemen, but whom this single malign influence has condemned to coarse manners and a frowzy, repulsive home for life. You have known many men whose powers are crippled and their nature soured by poverty, by the heavy necessity for calculating how far each shilling will go, by a certain sense of degradation that comes of sordid shifts. How can a poor parson write an eloquent or spirited sermon when his mind all the while is running upon the thought how he is to pay the baker or how he is to get shoes for his children? It will be but a dull discourse which, under that weight, will be produced even by a man who, favorably placed, could have done very considerable things. It is only a great genius here and there who can do great things, who can do his best, no matter at what disadvantage he may be placed; the great mass of ordinary men can make little headway with wind and tide dead against them. Not many trees would grow well, if watered daily (let us say) with vitriol. Yet a tree which would speedily die under that nurture might do very fairly, might even do magnificently, if it had fair play, if it got its chance of common sunshine and shower. Some men, indeed, though always hampered by circumstances, have accomplished much; but then you cannot help thinking how much more they might have accomplished, had they been placed more happily. Pugin, the great Gothic architect, designed various noble buildings; but I believe he complained that he never had fair play with his finest,—that he was always weighted by considerations of expense, or by the nature of the ground he had to build on, or by the number of people it was essential the building should accommodate. And so he regarded his noblest edifices as no more than hints of what he could have done. He made grand running in the race; but, oh, what running he could have made, if you had taken off those twelve additional pounds! I dare say you have known men who labored to make a pretty country-house on a site which had some one great drawback. They were always battling with that drawback, and trying to conquer it; but they never could quite succeed. And it remained a real worry and vexation. Their house was on the north side of a high hill, and never could have its due share of sunshine. Or you could not reach it but by climbing a very steep ascent; or you could not in any way get water into the landscape. When Sir Walter was at length able to call his own a little estate on the banks of the Tweed he loved so well, it was the ugliest, bleakest, and least interesting spot upon the course of that beautiful river; and the public road ran within a few yards of his door. The noble-hearted man made a charming dwelling at last; but he was fighting against Nature in the matter of the landscape round it; and you can see yet, many a year after he left it, the poor little trees of his beloved plantations contrasting with the magnificent timber of various grand old places above and below Abbotsford. There is something sadder in the sight of men who carried weight within themselves, and who, in aiming at usefulness or at happiness, were hampered and held back by their own nature. There are many men who are weighted with a hasty temper; weighted with a nervous, anxious constitution; weighted with an envious, jealous disposition; weighted with a strong tendency to evil speaking, lying, and slandering; weighted with a grumbling, sour, discontented spirit; weighted with a disposition to vaporing and boasting; weighted with a great want of common sense; weighted with an undue regard to what other people may be thinking or saying of them; weighted with many like things, of which more will be said by-and-by. When that good missionary, Henry Martyn, was in India, he was weighted with an irresistible drowsiness. He could hardly keep himself awake. And it must have been a burning earnestness that impelled him to ceaseless labor, in the presence of such a drag-weight as that. I am not thinking or saying, my friend, that it is wholly bad for us to carry weight,—that great good may not come of the abatement of our power and spirit which may be made by that weight. I remember a greater missionary than even the sainted Martyn, to whom the Wisest and Kindest appointed that he should carry weight, and that he should fight at a sad disadvantage. And the greater missionary tells us that he knew why that weight was appointed him to carry; and that he felt he needed it all to save him from a strong tendency to undue self-conceit. No one knows, now, what the burden was which he bore; but it was heavy and painful; it was "a thorn in the flesh." Three times he earnestly asked that it might be taken away; but the answer he got implied that he needed it yet, and that his Master thought it a better plan to strengthen the back than to lighten the burden. Yes, the blessed Redeemer appointed that St. Paul should carry weight in life; and I think, friendly reader, that we shall believe that it is wisely and kindly meant, if the like should come to you and me.

We all understand what is meant, when we hear it said that a man is doing very well, or has done very well, considering. I do not know whether it is a Scotticism to stop short at that point of the sentence. We do it, constantly, in this country. The sentence would be completed by saying, considering the weight he has to carry, or the disadvantage at which he works. And things which are very good, considering, may range very far up and down the scale of actual merit. A thing which is very good, considering, may be very bad, or may be tolerably good. It never can be absolutely very good; for, if it were, you would cease to use the word considering. A thing which is absolutely very good, if it have been done under extremely unfavorable circumstances, would not be described as very good, considering; it would be described as quite wonderful, considering, or as miraculous, considering. And it is curious how people take a pride in accumulating unfavorable circumstances, that they may overcome them, and gain the glory of having overcome them. Thus, if a man wishes to sign his name, he might write the letters with his right hand; and though he write them very clearly and well and rapidly, nobody would think of giving him any credit. But if he write his name rather badly with his left hand, people would say it was a remarkable signature, considering; and if he write his name very ill indeed with his foot, people would say the writing was quite wonderful, considering. If a man desire to walk from one end of a long building to the other, he might do so by walking along the floor; and though he did so steadily, swiftly, and gracefully, no one would remark that he had done anything worth notice. But if he choose for his path a thick rope, extended from one end of the building to the other, at a height of a hundred feet, and if he walk rather slowly and awkwardly along it, he will be esteemed as having done something very extraordinary: while if, in addition to this, he is blindfolded, and has his feet placed in large baskets instead of shoes, he will, if in any way he can get over the distance between the ends of the building, be held as one of the most remarkable men of the age. Yes, load yourself with weight which no one asks you to carry; accumulate disadvantages which you need not face, unless you choose; then carry the weight in any fashion, and overcome the disadvantages in any fashion; and you are a great man, considering: that is, considering the disadvantages and the weight. Let this be remembered: if a man is so placed that he cannot do his work, except in the face of special difficulties, then let him be praised, if he vanquish these in some decent measure, and if he do his work tolerably well. But a man deserves no praise at all for work which he has done tolerably or done rather badly, because he chose to do it under disadvantageous circumstances, under which there was no earthly call upon him to do it. In this case he probably is a self-conceited man, or a man of wrong-headed independence of disposition; and in this case, if his work be bad absolutely, don't tell him that it is good, considering. Refuse to consider. He has no right to expect that you should. There was a man who built a house entirely with his own hands. He had never learned either mason-work or carpentry: he could quite well have afforded to pay skilled workmen to do the work he wanted; but he did not choose to do so. He did the whole work himself. The house was finished; its aspect was peculiar. The walls were off the perpendicular considerably, and the windows were singular in shape; the doors fitted badly, and the floors were far from level. In short, it was a very bad and awkward-looking house: but it was a wonderful house, considering. And people said that it was so, who saw nothing wonderful in the beautiful house next it, perfect in symmetry and finish and comfort, but built by men whose business it was to build. Now I should have declined to admire that odd house, or to express the least sympathy with its builder. He chose to run with a needless hundred-weight on his back: he chose to walk in baskets instead of in shoes. And if, in consequence of his own perversity, he did his work badly, I should have refused to recognize it as anything but bad work. It was quite different with Robinson Crusoe, who made his dwelling and his furniture for himself, because there was no one else to make them for him. I dare say his cave was anything but exactly square; and his chairs and table were cumbrous enough; but they were wonderful, considering certain facts which he was quite entitled to expect us to consider. Southey's Cottonian Library was all quite right; and you would have said that the books were very nicely bound, considering; for Southey could not afford to pay the regular binder's charges; and it was better that his books should be done up in cotton of various hues by the members of his own family than that they should remain not bound at all. You will think, too, of the poor old parson who wrote a book which he thought of great value, but which no publisher would bring out. He was determined that all his labor should not be lost to posterity. So he bought types and a printing-press, and printed his precious work, poor man: he and his man-servant did it all. It made a great many volumes; and the task took up many years. Then he bound the volumes with his own hands; and carrying them to London, he placed a copy of his work in each of the public libraries. I dare say he might have saved himself his labor. How many of my readers could tell what was the title of the work, or what was the name of its author? Still, there was a man who accomplished his design, in the face of every disadvantage.

There is a great point of difference between our feeling towards the human being who runs his race much overweighted and our feeling towards the inferior animal that does the like. If you saw a poor horse gamely struggling in a race, with a weight of a ton extra, you would pity it. Your sympathies would all be with the creature that was making the best of unfavorable circumstances. But it is a sorrowful fact, that the drag-weight of human beings not unfrequently consists of things which make us angry rather than sympathetic. You have seen a man carrying heavy weight in life, perhaps in the form of inveterate wrong-headedness and suspiciousness; but instead of pitying him, our impulse would rather be to beat him upon that perverted head. We pity physical malformation or unhealthiness; but our bent is to be angry with intellectual and moral malformation or unhealthiness. We feel for the deformed man, who must struggle on at that sad disadvantage; feeling it, too, much more acutely than you would readily believe. But we have only indignation for the man weighted with far worse things, and things which, in some cases at least, he can just as little help. You have known men whose extra pounds, or even extra ton, was a hasty temper, flying out of a sudden into ungovernable bursts: or a moral cowardice leading to trickery and falsehood: or a special disposition to envy and evil-speaking: or a very strong tendency to morbid complaining about their misfortunes and troubles: or an invincible bent to be always talking of their sufferings through the derangement of their digestive organs. Now, you grow angry at these things. You cannot stand them. And there is a substratum of truth to that angry feeling. A man can form his mind more than he can form his body. If a man be well-made, physically, he will, in ordinary cases, remain so: but he may, in a moral sense, raise a great hunchback where Nature made none. He may foster a malignant temper, a grumbling, fretful spirit, which by manful resistance might be much abated, if not quite put down. But still, there should often be pity, where we are prone only to blame. We find a person in whom a truly disgusting character has been formed: well, if you knew all, you would know that the person had hardly a chance of being otherwise: the man could not help it. You have known people who were awfully unamiable and repulsive: you may have been told how very different they once were,—sweet-tempered and cheerful. And surely the change is a far sadder one than that which has passed upon the wrinkled old woman who was once (as you are told) the loveliest girl of her time. Yet many a one who will look with interest upon the withered face and the dimmed eyes, and try to trace in them the vestiges of radiant beauty gone, will never think of puzzling out in violent spurts of petulance the perversion of a quick and kind heart; or in curious oddities and pettinesses the result of long and lonely years of toil in which no one sympathized; or in cynical bitterness and misanthropy an old disappointment never got over. There is a hard knot in the wood, where a green young branch was lopped away. I have a great pity for old bachelors. Those I have known have for the most part been old fools. But the more foolish and absurd they are, the more pity is due them. I believe there is something to be said for even the most unamiable creatures. The shark is an unamiable creature. It is voracious. It will snap a man in two. Yet it is not unworthy of sympathy. Its organization is such that it is always suffering the most ravenous hunger. You can hardly imagine the state of intolerable famine in which that unhappy animal roams the ocean. People talk of its awful teeth and its vindictive eye. I suppose it is well ascertained that the extremity of physical want, as reached on rafts at sea, has driven human beings to deeds as barbarous as ever shark was accused of. The worse a human being is, the more he deserves our pity. Hang him, if that be needful for the welfare of society; but pity him even as you hang. Many a poor creature has gradually become hardened and inveterate in guilt who would have shuddered at first, had the excess of it ultimately reached been at first presented to view. But the precipice was sloped off: the descent was made step by step. And there is many a human being who never had a chance of being good: many who have been trained, and even compelled, to evil from very infancy. Who that knows anything of our great cities, but knows how the poor little child, the toddling innocent, is sometimes sent out day by day to steal, and received in his wretched home with blows and curses, if he fail to bring back enough? Who has not heard of such poor little things, unsuccessful in their sorry work, sleeping all night in some wintry stair, because they durst not venture back to their drunken, miserable, desperate parents? I could tell things at which angels might shed tears, with much better reason for doing so than seems to me to exist in some of those more imposing occasions on which bombastic writers are wont to describe them as weeping. Ah, there is One who knows where the responsibility for all this rests! Not wholly with the wretched parents: far from that. They, too, have gone through the like: they had as little chance as their children. They deserve our deepest pity, too. Perhaps the deeper pity is not due to the shivering, starving child, with the bitter wind cutting through its thin rags, and its blue feet on the frozen pavement, holding out a hand that is like the claw of some beast; but rather to the brutalized mother who could thus send out the infant she bore. Surely the mother's condition, if we look at the case aright, is the more deplorable. Would not you, my reader, rather endure any degree of cold and hunger than come to this? Doubtless, there is blame somewhere, that such things should be: but we all know that the blame of the most miserable practical evils and failures can hardly be traced to particular individuals. It is through the incapacity of scores of public servants that an army is starved. It is through the fault of millions of people that our great towns are what they are: and it must be confessed that the actual responsibility is spread so thinly over so great a surface that it is hard to say it rests very blackly upon any one spot. Oh that we could but know whom to hang, when we find some flagrant, crying evil! Unluckily, hasty people are ready to be content, if they can but hang anybody, without minding much whether that individual be more to blame than many beside. Laws and kings have something to do here: but management and foresight on the part of the poorer classes have a great deal more to do. And no laws can make many persons managing or provident. I do not hesitate to say, from what I have myself seen of the poor, that the same short-sighted extravagance, the same recklessness of consequences, which are frequently found in them, would cause quite as much misery, if they prevailed in a like degree among people with a thousand a year. But it seems as if only the tolerably well-to-do have the heart to be provident and self-denying. A man with a few hundreds annually does not marry, unless he thinks he can afford it: but the workman with fifteen shillings a week is profoundly indifferent to any such calculation. I firmly believe that the sternest of all self-denial is that practised by those who, when we divide mankind into rich and poor, must be classed (I suppose) with the rich. But I turn away from a miserable subject, through which I cannot see my way clearly, and on which I cannot think but with unutterable pain. It is an easy way of cutting the knot, to declare that the rich are the cause of all the sufferings of the poor; but when we look at the case in all its bearings, we shall see that that is rank nonsense. And on the other hand, it is unquestionable that the rich are bound to do something. But what? I should feel deeply indebted to any one who would write out, in a few short and intelligible sentences, the practical results that are aimed at in the "Song of the Shirt." The misery and evil are manifest: but tell us whom to hang; tell us what to do!

One heavy burden with which many men are weighted for the race of life is depression of spirits. I wonder whether this used to be as common in former days as it is now. There was, indeed, the man in Homer who walked by the seashore in a very gloomy mood; but his case seems to have been thought remarkable. What is it in our modern mode of life and our infinity of cares, what little thing is it about the matter of the brain or the flow of the blood, that makes the difference between buoyant cheerfulness and deep depression? I begin to think that almost all educated people, and especially all whose work is mental rather than physical, suffer more or less from this indescribable gloom. And although a certain amount of sentimental sadness may possibly help the poet, or the imaginative writer, to produce material which may be very attractive to the young and inexperienced, I suppose it will be admitted by all that cheerfulness and hopefulness are noble and healthful stimulants to worthy effort, and that depression of spirits does (so to speak) cut the sinews with which the average man must do the work of life. You know how lightly the buoyant heart carries people through entanglements and labors under which the desponding would break down, or which they never would face. Yet, in thinking of the commonness of depressed spirits, even where the mind is otherwise very free from anything morbid, we should remember that there is a strong temptation to believe that this depression is more common and more prevalent than it truly is. Sometimes there is a gloom which overcasts all life, like that in which James Watt lived and worked, and served his race so nobly,—like that from which the gentle, amiable poet, James Montgomery, suffered through his whole career. But in ordinary cases the gloom is temporary and transient. Even the most depressed are not always so. Like, we know, suggests like powerfully. If you are placed in some peculiar conjuncture of circumstances, or if you pass through some remarkable scene, the present scene or conjuncture will call up before you, in a way that startles you, something like itself which you had long forgotten, and which you would never have remembered but for this touch of some mysterious spring. And accordingly, a man depressed in spirits thinks that he is always so, or at least fancies that such depression has given the color to his life in a very much greater degree than it actually has done so. For this dark season wakens up the remembrance of many similar dark seasons which in more cheerful days are quite forgot; and these cheerful days drop out of memory for the time. Hearing such a man speak, if he speak out his heart to you, you think him inconsistent, perhaps you think him insincere. You think he is saying more than he truly feels. It is not so; he feels and believes it all at the time. But he is taking a one-sided view of things; he is undergoing the misery of it acutely for the time, but by-and-by he will see things from quite a different point. A very eminent man (there can be no harm in referring to a case which he himself made so public) wrote and published something about his miserable home. He was quite sincere, I do not doubt. He thought so at the time. He was miserable just then; and so, looking back on past years, he could see nothing but misery. But the case was not really so, one could feel sure. There had been a vast deal of enjoyment about his home and his lot; it was forgotten then. A man in very low spirits, reading over his diary, somehow lights upon and dwells upon all the sad and wounding things; he involuntarily skips the rest, or reads them with but faint perception of their meaning. In reading the very Bible, he does the like thing. He chances upon that which is in unison with his present mood. I think there is no respect in which this great law of the association of ideas holds more strictly true than in the power of a present state of mind, or a present state of outward circumstances, to bring up vividly before us all such states in our past history. We are depressed, we are worried; and when we look back, all our departed days of worry and depression appear to start up and press themselves upon our view to the exclusion of anything else; so that we are ready to think that we have never been otherwise than depressed and worried all our life. But when more cheerful times come, they suggest only such times of cheerfulness, and no effort will bring back the depression vividly as when we felt it. It is not selfishness or heartlessness, it is the result of an inevitable law of mind, that people in happy circumstances should resolutely believe that it is a happy world after all; for, looking back, and looking around, the mind refuses to take distinct note of anything that is not somewhat akin to its present state. And so, if any ordinary man, who is not a distempered genius or a great fool, tells you that he is always miserable, don't believe him. He feels so now, but he does not always feel so. There are periods of brightening in the darkest lot. Very, very few live in unvarying gloom. Not but that there is something very pitiful (by which I mean deserving of pity) in what may be termed the Micawber style of mind,—in the stage of hysteric oscillations between joy and misery. Thoughtless readers of "David Copperfield" laugh at Mr. Micawber, and his rapid passages from the depth of despair to the summit of happiness, and back again. But if you have seen or experienced that morbid condition, you would know that there is more reason to mourn over it than to laugh at it. There is acute misery felt now and then; and there is a pervading, never-departing sense of the hollowness of the morbid mirth. It is but a very few degrees better than "moody madness, laughing wild, amid severest woe." By depression of spirits I understand a dejection without any cause that could be stated, or from causes which in a healthy mind would produce no such degree of dejection. No doubt, many men can remember seasons of dejection which was not imaginary, and of anxiety and misery whose causes were only too real. You can remember, perhaps, the dark time in which you knew quite well what it was that made it so dark. Well, better days have come. That sorrowful, wearing time, which exhausted the springs of life faster than ordinary living would have done, which aged you in heart and frame before your day, dragged over, and it is gone. You carried heavy weight, indeed, while it lasted. It was but poor running you made, poor work you did, with that feeble, anxious, disappointed, miserable heart. And you would many a time have been thankful to creep into a quiet grave. Perhaps that season did you good. Perhaps it was the discipline you needed. Perhaps it took out your self-conceit, and made you humble. Perhaps it disposed you to feel for the griefs and cares of others, and made you sympathetic. Perhaps, looking back now, you can discern the end it served. And now that it has done its work, and that it only stings you when you look back, let that time be quite forgotten!

* * * * *

There are men, and very clever men, who do the work of life at a disadvantage, through this, that their mind is a machine fitted for doing well only one kind of work,—or that their mind is a machine which, though doing many things well, does some one thing, perhaps a conspicuous thing, very poorly. You find it hard to give a man credit for being possessed of sense and talent, if you hear him make a speech at a public dinner, which speech approaches the idiotic for its silliness and confusion. And the vulgar mind readily concludes that he who does one thing extremely ill can do nothing well, and that he who is ignorant on one point is ignorant on all. A friend of mine, a country parson, on first going to his parish, resolved to farm his glebe for himself. A neighboring farmer kindly offered the parson to plough one of his fields. The farmer said that he would send his man John with a plough and a pair of horses, on a certain day. "If ye're goin' about," said the farmer to the clergyman, "John will be unco' weel pleased, if you speak to him, and say it's a fine day, or the like o' that; but dinna," said the farmer, with much solemnity, "dinna say onything to him aboot ploughin' and sawin'; for John," he added, "is a stupid body, but he has been ploughin' and sawin' all his life, and he'll see in a minute that ye ken naething aboot ploughin' and sawin'. And then," said the sagacious old farmer, with extreme earnestness, "if he comes to think that ye ken naething aboot ploughin' and sawin', he'll think that ye ken naething aboot onything!" Yes, it is natural to us all to think, that, if the machine breaks down at that work in which we are competent to test it, then the machine cannot do any work at all.

If you have a strong current of water, you may turn it into any channel you please, and make it do any work you please. With equal energy and success it will flow north or south; it will turn a corn-mill, or a threshing-machine, or a grindstone. Many people live under a vague impression that the human mind is like that. They think,—Here is so much ability, so much energy, which may be turned in any direction, and made to do any work; and they are surprised to find that the power, available and great for one kind of work, is worth nothing for another. A man very clever at one thing is positively weak and stupid at another thing. A very good judge may be a wretchedly bad joker; and he must go through his career at this disadvantage, that people, finding him silly at the thing they are able to estimate, find it hard to believe that he is not silly at everything. I know, for myself, that it would not be right that the Premier should request me to look out for a suitable Chancellor. I am not competent to appreciate the depth of a man's knowledge of equity; by which I do not mean justice, but chancery law. But, though quite unable to understand how great a Chancellor Lord Eldon was, I am quite able to estimate how great a poet he was, also how great a wit. Here is a poem by that eminent person. Doubtless he regarded it as a wonder of happy versification, as well as instinct with the most convulsing fun. It is intended to set out in a metrical form the career of a certain judge, who went up as a poor lad from Scotland to England, but did well at the bar, and ultimately found his place upon the bench. Here is Lord Chancellor Eldon's humorous poem:—

  "James Allan Parke
  Came naked stark
    From Scotland:
  But he got clothes,
  Like other beaux,
    In England!"

Now the fact that Lord Eldon wrote that poem, and valued it highly, would lead some folk to suppose that Lord Eldon was next door to an idiot. And a good many other things which that Chancellor did, such as his quotations from Scripture in the House of Commons, and his attempts to convince that assemblage (when Attorney-General) that Napoleon I. was the Apocalyptic Beast or the Little Horn, certainly point towards the same conclusion. But the conclusion, as a general one, would be wrong. No doubt, Lord Eldon was a wise and sagacious man as judge and statesman, though as wit and poet he was almost an idiot. So with other great men. It is easy to remember occasions on which great men have done very foolish things. There never was a truer hero nor a greater commander than Lord Nelson; but in some things he was merely an awkward, overgrown midshipman. But then, let us remember that a locomotive engine, though excellent at running, would be a poor hand at flying. That is not its vocation. The engine will draw fifteen heavy carriages fifty miles in an hour; and that remains as a noble feat, even though it be ascertained that the engine could not jump over a brook which would be cleared easily by the veriest screw. We all see this.

But many of us have a confused idea that a great and clever man is (so to speak) a locomotive that can fly; and when it is proved that he cannot fly, then we begin to doubt whether he can even run. We think he should be good at everything, whether in his own line or not. And he is set at a disadvantage, particularly in the judgment of vulgar and stupid people, when it is clearly ascertained that at some things he is very inferior. I have heard of a very eminent preacher who sunk considerably (even as regards his preaching) in the estimation of a certain family, because it appeared that he played very badly at bowls. And we all know that occasionally the Premier already mentioned reverses the vulgar error, and in appointing men to great places is guided by an axiom which amounts to just this: this locomotive can run well, therefore it will fly well. This man has filled a certain position well, therefore let us appoint him to a position entirely different; no doubt, he will do well there too. Here is a clergyman who has edited certain Greek plays admirably; let us make him a bishop.

It may be remarked here, that the men who have attained the greatest success in the race of life have generally carried weight. Nitor in adversum might be the motto of many a man besides Burke. It seems to be almost a general rule, that the raw material out of which the finest fabrics are made should look very little like these, to start with. It was a stammerer, of uncommanding mien, who became the greatest orator of graceful Greece. I believe it is admitted that Chalmers was the most effective preacher, perhaps the most telling speaker, that Britain has seen for at least a century; yet his aspect was not commanding, his gestures were awkward, his voice was bad, and his accent frightful. He talked of an oppning when be meant an opening, and he read out the text of one of his noblest sermons, "He that is fulthy, let him be fulthy stall." Yet who ever thought of these things after hearing the good man for ten minutes? Ay, load Eclipse with what extra pounds you might, Eclipse would always be first! And, to descend to the race-horse, he had four white legs, white to the knees; and he ran more awkwardly than racer ever did, with his head between his forelegs, close to the ground, like a pig. Alexander, Napoleon, and Wellington were all little men, in places where a commanding presence would have been of no small value. A most disagreeably affected manner has not prevented a barrister with no special advantages from rising with general approval to the highest places which a barrister can fill. A hideous little wretch has appeared for trial in a criminal court, having succeeded in marrying seven wives at once. A painful hesitation has not hindered a certain eminent person from being one of the principal speakers in the British Parliament for many years. Yes, even disadvantages never overcome have not sufficed to hold in obscurity men who were at once able and fortunate. But sometimes the disadvantage was thoroughly overcome. Sometimes it served no other end than to draw to one point the attention and the efforts of a determined will; and that matter in regard to which Nature seemed to have said that a man should fall short became the thing in which he attained unrivalled perfection.

A heavy drag-weight upon the powers of some men is the uncertainty of their powers. The man has not his powers at command. His mind is a capricious thing, that works when it pleases, and will not work except when it pleases. I am not thinking now of what to many is a sad disadvantage: that nervous trepidation which cannot be reasoned away, and which often deprives them of the full use of their mental abilities just when they are most needed. It is a vast thing in a man's favor, that whatever he can do he should be able to do at any time, and to do at once. For want of coolness of mind, and that readiness which generally goes with it, many a man cannot do himself justice; and in a deliberative assembly he may be entirely beaten by some flippant person who has all his money (so to speak) in his pocket, while the other must send to the bank for his. How many people can think next day, or even a few minutes after, of the precise thing they ought to have said, but which would not come at the time! But very frequently the thing is of no value, unless it come at the time when it is wanted. Coming next day, it is like the offer of a thick fur great-coat on a sweltering day in July. You look at the wrap, and say, "Oh, if I could but have had you on the December night when I went to London by the limited mail, and was nearly starved to death!" But it seems as if the mind must be, to a certain extent, capricious in its action. Caprice, or what looks like it, appears of necessity to go with complicated machinery, even material. The more complicated a machine is, the liker it grows to mind, in the matter of uncertainty and apparent caprice of action. The simplest machine—say a pipe for conveying water—will always act in precisely the same way. And two such pipes, if of the same dimensions, and subjected to the same pressure, will always convey the self-same quantities. But go to more advanced machines. Take two clocks or two locomotive engines, and though these are made in all respects exactly alike, they will act (I can answer at least for the locomotive engines) quite differently. One locomotive will swallow a vast quantity of water at once; another must be fed by driblets; no one can say why. One engine is a fac-simile of the other; yet each has its character and its peculiarities as truly as a man has. You need to know your engine's temper before driving it, just as much as you need to know that of your horse, or that of your friend. I know, of course, there is a mechanical reason for this seeming caprice, if you could trace the reason. But not one man in a thousand could trace out the reason. And the phenomenon, as it presses itself upon us, really amounts to this: that very complicated machinery appears to have a will of its own,—appears to exercise something of the nature of choice. But there is no machine so capricious as the human mind. The great poet who wrote those beautiful verses could not do that every day. A good deal more of what he writes is poor enough; and many days he could not write at all. By long habit the mind may be made capable of being put in harness daily for the humbler task of producing prose; but you cannot say, when you harness it in the morning, how far or at what rate it will run that day.

Go and see a great organ of which you have been told. Touch it, and you hear the noble tones at once. The organ can produce them at any time. But go and see a great man; touch him,—that is, get him to begin to talk. You will be much disappointed, if you expect, certainly, to hear anything like his book or his poem. A great man is not a man who is always saying great things, or who is always able to say great things. He is a man who on a few occasions has said great things; who on the coming of a sufficient occasion may possibly say great things again; but the staple of his talk is commonplace enough. Here is a point of difference from machinery, with all machinery's apparent caprice. You could not say, as you pointed to a steam-engine, "The usual power of that engine is two hundred horses; but once or twice it has surprised us all by working up to two thousand." No; the engine is always of nearly the power of two thousand horses, if it ever is. But what we have been supposing as to the engine is just what many men have done. Poe wrote "The Raven"; he was working then up to two thousand horse power. But he wrote abundance of poor stuff, working at about twenty-five. Read straight through the volumes of Wordsworth, and I think you will find traces of the engine having worked at many different powers, varying from twenty-five horses or less up two thousand or more. Go and hear a really great preacher, when he is preaching in his own church upon a common Sunday, and possibly you may hear a very ordinary sermon. I have heard Mr. Melvill preach very poorly. You must not expect to find people always at their best. It is a very unusual thing that even the ablest men should be like Burke, who could not talk with an intelligent stranger for five minutes without convincing the stranger that he had talked for five minutes with a great man. And it is an awful thing, when some clever youth is introduced to some local poet who has been told how greatly the clever youth admires him, and what vast expectations the clever youth has formed of his conversation, and when the local celebrity makes a desperate effort to talk up to the expectations formed of him. I have witnessed such a scene; and I can sincerely say that I could not previously have believed that the local celebrity could have made such a fool of himself. He was resolved to show that he deserved his fame, and to show that the mind which had produced those lovely verses in the country newspaper could not stoop to commonplace things.

* * * * *

Undue sensitiveness, and a too lowly estimate of their own powers, hang heavily upon some men,—probably upon more men than one would imagine. I believe that many a man whom you would take to be ambitious, pushing, and self-complacent, is ever pressed with a sad conviction of inferiority, and wishes nothing more than quietly to slip through life. It would please and satisfy him, if he could but be assured that he is just like other people. You may remember a touch of nature (that is, of some people's nature) in Burns; you remember the simple exultation of the peasant mother, when her daughter gets a sweetheart: she is "well pleased to see her bairn respeckit like the lave," that is, like the other girls round. And undue humility, perhaps even befitting humility, holds back sadly in the race of life. It is recorded that a weaver in a certain village in Scotland was wont daily to offer a singular petition; he prayed daily and fervently for a better opinion of himself. Yes, a firm conviction of one's own importance is a great help in life. It gives dignity of bearing; it does (so to speak) lift the horse over many a fence at which one with a less confident heart would have broken down. But the man who estimates himself and his place humbly and justly will be ready to shrink aside, and let men of greater impudence and not greater desert step before him. I have often seen, with a sad heart, in the case of working people that manner, difficult to describe, which comes of being what we in Scotland sometimes call sair hadden down. I have seen the like in educated people, too. And not very many will take the trouble to seek out and to draw out the modest merit that keeps itself in the shade. The energetic, successful people of this world are too busy in pushing each for himself to have time to do that. You will find that people with abundant confidence, people who assume a good deal, are not unfrequently taken at their own estimate of themselves. I have seen a Queen's Counsel walk into court, after the case in which he was engaged had been conducted so far by his junior, and conducted as well as mortal could conduct it. But it was easy to see that the complacent air of superior strength with which the Queen's Counsel took the management out of his junior's hands conveyed to the jury, (a common jury,) the belief that things were now to be managed in quite different and vastly better style. And have you not known such a thing as that a family, not a whit better, wealthier, or more respectable than all the rest in the little country town or the country parish, do yet, by carrying their heads higher, (no mortal could say why,) gradually elbow themselves into a place of admitted social superiority? Everybody knows exactly what they are, and from what they have sprung; but somehow, by resolute assumption, by a quiet air of being better than their neighbors, they draw ahead of them, and attain the glorious advantage of one step higher on the delicately graduated social ladder of the district. Now it is manifest, that, if such people had sense to see their true position, and the absurdity of their pretensions, they would assuredly not have gained that advantage, whatever it may be worth.

But sense and feeling are sometimes burdens in the race of life; that is, they sometimes hold a man back from grasping material advantages which he might have grasped, had he not been prevented by the possession of a certain measure of common sense and right feeling. I doubt not, my friend, that you have acquaintances who can do things which you could not do for your life, and who by doing these things push their way in life. They ask for what they want, and never let a chance go by them. And though they may meet many rebuffs, they sometimes make a successful venture. Impudence sometimes attains to a pitch of sublimity; and at that point it has produced a very great impression upon many men. The incapable person who started for a professorship has sometimes got it. The man who, amid the derision of the county, published his address to the electors, has occasionally got into the House of Commons. The vulgar half-educated preacher, who without any introduction asked a patron for a vacant living in the Church, has now and then got the living. And however unfit you may be for a place, and however discreditable may have been the means by which you got it, once you have actually held it for two or three years people come to acquiesce in your holding it. They accept the fact that you are there, just as we accept the fact that any other evil exists in this world, without asking why, except on very special occasions. I believe, too, that, in the matter of worldly preferment, there is too much fatalism in many good men. They have a vague trust that Providence will do more than it has promised. They are ready to think, that, if it is God's will that they are to gain such a prize, it will be sure to come their way without their pushing. That is a mistake. Suppose you apply the same reasoning to your dinner. Suppose you sit still in your study and say, "If I am to have dinner to-day, it will come without effort of mine; and if I am not to have dinner to-day, it will not come by any effort of mine; so here I sit still and do nothing." Is not that absurd? Yet that is what many a wise and good man practically says about the place in life which would suit him, and which would make him happy. Not Turks and Hindoos alone have a tendency to believe in their Kismet. It is human to believe in that. And we grasp at every event that seems to favor the belief. The other evening, in the twilight, I passed two respectable-looking women who seemed like domestic servants; and I caught one sentence which one said to the other with great apparent faith. "You see," she said, "if a thing's to come your way, it'll no gang by ye!" It was in a crowded street; but if it had been in my country parish, where everyone knew me, I should certainly have stopped the women, and told them, that, though what they said was quite true, I feared they were understanding it wrongly, and that the firm belief we all hold in God's Providence which reaches to all events, and in His sovereignty which orders all things, should be used to help us to be resigned, after we have done our best and failed, but should never be used as an excuse for not doing our best. When we have set our mind on any honest end, let us seek to compass it by every honest means; and if we fail after having used every honest means, then let us fall back on the comfortable belief that things are ordered by the Wisest and Kindest; then is the time for the Fiat Voluntas Tua.

You would not wish, my friend, to be deprived of common sense and of delicate feeling, even though you could be quite sure that once that drag-weight was taken off, you would spring forward to the van, and make such running in the race of life as you never made before. Still, you cannot help looking with a certain interest upon those people who, by the want of these hindering influences, are enabled to do things and say things which you never could. I have sometimes looked with no small curiosity upon the kind of man who will come uninvited, and without warning of his approach, to stay at another man's house: who will stay on, quite comfortable and unmoved, though seeing plainly he is not wanted: who will announce, on arriving, that his visit is to be for three days, and who will then, without farther remark, and without invitation of any kind, remain for a month or six weeks: and all the while sit down to dinner every day with a perfectly easy and unembarrassed manner. You and I, my reader, would rather live on much less than sixpence a day than do all this. We could not do it. But some people not merely can do it, but can do it without any appearance of effort. Oh, if the people who are victimized by these horse-leeches of society could but gain a little of the thickness of skin which characterizes the horse-leeches, and bid them be off, and not return again till they are invited! To the same pachydermatous class belong those individuals who will put all sorts of questions as to the private affairs of other people, but carefully shy off from any similar confidence as to their own affairs: also those individuals who borrow small sums of money and never repay them, but go on borrowing till the small sums amount to a good deal. To the same class may be referred the persona who lay themselves out for saying disagreeable things, the "candid friends" of Canning, the "people who speak their mind," who form such pests of society. To find fault is to right-feeling men a very painful thing; but some take to the work with avidity and delight. And while people of cultivation shrink, with a delicate intuition, from saying any thing which may give pain or cause uneasiness to others, there are others who are ever painfully treading upon the moral corns of all around them. Sometimes this is done designedly: as by Mr. Snarling, who by long practice has attained the power of hinting and insinuating, in the course of a forenoon call, as many unpleasant things as may germinate into a crop of ill-tempers and worries which shall make the house at which he called uncomfortable all that day. Sometimes it is done unawares, as by Mr. Boor, who, through pure ignorance and coarseness, is always bellowing out things which it is disagreeable to some one, or to several, to hear. Which was it, I wonder, Boor or Snarling, who once reached the dignity of the mitre, and who at prayers in his house uttered this supplication on behalf of a lady visitor who was kneeling beside him: "Bless our friend, Mrs. ——: give her a little more common sense; and teach her to dress a little less like a tragedy queen than she does at present"?

* * * * *

But who shall reckon up the countless circumstances which lie like a depressing burden on the energies of men, and make them work at that disadvantage which we have thought of under the figure of carrying weight in life? There are men who carry weight in a damp, marshy neighborhood, who, amid bracing mountain air might have done things which now they will never do. There are men who carry weight in an uncomfortable house: in smoky chimneys: in a study with a dismal look-out: in distance from a railway-station: in ten miles between them and a bookseller's shop. Give another hundred a year of income, and the poor struggling parson who preaches dull sermons will astonish you by the talent he will exhibit when his mind is freed from the dismal depressing influence of ceaseless scheming to keep the wolf from the door. Let the poor little sick child grow strong and well, and with how much better heart will its father face the work of life! Let the clergyman who preached, in a spiritless enough way, to a handful of uneducated rustics, be placed in a charge where weekly he has to address a large cultivated congregation, and, with the new stimulus, latent powers may manifest themselves which no one fancied he possessed, and he may prove quite an eloquent and attractive preacher. A dull, quiet man, whom you esteemed as a blockhead, may suddenly be valued very differently when circumstances unexpectedly call out the solid qualities he possesses, unsuspected before. A man devoid of brilliancy may on occasion show that he possesses great good sense, or that he has the power of sticking to his task in spite of discouragement. Let a man be placed where dogged perseverance will stand him in stead, and you may see what he can do when he has but a chance. The especial weight which has held some men back, the thing which kept them from doing great things and attaining great fame, has been just this: that they were not able to say or to write what they have thought and felt. And, indeed, a great poet is nothing more than the one man in a million who has the gift to express that which has been in the mind and heart of multitudes. If even the most commonplace of human beings could write all the poetry he has felt, he would produce something that would go straight to the hearts of many.

It is touching to witness the indications and vestiges of sweet and admirable things which have been subjected to a weight which has entirely crushed them down,—things which would have come out into beauty and excellence, if they had been allowed a chance. You may witness one of the saddest of all the losses of Nature in various old maids. What kind hearts are there running to waste! What pure and gentle affections blossom to be blighted! I dare say you have heard a young lady of more than forty sing, and you have seen her eyes fill with tears at the pathos of a very commonplace verse. Have you not thought that there was the indication of a tender heart which might have made some good man happy, and, in doing so, made herself happy, too? But it was not to be. Still, it is sad to think that sometimes upon cats and dogs there should be wasted the affection of a kindly human being! And you know, too, how often the fairest promise of human excellence is never suffered to come to fruit. You must look upon gravestones to find the names of those who promised to be the best and noblest specimens of the race. They died in early youth,—perhaps in early childhood. Their pleasant faces, their singular words and ways, remain, not often talked of, in the memories of subdued parents, or of brothers and sisters now grown old, but never forgetting how that one of the family, that was as the flower of the flock, was the first to fade. It has been a proverbial saying, you know, even from heathen ages, that those whom the gods love die young. It is but an inferior order of human beings that makes the living succession to carry on the human race.

* * * * *

WHY HAS THE NORTH FELT AGGRIEVED WITH ENGLAND?

We have chosen a guarded and passionless wording for a topic on which we wish to offer a few frankly spoken, but equally passionless remarks. With the bitterness and venom and exaggeration of statement which both English and American papers have interchanged in reference to matters of opinion and matters of feeling connected with our national troubles we do not now intermeddle. We would not imitate it: we regret it, and on our own side we are ashamed of it. We have read editorials and communications in our own papers so grossly vituperative and stinging in the rancor of their spirit, that it would not have surprised us, if some Englishmen, of a certain class, had organized a hostile association against us in revenge for our truculent defiance. The real spirit of bullyism, of the cockpit and the pugilistic ring, has been exhibited in this interchange of newspaper opinion. The more is the reason why we should not overlook or be blind to the real grievances in the case, nor fail to give expression to them in the strongest way of which their emphatic, but unembittered, statement will admit. Whether the London "Times" is or is not an authoritative vehicle for the utterance of average English opinion, and an index, in its general tone, of the prevailing sentiment of that people, is a question which, so far from wishing to decide, we must decline to entertain, as mainly irrelevant to our present purpose. As a matter of fact, however, if we did accept that print as an authority and a standard in English opinion, we should throw more of temper than we hope to prevent escaping through our words into the remarks which are to follow. That paper evidently represents the opinion of one class, perhaps of more than one class of Englishmen. An intelligent American reader of its comments on our affairs can always read it, as even the best-informed Englishman cannot, with the skill and ability to discern its spirit, often covertly mean, and to detect its misrepresentations, some of the grossest of which are made the basis of its arguments and inferences. From the very opening of our strife to the last issue of that print which has crossed the water, its comments and records relating to our affairs have presented a most ingenious and mischievous combination of everything false, ill-tempered, malignant, and irritating. It is at present exercising itself upon the financial arrangements of our Government, and uttering prophecies, falsified before they have come to our knowledge, about the inability or the unwillingness of our loyal people to furnish the necessary money.

But enough of the London "Times." We have in view matters not identified with the spirit and comments of a single newspaper, however influential. We have in view graver and more comprehensive facts,—facts, too, more significant of feelings and opinion. Stating our point in general terms, which we shall reduce to some particulars before we close, we affirm frankly and emphatically, that the North, we might even say this Nation, as a government standing in solemn treaty relations with Great Britain, has just cause of complaint and offence at the prevailing tone and spirit of the English people, and press, and mercantile classes, towards us, in view of the rebellion which is convulsing our land. That tone and spirit have not been characterized by justice, magnanimity, or true sympathy with a noble and imperilled cause; they have not been in keeping with the professions and avowed principles of that people; they have not been consistent with the former intimations of English opinion towards us, as regards our position and our duty; and they have sadly disappointed the hopes on whose cheering support we had relied when the dark hours which English influence had helped to prepare for us should come.

Before we proceed to our specifications, let us meet the suggestion often thrown out, that we have been unduly and morbidly sensitive to English opinion in this matter; and let us gratefully allow for the exceptions that may require to be recognized in the application of our charges against the English people or press as a whole. It has been said that we have shown a timid and almost craven sensitiveness to the opinions pronounced abroad upon our national struggle, especially those pronounced by our own kinsfolk of England. It is urged, that a strong and prosperous and united people, if conscious of only a rightful cause, and professing the ability to maintain it, should be self-reliant, independent of foreign judgment, and ready to trust to time and the sure candor and fulness of the expositions which it brings with it, to set us right before the eyes of the world. But what if another nation, supposed to be friendly, known even to have recommended and urged upon us the very cause for which we are contending, represents it in such a contumelious and disheartening way as to show us that we have not even her sympathy? Further, what if there is a spirit and a tone of treatment towards us which suggests the possibility that at some critical moment she may interfere in a way that will embarrass us and encourage our enemies? The sensitiveness of a people to the possible power of mischief that may lie against them in the hands of a jealous neighbor, ready to be used at the will or caprice of its possessor, may indicate timidity or weakness. But Great Britain, knowing very well what the feeling is, ought to understand that it may consist with real strength, courage, and right purposes. It is notorious now to all the civilized world, as a fact often ludicrously and sometimes lugubriously set forth, that millions of sturdy English folk have lived for many years, and live at this hour, in a state of quaking trepidation as to the designs of a single man of "ideas" across their Channel. What bulletin have the English people ever read from day to day with such an intermittent pulse as that with which they peruse quotations from the "Moniteur"? The English people, whatever might have been true of them once, are now the last people in the world—matched and overawed as they are by the French—to charge upon another people a timid sensitiveness for even the slightest intimations of foreign feeling and possible intentions.

We must allow also for exceptions to the sweep of the specific charges under which we shall express our grievances at the general course of English treatment towards us. There have been messages in many private letters from Englishmen and Englishwomen of high public and of dignified private station, there have been editorials and communications in a few English papers, there have been brief utterances in Parliament, and from leading speakers at political, mercantile, literary, and religious assemblies, which have shown a full appreciation of the import of our present strife, and have conveyed to us in words of most precious and grateful encouragement the assurance that many hearts are beating with ours across the sea. That the truculence and venom of some of our own papers may have repressed the feeling and the utterance of this same sympathy in many individuals and ways where it might otherwise have manifested itself is not unnatural, and is very probable. We acknowledge most gratefully the cheer and the inspiration which have come to us from every word, wish, and act from abroad that has recognized the stake of our conflict; and we will take for granted the real existence and the glowing heartiness of much of the same which has not been expressed, or has not reached us. Farther even than this we will go in tempering or qualifying the utterance of our grievances. We will take for granted that very much of the coldness, or antipathy, or contemptuousness, or misrepresentation which we have recognized in the general treatment of us and our cause by Englishmen is to be accounted to actual ignorance or a very partial understanding of our real circumstances and of the conditions of the conflict, and of the relations of parties to it. De Tocqueville is universally regarded among us as the only foreigner who ever divined the theoretical and the practical method of our institutions. Englishmen, English statesmen even, have never penetrated to the mystery of them. Many intelligent British travellers have seemed to wish to do so, and to have tried to do so. But the study bothers them, the secret baffles them. They give it up with a gruff impatience which writes on their features the sentence, "You have no right to have such complicated and unintelligible arrangements in your governments, State and Federal: they are quite un-English." Our foreign kinsfolk seem unwilling to realize the extent of our domain, and the size of some of our States as compared with their own island, and incapable of understanding how different institutions, forms, limitations, and governmental arrangements may exist in the several States, independently of, or in subordination to, the province and administration of the Federal Government. Nearly every English journal which undertakes to refer to our affairs will make ludicrous or serious blunders, if venturing to enter into details. The "Edinburgh Review" kindly volunteered to be the champion of American institutions and products in opposition to the extreme Toryism of the "Quarterly." Sydney Smith took us, our authors and early enterprises, under his special patronage, and he wrote many favorable articles of that character. One would have supposed, that, in the necessary preparation for such labors, he would have acquired some geographical, statistical, and other rudimentary knowledge about us, enough to have kept him from gross blunders. Unluckily, for him and for us, for the sake of getting here on his money double the interest which he could get at home, and not considering that the greater the promised profit the greater the risk, he made investments in some of our stock companies and bonds. When these investments proved disastrous, he raved and fumed, calling upon our Government—which had nothing more to do with the matter than had the English Parliament—to make good his losses.

We are tempted for a moment to drop the graver thread of our theme to relate an anecdote in illustration of our present point. It happened a few years ago that we had as a household guest for two or three weeks an English gentleman, well-informed, courteous, and excellent, who had been for several years the editor of a London paper. On the day after his domestication with us, which was within the first week of his arrival at New York, sitting where we are now writing, after breakfast, he announced that "he had a commission to execute for a friend, with a person residing in Springfield." Opening his note-book, he handed us a slip of paper bearing the gentleman's name and address, "Springfield, Ohio." Furnishing him with writing-materials, we were about turning to our own occupation, when, suddenly, with a quick exclamation, as if recalling something, he said, "Sure, I have been in Springfield. I remember a short, a very short time was allowed for dinner, as I came from New York." We explained, or tried to explain to him, that the Springfield through which he had passed and the Springfield to which he was writing were in different States widely separated, and that there were also several other "Springfields." To this he demurred, protesting that it made matters quite confusing to foreigners to have the same names repeated in different parts of the Country. In vain did we suggest that all confusion was avoided by adding the abbreviated name of the State. No! "It was very confusing." Suddenly, a thought occurred to us, and, refreshing our memory by a glance at the Index of our English "Road-Book," we suggested triumphantly that names were repeated for different localities in England: thus, there are four Ashfords, two Dorchesters, six Hortons, seven Newports, etc., etc. Our guest, with an air and vehemence that quite outvied our triumph, exclaimed,—"Oh! but they are in different shi_rrr_hes, in different shi_rrr_hes!" Sure enough, one of his own shires is a larger thing to an Englishman than one of our States. He lives on an island which is to him larger than all the rest of the world, though any one starting from the centre of it, on a fast horse, unless he crossed the border into Scotland, could scarcely ride in any direction twenty-four hours without getting overboard.

To the actual ignorance or obfuscation of mind of the majority of the English people, as regards our country and its institutions, we are doubtless to refer much of the ill-toned and seemingly unfriendly comments made upon our affairs in their organs. Thus, it is intimated to us by many English writers, that they regard the North now as simply undertaking to patch up a Union founded and sustained by mean compromises, an object which has already led us into many humiliating concessions,—and that the moment we announce that we are striking a blow for Liberty, we shall have their sympathy without stint or measure. No Englishman who really understood our affairs would talk in that way. One of the chief lures which instigated and encouraged the Southern rebellion was the assurance, adroitly insinuated by the leading traitors into their duped followers, that opposition by the rest of the country to their schemes would take the form of an anti-slavery crusade, in which form the opposition would be put down by the combined force of those who did not belong to the Republican party. They were deceived. Opposition to them took the form of a rallying by all parties to the defence of the Constitution, the maintenance of the Union. For any anti-slavery zeal to have attempted to divert the aroused patriotism of the land to a breach of one of its fundamental constitutional provisions would have been treacherous and futile. The majority of our enlisted patriotic soldiers would have laid down their arms. If the leadings of Providence shall direct the thickening strife into an exterminating crusade against slavery, doubtless our patriots will wait on Providence. But we could not have started in our stern work avowing that as an object of our own. And as to the meanness of our concessions and compromises for Union, we have to consider what woes and wrongs that Union has averted. Has England no discreditable passages in her own Parliamentary history? Have her attempts at governing large masses of men, Christian and heathen, Roman Catholic and Protestant, and of all sects, privileged and oppressed, never led her into any truckling or tyrannical legislation, any concessions or compromises of ideal or abstract right?

But we must come to our specifications, introducing them with but a single other needful suggestion. We have not to complain of any acts or formal measures of the English Government against us,—nor even of the omission of any possible public manifestation which might have turned to our encouragement or service. But it will be admitted that we have grievances to complain of, if the tone and the strain of English opinion and sentiment have been such as to inspirit the South and to dispirit the North. If English comments have palliated or justified the original and the incidental measures of the Rebellion,—if they have been zealous to find or to exaggerate excuses for it, to overstate the apparent or professed grounds of it, to wink at the meannesses and outrages by which it has thriven,—if they have perverted or misrepresented the real issue, have ridiculed or discouraged the purposes of its patriotic opponents, have embarrassed or impeded their hopes of success, or have prejudged or foreclosed the probable result,—it will be admitted, we say, that we have grievances against those who have so dealt by us in the hour of our dismay and trial. And it is an enormous aggravation of the disappointment or the wrong which we are bearing, that it is visited upon us by England just as we have initiated measures for at least restraining and abating the dominant power of that evil institution for our complicity in the support of which she has long been our unsparing censor. We complain generally of the unsympathizing and contemptuous tone of England towards us,—of the mercurial standard by which she judges our strife,—of the scarcely qualified delight with which she parades our occasional ill-successes and discomfitures,—of the baste which she has made to find tokens of a rising despotism or a military dictatorship in those measures of our Government which are needful and consistent with the exigencies of a state of warfare, such as the suspension, on occasions, of the habeas corpus, the suppression of disloyal publications, the employment of spies, and the requisition of passports,—and finally, of the contemptible service to which England has tried to put our last tariff, and of her evident unwillingness to have us find or furnish the finances of our war. Not to deal, however, with generalities, we proceed to make three distinct points of an argument that crowds us with materials.

Foremost among the grievances which we at the North may allege against our brethren across the water—foremost, both in time and in the harmful influence of its working—we may specify this fact, that the English press, with scarce an exception, made haste, in the very earliest stages of the Southern Rebellion, to judge and announce the hopeless partition of our Union, as an event accomplished and irrevocable. The way in which this judgment was reached and pronounced, the time and circumstances of its utterance, and the foregone conclusions which were drawn from it, gave to it a threatening and mischievous agency, only less prejudicial to our cause, we verily believe, than would have been an open alliance between England and the enemies of the Republic. This haste to announce the positive and accomplished dissolution of our National Union was forced most painfully upon our notice in the darkest days of our opening strife. Those who undertook to guide and instruct English opinion in the matter had easy means of informing themselves about the strangely fortuitous and deplorable, though most opportune and favoring combination of circumstances under which "Secession" was initiated and strengthened. They knew that the Administration, then in its last days of power, was half-covertly, half-avowedly in sympathy and in active cooperation with the cause of rebellion. The famous "Ostend Conference" had had its doings and designs so thoroughly aired in the columns of the English press, that we cannot suppose either the editors or the readers ignorant of the spirit or intentions of those who controlled the policy of that Administration. Early information likewise crossed the water to them of the discreditable and infamous doings and plottings of members of the Cabinet, evidently in league with the fomenting treachery. They knew that the head of the Navy Department had either scattered our ships of war to the ends of the earth, or had moored them in helpless disability at our dockyards,—that the head of the War Department had been plundering the arsenals of loyal States to furnish weapons for intended rebellion,—that the head of the Treasury Department was purloining its funds,—and that the President himself, while allowing national forts to be environed by hostile batteries, had formally announced that both Secession itself and all attempts to resist it were alike unconstitutional,—the effect of which grave opinion was to let Secession have its way till Coercion would seem to be not only unconstitutional, but unavailing. Our English kinsfolk also knew that our prominent diplomatic agents abroad, representing solemn treaty relations with them of this nation as a unit, under sacred oaths of loyalty to it, and living on generous grants from its Treasury, were also in more or less of active sympathy with traitorous schemes. So far, it must be owned, there was little in the promise of whatever might grow from these combined enormities to engage the confidence or the good wishes of true-hearted persons on either side of the water.

But whatever power of mischief lay in this marvellous combination of evil forces, so malignly working together, the Administration in which they found their life and whose agencies they employed was soon to yield up its fearfully desecrated trust. A new order of things, representing at least the spirit and purpose of that philanthropy and public righteousness to which our English brethren had for years been prompting us, was to come in with a new Administration, already constitutionally recognized, but not as yet put into power. It was asking but little of intelligent foreigners of our own blood and language, that they should make due allowance for that recurring period in the terms of our Government—as easily turned to mischievous influences as is an interregnum in a monarchy—by which there is a lapse of four months between the election and the inauguration of our Chief Magistrate. A retiring functionary may work and plan and provide an immense amount of disabling, annoying, and damaging experience to be encountered by his successor. That successor may at a distance, or close at hand, be an observer of all this influence; but whether it be simply of a partisan or of a malignant character, he is powerless to resist it, and good taste and the proprieties of his position seem to suggest that he make no public recognition of it. Every Chief Magistrate of this Republic, before its present head, acceded to office with its powers and dignities and facilities and trusts unimpaired by his predecessor. We have thought that among the thorns of the pillow on which a certain "old public functionary" lays his head, as he watches the dismal working of elements which he had more power than any other to have dispelled, not the least sharp one must be that which pierces him with the thought of the difference between the position which his predecessors prepared for him and that which he prepared for his successor. Not among the least of the claims which that successor has upon the profound and respectful sympathy of all good men everywhere is the fact that there has been no public utterance of complaining or reproachful words from his lips, reflecting upon his predecessor, or even asking indulgence on the score of the shattered and almost wrecked fabric of which we have put him in charge. We confess that we have looked through the English papers for months for some magnanimous and high-souled tribute of this sort to the Man who thus nobly represents a sacred and imperilled cause. If such tribute has been rendered, it has escaped our notice.

Now, as we are reflecting upon the tone and spirit of the English press at the opening of the Rebellion, we have to recall to the minds of our readers the fact, that in all its early stages, even down to and almost after the proclamation of the President summoning a volunteer force to resist it, we ourselves, at the North, utterly refused to consider the Seceders as in earnest. We may have been stupid, besotted, infatuated even, in our blindness and incredulity. But none the less did we, that is, the great majority of us, regard all the threats and measures of the South as something less formidable and actual than open war and probable or threatening revolution. We were persuaded that the people of the South had been wrought up by artful and ambitious leaders to wild alarm that the new Administration would visit outrages upon them and try to turn them into a state of vassalage. Utterly unconscious as we were of any purpose to trespass upon or reduce their fullest constitutional rights, we knew how grossly our intentions were misrepresented to them. We applied the same measure to the distance between their threats and the probability that they would carry them out which we knew ought to be applied to the difference between our supposed and our real intentions. In a word,—for this is the simple truth,—we regarded the manifestations of the seceding and rebelling States—or rather of the leaders and their followers in them—as in part bluster and in part a warning of what might ensue, though it would not be likely to ensue when their eyes were open to the truth. We were met by bold defiance, by outrageous abuse, and with an almost overwhelming venting of falsehoods. There was boastfulness, arrogance, assured claims of sufficient strength, and daring prophecies of success, enough to have made any cause triumphant, if triumph comes through such means. Still we were incredulous, perhaps foolishly and culpably so,—but incredulous, and unintimidated, and confident, none the less. We believed that wise, forbearing, and temperate measures of the new Administration would remove all real grievances, dispel all false alarms, and at least leave open the way to bloodless methods of preserving the Union. Part of our infatuation consisted in our seeing so plainly the infatuation of the South, while we did not allow for the lengths of wild and reckless folly into which it might drive them. We could see most plainly that either success in their schemes, or failure through a struggle to accomplish them, would be alike ruinous to them; that no cause standing on the basis and contemplating the objects recognized by them could possibly prosper, so long as the throne of heaven had a sovereign seated upon it. Full as much, then, from our conviction that the South would not insist upon doing itself such harm as from any fear of what might happen to us, did we refuse to regard Secession as a fixed fact. At the period of which we are speaking, there was probably not a single man at the North, of well-furnished and well-balanced mind—who stood clear in heart and pocket of all secret or interested bias toward the South—that deliberately recognized the probability of the dissolution of the Union. Very few such men will, indeed, recognize that possibility now, except as they recognize the possibility of the destruction of an edifice of solid blocks and stately columns by the grinding to powder of each large mass of the fabric, so that no rebuilding could restore it.

This was the state of mind and feeling with which we, who had so much at stake and could watch every pulsation of the excitement, contemplated the aspect of our opening strife. But with the first echo from abroad of its earliest announcements here came the most positive averments in the English papers, with scarcely a single exception, that the knell of this Union had struck. We had fallen asunder, our bond was broken, we had repudiated our former league or fellowship, and henceforth what had been a unit was to be two or more fragments, in peaceful or hostile relations as the case might be, but never again One. It would but revive for us the first really sharp and irritating pangs of this dismal experience, to go over the files of papers for those extracts which were like vinegar to our eyes as we first read them. Their substance is repeated to us in the sheets which come by every steamer. There were, of course, variations of tone and spirit in these evil prognostications and these raven-like croaks. Sometimes there was a vein of pity, and of that kind of sorrow which we feel and of that other kind which we express for other people's troubles. Sometimes there was a start of surprise, an ejaculation of amazement, or even profound dismay, at the calamity which had come upon us. In others of these newspaper comments there was that unmistakable superciliousness, that goading contemptuousness of self-conceit and puffy disdain, which John Bull visits on all "un-English" things, especially when they happen under their unfortunate aspects. In not a few of these same comments there was a tone of exultation, malignant and almost diabolical, as at the discomfiture of a hated and dangerous rival. We have read at least three English newspapers for each week that has passed since our troubles began; we have been readers of these papers for a score of years. In not one of them have we met the sentence or the line which pronounces hopefully, with bold assurance, for the renewed life of our Union. In by far the most of them there is reiterated the most positive and dogged averment that there is no future for us. We are not unmindful of the manliness and stout cheer with which a very few of them have avowed their wish and faith that the Rebels may be utterly discomfited and held up before the world in their shame and friendlessness, and have coupled with these utterances words of warm sympathy and approval for the North. But these ill-wishes for the one party and these good wishes for the other party are independent of anything but utter hopelessness as to the preservation or the restoration of the Union.

Now some may suggest that we make altogether too much of what so far is but the expression of an opinion, and, at worst, of an unfavorable opinion,—an opinion, too, which may yet prove to be correct. But the giving of an opinion on some matters has all the effect of taking a side, and often helps much to decide the stake. On very many accounts, this expression of English opinion, at the time it was uttered and with such emphasis, was most unwarranted and most mischievous. It is very easy to distribute its harmful influence upon our interests and prospects into three very different methods, all of which combined to injure or obstruct the Northern cause,—the National cause. Thus, this opinion of the hopelessness of our resistance of the men of our Union was of great value to the Rebels as an encouragement under any misgivings they might have; it was calculated to prejudice our position in the eyes of the world; and it had a tendency to dispirit many among ourselves. A word upon each of these points.—How quickening must it have been to the flagging hopes or determination of the Rebels to read in the English journals that they were sure of success, that the result was already registered, that they had gained their purpose simply by proposing it! Nor was it possible to regard this opinion as not carrying with it some implication that the cause of the Rebels was a just one, and was sure of success, if for other reasons, for this, too, among them, namely, that it was just. Why else were the Rebels so sure of a triumph? Was it because of their superior strength or resources? A very little inquiry would have set aside that suggestion. Was it because of the nobleness of their cause? A very frank avowal from the Vice-President of the assumed Confederacy announced to liberty-loving Englishmen that that cause was identified with a slavocracy. Or was the Rebel cause to succeed through the dignity and purity of the means enlisted in its service? It was equally well known on both sides of the water by what means and appliances of fraud, perfidy, treachery, and other outrages, the schemes of the Rebellion were initiated and pursued. If, in spite of all these negatives, the English press prophesies success to the Rebels, was not the prophecy a great comfort and spur to them?—Again, this prophecy of our sure discomfiture prejudiced us before the world. It gave a public character and aspect of hopelessness to our cause; it invited coldness of treatment towards us; it seemed to warn off all nations from giving us aid or comfort; and it virtually affirmed that any outlay of means or life by us in a cause seen to be impracticable would be reckless, sanguinary, cruel, and inhuman.—And, once more, to those among ourselves who are influenced by evil prognostications, it was most dispiriting to be told, as if by cool, unprejudiced observers from outside, that no uprising of patriotism, no heroism of sacrifice, no combination of wisdom and power would be of any avail to resist a foreordained catastrophe.—In these three harmful ways of influence, the ill-omened opinion reiterated from abroad had a tendency to fulfil itself. The whole plea of justification offered abroad for the opinion is given in the assertion that those who have once been bitterly alienated can never be brought into true harmony again, and that it is impossible to govern the unwilling as equals. England has but to read the record of her own strifes and battles and infuriated passages with Scotland and Ireland,—between whom and herself alienations of tradition, prejudice, and religion seemed to make harmony as impossible as the promise of it is to these warring States,—England has only to refresh her memory on these points, in order to relieve us of the charge of folly in attempting an impossibility. So much for the first grievance we allege against our English brethren.

Another of our specifications of wrong is involved in that already considered. If English opinion decided that our nationality must henceforth be divided, it seemed also to imply that we ought to divide according to terms dictated by the Seceders. This was a precious judgment to be pronounced against us by a sister Government which was standing in solemn treaty relations with us as a unit in our nationality! What did England suppose had become of our Northern manhood, of the spirit of which she herself once felt the force? There was something alike humiliating and exasperating in this implied advice from her, that we should tamely and unresistingly submit to a division of continent, bays, and rivers, according to terms defiantly and insultingly proposed by those who had a joint ownership with ourselves. How would England receive such advice from us under like circumstances? But we must cut short the utterance of our feelings on this point, that we may make another specification,—

Which is, that our English critics see only, or chiefly, in the fearful and momentous conflict in which we are engaged, "a bursting of the bubble of Democracy"! Shall we challenge now the intelligence or the moral principle, the lack of one or the other of which is betrayed in this sneering and malignant representation—this utter misrepresentation—of the catastrophe which has befallen our nation? Intelligent Englishmen know full well that the issue raised among us does not necessarily touch or involve at a single point the principles of Democracy, but stands wide apart and distinct from them. We might with as much propriety have said that the Irish Rebellion and the Indian Mutiny showed "the bursting of the bubble of Monarchy." The principles of Democracy stand as firm and find our people as loyal to them in every little town-meeting and in every legislature of each loyal State in the Union as they did in the days of our first enthusiastic and successful trial of them. Supposing even that the main assumption on which so many Englishmen have prematurely vented their scorn were a fact; we cannot but ask if the nation nearest akin to us, and professing to be guided in this century by feelings which forbid a rejoicing over others' great griefs, has no words of high moral sympathy, no expressions of regretful disappointment in our calamities? Is it the first or the most emphatic thing which it is most fitting for Christian Englishmen to say over the supposed wreck of a recently noble and promising country, the prospered home of thirty millions of God's children,—that "a bubble has burst"? We might interchange with our foreign "comforters" a discussion by arguments and facts as to whether a monarchy or a democracy has about it more of the qualities of a bubble, but the debate would be irrelevant to our present purpose. We believe that Democracy in its noblest and all-essential and well-proved principles will survive the shock which has struck upon our nation, whatever the result of that shock may yet prove to be. We believe, further, that the principles of Democracy will come out of the struggle which is trying, not themselves, but something quite distinct from them, with a new affirmation and vindication. But let that be as it may, we are as much ashamed for England's sake as we are aggrieved on our own account that from the vehicles of public sentiment in "the foremost realm in the world for all true culture, advanced progress, and the glorious triumphs of liberty and religion," what should be a profoundly plaintive lament over our supposed ruin is, in reality, a mocking taunt and a hateful gibe over our failure in daring to try an "un-English" experiment.[A]

[Footnote A: The following precious utterances of John Bull moralizing, which might have been spoken of the Thugs in India, or some provincial Chinese enterprise, are extracted from the cotton circular of Messrs. Neill, Brothers, addressed to their correspondents, and dated, Manchester, Aug. 21. We find the circular copied in a religious newspaper published in London, without any rebuke. "The North will have to learn the limited extent of her powers as compared with the gigantic task she has undertaken. One and perhaps two defeats will be insufficient to reverse the false education of a lifetime. Many lessons will probably be necessary, and, meantime, any success the Northern troops may obtain will again inflame the national vanity, and the lessons of adversity will need to be learned over again. More effect will probably be produced by sufferings at home, by the ruin of the higher classes and pauperization of the lower, and by the general absorption of the floating capital of the country"! There, good reader, what think you of the cotton moralizing of a comfortable factor, dwelling in immaculate England, dealing with us in cotton, and with the Chinese in opium?]

The stately "Quarterly Review," in its number for July, uses a little more of dignity in wording the title of an article upon our affairs thus,—"Democracy on its Trial"; but it makes up for the waste of refinement upon its text by a lavish indulgence in scurrility and falsehood in its comments. As a specimen, take the following. Living here in this goodly city of Boston, and knowing and loving well its ways and people, we are asked to credit the following story, which the Reviewer says he heard from "a well-known traveller." The substance of the story is, that a Boston merchant proposed to gild the lamp over his street-door, but was dissuaded from so doing by the suggestion of a friend, that by savoring of aristocracy the ornamented gas-burner would offend the tyrannical people and provoke violence against it! This, the latest joke in the solemn Quarterly, has led many of its readers here to recall the days of Madame Trollope and the Reverend Mr. Fiddler, those veracious and "well-known travellers." There are, we are sorry to say, many gilded street-lamps, burnished and blazing every night, in Boston. But instead of standing before the houses of our merchants, they designate quite a different class of edifices. Our merchants, as a general thing, would object, both on the score of good taste and on grounds of disagreeable association with the signal, to raise such an ornament before the doors of their comfortable homes. The common people, however, so far from taking umbrage at the spectacle, would be rather gratified by the generosity of our grandees in being willing to show some of their finery out of doors. This would be the feeling especially of that part of our population which is composed of foreigners, who have been used to the sight of such demonstrations in their native countries, which are not democracies. In fact, we suspect that the reason why English "flunkeys" hate American "flunkeyism," with its laced coachmen, etc., is because mere money, by aping the insignia of rank, its gewgaws and trumpery, shows too plainly how much of the rank itself depends upon the fabrics and demonstrations through which it sets itself forth. We can conceive that an English nobleman travelling in this country, who might chance in one of our cities to see a turn-out with its outriders, tassels, and crests, almost or quite as fine as his own, if he were informed that it belonged to a plebeian who had grown vastly rich through some coarse traffic, might resolve to reduce all the display of his own equipage the moment he reached home. The labored and mean-spirited purpose of the writer of the aforesaid article in the Quarterly, and of other writers of like essays, is to find in our democracy the material and occasion of everything of a discreditable sort which occurs in our land. Now we apprehend, not without some means of observation and inquiry, that the state and features of society in Great Britain and in all our Northern regions are almost identically the same, or run in parallelisms, by which we might match every phenomenon, incident, prejudice, and folly, every good and every bad trait and manifestation in the one place with something exactly like it in the other. During a whole score of years, as we have read the English journals and our own, the thought has over and over again suggested itself to us that any one who had leisure and taste for the task might cut out from each series of papers respectively, for a huge commonplace book, matters of a precisely parallel nature in both countries. A simple difference in the names of men and of places would be all that would appear or exist. Every noble and every mean and every mixed exhibition of character,—every act of munificence and of baseness,—every narrative of thrilling or romantic interest,—every instance and example of popular delusion, humbug, man-worship, breach of trust, domestic infelicity, and of cunning or astounding depravity and hypocrisy,—every religious, social, and political excitement,—every panic,—and every accident even, from carelessness or want of skill,—each and all these have their exact parallels, generally within the same year of time in Great Britain and in our own country. The crimes and the catastrophes, in each locality, have seemed almost repetitions of the same things on either continent. Munificent endowments of charitable institutions, zeal in reformatory enterprises and in the correction of abuses, have shown that the people of both regions stand upon the same plane of humanity and practical Christian culture. The same great frauds have indicated in each the same amount of rottenness in men occupying places of trust. Both regions have had the same sort of unprincipled "railway kings" and bankers, similar railroad disasters, similar cases of the tumbling down of insecure walls, and of wife-poisoning. A Chartist insurrection enlists a volunteer police in London, and an apprehended riot among foreigners is met by a similar precaution in one of our cities. An intermittent controversy goes on in England about the interference of religion with common education, and Boston or New York is agitated at the same time with the question about the use of the Bible in the public schools. Boston rowdies mob an English intermeddler with the ticklish matters of our national policy, and English rowdies mob an Austrian Haynau. England goes into ecstasies over the visit of a Continental Prince, and our Northern States repeat the demonstration over the visit of a British Prince. The Duke of Wellington alarms his fellow-subjects by suggesting that their national defences would all prove insufficient against the assaults of a certain terrible Frenchman, and an American cabinet official echoes the suggestion that England may, perhaps, try her strength in turn against us. There are evidently a great many bubbles in this world, and, for all that we know to the contrary, they are all equally liable to burst. Some famous ones, bright in royal hues, have burst within the century. Some more of the same may, not impossibly, suffer a collapse before the century has closed. So that, for this matter, "the bubble of Democracy" must take its chance with the rest.

We have one more specification to make under our general statement of reasons why the North feels aggrieved with the prevailing tone of sentiment and comment in the English journals in reference to our great calamity. We protest against the verdict which finds expression in all sorts of ways and with various aggravations, that, in attempting to rupture our Union, and to withdraw from it on their own terms, at their own pleasure, the seceding States are but repeating the course of the old Thirteen Colonies in declaring themselves independent, and sundering their ties to the mother country. There is evidently the rankling of an old smart in this plea for rebels, which, while it is not intended to justify rebellion in itself, is devised as a vindication of rebels against rebels. There is manifest satisfaction and a high zest, and something of the morally awful and solemnly remonstrative, in the way in which the past is evoked to visit its ghostly retribution upon us. The old sting rankles in the English breast. She is looking on now to see us hoist by our own petard. These pamphlet pages, with their circumscribed limits and their less ambitious aims, do not invite an elaborate dealing with the facts of the case, which would expose the sophistical, if not the vengeful spirit of this English plea, as for rebels against rebels. A thorough exposition of the relations which the present Insurrection bears to the former Revolution would demand an essay. The relations between them, however, whether stated briefly or at length, would be found to be simply relations of difference, without one single point of resemblance, much less of coincidence. We can make but the briefest reference to the points of contrast and unlikeness between the two things, after asserting that they have no one common feature. It might seem evasive in us to suggest to our English critics that they should refresh their memories about the causes and the justification of our Revolution by reading the pages of their own Burke. We are content to rest our case on his argument, simply affirming that on no one point will it cover the alleged parallelism of the Southern Rebellion.

The relations of our States to each other and to the Union are quite unlike those in which the Colonies stood to England. England claimed by right of discovery and exploration the soil on which her Colonies here were planted, though she had rival claimants from the very first. A large number of the Colonists never had any original connection with England, and owed her no allegiance. Holland, Sweden, and other countries furnished much of the first stock of our settlers, who thought they were occupying a wild part of God's earth rather than a portion of the English dominions. The Colonies were not planted at public charge, by Government cost or enterprise. The English exiles, with but slender grounds of grateful remembrance of the land they had left, brought with them their own private means, subdued a wilderness, extinguished the aboriginal titles, and slowly and wearily developed the resources of the country. Often in their direst straits did they decline to ask aid from England, lest they might thereby furnish a plea for her interference with their internal affairs. Several of the Colonies from the first acted upon their presumed independence, and resolved on the frank assertion of it as soon as they might dare the venture. That time for daring happened to be contemporaneous with a tyrannical demand upon them for tribute without representation. Thus the relations of the Colonies to England were of a hap-hazard, abnormal, incidental, and always unsettled character. They might be modified or changed without any breach of contract. They might be sundered without perjury or perfidy.

How unlike in all respects are the relations of these States to each other and to the Union! Drawn together after dark days and severe trials,—solemnly pledged to each other by the people whom the Union raised to a full citizenship in the Republic,—bound by a compact designed to be without limitation of time,—lifted by their consolidation to a place and fame and prosperity which they would never else have reached,—mutually necessary to each other's thrift and protection,—making a nation adapted by its organic constitution to the region of the earth which it occupies,—and now, by previous memories and traditions, by millions of social and domestic alliances, knit by heart-strings the sundering of which will be followed by a flow of the life-blood till all is spent,—these terms are but a feeble setting forth of the relations of these States to each other and to the Union. Some of these States which have been voted out of the Union by lawless Conventions owe their creation to the Union. Their very soil has been paid for out of the public treasury. Indeed, the Union is still in debt under obligations incurred by their purchase.

How striking, too, is the contrast between the character and method of the proceedings which originated and now sustain the Rebellion, and those which initiated and carried through the Revolution! The Rebellion exhibits to us a complete inversion of the course of measures which inaugurated the Revolution. "Secession" was the invention of ambitious leaders, who overrode the forms of law, and have not dared to submit their votes and their doings to primary meetings of the people whom they have driven with a despotic tyranny. In the Revolution the people themselves were the prime movers. Each little country town and municipality of the original Colonies, that has a hundred years of history to be written, will point us boastfully to entries in its records showing how it instructed its representatives first to remonstrate against tyranny, and then to resist it by successive measures, each of which, with its limitations and its increasing boldness, was dictated by the same people. The people of Virginia, remembering the ancient precedent which won them their renown, intended to follow it in an early stage of our present strife. They allowed a Convention to assemble, under the express and rigid condition, that, if it should see fit to advise any measure which would affect the relations of their State to the Union, a reference should be made of it, prior to any action, to the will of the people. The Convention covertly and treacherously abused its trust. In secret session it authorized measures on the strength of which the Governor of the State proceeded to put it into hostile relations with the Union. When the foregone conclusion was at last farcically submitted to the people, a perjured Senator of the National Congress notified such of them as would not ratify the will of the Convention, that they must leave the State.

Once more, in our Revolution, holders of office and of lucrative trusts in the interest of England were to a man loyal to the Home Government, and our independence was effected without any base appliances. In the work of secession and rebellion, the very officials and sworn guardians of our Government have been the foremost plotters. They have used their opportunities and their trusts for the most perfidious purposes. Nothing but perjury in the very highest places could have initiated secession and rebellion, and to this very moment they derive all their vigor in the council-chamber and on the field from forsworn men, most of whom have been trained from their childhood, nurtured, instructed, and fed, and all of whom have been fostered in their manhood, and gifted with their whole power for harming her, by the kindly mother whose life they are assailing. If the Man with the Withered Hand had used the first thrill of life and vigor coming into it by the word of the Great Physician to aim a blow at his benefactor, his ingratitude would have needed to stand recorded only until this year of our Lord, to have been matched by deeds of men who have thrown this dear land of ours into universal mourning. Yet our English brethren would try to persuade us that these men are but repeating the course and the deeds of the American Revolution!

* * * * *

THE WILD ENDIVE.

  Only the dusty common road,
    The glaring weary heat;
  Only a man with a soldier's load,
    And the sound of tired feet.

  Only the lonely creaking hum
    Of the Cicada's song;
  Only a fence where tall weeds come
    With spikèd fingers strong.

  Only a drop of the heaven's blue
    Left in a way-side cup;
  Only a joy for the plodding few
    And eyes that look not up.

  Only a weed to the passer-by,
    Growing among the rest;—
  Yet something clear as the light of the sky
    It lodges in my breast.

THE CONTRABANDS AT FORTRESS MONROE.

In the month of August, 1620, a Dutch man-of-war from Guinea entered James River and sold "twenty negars." Such is the brief record left by John Rolfe, whose name is honorably associated with that of Pocahontas. This was the first importation of the kind into the country, and the source of existing strifes. It was fitting that the system which from that slave-ship had been spreading over the continent for nearly two centuries and a half should yield for the first time to the logic of military law almost upon the spot of its origin. The coincidence may not inappropriately introduce what of experience and reflection the writer has to relate of a three-months' soldier's life in Virginia.

On the morning of the 22d of May last, Major-General Butler, welcomed with a military salute, arrived at Fortress Monroe, and assumed the command of the Department of Virginia. Hitherto we had been hemmed up in the peninsula of which the fort occupies the main part, and cut off from communication with the surrounding country. Until within a few days our forces consisted of about one thousand men belonging to the Third and Fourth Regiments of Massachusetts militia, and three hundred regulars. The only movement since our arrival on the 20th of April had been the expedition to Norfolk of the Third Regiment, in which it was my privilege to serve as a private. The fort communicates with the main-land by a dike or causeway about half a mile long, and a wooden bridge, perhaps three hundred feet long, and then there spreads out a tract of country, well wooded and dotted over with farms. Passing from this bridge for a distance of two miles northwestward, you reach a creek or arm of the bay spanned by another wooden bridge, and crossing it you are at once in the ancient village of Hampton, having a population of some fifteen hundred inhabitants. The peninsula on which the fort stands, the causeway, and the first bridge described, are the property of the United States. Nevertheless, a small picket-guard of the Secessionists had been accustomed to occupy a part of the bridge, sometimes coming even to the centre, and a Secession flag waved in sight of the fort. On the 13th of May, the Rebel picket-guard was driven from the bridge, and all the Government property was taken possession of by a detachment of two companies from the Fourth Regiment, accompanied by a dozen regulars with a field-piece, acting under the orders of Colonel Dimick, the commander of the post. They retired, denouncing vengeance on Massachusetts troops for the invasion of Virginia. Our pickets then occupied the entire bridge and a small strip of the main-land beyond, covering a valuable well; but still there was no occupation in force of any but Government property. The creation of a new military department, to the command of which a major-general was assigned, was soon to terminate this isolation. On the 13th of May the First Vermont Regiment arrived, on the 24th the Second New York, and two weeks later our forces numbered nearly ten thousand.

On the 23d of May General Butler ordered the first reconnoitring expedition, which consisted of a part of the Vermont Regiment, and proceeded under the command of Colonel Phelps over the dike and bridge towards Hampton. They were anticipated, and when in sight of the second bridge saw that it had been set on fire, and, hastening forward, extinguished the flames. The detachment then marched into the village. A parley was held with a Secession officer, who represented that the men in arms in Hampton were only a domestic police. Meanwhile the white inhabitants, particularly the women, had generally disappeared. The negroes gathered around our men, and their evident exhilaration was particularly noted, some of them saying, "Glad to see you, Massa," and betraying the fact, that, on the approach of the detachment, a field-piece stationed at the bridge had been thrown into the sea. This was the first communication between our army and the negroes in this department.

The reconnoissance of the day had more important results than were anticipated. Three negroes, owned by Colonel Mallory, a lawyer of Hampton and a Rebel officer, taking advantage of the terror prevailing among the white inhabitants, escaped from their master, skulked during the afternoon, and in the night came to our pickets. The next morning, May 24th, they were brought to General Butler, and there, for the first time, stood the Major-General and the fugitive slave face to face. Being carefully interrogated, it appeared that they were field-hands, the slaves of an officer in the Rebel service, who purposed taking them to Carolina to be employed in military operations there. Two of them had wives in Hampton, one a free colored woman, and they had several children in the neighborhood. Here was a new question, and a grave one, on which the Government had as yet developed no policy. In the absence of precedents or instructions, an analogy drawn from international law was applied. Under that law, contraband goods, which are directly auxiliary to military operations, cannot in time of war be imported by neutrals into an enemy's country, and may be seized as lawful prize when the attempt is made so to import them. It will be seen, that, accurately speaking, the term applies exclusively to the relation between a belligerent and a neutral, and not to the relation between belligerents. Under the strict law of nations, all the property of an enemy may be seized. Under the Common Law, the property of traitors is forfeit. The humaner usage of modern times favors the waiving of these strict rights, but allows,—without question, the seizure and confiscation of all such goods as are immediately auxiliary to military purposes. These able-bodied negroes, held as slaves, were to be employed to build breastworks, to transport or store provisions, to serve as cooks or waiters, and even to bear arms. Regarded as property, according to their master's claim, they could be efficiently used by the Rebels for the purposes of the Rebellion, and most efficiently by the Government in suppressing it. Regarded as persons, they had escaped from communities where a triumphant rebellion had trampled on the laws, and only the rights of human nature remained, and they now asked the protection of the Government, to which, in prevailing treason, they were still loyal, and which they were ready to serve as best they could.

The three negroes, being held contraband of war, were at once set to work to aid the masons in constructing a new bakehouse within the fort. Thenceforward the term "contraband" bore a new signification, with which it will pass into history, designating the negroes who had been held as slaves, now adopted under the protection of the Government. It was used in official communications at the fort. It was applied familiarly to the negroes, who stared somewhat, inquiring, "What d' ye call us that for?" Not having Wheaton's "Elements" at hand, we did not attempt an explanation. The contraband notion was adopted by Congress in the Act of July 6th, which confiscates slaves used in aiding the Insurrection. There is often great virtue in such technical phrases in shaping public opinion. They commend practical action to a class of minds little developed in the direction of the sentiments, which would be repelled by formulas of a broader and nobler import. The venerable gentleman, who wears gold spectacles and reads a conservative daily, prefers confiscation to emancipation. He is reluctant to have slaves declared freemen, but has no objection to their being declared contrabands. His whole nature rises in insurrection when Beecher preaches in a sermon that a thing ought to be done because it is a duty, but he yields gracefully when Butler issues an order commanding it to be done because it is a military necessity.

On the next day, Major John B. Cary, another Rebel officer, late principal of an academy in Hampton, a delegate to the Charleston Convention, and a seceder with General Butler from the Convention at Baltimore, came to the fort with a flag of truce, and, claiming to act as the representative of Colonel Mallory, demanded the fugitives. He reminded General Butler of his obligations under the Federal Constitution, under which he claimed to act. The ready reply was, that the Fugitive-Slave Act could not be invoked for the reclamation of fugitives from a foreign State, which Virginia claimed to be, and she must count it among the infelicities of her position, if so far at least she was taken at her word.

The three pioneer negroes were not long to be isolated from their race. There was no known channel of communication between them and their old comrades, and yet those comrades knew, or believed with the certainty of knowledge, how they had been received. If inquired of whether more were coming, their reply was, that, if they were not sent back, others would understand that they were among friends, and more would come the next day. Such is the mysterious spiritual telegraph which runs through the slave population. Proclaim an edict of emancipation in the hearing of a single slave on the Potomac, and in a few days it will be known by his brethren on the Gulf. So, on the night of the Big Bethel affair, a squad of negroes, meeting our soldiers, inquired anxiously the way to "the freedom fort."

The means of communicating with the fort from the open country became more easy, when, on the 24th of May, (the same day on which the first movement was made from Washington into Virginia,) the Second New York Regiment made its encampment on the Segar farm, lying near the bridge which connected the fort with the main-land, an encampment soon enlarged by the First Vermont and other New York regiments. On Sunday morning, May 26th, eight negroes stood before the quarters of General Butler, waiting for an audience.

They were examined in part by the Hon. Mr. Ashley, M.C. from Ohio, then a visitor at the fort. On May 27th, forty-seven negroes of both sexes and all ages, from three months to eighty-five years, among whom were half a dozen entire families, came in one squad. Another lot of a dozen good field-hands arrived the same day; and then they continued to come by twenties, thirties, and forties. They were assigned buildings outside of the fort or tents within. They were set to work as servants to officers, or to store provisions landed from vessels,—thus relieving us of the fatigue duty which we had previously done, except that of dragging and mounting columbiads on the ramparts of the fort, a service which some very warm days have impressed on my memory.

On the 27th of May, the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, the First Vermont, and some New York regiments made an advance movement and occupied Newport News, (a promontory named for Captain Christopher Newport, the early explorer,) so as more effectually to enforce the blockade of James River. There, too, negroes came in, who were employed as servants to the officers. One of them, when we left the fort, more fortunate than his comrades, and aided by a benevolent captain, eluded the vigilance of the Provost Marshal, and is now the curiosity of a village in the neighborhood of Boston.

It was now time to call upon the Government for a policy in dealing with slave society thus disrupted and disorganized. Elsewhere, even under the shadow of the Capitol, the action of military officers had been irregular, and in some cases in palpable violation of personal rights. An order of General McDowell excluded all slaves from the lines. Sometimes officers assumed to decide the question whether a negro was a slave, and deliver him to a claimant, when, certainly in the absence of martial law, they had no authority in the premises, under the Act of Congress,—that power being confided to commissioners and marshals. As well might a member of Congress or a State sheriff usurp the function. Worse yet, in defiance of the Common Law, they made color a presumptive proof of bondage. In one case a free negro was delivered to a claimant under this process, more summary than any which the Fugitive-Slave Act provides. The colonel of a Massachusetts regiment showed some practical humor in dealing with a pertinacious claimant who asserted title to a negro found within his lines, and had brought a policeman along with him to aid in enforcing it. The shrewd colonel, (a Democrat he is,) retaining the policeman, put both the claimant and claimed outside of the lines together to try their fleetness. The negro proved to be the better gymnast and was heard of no more. This capricious treatment of the subject was fraught with serious difficulties as well as personal injuries, and it needed to be displaced by an authorized system.

On the 27th of May, General Butler, having in a previous communication reported his interview with Major Cary, called the attention of the War Department to the subject in a formal despatch,—indicating the hostile purposes for which the negroes had been or might be successfully used, stating the course he had pursued in employing them and recording expenses and services, and suggesting pertinent military, political, and humane considerations. The Secretary of War, under date of the 30th of May, replied, cautiously approving the course of General Butler, and intimating distinctions between interfering with the relations of persons held to service and refusing to surrender them to their alleged masters, which it is not easy to reconcile with well-defined views of the new exigency, or at least with a desire to express them. The note was characterized by diplomatic reserve which it will probably be found difficult long to maintain.

The ever-recurring question continued to press for solution. On the 6th of July the Act of Congress was approved, declaring that any person claiming the labor of another to be due to him, and permitting such party to be employed in any military or naval service whatsoever against the Government of the United States, shall forfeit his claim to such labor, and proof of such employment shall thereafter be a full answer to the claim. This act was designed for the direction of the civil magistrate, and not for the limitation of powers derived from military law. That law, founded on salus republicae, transcends all codes, and lies outside of forms and statutes. John Quincy Adams, almost prophesying as he expounded, declared, in 1842, that under it slavery might be abolished. Under it, therefore, Major-General Fremont, in a recent proclamation, declared the slaves of all persons within his department, who were in arms against the Government, to be freemen, and under it has given title-deeds of manumission. Subsequently President Lincoln limited the proclamation to such slaves as are included in the Act of Congress, namely, the slaves of Rebels used in directly hostile service. The country had called for Jacksonian courage, and its first exhibition was promptly suppressed. If the revocation was made in deference to protests from Kentucky, it seems, that, while the loyal citizens of Missouri appeared to approve the decisive measure, they were overruled by the more potential voice of other communities who professed to understand their affairs better than they did themselves. But if, as is admitted, the commanding officer, in the plenitude of military power, was authorized to make the order within his department, all human beings included in the proclamation thereby acquired a vested title to their freedom, of which neither Congress nor President could dispossess them. No conclusive behests of law necessitating the limitation, it cannot rest on any safe reasons of military policy. The one slave who carries his master's knapsack on a march contributes far less to the efficiency of the Rebel army than the one hundred slaves who hoe corn on his plantation with which to replenish its commissariat. We have not yet emerged from the fine-drawn distinctions of peaceful times. We may imprison or slaughter a Rebel, but we may not unloose his hold on a person he has claimed as a slave. We may seize all his other property without question, lands, houses, cattle, jewels; but his asserted property in man is more sacred than the gold which overlay the Ark of the Covenant, and we may not profane it. This reverence for things assumed to be sacred, which are not so, cannot long continue. The Government can well turn away from the enthusiast, however generous his impulses, who asks the abolition of slavery on general principles of philanthropy, for the reason that it already has work enough on its hands. It may not change the objects of the war, but it must of necessity at times shift its tactics and its instruments, as the exigency demands. Its solemn and imperative duty is to look every issue, however grave and transcendent, firmly in the face; and having ascertained upon mature and conscientious reflection what is necessary to suppress the Rebellion, it must then proceed with inexorable purpose to inflict the blows where Rebellion is the weakest and under which it must inevitably fall.

On the 30th of July, General Butler, being still unprovided with adequate instructions,—the number of contrabands having now reached nine hundred,—applied to the War Department for further directions. His inquiries, inspired by good sense and humanity alike, were of the most fundamental character, and when they shall have received a full answer the war will be near its end. Assuming the slaves to have been the property of masters, he considers them waifs abandoned by their owners, in which the Government as a finder cannot, however, acquire a proprietary interest, and they have therefore reverted to the normal condition of those made in God's image, "if not free-born, yet free-manumitted, sent forth from the hand that held them, never to return." The author of that document may never win a victor's laurels on any renowned field, but, depositing it in the archives of the Government, he leaves a record in history which will outlast the traditions of battle or siege. It is proper to add, that the answer of the War Department, so far as its meaning is clear, leaves the General uninstructed as to all slaves not confiscated by the Act of Congress.

The documentary history being now completed, the personal narrative of affairs at Fortress Monroe is resumed.

The encampment of Federal troops beyond the peninsula of the fort and in the vicinity of the village of Hampton was immediately followed by an hegira of its white inhabitants, burning, as they fled, as much of the bridge as they could. On the 28th of May, a detachment of troops entered the village and hoisted the stars and stripes on the house of Colonel Mallory. Picket-guards occupied it intermittently during the month of June. It was not until the first day of July that a permanent encampment was made there, consisting of the Third Massachusetts Regiment, which moved from the fort, the Fourth, which moved from Newport News, and the Naval Brigade, all under the command of Brigadier-General Pierce,—the camp being informally called Camp Greble, in honor of the lieutenant of that name who fell bravely in the disastrous affair of Big Bethel. Here we remained until July 16th, when, our term of enlistment having expired, we bade adieu to Hampton, its ancient relics, its deserted houses, its venerable church, its trees and gardens, its contrabands, all so soon to be wasted and scattered by the torch of Virginia Vandals. We passed over the bridge, the rebuilding of which was completed the day before, marched to the fort, exchanged our rifle muskets for an older pattern, listened to a farewell address from General Butler, bade good-bye to Colonel Dimick, and embarked for Boston. It was during this encampment at Hampton, and two previous visits, somewhat hurried, while as yet it was without a permanent guard, that my personal knowledge of the negroes, of their feelings, desires, aspirations, capacities, and habits of life was mainly obtained.

A few words of local history and description may illustrate the narrative. Hampton is a town of considerable historic interest. First among civilized men the illustrious adventurer Captain John Smith with his comrades visited its site in 1607, while exploring the mouth of James River to find a home for the first colonists. Here they smoked the calumet of peace with an Indian tribe. To the neighboring promontory, where they found good anchorage and hospitality, they gave the name of Point Comfort, which it still bears. Hampton, though a settlement was commenced there in 1610, did not become a town until 1705. Hostile fleets have twice appeared before it. The first time was in October, 1775, when some tenders sent by Lord Dunmore to destroy it were repulsed by the citizens, aided by the Culpepper riflemen. Then and there was the first battle of the Revolution in Virginia. Again in June, 1813, it was attacked by Admiral Cockburn and General Beckwith, and scenes of pillage followed, dishonorable to the British soldiery. Jackson, in his address to his army just before the Battle of New Orleans, conjured his soldiers to remember Hampton. Until the recent conflagration, it abounded in ancient relics. Among them was St. John's Church, the main body of which was of imported brick, and built at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The fury of Secession irreverently destroyed this memorial of antiquity and religion, which even a foreign soldiery had spared. One inscription in the graveyard surrounding the church is as early as 1701, and even earlier dates are found on tombstones in the fields a mile distant. The Court-House, a clumsy old structure, in which was the law-office of Colonel Mallory, contained judicial records of a very early colonial period. Some, which I examined, bore date of 1634. Several old houses, with spacious rooms and high ornamented ceilings, gave evidence that at one time they had been occupied by citizens of considerable taste and rank. A friend of mine found among the rubbish of a deserted house an English illustrated edition of "Paradise Lost," of the date of 1725, and Boyle's Oxford edition of "The Epistles of Phalaris," famous in classical controversy, printed in 1718. The proximity of Fortress Monroe, of the fashionable watering-place of Old Point, and of the anchorage of Hampton Roads, has contributed to the interest of the town. To this region came in summer-time public men weary of their cares, army and navy officers on furlough or retired, and the gay daughters of Virginia. In front of the fort, looking seaward, was the summer residence of Floyd; between the fort and the town was that of John Tyler. President Jackson sought refuge from care and solicitation at the Rip Raps, whither he was followed by his devoted friend, Mr. Blair. So at least a contraband informed me, who said he had often seen them both there.

Nevertheless, the town bore no evidence of thrift. It looked as though it were sleepy and indolent in the best of times, having oysters for its chief merchandise. The streets were paved, but the pavements were of large irregular stones, and unevenly laid. Few houses were new, and, excepting St. John's Church, the public edifices were mean. All these have been swept away by the recent conflagration, a waste of property indefensible on any military principles. The buildings might have furnished winter-quarters for our troops, but in that climate they were not necessary for that purpose, perhaps not desirable, or, if required, could be easily replaced by temporary habitations constructed of lumber imported from the North by sea. But the Rebel chiefs had thrown themselves into heroic attitudes, and while playing the part of incendiaries, they fancied their action to be as sublime as that of the Russians at Moscow. With such a precedent of Vandalism, no ravages of our own troops can hereafter be complained of.

The prevailing exodus, leaving less than a dozen white men behind, testifies the political feelings of the people. Only two votes were thrown against the ordinance of Secession. Whatever of Union sentiment existed there had been swept away by such demagogues as Mallory, Cary, Magruder, Shiels, and Hope. Hastily as they left, they removed in most cases all their furniture, leaving only the old Virginia sideboard, too heavy to be taken away. In a few exceptional cases, from the absence of the owner or other cause, the house was still furnished; but generally nothing but old letters, torn books, newspapers, cast-off clothing, strewed the floors. Rarely have I enjoyed the hours more than when roaming from cellar to garret these tenantless houses. A deserted dwelling! How the imagination is fascinated by what may have there transpired of human joy or sorrow,—the solitary struggles of the soul for better things, the dawn and the fruition of love, the separations and reunions of families, the hearth-stone consecrated by affection and prayer, the bridal throng, the birth of new lives, the farewells to the world, the funeral train.

But more interesting and instructive were the features of slave-life which here opened to us. The negroes who remained, of whom there may have been three hundred of all ages, lived in small wooden shanties, generally in the rear of the master's house, rarely having more than one room on the lower floor, and that containing an open fireplace where the cooking for the master's family was done, tables, chairs, dishes, and the miscellaneous utensils of household life. The masters had taken with them, generally, their waiting-maids and house-servants, and had desired to carry all their slaves with them. But in the hasty preparations,—particularly where the slaves were living away from their master's close, or had a family,—it was difficult to remove them against their will, as they could skulk for a few hours and then go where they pleased. Some voluntarily left their slaves behind, not having the means to provide for them, or, anticipating a return at no distant day, desired them to stay and guard the property. The slaves who remained lived upon the little pork and corn-meal that were left and the growing vegetables. They had but little to do. The women looked after their meagre household concerns, but the men were generally idle, standing in groups, or sitting in front of the shanties talking with the women. Some began to serve our officers as soon as we were quartered in the town,—while a few others set up cake-stands upon the street.

It was necessary for the protection of the post that some breastworks should be thrown up, and a line was planned extending from the old cemetery northward to the new one, a quarter of a mile distant. Our own troops were disinclined to the labor, their time being nearly expired, and they claiming that they had done their share of fatigue duty both at the fort and at Newport News. A member of Brigadier-General Pierce's staff—an efficient officer and a humane gentleman—suggested the employment of the contrabands and the furnishing of them with rations, an expedient best for them and agreeable to us. He at once dictated a telegram to General Butler in these words:—"Shall we put the contrabands to work on the intrenchments, and will you furnish them with rations?" An affirmative answer was promptly received on Monday morning, July 8th, and that was the first day in the course of the war in which the negro was employed upon the military works of our army. It therefore marks a distinct epoch in its progress and in its relations to the colored population. The writer—and henceforth his narrative must indulge in the frequent use of the first person—was specially detailed from his post as private in Company L of the Third Regiment to collect the contrabands, record their names, ages, and the names of their masters, provide their tools, superintend their labor, and procure their rations. My comrades smiled, as I undertook the novel duty, enjoying the spectacle of a Massachusetts Republican converted into a Virginia slave-master. To me it seemed rather an opportunity to lead them from the house of bondage never to return. For, whatever may be the general duty to this race, to all such as we have in any way employed to aid our armies our national faith and our personal honor are pledged. The code of a gentleman, to say nothing of a higher law of rectitude, necessitates protection to this extent. Abandoning one of these faithful allies, who, if delivered up, would be reduced to severer servitude because of the education he had received and the services he had performed, probably to be transported to the remotest slave region as now too dangerous to remain near its borders, we should be accursed among the nations of the earth. I felt assured that from that hour, whatsoever the fortunes of the war, every one of those enrolled defenders of the Union had vindicated beyond all future question, for himself, his wife, and their issue, a title to American citizenship, and become heir to all the immunities of Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States.

Passing through the principal streets, I told the contrabands that when they heard the court-house bell, which would ring soon, they must go to the court-house yard, where a communication would be made to them. In the mean time I secured the valuable services of some fellow-privates, one for a quarter-master, two others to aid in superintending at the trenches, and the orderly-sergeant of my own company, whose expertness in the drill was equalled only by his general good sense and business capacity. Upon the ringing of the bell, about forty contrabands came to the yard. A second exploration added to the number some twenty or more, who had not heard the original summons. They then came into the building, where they were called to order and addressed. I had argued to judges and juries, but I had never spoken to such auditors before in a court-room. I told them that the colored men had been employed on the breastworks of the Rebels, and we needed their aid,—that they would be required to do only such labor as we ourselves had done,—that they should be treated kindly, and no one should be obliged to work beyond his capacity, or if unwell,—and that they should be furnished in a day or two with full soldiers' rations. I told them that their masters had said they were an indolent people,—that I did not believe the charge,—that I was going home to Massachusetts soon and should be glad to report that they were as industrious as the whites. They generally showed no displeasure, some even saying, that, not having done much for some time, it was the best thing for them to be now employed. Four or five men over fifty years old said that they suffered from rheumatism, and could not work without injury. Being confirmed by the by-standers, they were dismissed. Other old men said they would do what they could, and they were assured that no more would be required of them. Two of them, provided with a bucket and dipper, were detailed to carry water all the time along the line of laborers. Two young men fretted a little, and claimed to be disabled in some way. They were told to resume their seats, and try first and see what they could do,—to the evident amusement of the rest, who knew them to be indolent and disposed to shirk. A few showed some sulkiness, but it all passed away after the first day, when they found that they were to be used kindly. One well-dressed young man, a carpenter, feeling a little better than his associates, did not wear a pleasant face at first. Finding out his trade, we set him to sawing the posts for the intrenchments, and he was entirely reconciled. Free colored men were not required to work; but one volunteered, wishing, as he said, to do his part. The contrabands complained that the free colored men ought to be required to work on the intrenchments as well as they. I thought so too, but followed my orders. A few expressed some concern lest their masters should punish them for serving us, if they ever returned. One inquired suspiciously why we took the name of his master. My reply was, that it was taken in order to identify them,—an explanation with which he was more satisfied than I was myself. Several were without shoes, and said that they could not drive the shovel into the earth. They were told to use the picks. The rest of the forenoon being occupied in registering their names and ages, and the names of their masters, they were dismissed to come together on the ringing of the bell, at two, P.M.

It had been expressly understood that I was to have the exclusive control and supervision of the negroes, directing their hours of labor and their rests, without interference from any one. The work itself was to be planned and superintended by the officers of the Third and Fourth Regiments. This exclusive control of the men was necessarily confided to one, as different lieutenants detailed each day could not feel a responsibility for their welfare. One or two of these, when rests were allowed the negroes, were somewhat disgusted, saying that negroes could dig all the time as well as not. I had had some years before an experience with the use of the shovel under a warm sun, and knew better, and I wished I could superintend a corps of lieutenants and apply their own theory to themselves.

At two, P.M., the contrabands came together, answered to their names, and, each taking a shovel, a spade, or a pick, began to work upon the breastworks farthest from the village and close to the new cemetery. The afternoon was very warm, the warmest we had in Hampton. Some, used only to household or other light work, wilted under the heat, and they were told to go into the cemetery and lie down. I remember distinctly a corpulent colored man, down whose cheeks the perspiration rolled and who said he felt badly. He also was told to go away and rest until he was better. He soon came back relieved, and there was no more faithful laborer among them all during the rest of the time. Twice or three times in the afternoon an intermission of fifteen minutes was allowed to all. Thus they worked until six in the evening, when they were dismissed for the day. They deposited their tools in the court-house, where each one of his own accord carefully put his pick or shovel where he could find it again,—sometimes behind a door and sometimes in a sly corner or under a seat, preferring to keep his own tool. They were then informed that they must come together on the ringing of the bell the next morning at four o'clock. They thought that too early, but they were assured that the system best for their health would be adopted, and they would afterwards be consulted about changing it. The next morning we did not rise quite so early as four, and the bell was not rung till some minutes later. The contrabands were prompt, their names had been called, and they had marched to the trenches, a quarter of a mile distant, and were fairly at work by half-past four or a quarter before five. They did excellent service during the morning hours, and at seven were dismissed till eight. The roll was then called again, absences, if any, noted, and by half-past eight they were at their post. They continued at the trenches till eleven, being allowed rests, and were then dismissed until three, P.M., being relieved four hours in the middle of the day, when, the bell being rung and the roll called, they resumed their work and continued till six, when they were dismissed for the day. Such were the hours and usual course of their labor. Their number was increased some half dozen by fugitives from the back-country, who came in and asked to be allowed to serve on the intrenchments.

The contrabands worked well, and in no instance was it found necessary for the superintendents to urge them. There was a public opinion among them against idleness, which answered for discipline. Some days they worked with our soldiers, and it was found that they did more work, and did the nicer parts—the facings and dressings—better. Colonels Packard and Wardrop, under whose direction the breastworks were constructed, and General Butler, who visited them, expressed satisfaction at the work which the contrabands had done. On the 14th of July, Mr. Russell, of the London "Times," and Dr. Bellows, of the Sanitary Commission, came to Hampton and manifested much interest at the success of the experiment. The result was, indeed, pleasing. A subaltern officer, to whom I had insisted that the contrabands should be treated with kindness, had sneered at the idea of applying philanthropic notions in time of war. It was found then, as always, that decent persons will accomplish more when treated at least like human beings. The same principle, if we will but credit our own experience and Mr. Rarey, too, may with advantage be extended to our relations with the beasts that serve us.

Three days after the contrabands commenced their work, five days' rations were served to them,—a soldier's ration for each laborer, and half a ration for each dependant. The allowance was liberal,—as a soldier's ration, if properly cooked, is more than he generally needs, and the dependant for whom a half-ration was received might be a wife or a half-grown child. It consisted of salt beef or pork, hard bread, beans, rice, coffee, sugar, soap, and candles, and where the family was large it made a considerable pile. The recipients went home, appearing perfectly satisfied, and feeling assured that our promises to them would be performed. On Sunday fresh meat was served to them in the same manner as to the troops.

There was one striking feature in the contrabands which must not be omitted. I did not hear a profane or vulgar word spoken by them during my superintendence, a remark which it will be difficult to make of any sixty-four white men taken together anywhere in our army. Indeed, the greatest discomfort of a soldier, who desires to remain a gentleman in the camp, is the perpetual reiteration of language which no decent lips would utter in a sister's presence. But the negroes, so dogmatically pronounced unfit for freedom, were in this respect models for those who make high boasts of civility of manners and Christian culture. Out of the sixty-four who worked for us, all but half a dozen were members of the Church, generally the Baptist. Although without a pastor, they held religious meetings on the Sundays which we passed in Hampton, which were attended by about sixty colored persons and three hundred soldiers. The devotions were decorously conducted, bating some loud shouting by one or two excitable brethren, which the better sense of the rest could not suppress. Their prayers and exhortations were fervent, and marked by a simplicity which is not infrequently the richest eloquence. The soldiers behaved with entire propriety, and two exhorted them with pious unction, as children of one Father, ransomed by the same Redeemer.

To this general propriety of conduct among the contrabands intrusted to me there was only one exception, and that was in the case of Joe ——; his surname I have forgotten. He was of a vagrant disposition, and an inveterate shirk. He had a plausible speech and a distorted imagination, and might be called a demagogue among darkies. He bore an ill physiognomy,—that of one "fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." He was disliked by the other contrabands, and had been refused admission to their Church, which he wished to join in order to get up a character. Last, but not least, among his sins, he was accustomed to boat his wife, of which she accused him in my presence; whereupon he justified himself on the brazen assumption that all husbands did the same. There was no good reason to believe that he had already been tampered with by Rebels; but his price could not be more than five dollars. He would be a disturbing element among the laborers on the breastworks, and he was a dangerous person to be so near the lines; we therefore sent him to the fort. The last I heard of him, he was at the Rip Raps, bemoaning his isolation, and the butt of our soldiers there, who charged him with being a "Secesh," and confounded him by gravely asserting that they were such themselves and had seen him with the "Secesh" at Yorktown. This was the single goat among the sheep.

On Monday evening, July 15th, when the contrabands deposited their tools in the court-house, I requested them to stop a moment in the yard. I made each a present of some tobacco, which all the men and most of the women use. As they gathered in a circle around me, head peering over head, I spoke to them briefly, thanking them for their cordial work and complimenting their behavior, remarking that I had heard no profane or vulgar word from them, in which they were an example to us,—adding that it was the last time I should meet them, as we were to march homeward in the morning, and that I should bear to my people a good report of their industry and morals. There was another word that I could not leave without speaking. Never before in our history had a Northern man, believing in the divine right of all men to their liberty, had an opportunity to address an audience of sixty-four slaves and say what the Spirit moved him to utter,—and I should have been false to all that is true and sacred, if I had let it pass. I said to them that there was one more word for me to add, and that was, that every one of them was as much entitled to his freedom as I was to mine, and I hoped they would all now secure it. "Believe you, boss," was the general response, and each one with his rough gravelly hand grasped mine, and with tearful eyes and broken utterances said, "God bless you!" "May we meet in Heaven!" "My name is Jack Allen, don't forget me!" "Remember me, Kent Anderson!" and so on. No,—I may forget the playfellows of my childhood, my college classmates, my professional associates, my comrades in arms, but I will remember you and your benedictions until I cease to breathe! Farewell, honest hearts, longing to be free! and may the kind Providence which for-gets not the sparrow shelter and protect you!

During our encampment at Hampton, I occupied much of my leisure time in conversations with the contrabands, both at their work and in their shanties, endeavoring to collect their currents of thought and feeling. It remains for me to give the results, so far as any could be arrived at.

There were more negroes of unmixed African blood than we expected to find. But many were entirely bleached. One man, working on the breastworks, owned by his cousin, whose name he bore, was no darker than white laborers exposed by their occupation to the sun, and could not be distinguished as of negro descent. Opposite our quarters was a young slave woman who had been three times a mother without ever having been a wife. You could not discern in her three daughters, either in color, feature, or texture of hair, the slightest trace of African lineage. They were as light-faced and fair-haired as the Saxon slaves whom the Roman Pontiff, Gregory the Great, met in the markets of Rome. If they were to be brought here and their pedigree concealed, they could readily mingle with our population and marry white men, who would never suspect that they were not pure Caucasians.

From the best knowledge I could obtain, the negroes in Hampton had rarely been severely whipped. A locust-tree in front of the jail had been used for a whipping-post, and they were very desirous that it should be cut down. It was used, however, only for what are known there as flagrant offences, like running away. Their masters, when in ill-temper, had used rough language and inflicted chance blows, but no one ever told me that he had suffered from systematic cruelty or been severely whipped, except Joe, whose character I have given. Many of them bore testimony to the great kindness of their masters and mistresses.

Separations of families had been frequent. Of this I obtained definite knowledge. When I was registering the number of dependants, preparatory to the requisition for rations, the answer occasionally was, "Yes, I have a wife, but she is not here." "Where is she?" "She was sold off two years ago, and I have not heard of her since." The husband of the woman who took care of the quarters of General Pierce had been sold away from her some years before. Such separations are regarded as death, and the slaves re-marry. In some cases the bereft one—so an intelligent negro assured me—pines under his bereavement and loses his value; but so elastic is human nature that this did not appear to be generally the case. The same answer was given about children,—that they had been sold away. This, in a slave-breeding country, is done when they are about eight years old. Can that be a mild system of servitude which permits such enforced separations? Providence may, indeed, sunder forever those dearest to each other, and the stricken soul accepts the blow as the righteous discipline of a Higher Power; but when the bereavement is the arbitrary dictate of human will, there are no such consolations to sanctify grief and assuage agony.

There is a universal desire among the slaves to be free. Upon this point my inquiries were particular, and always with the same result. When we said to them, "You don't want to be free,—your masters say you don't,"—they manifested much indignation, answering, "We do want to be free,—we want to be for ourselves." We inquired further, "Do the house slaves who wear their master's clothes want to be free?" "We never heard of one who did not," was the instant reply. There might be, they said, some half-crazy one who did not care to be free, but they had never seen one. Even old men and women, with crooked backs, who could hardly walk or see, shared the same feeling. An intelligent Secessionist, Lowry by name, who was examined at head-quarters, admitted that a majority of the slaves wanted to be free. The more intelligent the slave and the better he had been used, the stronger this desire seemed to be. I remember one such particularly, the most intelligent one in Hampton, known as "an, influential darky" ("darky" being the familiar term applied by the contrabands to themselves). He could read, was an exhorter in the Church, and officiated in the absence of the minister. He would have made a competent juryman. His mistress, he said, had been kind to him, and had never spoken so harshly to him as a captain's orderly in the Naval Brigade had done, who assumed one day to give him orders. She had let him work where he pleased, and he was to bring her a fixed sum, and appropriate the surplus to his own use. She pleaded with him to go away with her from Hampton at the time of the exodus, but she would not force him to leave his family. Still he hated to be a slave, and he talked like a philosopher about his rights. No captive in the galleys of Algiers, not Lafayette in an Austrian dungeon, ever pined more for free air. He had saved eighteen hundred dollars of his surplus earnings in attending on visitors at Old Point, and had spent it all in litigation to secure the freedom of his wife and children, belonging to another master, whose will had emancipated them, but was contested on the ground of the insanity of the testator. He had won a verdict, but his lawyers told him they could not obtain a judgment upon it, as the judge was unfavorable to freedom.

The most frequent question asked of one who has had any means of communication with the contrabands during the war is in relation to their knowledge of its cause and purposes, and their interest in it. One thing was evident,—indeed, you could not talk with a slave who did not without prompting give the same testimony,—that their masters had been most industrious in their attempts to persuade them that the Yankees were coming down there only to get the land,—that they would kill the negroes and manure the ground with them, or carry them off to Cuba or Hayti and sell them. An intelligent man who had belonged to Colonel Joseph Segar—almost the only Union man at heart in that region, and who for that reason, being in Washington at the time the war began, had not dared to return to Hampton—served the staff of General Pierce. He bore the highest testimony to the kindness of his master, who, he said, told him to remain,—that the Yankees were the friends of his people, and would use them well. "But," said David,—for that was his name,—"I never heard of any other master who talked that way, but they all told the worst stories about the Yankees, and the mistresses were more furious even than the masters." David, I may add, spite of his good master, longed to be free.

The masters, in their desperation, had within a few months resorted to another device to secure the loyalty of their slaves. The colored Baptist minister had been something of a pet among the whites, and had obtained subscriptions from some benevolent citizens to secure the freedom of a handsome daughter of his who was exposed to sale on an auction block, where her beauty inspired competition. Some leading Secessionists, Lawyer Hope for one, working somewhat upon his gratitude and somewhat upon his vanity, persuaded him to offer the services of himself and his sons, in a published communication, to the cause of Virginia and the Confederate States. The artifice did not succeed. He lost his hold on his congregation, and could not have safely remained after the whites left. He felt uneasy about his betrayal, and tried to restore himself to favor by saying that he meant no harm to his people; but his protestations were in vain. His was the deserved fate of those in all ages who, victims of folly or bribes, turn their backs on their fellows.

Notwithstanding all these attempts, the negroes, with rare exceptions, still believed that the Yankees were their friends. They had learned something in Presidential elections, and they thought their masters could not hate us as they did, unless we were their friends. They believed that the troubles would somehow or other help them, although they did not understand all that was going on. They may be pardoned for their want of apprehension, when some of our public men, almost venerable, and reputed to be very wise and philosophical, are bewildered and grope blindly. They were somewhat perplexed by the contradictory statements of our soldiers, some of whom, according to their wishes, said the contest was for them, and others that it did not concern them at all and they would remain as before. If it was explained to them, that Lincoln was chosen by a party who were opposed to extending slavery, but who were also opposed to interfering with it in Virginia,—that Virginia and the South had rebelled, and we had come to suppress the rebellion,—and although the object of the war was not to emancipate them, yet that might be its result,—they answered, that they understood the statement perfectly. They did not seem inclined to fight, although willing to work. More could not be expected of them while nothing is promised to them. What latent inspirations they may have remains to be seen. They had at first a mysterious dread of fire-arms, but familiarity is rapidly removing that.

The religious element of their life has been noticed. They said they had prayed for this day, and God had sent Lincoln in answer to their prayers. We used to overhear their family devotions, somewhat loud according to their manner, in which they prayed earnestly for our troops. They built their hopes of freedom on Scriptural examples, regarding the deliverance of Daniel from the lions' den, and of the Three Children from the furnace, as symbolic of their coming freedom. One said to me, that masters, before they died, by their wills sometimes freed their slaves, and he thought that a type that they should become free.

One Saturday evening one of them asked me to call and see him at his home the next morning. I did so, and he handed me a Bible belonging to his mistress, who had died a few days before, and whose bier I had helped to carry to the family vault. He wanted me to read to him the eleventh chapter of Daniel. It seemed, that, as one of the means of keeping them quiet, the white clergymen during the winter and spring had read them some verses from it to show that the South would prevail, enforcing passages which ascribed great dominion to "the king of the South," and suppressing those which subsequently give the supremacy to "the king of the North." A colored man who could read had found the latter passages and made them known. The chapter is dark with mystery, and my auditor, quite perplexed as I read on, remarked, "The Bible is a very mysterious book." I read to him also the thirty-fourth chapter of Jeremiah, wherein the sad prophet of Israel records the denunciations by Jehovah of sword, pestilence, and famine against the Jews for not proclaiming liberty to their servants and handmaids. He had not known before that there were such passages in the Bible.

The conversations of the contrabands on their title to be regarded as freemen showed reflection. When asked if they thought themselves fit for freedom, and if the darkies were not lazy, their answer was, "Who but the darkies cleared all the land round here? Yes, there are lazy darkies, but there are more lazy whites." When told that the free blacks had not succeeded, they answered that the free blacks have not had a fair chance under the laws,—that they don't dare to enforce their claims against white men,—that a free colored blacksmith had a thousand dollars due to him from white men, but he was afraid to sue for any portion of it. One man, when asked why he ought to be free, replied,—"I feed and clothe myself and pay my master one hundred and twenty dollars a year; and the one hundred and twenty dollars is just so much taken from me, which ought to be used to make me and my children comfortable." Indeed, broken as was their speech and limited as was their knowledge, they reasoned abstractly on their rights as well as white men. Locke or Channing might have fortified the argument for universal liberty from their simple talk. So true is it that the best thoughts which the human intellect has produced have come, not from affluent learning or ornate speech, but from the original elements of our nature, common to all races of men and all conditions in life; and genius the highest and most cultured may bend with profit to catch the lowliest of human utterances.

There was a very general desire among the contrabands to know how to read. A few had learned; and these, in every instance where we inquired as to their teacher, had been taught on the sly in their childhood by their white playmates. Others knew their letters, but could not "put them together," as they said. I remember of a summer's afternoon seeing a young married woman, perhaps twenty-five years old, seated on a door-step with her primer before her, trying to make progress.

In natural tact and the faculty of getting a livelihood the contrabands are inferior to the Yankees, but quite equal to the mass of the Southern population. It is not easy to see why they would be less industrious, if free, than the whites, particularly as they would have the encouragement of wages. There would be transient difficulties at the outset, but no more than a bad system lasting for ages might be expected to leave behind. The first generation might be unfitted for the active duties and responsibilities of citizenship; but this difficulty, under generous provisions for education, would not pass to the next. Even now they are not so much behind the masses of the whites. Of the Virginians who took the oath of allegiance at Hampton, not more than one in fifteen could write his name, and the rolls captured at Hatteras disclose an equally deplorable ignorance. The contrabands might be less addicted than the now dominant race to bowie-knives and duels, think less of the value of bludgeons as forensic arguments, be less inhospitable to innocent sojourners from Free States, and have far inferior skill in robbing forts and arsenals, plundering the Treasury, and betraying the country at whose crib they had fattened; but mankind would forgive them for not acquiring these accomplishments of modern treason. As a race, they may be less vigorous and thrifty than the Saxon, but they are more social, docile, and affectionate, fulfilling the theory which Channing held in relation to them, if advanced to freedom and civilization.

If in the progress of the war they should be called to bear arms, there need be no reasonable apprehension that they would exhibit the ferocity of savage races. Unlike such, they have been subordinated to civilized life. They are by nature a religious people. They have received an education in the Christian faith from devout teachers of their own and of the dominant race. Some have been taught (let us believe it) by the precepts of Christian masters, and some by the children of those masters, repeating the lessons of the Sabbath-school. The slaveholders assure us that they have all been well treated. If that be so, they have no wrongs to avenge. Associated with our army, they would conform to the stronger and more disciplined race. Nor is this view disproved by servile insurrections. In those cases, the insurgents, without arms, without allies, without discipline, but throwing themselves against society, against government, against everything, saw no other escape than to devastate and destroy without mercy in order to get a foothold. If they exterminated, it was because extermination was threatened against them. In the Revolution, in the army at Cambridge, from the beginning to the close of the war, against the protests of South Carolina by the voice of Edward Rutledge, but with the express sanction of Washington,—ever just, ever grateful for patriotism, whencesoever it came,—the negroes fought in the ranks with the white men, and they never dishonored the patriot cause. So also at the defence of New Orleans they received from General Jackson a noble tribute to their fidelity and soldier-like bearing. Weighing the question historically and reflectively, and anticipating the capture of Richmond and New Orleans, there need be more serious apprehension of the conduct of some of our own troops recruited in large cities than of a regiment of contrabands officered and disciplined by white men.

But as events travel faster than laws or proclamations, already in this war with Rebellion the two races have served together. The same breastworks have been built by their common toil. True and valiant, they stood side by side in the din of cannonade, and they shared as comrades in the victory of Hatteras. History will not fail to record that on the 28th day of August, 1861, when the Rebel forts were bombarded by the Federal army and navy, under the command of Major-General Butler and Commodore Stringham, fourteen negroes, lately Virginia slaves, now contraband of war, faithfully and without panic worked the after-gun of the upper deck of the Minnesota, and hailed with a victor's pride the Stars and Stripes as they again waved on the soil of the Carolinas.

THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD.

  Along a river-side, I know not where,
  I walked last night in mystery of dream;
  A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair,
  To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam
  Of a moon-wraith that waned through haunted air.

  Pale fire-flies pulsed within the meadow mist
  Their halos, wavering thistle-downs of light;
  The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst,
  Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in affright,
  Like Odin's hounds, fled baying down the night.

  Then all was silent, till there smote my ear
  A movement in the stream that checked my breath:
  Was it the slow plash of a wading deer?
  But something said, "This water is of Death!
  The Sisters wash a Shroud,—ill thing to hear!"

  I, looking then, beheld the ancient Three,
  Known to the Greek's and to the Norseman's creed,
  That sit in shadow of the mystic Tree,
  Still crooning, as they weave their endless brede,
  One song: "Time was, Time is, and Time shall be."

  No wrinkled crones were they, as I had deemed,
  But fair as yesterday, to-day, to-morrow,
  To mourner, lover, poet, ever seemed;
  Something too deep for joy, too high for sorrow,
  Thrilled in their tones and from their faces gleamed.

  "Still men and nations reap as they have strawn,"—
  So sang they, working at their task the while,—
  "The fatal raiment must be cleansed ere dawn:
  For Austria? Italy? the Sea-Queen's Isle?
  O'er what quenched grandeur must our shroud be drawn?

  "Or is it for a younger, fairer corse,
  That gathered States for children round his knees,
  That tamed the wave to be his posting-horse,
  The forest-feller, linker of the seas,
  Bridge-builder, hammerer, youngest son of Thor's?

  "What make we, murmur'st thou, and what are we?
  When empires must be wound, we bring the shroud,
  The time-old web of the implacable Three:
  Is it too coarse for him, the young and proud?
  Earth's mightiest deigned to wear it; why not he?"

  "Is there no hope?" I moaned. "So strong, so fair!
  Our Fowler, whose proud bird would brook erewhile
  No rival's swoop in all our western air!
  Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file,
  For him, life's morn-gold bright yet in his hair?

  "Leave me not hopeless, ye unpitying dames!
  I see, half-seeing. Tell me, ye who scanned
  The stars, Earth's elders, still must noblest aims
  Be traced upon oblivious ocean-sands?
  Must Hesper join the wailing ghosts of names?"

  "When grass-blades stiffen with red battle-dew,
  Ye deem we choose the victors and the slain:
  Say, choose we them that shall be leal and true
  To the heart's longing, the high faith of brain?
  Yet here the victory is, if ye but knew.

  "Three roots bear up Dominion: Knowledge, Will,—
  These two are strong, but stronger yet the third,—
  Obedience, the great tap-root, that still,
  Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred,
  Though the storm's ploughshare spend its utmost skill.

  "Is the doom sealed for Hesper? 'T is not we
  Denounce it, but the Law before all time:
  The brave makes danger opportunity;
  The waverer, paltering with the chance sublime,
  Dwarfs it to peril: which shall Hesper be?

  "Hath he let vultures climb his eagle's seat
  To make Jove's bolts purveyors of their maw?
  Hath he the Many's plaudits found more sweet
  Than wisdom? held Opinion's wind for law?
  Then let him hearken for the headsman's feet!

  "Rough are the steps, slow-hewn in flintiest rock,
  States climb to power by; slippery those with gold
  Down which they stumble to eternal mock:
  No chafferer's hand shall long the sceptre hold,
  Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell the block.

  "We sing old sagas, songs of weal and woe,
  Mystic because too cheaply understood;
  Dark sayings are not ours; men hear and know,
  See Evil weak, see only strong the Good,
  Yet hope to balk Doom's fire with walls of tow.

  "Time Was unlocks the riddle of Time Is,
  That offers choice of glory and of gloom;
  The solver makes Time Shall Be surely his.—
  But hasten, Sisters! for even now the tomb
  Grates its slow hinge and calls from the abyss."

  "But not for him," I cried, "not yet for him,
  Whose large horizon, westering, star by star
  Wins from the void to where on ocean's rim
  The sunset shuts the world with golden bar,—
  Not yet his thews shall fail, his eye grow dim!

  "His shall be larger manhood, saved for those
  That walk unblenching through the trial-fires;
  Not suffering, but faint heart is worst of woes,
  And he no base-born son of craven sires,
  Whose eye need droop, confronted with his foes.

  "Tears may be ours, but proud, for those who win
  Death's royal purple in the enemy's lines:
  Peace, too, brings tears; and 'mid the battle-din,
  The wiser ear some text of God divines;
  For the sheathed blade may rust with darker sin.

  "God, give us peace!—not such as lulls to sleep,
  But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose knit!
  And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep,
  Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit,
  And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!"

  So said I, with clenched hands and passionate pain,
  Thinking of dear ones by Potomac's side:
  Again the loon laughed, mocking; and again
  The echoes bayed far down the night, and died,
  While waking I recalled my wandering brain.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

Sermons preached in the Chapel of Harvard College. By JAMES WALKER, D.D. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.

The great reputation which Dr. Walker has long enjoyed, as one of the most impressive pulpit orators of the country, will suffer little diminution by the publication of these specimens of his rare powers of statement, argument, and illustration. To the general reader, they are, to be sure, deprived of the fascination of his voice and manner; but as the peculiarities of his elocution have their source in the peculiarities of his mental and moral organization, it will be found that the style and structure of these printed sermons suggest the mule of their delivery, which is simply the emphatic utterance of emphatic thought. The Italicized words, with which the volume abounds, palpably mark the results of thinking, and arrest attention because they are not less emphasized by the intellect than by the type. In reflecting Dr. Walker's mind, the work at the same time reflects his manner.

Every reader of these sermons will be struck by their thorough reasonableness,—a reasonableness which does not exclude, but includes, the deepest and warmest religious sensibility. Moral and religious feeling pervades every statement; but the feeling is still confined within a flexible framework of argument, which, while it enlarges with every access of emotion, is always an outlying boundary of thought, beyond which passion does not pass. Light continually asserts itself as more comprehensive in its reach than heat; and the noblest spiritual instincts and impulses are never allowed unchecked expression as sentiments, but have to submit to the restraints imposed by principles. Even in the remarkable sermon entitled, "The Heart more than the Head," it will be found that it is the head which legitimates the action of the heart. The sentiments are exalted above the intellect by a process purely intellectual, and the inferiority of the reason is shown to be a principle essentially reasonable. Thus, throughout the volume, the author's mental insight into the complex phenomena of our spiritual nature is always accompanied by a mental oversight of its actual and possible aberrations. A sound, large, "round-about" common sense, keen, eager, vigilant, sagacious, encompasses all the emotional elements of his thought. He has a subtile sense of mystery, but he is not a mystic. The most marvellous workings of the Divine Spirit he apprehends under the conditions of Law, and even in the raptures of devotion he never forgets the relation of cause and effect.

The style of these sermons is what might be expected from the character of the mind it expresses. If Dr. Walker were not a thinker, it is plain that he could never have been a rhetorician. He has no power at all as a writer, if writing be considered an accomplishment which can be separated from earnest thinking. Words are, with him, the mere instruments for the expression of things; and he hits on felicitous words only under that impatient stress of thought which demands exact expression for definite ideas. All his words, simple as they are, are therefore fairly earned, and he gives to them a force and significance which they do not bear in the dictionary. The mind of the writer is felt beating and burning beneath his phraseology, stamping every word with the image of a thought. Largeness of intellect, acute discrimination, clear and explicit statement, masterly arrangement of matter, an unmistakable performance of the real business of expression,—these qualities make every reader of the sermons conscious that a mind of great vigor, breadth, and pungency is brought into direct contact with his own. The almost ostentatious absence of "fine writing" only increases the effect of the plain and sinewy words.

If we pass from the form to the substance of Dr. Walker's teachings, we shall find that his sermons are especially characterized by practical wisdom. A scholar, a moralist, a metaphysician, a theologian, learned in all the lore and trained in the best methods of the schools, he is distinguished from most scholars by his broad grasp of every-day life. It is this quality which has given him his wide influence as a preacher, and this is a prominent charm of his printed sermons. He brings principles to the test of facts, and connects thoughts with things. The conscience which can easily elude the threats, the monitions, and the appeals of ordinary sermonizers, finds itself mastered by his mingled fervor, logic, and practical knowledge. Every sermon in the present volume is good for use, and furnishes both inducements and aids to the formation of manly Christian character. There is much, of course, to lift the depressed and inspire the weak; but the great peculiarity of the discourses is the resolute energy with which they grapple with the worldliness and sin of the proud and the strong.

The Monks of the West, from St. Benedict to St. Bernard. By the COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT, Member of the French Academy. Authorized Translation. Volumes I. and II. Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons. 1861. 8vo. pp. xii. and 515, 549.

These volumes form the first instalment of a work in which one of the great lights of the Romish Church in our day proposes to recount the glories of Western Monasticism, and to narrate the lives of some of the remarkable men who successively passed from the cloister to the Papal throne, or in positions scarcely less conspicuous permanently affected the history of the Church. His original design, however, does not appear to have extended beyond writing the life of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, which he intended to make in some measure a complement to his life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. But he judged rightly, that, in order to exhibit the character and influence of that remarkable man under all their various aspects, it was needful at the outset to retrace the early history of monastic institutions in the West, and to show how far they tended to prepare the way for such a man. Only a part of this preliminary task has been accomplished as yet; but enough has been done to show in what spirit the historian has approached his subject, how thoroughly he has explored the original sources of information, and what will probably be the real worth of his labors. For such a work Montalembert possesses adequate and in some respects peculiar qualifications. His learning, eloquence, and candor will be conceded by every one who is familiar with his previous writings or with his public life; and at the same time he unites a passionate love of liberty, everywhere apparent in his book, with a zeal for the Church, worthy of any of the monks whom he commemorates. While his narrative is always animated and picturesque, and often rises into passages of fervid eloquence, he has conducted his researches with the unwearied perseverance of a mere antiquary, and has exhausted every source of information. "Every word which I have written," he says, "has been drawn from original and contemporary sources; and if I have quoted facts or expressions from second-hand authors, it has never been without attentively verifying the original or completing the text. A single date, quotation, or note, apparently insignificant, has often cost me hours and sometimes days of labor. I have never contented myself with being approximately right, nor resigned myself to doubt until every chance of arriving at certainty was exhausted." To the spirit and temper in which the book is written no well-founded exception can be taken; but considerable abatement must be made from the author's estimate of the services rendered by the monks to Christian civilization, and no Protestant will accept his views as to the permanent worth of monastic institutions. With this qualification, and with some allowance for needless repetitions, we cannot but regard his work as a most attractive and eloquent contribution to ecclesiastical history.

About half of the first volume is devoted to a General Introduction, explanatory of the origin and design of the work, but mainly intended to paint the character of monastic institutions, to describe the happiness of a religious life, and to examine the charges brought against the monks. These topics are considered in ten chapters, filled with curious details, and written with an eloquence and an earnestness which it is difficult for the reader to resist. Following this we have a short and brilliant sketch of the social and political condition of the Roman Empire after the conversion of Constantine, exhibiting by a few masterly touches its wide-spread corruption, the feebleness of its rulers, and the utter degradation of the people. The next two books treat of the Monastic Precursors in the East as well as in the West, and present a series of brief biographical sketches of the most famous monks, from St. Anthony, the father of Eastern monasticism, to St. Benedict, the earliest legislator for the monasteries of the West. Among the illustrious men who pass before us in this review, and all of whom are skilfully delineated, are Basil of Caesarea and his friend Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Athanasius, Martin of Tours, and the numerous company of saints and doctors nurtured in the great monastery of Lerins. And though an account of the saintly women who have led lives of seclusion would scarcely seem to be included under the title of Montalembert's work, he does not neglect to add sketches of the most conspicuous of them,—Euphrosyne, Pelagia, Marcella, Furia, and others. These preliminary sketches fill the last half of the first volume.

The Fourth Book comprises an account of the Life and Rule of St. Benedict, and properly opens the history which Montalembert proposes to narrate. It presents a sufficiently minute sketch of the personal history of Benedict and his immediate followers; but its chief merit is in its very ample and satisfactory exposition of the Benedictine Rule. The next book traces the history of monastic institutions in Italy and Spain during the sixth and seventh centuries, and includes biographical notices of Cassiodorus, the founder of the once famous monastery of Viviers in Calabria, of St. Gregory the Great, of Leander, Bishop of Seville, and his brother Isidore, of Ildefonso of Toledo, and of many others of scarcely less renown in the early monastic records. The Sixth Book is devoted to the monks under the first Merovingians, and is divided into five sections, treating respectively of the conquest of Gaul by the Franks, of the arrival of St. Maur in Anjou and the propagation of the Benedictine rule there, of the relations previously existing between the monks and the Merovingians, of St. Radegund and her followers, and of the services of the monks in clearing the forests and opening the way for the advance of civilization. The Seventh Book records the life of St. Columbanus, and describes at much length his labors in Gaul, as well as those of his disciples, both in the great monastery of Luxeuil and in the numerous colonies which issued from it and spread over the whole neighborhood, bringing the narrative down to the close of the seventh century. At this point the portion of Montalembert's work now published terminates, leaving, we presume, several additional volumes to follow. For their appearance we shall look with much interest. If the remainder is executed in the same spirit as the portion now before us, and is marked by the same diligent study of the original authorities and the same persuasive eloquence, it will form one of the most valuable of the many attractive monographs which we owe to the French historians of our time, and will be read with equal interest by Catholics and Protestants.

Eighty Years' Progress of the United States, showing the Various
Channels of Industry and Education through which the People of the
United States have arisen from a British Colony to their Present
National Importance. Illustrated with over Two Hundred Engravings. New
York: 51 John Street. Worcester: L. Stebbins. Two Volumes. 8vo.

A vast amount of useful information is treasured up in these two national volumes. Agriculture, commerce and trade, the cultivation of cotton, education, the arts of design, banking, mining, steam, the fur-trade, etc., are subjects of interest everywhere, and the present writers seem to be specially competent for the task they have assumed. If the household library should possess such books more frequently, less ignorance would prevail on topics concerning which every American ought to be well-informed. Woful silence usually prevails when a foreigner asks for statistics on any point connected with our industrial progress, and very few take the trouble to get at facts which are easy enough to be had with a little painstaking. We are glad to see so much good material brought together as we find in these two well-filled volumes.

Electro-Physiology and Electro-Therapeutics: Showing the Rules and Methods for the Employment of Galvanism in Nervous Diseases, etc. Second Edition, with Additions. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1861.

At a time when the partition-wall between Jew and Gentile of the medical world is pretty thoroughly breached, if not thrown down, and quackery and imposture are tolerated as necessary evils, it is agreeable to meet with a real work of science, emanating from the labors of a regular physician, concerning the influences exerted by electricity on the human body, both in health and disease.

Electricity is one of the great powers of Nature, pervading all matter, existing in all mineral, vegetable, and animal bodies, not only acting in the combinations of the elements and molecules, but also serving as a means for their separation from each other. This imponderable fluid or power, whatever it may be, whether one or two, or a polarization of one force into the states + and -, is one of the most active agencies known to man, and although not capable of being weighed in the balance, is not found wanting anywhere in Nature. It courses in great currents beneath our feet, in the solid rocks of the earth, penetrating to the very interior of the globe, while it also rushes through our atmosphere in lurid flashes, and startles us with the crash and roar of heaven's artillery. It gives magnetic polarity to the earth, and directs the needle by its influence; for magnetic attraction is only an effect of the earth's thermo-electricity, excited by the sun's rays acting in a continuous course. Both animal and vegetable life are dependent on electric forces for their development; and many of their functions, directly or indirectly, result from their agency.

If this force controls to a great degree the living functions of our organs in their healthy action, it must be that it is concerned in those derangements and lesions which constitute disease and abnormal actions or disorders. It must have a remedial and the opposite effect, according as it is applied.

Is such a gigantic power to be left in the hands of charlatans, or shall it be reserved for application by scientific physicians? This is a question we must meet and answer practically.

It may be asked why a force of this nature has been so long neglected by practising physicians. The answer is very simple, and will be recognized as true by all middle-aged physicians in this country.

For the past fifty years it has been customary to state in lectures in our medical colleges, that "chemistry has nothing to do with medicine"; and since our teachers knew nothing of the subject themselves, they denounced such knowledge as unnecessary to the physician. Electricity, the great moving power in all chemical actions, shared the fate of chemistry in general, and met with condemnation without trial. A young physician did not dare to meddle with chemicals or with any branch of natural or experimental science for fear of losing his chance of medical employment by sinking the doctor among his gallipots.

Electricity, thus neglected, fell into the hands of irregular practitioners, and was as often used injuriously as beneficially, and more frequently without any effect. The absurd pretensions of galvanic baths for the extraction of mercury from the system will be remembered by most of our citizens, and the shocking practice of others is not forgotten.

It was therefore earnestly desired by medical practitioners who themselves were not by education competent to manage electric and galvanic machinery, that some medical man of good standing, who had made a special study of this subject, should undertake the treatment of diseases requiring the use of electricity. Dr. Garratt was induced to undertake this important duty, and he has prepared a work on this practice which embraces all that has appeared in the writings of others, both in this country and Europe, while he has, from his own researches and rich experience, added much new matter of great practical value. Among his original contributions we note,—

1st. A definite, systematic method for the application of Galvanic and Faradaic currents of electricity to the human organism, for curing or aiding in the cure of given classes of diseases. (See pages 475, 479, and 669 to 706; also Chap. 5, p. 280.)

2d. Improvements in the methods of applying electricity, as stated on pages 293 to 296, and 300, 329, and 332, which we have not room to copy.

3d. He has introduced the term Faradaic current to represent the induced current, first discovered by Professor Henry, and so much extended in application by Faraday.

4th. The determination of several definite points in sentient and mixed nerves, often the seats of neuralgic pain,—thus correcting Dr. Valleix's painful points.

5th. The treatment of uterine, and some other female disorders, by means of the induced galvanic current (pages 612 to 621).

A careful examination of this book shows it to contain a very full résumé of the best which have been written on the subjects embraced under the medical applications of electricity in its various modes of development, and a careful analysis of the doctrines of others; while the author has given frankly an account of cases in which he has failed, as of those in which he has been successful. He does not offer electric treatment as a panacea for "all the ills which flesh is heir to," but shows how far and in what cases it proves beneficial. He has shown that there is a right and a wrong way of operating, and that mischief may be done by an unskilful hand, while one who is well qualified by scientific knowledge and practical experience may do much good, and in many diseases,—more especially in those of the nerves, such as neuralgia and partial paralysis, in which remarkable cures have been effected. We commend this work to the attention of medical gentlemen, and especially to students of medicine who wish to be posted up in the novel methods of treating diseases. It is also a book which all scientific men may consult with advantage, and which will gratify the curiosity of the general scholar.

Memoir of Edward Forbes, F.R.S., Late Regius Professor of Natural
History in the University of Edinburgh. By GEORGE WILSON, M.D.,
F.R.S.E., and ARCHIBALD GEIKIE, F.R.S.E., etc. Cambridge and London:
MacMillan & Co.

Dr. Wilson did not live to finish the memoir which he so ably began. The great naturalist, Edward Forbes, deserved the best from his contemporaries, and we are glad to have the combined labors of such distinguished men as Wilson and Geikie put forth in commemoration of him. The chair of Natural History at Edinburgh was honored by him whose biography is now before us. His advent to that eminent post was everywhere hailed with a unanimity that augured well for his career, and no one could have been chosen to succeed the illustrious Jameson for whom there could have been more enthusiasm. His admitted genius and the range of his acquirements fully entitled him to the office, and all who know him looked forward to brilliant accomplishments in his varied paths of science. Death closed the brief years of this earnest student at the early age of thirty-nine. Cut off in the prime of his days, with his powers and purposes but partially unfolded, he yet shows grandly among the best men of his time.

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