[Illustration: POE, LOWELL, LONGFELLOW, PARKMAN]

 THE BEST

 _of the_

 WORLD'S CLASSICS

 RESTRICTED TO PROSE

 HENRY CABOT LODGE

 _Editor-in-Chief_

 FRANCIS W. HALSEY

 _Associate Editor_

 With an Introduction, Biographical and Explanatory Notes, etc. 

 IN TEN VOLUMES

 Vol. X

 AMERICA--II

 INDEX

 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

 NEW YORK AND LONDON

 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY

 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

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The Best of the World's Classics

VOL. X

AMERICA--II

1807-1909

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CONTENTS

VOL. X--AMERICA--II

 _Page_HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW--(Born in 1807, died in 1882. ) Musings in Père Lachaise. (From "Outre-Mer") 3

EDGAR ALLAN POE--(Born in 1809, died in 1849. ) I The Cask of Amontillado. (Published originally in _Godey's Magazine_ in 1846) 11 II Of Hawthorne and the Short Story. (From a review of Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales" and "Mosses from an Old Manse" published in _Godey's Magazine_ in 1846) 19 III Of Willis, Bryant, Halleck and Macaulay. (Passages selected from articles printed in Volume II of the "Works of Poe") 25

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES--(Born in 1809, died in 1894. ) I Of Doctors, Lawyers and Ministers. (From Chapter V of "The Poet at the Breakfast Table") 31 II Of the Genius of Emerson. (From an address before the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1882) 36 III The House in Which the Professor Lived. (From Part X of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table") 42 IV Of Women Who Put on Airs. (From Part XI of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table") 49

MARGARET FULLER--(Born in 1810, lost in a shipwreck off Fire Island in 1850. ) I Her Visit to George Sand. (From a letter to Elizabeth Hoar) 52 II Two Glimpses of Carlyle. (From a letter to Emerson) 54

HORACE GREELEY--(Born in 1811, died in 1872. ) The Fatality of Self-Seeking in Editors and Authors. (Printed with the "Miscellanies" in the "Recollections of a Busy Life") 58

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY--(Born in 1814, died in 1877. ) I Charles V and Philip II in Brussels. (From Chapter I of "The Rise of the Dutch Republic") 63 II The Arrival of the Spanish Armada. (From Chapter XIX of the "History of the United Netherlands") 74 III "The Spanish Fury. " (From Part IV, Chapter V, of "The Rise of the Dutch Republic") 84

RICHARD HENRY DANA, THE YOUNGER--(Born in 1815, died in 1882. ) A Fierce Gale under a Clear Sky. (From "Two Years Before the Mast") 93

HENRY DAVID THOREAU--(Born in 1817, died in 1862. ) I The Building of His House at Walden Pond. (From Chapter I of "Walden, or, Life in the Woods") 99 II How to Make Two Small Ends Meet. (From Chapters I and II of "Walden") 103 III On Reading the Ancient Classics. (From Chapter III of "Walden") 115 IV Of Society and Solitude. (From Chapter IV of "Walden") 120

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL--(Born in 1819, died in 1891. ) I The Poet as Prophet. (From an essay contributed to _The Pioneer_ in 1843) 125 II The First of the Moderns. (From the first essay in the first series, entitled "Among My Books") 129 III Of Faults Found in Shakespeare. (From the essay entitled "Shakespeare Once More, " printed in the first series entitled "Among My Books") 133 IV Americans as Successors of the Dutch. (From the essay entitled "On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners, " printed in "From My Study Window") 138

CHARLES A. DANA--(Born in 1819, died in 1897. ) Greeley as a Man of Genius. (From an article printed in the New York _Sun_, December 5, 1872) 146

JAMES PARTON--(Born in 1822, died in 1891. ) Aaron Burr and Madame Jumel. (From his "Life of Burr") 150

FRANCIS PARKMAN--(Born in 1823, died in 1893. ) I Champlain's Battle with the Iroquois. (From Chapter X of "The Pioneers of France in the New World") 157 II The Death of La Salle. (From Chapter XXV of "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West") 161 III The Coming of Frontenac to Canada. (From Chapters I and II of "Count Frontenac and New France") 167 IV The Death of Isaac Jogues. (From Chapters XVI and XX of "The Jesuits in North America") 171 V Why New France Failed. (From the Introduction to "The Pioneers of France in the New World") 176 VI The Return of the Coureurs-de-Bois. (From Chapter XVIII of "The Old Régime in Canada") 179

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS--(Born in 1824, died in 1892. ) Our Cousin the Curate. (From Chapter VII of "Prue and I") 183

ARTEMUS WARD--(Born in 1824, died in 1867. ) Forrest as Othello. (From "Artemus Ward, His Book") 191

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH--(Born in 1836, died in 1908. ) I A Sunrise in Stillwater. (From Chapter I of "The Stillwater Tragedy") 195 II The Fight at Slatter's Hill. (From Chapter XIII of "The Story of a Bad Boy") 198 III On Returning from Europe. (From Chapter IX of "From Ponkapog to Pesth") 204

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS--(Born in 1837. ) To Albany by the Night Boat. (From Chapter III of "The Wedding Journey") 207

JOHN HAY--(Born in 1838, died in 1905. ) Lincoln's Early Fame. (From Volume X, Chapter XVIII of "Abraham Lincoln, A History") 211

HENRY ADAMS--(Born in 1838. ) Jefferson's Retirement. (From the "History of the United States") 219

BRET HARTE--(Born in 1839, died in 1902. ) I Peggy Moffat's Inheritance. (From "The Twins of Table Mountain") 224 II John Chinaman. (From "The Luck of Roaring Camp") 236 III M'liss Goes to School. (From "M'liss, " one of the stories in "The Luck of Roaring Camp") 240

HENRY JAMES--(Born in 1843. ) I Among the Malvern Hills. (From "A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales") 246 II Turgeneff's World. (From "French Poets and Novelists") 252

INDEX TO THE TEN VOLUMES 255

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VOL. X

AMERICA--II

1807-1909

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HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

 Born in 1807, died in 1882; graduated from Bowdoin in 1825; traveled in Europe in 1826-29; professor at Bowdoin in 1829-35; again visited Europe in 1835-86; professor at Harvard in 1836-54; published "Voices of the Night" in 1839, "Evangeline" in 1847, "Hiawatha" in 1855, "Miles Standish" in 1858; "Tales of a Wayside Inn" in 1863, a translation of Dante in 1867-70, "The Divine Tragedy" in 1871, and many other volumes of verse; his prose writings include "Outre-Mer, " published in 1835, and two novels, "Hyperion, " published in 1839, and "Kavanagh, " in 1849. 

MUSINGS IN PÈRE LACHAISE[1]

The cemetery of Père Lachaise is the Westminster Abbey of Paris. Bothare the dwellings of the dead; but in one they repose in green alleysand beneath the open sky--in the other their resting place is in theshadowy aisle and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is atemple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one the softmelancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the warbleof birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentlevisit of the sunshine and the shower: in the other no sound but thepassing footfall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight stealsin through high and dusky windows; and the damps of the gloomy vaultlie heavy on the heart, and leave their stain upon the molderingtracery of the tomb. 

[Footnote 1: From "Outre-Mer. "]

Père Lachaise stands just beyond the Barrière d'Aulney, on a hillsidelooking toward the city. Numerous gravel walks, winding through shadyavenues and between marble monuments, lead up from the principalentrance to a chapel on the summit. There is hardly a grave that hasnot its little enclosure planted with shrubbery, and a thick mass offoliage half conceals each funeral stone. The sighing of the wind, asthe branches rise and fall upon it--the occasional note of a birdamong the trees, and the shifting of light and shade upon the tombsbeneath have a soothing effect upon the mind; and I doubt whether anyone can enter that enclosure, where repose the dust and ashes of somany great and good men, without feeling the religion of the placesteal over him, and seeing something of the dark and gloomy expressionpass off from the stern countenance of Death. 

It was near the close of a bright summer afternoon that I visited thiscelebrated spot for the first time. The first object that arrested myattention on entering was a monument in the form of a small Gothicchapel which stands near the entrance, in the avenue leading to theright hand. On the marble couch within are stretched two figures, carved in stone and drest in the antique garb of the Middle Ages. Itis the tomb of Abélard and Héloïse. The history of these twounfortunate lovers is too well known to need recapitulation; butperhaps it is not so well known how often their ashes were disturbedin the slumber of the grave. Abélard died in the monastery of St. Marcel, and was buried in the vaults of the church. His body wasafterward removed to the convent of the Paraclete, at the request ofHéloïse, and at her death her body was deposited in the same tomb. Three centuries they reposed together; after which they were separatedto different sides of the church, to calm the delicate scruples of thelady abbess of the convent. More than a century afterward they wereagain united in the same tomb; and when at length the Paraclete wasdestroyed, their moldering remains were transported to the church ofNogent-sur-Seine. They were next deposited in an ancient cloister atParis, and now repose near the gateway of the cemetery of PèreLachaise. What a singular destiny was theirs! that, after a life ofsuch passionate and disastrous love--such sorrows, and tears, andpenitence--their very dust should not be suffered to rest quietly inthe grave!--that their death should so much resemble their life in itschanges and vicissitudes, its partings and its meetings, itsinquietudes and its persecutions!--that mistaken zeal should followthem down to the very tomb--as if earthly passion could glimmer, likea funeral lamp, amid the damps of the charnel house, and "even intheir ashes burn their wonted fires"!

As I gazed on the sculptured forms before me, and the little chapelwhose Gothic roof seemed to protect their marble sleep, my busy memoryswung back the dark portals of the past, and the picture of their sadand eventful lives came up before me in the gloomy distance. What alesson for those who are endowed with the fatal gift of genius! Itwould seem, indeed, that He who "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"tempers also His chastisements to the errors and infirmities of aweak and simple mind--while the transgressions of him upon whosenature are more strongly marked the intellectual attributes of theDeity are followed, even upon earth, by severer tokens of the Divinedispleasure. He who sins in the darkness of a benighted intellect seesnot so clearly, through the shadows that surround him, the countenanceof an offended God; but he who sins in the broad noonday of a clearand radiant mind, when at length the delirium of sensual passion hassubsided and the cloud flits away from before the sun, tremblesbeneath the searching eye of that accusing Power which is strong inthe strength of a godlike intellect. Thus the mind and the heart areclosely linked together, and the errors of genius bear with them theirown chastisement, even upon earth. The history of Abélard and Héloïseis an illustration of this truth. But at length they sleep well. Theirlives are like a tale that is told; their errors are "folded up like abook"; and what mortal hand shall break the seal that death has setupon them?

Leaving this interesting tomb behind me, I took a pathway to the left, which conducted me up the hillside. I soon found myself in the deepshade of heavy foliage, where the branches of the yew and willowmingled, interwoven with the tendrils and blossoms of the honeysuckle. I now stood in the most populous part of this city of tombs. Everystep awakened a new train of thrilling recollections, for at everystep my eye caught the name of some one whose glory had exalted thecharacter of his native land and resounded across the waters of theAtlantic. Philosophers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poetsslept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument, andsome beneath the simple headstone. But the political intrigue, thedream of science, the historical research, the ravishing harmony ofsound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre--where are they?With the living, and not with the dead! The right hand has lost itscunning in the grave; but the soul, whose high volitions it obeyed, still lives to reproduce itself in ages yet to come. 

Amid these graves of genius I observed here and there a splendidmonument, which had been raised by the pride of family over the dustof men who could lay no claim either to the gratitude or remembranceof posterity. Their presence seemed like an intrusion into thesanctuary of genius. What had wealth to do there? Why should it crowdthe dust of the great? That was no thoroughfare of business--no martof gain! There were no costly banquets there; no silken garments, norgaudy liveries, nor obsequious attendants! "What servants, " saysJeremy Taylor, "shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? whatfriends to visit us? what officious people to cleanse away the moistand unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of theweeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funerals?"Material wealth gives a factitious superiority to the living, but thetreasures of intellect give a real superiority to the dead; and therich man, who would not deign to walk the street with the starving andpenniless man of genius, deems it an honor, when death has redeemedthe fame of the neglected, to have his ashes laid beside him, and toclaim with him the silent companionship of the grave. 

I continued my walk through the numerous winding paths, as chance orcuriosity directed me. Now I was lost in a little green hollowoverhung with thick-leaved shrubbery, and then came out upon anelevation, from which, through an opening in the trees, the eye caughtglimpses of the city, and the little esplanade at the foot of the hillwhere the poor lie buried. There poverty hires its grave and takes buta short lease of the narrow house. At the end of a few months, or atmost of a few years, the tenant is dislodged to give place to another, and he in turn to a third. "Who, " says Sir Thomas Browne, "knows thefate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath theoracle of his ashes, or whither they are to be scattered?"

Yet even in that neglected corner the hand of affection had been busyin decorating the hired house. Most of the graves were surrounded witha slight wooden paling, to secure them from the passing footstep;there was hardly one so deserted as not to be marked with its littlewooden cross and decorated with a garland of flowers; and here andthere I could perceive a solitary mourner, clothed in black, stoopingto plant a shrub on the grave, or sitting in motionless sorrow besideit. 

As I passed on amid the shadowy avenues of the cemetery, I could nothelp comparing my own impressions with those which others have feltwhen walking alone among the dwellings of the dead. Are, then, thesculptured urn and storied monument nothing more than symbols offamily pride? Is all I see around me a memorial of the living morethan of the dead, an empty show of sorrow, which thus vaunts itself inmournful pageant and funeral parade? Is it indeed true, as some havesaid, that the simple wild flower which springs spontaneously upon thegrave, and the rose which the hand of affection plants there, arefitter objects wherewith to adorn the narrow house? No! I feel that itis not so! Let the good and the great be honored even in the grave. Let the sculptured marble direct our footsteps to the scene of theirlong sleep; let the chiseled epitaph repeat their names, and tell uswhere repose the nobly good and wise! It is not true that all areequal in the grave. There is no equality even there. The mere handfulof dust and ashes, the mere distinction of prince and beggar, of arich winding sheet and a shroudless burial, of a solitary grave and afamily vault--were this all, then, indeed it would be true that deathis a common leveler. Such paltry distinctions as those of wealth andpoverty are soon leveled by the spade and mattock; the damp breath ofthe grave blots them out forever. But there are other distinctionswhich even the mace of death can not level or obliterate. Can it breakdown the distinction of virtue and vice? Can it confound the good withthe bad? the noble with the base? all that is truly great, and pure, and godlike, with all that is scorned, and sinful, and degraded? No!Then death is not a common leveler!. .. 

Before I left the graveyard the shades of evening had fallen, and theobjects around me grown dim and indistinct. As I passed the gateway, Iturned to take a parting look. I could distinguish only the chapel onthe summit of the hill, and here and there a lofty obelisk ofsnow-white marble, rising from the black and heavy mass of foliagearound, and pointing upward to the gleam of the departed sun, thatstill lingered in the sky, and mingled with the soft starlight of asummer evening. 

EDGAR ALLAN POE

 Born in 1809, died in 1849; his father and mother actors; adopted by John Allan of Richmond after his mother's death; educated in Richmond, in England, at the University of Virginia, and at West Point; published "Tamerlane" in 1827; settled in Baltimore and devoted himself to literature; editor of several magazines 1835-44; published "The Raven" in 1845, "Al Aaraaf" in 1829, "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque" in 1840. 

I

THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO[2]

It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of thecarnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me withexcessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head wassurmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see himthat I thought I should never have done wringing his hand. 

[Footnote 2: Published in _Godey's Magazine_ in 1846. ]

I said to him: "My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkablewell you are looking to-day! But I have received a pipe of what passesfor Amontillado, and I have my doubts. "

"How?" said he. "Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible! And in the middle ofthe carnival!"

"I have my doubts, " I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the fullAmontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were notto be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain. "

"Amontillado!"

"I have my doubts--"

"Amontillado!"

"And I must satisfy them. "

"Amontillado!"

"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has acritical turn, it is he. He will tell me--"

"Luchesi can not tell Amontillado from Sherry. "

"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for yourown. "

"Come, let us go. "

"Whither?"

"To your vaults. "

"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceiveyou have an engagement. Luchesi--"

"I have no engagement; come. "

"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold withwhich I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with niter. "

"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! Youhave been imposed upon. And as for Luchesi, he can not distinguishSherry from Amontillado. "

Thus speaking, Fortunato possest himself of my arm. Putting on a maskof black silk, and drawing a _roquelaure_ closely about my person, Isuffered him to hurry me to my palazzo. 

There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry inhonor of the time. I had told them that I should not return until themorning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from thehouse. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure theirimmediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned. 

I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato, bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway that led intothe vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting himto be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of thedescent, and stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of theMontresors. 

The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingledas he strode. 

"The pipe, " said he. 

"It is farther on, " said I; "but observe the white web-work whichgleams from these cavern walls. "

He turned toward me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs thatdistilled the rheum of intoxication. 

"Niter?" he asked, at length. 

"Niter, " I replied. "How long have you had that cough?"

"Ugh! ugh! ugh--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh!ugh! ugh!"

My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes. 

"It is nothing, " he said, at last. 

"Come, " I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health isprecious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. Wewill go back; you will be ill, and I can not be responsible. Besides, there is Luchesi--"

"Enough, " he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die. "

"True--true, " I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarmingyou unnecessarily--but you should use all proper caution. A draft ofthis Medoc will defend us from the damps. "

Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long rowof its fellows that lay upon the mold. 

"Drink, " I said, presenting him the wine. 

He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to mefamiliarly, while his bells jingled. 

"I drink, " he said, "to the buried that repose around us. "

"And I to your long life. "

He again took my arm, and we proceeded. 

"These vaults, " he said, "are extensive. "

"The Montresors, " I replied, "were a great and numerous family. "

"I forget your arms. "

"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpentrampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel. "

"And the motto?"

_"Nemo me impune lacessit. "_

"Good!" he said. 

The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grewwarm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled bones, withcasks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of thecatacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seizeFortunato by an arm above the elbow. 

"The niter!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon thevaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickleamong the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Yourcough--"

"It is nothing, " he said; "let us go on. But first, another draft ofthe Medoc. "

I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at abreath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw thebottle upward with a gesticulation I did not understand. 

I looked at him in surprize. He repeated the movement--a grotesqueone. 

"You do not comprehend!" he said. 

"Not I, " I replied. 

"Then you are not of the brotherhood. "

"How?"

"You are not of the masons. "

"Yes, yes, " I said, "yes, yes. "

"You? Impossible! A mason?"

"A mason, " I replied. 

"A sign, " he said. 

"It is this, " I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds ofmy _roquelaure_. 

"You jest, " he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceedto the Amontillado. "

"Be it so, " I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and againoffering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our routein search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glowthan flame. 

At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another lessspacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to thevault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Threesides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuouslyupon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within thewalls thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived astill interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, inheight six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no specialuse within itself, but formed merely the interval between two of thecolossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by oneof their circumscribing walls of solid granite. 

It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored topry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light didnot enable us to see. 

"Proceed, " I said, "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi--"

"He is an ignoramus, " interrupted my friend, as he stept unsteadilyforward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant hehad reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progressarrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and Ihad fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one ofthese depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing thelinks about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secureit. He was too much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key I steptback from the recess. 

"Pass your hand, " I said, "over the wall; you can not help feeling theniter. Indeed it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you allthe little attentions in my power. "

"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from hisastonishment. 

"True, " I replied; "the Amontillado. "

As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of whichI have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantityof building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid ofmy trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche. 

I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discoveredthat the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from thedepth of the recess. It was _not_ the cry of a drunken man. There wasthen a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and thethird, and the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of thechain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that Imight harken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labors andsat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided, I resumedthe trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with mybreast. I again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within. 

A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from thethroat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For abrief moment I hesitated--I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I beganto grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instantreassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells ofhim who clamored. I reechoed--I aided--I surpassed them in volume andin strength. I did this, and the clamorer grew still. 

It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I hadcompleted the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished aportion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a singlestone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; Iplaced it partially in its destined position. But now there came fromout the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It wassucceeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing asthat of the noble Fortunato. The voice said:

"Ha! ha! ha!--he! he!--a very good joke--indeed--an excellent jest. Wewill have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo--he! he! he!--overour wine--he! he! he!"

"The Amontillado!" I said. 

"He! he! he!--he! he! he!--yes, the Amontillado. But is it not gettinglate? Will they not be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunatoand the rest? Let us be gone. "

"Yes, " I said, "let us be gone. "

"For the love of God, Montresor!"

"Yes, " I said, "for the love of God!"

But to these words I harkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. Icalled aloud: "Fortunato!"

No answer. I called again: "Fortunato!"

No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture andlet it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of thebells. My heart grew sick--on account of the dampness of thecatacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labor. I forced the laststone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry Ireerected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century nomortal has disturbed them. _In pace requiescat!_

II

OF HAWTHORNE AND THE SHORT STORY[3]

The reputation of the author of "Twice-Told Tales" has been confined, until very lately, to literary society; and I have not been wrong, perhaps, in citing him as the example, par excellence, in thiscountry, of the privately admired and publicly-unappreciated man ofgenius. Within the last year or two, it is true, an occasional critichas been urged, by honest indignation, into very warm approval. Mr. Webber, [4] for instance (than whom no one has a keener relish for thatkind of writing which Mr. Hawthorne has best illustrated), gave us, ina late number of _The American Review_, a cordial and certainly a fulltribute to his talents; and since the issue of the "Mosses from an OldManse" criticisms of similar tone have been by no means infrequent inour more authoritative journals. I can call to mind few reviews ofHawthorne published before the "Mosses. " One I remember in _Arcturus_(edited by Matthews and Duyckinck[5]) for May, 1841; another in the_American Monthly_ (edited by Hoffman[6] and Herbert) for March, 1838;a third in the ninety-sixth number of _The North American Review_. These criticisms, however, seemed to have little effect on the populartaste--at least, if we are to form any idea of the popular taste byreference to its expression in the newspapers, or by the sale of theauthor's book. It was never the fashion (until lately) to speak ofhim in any summary of our best authors. .. . 

[Footnote 3: From a review of Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales" and"Mosses from an Old Manse, " published in _Godey's Magazine_ in 1846. Except for an earlier notice by Longfellow in _The North AmericanReview_, this was the first notable recognition Hawthorne's storiesreceived from a contemporary critic. ]

[Footnote 4: Charles Wilkens Webber, magazine writer and author of adozen books now forgotten, was a native of Kentucky who settled in NewYork. In 1855 he joined William Walker in his filibustering expeditionto Central America, and was killed in the battle of Rivas. ]

[Footnote 5: Evert A. Duyckinck, joint editor with his brother of the"Cyclopedia of American Literature. "]

[Footnote 6: Charles Fenno Hoffman, poet, novelist, and critic, wasrelated to Mathilda Hoffman, the sweetheart of Washington Irving. ]

Beyond doubt, this inappreciation of him on the part of the publicarose chiefly from the two causes to which I have referred--from thefacts that he is neither a man of wealth nor a quack; but these areinsufficient to account for the whole effect. No small portion of itis attributable to the very marked idiosyncrasy of Mr. Hawthornehimself. In one sense, and in great measure, to be peculiar is to beoriginal, and than the true originality there is no higher literaryvirtue. This true or commendable originality, however, implies not theuniform, but the continuous peculiarity--a peculiarity springing fromever-active vigor of fancy--better still if from ever-present force ofimagination, giving its own hue, its own character to everything ittouches, and, especially, self-impelled to touch everything. .. . 

The pieces in the volumes entitled "Twice-Told Tales" are now in theirthird republication, and, of course, are thrice-told. Moreover, theyare by no means all tales, either in the ordinary or in the legitimateunderstanding of the term. Many of them are pure essays. Of the EssaysI must be content to speak in brief. They are each and all beautiful, without being characterized by the polish and adaptation so visible inthe tales proper. A painter would at once note their leading orpredominant feature, and style it repose. There is no attempt ateffect. All is quiet, thoughtful, subdued. Yet this repose may existsimultaneously with high originality of thought; and Mr. Hawthorne hasdemonstrated the fact. At every turn we meet with novel combinations;yet these combinations never surpass the limits of the quiet. We aresoothed as we read; and withal is a calm astonishment that ideas soapparently obvious have never occurred or been presented to us before. Herein our author differs materially from Lamb or Hunt orHazlitt--who, with vivid originality of manner and expression, haveless of the true novelty of thought than is generally supposed, andwhose originality, at best, has an uneasy and meretricious quaintness, replete with startling effects unfounded in nature, and inducingtrains of reflection which lead to no satisfactory result. The essaysof Hawthorne have much of the character of Irving, with more oforiginality, and less of finish; while, compared with the _Spectator_, they have a vast superiority at all points. The Spectator, Mr. Irvingand Hawthorne have in common that tranquil and subdued manner which Ihave chosen to denominate repose; but, in the ease of the two former, this repose is attained rather by the absence of novel combination, orof originality, than otherwise, and consists chiefly in the calm, quiet, unostentatious expression of commonplace thoughts, in anunambitious, unadulterated Saxon. In them, by strong effort, we aremade to conceive the absence of all. In the essays before me theabsence of effort is too obvious to be mistaken, and a strongundercurrent of suggestion runs continuously beneath the upper streamof the tranquil thesis. In short, these effusions of Mr. Hawthorne arethe product of a truly imaginative intellect, restrained, and in somemeasure represt by fastidiousness of taste, by constitutionalmelancholy, and by indolence. 

But it is of his tales that I desire principally to speak. The taleproper, in my opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field forthe exercise of the loftiest talent which can be afforded by the widedomains of mere prose. Were I bidden to say how the highest geniuscould be most advantageously employed for the best display of its ownpowers, I should answer, without hesitation--in the composition of arimed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour. Within this limit alone can the highest order of true poetry exist. Ineed only here say, upon this topic, that, in almost all classes ofcomposition, the unity of effect or impression is a point of thegreatest importance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity can not bethoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal can not be completedat one sitting. We may continue the reading of a prose composition, from the very nature of prose itself, much longer than we canpersevere, to any good purpose, in the perusal of a poem. This latter, if truly fulfilling the demands of the poetic sentiment, induces anexaltation of the soul which can not be long sustained. All highexcitements are necessarily transient. Thus a long poem is a paradox. And, without unity of impression, the deepest effects can not bebrought about. Epics were the offspring of an imperfect sense of art, and their reign is no more. A poem too brief may produce a vivid, butnever an intense or enduring impression. Without a certain continuityof effort--without a certain duration or repetition of purpose--thesoul is never deeply moved. There must be the dropping of the waterupon the rock. De Béranger has wrought brilliant things--pungent andspirit-stirring--but, like all impassive bodies, they lack momentum, and thus fail to satisfy the poetic sentiment. They sparkle andexcite, but, from want of continuity, fail deeply to impress. Extremebrevity will degenerate into epigrammatism; but the sin of extremelength is even more unpardonable. _In medio tutissimus ibis. _ Were Icalled upon, however, to designate that class of composition which, next to such a poem as I have suggested, should best fulfil thedemands of high genius--should offer it the most advantageous field ofexertion--I should unhesitatingly speak of the prose tale, as Mr. Hawthorne has here exemplified it. I allude to the short prosenarrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in itsperusal. 

Of Mr. Hawthorne's "Tales" we would say, emphatically that they belongto the highest region of art--an art subservient to genius of a verylofty order. .. . We know of few compositions which the critic can morehonestly commend than these "Twice-Told Tales. " As Americans, we feelproud of the book. 

Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, creation, imagination, originality--a trait which, in the literature of fiction, ispositively worth all the rest. But the nature of the originality, sofar as regards its manifestation in letters, is but imperfectlyunderstood. The inventive or original mind as frequently displaysitself in novelty of tone as in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne isoriginal in all points. It would be a matter of some difficulty todesignate the best of these tales; we repeat that, without exception, they are beautiful. 

He has the purest style, the finest taste, the most availablescholarship, the most delicate humor, the most touching pathos, themost radiant imagination, the most consummate ingenuity; and withthese varied good qualities he has done well as a mystic. But is thereany one of these qualities which should prevent his doing doubly aswell in a career of honest, upright, sensible, prehensible andcomprehensible things? Let him mend his pen, get a bottle of visibleink, come out from the "Old Manse, " cut Mr. Alcott, hang (if possible)the editor of The Dial, and throw out of the window to the pigs allhis odd numbers of _The North American Review_. 

III

OF WILLIS, BRYANT, HALLECK, AND MACAULAY[7]

Whatever may be thought of Mr. Willis's talents, there can be no doubtabout the fact that, both as an author and as a man, he has made agood deal of noise in the world--at least for an American. Hisliterary life, in especial, has been one continual emeute; but thenhis literary character is modified or impelled in a very remarkabledegree by his personal one. His success (for in point of fame, if ofnothing else, he has certainly been successful) is to be attributedone-third to his mental ability and two-thirds to his physicaltemperament--the latter goading him into the accomplishment of whatthe former merely gave him the means of accomplishing. .. . At a veryearly age, Mr. Willis seems to have arrived at an understanding that, in a republic such as ours, the mere man of letters must ever be acipher, and endeavored, accordingly, to unite the eclat of thelitterateur with that of the man of fashion or of society. He "pushedhimself, " went much into the world, made friends with the gentler sex, "delivered" poetical addresses, wrote "scriptural" poems, traveled, sought the intimacy of noted women, and got into quarrels withnotorious men. All these things served his purpose--if, indeed, I amright in supposing that he had any purpose at all. It is quiteprobable that, as before hinted, he acted only in accordance with hisphysical temperament; but, be this as it may, his personal greatlyadvanced, if it did not altogether establish his literary fame. I haveoften carefully considered whether, without the physique of which Ispeak, there is that in the absolute morale of Mr. Willis which wouldhave earned him reputation as a man of letters, and my conclusion isthat he could not have failed to become noted in some degree underalmost any circumstances, but that about two-thirds (as above stated)of his appreciation by the public should be attributed to thoseadventures which grew immediately out of his animal constitution. 

[Footnote 7: Passages selected from articles now printed in Volume IIof the "Works of Poe, " as published in New York in 1876. ]

Mr. Bryant's position in the poetical world is, perhaps, bettersettled than that of any American. There is less difference of opinionabout his rank; but, as usual, the agreement is more decided inprivate literary circles than in what appears to be the publicexpression of sentiment as gleaned from the press. I may as wellobserve here, too, that this coincidence of opinion in private circlesis in all cases very noticeable when compared with the discrepancy ofthe apparent public opinion. In private it is quite a rare thing tofind any strongly-marked disagreement--I mean, of course, about mereauthorial merit. .. . It will never do to claim for Bryant a genius ofthe loftiest order, but there has been latterly, since the days of Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Lowell, a growing disposition to deny him genius inany respect. He is now commonly spoken of as "a man of high poeticaltalent, very 'correct, ' with a warm appreciation of the beauty ofnature and great descriptive powers, but rather too much of theold-school manner of Cowper, Goldsmith and Young. " This is the truth, but not the whole truth. Mr. Bryant has genius, and that of a markedcharacter, but it has been overlooked by modern schools, becausedeficient in those externals which have become in a measure symbolicalof those schools. 

The name of Halleck is at least as well established in the poeticalworld as that of any American. Our principal poets are, perhaps, mostfrequently named in this order--Bryant, Halleck, Dana, Sprague, [8]Longfellow, Willis, and so on--Halleck coming second in the series, but holding, in fact, a rank in the public opinion quite equal to thatof Bryant. The accuracy of the arrangement as above made may, indeed, be questioned. For my own part, I should have it thus--Longfellow, Bryant, Halleck, Willis, Sprague, Dana; and, estimating rather thepoetic capacity than the poems actually accomplished, there are threeor four comparatively unknown writers whom I would place in the seriesbetween Bryant and Halleck, while there are about a dozen whom Ishould assign a position between Willis and Sprague. Two dozen atleast might find room between Sprague and Dana--this latter, I fear, owing a very large portion of his reputation to his quondam editorialconnection with _The North American Review_. One or two poets, now inmy mind's eye, I should have no hesitation in posting above even Mr. Longfellow--still not intending this as very extravagant praise. .. . Mr. Halleck, in the apparent public estimate, maintains a somewhatbetter position than that to which, on absolute grounds, he isentitled. There is something, too, in the bonhomie of certain of hiscompositions--something altogether distinct from poetic merit--whichhas aided to establish him; and much also must be admitted on thescore of his personal popularity, which is deservedly great. With allthese allowances, however, there will still be found a large amount ofpoetical fame to which he is fairly entitled. .. . Personally he is aman to be admired, respected, but more especially beloved. His addresshas all the captivating bonhomie which is the leading feature of hispoetry, and, indeed, of his whole moral nature. With his friends heis all ardor, enthusiasm and cordiality, but to the world at large heis reserved, shunning society, into which he is seduced only withdifficulty, and upon rare occasions. The love of solitude seems tohave become with him a passion. 

[Footnote 8: Charles Sprague, born in Boston in 1791, was known in hisown day as "the American Pope. "]

Macaulay has obtained a reputation which, altho deservedly great, isyet in a remarkable measure undeserved. The few who regard him merelyas a terse, forcible and logical writer, full of thought, andabounding in original views, often sagacious and never otherwise thanadmirably exprest--appear to us precisely in the right. The many wholook upon him as not only all this, but as a comprehensive andprofound thinker, little prone to error, err essentially themselves. The source of the general mistake lies in a very singularconsideration--yet in one upon which we do not remember ever to haveheard a word of comment. We allude to a tendency in the public mindtoward logic for logic's sake--a liability to confound the vehiclewith the conveyed--an aptitude to be so dazzled by the luminousnesswith which an idea is set forth as to mistake it for the luminousnessof the idea itself. The error is one exactly analogous with that whichleads the immature poet to think himself sublime wherever he isobscure, because obscurity is a source of the sublime--thusconfounding obscurity of expression with the expression of obscurity. In the case of Macaulay--and we may say, _en passant_, of our ownChanning--we assent to what he says too often because we so veryclearly understand what it is that he intends to say. Comprehendingvividly the points and the sequence of his argument, we fancy that weare concurring in the argument itself. It is not every mind which isat once able to analyze the satisfaction it receives from such essaysas we see here. If it were merely beauty of style for which they weredistinguished--if they were remarkable only for rhetoricalflourishes--we would not be apt to estimate these flourishes at morethan their due value. We would not agree with the doctrines of theessayist on account of the elegance with which they were urged. On thecontrary, we would be inclined to disbelief. But when all ornamentsave that of simplicity is disclaimed--when we are attacked byprecision of language, by perfect accuracy of expression, bydirectness and singleness of thought, and above all by a logic themost rigorously close and consequential--it is hardly a matter forwonder that nine of us out of ten are content to rest in thegratification thus received as in the gratification of absolutetruth. 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

 Born in 1809, died in 1894; professor in the Medical School of Harvard in 1847-82; wrote for the _Atlantic Monthly_ "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" in 1857-58, "The Professor at the Breakfast Table" in 1859, "The Poet at the Breakfast Table" in 1872; published "Elsie Venner" in 1861, "The Guardian Angel" in 1868, "A Mortal Antipathy" in 1885; a collection of verse entitled "Songs in Many Keys" in 1861, "Humorous Poems" in 1865, "Songs of Many Seasons, " in 1874, "Before the Curfew" in 1888; also wrote volumes of essays and memoirs of Emerson and Motley. 

I

OF DOCTORS, LAWYERS, AND MINISTERS[9]

"What is your general estimate of doctors, lawyers, and ministers?"said I. 

"Wait a minute, till I have got through with your first question, "said the Master. "One thing at a time. You asked me about the youngdoctors, and about our young doctors, they come home _très bienchaussés_, as a Frenchman would say, mighty well shod withprofessional knowledge. But when they begin walking round among theirpoor patients--they don't commonly start with millionaires--they findthat their new shoes of scientific acquirements have got to be brokenin just like a pair of boots or brogans. I don't know that I have putit quite strong enough. Let me try again. You've seen those fellows atthe circus that get up on horseback, so big that you wonder how theycould climb into the saddle. But pretty soon they throw off theiroutside coat, and the next minute another one, and then the one underthat, and so they keep peeling off one garment after another tillpeople begin to look queer and think they are going too far for strictpropriety. Well, that is the way a fellow with a real practical turnserves a good many of his scientific wrappers--flings 'em off forother people to pick up, and goes right at the work of curingstomach-aches and all the other little mean unscientific complaintsthat make up the larger part of every doctor's business. I think ourDr. Benjamin is a worthy young man, and if you are in need of a doctorat any time I hope you will go to him; and if you come off withoutharm, I will--recommend some other friend to try him. "

[Footnote 9: From Chapter V of "The Poet at the Breakfast Table. "Copyright, 1872, 1891, by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Published byHoughton, Mifflin Company. ]

I thought he was going to say he would try him in his own person; butthe Master is not fond of committing himself. 

"Now I will answer your other question, " he said. "The lawyers are thecleverest men, the ministers are the most learned, and the doctors arethe most sensible. "

"The lawyers are a picked lot, 'first scholars, ' and the like, buttheir business is as unsympathetic as Jack Ketch's. There is nothinghumanizing in their relations with their fellow creatures. They go forthe side that retains them. They defend the man they know to be arogue, and not very rarely throw suspicion on the man they know to beinnocent. Mind you, I am not finding fault with them--every side of acase has a right to the best statement it admits of; but I say it doesnot tend to make them sympathetic. Suppose in a case of Fever _vs. _Patient, the doctor should side with either party according to whetherthe old miser or his expectant heir was his employer. Suppose theminister should side with the Lord or the devil, according to thesalary offered, and other incidental advantages, where the soul of asinner was in question. You can see what a piece of work it would makeof their sympathies. But the lawyers are quicker witted than either ofthe other professions, and abler men generally. They are good-natured, or if they quarrel, their quarrels are above-board. I don't think theyare as accomplished as the ministers; but they have a way of crammingwith special knowledge for a case, which leaves a certain shallowsediment of intelligence in their memories about a good many things. They are apt to talk law in mixt company; and they have a way oflooking round when they make a point, as if they were addressing ajury, that is mighty aggravating--as I once had occasion to see whenone of 'em, and a pretty famous one, put me on the witness stand at adinner party once. 

"The ministers come next in point of talent. They are far more curiousand widely interested outside of their own calling than either of theother professions. I like to talk with 'em. They are interesting men:full of good feelings, hard workers, always foremost in good deeds, and on the whole the most efficient civilizing class--working downwardfrom knowledge to ignorance, that is; not so much upward, perhaps--that we have. The trouble is that so many of 'em work inharness, and it is pretty sure to chafe somewhere. They feed us oncanned meats mostly. They cripple our instincts and reason, and giveus a crutch of doctrine. I have talked with a great many of 'em, ofall sorts of belief; and I don't think they are quite so easy in theirminds, the greater number of them, nor so clear in their convictionsas one would think to hear 'em lay down the law in the pulpit. Theyused to lead the intelligence of their parishes; now they do prettywell if they keep up with it, and they are very apt to lag behind it. Then they must have a colleague. The old minister thinks he can holdto his old course, sailing right into the wind's eye of human nature, as straight as that famous old skipper John Bunyan; the young ministerfalls off three or four points, and catches the breeze that left theold man's sails all shivering. By-and-by the congregation will getahead of him, and then it must have another new skipper. The priestholds his own pretty well; the minister is coming down everygeneration nearer and nearer to the common level of the usefulcitizen--no oracle at all, but a man of more than average moralinstincts, who, if he knows anything, knows how little he knows. Theministers are good talkers, only the struggle between nature and gracemakes some of 'em a little awkward occasionally. The women do theirbest to spoil 'em, as they do the poets. You find it pleasant to bespoiled, no doubt; so do they. Now and then one of 'em goes over thedam; no wonder--they're always in the rapids. "

By this time our three ladies had their faces all turned toward thespeaker, like the weathercocks in a northeaster, and I thought it bestto switch off the talk on to another rail. 

"How about the doctors?" I said. 

"Theirs is the least learned of the professions, in this country atleast. They have not half the general culture of the lawyers, nor aquarter of that of the ministers. I rather think, tho, they are moreagreeable to the common run of people than the men with the blackcoats or the men with green bags. People can swear before 'em if theywant to, and they can't very well before ministers. I don't carewhether they want to swear or not, they don't want to be on their goodbehavior. Besides, the minister has a little smack of the sexton abouthim; he comes when people are _in extremis_, but they don't send forhim every time they make a slight moral slip--tell a lie, forinstance, or smuggle a silk dress through the custom-house: but theycall in the doctor when the child is cutting a tooth or gets asplinter in its finger. So it doesn't mean much to send for him, onlya pleasant chat about the news of the day; for putting the baby torights doesn't take long. Besides, everybody doesn't like to talkabout the next world; people are modest in their desires, and findthis world as good as they deserve: but everybody loves to talkphysic. Everybody loves to hear of strange cases; people are eager totell the doctor of the wonderful cures they have heard of; they wantto know what is the matter with somebody or other who is said to besuffering from "a complication of diseases, " and above all to get ahard name, Greek or Latin, for some complaint which sounds altogethertoo commonplace in plain English. If you will only call a headache a_Cephalalgia_, it acquires dignity at once, and a patient becomesrather proud of it. So I think doctors are generally welcome in mostcompanies. "

II

OF THE GENIUS OF EMERSON[10]

Emerson's was an Asiatic mind, drawing its sustenance partly from thehard soil of our New England, partly, too, from the air that has knownHimalaya and the Ganges. So imprest with this character of his mindwas Mr. Burlingame, [11] as I saw him, after his return from hismission, that he said to me, in a freshet of hyperbole, which was theoverflow of a channel with a thread of truth running in it, "There aretwenty thousand Ralph Waldo Emersons in China. "

[Footnote 10: From an address before the Massachusetts HistoricalSociety in 1862. Published by Houghton, Mifflin Company. ]

[Footnote 11: Anson Burlingame, famous in his time for treatiesnegotiated between China and the United States, England, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and Prussia. His son, E. I. Burlingame, has long beenthe editor of _Scribner's Magazine_. ]

What could we do with this unexpected, unprovided for, unclassified, half-unwelcome new-comer, who had been for a while potted, as itwere, in our Unitarian cold green-house, but had taken to growing sofast that he was lifting off its glass roof and letting in thehailstorms? Here was a protest that outflanked the extreme left ofliberalism, yet so calm and serene that its radicalism had the accentsof the gospel of peace. Here was an iconoclast without a hammer, whotook down our idols from their pedestals so tenderly that it seemedlike an act of worship. 

The scribes and pharisees made light of his oracular sayings. Thelawyers could not find the witnesses to subpoena and the documentsto refer to when his case came before them, and turned him over totheir wives and daughters. The ministers denounced his heresies, andhandled his writings as if they were packages of dynamite, and thegrandmothers were as much afraid of his new teachings as old Mrs. Piozzi[12] was of geology. We had had revolutionary orators, reformers, martyrs; it was but a few years since Abner Kneeland hadbeen sent to jail for expressing an opinion about the great FirstCause; but we had had nothing like this man, with his seraphic voiceand countenance, his choice vocabulary, his refined utterance, hisgentle courage, which, with a different manner, might have been calledaudacity, his temperate statement of opinions which threatened toshake the existing order of thought like an earthquake. 

[Footnote 12: Hester Lynch Salisbury, who married first Henry Thrale, the English brewer, and second an Italian musician named Piozzi; buther fame rests on her friendship of twenty years with Doctor SamuelJohnson, of whom she wrote reminiscences, described by Carlyle as"Piozzi's ginger beer. "]

His peculiarities of style and of thinking became fertile parents ofmannerisms, which were fair game for ridicule as they appeared in hisimitators. For one who talks like Emerson or like Carlyle soon findshimself surrounded by a crowd of walking phonographs, who mechanicallyreproduce his mental and vocal accents. Emerson was before longtalking in the midst of a babbling Simonetta of echoes, and notunnaturally was now and then himself a mark for the small-shot ofcriticism. He had soon reached that height in the "cold thinatmosphere" of thought where

 "Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark his distant flight to do him wrong. "

I shall add a few words, of necessity almost epigrammatic, upon hiswork and character. He dealt with life, and life with him was notmerely this particular air-breathing phase of being, but the spiritualexistence which included it like a parenthesis between the twoinfinities. He wanted his daily drafts of oxygen like his neighbors, and was as thoroughly human as the plain people he mentions who hadsuccessively owned or thought they owned the house-lot on which heplanted his hearthstone. But he was at home no less in theinterstellar spaces outside of all the atmospheres. Thesemi-materialistic idealism of Milton was a gross and clumsy mediumcompared to the imponderable ether of "The Over-soul" and theunimaginable vacuum of "Brahma. " He followed in the shining and daringtrack of the _Graius homo_ of Lucretius:

 _"Vivida vis animi pervicit, et extra Processit longe flammantia moenia mundi. "_

It always seemed to me as if he looked at this earth very much as avisitor from another planet would look upon it. He was interested, andto some extent curious about it, but it was not the first spheroid hehad been acquainted with, by any means. I have amused myself withcomparing his descriptions of natural objects with those of the AngelRaphael in the seventh book of Paradise Lost. Emerson talks of histitmouse as Raphael talks of his emmet. Angels and poets never dealwith nature after the manner of those whom we call naturalists. 

To judge of him as a thinker, Emerson should have been heard as alecturer, for his manner was an illustration of his way of thinking. He would lose his place just as his mind would drop its thought andpick up another, twentieth cousin or no relation at all to it. Thiswent so far at times that one could hardly tell whether he was puttingtogether a mosaic of colored fragments, or only turning a kaleidoscopewhere the pieces tumbled about as they best might. It was as if he hadbeen looking in at a cosmic peep-show, and turning from it at briefintervals to tell us what he saw. But what fragments these coloredsentences were, and what pictures they often placed before us, as ifwe too saw them! Never has this city known such audiences as hegathered; never was such an Olympian entertainment as that which hegave them. 

It is very hard to speak of Mr. Emerson's poetry; not to do itinjustice, still more to do it justice. It seems to me like the robeof a monarch patched by a New England housewife. The royal tint andstuff are unmistakable, but here and there the gray worsted from thedarning-needle crosses and ekes out the Tyrian purple. Few poets whohave written so little in verse have dropped so many of those "jewelsfive words long" which fall from their setting only to be morechoicely treasured. _E pluribus unum_ is scarcely more familiar to ourears than "He builded better than he knew, " and Keats's "thing ofbeauty" is little better known than Emerson's "beauty is its ownexcuse for being. " One may not like to read Emerson's poetry becauseit is sometimes careless, almost as if carefully so, tho neverundignified even when slipshod; spotted with quaint archaisms andstrange expressions that sound like the affectation of negligence, orwith plain, homely phrases such as the self-made scholar is alwaysafraid of. But if one likes Emerson's poetry he will be sure to loveit; if he loves it, its phrases will cling to him as hardly any othersdo. It may not be for the multitude, but it finds its place likepollen-dust and penetrates to the consciousness it is to fertilize andbring to flower and fruit. 

I have known something of Emerson as a talker, not nearly so much asmany others who can speak and write of him. It is unsafe to tell how agreat thinker talks, for perhaps, like a city dealer with a villagecustomer, he has not shown his best goods to the innocent reporter ofhis sayings. However that may be in this case, let me contrast in asingle glance the momentary effect in conversation of the twoneighbors, Hawthorne and Emerson. Speech seemed like a kind of travailto Hawthorne. One must harpoon him like a cetacean with questions tomake him talk at all. Then the words came from him at last, withbashful manifestations, like those of a young girl, almost--words thatgasped themselves forth, seeming to leave a great deal more behindthem than they told, and died out discontented with themselves, likethe monologue of thunder in the sky, which always goes off mumblingand grumbling as if it had not said half it wanted to, and ought tosay. .. . 

To sum up briefly what would, as it seems to me, be the text to beunfolded in his biography, he was a man of excellent common sense, with a genius so uncommon that he seemed like an exotic transplantedfrom some angelic nursery. His character was so blameless, sobeautiful, that it was rather a standard to judge others by than tofind a place for on the scale of comparison. Looking at life with theprofoundest sense of its infinite significance, he was yet a cheerfuloptimist, almost too hopeful, peeping into every cradle to see if itdid not hold a babe with the halo of a new Messiah about it. Heenriched the treasure-house of literature, but, what was far more, heenlarged the boundaries of thought for the few that followed him, andthe many who never knew, and do not know to-day, what hand it waswhich took down their prison walls. He was a preacher who taught thatthe religion of humanity included both those of Palestine, nor thosealone, and taught it with such consecrated lips that the narrowestbigot was ashamed to pray for him, as from a footstool nearer to thethrone. "Hitch your wagon to a star": this was his version of thedivine lesson taught by that holy George Herbert whose words heloved. Give him whatever place belongs to him in our literature, inthe literature of our language, of the world, but remember this: theend and aim of his being was to make truth lovely and manhoodvalorous, and to bring our daily life nearer and nearer to theeternal, immortal, invisible. 

III

THE HOUSE IN WHICH THE PROFESSOR LIVED[13]

"This is the shortest way, " she said, as we came to a corner. 

"Then we won't take it, " said I. The schoolmistress laughed a little, and said she was ten minutes early, so she could go around. 

[Footnote 13: From Part X of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. "Published by Houghton, Mifflin Company. ]

We walked around Mr. Paddock's row of English elms. The gray squirrelswere out looking for their breakfasts, and one of them came toward usin light, soft, intermittent leaps, until he was close to the rail ofthe burial ground. He was on a grave with a broad blue slate-stone atits head, and a shrub growing on it. The stone said this was the graveof a young man who was the son of an honorable gentleman, and who dieda hundred years ago and more. Oh, yes, died--with a small triangularmark in one breast, and another smaller opposite, in his back, whereanother young man's rapier had slid through his body; and so he laydown out there on the Common, and was found cold the next morning, with the night dews and the death dews mingled on his forehead. 

"Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave, " said I. "His boneslie where his body was laid so long ago, and where the stone says theylie--which is more than can be said of most of the tenants of this andseveral other burial grounds. .. . 

"Stop before we turn away, and breathe a woman's sigh over poorBenjamin's dust. Love killed him, I think. Twenty years old, and outthere fighting another young fellow on the common, in the cool of thatold July evening; yes, there must have been love at the bottom of it. "

The schoolmistress dropt a rosebud she had in her hand through therails, upon the grave of Benjamin Woolbridge. That was all her commentupon what I told her. "How women love Love!" said I; but she did notspeak. 

We came opposite the head of a place or court running eastward fromthe main street. "Look down there, " I said; "my friend, the Professor, lived in that house, at the left hand, next the further corner, foryears and years. He died out of it, the other day. " "Died?" said theschoolmistress. "Certainly, " said I. "We die out of houses, just as wedie out of our bodies. A commercial smash kills a hundred men's homesfor them, as a railroad crash kills their mortal frames and drives outthe immortal tenants. Men sicken of houses until at last they quitthem, as the soul leaves its body when it is tired of its infirmities. The body has been called 'the house we live in'; the house is quiteas much the body we live in. Shall I tell you some things theProfessor said the other day?" "Do!" said the schoolmistress. 

"'A man's body, ' said the Professor, 'is whatever is occupied by hiswill and his sensibility. The small room down there, where I wrotethose papers you remember reading, was much more a part of my bodythan a paralytic's senseless and motionless arm or leg is of his. 

"'The soul of a man has a series of concentric envelopes around it, like the core of an onion, or the innermost of a nest of boxes. First, he has his natural garment of flesh and blood. Then his artificialinteguments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle oflighter tissues, and their variously tinted pigments. Third, hisdomicile, be it a single chamber or a stately mansion. And then, thewhole visible world, in which Time buttons him up as in a looseoutside wrapper. 

"'You shall observe, ' the Professor said, for like Mr. John Hunter andother great men, he brings in that 'shall' with great effectsometimes, 'you shall observe that a man's clothing or series ofenvelopes after a certain time mold themselves upon his individualnature. We know this of our hats, and are always reminded of it whenwe happen to put them on wrong side foremost. We soon find that thebeaver is a hollow cast of the skull, with all its irregular bumps anddepressions. Just so all that clothes a man, even to the blue skywhich caps his head--a little loosely--shapes itself to fit eachparticular being beneath it. Farmers, sailors, astronomers, poets, lovers, condemned criminals, all find it different, according to theeyes with which they severally look. 

"'But our houses shape themselves palpably on our inner and outernatures. See a householder breaking up and you will be sure of it. There is a shellfish which builds all manner of smaller shells intothe walls of its own. A house is never a home until we have crusted itwith the spoils of a hundred lives besides those of our own past. Seewhat these are, and you can tell what the occupant is. 

"'I had no idea, ' said the Professor, 'until I pulled up my domesticestablishment the other day, what an enormous quantity of roots I hadbeen making the years I was planted there. Why, there wasn't a nook ora corner that some fiber had not worked its way into; and when I gavethe last wrench, each of them seemed to shriek like a mandrake, as itbroke its hold and came away. 

"'There is nothing that happens, you know, which must not inevitably, and which does not actually, photograph itself in every conceivableaspect and in all dimensions. The infinite galleries of the Past awaitbut one brief process, and all their pictures will be called out andfixt forever. We had a curious illustration of the great fact on avery humble scale. When a certain bookcase, long standing in oneplace, for which it was built, was removed, there was the exact imageon the wall of the whole, and of many of its portions. But in themidst of this picture was another--the precise outline of a map whichhung on the wall before the bookcase was built. We had all forgotteneverything about the map until we saw its photograph on the wall. Then we remembered it, as some day or other we may remember a sinwhich has been built over and covered up, when this lower universe ispulled away from the wall of Infinity, where the wrongdoing stands, self-recorded. '

"The Professor lived in that house a long time--not twenty years, butpretty near it. When he entered that door, two shadows glided over thethreshold; five lingered in the doorway when he passed through it forthe last time--and one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to belonger than his own. What changes he saw in that quiet place! Deathrained through every roof but his; children came into life, grew tomaturity; wedded, faded away, threw themselves away; the whole dramaof life was played in that stock company's theater of a dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity everentered his dwelling. 'Peace be to those walls forever, ' the Professorsaid, for the many pleasant years he has passed within them. 

"The Professor has a friend, now living at a distance, who has beenwith him in many of his changes of place, and who follows him inimagination with tender interest wherever he goes. In that littlecourt, where he lived in gay loneliness so long--in his autumnalsojourn by the Connecticut, where it comes loitering down from itsmountain fastnesses like a great lord, swallowing up the smallproprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes, until it gets proud andswollen and wantons in huge luxurious oxbows about the fairNorthampton meadows, and at last overflows the oldest inhabitant'smemory in profligate freshets at Hartford and all along its lowershores--up in that caravansary on the banks of the stream whereLedyard launched his log canoe, and the jovial old Colonel used tolead the commencement processions--where blue Ascutney looked downfrom the far distance, and the hills of Beulah, as the Professoralways called them, rolled up the opposite horizon in soft climbingmasses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he used tolook through his old 'Dollond' to see if the Shining Ones were notwithin range of sight--sweet visions, sweetest in those Sunday walksthat carried them by the peaceful common, through the solemn villagelying in cataleptic stillness under the shadows of the rod of Moses, to the terminus of their harmless stroll--the 'patulous fage, ' in theProfessor's classic dialect--the spreading beech, in more familiarphrase--[stop and breathe here a moment, for the sentence is not doneyet, and We have another long journey before us. ]

"--and again once more up among those other hills that shut in theamber-flowing Housatonic--dark stream, but clear, like the lucid orbsthat shine beneath the lids of auburn-haired, sherry-wine-eyeddemiblondes--in the home overlooking the winding stream and thesmooth, flat meadow; looked down upon by wild hills, where the tracksof bears and catamounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the wintersnow; facing the twin summits which rise in the far North, the highestwaves of the great land storm in this billowy region--suggestive tomad fancies of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched out bya stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away beneath the leaves ofthe forest--in that home where seven blest summers were passed, whichstand in memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatificvision of the holy dreamer--

"--in that modest dwelling we were just looking at, not glorious, yetnot unlovely in the youth of its drab and mahogany--full of great andlittle boys' playthings from top to bottom--in all these summer orwinter nests he was always at home and always welcome. 

"This long articulated sigh of reminiscences--this calenture whichshows me the maple-shadowed plains of Berkshire and themountain-circled green of Grafton beneath the salt waves that comefeeling their way along the wall at my feet, restless andsoft-touching as blind men's busy fingers--is for that friend of minewho looks into the waters of the Patapsco and sees beneath them thesame visions that paint themselves for me in the green depths of theCharles. "

Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress? Why, no--of course not. I have been talking with you, the reader, for the last ten minutes. You don't think I should expect any woman to listen to such a sentenceas that long one, without giving her a chance to put in a word?

What did I say to the schoolmistress? Permit me one moment. I don'tdoubt your delicacy and good-breeding; but in this particular case, asI was allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very interestingyoung woman, you must allow me to remark, in the classic version of afamiliar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is _nullumtui negotii_. 

When the schoolmistress and I reached the schoolroom door, the damaskroses I spoke of were so much heightened in color by exercise that Ifelt sure it would be useful to her to take a stroll like this everymorning, and made up my mind I would ask her to let me join her again. 

IV

OF WOMEN WHO PUT ON AIRS[14]

I can't say just how many walks she (the schoolmistress) and I hadtaken together before this one. I found the effect of going out everymorning was decidedly favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for which were just marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when she smiled and nodded good-morning to mefrom the schoolhouse steps. 

[Footnote 14: From Part XI of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. "Published by Houghton, Mifflin Company. ]

I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if Ishould try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen walkswe took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint from myfriends the publishers that a separate volume, at my own risk andexpense, would be the proper method of bringing them before thepublic. 

I would have a woman as true as death. At the first real lie whichworks from the heart outward she should be tenderly chloroformed intoa better world, where she can have an angel for a governess, and feedon strange fruits which will make her all over again, even to herbones and marrow. Whether gifted with the accident of beauty or not, she should have been molded in the rose-red clay of love before thebreath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love capacity is acongenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one gets to know thewarm-hued natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeitsof it. Proud she may be, in the sense of respecting herself; butpride, in the sense of contemning others less gifted than herself, deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where thepunishments are smallpox and bankruptcy. She who nips off the end of abrittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow uponthose whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims thefact that she comes not merely of low blood, but of bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people gracious in propermeasure to all; but if a woman puts on airs with her real equals, shehas something about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or oughtto be. Middle, and more than middle-aged people, who know familyhistories, generally see through it. An official of standing was rudeto me once. "Oh, that is the maternal grandfather, " said a wise oldfriend to me, "he was a boor. " Better too few words, from the woman welove, than too many: while she is silent, Nature is working for her;while she talks, she is working for herself. Love is sparingly solublein the words of men; therefore they speak much of it; but onesyllable of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heartcan hold. 

Whether I said any or all of these things to the schoolmistress ornot--whether I stole them put of Lord Bacon--whether I cribbed themfrom Balzac--whether I dipt them from the ocean of Tupperianwisdom--or whether I have just found them in my head (laid there bythat solemn fowl, Experience, who, according to my observation, cackles oftener than she drops real, live eggs), I can not say. Wisemen have said more foolish things--and foolish men, I don't doubt, have said as wise things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I hadpleasant walks and long talks, all of which I do not feel bound toreport. 

You are a stranger to me, Ma'am. --I don't doubt you would like to knowall I said to the schoolmistress. --I shan't do it; I had rather getthe publishers to return the money you have invested in this. Besides, I have forgotten a good deal of it. I shall tell only what I like ofwhat I remember. 

MARGARET FULLER

 Born in Massachusetts in 1810; lost in a shipwreck off Fire Island in 1850; edited _The Dial_ in 1840-42; literary critic for the New York _Tribune_ in 1844-46; went to Europe in 1846; married the Marquis d'Ossoli in 1847; in Rome during the Revolution of 1848-49; published "A Summer on the Lakes" in 1843, "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" in 1845, "Papers on Art and Literature" in 1846. 

I

HER VISIT TO GEORGE SAND[15]

It is the custom to go and call on those to whom you bring letters, and push yourself upon their notice; thus you must go quite ignorantwhether they are disposed to be cordial. My name is always murdered bythe foreign servants who announce me. I speak very bad French; onlylately have I had sufficient command of it to infuse some of mynatural spirit in my discourse. This has been a great trial to me, whoam eloquent and free in my own tongue, to be forced to feel mythoughts struggling in vain for utterance. 

[Footnote 15: From a letter to Elizabeth Hoar, written in 1847 andprinted in the "Memoirs. "]

The servant who admitted me was in the picturesque costume of apeasant, and as Madame Sand afterward told me, her goddaughter, whomshe had brought from her province. She announced me as "MadameSalère, " and returned into the anteroom to tell me, "Madame says shedoes not know you. " I began to think I was doomed to rebuff among thecrowd who deserve it. However, to make assurance sure, I said, "Ask ifshe has received a letter from me. " As I spoke Madame Sand opened thedoor, and stood looking at me an instant. Our eyes met. 

I never shall forget her look at that moment. The doorway made a framefor her figure; she is large but well formed. She was drest in a robeof dark-violet silk, with a black mantle on her shoulders, herbeautiful hair drest with the greatest taste; her whole appearance andattitude, in its simple and ladylike dignity, presented an almostludicrous contrast to the vulgar caricature idea of George Sand. Herface is a very little like the portraits, but much finer; the upperpart of the forehead and eyes are beautiful, the lower strong andmasculine, expressive of a hardy temperament and strong passions, butnot in the least coarse; the complexion olive, and the air of thewhole head Spanish (as, indeed, she was born at Madrid, and is only onone side of French blood). 

All these I saw at a glance; but what fixt my attention was theexpression of goodness, nobleness, and power that pervaded thewhole--the truly human heart and nature that shone in the eyes. As oureyes met, she said, "_C'est vous_, " and held out her hand. I took it, and went into her little study; we sat down a moment; then I said, "_Il me fait de bien de vous voir_, " and I am sure I said it with mywhole heart, for it made me very happy to see such a woman, so largeand so developed in character, and everything that is good in it soreally good. I loved, shall always love her. 

She looked away, and said, _"Ah! vous m'avez écrit une lettrecharmante_. " This was all the preliminary of our talk, which then wenton as if we had always known one another. .. . Her way of talking isjust like her writing--lively, picturesque, with an undertone of deepfeeling, and the same happiness in striking the nail on the head everynow and then with a blow. .. . I heartily enjoyed the sense of so rich, so prolific, so ardent a genius. I liked the woman in her, too, verymuch; I never liked a woman better. .. . For the rest, she holds herplace in the literary and social world of France like a man, and seemsfull of energy and courage in it. I suppose she has suffered much, butshe has also enjoyed and done much. 

II

TWO GLIMPSES OF CARLYLE[16]

Of the people I saw in London you will wish me to speak first of theCarlyles. Mr. Carlyle came to see me at once, and appointed an eveningto be passed at their house. That first time I was delighted with him. He was in a very sweet humor--full of wit and pathos, without beingoverbearing or oppressive. I was quite carried away with the richflow of his discourse; and the hearty, noble earnestness of hispersonal being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing, before I wearied of it. I admired his Scotch, his way of singing hisgreat full sentences, so that each one was like the stanza of anarrative ballad. He let me talk, now and then, enough to free mylungs and change my position, so that I did not get tired. Thatevening he talked of the present state of things in England, givinglight, witty sketches of the men of the day, fanatics and others, andsome sweet, homely stories he told of things he had known of theScotch peasantry. Of you he spoke with hearty kindness; and he toldwith beautiful feeling a story of some poor farmer or artizan in thecountry, who on Sunday lays aside the cark and care of that dirtyEnglish world, and sits reading the "Essays" and looking upon thesea. .. . 

[Footnote 16: From a letter to Emerson, written in 1846, and printedin the "Memoirs. "]

The second time Mr. Carlyle had a dinner party, at which was a witty, French, flippant sort of a man, named Lewes, [17] author of a "Historyof Philosophy, " and now writing a life of Goethe, a task for which hemust be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him. But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interruptCarlyle a little--of which one was glad, for that night he was in hisacrid mood; and tho much more brilliant than on the former evening, grew wearisome to me, who disclaimed and rejected almost everythinghe said. .. . 

[Footnote 17: George Henry Lewes, whose relations to George Eliotbegan after Margaret Fuller's visit. Lewes was not a Frenchman, but ofWelsh descent, born in London, and a grandson of Charles Lee Lewes, the actor. ]

Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be facedwith steady eyes. He does not converse, only harangues. It is theusual misfortune of such marked men--happily not one invariable orinevitable--that they can not allow other minds room to breathe, andshow themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment andinstruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experienceof the humblest. Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down allopposition, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless intheir sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physicalsuperiority--raising his voice and rushing on his opponent with atorrent of sound. This is not in the least from unwillingness to allowfreedom to others. On the contrary, no man would more enjoy a manlyresistance in his thoughts. But it is the impulse of a mind accustomedto follow out its own impulse, as the hawk its prey, and which knowsnot how to stop in the chase. 

Carlyle indeed is arrogant and overbearing; but in his arrogance thereis no littleness, no self-love. It is the heroic arrogance of some oldScandinavian conqueror; it is his nature, and the untamable impulsethat has given him power to crush the dragons. He sings rather thantalks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally catching up, near the beginning, some singular epithet which serves as a refrain when his song isfull, or with which, as with a knitting-needle, he catches up thestitches, if he has chanced now and then to let fall a row. For thehigher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subjectis delightfully and gorgeously absurd. He sometimes stops a minute tolaugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigor; for all thespirits he is driving before him as Fata Morgana, [18] ugly masks, infact, if he can but make them turn about; but he laughs that they seemto others such dainty Ariels. His talk, like his books, is full ofpictures; his critical strokes masterly. Allow for his point of view, and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject. I can not speakmore or wiselier of him now, nor needs it; his works are true, toblame and praise him--the Siegfried of England, great and powerful, ifnot quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil thanlegislate for good. 

[Footnote 18: Fata (a fairy) Morgana, sister of King Arthur, is aleading figure in the "Morte d'Arthur" and other romances, includingItalian. ]

HORACE GREELEY

 Born in New Hampshire in 1811, died in 1872; came to New York in 1831, where he edited the _Log Cabin_ during the Harrison-Tyler campaign; in 1841 founded _The Tribune;_ member of Congress in 1848-49; prominent as an anti-slavery leader and supporter of the Union cause; nominated for president by the Liberal-Republican and Democratic parties in 1872, but defeated by Gen. Grant; published "Recollections of a Busy Life" in 1868, and "The American Conflict" in 1864-66. 

I

THE FATALITY OF SELF-SEEKING IN EDITORS AND AUTHORS[19]

It only remains to me to speak more especially of my own vocation--theeditor's--which bears much the same relation to the author's that thebellows-blower's bears to the organist's, the player's to thedramatist's, Julian or Liszt to Weber or Beethoven. The editor, fromthe absolute necessity of the case, can not speak deliberately; hemust write to-day of to-day's incidents and aspects, tho these may becompletely overlaid and transformed by the incidents and aspects ofto-morrow. He must write and strive in the full consciousness thatwhatever honor or distinction he may acquire must perish with thegeneration that bestowed them--with the thunders of applause thatgreeted Kemble or Jenny Lind, with the ruffianism that expelledMacready, or the cheerful laugh that erewhile rewarded the sallies ofBurton or Placide. [20]

[Footnote 19: Printed with the "Miscellanies" In the "Recollections ofa Busy Life. "]

[Footnote 20: Henry Placide, an American actor born in Charleston, whoexcelled in the parts of Sir Peter Teazle and Sir Anthony Absolute. ]

No other public teacher lives so wholly in the present as the editor;and the noblest affirmations of unpopular truth--the mostself-sacrificing defiance of a base and selfish public sentiment thatregards only the most sordid ends, and values every utterance solelyas it tends to preserve quiet and contentment, while the dollars falljingling into the merchant's drawer, the land-jobber's vault, and themiser's bag--can but be noted in their day, and with their dayforgotten. It is his cue to utter silken and smooth sayings--tocondemn vice so as not to interfere with the pleasures or alarm theconscience of the vicious--to praise and champion liberty so as not togive annoyance or offense to slavery, and to commend and glorify laborwithout attempting to expose or repress any of the gainfulcontrivances by which labor is plundered and degraded. Thus sidlingdextrously between somewhere and nowhere, the able editor of thenineteenth century may glide through life respectable and in goodease, and lie down to his long rest with the non-achievements of hislife emblazoned on the very whitest marble, surmounting and glorifyinghis dust. 

There is a different and sterner path--I know not whether there be anynow qualified to tread it--I am not sure that even one has everfollowed it implicitly, in view of the certain meagerness of itstemporal rewards and the haste wherewith any fame acquired in a sphereso thoroughly ephemeral as the editor's must be shrouded by the darkwaters of oblivion. This path demands an ear ever open to the plaintsof the wronged and the suffering, tho they can never repay advocacy, and those who mainly support newspapers will be annoyed and oftenexposed by it; a heart as sensitive to oppression and degradation inthe next street as if they were practised in Brazil or Japan; a pen asready to expose and reprove the crimes whereby wealth is amassed andluxury enjoyed in our own country at this hour as if they had onlybeen committed by Turks or pagans in Asia some centuries ago. 

Such an editor, could one be found or trained, need not expect to leadan easy, indolent, or wholly joyous life--to be blest by archbishopsor followed by the approving shouts of ascendent majorities; but hemight find some recompense for their loss in the calm verdict of anapproving conscience; and the tears of the despised and thefriendless, preserved from utter despair by his efforts andremonstrances, might freshen for a season the daisies that bloomedabove his grave. 

Literature is a noble calling, but only when the call obeyed by theaspirant issues from a world to be enlightened and blest, not from avoid stomach clamoring to be gratified and filled. Authorship is aroyal priesthood; but wo to him who rashly lays unhallowed hands onthe ark or the altar, professing a zeal for the welfare of the raceonly that he may secure the confidence and sympathies of others, anduse them for his own selfish ends! If a man have no heroism in hissoul--no animating purpose beyond living easily and faringsumptuously--I can imagine no greater mistake on his part than that ofresorting to authorship as a vocation. That such a one may achievewhat he regards as success I do not deny; but, if so, he does it atgreater risk and by greater exertion than would have been required towin it in any other pursuit. No; it can not be wise in a selfish, orsordid, or sensual man to devote himself to literature; the fearfulself-exposure incident to this way of life--the dire necessity whichconstrains the author to stamp his own essential portrait on everyvolume of his works, no matter how carefully he may fancy he haserased, or how artfully he may suppose he has concealed it--thisshould repel from the vestibule of the temple of fame the foot ofevery profane or mocking worshiper. 

But if you are sure that your impulse is not personal nor sinister, but a desire to serve and ennoble your race, rather than to dazzle andbe served by it; that you are ready joyfully to "scorn delights, andlive laborious days, " so that thereby the well-being of mankind may bepromoted--then I pray you not to believe that the world is too wise toneed further enlightenment, nor that it would be impossible for one sohumble as yourself to say aught whereby error may be dispelled or goodbe diffused. Sell not your integrity; barter not your independence;beg of no man the privilege of earning a livelihood by authorship;since that is to degrade your faculty, and very probably to corruptit; but seeing through your own clear eyes, and uttering the impulsesof your own honest heart, speak or write as truth and love shalldictate, asking no material recompense, but living by the labor ofyour hands, until recompense shall be voluntarily tendered to secureyour service, and you may frankly accept it without a compromise ofyour integrity or a peril to your freedom. Soldier in the long warfarefor man's rescue from darkness and evil, choose not your place on thebattle-field, but joyfully accept that assigned you; asking notwhether there be higher or lower, but only whether it is here that youcan most surely do your proper work, and meet your full share of theresponsibility and the danger. 

Believe not that the heroic age is no more; since to that age is onlyrequisite the heroic purpose and the heroic soul. So long as ignoranceand evil shall exist so long there will be work for the devoted, andso long will there be room in the ranks of those who, defying obloquy, misapprehension, bigotry, and interested craft, struggle and dare forthe redemption of the world. "Of making many books there is no end, "tho there is happily a speedy end of most books after they are made;but he who by voice or pen strikes his best blow at the impostures andvices whereby our race is debased and paralyzed may close his eyes indeath, consoled and cheered by the reflection that he has done what hecould for the emancipation and elevation of his kind. 

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

 Born in 1814, died in 1877; graduated from Harvard in 1831; studied at Göttingen and Berlin; returned to America in 1834 and admitted to the bar, but soon took up the study of history; United States minister to Austria in 1861-68, and to Great Britain in 1869-70; published his "Rise of the Dutch Republic" in 1856, "History of the United Netherlands" in 1860-67, and "John of Barneveld" in 1874. 

I

CHARLES V AND PHILIP II IN BRUSSELS[21]

(1555)

The Emperor, like many potentates before and since, was fond of greatpolitical spectacles. He knew their influence upon the masses ofmankind. Altho plain even to shabbiness in his own costume, andusually attired in black, no one ever understood better than he how toarrange such exhibitions in a striking and artistic style. We haveseen the theatrical and imposing manner in which he quelled theinsurrection at Ghent, and nearly crusht the life forever out of thatvigorous and turbulent little commonwealth. The closing scene of hislong and energetic reign he had now arranged with profound study, andwith an accurate knowledge of the manner in which the requisiteeffects were to be produced. The termination of his own career, theopening of his beloved Philip's, were to be dramatized in a mannerworthy the august characters of the actors, and the importance of thegreat stage where they played their parts. The eyes of the whole worldwere directed upon that day toward Brussels; for an imperialabdication was an event which had not, in the sixteenth century, beenstaled by custom. 

[Footnote 21: From Chapter I of the "The Rise of the Dutch Republic. "Published by Harper & Brothers. After his abdication Charles V retiredto a monastery, where he died three years later. ]

The gay capital of Brabant--of that province which rejoiced in theliberal constitution known by the cheerful title of the "joyfulentrance"--was worthy to be the scene of the imposing show. Brusselshad been a city for more than five centuries, and at that day numberedabout one hundred thousand inhabitants. Its walls, six miles incircumference, were already two hundred years old. Unlike mostNetherland cities, lying usually upon extensive plains, it was builtalong the sides of an abrupt promontory. A wide expanse of livingverdure--cultivated gardens, shady groves, fertile cornfields--flowedround it like a sea. The foot of the town was washed by the littleriver Senne, while the irregular but picturesque streets rose up thesteep sides of the hill like the semicircles and stairways of anamphitheater. Nearly in the heart of the place rose the audacious andexquisitely embroidered tower of the town-house, three hundred andsixty-six feet in height; a miracle of needlework in stone, rivalingin its intricate carving the cobweb tracery of that lace which has forcenturies been synonymous with the city, and rearing itself above afaçade of profusely decorated and brocaded architecture. The crest ofthe elevation was crowned by the towers of the old ducal palace ofBrabant, with its extensive and thickly wooded park on the left, andby the stately mansions of Orange, Egmont, Aremberg, Culemburg, andother Flemish grandees, on the right. .. . 

The palace where the states-general were upon this occasion convenedhad been the residence of the dukes of Brabant since the days of Johnthe Second, who had built it about the year 1300. It was a spaciousand convenient building, but not distinguished for the beauty of itsarchitecture. In front was a large open square, enclosed by an ironrailing; in the rear an extensive and beautiful park, filled withforest trees, and containing gardens and labyrinths, fish-ponds andgame preserves, fountains and promenades, race-courses and archerygrounds. The main entrance to this edifice opened upon a spacioushall, connected with a beautiful and symmetrical chapel. The hall wascelebrated for its size, harmonious proportions, and the richness ofits decorations. It was the place where the chapters of the famousorder of the Golden Fleece were held. Its walls were hung with amagnificent tapestry of Arras, representing the life and achievementsof Gideon the Midianite, and giving particular prominence to themiracle of the "fleece of wool, " vouchsafed to that renowned champion, the great patron of the Knights of the Fleece. 

On the present occasion there were various additional embellishmentsof flowers and votive garlands. At the western end a spacious platformor stage, with six or seven steps, had been constructed, below whichwas a range of benches for the deputies of the seventeen provinces. Upon the stage itself there were rows of seats, covered with tapestry, upon the right hand and upon the left. These were respectively toaccommodate the knights of the order and the guests of highdistinction. In the rear of these were other benches for the membersof the three great councils. In the center of the stage was a splendidcanopy, decorated with the arms of Burgundy, beneath which were placedthree gilded arm-chairs. All the seats upon the platform were vacant;but the benches below, assigned to the deputies of the provinces, werealready filled. Numerous representatives from all the States buttwo--Gelderland and Overyssel--had already taken their places. Gravemagistrates in chain and gown, and executive officers in the splendidcivic uniforms for which the Netherlands were celebrated, alreadyfilled every seat within the space allotted. The remainder of the hallwas crowded with the more favored portion of the multitude, which hadbeen fortunate enough to procure admission to the exhibition. Thearchers and halbardiers of the body-guard kept watch at all the doors. The theater was filled, the audience was eager with expectation, theactors were yet to arrive. 

As the clock struck three, the hero of the scene appeared. Cæsar, ashe was always designated in the classic language of the day, entered, leaning on the shoulder of William of Orange. They came from thechapel, and were immediately followed by Philip the Second and QueenMary of Hungary. The Archduke Maximilian, the Duke of Savoy, andother great personages came afterward, accompanied by a glitteringthrong of warriors, councilors, governors, and Knights of the Fleece. 

Many individuals of existing or future historic celebrity in theNetherlands, whose names are so familiar to the student of the epoch, seemed to have been grouped, as if by premeditated design, upon thisimposing platform, where the curtain was to fall forever upon themightiest emperor since Charlemagne, and where the opening scene ofthe long and tremendous tragedy of Philip's reign was to besimultaneously enacted. There was the bishop of Arras, soon to beknown throughout Christendom by the more celebrated title of CardinalGranvelle--the serene and smiling priest, whose subtle influence overthe destinies of so many individuals then present, and over thefortunes of the whole land, was to be so extensive and so deadly. There was that flower of Flemish chivalry, the lineal descendant ofancient Frisian kings, already distinguished for his bravery in manyfields, but not having yet won those two remarkable victories whichwere soon to make the name of Egmont like the sound of a trumpetthroughout the whole country. Tall, magnificent in costume, with darkflowing hair, soft brown eye, smooth cheek, a slight mustache, andfeatures of almost feminine delicacy--such was the gallant andill-fated Lamoral Egmont. The Count of Hoorne, [22] too, with bold, sullen face, and fan-shaped beard--a brave, honest, discontented, quarrelsome, unpopular man; those other twins in doom, the MarquisBerghen and the Lord of Montigny; the Baron Berlaymont, brave, intensely loyal, insatiably greedy for office and wages, but who atleast never served but one party; the Duke of Arschot, who was toserve all, essay to rule all, and to betray all--a splendid seignior, magnificent in cramoisy velvet, but a poor creature, who traced hispedigree from Adam according to the family monumental inscriptions atLouvain, but who was better known as grandnephew of the Emperor'sfamous tutor Chièvres; the bold, debauched Brederode, with handsome, reckless face and turbulent demeanor; the infamous Noircarmes, whosename was to be covered with eternal execration for aping toward hisown compatriots and kindred as much of Alva's atrocities and avariceas he was permitted to exercise; the distinguished soldiers Meghen andAremberg--these, with many others whose deeds of arms were to becomecelebrated throughout Europe, were all conspicuous in the brilliantcrowd. There, too, was that learned Frisian, President Viglius, crafty, plausible, adroit, eloquent--a small, brisk man, with longyellow hair, glittering green eyes, round, tumid, rosy cheeks, andflowing beard. Foremost among the Spanish grandees, and close toPhilip, stood the famous favorite, Ruy Gomez, or, as he was familiarlycalled, "_Re y Gomez_" (King and Gomez)--a man of meridional aspect, with coal-black hair and beard, gleaming eyes, a face pallid withintense application, and slender but handsome figure; while inimmediate attendance upon the Emperor was the immortal Prince ofOrange. 

[Footnote 22: See Prescott's account of the execution of Egmont andHoorne, in Volume IX of this collection. ]

Such were a few only of the most prominent in that gay throng, whosefortunes in part it will be our humble duty to narrate; how many ofthem passing through all this glitter to a dark and mysterious gloom!some to perish on public scaffolds, some by midnight assassination;others, more fortunate, to fall on the battle-field; nearly all, sooner or later, to be laid in bloody graves!

All the company present had risen to their feet as the Emperorentered. By his command, all immediately after resumed their places. The benches at either end of the platform were accordingly filled withthe royal and princely personages invited--with the Fleece Knights, wearing the insignia of their order, with the members of the threegreat councils, and with the governors. The Emperor, the King, and theQueen of Hungary were left conspicuous in the center of the scene. Asthe whole object of the ceremony was to present an impressiveexhibition, it is worth our while to examine minutely the appearanceof the two principal characters. 

Charles the Fifth was then fifty-five years and eight months old; buthe was already decrepit with premature old age. He was of about themiddle height; and had been athletic and well proportioned. Broad inthe shoulders, deep in the chest, thin in the flank, very muscular inthe arms and legs, he had been able to match himself with allcompetitors in the tourney and the ring, and to vanquish the bull withhis own hand in the favorite national amusement of Spain. He had beenable in the field to do the duty of captain and soldier, to endurefatigue and exposure, and every privation except fasting. Thesepersonal advantages were now departed. Crippled in hands, knees, andlegs, he supported himself with difficulty upon a crutch, with the aidof an attendant's shoulder. In face he had always been extremely ugly, and time had certainly not improved his physiognomy. His hair, once ofa light color, was now white with age, close-clipt and bristling; hisbeard was gray, coarse, and shaggy. His forehead was spacious andcommanding; the eye was dark-blue, with an expression both majesticand benignant. His nose was aquiline but crooked. The lower part ofhis face was famous for its deformity. The under lip, a Burgundianinheritance, as faithfully transmitted as the duchy and county, washeavy and hanging; the lower jaw protruding so far beyond the upperthat it was impossible for him to bring together the few fragments ofteeth which still remained, or to speak a whole sentence in anintelligible voice. Eating and talking, occupations to which he wasalways much addicted, were becoming daily more arduous in consequenceof this original defect; which now seemed hardly human, but rather anoriginal deformity. 

So much for the father. The son, Philip the Second, was a small, meager man, much below the middle height, with thin legs, a narrowchest, and the shrinking, timid air of a habitual invalid. He seemedso little upon his first visit to his aunts, the Queens Eleanor andMary, accustomed to look upon proper men in Flanders and Germany, thathe was fain to win their favor by making certain attempts in thetournament, in which his success was sufficiently problematical. "Hisbody, " says his profest panegyrist, "was but a human cage, in which, however brief and narrow, dwelt a soul to whose flight theimmeasurable expanse of heaven was too contracted. " The same wholesaleadmirer adds that "his aspect was so reverend that rustics who met himalone in the wood, without knowing him, bowed down with instinctiveveneration. " In face he was the living image of his father; having thesame broad forehead and blue eye, with the same aquiline, but betterproportioned, nose. In the lower part of the countenance theremarkable Burgundian deformity was likewise reproduced: he had thesame heavy, hanging lip, with a vast mouth, and monstrously protrudinglower jaw. His complexion was fair, his hair light and thin, his beardyellow, short, and pointed. He had the aspect of a Fleming, but theloftiness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in public was still, silent, almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the ground when heconversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed and even suffering inmanner. This was ascribed partly to a natural haughtiness, which hehad occasionally endeavored to overcome, and partly to habitual painsin the stomach, occasioned by his inordinate fondness for pastry. 

Such was the personal appearance of the man who was about to receiveinto his single hand the destinies of half the world; whose singlewill was, for the future, to shape the fortunes of every individualthen present, of many millions more in Europe, America, and at theends of the earth, and of countless millions yet unborn. .. . 

The Emperor then rose to his feet. Leaning on his crutch, he beckonedfrom his seat the personage upon whose arm he had leaned as heentered the hall. A tall, handsome youth of twenty-two came forward: aman whose name from that time forward, and as long as history shallendure, has been and will be more familiar than any other in themouths of Netherlanders. At that day he had rather a southern than aGerman or Flemish appearance. He had a Spanish cast of features, dark, well chiseled, and symmetrical. His head was small and well placedupon his shoulders. His hair was dark brown, as were also his mustacheand peaked beard. His forehead was lofty, spacious, and alreadyprematurely engraved with the anxious lines of thought. His eyes werefull, brown, well opened, and expressive of profound reflection. Hewas drest in the magnificent apparel for which the Netherlanders werecelebrated above all other nations, and which the ceremony renderednecessary. His presence being considered indispensable at this greatceremony, he had been summoned but recently from the camp on thefrontier, where, notwithstanding his youth, the Emperor had appointedhim to command his army in chief against such antagonists as AdmiralColigny and the Duc de Nevers. 

Thus supported upon his crutch and upon the shoulder of William ofOrange, the Emperor proceeded to address the States, by the aid of aclosely written brief which he held in his hand. He reviewed rapidlythe progress of events from his seventeenth year up to that day. Turning to Philip, he observed that for a dying father to bequeath somagnificent an empire to his son was a deed worthy of gratitude; butthat when the father thus descended to the grave before his time, andby an anticipated and living burial sought to provide for the welfareof his realms and the grandeur of his son, the benefit thus conferredwas surely far greater. He added that the debt would be paid to himand with usury, should Philip conduct himself in his administration ofthe province with a wise and affectionate regard to their trueinterests. .. . 

Sobs were heard throughout every portion of the hall, and tears pouredprofusely from every eye. The Fleece Knights on the platform and theburghers in the background were all melted with the same emotion. Asfor the Emperor himself, he sank almost fainting upon his chair as heconcluded his address. An ashy paleness overspread his countenance, and he wept like a child. Even the icy Philip was almost softened, ashe rose to perform his part in the ceremony. Dropping upon his kneesbefore his father's feet, he reverently kissed his hand. Charlesplaced his hands solemnly upon his son's head, made the sign of thecross, and blest him in the name of the Holy Trinity. Then raising himin his arms he tenderly embraced him, saying, as he did so, to thegreat potentates around him, that he felt a sincere compassion for theson on whose shoulders so heavy a weight had just devolved, and whichonly a lifelong labor would enable him to support. .. . 

The orations and replies having now been brought to a close, theceremony was terminated. The Emperor, leaning on the shoulders of thePrince of Orange and of the Count de Buren, slowly left the hall, followed by Philip, the Queen of Hungary, and the whole court; all inthe same order in which they had entered, and by the same passage intothe chapel. 

II

THE ARRIVAL OF THE SPANISH ARMADA[23]

(1588)

Almost at that very instant intelligence had been brought from thecourt to the Lord Admiral at Plymouth that the Armada, dispersed andshattered by the gales of June, was not likely to make its appearancethat year; and orders had consequently been given to disarm the fourlargest ships and send them into dock. Even Walsingham hadparticipated in this strange delusion. 

[Footnote 23: From Chapter XIX of the "History of the UnitedNetherlands. " Published by Harper & Brothers. See Hume's account ofthe arrival of the Armada in Volume IV, page 113, of this collection. ]

Before Howard[24] had time to act upon this ill-timed suggestion--evenhad he been disposed to do so--he received authentic intelligence thatthe great fleet was off the Lizard. Neither he nor Francis Drake werethe men to lose time in such an emergency; and before that Fridaynight was spent, sixty of the best English ships had been warped outof Plymouth harbor. 

[Footnote 24: Lord Howard of Effingham, commander of the Englishfleet. ]

On Saturday, 30th July, the wind was very light at southwest, with amist and drizzling rain; but by three in the afternoon the two fleetscould descry and count each other through the haze. 

By nine o'clock, 31st July, about two miles from Looe on the Cornishcoast, the fleets had their first meeting. There were one hundred andthirty-six sail of the Spaniards, of which ninety were large ships;and sixty-seven of the English. It was a solemn moment. Thelong-expected Armada presented a pompous, almost a theatricalappearance. The ships seemed arranged for a pageant, in honor of avictory already won. Disposed in form of a crescent, the horns ofwhich were seven miles asunder, those gilded, towered, floatingcastles, with their gaudy standards and their martial music, movedslowly along the channel, with an air of indolent pomp. Theircaptain-general, the golden duke, stood in his private shot-prooffortress, on the deck of his great galleon the _St. Martin_, surrounded by generals of infantry and colonels of cavalry, who knewas little as he did himself of naval matters. 

The English vessels, on the other hand--with a few exceptions light, swift, and easily handled--could sail round and round those unwieldygalleons, hulks, and galleys rowed by fettered slave gangs. Thesuperior seamanship of free Englishmen commanded by such experiencedcaptains as Drake, Frobisher, [25] and Hawkins[26]--from infancy athome on blue water--was manifest in the very first encounter. Theyobtained the weather-gage at once, and cannonaded the enemy atintervals with considerable effect; easily escaping at will out ofrange of the sluggish Armada, which was incapable of bearing sail inpursuit, altho provided with an armament which could sink all itsenemies at close quarters. "We had some small fight with them thatSunday afternoon, " said Hawkins. 

[Footnote 25: Sir Martin Frobisher, who in 1576 commanded anexpedition in search of the Northwest Passage, and discovered the baysince called after him. ]

[Footnote 26: Sir John Hawkins at this time was a rear-admiral. He wasknighted after the defeat of the Armada. ]

Medina Sidonia[27] hoisted the royal standard at the fore; and thewhole fleet did its utmost, which was little, to offer general battle. It was in vain. The English, following at the heels of the enemy, refused all such invitations, and attacked only the rear-guard of theArmada, where Recalde commanded. That admiral, steadily maintaininghis post, faced his nimble antagonists, who continued to tease, tomaltreat, and to elude him, while the rest of the fleet proceededslowly up the Channel closely followed by the enemy. And thus therunning fight continued along the coast, in full view of Plymouth, whence boats with reenforcements and volunteers were perpetuallyarriving to the English ships, until the battle had drifted quite outof reach of the town. 

[Footnote 27: The Duke of Medina Sidonia, who commanded the Armada. ]

Already in this first "small fight" the Spaniards had learned alesson, and might even entertain a doubt of their invincibility. Butbefore the sun set there were more serious disasters. Much powder andshot had been expended by the Spaniard to very little purpose, and soa master-gunner on board Admiral Oquendo's flag-ship was reprimandedfor careless ball-practise. The gunner, who was a Fleming, enragedwith his captain, laid a train to the powder-magazine, fired it, andthrew himself into the sea. Two decks blew up. The great castle at thestern rose into clouds, carrying with it the paymaster-general of thefleet, a large portion of treasure, and nearly two hundred men. Theship was a wreck, but it was possible to save the rest of the crew. SoMedina Sidonia sent light vessels to remove them, and wore with hisflag-ship to defend Oquendo, who had already been fastened upon by hisEnglish pursuers. But the Spaniards, not being so light in hand astheir enemies, involved themselves in much embarrassment by theirmaneuver, and there was much falling foul of each other, entanglementof rigging, and carrying away of yards. Oquendo's men, however, wereultimately saved and taken to other ships. 

Meantime Don Pedro de Valdez, commander of the Andalusian squadron, having got his galleon into collision with two or three Spanish shipssuccessively, had at last carried away his foremast close to the deck, and the wreck had fallen against his main-mast. He lay crippled andhelpless, the Armada was slowly deserting him, night was coming on, the sea was running high, and the English, ever hovering near, wereready to grapple with him. In vain did Don Pedro fire signals ofdistress. The captain-general--even as tho the unlucky galleon had notbeen connected with the Catholic fleet--calmly fired a gun to collecthis scattered ships, and abandoned Valdez to his fate. "He left mecomfortless in sight of the whole fleet, " said poor Pedro; "andgreater inhumanity and unthankfulness I think was never heard of amongmen. "

Yet the Spaniard comported himself most gallantly. Frobisher, in thelargest ship of the English fleet, the _Triumph_, of eleven hundredtons, and Hawkins in the _Victory_, of eight hundred, cannonaded himat a distance, but night coming on, he was able to resist; and it wasnot till the following morning that he surrendered to the _Revenge_. 

Drake then received the gallant prisoner on board his flag-ship--muchto the disgust and indignation of Frobisher and Hawkins, thusdisappointed of their prize and ransom money--treated him with muchcourtesy, and gave his word of honor that he and his men should betreated fairly like good prisoners of war. This pledge was redeemed;for it was not the English, as it was the Spanish custom, to convertcaptives into slaves, but only to hold them for ransom. Valdezresponded to Drake's politeness by kissing his hand, embracing him, and overpowering him with magnificent compliments. He was then sent onboard the Lord Admiral, who received him with similar urbanity, andexprest his regret that so distinguished a personage should have beenso coolly deserted by the Duke of Medina. Don Pedro then returned tothe _Revenge_, where, as the guest of Drake, he was a witness to allsubsequent events up to the 10th of August; on which day he was sentto London with some other officers, Sir Francis claiming his ransom ashis lawful due. 

Here certainly was no very triumphant beginning for the Invincible Armada. On the very first day of their being in presence of the English fleet--thenbut sixty-seven in number, and vastly their inferior in size and weight ofmetal--they had lost the flagships of the Guipuzcoan and of the Andalusiansquadrons, with a general-admiral, four hundred and fifty officers and men, and some one hundred thousand ducats of treasure. They had beenoutmaneuvered, outsailed, and thoroughly maltreated by their antagonists, and they had been unable to inflict a single blow in return. Thus the"small fight" had been a cheerful one for the opponents of the Inquisition, and the English were proportionally encouraged. .. . 

Never, since England was England, had such a sight been seen as nowrevealed itself in those narrow straits between Dover and Calais. Along that long, low, sandy shore, and quite within the range of theCalais fortifications, one hundred and thirty Spanish ships--thegreater number of them the largest and most heavily armed in theworld--lay face to face, and scarcely out of cannon-shot, with onehundred and fifty English sloops and frigates, the strongest andswiftest that the island could furnish, and commanded by men whoseexploits had rung through the world. 

Farther along the coast, invisible, but known to be performing a mostperilous and vital service, was a squadron of Dutch vessels of allsizes, lining both the inner and outer edges of the sandbanks off theFlemish coasts, and swarming in all the estuaries and inlets of thatintricate and dangerous cruising-ground between Dunkirk andWalcheren. Those fleets of Holland and Zeeland, numbering some onehundred and fifty galleons, sloops, and fly-boats, under Warmond, Nassau, Van der Does, De Moor, and Rosendael, lay patiently blockadingevery possible egress from Newport, or Gravelines, or Sluys, orFlushing, or Dunkirk; and longing to grapple with the Duke of Parma, so soon as his fleet of gunboats and hoys, packed with his Spanish andItalian veterans, should venture to set forth upon the sea for theirlong-prepared exploit. 

It was a pompous spectacle that midsummer night upon those narrowseas. The moon, which was at the full, was rising calmly upon a sceneof anxious expectation. Would she not be looking, by the morrow'snight, upon a subjugated England, a reenslaved Holland--upon thedownfall of civil and religious liberty? Those ships of Spain, whichlay there with their banners waving in the moonlight, dischargingsalvos of anticipated triumph and filling the air with strains ofinsolent music--would they not, by daybreak, be moving straight totheir purpose, bearing the conquerors of the world to the scene oftheir cherished hopes?

That English fleet, too, which rode there at anchor, so anxiously onthe watch--would that swarm of nimble, lightly handled, but slendervessels, which had held their own hitherto in hurried and desultoryskirmishes, be able to cope with their great antagonist, now that themoment had arrived for the death grapple? Would not Howard, Drake, Frobisher, Seymour, Winter, and Hawkins be swept out of the straits atlast, yielding an open passage to Medina, Oquendo, Recalde, andFarnese? Would those Hollanders and Zeelanders cruising so vigilantlyamong their treacherous shallows dare to maintain their post now thatthe terrible "Holoferness, " with his invincible legions, was resolvedto come forth?

And the impatience of the soldiers and sailors on board the fleet wasequal to that of their commanders. There was London almost beforetheir eyes--a huge mass of treasure, richer and more accessible thanthose mines beyond the Atlantic which had so often rewarded Spanishchivalry with fabulous wealth. And there were men in those galleonswho remembered the sack of Antwerp eleven years before; men who couldtell, from personal experience, how helpless was a great commercialcity when once in the clutch of disciplined brigands; men who in thatdread "fury of Antwerp" had enriched themselves in an hour with theaccumulations of a merchant's lifetime, and who had slain fathers andmothers, sons and daughters, brides and bridegrooms, before eachother's eyes, until the number of inhabitants butchered in the blazingstreets rose to many thousands, and the plunder from palaces andwarehouses was counted by millions, before the sun had set on the"great fury. " Those Spaniards, and Italians, and Walloons were nowthirsting for more gold, for more blood; and as the capital of Englandwas even more wealthy and far more defenseless than the commercialmetropolis of the Netherlands had been, so it was resolved that theLondon "fury" should be more thorough and more productive than the"fury of Antwerp, " at the memory of which the world still shuddered. And these professional soldiers had been taught to consider theEnglish as a pacific, delicate, effeminate race; dependent on goodliving, without experience of war, quickly fatigued and discouraged, and even more easily to be plundered and butchered than were theexcellent burghers of Antwerp. 

And so these southern conquerors looked down from their great galleonsand galeasses upon the English vessels. More than three-quarters ofthem were merchantmen. There was no comparison whatever between therelative strength of the fleets. In number they were about equal, being each from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fiftystrong; but the Spaniards had twice the tonnage of the English, fourtimes the artillery, and nearly three times the number of men. .. . 

As the twilight deepened, the moon became totally obscured, dark cloudmasses spread over the heavens, the sea grew black, distant thunderrolled, and the sob of an approaching tempest became distinctlyaudible. Such indications of a westerly gale were not encouraging tothose cumbrous vessels, with the treacherous quicksands of Flandersunder their lee. 

At an hour past midnight it was so dark that it was difficult for themost practised eye to pierce far into the gloom. But a faint drip ofoars now struck the ears of the Spaniards as they watched from thedecks. A few moments afterward the sea became suddenly luminous; andsix flaming vessels appeared at a slight distance, bearing steadilydown upon them before the wind and tide. 

There were men in the Armada who had been at the siege of Antwerponly three years before. They remembered with horror the devil-shipsof Gianibelli--those floating volcanoes which had seemed to rend earthand ocean, whose explosion had laid so many thousands of soldiers deadat a blow, and which had shattered the bridge and floating forts ofFarnese as tho they had been toys of glass. They knew too that thefamous engineer was at that moment in England. 

In a moment one of those horrible panics which spread with suchcontagious rapidity among large bodies of men, seized upon theSpaniards. There was a yell throughout the fleet--"The fire-ships ofAntwerp! the fire-ships of Antwerp!" and in an instant every cable wascut, and frantic attempts were made by each galleon and galeasse toescape what seemed imminent destruction. The confusion was beyonddescription. Four or five of the largest ships became entangled witheach other. Two others were set on fire by the flaming vessels andwere consumed. Medina Sidonia, who had been warned, even before hisdeparture from Spain, that some such artifice would probably beattempted, and who had even, early that morning, sent out a party ofsailors in a pinnace to search for indications of the scheme, was notsurprized or dismayed. He gave orders--as well as might be--that everyship, after the danger should be passed, was to return to its post andawait his further orders. But it was useless in that moment ofunreasonable panic to issue commands. The despised Mantuan, who hadmet with so many rebuffs at Philip's court, and who--owing to officialincredulity--had been but partially successful in his magnificententerprise at Antwerp, had now, by the mere terror of his name, inflicted more damage on Philip's Armada than had hitherto beenaccomplished by Howard and Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher combined. 

So long as night and darkness lasted, the confusion and uproarcontinued. When the Monday morning dawned, several of the Spanishvessels lay disabled, while the rest of the fleet was seen at adistance of two leagues from Calais, driving toward the Flemish coast. The threatened gale had not yet begun to blow; but there were freshsqualls from the W. S. W. , which, to such awkward sailors as theSpanish vessels, were difficult to contend with. On the other hand, the English fleet were all astir, and ready to pursue the Spaniards, now rapidly drifting into the North Sea. 

III

"THE SPANISH FURY"[28]

(1576)

Meantime, while the short November day was fast declining, the combatstill raged in the interior of the city (Antwerp). Various currents ofconflict, forcing their separate way through many streets, had at lastmingled in the Grande Place. Around this irregular, not very spacioussquare, stood the gorgeous Hotel de Ville, and the tall, many-storied, fantastically gabled, richly decorated palaces of the guilds. Here along struggle took place. It was terminated for a time by the cavalryof Vargas, who, arriving through the streets of Saint Joris, accompanied by the traitor Van Ende, charged decisively into themêlée. The masses were broken, but multitudes of armed men foundrefuge in the buildings, and every house became a fortress. From everywindow and balcony a hot fire was poured into the square, as, pent ina corner, the burghers stood at last at bay. It was difficult to carrythe houses by storm, but they were soon set on fire. A large number ofsutlers and other varlets had accompanied the Spaniards from thecitadel, bringing torches and kindling materials for the expresspurpose of firing the town. With great dexterity, these means were nowapplied, and in a brief interval the city hall and other edifices onthe square were in flames. The conflagration spread with rapidity, house after house, street after street, taking fire. Nearly a thousandbuildings, in the most splendid and wealthy quarter of the city, weresoon in a blaze, and multitudes of human beings were burned with them. In the city hall many were consumed, while others leapt from thewindows to renew the combat below. The many tortuous streets which leddown a slight descent from the rear of the town-house to the quayswere all one vast conflagration. On the other side, the magnificentcathedral, separated from the Grande Place by a single row ofbuildings, was lighted up, but not attacked by the flames. The tallspire cast its gigantic shadow across the last desperate conflict. Inthe street called the Canal au Sucre, immediately behind thetown-house, there was a fierce struggle, a horrible massacre. A crowdof burghers, grave magistrates, and such of the German soldiers asremained alive still confronted the ferocious Spaniards. There, amidthe flaming desolation, Goswyn Verreyck, the heroic margrave of thecity, fought with the energy of hatred and despair. The burgomasterVan der Meere lay dead at his feet; senators, soldiers, citizens fellfast around him, and he sank at last upon a heap of slain. With himeffectual resistance ended. The remaining combatants were butchered, or were slowly forced downward to perish in the Scheld. Women, children, old men were killed in countless numbers, and still, throughall this havoc, directly over the heads of the struggling throng, suspended in mid-air above the din and smoke of the conflict, theresounded, every half-quarter of every hour, as if in gentle mockery, from the belfry of the cathedral, the tender and melodious chimes. 

[Footnote 28: From Part IV of Chapter V of "The Rise of the DutchRepublic. " Published by Harper & Brothers. The name "Spanish Fury" wasgiven to the sack of Antwerp by the Spaniards. ]

Never was there a more monstrous massacre, even in the blood-stainedhistory of the Netherlands. It was estimated that, in the course ofthis and the two following days, not less than eight thousand humanbeings were murdered. The Spaniards seemed to cast off even the vizardof humanity. Hell seemed emptied of its fiends. Night fell upon thescene before the soldiers were masters of the city; but worse horrorsbegan after the contest was ended. This army of brigands had comethither with a definite, practical purpose, for it was notblood-thirst, nor lust, nor revenge, which had impelled them, but itwas avarice, greediness for gold. For gold they had waded through allthis blood and fire. Never had men more simplicity of purpose, moredirectness in its execution. They had conquered their India at last;its golden mines lay all before them, and every sword should open ashaft. Riot and rape might be deferred; even murder, tho congenial totheir taste, was only subsidiary to their business. They had come totake possession of the city's wealth, and they set themselvesfaithfully to accomplish their task. For gold, infants were dashed outof existence in their mothers' arms; for gold, parents were torturedin their children's presence; for gold, brides were scourged to deathbefore their husbands' eyes. Wherever treasure was suspected, everyexpedient which ingenuity, sharpened by greediness, could suggest, wasemployed to extort it from its possessors. The fire, spreading moreextensively and more rapidly than had been desired through thewealthiest quarter of the city, had unfortunately devoured a vastamount of property. Six millions, at least, had thus been swallowed; adestruction by which no one had profited. There was, however, muchleft. The strong boxes of the merchants, the gold, silver, andprecious jewelry, the velvets, satins, brocades, laces, and similarwell concentrated and portable plunder, were rapidly appropriated. Sofar the course was plain and easy, but in private houses it was moredifficult. The cash, plate, and other valuables of individuals werenot so easily discovered. 

Torture was, therefore, at once employed to discover the hiddentreasures. After all had been given, if the sum seemed too little, theproprietors were brutally punished for their poverty or their supposeddissimulation. A gentlewoman, named Fabry, with her aged mother andother females of the family, had taken refuge in the cellar of hermansion. As the day was drawing to a close, a band of plunderersentered, who, after ransacking the house, descended to the cellarage. Finding the door barred, they forced it open with gunpowder. Themother, who was nearest the entrance, fell dead on the threshold. Stepping across her mangled body, the brigands sprang upon herdaughter, loudly demanding the property which they believed to beconcealed. They likewise insisted on being informed where the masterof the house had taken refuge. Protestations of ignorance as to hiddentreasure, or the whereabouts of her husband, who, for aught she knew, was lying dead in the streets, were of no avail. To make her morecommunicative, they hanged her on a beam in the cellar, and after afew moments cut her down before life was extinct. Still receiving nosatisfactory reply, where a satisfactory reply was impossible, theyhanged her again. Again, after another brief interval, they gave her asecond release, and a fresh interrogatory. This barbarity theyrepeated several times, till they were satisfied that there wasnothing to be gained by it, while, on the other hand, they were losingmuch valuable time. Hoping to be more successful elsewhere, they lefther hanging for the last time, and trooped off to fresher fields. Strange to relate, the person thus horribly tortured survived. Aservant in her family, married to a Spanish soldier, providentiallyentered the house in time to rescue her perishing mistress. She wasrestored to existence, but never to reason. Her brain was hopelesslycrazed, and she passed the remainder of her life wandering about herhouse, or feebly digging in her garden for the buried treasure whichshe had been thus fiercely solicited to reveal. 

A wedding-feast was rudely interrupted. Two young persons, neighborsof opulent families, had been long betrothed, and the marriage-day hadbeen fixt for Sunday, the fatal 4th of November. The guests wereassembled, the ceremony concluded, and the nuptial banquet inprogress, when the horrible outcries in the streets proclaimed thatthe Spaniards had broken loose. Hour after hour of tremblingexpectation succeeded. At last, a thundering at the gate proclaimedthe arrival of a band of brigands. Preceded by their captain, a largenumber of soldiers forced their way into the house, ransacking everychamber, no opposition being offered by the family and friends, toofew and powerless to cope with this band of well-armed ruffians. Platechests, wardrobes, desks, caskets of jewelry were freely offered, eagerly accepted, but not found sufficient, and to make the lucklesswretches furnish more than they possest, the usual brutalities wereemployed. The soldiers began by striking the bridegroom dead. Thebride fell shrieking into her mother's arms, whence she was torn bythe murderers, who immediately put the mother to death, and anindiscriminate massacre then followed the fruitless attempts toobtain by threats and torture treasure which did not exist. The bride, who was of remarkable beauty, was carried off to the citadel. Maddenedby this last outrage, the father, who was the only man of the partyleft alive, rushed upon the Spaniards. Wresting a sword from one ofthe crew, the old man dealt with it so fiercely that he stretched morethan one enemy dead at his feet, but it is needless to add that he wassoon dispatched. 

Meantime, while the party were concluding the plunder of the mansion, the bride was left in a lonely apartment of the fortress. Withoutwasting time in fruitless lamentation, she resolved to quit the lifewhich a few hours had made so desolate. She had almost succeeded inhanging herself with a massive gold chain which she wore, when hercaptor entered the apartment. Inflamed, not with lust, but withavarice, excited not by her charms, but by her jewelry, he rescued herfrom her perilous position. He then took possession of her chain andthe other trinkets with which her wedding-dress was adorned, andcaused her to be entirely stript of her clothing. She was thenscourged with rods till her beautiful body was bathed in blood, and atlast alone, naked, nearly mad, was sent back into the city. Here theforlorn creature wandered up and down through the blazing streets, among the heaps of dead and dying, till she was at last put out of hermisery by a gang of soldiers. 

Such are a few isolated instances, accidentally preserved in theirdetails, of the general horrors inflicted on this occasion. Othersinnumerable have sunk into oblivion. On the morning of the 5th ofNovember Antwerp presented a ghastly sight. The magnificent marbletown-house, celebrated as a "world's wonder, " even in that age andcountry, in which so much splendor was lavished on municipal palaces, stood a blackened ruin--all but the walls destroyed, while itsarchives, accounts, and other valuable contents had perished. The moresplendid portion of the city had been consumed, at least five hundredpalaces, mostly of marble or hammered stone, being a smoldering massof destruction. The dead bodies of those fallen in the massacre wereon every side, in greatest profusion around the Place de Meer, amongthe Gothic pillars of the Exchange, and in the streets near thetown-house. The German soldiers lay in their armor, some with theirheads burned from their bodies, some with legs and arms consumed bythe flames through which they had fought. The Margrave GoswynVerreyck, the burgomaster Van der Meere, the magistrates Lancelot VanUrselen, Nicholas Van Boekholt, and other leading citizens lay amongpiles of less distinguished slain. They remained unburied until theoverseers of the poor, on whom the living had then more importunateclaims than the dead, were compelled by Roda to bury them out of thepauper fund. The murderers were too thrifty to be at funeral chargesfor their victims. The ceremony was not hastily performed, for thenumber of corpses had not been completed. Two days longer the havoclasted in the city. Of all the crimes which men can commit, whetherfrom deliberate calculation or in the frenzy of passion, hardly onewas omitted, for riot, gaming, rape, which had been postponed to themore stringent claims of robbery and murder, were now rapidly added tothe sum of atrocities. History has recorded the account indelibly onher brazen tablets; it can be adjusted only at the judgment-seatabove. 

Of all the deeds of darkness yet compassed in the Netherlands this wasthe worst. It was called The Spanish Fury, by which dread name it hasbeen known for ages. The city, which had been a world of wealth andsplendor, was changed to a charnel-house, and from that hour itscommercial prosperity was blasted. Other causes had silently girdledthe yet green and flourishing tree, but the Spanish Fury was the firewhich consumed it to ashes. Three thousand dead bodies were discoveredin the streets, as many more were estimated to have perished in theScheld, and nearly an equal number were burned or destroyed in otherways. Eight thousand persons undoubtedly were put to death. Sixmillions of property were destroyed by the fire, and at least as muchmore was obtained by the Spaniards. 

RICHARD HENRY DANA THE YOUNGER

 Born in Cambridge, Mass. , in 1815; died in 1882; being in ill health, shipped before the mast in 1834, making a voyage to the Pacific, described in his book "Two Years Before the Mast, " published in 1840; one of the founders of the Free Soil party in 1848; edited Wheaton's "Elements of International Law, " published in 1866. 

A FIERCE GALE UNDER A CLEAR SKY[29]

We had been below but a short time before we had the usualpremonitions of a coming gale--seas washing over the whole forwardpart of the vessel, and her bows beating against them with a force andsound like the driving of piles. The watch, too, seemed very busytrampling about decks and singing out at the ropes. A sailor can tellby the sound what sail is coming in; and in a short time we heard thetop-gallant-sails come in, one after another, and then the flying jib. This seemed to ease her a good deal, and we were fast going off to theland of Nod, when--bang, bang, bang on the scuttle, and "All hands, reef topsails, ahoy!" started us out of our berths, and it not beingvery cold weather, we had nothing extra to put on, and were soon ondeck. 

[Footnote 29: From "Two Years Before the Mast. "]

I shall never forget the fineness of the sight. It was a clear andrather a chilly night; the stars were twinkling with an intensebrightness, and as far as the eye could reach there was not a cloudto be seen. The horizon met the sea in a defined line. A painter couldnot have painted so clear a sky. There was not a speck upon it. Yet itwas blowing great guns from the northwest. When you can see a cloud towindward, you feel that there is a place for the wind to come from;but here it seemed to come from nowhere. No person could have toldfrom the heavens, by their eyesight alone, that it was not a stillsummer's night. One reef after another we took in the topsails, andbefore we could get them hoisted up we heard a sound like a shortquick rattling of thunder, and the jib was blown to atoms out of thebolt-rope. We got the topsails set, and the fragments of the jibstowed away, and the foretopmast staysail set in its place, when thegreat mainsail gaped open, and the sail ripped from head to foot. "Layup on that main yard and furl the sail, before it blows to tatters!"shouted the captain; and in a moment we were up, gathering the remainsof it upon the yard. We got it wrapt round the yard, and passedgaskets over it as snugly as possible, and were just on deck again, when with another loud rent, which was heard throughout the ship, theforetopsail, which had been double-reefed, split in two athwartships, just below the reef-band, from earing to earing. Here again itwas--down yard, haul out reef-tackles, and lay out upon the yard forreefing. By hauling the reef-tackles chock-a-block we took the strainfrom the other earings, and passing the close-reef earing, andknotting the points carefully, we succeeded in setting the sail, closereefed. 

We had but just got the rigging coiled up, and were waiting to hear"Go below the watch!" when the main royal worked loose from thegaskets, and blew directly out to leeward, flapping and shaking themast like a wand. Here was a job for somebody. The royal must come inor be cut adrift, or the mast would be snapt short off. All the lighthands in the starboard watch were sent up one after another, but theycould do nothing with it. At length John, the tall Frenchman, the headof the starboard watch (and a better sailor never stept upon a deck), sprang aloft, and by the help of his long arms and legs succeededafter a hard struggle--the sail blowing over the yard-arm to leeward, and the skysail adrift directly over his head--in smothering it andfrapping it with long pieces of sinnet. He came very near being blownor shaken from the yard several times, but he was a true sailor, everyfinger a fish-hook. Having made the sail snug, he prepared to send theyard down, which was a long and difficult job; for frequently he wasobliged to stop and hold on with all his might for several minutes, the ship pitching so as to make it impossible to do anything else atthat height. The yard at length came down safe, and after it the foreand mizzen royal yards were sent down. All hands were then sent aloft, and for an hour or two we were hard at work, making the booms wellfast, unreefing the studding sail and royal and skysail gear, gettingrolling-ropes on the yard, setting up the weather breast-backstays, and making other preparations for a storm. It was a fine night for agale, just cool and bracing enough for quick work, without beingcold, and as bright as day. It was sport to have a gale in suchweather as this. Yet it blew like a hurricane. The wind seemed to comewith a spite, an edge to it, which threatened to scrape us off theyards. The force of the wind was greater than I had ever felt itbefore; but darkness, cold, and wet are the worst parts of a storm toa sailor. 

Having got on deck again, we looked round to see what time of night itwas, and whose watch. In a few minutes the man at the wheel struckfour bells, and we found that the other watch was out and our own halfout. Accordingly, the starboard watch went below, and left the ship tous for a couple of hours, yet with orders to stand by for a call. 

Hardly had they got below before away went the foretopmast staysail, blown to ribbons. This was a small sail, which we could manage in thewatch, so that we were not obliged to call up the other watch. We laidupon the bowsprit, where we were under water half the time, and tookin the fragments of the sail; and as she must have some headsail onher, prepared to bend another staysail. We got the new one out intothe nettings; seized on the tack, sheets, and halyards, and the hanks;manned the halyards, cut adrift the frapping-lines, and hoisted away;but before it was half-way up the stay it was blown all to pieces. When we belayed the halyards, there was nothing left but thebolt-rope. Now large eyes began to show themselves in the foresail;and knowing that it must soon go, the mate ordered us upon the yard tofurl it. Being unwilling to call up the watch, who had been on deckall night, he roused out the carpenter, sailmaker, cook, and steward, and with their help we manned the foreyard, and after nearly half anhour's struggle, mastered the sail and got it well furled round theyard. 

The force of the wind had never been greater than at this moment. Ingoing up the rigging it seemed absolutely to pin us down to theshrouds; and on the yard there was no such thing as turning a face towindward. Yet there was no driving sleet and darkness and wet and coldas off Cape Horn; and instead of stiff oilcloth suits, southwestercaps, and thick boots, we had on hats, round jackets, duck trousers, light shoes, and everything light and easy. These things make a greatdifference to a sailor. When we got on deck the man at the wheelstruck eight bells (four o'clock in the morning), and "Allstarbowlines, ahoy!" brought the other watch up, but there was nogoing below for us. The gale was now at its height, "blowing likescissors and thumb-screws"; the captain was on deck; the ship, whichwas light, rolling and pitching as tho she would shake the long sticksout of her, and the sails were gaping open and splitting in everydirection. The mizzen-topsail, which was a comparatively new sail andclose reefed, split from head to foot in the bunt; the foretopsailwent in one rent from clew to earing, and was blowing to tatters; oneof the chain bobstays parted; the spritsailyard sprung in the slings, the martingale had slued away off to leeward; and owing to the longdry weather the lee rigging hung in large bights at every lurch. Oneof the main-topgallant shrouds had parted; and to crown all, thegalley had got adrift and gone over to leeward, and the anchor on thelee bow had worked loose and was thumping the side. Here was workenough for all hands for half a day. Our gang laid out on themizzen-top-sailyard, and after more than half an hour's hard workfurled the sail, tho it bellied out over our heads, and again, by aslat of the wind, blew in under the yard with a fearful jerk andalmost threw us off from the foot-ropes. .. . 

It was now eleven o'clock, and the watch was sent below to getbreakfast, and at eight bells (noon), as everything was snug, althothe gale had not in the least abated, the watch was set and the otherwatch and idlers sent below. For three days and three nights the galecontinued with unabated fury, and with singular regularity. There wereno lulls, and very little variation in its fierceness. Our ship, beinglight, rolled so as almost to send the fore yard-arm under water, anddrifted off bodily to leeward. All this time there was not a cloud tobe seen in the sky, day or night; no, not so large as a man's hand. Every morning the sun rose cloudless from the sea, and set again atnight in the sea in a flood of light. The stars, too, came out of theblue one after another, night after night, unobscured, and twinkled asclear as on a still frosty night at home, until the day came uponthem. All this time the sea was rolling in immense surges, white withfoam, as far as the eye could reach, on every side; for we were nowleagues and leagues from shore. 

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

 Born in Concord, Mass. , in 1817; died in 1862; graduated from Harvard in 1837; taught school; practised surveying; lived alone at Walden Pond in 1845-47; a friend of Emerson and Alcott; imprisoned for refusal to pay a tax he believed to be unjust; published "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers" in 1849, and "Walden" in 1854; "Excursions" published after his death, with a memoir, by Emerson, "The Maine Woods" in 1864, "Cape Cod" in 1865; his "Journals" and other works also published after his death. 

I

THE BUILDING OF HIS HOUSE AT WALDEN POND[30]

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I livedalone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I hadbuilt myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there twoyears and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized lifeagain. .. . 

[Footnote 30: From Chapter I of "Walden, or Life in the Woods. "]

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an ax and went down to thewoods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall arrowy white pines, still in theiryouth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, butperhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow mento have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the ax, as hereleased his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but Ireturned it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillsidewhere I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out onthe pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines andhickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not yetdissolved, tho there were some open spaces, and it was all darkcolored and saturated with water. There were some slight flurries ofsnow during the days that I worked there; but for the most part when Icame out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heapstretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone inthe spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds alreadycome to commence another year with us. .. . 

I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on twosides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving therest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and muchstronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenonedby its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time. My days inthe woods were not very long ones; yet I usually carried my dinner ofbread and butter, and read the newspaper in which it was wrapt, atnoon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and tomy bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands werecovered with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was more thefriend than the foe of the pine-tree, tho I had cut down some of them, having become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in thewood was attracted by the sound of my ax, and we chatted pleasantlyover the chips which I had made. .. . 

I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where awoodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumac andblackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet squareby seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in anywinter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sunhaving never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. It was buttwo hours' work. I took particular pleasure in this breaking ofground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for anequable temperature. Under the most splendid house in the city isstill to be found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after the superstructure has disappeared posterity willremark its dent in the earth. The house is still but a sort of porchat the entrance of a burrow. 

At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of myacquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion forneighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of myhouse. No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisersthan I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising ofloftier structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 4th ofJuly, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards werecarefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectlyimpervious to rain; but before boarding I laid the foundation of achimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill fromthe pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in themeanwhile out-of-doors, on the ground, early in the morning; whichmode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeablethan the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixta few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, andpassed some pleasant hours in that way. In those days, when my handswere much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paperwhich lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as muchentertainment, in fact, answered the same purpose as the Iliad. 

Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house, which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and sappyshingles made of the first slice of the log, which edges I was obligedto straighten with a plane. 

I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide byfifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, alarge window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and abrick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the usualprice for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all ofwhich was done by myself, was as follows; and I give the detailsbecause very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, andfewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various materials whichcompose them:

Boards $ 8. 03-1/2Refuse shingles for roof and sides 4. 00Laths 1. 25Two second-hand windows with glass 2. 43One thousand old brick 4. 00Two casks of lime (That was high) 2. 40Hair (More than I needed) 0. 31Mantle-tree iron 0. 15Nails 3. 90Hinges and screws 0. 14Latch 0. 10Chalk 0. 01Transportation (I carried a good parton my back) 1. 40 ----------In all $28. 12-1/2

These are all the materials excepting the timber, stones, and sand, which I claimed by squatter's right. I have also a small woodshedadjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building thehouse. 

II

HOW TO MAKE TWO SMALL ENDS MEET[31]

Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars bysome honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusualexpenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soilnear it chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven acres, mostlygrowing up to pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding seasonfor eight dollars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said that it was"good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on. " I put no manurewhatever on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, andnot expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe itall once. I got out several cords of stumps in plowing, which suppliedme with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mold, easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance ofthe beans there. The dead and for the most part unmerchantable woodbehind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied theremainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for theplowing, tho I held the plow myself. My farm outgoes for the firstseason were, for implements, seed, work, etc. , $14. 72-1/2. The seedcorn was given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless youplant more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteenbushels of potatoes, besides some peas and sweet corn. The yellow cornand turnips were too late to come to anything. My whole income fromthe farm was

 $23. 44Deducting the outgoes 14. 72-1/2 --------------There are left $ 8. 71-1/2

besides produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate wasmade of the value of $4. 50--the amount on hand much more thanbalancing a little grass which I did not raise. All things considered, that is considering the importance of a man's soul and of to-day, notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partlyeven because of its transient character I believe that that was doingbetter than any farmer in Concord did that year. 

[Footnote 31: From Chapters I and II of "Walden. "]

The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land which Irequired, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experienceof both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works onhusbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if one would live simplyand eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate, and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious andexpensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods ofground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxento plow it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than tomanure the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work as it werewith his left hand at odd hours in the summer; and thus he would notbe tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as at present. I desire tospeak impartially on this point, and as one not interested in thesuccess or failure of the present economical and social arrangements. I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was notanchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment. Besides being better offthan they already, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, I should have been nearly as well off as before. .. . 

By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in thevillage in the meanwhile, for I have as many trades as fingers, I hadearned $13. 34. The expense of food for eight months, namely, from July4th to March 1st, the time when these estimates were made, tho I livedthere more than two years--not counting potatoes, a little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of whatwas on hand at the last date, was

Rice $1. 73-1/2}Molasses (Cheapest form } of the saccharine) 1. 73 }Rye meal 1. 04-3/4}Indian meal (Cheaper } than rye) 0. 99-3/4}Pork 0. 22 }Flour (Costs more than } All Experiments Indian meal, both } which had failed money and trouble) 0. 88 }Sugar 0. 80 }Lard 0. 65 }Apples 0. 25 }Dried apple 0. 22 }Sweet potatoes 0. 10 }One pumpkin 0. 06 }One watermelon 0. 02 }Salt 0. 03 }

Yes, I did eat $8. 74, all told; but I should not thus unblushinglypublish my guilt, if I did not know that most of my readers wereequally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no betterin print. The next year I sometimes caught a mess of fish for mydinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck whichravaged my beanfield--effect his transmigration, as a Tartar wouldsay--and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but tho itafforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, Isaw that the longest use would not make that a good practise, howeverit might seem to have your woodchucks ready drest by the villagebutcher. 

Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same date, tho littlecan be inferred from this item, amounted to

 $8. 40-3/4Oil and some household utensils 2. 00

So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and mending, which for the most part were done out of the house, and their billshave not yet been received--and these are all and more than all theways by which money necessarily goes out in this part of theworld--were

House $28. 12-1/2Farm, one year 14. 72-1/2Food, eight months 8. 74Clothing, etc. , eight months 8. 40-3/4Oil, etc. , eight months 2. 00 ------- In all $61. 99-3/4

I address myself now to those of my readers who have a living to get. And to meet this I have for farm produce sold

 $23. 44Earned by day-labor 13. 34 ------ In all $36. 78

which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of$25. 21-3/4 on the one side, this being very nearly the means with which Istarted, and the measure of expenses to be incurred--and on theother, besides the leisure and independence and health thus secured, acomfortable house for me as long as I choose to occupy it. 

These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive theymay appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain valuealso. Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some account. It appears from the above estimate that my food alone cost me in moneyabout twenty-seven cents a week. It was, for nearly two years afterthis, rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very littlesalt pork, molasses, and salt, and my drink water. It was fit that Ishould live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the philosophy ofIndia. To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may aswell state that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done, andI trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to thedetriment of my domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, as Ihave stated, a constant element, does not in the least affect acomparative statement like this. 

I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incrediblylittle trouble to obtain one's necessary food, even in this latitude;that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retainhealth and strength. I have made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactoryon several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane (_PortulacaOleracea_) which I gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted. I givethe Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name. And praywhat more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinarynoons, than sufficient number of ears of green sweet-corn boiled, with the addition of salt? Even the little variety which I used was ayielding to the demands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men havecome to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want ofnecessaries, but for want of luxuries; and I know a good woman whothinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking wateronly. 

The reader will perceive that I am treating the subject rather from aneconomic than a dietetic point of view, and he will not venture to putmy abstemiousness to the test unless he has a well-stocked larder. 

Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the end of astick of timber sawed off in building my house; but it was wont to getsmoked and to have a piny flavor. I tried flour also; but have at lastfound a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no little amusement to bake several smallloaves of this in succession, tending and turning them as carefully asan Egyptian his hatching eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which Iripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of othernoble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them incloths. I made a study of the ancient and indispensable art ofbread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back tothe primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, whenfrom the wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness andrefinement of this diet, and traveling gradually down in my studiesthrough that accidental souring of the dough, which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentationsthereafter, till I came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread, " the staffof life. 

For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the laborof my hands, and I found that by working about six weeks in a year, Icould meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, aswell as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I havethoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were inproportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for I wasobliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the goodof my fellow men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. Ihave tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to getunder way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to thedevil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing whatis called a good business. When formerly I was looking about to seewhat I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to thewishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, Ithought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely Icould do, and its small profits might suffice--for my greatest skillhas been to want but little--so little capital it required, so littledistraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While myacquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, Icontemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hillsall summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereaftercarelessly dispose of them; so to keep the flocks of Admetus. I alsodreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens tosuch villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city, by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that trade curseseverything it handles; and tho you trade in messages from heaven, thewhole curse of trade attaches to the business. .. . 

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that tomaintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, ifwe will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nationsare still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary thata man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless hesweats easier than I do. .. . 

The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat, wasa tent, which I used occasionally when making excursions in thesummer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, afterpassing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With thismore substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress towardsettling in the world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort ofcrystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It wassuggestive as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors totake the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of itsfreshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where Isat, even in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, "Anabode-without birds is like a meat without seasoning. " Such was not myabode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not byhaving imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. I was notonly nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden andthe orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of theforest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager, the wood-thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many others. 

I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a halfsouth of the village of Concord, and somewhat higher than it, in themidst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and abouttwo miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord battleground; but I was so low in the woods that the opposite shore, half amile off, like the rest covered with wood, was my most distanthorizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on the pond itimprest me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottomfar above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw itthrowing off its mighty clothing of mist, and here and there, bydegrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface wererevealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing inevery direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of somenocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon the treeslater into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains. 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to frontonly the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn whatit had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had notlived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear;nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live sosturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, tocut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, andreduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, then toget the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness tothe world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and beable to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it isof the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it isthe chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever. "

Still we live meanly, like ants; tho the fable tells us that we werelong ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it iserror upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has forits occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life isfrittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count morethan his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, andlump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let youraffairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; insteadof a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such arethe clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand and one items to beallowed for that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go tothe bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and hemust be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary, eat but one; insteadof a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. 

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown offthe track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on therails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and withoutperturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ringand the children cry--determined to make a day of it. Why should weknock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset andoverwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you aresafe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mastlike Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarsefor its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will considerwhat kind of music they are like. 

III

ON READING THE ANCIENT CLASSICS[32]

The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger ofdissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measureemulates their heroes, and consecrates morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mothertongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and wemust laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturinga larger sense than common use permits out of that wisdom and valorand generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with allits translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroicwriters of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in whichthey are printed as rare and curious as ever. It is worth the expenseof youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of anancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of thestreet, to be perpetual suggestions and provocation. It is not in vainthat the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he hasheard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would atlength make way for more modern and practical studies; but theadventurous student will always study classics, in whatever languagethey may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are theclassics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the onlyoracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the mostmodern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might aswell omit to study Nature because she is old. 

[Footnote 32: From Chapter III of "Walden. "]

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a nobleexercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercisewhich the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such asthe athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole lifeto this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly asthey were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak thelanguage of that nation by which they are written, for there is amemorable interval between the spoken and the written language, thelanguage heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn itunconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is thematurity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this isour father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significantto be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in theMiddle Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read theworks of genius written in those languages; for these were not writtenin that Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select language ofliterature. They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece andRome, but the very materials on which they were written were wastepaper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporaryliterature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquireddistinct tho rude written languages of their own, sufficient for thepurposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, andscholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures ofantiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, afterthe lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only arestill reading it. 

However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts ofeloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind orabove the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars isbehind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may readthem. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They arenot exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What iscalled eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in thestudy. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but thewriter, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would bedistracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaksto the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who canunderstand him. 

No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditionsin a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It issomething at once more intimate with us and more universal than anyother work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. Itmay be translated into every language, and not only be read butactually breathed from all human lips; not be represented on canvas orin marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. Thesymbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Twothousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for theyhave carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all landsto protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasuredwealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations andnations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally andrightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause oftheir own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the readerhis common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural andirresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings oremperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate andperhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry hiscoveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles ofwealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higherbut yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensibleonly of the imperfection of his culture, and the vanity andinsufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense bythe pains which he takes to secure for his children that intellectualculture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomesthe founder of a family. 

Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in thelanguage in which they were written must have a very imperfectknowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable thatno transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor Æschylus, nor Virgileven--works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost asthe morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of theirgenius, have rarely, if ever, equaled the elaborate beauty and finishand the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They onlytalk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will be soon enough toforget them when we have the learning and the genius which will enableus to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich, indeed, when those relics which we call classics, and the still older and morethan classic but even less known scriptures of the nations, shall havestill further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled withVedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes andShakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successivelydeposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile wemay hope to scale heaven at last. 

IV

OF SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE[33]

When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there andleft their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. They who comerarely to the woods take some little piece of the forest into theirhands to play with by the way, which they leave, either intentionallyor accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and dropt it on my table. I could always tell if visitors had calledin my absence, either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print oftheir shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they were bysome slight trace left, as a flower dropt, or a bunch of grass pluckedand thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequentlynotified of the passage of a traveler along the highway sixty rods offby the scent of his pipe. .. . 

[Footnote 33: From Chapter IV of "Walden. "]

I have never felt lonesome, or in the least opprest by a sense ofsolitude but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was notessential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was somethingunpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanityin my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of agentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible ofsuch sweet and beneficent society in nature, in the very pattering ofthe drops and in every sound and sight around my house, an infiniteand unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmospheresustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhoodsignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pineneedle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was sodistinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, evenin scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and alsothat the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person, nor avillager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to meagain. .. . 

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be incompany, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I loveto be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable assolitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad amongmen than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working isalways alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured bythe miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. Thereally diligent student in one of the crowded hives of CambridgeCollege is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can workalone in the field all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he can not sitdown in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be wherehe can "see the folks, " and recreate, and, as he thinks, remuneratehimself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the studentcan sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennuiand "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, tho in thehouse, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, asthe farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and societythat the latter does, tho it may be a more condensed form of it. 

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, nothaving had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet atmeals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that oldmusty cheese that we are. We have to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meetingtolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at thepost-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night;we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over oneanother, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and heartycommunications. Consider the girls in a factory--never alone, hardlyin their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitantto a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in hisskin, that we should touch him. 

I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one mayconvey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon inthe pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden pond itself. Whatcompany has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the bluedevils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appearto be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone--but the devil, he isfar from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. Iam no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, ora bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humble-bee. I am no morelonely than the Mill brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, orthe south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the firstspider in a new house. 

I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snowfalls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler andoriginal proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden pond, andstoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of oldtime and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerfulevening, with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even withoutapples or cider; a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley;[34] andtho he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. Anelderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to mostpersons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius ofunequaled fertility, and her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what factevery one is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. Aruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet. 

[Footnote 34: The English regicides who came to America, and after1660 lived in concealment in New England, a part of the time in a cavenear New Haven. William Goffe died in Hadley, Mass. , in 1679. EdwardWhalley, who had been one of Cromwell's major generals, died also inHadley a year before Goffe. ]

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

 Born in 1819, died in 1891; graduated from Harvard in 1838; in 1855 became professor at Harvard; editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_ in 1857-62, _The North American Review_ in 1863-72; minister to Spain in 1877-80, and Great Britain in 1880-85; published "A Year's Life" in 1841, "The Vision of Sir Launfal" in 1845, "A Fable for Critics" in 1848, "The Biglow Papers" in 1848, and a second series in 1867, "Under the Willows" in 1868, "The Cathedral" in 1869; among his best-known prose works, "Conversations on Some of the Old Poets" published in 1845, "Fireside Travels" in 1864, "Among My Books" in 1870 and 1876, "My Study Windows" in 1871; his "Letters" edited by Charles Eliot Norton, published in 1893. 

I

THE POET AS PROPHET[35]

Poets are the forerunners and prophets of changes in the moral world. Driven by their fine nature to search into and reverently contemplatethe universal laws of the soul, they find some fragment of the brokentables of God's law, and interpret it, half-conscious of its mightyimport. While philosophers are wrangling, and politicians playing atsnapdragon with, the destinies of millions, the poet, in the silentdeeps of his soul, listens to those mysterious pulses which, from onecentral heart, send life and beauty through the finest veins of theuniverse, and utters truths to be sneered at, perchance, bycontemporaries, but which become religion to posterity. Not unwiselyordered is that eternal destiny which renders the seer despised ofmen, since thereby he is but the more surely taught to lay his headmeekly upon the mother-breast of Nature, and harken to the musicalsoft beating of her bounteous heart. 

[Footnote 35: From an essay contributed to _The Pioneer_ in 1843. Lowell was the founder and editor of _The Pioneer_, Robert Carterbeing his associate. The magazine lived only three months. CharlesEliot Norton, the editor of Lowell's "Letters, " says it "left itsprojectors burdened with a considerable debt. " "I am deeply in debt, "wrote Lowell afterward, when hesitating to undertake a journey, "andfeel a twinge for every cent I spend. "]

That Poesy, save as she can soar nearer to the blissful throne of theSupreme Beauty, is of no more use than all other beautiful things are, we are fain to grant. That she does not add to the outward wealth ofthe body, and that she is only so much more excellent than any bodilygift as spirit is more excellent than matter, we must also yield. But, inasmuch as all beautiful things are direct messages and revelationsof himself, given us by our Father, and as Poesy is the searcher outand interpreter of all these, tracing by her inborn sympathy theinvisible nerves which bind them harmoniously together, she is to berevered and cherished. The poet has a fresher memory of Eden, and ofthe path leading back thereto, than other men; so that we might almostdeem him to have been conceived, at least, if not borne and nursed, beneath the ambrosial shadow of those dimly remembered bowers, and tohave had his infant ears filled with the divine converse of angels, who then talked face to face with his sires, as with beloved youngerbrethren, and of whose golden words only the music remained to him, vibrating forever in his soul, and making him yearn to have all soundsof earth harmonize therewith. In the poet's lofty heart Truth hangsher aerie, and there Love flowers, scattering thence her winged seedsover all the earth with every wind of heaven. In all ages the poet'sfiery words have goaded men to remember and regain their ancientfreedom, and, when they had regained it, have tempered it with a loveof beauty, so as that it should accord with the freedom of nature, andbe as unmovably eternal as that. The dreams of poets are morningdreams, coming to them in the early dawn and daybreaking of greattruths, and are surely fulfilled at last. They repeat them, aschildren do, and all Christendom, if it be not too busy withquarreling about the meaning of creeds, which have no meaning at all, listens with a shrug of the shoulders and a smile of pityingincredulity; for reformers are always madmen in their own age, andinfallible saints in the next. 

We love to go back to the writings of our old poets, for we find inthem the tender germs of many a thought which now stands like a hugeoak in the inward world, an ornament and a shelter. We can not helpreading with awful interest what has been written or rudely scrawledupon the walls of this our earthly prison house, by former dwellerstherein. From that which centuries have established, too, we may drawtrue principles of judgment for the poetry of our own day. A rightknowledge and apprehension of the past teaches humbleness andself-sustainment to the present. Showing us what has been, it alsoreveals what can be done. Progress is Janus-faced, looking to thebygone as well as to the coming; and radicalism should not so muchbusy itself with lopping off the dead or seeming dead limbs, as withclearing away that poisonous rottenness around the roots, from whichthe tree has drawn the principle of death into its sap. A love of thebeautiful and harmonious, which must be the guide and forerunner toevery onward movement of humanity, is created and cherished moresurely by pointing out what beauty dwells in anything, even the mostdeformed (for there is something in that also, else it could not evenbe), than by searching out and railing at all the foulnesses innature. 

Not till we have patiently studied beauty can we safely venture tolook at defects, for not till then can we do it in that spirit ofearnest love, which gives more than it takes away. Exultingly as wehail all signs of progress, we venerate the past also. The tendrils ofthe heart, like those of ivy, cling but the more closely to what theyhave clung to long, and even when that which they entwine crumblesbeneath them, they still run greenly over the ruin, and beautify thosedefects which they can not hide. The past as well as the present, molds the future, and the features of some remote progenitor willrevive again freshly in the latest offspring of the womb of time. Ourearth hangs well-nigh silent now, amid the chorus of her sister orbs, and not till past and present move harmoniously together will musiconce more vibrate on this long silent chord in the symphony of theuniverse. 

II

THE FIRST OF THE MODERNS[36]

Dryden has now been in his grave nearly a hundred and seventy years;in the second class of English poets perhaps no one stands, on thewhole, so high as he; during his lifetime, in spite of jealousy, detraction, unpopular politics, and a suspicious change of faith, hispreeminence was conceded; he was the earliest complete type of thepurely literary man, in the modern sense; there is a singularunanimity in allowing him a certain claim to greatness which would bedenied to men as famous and more read--to Pope or Swift, for example;he is supposed, in some way or other, to have reformed English poetry. It is now about half a century since the only uniform edition of hisworks was edited by Scott. No library is complete without him, no nameis more familiar than his, and yet it may be suspected that fewwriters are more thoroughly buried in that great cemetery of the"British Poets. "

[Footnote 36: From the first essay in the first series entitled "AmongMy Books. " Copyright, 1870, by James Russell Lowell. Published byHoughton, Mifflin Company. ]

If contemporary reputation be often deceitful, posthumous fame may begenerally trusted, for it is a verdict made up of the suffrages of theselect men in succeeding generations. This verdict has been as good asunanimous in favor of Dryden. It is, perhaps, worth while to take afresh observation of him, to consider him neither as warning norexample, but to endeavor to make out what it is that has given solofty and firm a position to one of the most unequal, inconsistent, and faulty writers that ever lived. He is a curious example of what weoften remark of the living, but rarely of the dead--that they getcredit for what they might be quite as much as for what they are--andposterity has applied to him one of his own rules of criticism, judging him by the best rather than the average of his achievement, athing posterity is seldom wont to do. On the losing side in politics, it is true of his polemical writings as of Burke's--whom in manyrespects he resembles, and especially in that supreme quality of areasoner, that his mind gathers not only heat, but clearness andexpansion, by its own motion--that they have won his battle for him inthe judgment of after times. 

To us, looking back at him, he gradually becomes a singularlyinteresting and even picturesque figure. He is, in more senses thanone, in language, in turn of thought, in style of mind, in thedirection of his activity, the first of the moderns. He is the firstliterary man who was also a man of the world, as we understand theterm. He succeeded Ben Jonson as the acknowledged dictator of wit andcriticism, as Dr. Johnson, after nearly the same interval, succeededhim. All ages are, in some sense, ages of transition; but there aretimes when the transition is more marked, more rapid; and it is, perhaps, an ill fortune for a man of letters to arrive at maturityduring such a period, still more to represent in himself the changethat is going on, and to be an efficient cause in bringing it about. Unless, like Goethe, he is of a singularly uncontemporaneous nature, capable of being _tutta in se romita_, and of running parallel withhis time rather than being sucked into its current, he will bethwarted in that harmonious development of native force which has somuch to do with its steady and successful application. Drydensuffered, no doubt, in this way. Tho in creed he seems to have driftedbackward in an eddy of the general current; yet of the intellectualmovement of the time, so far certainly as literature shared in it, hecould say, with Æneas, not only that he saw, but that himself was agreat part of it. 

That movement was, on the whole, a downward one, from faith to scepticism, from enthusiasm to cynicism, from the imagination to the understanding. Itwas in a direction altogether away from those springs of imagination andfaith at which they of the last age had slaked the thirst or renewed thevigor of their souls. Dryden himself recognized that indefinable andgregarious influence which we call nowadays the spirit of the age, when hesaid that "every age has a kind of universal genius. " He had also a justnotion of that in which he lived; for he remarks, incidentally, that "allknowing ages are naturally sceptic and not at all bigoted, which, if I amnot much deceived, is the proper character of our own. " It may be conceivedthat he was even painfully half-aware of having fallen upon a timeincapable, not merely of a great poet, but perhaps of any poet at all; fornothing is so sensitive to the chill of a skeptical atmosphere as thatenthusiasm which, if it be not genius, is at least the beautiful illusion, that saves it from the baffling quibbles of self-consciousness. Thriceunhappy he who, born to see things as they might be, is schooled bycircumstances to see them as people say they are--to read God in a prosetranslation. Such was Dryden's lot, and such, for a good part of his days, it was by his own choice. He who was of a stature to snatch the torch oflife that flashes from lifted hand to hand along the generations, over theheads of inferior men, chose rather to be a link-boy to the stews. .. . 

But at whatever period of his life we look at Dryden, and whatever, for the moment, may have been his poetic creed, there was something inthe nature of the man that would not be wholly subdued to what itworked in. There are continual glimpses of something in him greaterthan he, hints of possibilities finer than anything he has done. Youfeel that the whole of him was better than any random specimens, thoof his best, seem to prove. _Incessu patet_, he has by times the largestride of the elder race, tho it sinks too often into the slouch of aman who has seen better days. His grand air may, in part, spring froma habit of easy superiority to his competitors; but must also, inpart, be ascribed to an innate dignity of character. That thispreeminence should have been so generally admitted, during his life, can only be explained by a bottom of good sense, kindliness, and soundjudgment, whose solid worth could afford that many a flurry of vanity, petulance, and even error should flit across the surface and beforgotten. Whatever else Dryden may have been, the last and abidingimpression of him is that he was thoroughly manly; and while it may bedisputed whether he was a great poet, it may be said of him, asWordsworth said of Burke, "that he was by far the greatest man of hisage, not only abounding in knowledge himself, but feeding, in variousdirections, his most able contemporaries. "

III

OF FAULTS FOUND IN SHAKESPEARE[37]

Mr. Matthew Arnold seems to think that Shakespeare has damaged Englishpoetry. I wish he had! It is true he lifted Dryden above himself in"All for Love"; but it was Dryden who said of him, by instinctiveconviction rather than judgment, that within his magic circle nonedared tread but he. Is he to blame for the extravagances of moderndiction, which are but the reaction of the brazen age against thedegeneracy of art into artifice, that has characterized the silverperiod in every literature? We see in them only the futile effort ofmisguided persons to torture out of language the secret of thatinspiration which should be in themselves. We do not find theextravagances in Shakespeare himself. We never saw a line in anymodern poet that reminded us of him, and will venture to assert thatit is only poets of the second class that find successful imitators. And the reason seems to us a very plain one. The genius of the greatpoet seeks repose in the expression of itself, and finds it at last instyle, which is the establishment of a perfect mutual understandingbetween the worker and his material. The secondary intellect, on theother hand, seeks for excitement in expression, and stimulates itselfinto mannerism, which is the wilful obtrusion of self, as style is itsunconscious abnegation. No poet of the first class has ever left aschool, because his imagination is incommunicable; while, just assurely as the thermometer tells of the neighborhood of an iceberg, youmay detect the presence of a genius of the second class in anygeneration by the influence of his mannerism, for that, being anartificial thing, is capable of reproduction. Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, left no heirs either to the form or mode of their expression;while Milton, Sterne, and Wordsworth left behind them whole regimentsuniformed with all their external characteristics. 

[Footnote 37: From the essay entitled "Shakespeare Once Again, "printed in the first series entitled "Among My Books. " Copyright, 1870, by James Russell Lowell. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. ]

We do not mean that great poetic geniuses may not have influencedthought (tho we think it would be difficult to show how Shakespearehad done so, directly and wilfully), but that they have not infectedcontemporaries or followers with mannerism. The quality in him whichmakes him at once so thoroughly English and so thoroughly cosmopolitanis that aeration of the understanding by the imagination which he hasin common with all the greater poets, and which is the privilege ofgenius. The modern school, which mistakes violence for intensity, seems to catch its breath when it finds itself on the verge of naturalexpression, and to say to itself, "Good heavens! I had almostforgotten I was inspired!" But of Shakespeare we do not even suspectthat he ever remembered it. He does not always speak in that intenseway that flames up in Lear and Macbeth through the rifts of a soilvolcanic with passion. He allows us here and there the repose of acommonplace character, the consoling distraction of a humorous one. Heknows how to be equable and grand without effort, so that we forgetthe altitude of thought to which he has led us, because the slowlyreceding slope of a mountain stretching downward by ample gradationsgives a less startling impression of height than to look over the edgeof a ravine that makes but a wrinkle in its flank. 

Shakespeare has been sometimes taxed with the barbarism of profusenessand exaggeration. But this is to measure him by a Sophoclean scale. The simplicity of the antique tragedy is by no means that ofexpression, but is of form merely. In the utterance of great passionssomething must be indulged to the extravagance of Nature; the subduedtones to which pathos and sentiment are limited can not express atempest of the soul. The range between the piteous "no more but so, "in which Ophelia compresses the heartbreak whose compression was tomake her mad, and that sublime appeal of Lear to the elements ofnature, only to be matched, if matched at all, in the "Prometheus, " isa wide one, and Shakespeare is as truly simple in the one as in theother. The simplicity of poetry is not that of prose, nor itsclearness that of ready apprehension merely. To a subtile sense, asense heightened by sympathy, those sudden fervors of phrase, gone ereone can say it lightens, that show us Macbeth groping among thecomplexities of thought in his conscience-clouded mind, and reveal theintricacy rather than enlighten it, while they leave the eye darkenedto the literal meaning of the words, yet make their logical sequencethe grandeur of the conception, and its truth to nature clearer thansober daylight could. There is an obscurity of mist rising from theundrained shallows of the mind, and there is the darkness ofthunder-cloud gathering its electric masses with passionate intensityfrom the clear element of the imagination, not at random or wilfully, but by the natural processes of the creative faculty, to brood thoseflashes of expression that transcend rhetoric, and are only to beapprehended by the poetic instinct. 

In that secondary office of imagination, where it serves the artist, not as the reason that shapes, but as the interpreter of hisconceptions into words, there is a distinction to be noticed betweenthe higher and lower mode in which it performs its function. It may beeither creative or pictorial, may body forth the thought or merelyimage it forth. With Shakespeare, for example, imagination seemsimmanent in his very consciousness; with Milton, in his memory. In theone it sends, as if without knowing it, a fiery life into the verse, "Sei die Braut das Wort, Bräutigam der Geist";

in the other it elaborates a certain pomp and elevation. Accordingly, the bias of the former is toward over-intensity, of the latter towardover-diffuseness. Shakespeare's temptation is to push a willingmetaphor beyond its strength, to make a passion over-inform itstenement of words; Milton can not resist running a simile on into afugue. 

One always fancies Shakespeare in his best verses, and Milton at thekeyboard of his organ. Shakespeare's language is no longer the merevehicle of thought; it has become part of it, its very flesh andblood. The pleasure it gives us is unmixt, direct, like that from thesmell of a flower or the flavor of a fruit. Milton sets everywhere hislittle pitfalls of bookish association for the memory. I know thatMilton's manner is very grand. It is slow, it is stately, moving as intriumphal procession, with music, with historic banners, with spoilsfrom every time and every region, and captive epithets, like hugeSicambrians, thrust their broad shoulders between us and the thoughtwhose pomp they decorate. But it is manner, nevertheless, as is provedby the ease with which it is parodied, by the danger it is in ofdegenerating into mannerism whenever it forgets itself. Fancy a parodyof Shakespeare--I do not mean of his words, but of his tone, for thatis what distinguishes the master. You might as well try it with theVenus of Melos. In Shakespeare it is always the higher thing, thethought, the fancy, that is preeminent; it is Cæsar that draws alleyes, and not the chariot in which he rides, or the throng which isbut the reverberation of his supremacy. If not, how explain the charmwith which he dominates in all tongues, even under the disenchantmentof translation? Among the most alien races he is as solidly at home asa mountain seen from different sides by many lands, itself superblysolitary, yet the companion of all thoughts and domesticated in allimaginations. 

IV

AMERICANS AS SUCCESSORS OF THE DUTCH[38]

For more than a century the Dutch were the laughing-stock of politeEurope. They were butter-firkins, swillers of beer and schnapps, andtheir _vrouws_ from whom Holbein painted the all but loveliest ofMadonnas, Rembrandt the graceful girl who sits immortal on his knee inDresden, and Rubens his abounding goddesses, were the synonyms ofclumsy vulgarity. Even so late as Irving the ships of the greatestnavigators in the world were represented as sailing equally wellstern-foremost. That the aristocratic Venetians should have

 "Riveted with gigantic piles Thorough the center their new catchèd miles"

was heroic. But the far more marvelous achievement of the Dutch inthe same kind was ludicrous even to republican Marvell. Meanwhile, during that very century of scorn, they were the best artists, sailors, merchants, bankers, printers, scholars, jurisconsults, andstatesmen in Europe, and the genius of Motley has revealed them to us, earning a right to themselves by the most heroic struggle in humanannals. But, alas! they were not merely simple burghers who had fairlymade themselves High Mightinesses, and could treat on equal terms withanointed kings, but their commonwealth carried in its bosom the germsof democracy. They even unmuzzled, at least after dark, that dreadfulmastiff, the Press, whose scent is, or ought to be, so keen for wolvesin sheep's clothing and for certain other animals in lions' skins. They made fun of sacred majesty, and, what was worse, manageduncommonly well without it. In an age when periwigs made so large apart of the natural dignity of man people with such a turn of mindwere dangerous. How could they seem other than vulgar and hateful?

[Footnote 38: From the essay entitled "On a Certain Condescension inForeigners, " printed in "From My Study Windows. " Copyright, 1870, 1871, 1890, by James Russell Lowell. Published by Houghton, MifflinCompany. ]

In the natural course of things we succeeded to this unenviableposition of general butt. The Dutch had thriven under it pretty well, and there was hope that we could at least contrive to worry along. Andwe certainly did in a very redoubtable fashion. Perhaps we deservedsome of the sarcasm more than our Dutch predecessors in office. We hadnothing to boast of in arts or letters, and were given to braggingovermuch of our merely material prosperity, due quite as much to thevirtue of our continent as to our own. There was some truth inCarlyle's sneer after all. Till we had succeeded in some higher waythan this, we had only the success of physical growth. Our greatness, like that of enormous Russia, was greatness on the map--barbarian massonly; but had we gone down, like that other Atlantis, in some vastcataclysm, we should have covered but a pin's point on the chart ofmemory, compared with those ideal spaces occupied by tiny Attica andcramped England. At the same time, our critics somewhat too easilyforgot that material must make ready the foundation for idealtriumphs, that the arts have no chance in poor countries. But it mustbe allowed that democracy stood for a great deal in our shortcoming. The _Edinburgh Review_ never would have thought of asking, "Who readsa Russian book?" and England was satisfied with iron from Swedenwithout being impertinently inquisitive after her painters andstatuaries. Was it that they expected too much from the mere miracleof freedom? Is it not the highest art of a republic to make men offlesh and blood, and not the marble ideals of such? It may be fairlydoubted whether we have produced this higher type of man yet. Perhapsit is the collective, not the individual humanity that is to have achance of nobler development among us. We shall see. We have a vastamount of imported ignorance, and, still worse, of native ready-madeknowledge, to digest before even the preliminaries of such aconsummation can be arranged. We have got to learn that statesmanshipis the most complicated of all arts, and to come back to theapprenticeship system too hastily abandoned. .. . 

So long as we continue to be the most common-schooled and the leastcultivated people in the world, I suppose we must consent to endurethis condescending manner of foreigners toward us. The more friendlythey mean to be the more ludicrously prominent it becomes. They cannever appreciate the immense amount of silent work that has been donehere, making this continent slowly fit for the abode of man, and whichwill demonstrate itself, let us hope, in the character of the people. Outsiders can only be expected to judge a nation by the amount it hascontributed to the civilization of the world; the amount, that is, that can be seen and handled. A great place in history can only beachieved by competitive examinations, nay, by a long course of them. How much new thought have we contributed to the common stock? Tillthat question can be triumphantly answered, or needs no answer, wemust continue to be simply interesting as an experiment, to be studiedas a problem, and not respected as an attained result or anaccomplished solution. Perhaps, as I have hinted, their patronizingmanner toward us is the fair result of their failing to see hereanything more than a poor imitation, a plaster-cast of Europe. 

Are they not partly right? If the tone of the uncultivated Americanhas too often the arrogance of the barbarian, is not that of thecultivated as often vulgarly apologetic? In the America they meet withis there the simplicity, the manliness, the absence of sham, the faithin human nature, the sensitiveness to duty and implied obligation, that in any way distinguishes us from what our orators call "theeffete civilization of the Old World"? Is there a politician among usdaring enough (except a Dana[39] here and there) to risk his future onthe chance of our keeping our word with the exactness of superstitiouscommunities like England? Is it certain that we shall be ashamed of abankruptcy of honor, if we can only keep the letter of our bond? Ihope we shall be able to answer all these questions with a frank yes. 

[Footnote 39: The reference is to Richard Henry Dana, author of "TwoYears Before the Mast, " who in 1876 was appointed by President Grantminister to England, but failed of confirmation in the Senate, owingto political intrigues due to his independence. Lowell appears to haveinserted this reference to Dana in an edition published subsequent tothe first, the date of the first being 1871. ]

At any rate, we would advise our visitors that we are not merelycurious creatures, but belong to the family of man, and that, asindividuals, we are not to be always subjected to the competitiveexamination above mentioned, even if we acknowledged their competenceas an examining board. Above all, we beg them to remember that Americais not to us, as to them, a mere object of external interest to bediscust and analyzed, but in us, part of our very marrow. Let them notsuppose that we conceive of ourselves as exiles from the graces andamenities of an older date than we, tho very much at home in a stateof things not yet all it might be or should be, but which we mean tomake so, and which we find both wholesome and pleasant for men (thoperhaps not for _dilettanti_) to live in. "The full tide of humanexistence"[40] may be felt here as keenly as Johnson felt it atCharing Cross, and in a larger sense. I know one person who issingular enough to think Cambridge the very best spot on the habitableglobe. "Doubtless God could have made a better, but doubtless He neverdid. "

[Footnote 40: A remark of Dr. Johnson's as reported by Boswell. ]

It will take England a great while to get over her airs of patronagetoward us, or even passably to conceal them. She can not helpconfounding the people with the country, and regarding us as lustyjuveniles. She has a conviction that whatever good there is in us iswholly English, when the truth is that we are worth nothing except sofar as we have disinfected ourselves of Anglicism. She is especiallycondescending just now, and lavishes sugar-plums on us as if we hadnot outgrown them. I am no believer in sudden conversions, especiallyin sudden conversions to a favorable opinion of people who have justproved you to be mistaken in judgment and therefore unwise in policy. I never blamed her for not wishing well to democracy--how shouldshe?--but _Alabamas_ are not wishes. Let her not be too hasty inbelieving Mr. Reverdy Johnson's[41] pleasant words. Tho there is nothoughtful man in America who would not consider a war with Englandthe greatest of calamities, yet the feeling toward her here is veryfar from cordial, whatever our minister may say in the effusion thatcomes after ample dining. Mr. Adams, [42] with his famous "My Lord, this means war, " perfectly represented his country. Justly or not, wehave a feeling that we have been wronged, not merely insulted. Theonly sure way of bringing about a healthy relation between the twocountries is for Englishmen to clear their minds of the notion that weare always to be treated as a kind of inferior and deported Englishmanwhose nature they perfectly understand, and whose back theyaccordingly stroke the wrong way of the fur with amazing perseverance. Let them learn to treat us naturally on our merits as human beings, asthey would a German or a Frenchman, and not as if we were a kind ofcounterfeit Briton whose crime appeared in every shade of difference, and before long there would come that right feeling which we naturallycall a good understanding. The common blood, and still more the commonlanguage, are fatal instruments of misapprehension. Let them give uptrying to understand us, still more thinking that they do, and actingin various absurd ways as the necessary consequence, for they willnever arrive at that devoutly-to-be-wished consummation till theylearn to look at us as we are and not as they suppose us to be. Dearold long-estranged mother-in-law, it is a great many years since weparted. Since 1660, when you married again, you have been astep-mother to us. Put on your spectacles, dear madam. Yes, we havegrown, and changed likewise. You would not let us darken your doors, if you could possibly help it. 

[Footnote 41: Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, Mr. Adams's successor asminister to England, negotiated a settlement of the _Alabama_ dispute, which was unfavorably received in this country and finally rejected bythe Senate, which led to his recall in 1869. ]

[Footnote 42: Charles Francis Adams, our minister to England from 1861to 1867, made this remark to a British cabinet minister at the time ofthe threatened sailing of the Laird rams. ]

We know that perfectly well. But pray, when we look to be treated asmen, don't shake that rattle in our faces, nor talk baby to us anylonger. 

 "Do, child, go to it grandam, child; Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig!"

CHARLES A. DANA

 Born in 1819, died in 1897; joined the Brook Farm Community in 1842; an editor of the New York _Tribune_ in 1847-62; Assistant Secretary of War in 1863-64; became editor of the New York _Sun_ in 1868, remaining editor until his death; published "A Household Book of Poetry" in 1857; joint editor with George Ripley of the "American Encyclopedia. "

GREELEY AS A MAN OF GENIUS[43]

Those who have examined the history of this remarkable man and whoknow how to estimate the friendlessness, the disabilities, and thedisadvantages which surrounded his childhood and youth; the scantyopportunities, or rather the absence of all opportunity, of education;the destitution and loneliness amid which he struggled for thepossession of knowledge; and the unflinching zeal and pertinacity withwhich he provided for himself the materials for intellectual growth, will heartily echo the popular judgment that he was indeed a man ofgenius, marked out from his cradle to inspire, animate, and instructothers. 

[Footnote 43: From an article printed in the New York _Sun_, December5, 1872. Greeley had died November 29, of this year. ]

From the first, when a child in his father's log cabin, lying upon thehearth that he might read by the flickering firelight, his attentionwas given almost exclusively to public and political affairs. Thisdetermined his vocation as a journalist; and he seems never to havefelt any attraction toward any other of the intellectual professions. He never had a thought of being a physician, a clergyman, an engineer, or a lawyer. Private questions, individual controversies had littleconcern for him except as they were connected with public interests. Politics and newspapers were his delight, and he learned to be aprinter in order that he might become a newspaper maker. And after hewas the editor of a newspaper, what chiefly engaged him was thediscussion of political and social questions. His whole greatness as ajournalist was in this sphere. For the collection and digestion ofnews, with the exception of election statistics, he had no greatfondness and no special ability. He valued talent in that departmentonly because he knew it was essential to the success of the newspaperhe loved. His own thoughts were always elsewhere. 

Accordingly there have been journalists who as such, strictlyspeaking, have surpassed him. Minds not devoted to particulardoctrines, not absorbed in the advocacy of cherished ideas--in a word, minds that believe little and aim only at the passing success of aday--may easily excel one like him in the preparation of a merenewspaper. Mr. Greeley was the antipodes of all such persons. He wasalways absolutely in earnest. His convictions were intense; he hadthat peculiar courage, most precious in a great man, which enables himto adhere to his own line of action despite the excited appeals offriends and the menaces of variable public opinion; and his constantpurpose was to assert his principles, to fight for them, and presentthem to the public in the way most likely to give them the same holdupon other minds which they had upon his own. In fact, he was not somuch a journalist, in the proper meaning of that term, as apamphleteer or writer of leading articles. 

In this sphere of effort he had scarcely an equal. His command oflanguage was extraordinary, tho he had little imagination and hisvocabulary was limited; but he possest the faculty of expressinghimself in a racy, virile manner, within the apprehension of everyreader. As he treated every topic in a practical rather than aphilosophical spirit, and with strong feeling rather than infalliblelogic, so he never wrote above the heads of the public. What he saidwas plain, clear, striking. His illustrations were quaint and homely, sometimes even vulgar, but they never failed to tell. He was giftedalso with an excellent humor which greatly enlivened his writing. Inretort, especially when provoked, he was dangerous to his antagonist;and tho his reasoning might be faulty, he would frequently gain hiscause by a flash of wit that took the public, and, as it were, hustledhis adversary out of court. But he was not always a victoriouspolemic. His vehemence in controversy was sometimes too precipitatefor his prudence; he would rush into a fight with his armorunfastened, and with only a part of the necessary weapons; and as thelate Washington Hunt[44] once exprest it, he could be more damaging tohis friends than to his opponents. .. . 

[Footnote 44: Governor of New York in 1851-53, having been elected bythe Whigs. ]

The occasional uncertainty of his judgment was probably due, in ameasure, to the deficiency of his education. Self-educated men are notalways endowed with the strong logical faculty and sure good sensewhich are developed and strengthened by thorough intellectual culture. Besides, a man of powerful intellect who is not regularly disciplinedis apt to fall into an exaggerated mental self-esteem from which moreaccurate training and information would have preserved him. But thevery imperfection of Greeley's early studies had a compensation in thefact that they left him, in all the tendencies and habits of his mind, an American. No foreign mixture of thought or tradition went to thecomposition of his strong intelligence. Of all the great men who havebecome renowned on this side of the Atlantic he was most purely andentirely the product of the country and its institutions. Accordingly, a sturdy reliance on his own conclusions and a readiness to defy theworld in their behalf were among his most strongly markedcharacteristics. 

But a kind of moral unsteadiness diminished his power. The miseries ofhis childhood had left their trace in a querulous, lamentable, helpless tone of feeling, into which he fell upon any littlemisfortune or disappointment; and as he grew older he came to lackhope. 

JAMES PARTON

 Born in 1822, died in 1891; noted biographer and miscellaneous writer; published "Life of Horace Greeley" in 1855, "Aaron Burr" in 1857, "Andrew Jackson" in 1860, "Benjamin Franklin" in 1864, "Thomas Jefferson" in 1874, "Voltaire" in 1881; author of several other books. 

AARON BURR AND MADAME JUMEL[45]

In the year 1822 M. Jumel lost a considerable part of his fortune, andmadame returned alone to New York, bringing with her a prodigiousquantity of grand furniture and paintings. Retiring to a seat in theupper part of Manhattan Island, which she possest in her ownright, [46] she began with native energy the task of restoring herhusband's broken fortunes. She cultivated her farm; she lookedvigilantly to the remains of the estate; she economized. In 1828, whenM. Jumel returned to the United States, they were not as rich as informer days, but their estate was ample for all rational purposes andenjoyments. In 1832 M. Jumel, a man of magnificent proportions, veryhandsome, and perfectly preserved (a great waltzer at seventy), wasthrown from a wagon and fatally injured. He died in a few days. Madamewas then little past her prime. 

[Footnote 45: From the "Life of Burr. "]

[Footnote 46: Still standing on an eminence near High Bridge andpopularly known as the Jumel House, tho it would more properly becalled the Morris House. It was built by Col. Roger Morris of theBritish army after the old French war, his wife being Mary Philipse, of Philipse Manor, a former sweetheart of Washington. DuringWashington's sojourn in New York in 1776 it became his headquarters. It is now owned by New York City and has become a museum of historicalrelics. ]

There was talk of cholera in the city. Madame Jumel resolved upontaking a carriage tour in the country. Before setting out she wishedto take legal advice respecting some real estate, and as ColonelBurr's reputation in that department was preeminent, to his office inReade street she drove. In other days he had known her well, and thomany an eventful year had passed since he had seen her, he recognizedher at once. He received her in his courtliest manner, complimentedher with admirable tact, listened with soft deference to herstatement. He was the ideal man of business--confidential, self-possest, polite--giving his client the flattering impression thatthe faculties of his whole soul were concentrated upon the affair inhand. She was charmed, yet feared him. He took the papers, named theday when his opinion would be ready, and handed her to her carriagewith winning grace. At seventy-eight years of age, he was stillstraight, active, agile, fascinating. 

On the appointed day she sent to his office a relative, a student oflaw, to receive his opinion. This young gentleman, timid andinexperienced, had an immense opinion of Burr's talents; had heard allgood and all evil of him; supposed him to be, at least, the acutest ofpossible men. He went. Burr behaved to him in a manner so exquisitelypleasing that, to this hour, he has the liveliest recollection of thescene. No topic was introduced but such as were familiar andinteresting to young men. His manners were such as this age of slangyfamiliarity can not so much as imagine. The young gentleman went hometo Madame Jumel only to extol and glorify him. 

Madame and her party began their journey, revisiting Ballston, whither, in former times, she had been wont to go in a chariot drawnby eight horses; visiting Saratoga, then in the beginning of itscelebrity, where, in exactly ten minutes after her arrival, thedecisive lady bought a house and all it contained. Returning to NewYork to find that her mansion had been despoiled by robbers in herabsence, she lived for a while in the city. Colonel Burr called uponthe young gentleman who had been madame's messenger, and, after theiracquaintance had ripened, said to him, "Come into my office; I canteach you more in a year than you can learn in ten in an ordinaryway. " The proposition being submitted to Madame Jumel, she, anxiousfor the young man's advancement, gladly and gratefully consented. Heentered the office. Burr kept him close at his books. He did teach himmore in a year than he could have learned in ten in an ordinary way. Burr lived then in Jersey City. His office (23 Nassau street) swarmedwith applicants for aid, and he seemed now to have quite lost thepower of refusing. In no other respects, bodily or mental, did heexhibit signs of decrepitude. 

Some months passed on without his again meeting Madame Jumel. At thesuggestion of the student, who felt exceedingly grateful to Burr forthe solicitude with which he assisted in his studies, Madame Jumelinvited Colonel Burr to dinner. It was a grand banquet, at which hedisplayed all the charms of his manner, and shone to conspicuousadvantage. On handing to dinner the giver of the feast, he said: "Igive you my hand, madame; my heart has long been yours. " This wassupposed to be merely a compliment, and was little remarked at thetime. Colonel Burr called upon the lady; called frequently; becameever warmer in his attentions; proposed, at length, and was refused. He still plied his suit, however, and obtained at last, not the lady'sconsent, but an undecided No. Improving his advantage on the instant, he said, in a jocular manner, that he should bring out a clergyman toFort Washington on a certain day, and there he would once more solicither hand. 

He was as good as his word. At the time appointed, he drove out in hisgig to the lady's country residence, accompanied by Dr. Bogart, thevery clergyman who, just fifty years before, had married him to themother of his Theodosia. The lady was embarrassed, and still refused. But then the scandal! And, after all, why not? Her estate needed avigilant guardian, and the old house was lonely. After muchhesitation, she at length consented to be drest, and to receive hervisitors. And she was married. The ceremony was witnessed only by themembers of Madame Jumel's family, and by the eight servants of thehousehold, who peered eagerly in at the doors and windows. Theceremony over, Mrs. Burr ordered supper. Some bins of M. Jumel'swine-cellar, that had not been opened for half a century, were laidunder contribution. The little party was a very merry one. The parson, in particular, it is remembered, was in the highest spirits, overflowing with humor and anecdote. Except for Colonel Burr's greatage (which was not apparent), the match seemed not an unwise one. Thelurking fear he had had of being a poor and homeless old man was putto rest. She had a companion who had been ever agreeable, and herestate a steward than whom no one living was supposed to be morecompetent. 

As a remarkable circumstance connected with this marriage, it may bejust mentioned that there was a woman in New York who had aspired tothe hand of Colonel Burr, and who, when she heard of his union withanother, wrung her hands and shed tears! A feeling of that nature canseldom, since the creation of man, have been excited by the marriageof a man on the verge of fourscore. 

A few days after the wedding the "happy pair" paid a visit toConnecticut, of which State a nephew of Colonel Burr was thengovernor. They were received with attention. At Hartford Burr advisedhis wife to sell out her shares in the bridge over the Connecticut atthat place, and invest the proceeds in real estate. She ordered themsold. The stock was in demand, and the shares brought several thousanddollars. The purchasers offered to pay her the money, but she said, "No; pay it to my husband. " To him, accordingly, it was paid, and hehad it sewed up in his pocket, a prodigious bulk, and brought it toNew York, and deposited it in his own bank, to his own credit. 

Texas was then beginning to attract the tide of emigration which, afew years later, set so strongly thither. Burr had always taken agreat interest in that country. Persons with whom he had beenvariously connected in life had a scheme on foot for settling a largecolony of Germans on a tract of land in Texas. A brig had beenchartered, and the project was in a state of forwardness, when thepossession of a sum of money enabled Burr to buy shares in theenterprise. The greater part of the money which he had brought fromHartford was invested in this way. It proved a total loss. The timehad not yet come for emigration to Texas. The Germans becamediscouraged and separated, and, to complete the failure of the scheme, the title of the lands in the confusion of the times proved defective. Meanwhile madame, who was a remarkably thrifty woman, with a talentfor the management of property, wondered that her husband made noallusion to the subject of the investment; for the Texas speculationhad not been mentioned to her. She caused him to be questioned on thesubject. He begged to intimate to the lady's messenger that it was noaffair of hers, and requested him to remind the lady that she now hada husband to manage her affairs, and one who would manage them. 

Coolness between the husband and wife was the result of this colloquy. Then came remonstrances. Then estrangement. Burr got into the habit ofremaining at his office in the city. Then partial reconciliation. Fullof schemes and speculations to the last, without retaining any of hisformer ability to operate successfully, he lost more money, and more, and more. The patience of the lady was exhausted. She filed acomplaint accusing him of infidelity, and praying that he might haveno more control or authority over her affairs. The accusation is nowknown to have been groundless; nor, indeed, at the time was itseriously believed. It was used merely as the most convenient legalmode of depriving him of control over her property. At first heanswered the complaint vigorously, but afterward he allowed it to goby default, and proceedings were carried no further. A few short weeksof happiness, followed by a few months of alternate estrangement andreconciliation, and this union, that began not inauspiciously, was, ineffect, tho never in law, dissolved. What is strangest of all is thatthe lady, tho she never saw her husband during the last two years ofhis life, cherished no ill-will toward him, and shed tears at hisdeath. To this hour Madame Jumel thinks and speaks of him withkindness, attributing what was wrong or unwise in his conduct to theinfirmities of age. 

Men of seventy-eight have been married before and since. But, probably, never has there been another instance of a man of that agewinning a lady of fortune and distinction, grieving another by hismarriage, and exciting suspicions of incontinence against himself byhis attentions to a third!

FRANCIS PARKMAN

 Born in 1823, died in 1893; graduated from Harvard in 1844; studied law, but abandoned it for literature; his eyesight so defective he was nearly blind; professor at Harvard in 1871-72; published his "Conspiracy of Pontiac" in 1851, "Pioneers of France in the New World" in 1865, "Jesuits in North America" in 1867, "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West" in 1869, "The Old Régime in Canada" in 1874, "Count Frontenac" in 1877, "Montcalm and Wolfe" in 1884, "A Half-Century of Conflict" in 1892. 

I

CHAMPLAIN'S BATTLE WITH THE IROQUOIS[47]

(1609)

It was ten o'clock in the evening when, near a projecting point ofland, which was probably Ticonderoga, they descried dark objects inmotion on the lake before them. These were a flotilla of Iroquoiscanoes, heavier and slower than theirs, for they were made of oakbark. Each party saw the other, and the mingled war-cries pealed overthe darkened water. The Iroquois, who were near the shore, having nostomach for an aquatic battle, landed, and, making night hideous withtheir clamors, began to barricade themselves. Champlain could see themin the woods, laboring like beavers, hacking down trees with iron axestaken from the Canadian tribes in war, and with stone hatchets oftheir own making. The allies remained on the lake, a bowshot from thehostile barricade, their canoes made fast together by poles lashtacross. All night they danced with as much vigor as the frailty oftheir vessels would permit, their throats making amends for theenforced restraint of their limbs. It was agreed on both sides thatthe fight should be deferred till daybreak; but meanwhile a commerceof abuse, sarcasm, menace, and boasting gave unceasing exercise to thelungs and fancy of the combatants--"much, " says Champlain, "like thebesiegers and besieged in a beleaguered town. "

[Footnote 47: From Chapter X of "The Pioneers of France in the NewWorld. " Copyright, 1865, by Francis Parkman. Published by Little, Brown & Co. It may be noted here that one of the most remarkablecoincidences in the history of exploration is the fact that, at thetime of this battle between Champlain and the Iroquois, Henry Hudsonwas ascending the river that bears his name. Hudson went as far as thesite of Albany. The two explorers, therefore, at the same time hadreached points distant from each other only about one hundred miles, and yet each was unaware of the other's presence. Champlain and Hudsonrepresented the opposing forces in race and system of governmentwhich, from that time until the death of Montcalm at Quebec, were tocontend for mastery of the North American continent. ]

As day approached, he and his two followers put on the light armor ofthe time. Champlain wore the doublet and long hose then in vogue. Overthe doublet he buckled on a breastplate, and probably a back-piece, while his thighs were protected by cuisses of steel, and his head by aplumed casque. Across his shoulder hung the strap of his bandoleer, orammunition-box; at his side was his sword, and in his hand hisarquebus. Such was the equipment of this ancient Indian-fighter, whoseexploits date eleven years before the landing of the Puritans atPlymouth, and sixty-six years before King Philip's War. 

Each of the three Frenchmen was in a separate canoe, and, as it grewlight, they kept themselves hidden, either by lying at the bottom, orcovering themselves with an Indian robe. The canoes approached theshore, and all landed without opposition at some distance from theIroquois, whom they presently could see filing out of their barricade, tall, strong men, some two hundred in number, the boldest and fiercestwarriors of North America. They advanced through the forest with asteadiness which excited the admiration of Champlain. Among them couldbe seen three chiefs, made conspicuous by their tall plumes. Some boreshields of wood and hide, and some were covered with a kind of armormade of tough twigs interlaced with a vegetable fiber supposed byChamplain to be cotton. 

The allies, growing anxious, called with loud cries for theirchampion, and opened their ranks that he might pass to the front. Hedid so, and, advancing before his red companions in arms, stoodrevealed to the gaze of the Iroquois, who, beholding the warlikeapparition in their path, stared in mute amazement. "I looked atthem, " says Champlain, "and they looked at me. When I saw them gettingready to shoot their arrows at us, I leveled my arquebus, which I hadloaded with four balls, and aimed straight at one of the three chiefs. The shot brought down two, and wounded another. On this, our Indiansset up such a yelling that one could not have heard a thunder-clap, and all the while the arrows flew thick on both sides. The Iroquoiswere greatly astonished and frightened to see two of their men killedso quickly, in spite of their arrow-proof armor. As I was reloading, one of my companions fired a shot from the woods, which so increasedtheir astonishment that, seeing their chiefs dead, they abandoned thefield and fled into the depth of the forest. " The allies dashed afterthem. Some of the Iroquois were killed, and more were taken. Camp, canoes, provisions, all were abandoned, and many weapons flung down inthe panic flight. The victory was complete. 

At night the victors led out one of the prisoners, told him that hewas to die by fire, and ordered him to sing his death-song, if hedared. Then they began the torture, and presently scalped their victimalive, when Champlain, sickening at the sight, begged leave to shoothim. They refused, and he turned away in anger and disgust; on whichthey called him back and told him to do as he pleased. He turned againand a shot from his arquebus put the wretch out of misery. 

The scene filled him with horror; but, a few months later, on thePlace de la Grève at Paris, he might have witnessed tortures equallyrevolting and equally vindictive, inflicted on the regicideRavaillac[48] by the sentence of grave and learned judges. 

[Footnote 48: Ravaillac, a religious fanatic, was the assassin ofHenry IV of France. After climbing on to the rear of the King'scarriage in one of the streets of Paris, he stabbed the King twice, the second wound proving fatal. Ravaillac met his death by being tornasunder by horses. ]

II

THE DEATH OF LA SALLE[49]

(1687)

Night came; the woods grew dark; the evening meal was finished, andthe evening pipes were smoked. The order of the guard was arranged;and, doubtless by design, the first hour of the night was assigned toMoranget, the second to Saget, and the third to Nika. Gun in hand, each stood watch in turn over the silent but not sleeping forms aroundhim, till, his time expiring, he called the man who was to relievehim, wrapt himself in his blanket, and was soon buried in a slumberthat was to be his last. Now the assassins rose. Duhaut and Hiensstood with their guns cocked, ready to shoot down any one of thedestined victims who should resist or fly. The surgeon, with an ax, stole toward the three sleepers, and struck a rapid blow at each inturn. Saget and Nika died with little movement; but Moranget startedspasmodically into a sitting posture, gasping and unable to speak; andthe murderers compelled De Marle, who was not in their plot, tocompromise himself by dispatching him. 

[Footnote 49: From Chapter XXVII of "La Salle and the Discovery of theGreat West. " La Salle was assassinated by some of his own men, near abranch of the Trinity river in Texas. He had sailed from France in1684 for the purpose of founding a colony at the mouth of theMississippi, and had landed at Matagorda Bay, mistaking it for anoutlet of the Mississippi. He was about to sail for Canada in order toget supplies for his colony, when he met the fate here described. Copyright, 1860, 1879, 1897, by Francis Parkman, published by Little, Brown & Company. ]

The floodgates of murder were open, and the torrent must have its way. Vengeance and safety alike demanded the death of La Salle. Hiens, or"English Jem, " alone seems to have hesitated; for he was one of thoseto whom that stern commander had always been partial. Meanwhile, theintended victim was still at his camp, about six miles distant. It iseasy to picture, with sufficient accuracy, the features of thescene--the sheds of bark and branches, beneath which, among blanketsand buffalo-robes, camp utensils, pack-saddles, rude harness, guns, powder-horns, and bullet-pouches, the men lounged away the hour, sleeping or smoking, or talking among themselves; the blackenedkettles that hung from tripods of poles over the fires; the Indiansstrolling about the place or lying, like dogs in the sun, with eyeshalf-shut, yet all observant; and, in the neighboring meadow, thehorses grazing under the eye of a watchman. 

It was the eighteenth of March. Moranget and his companions had beenexpected to return the night before; but the whole day passed, andthey did not appear. La Salle became very anxious. He resolved to goand look for them; but, not well knowing the way, he told the Indianswho were about the camp that he would give them a hatchet if theywould guide him. One of them accepted the offer; and La Salle preparedto set out in the morning, at the same time directing Joutel to beready to go with him. Joutel says: "That evening, while we weretalking about what could have happened to the absent men, he seemedto have a presentiment of what was to take place. He asked me if I hadheard of any machinations against them, or if I had noticed any baddesign on the part of Duhaut and the rest. I answered that I had heardnothing, except that they sometimes complained of being found faultwith so often; and that this was all I knew, besides which, as theywere persuaded that I was in his interest, they would not have told meof any bad design they might have. We were very uneasy all the rest ofthe evening. "

In the morning La Salle set out with his Indian guide. He had changedhis mind with regard to Joutel, whom he now directed to remain incharge of the camp and to keep a careful watch. He told the friarAnastase Douay to come with him instead of Joutel, whose gun, whichwas the best in the party, he borrowed for the occasion, as well ashis pistol. The three proceeded on their way--La Salle, the friar, andthe Indian. "All the way, " writes the friar, "he spoke to me ofnothing but matters of piety, grace, and predestination; enlarging onthe debt he owed to God, who had saved him from so many perils duringmore than twenty years of travel in America. Suddenly, I saw himoverwhelmed with a profound sadness, for which he himself could notaccount. He was so much moved that I scarcely knew him. " He soonrecovered his usual calmness; and they walked on till they approachedthe camp of Duhaut, which was on the farther side of a small river. Looking about him with the eye of a woodsman, La Salle saw two eaglescircling in the air nearly over him, as if attracted by carcasses ofbeasts or men. He fired his gun and his pistol, as a summons to any ofhis followers who might be within hearing. The shots reached the earsof the conspirators. 

Rightly conjecturing by whom they were fired, several of them, led byDuhaut, crossed the river at a little distance above, where trees orother intervening objects hid them from sight. Duhaut and the surgeoncrouched like Indians in the long, dry, reed-like grass of the lastsummer's growth, while L'Archeveque stood in sight near the bank. LaSalle, continuing to advance, soon saw him, and calling to him, demanded where was Moranget. The man, without lifting his hat, or anyshow of respect, replied in an agitated and broken voice, but with atone of studied insolence, that Moranget was strolling aboutsomewhere. La Salle rebuked and menaced him. He rejoined withincreased insolence, drawing back, as he spoke, toward the ambuscade, while the incensed commander advanced to chastise him. At that moment, a shot was fired from the grass, instantly followed by another; and, pierced through the brain, La Salle dropt dead. 

The friar at his side stood terror-stricken, unable to advance or tofly; when Duhaut, rising from the ambuscade, called out to him to takecourage, for he had nothing to fear. The murderers now came forward, and with wild looks gathered about their victim. "There thou liest, great Bashaw! There thou liest!" exclaimed the surgeon Liotot, in baseexultation over the unconscious corpse. With mockery and insult, theystript it naked, dragged it into the bushes, and left it there, a preyto buzzards and wolves. 

Thus, in the vigor of his manhood, at the age of forty-three, diedRobert Cavelier de La Salle, "one of the greatest men, " writes Tonty, "of this age"; without question one of the most remarkable explorerswhose names live in history. His faithful officer Joutel thus sketcheshis portrait: "His firmness, his courage, his great knowledge of thearts and sciences, which made him equal to every undertaking, and hisuntiring energy, which enabled him to surmount every obstacle, wouldhave won at last a glorious success for his grand enterprise, had notall his fine qualities been counterbalanced by a haughtiness of mannerwhich often made him unsupportable, and by a harshness toward thoseunder his command which drew upon him an implacable hatred, and was atlast the cause of his death. "

The enthusiasm of the disinterested and chivalrous Champlain was notthe enthusiasm of La Salle, nor had he any part in the self-devotedzeal of the early Jesuit explorers. He belonged not to the age of theknight-errant and the saint, but to the modern world of practicalstudy and practical action. He was the hero, not of a principle nor ofa faith, but simply of a fixt idea and a determined purpose. As oftenhappens with concentered and energetic natures, his purpose was to hima passion and an inspiration; and he clung to it with a certainfanaticism of devotion. It was the offspring of an ambition vast andcomprehensive, yet acting in the interest both of France and ofcivilization. 

Serious in all things, incapable of the lighter pleasures, incapableof repose, finding no joy but in the pursuit of great designs, too shyfor society and too reserved for popularity, often unsympathetic andalways seeming so, smothering emotions which he could not utter, schooled to universal distrust, stern to his followers and pitiless tohimself, bearing the brunt of every hardship and every danger, demanding of others an equal constancy joined to an implicitdeference, heeding no counsel but his own, attempting the impossibleand grasping at what was too vast to hold--he contained in his owncomplex and painful nature the chief springs of his triumphs, hisfailures, and his death. 

It is easy to reckon up his defects, but it is not easy to hide fromsight the Roman virtues that redeemed them. Beset by a throng ofenemies, he stands, like the King of Israel, head and shoulders abovethem all. He was a tower of adamant, against whose impregnable fronthardship and danger, the rage of man and of the elements, the southernsun, the northern blast, fatigue, famine, and disease, delay, disappointment, and deferred hope emptied their quivers in vain. Thatvery pride which, Coriolanus-like, declared itself most sternly in thethickest press of foes, has in it something to challenge admiration. Never, under the impenetrable mail of paladin or crusader, beat aheart of more intrepid mettle than within the stoic panoply that armedthe breast of La Salle. To estimate aright the marvels of his patientfortitude, one must follow on his track through the vast scene of hisinterminable journeyings, those thousands of weary miles of forest, marsh, and river, where, again and again, in the bitterness of baffledstriving, the untiring pilgrim pushed onward toward the goal which hewas never to attain. America owes him an enduring memory; for, in thismasculine figure, she sees the pioneer who guided her to thepossession of her richest heritage. 

III

THE COMING OF FRONTENAC TO CANADA[50]

(1672)

Count Frontenac came of an ancient and noble race, said to have been ofBasque origin. His father held a high post in the household of Louis XIII, who became the child's godfather, and gave him his own name. At the age offifteen, the young Louis showed an uncontrollable passion for the life of asoldier. He was sent to the seat of war in Holland, to serve under thePrince of Orange. At the age of nineteen, he was a volunteer at the siegeof Hesdin; in the next year he was at Arras, where he distinguished himselfduring a sortie of the garrison; in the next, he took part in the siege ofAire; and, in the next, in those of Callioure and Perpignan. At the age oftwenty-three, he was made colonel of the regiment of Normandy, which hecommanded in repeated battles and sieges of the Italian campaign. He wasseveral times wounded, and in 1646 he had an arm broken at the siege ofOrbitello. In the same year, when twenty-six years old, he was raised tothe rank of maréchal de camp, equivalent to that of brigadier-general. Ayear or two later we find him at Paris, at the house of his father, on theQuai des Célestins. 

[Footnote 50: From Chapters I and II of "Count Frontenac and NewFrance Under Louis XIV. " Copyright, 1877, by Francis Parkman. Published by Little, Brown & Company. ]

In the same neighborhood lived La Grange-Trianon, Sieur de Neuville, awidower of fifty, with one child, a daughter of sixteen, whom he hadplaced in the charge of his relative, Madame de Bouthillier. Frontenacfell in love with her. Madam de Bouthillier opposed the match, andtold La Grange that he might do better for his daughter than marry herto a man who, say what he might, had but twenty thousand francs ayear. La Grange was weak and vacillating: sometimes he listened to hisprudent kinswoman, and sometimes to the eager suitor; treated him as ason-in-law, carried love messages from him to his daughter, and endedby refusing him her hand, and ordering her to renounce him on pain ofbeing immured in a convent. Neither Frontenac nor his mistress was ofa pliant temper. In the neighborhood was the little church of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, which had the privilege of uniting couples withoutthe consent of their parents; and here, on a Wednesday in October, 1648, the lovers were married in presence of a number of Frontenac'srelatives. La Grange was furious at the discovery; but his anger sooncooled, and complete reconciliation followed. 

The happiness of the newly wedded pair was short. Love soon changed toaversion, at least on the part of the bride. She was not of a tendernature; her temper was imperious, and she had a restless craving forexcitement. Frontenac, on his part, was the most wayward andheadstrong of men. She bore him a son; but maternal cares were not toher liking. .. . 

At Versailles there is a portrait of a lady, beautiful and young. Sheis painted as Minerva, a plumed helmet on her head, and a shield onher arm. In a corner of the canvas is written Anne de LaGrange-Trianon, Comtesse de Frontenac. This blooming goddess was thewife of the future governor of Canada. 

Madame de Frontenac, at the age of about twenty, was a favoritecompanion of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the grand-daughter of HenryIV and a daughter of the weak and dastardly Gaston, Duke of Orleans. Nothing in French annals has found more readers than the story of theexploit of this spirited princess at Orleans during the civil war ofthe Fronde. Her cousin Condé, chief of the revolt, had found favor inher eyes; and she had espoused his cause against her cousin, theKing. .. . 

In 1669, a Venetian embassy came to France to beg for aid against theTurks, who for more than two years had attacked Candia in overwhelmingforce. The ambassadors offered to place their own troops under Frenchcommand, and they asked Turenne to name a general officer equal to thetask. Frontenac had the signal honor of being chosen by the firstsoldier of Europe for this most arduous and difficult position. Hewent accordingly. The result increased his reputation for ability andcourage; but Candia was doomed, and its chief fortress fell into thehands of the infidels, after a protracted struggle, which is said tohave cost them a hundred and eighty thousand men. 

Three years later Frontenac received the appointment of Governor andLieutenant-General for the King in all New France. "He was, " saysSaint-Simon, "a man of excellent parts, living much in society, andcompletely ruined. He found it hard to bear the imperious temper ofhis wife and he was given the government of Canada to deliver him fromher, and afford him some means of living. " Certain scandalous songs ofthe day assign a different motive for his appointment. Louis XIV wasenamored of Madame de Montespan. She had once smiled upon Frontenac;and it is said that the jealous King gladly embraced the opportunityof removing from his presence and from hers a lover who hadforestalled him. 

Frontenac's wife had no thought of following him across the sea, amore congenial life awaiting her at home. .. . 

Frontenac was fifty-two years old when he landed at Quebec. If timehad done little to cure his many faults, it had done nothing to weakenthe springs of his unconquerable vitality. In his ripe middle age hewas as keen, fiery, and perversely headstrong as when he quarreledwith Prefontaine in the hall at St. Fargeau. 

Had nature disposed him to melancholy, there was much in his positionto awaken it. A man of courts and camps, born and bred in the focus ofa most gorgeous civilization, he was banished to the ends of theearth, among savage hordes and half-reclaimed forests, to exchange thesplendors of St. Germain and the dawning glories of Versailles for astern gray rock, haunted by somber priests, rugged merchants andtraders, blanketed Indians, and wild bushrangers. But Frontenac was aman of action. He wasted no time in vain regrets, and set himself tohis work with the elastic vigor of youth. His first impressions hadbeen very favorable. When, as he sailed up the St. Lawrence, the basinof Quebec opened before him, his imagination kindled with the grandeurof the scene. "I never, " he wrote, "saw anything more superb than theposition of this town. It could not be better situated as the futurecapital of a great empire. "

IV

THE DEATH OF ISAAC JOGUES[51]

(1646)

Late in the autumn a party of the Indians set forth on their yearlydeer-hunt, and Jogues was ordered to go with them. Shivering andhalf-famished, he followed them through the chill November forest, andshared their wild bivouac in the depths of the wintry desolation. Thegame they took was devoted to Areskoui, their god, and eaten in hishonor. Jogues would not taste the meat offered to a demon; and thus hestarved in the midst of plenty. At night, when the kettle was slung, and the savage crew made merry around their fire, he crouched in acorner of the hut, gnawed by hunger, and pierced to the bone withcold. They thought his presence unpropitious to their hunting, and thewomen especially hated him. His demeanor at once astonished andincensed his masters. He brought them fire-wood, like a squaw; he didtheir bidding without a murmur, and patiently bore their abuse; butwhen they mocked at his God, and laughed at his devotions, their slaveassumed an air and tone of authority, and sternly rebuked them. 

[Footnote 51: From Chapters XVI and XX of "The Jesuits in NorthAmerica. " Copyright, 1867, 1895, by Francis Parkman. Published byLittle, Brown & Company. The site of Jogues's martyrdom is nearAuriesville in the Mohawk valley, where a memorial chapel in his honoris now maintained, the Rev. John J. Wynne, S. J. , having been activein securing and maintaining it. ]

He would sometimes escape from "this Babylon, " as he calls the hut, and wander in the forest, telling his beads and repeating passages ofScripture. In a remote and lonely spot he cut the bark in the form ofthe cross from the trunk of a great tree; and here he made hisprayers. This living martyr, half-clad in shaggy furs, kneeling on thesnow among the icicled rocks and beneath the gloomy pines, bowing inadoration before the emblem of the faith in which was his onlyconsolation and his only hope, is alike a theme for the pen and asubject for the pencil. .. . 

He remained two days, half-stifled, in this foul lurking-place, [52]while the Indians, furious at his escape, ransacked the settlement invain to find him. They came off to the vessel, and so terrified theofficers that Jogues was sent on shore at night, and led to the fort. Here he was hidden in the garret of a house occupied by a miserly oldman, to whose charge he was consigned. Food was sent to him; but, ashis host appropriated the larger part to himself, Jogues was nearlystarved. There was a compartment of his garret, separated from therest by a partition of boards. Here the old Dutchman, who, like manyothers of the settlers, carried on a trade with the Mohawks, kept aquantity of goods for that purpose; and hither he often brought hiscustomers. The boards of the partition had shrunk, leaving widecrevices; and Jogues could plainly see the Indians, as they passedbetween him and the light. They, on their part, might as easily haveseen him, if he had not, when he heard them entering the house, hiddenhimself behind some barrels in the corner, where he would sometimesremain crouched for hours, in a constrained and painful posture, half-suffocated with heat, and afraid to move a limb. His wounded legbegan to show dangerous symptoms; but he was relieved by the care of aDutch, surgeon of the fort. The minister, Megapolensis, also visitedhim, and did all in his power for the comfort of his Catholic brother, with whom he seems to have been well pleased, and whom he calls "avery learned scholar. "

[Footnote 52: Near Albany, or Fort Orange, as it was then called. ]

When Jogues had remained for six weeks in this hiding-place, his Dutchfriends succeeded in satisfying his Indian masters by the payment of alarge ransom. A vessel from Manhattan, now New York, soon after brought upan order from the Director-General, Kieft, that he should be sent to him. Accordingly, he was placed in a small vessel, which carried him down theHudson. The Dutch on board treated him with great kindness; and, to do himhonor, named after him one of the islands in the river. At Manhattan hefound a dilapidated fort, garrisoned by sixty soldiers, and containing astone church and the Director-General's house, together with storehousesand barracks. Near it were ranges of small houses, occupied chiefly bymechanics and laborers; while the dwellings of the remaining colonists, numbering in all four or five hundred, were scattered here and there on theisland and the neighboring shores. The settlers were of different sects andnations, but chiefly Dutch Calvinists. Kieft told his guest that eighteendifferent languages were spoken at Manhattan. The colonists were in themidst of a bloody Indian war, brought on by their own besotted cruelty; andwhile Jogues was at the fort, some forty of the Dutchmen were killed on theneighboring farms, and many barns and houses burned. 

The Director-General, with a humanity that was far from usual withhim, exchanged Jogues's squalid and savage dress for a suit of Dutchcloth, and gave him passage in a small vessel which was then about tosail. .. . 

Jogues became a center of curiosity and reverence. He was summoned toParis. The Queen, Anne of Austria, wished to see him; and when thepersecuted slave of the Mohawks was conducted into her presence, shekissed his mutilated hands, while the ladies of the court throngedaround to do him homage. We are told, and no doubt with truth, thatthese honors were unwelcome to the modest and single-heartedmissionary, who thought only of returning to his work of convertingthe Indians. A priest with any deformity of body is debarred fromsaying mass. The teeth and knives of the Iroquois had inflicted aninjury worse than the tortures imagined, for they had robbed Jogues ofthe privilege which was the chief consolation of his life; but thePope, by a special dispensation, restored it to him, and with theopening spring he sailed again for Canada. .. . 

In the evening--it was the eighteenth of October--Jogues, smartingwith his wounds and bruises, was sitting in one of the lodges, when anIndian entered, and asked him to a feast. To refuse would have been anoffense. He arose and followed the savage, who led him to the lodge ofthe Bear chief. Jogues bent his head to enter, when another Indian, standing concealed within, at the side of the doorway, struck at himwith a hatchet. An Iroquois, called by the French Le Berger, who seemsto have followed in order to defend him, bravely held out his arm toward off the blow; but the hatchet cut through it, and sank into themissionary's brain. He fell at the feet of his murderer, who at oncefinished the work by hacking off his head. Lalande was left insuspense all night, and in the morning was killed in a similar manner. The bodies of the two Frenchmen were then thrown into the Mohawk, andtheir heads displayed on the points of the palisade which enclosed thetown. 

Thus died Isaac Jogues, one of the purest examples of Roman Catholicvirtue which this western continent has seen. 

V

WHY NEW FRANCE FAILED[53]

New France was all head. Under king, noble, and Jesuit, the lank, leanbody would not thrive. Even commerce wore the sword, decked itselfwith badges of nobility, aspired to forest seigniories and hordes ofsavage retainers. Along the borders of the sea an adverse power wasstrengthening and widening, with slow but stedfast growth, full ofblood and muscle--a body without a head. Each had its strength, eachits weakness, each its own modes of vigorous life: but the one wasfruitful, the other barren; the one instinct with hope, the otherdarkening with shadows of despair. 

[Footnote 53: From the introduction to "The Pioneers of France in theNew World. " Copyright, 1865, 1885, by Francis Parkman. Published byLittle, Brown & Company. ]

By name, local position, and character one of these communities offreemen stands forth as the most conspicuous representative of thisantagonism--liberty and absolutism, New England and New France. Theone was the offspring of a triumphant government; the other, of anopprest and fugitive people: the one, an unflinching champion of theRoman Catholic reaction; the other, a vanguard of the Reform. Eachfollowed its natural laws of growth, and each came to its naturalresults. Vitalized by the principles of its foundation, the Puritancommonwealth grew apace. New England was preeminently the land ofmaterial progress. Here the prize was within every man's reach;patient industry need never doubt its reward; nay, in defiance of thefour gospels, assiduity in pursuit of gain was promoted to the rank ofa duty, and thrift and godliness were linked in equivocal wedlock. Politically she was free; socially she suffered from that subtile andsearching oppression which the dominant opinion of a free communitymay exercise over the members who compose it. As a whole, she grewupon the gaze of the world, a signal example of expansive energy; butshe has not been fruitful in those salient and striking forms ofcharacter which often give a dramatic life to the annals of nationsfar less prosperous. 

We turn to New France, and all is reversed. Here was a bold attempt tocrush under the exactions of a grasping hierarchy, to stifle under thecurbs and trappings of a feudal monarchy a people compassed byinfluences of the wildest freedom--whose schools were the forest andthe sea, whose trade was an armed barter with savages, and whose dailylife a lesson of lawless independence. But this fierce spirit had itsvent. The story of New France is from the first a story of war: ofwar--for so her founders believed--with the adversary of mankindhimself; war with savage tribes and potent forest commonwealths; warwith the encroaching powers of heresy and of England. Her brave, unthinking people were stamped with the soldier's virtues and thesoldier's faults; and in their leaders were displayed, on a grand andnovel stage, the energies, aspirations, and passions which belong tohopes vast and vague, ill-restricted powers, and stations of command. 

The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate efforts of abusy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, togather competence or wealth. The expansion of New France was theachievement of a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. Itwas a vain attempt. Long and valiantly her chiefs upheld their cause, leading to battle a vassal population, warlike as themselves. Bornedown by numbers from without, wasted by corruption from within, NewFrance fell at last; and out of her fall grew revolutions whoseinfluence to this hour is felt through every nation of the civilizedworld. 

The French dominion is a memory of the past; and when we evoke itsdeparted shades, they rise upon us from their graves in strange, romantic guise. Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and thefitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest, mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowshipon the same stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us; an untamedcontinent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primevalsleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans minglingwith the sky. Such was the domain which France conquered forcivilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique learning, pale with the close breath of thecloister, here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savagehordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direstshapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of afar-reaching ancestry, here, with their dauntless hardihood, put toshame the boldest sons of toil. 

VI

THE RETURN OF THE COUREURS-DE-BOIS[54]

It was a curious scene when a party of _coureurs de bois_ returnedfrom their rovings. Montreal was their harboring place, and theyconducted themselves much like the crew of a man-of-war paid off aftera long voyage. As long as their beaver-skins lasted, they set nobounds to their riot. Every house in the place, we are told, wasturned into a drinking-shop. The newcomers were bedizened with astrange mixture of French and Indian finery; while some of them, withinstincts more thoroughly savage, stalked about the streets as nakedas a Pottawottamie or a Sioux. The clamor of tongues was prodigious, and gambling and drinking filled the day and the night. When at lastthey were sober again, they sought absolution for their sins; norcould the priests venture to bear too hard on their unruly penitents, lest they should break wholly with the church and dispensethenceforth with her sacraments. 

[Footnote 54: From Chapter XVII of "The Old Régime in Canada. "Copyright, 1874, by Francis Parkman. Published by Little, Brown & Co. ]

Under such leaders as Du Lhut, the _coureurs de bois_ built forts ofpalisades at various points throughout the West and Northwest. Theyhad a post of this sort at Detroit some time before its permanentsettlement, as well as others on Lake Superior and in the valley ofthe Mississippi. They occupied them as long as it suited theirpurposes, and then abandoned them to the next comer. Michillimackinacwas, however, their chief resort; and thence they would set out, twoor three together, to roam for hundreds of miles through the endlessmeshwork of interlocking lakes and rivers which seams the northernwilderness. 

No wonder that a year or two of bushranging spoiled them forcivilization. Tho not a very valuable member of society, and tho athorn in the side of princes and rulers, the _coureur de bois_ had hisuses, at least from an artistic point of view; and his strange figure, sometimes brutally savage, but oftener marked with the lines of adaredevil courage, and a reckless, thoughtless gaiety, will always bejoined to the memories of that grand world of woods which thenineteenth century is fast civilizing out of existence. At least, heis picturesque, and with his redskin companion serves to animateforest scenery. Perhaps he could sometimes feel, without knowing thathe felt them, the charms of the savage nature that had adopted him. 

Rude as he was, her voice may not always have been meaningless for onewho knew her haunts so well; deep recesses where, veiled in foliage, some wild shy rivulet steals with timid music through breathless cavesof verdure; gulfs where feathered crags rise like castle walls, wherethe noonday sun pierces with keen rays athwart the torrent, and themossed arms of fallen pines cast wavering shadows on the illuminedfoam; pools of liquid crystal turned emerald in the reflected green ofimpending woods; rocks on whose rugged front the gleam of sunlitwaters dances in quivering light; ancient trees hurled headlong by thestorm to dam the raging stream with their forlorn and savage ruin; orthe stern depths of immemorial forests, dim and silent as a cavern, columned with innumerable trunks, each like an Atlas upholding itsworld of leaves, and sweating perpetual moisture down its dark andchannelled rind; some strong in youth, some grisly with decrepit age, nightmares of strange distortion, gnarled and knotted with wens andgoitres; roots intertwined beneath like serpents petrified in an agonyof contorted strife; green and glistening mosses carpeting the roughground, mantling the rocks, turning pulpy stumps to mounds of verdure, and swathing fallen trunks as, bent in the impotence of rottenness, they lie outstretched over knoll and hollow, like moldering reptilesof the primeval world, while around, and on and through them, springsthe young growth that fattens on their decay--the forest devouring itsown dead. Or, to turn from its funereal shade to the light and life ofthe open woodland, the sheen of sparkling lakes, and mountains baskingin the glory of the summer noon, flecked by the shadows of passingclouds that sail on snowy wings across the azure. 

Yet it would be false coloring to paint the half-savage _coureur debois_ as a romantic lover of nature. He liked the woods because theyemancipated him from restraint. He liked the lounging ease of thecamp-fire, and the license of Indian villages. His life has a dark andugly side. 

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

 Born in 1824, died in 1892; joined the Brook Farm Community; traveled in Europe in 1846-50; became connected with the New York _Tribune_ in 1850; editor of _Putnam's Monthly_ in 1852-57, with _Harper's Magazine_ in 1854, and with _Harper's Weekly_ in 1863; prominent advocate of civil service reform, being one of the commissioners appointed by President Grant in 1871, but resigned on account of differences with the President; president of the State Civil Service League in 1880, and of the National Civil Service Reform League afterward until his death; published "Nile Notes of a Howadji" in 1851, "Lotus Eating" in 1852, "Potiphar Papers" in 1853, "Prue and I" in 1856. 

OUR COUSIN THE CURATE[55]

Our cousin the curate loved, while he was yet a boy, Flora, of thesparkling eyes and the ringing voice. His devotion was absolute. Florawas flattered, because all the girls, as I said, worshiped him; butshe was a gay, glancing girl, who had invaded the student's heart withher audacious brilliancy, and was half-surprized that she had subduedit. Our cousin--for I never think of him as my cousin only--wastedaway under the fervor of his passion. His life exhaled an incensebefore her. He wrote poems to her, and sang them under her window, inthe summer moonlight. He brought her flowers and precious gifts. Whenhe had nothing else to give, he gave her his love in a homage soeloquent and beautiful that the worship was like the worship of thewise men. The gay Flora was proud and superb. She was a girl, and thebravest and best boy loved her. She was young, and the wisest andtruest youth loved her. They lived together, we all lived together, inthe happy valley of childhood. We looked forward to manhood asisland-poets look across the sea, believing that the whole worldbeyond is a blest Araby of spices. 

[Footnote 55: From Chapter VII of "Prue and I. "]

The months went by, and the young love continued. Our cousin and Florawere only children still, and there was no engagement. The elderslooked upon the intimacy as natural and mutually beneficial. It wouldhelp soften the boy and strengthen the girl; and they took for grantedthat softness and strength were precisely what were wanted. It is agreat pity that men and women forget that they have been children. Parents are apt to be foreigners to their sons and daughters. Maturityis the gate of paradise, which shuts behind us; and our memories aregradually weaned from the glories in which our nativity was cradled. 

The months went by, the children grew older, and they constantlyloved. Now Prue always smiles at one of my theories; she is entirelyskeptical of it; but it is, nevertheless, my opinion that men lovemost passionately, and women most permanently. Men love at first andmost warmly; women love last and longest. This is natural enough; fornature makes women to be won, and men to win. Men are the active, positive force, and therefore, they are more ardent anddemonstrative. .. . 

Why our cousin should have loved the gay Flora so ardently was hard tosay; but that he did so, was not difficult to see. He went away tocollege. He wrote the most eloquent and passionate letters; and whenhe returned in vacations, he had no eyes, ears, nor heart for anyother being. I rarely saw him, for I was living away from our earlyhome, and was busy in a store--learning to be bookkeeper--but I heardafterward from himself the whole story. 

One day when he came home for the holidays, he found a young foreignerwith Flora--a handsome youth, brilliant and graceful. I have askedPrue a thousand times why women adore soldiers and foreigners. Shesays it is because they love heroism and are romantic. A soldier isprofessionally a hero, says Prue, and a foreigner is associated withall unknown and beautiful regions. I hope there is no worse reason. .. . 

Our cousin came home and found Flora and the young foreignerconversing. The young foreigner had large, soft, black eyes, and thedusky skin of the tropics. His manner was languid and fascinating, courteous and reserved. It assumed a natural supremacy, and you feltas if here were a young prince traveling before he came intopossession of his realm. .. . 

Our cousin the curate no sooner saw the tropical stranger and markedhis impression upon Flora than he felt the end. As the shaft struckhis heart, his smile was sweeter, and his homage even more poetic andreverential. I doubt if Flora understood him or herself. She did notknow, what he instinctively perceived, that she loved him less. Butthere are no degrees in love; when it is less than absolute andsupreme, it is nothing. Our cousin and Flora were not formallyengaged, but their betrothal was understood by all of us as a thing ofcourse. He did not allude to the stranger; but as day followed day, hesaw with every nerve all that passed. Gradually--so gradually that shescarcely noticed it--our cousin left Flora more and more with thesoft-eyed stranger, whom he saw she preferred. His treatment of herwas so full of tact, he still walked and talked with her so familiarlythat she was not troubled by any fear that he saw what she hardly sawherself. Therefore, she was not obliged to conceal anything from himor from herself; but all the soft currents of her heart were settingtoward the West Indian. Our cousin's cheek grew paler, and his soulburned and wasted within him. His whole future--all his dream oflife--had been founded upon his love. It was a stately palace builtupon the sand, and now the sand was sliding away. I have readsomewhere that love will sacrifice everything but itself. But ourcousin sacrificed his love to the happiness of his mistress. He ceasedto treat her as peculiarly his own. He made no claim in word or mannerthat everybody might not have made. He did not refrain from seeingher, or speaking of her as of all his other friends; and, at length, altho no one could say how or when the change had been made, it wasevident and understood that he was no more her lover, but that bothwere the best of friends. 

He still wrote to her occasionally from college, and his letters werethose of a friend, not of a lover. He could not reproach her. I donot believe any man is secretly surprized that a woman ceases to lovehim. Her love is a heavenly favor won by no desert of his. If itpasses, he can no more complain than a flower when the sunshine leavesit. 

Before our cousin left college Flora was married to the tropicalstranger. It was the brightest of June days, and the summer smiledupon the bride. There were roses in her hand and orange flowers in herhair, and the village church bell rang out over the peaceful fields. The warm sunshine lay upon the landscape like God's blessing, and Prueand I, not yet married ourselves, stood at an open window in the oldmeeting-house, hand in hand, while the young couple spoke their vows. Prue says that brides are always beautiful, and I, who remember Prueherself upon her wedding-day--how can I deny it? Truly, the gay Florawas lovely that summer morning, and the throng was happy in the oldchurch. But it was very sad to me, altho I only suspected then whatnow I know. I shed no tears at my own wedding, but I did at Flora's, altho I knew she was marrying a soft-eyed youth whom she dearly loved, and who, I doubt not, dearly loved her. 

Among the group of her nearest friends was our cousin the curate. Whenthe ceremony was ended, he came to shake her hand with the rest. Hisface was calm, and his smile sweet, and his manner unconstrained. Flora did not blush--why should she?--but shook his hand warmly, andthanked him for his good wishes. Then they all sauntered down theaisle together; there were some tears with the smiles among the otherfriends; our cousin handed the bride into her carriage, shook handswith the husband, closed the door, and Flora drove away. 

I have never seen her since; I do not even know if she be livingstill. But I shall always remember her as she looked that Junemorning, holding roses in her hand, and wreathed with orange flowers. Dear Flora! it was no fault of hers that she loved one man more thananother: she could not be blamed for not preferring our cousin to theWest Indian: there is no fault in the story, it is only a tragedy. 

Our cousin carried all the collegiate honors--but without excitingjealousy or envy. He was so really the best, that his companions wereanxious he should have the sign of his superiority. He studied hard, he thought much, and wrote well. There was no evidence of any blightupon his ambition or career, but after living quietly in the countryfor some time, he went to Europe and traveled. When he returned, heresolved to study law, but presently relinquished it. Then hecollected materials for a history, but suffered them to lie unused. Somehow the mainspring was gone. He used to come and pass weeks withPrue and me. His coming made the children happy, for he sat with them, and talked and played with them all day long, as one of themselves. .. . 

At length our cousin went abroad again to Europe. It was many yearsago that we watched him sail away, and when Titbottom, and Prue, and Iwent home to dinner, the grace that was said that day was a ferventprayer for our cousin the curate. Many an evening afterward, thechildren wanted him, and cried themselves to sleep calling upon hisname. Many an evening still our talk flags into silence as we sitbefore the fire, and Prue puts down her knitting and takes my hand, asif she knew my thoughts, altho we do not name his name. 

He wrote us letters as he wandered about the world. They wereaffectionate letters, full of observation, and thought, anddescription. He lingered longest in Italy, but he said his conscienceaccused him of yielding to the sirens; and he declared that his lifewas running uselessly away. At last he came to England. He was charmedwith everything, and the climate was even kinder to him than that ofItaly. He went to all the famous places, and saw many of the famousEnglishmen, and wrote that he felt England to be his home. Buryinghimself in the ancient gloom of a university town, altho past theprime of life, he studied like an ambitious boy. He said again thathis life had been wine poured upon the ground, and he felt guilty. Andso our cousin became a curate. .. . 

Our children have forgotten their old playmate; but I am sure if therebe any children in his parish, over the sea, they love our cousin thecurate, and watch eagerly for his coming. Does his step falter now, Iwonder; is that long fair hair gray; is that laugh as musical in thosedistant homes as it used to be in our nursery; has England among allher great and good men any man so noble as our cousin the curate?

The great book is unwritten; the great deeds are undone; in nobiographical dictionary will you find the name of our cousin thecurate. Is his life therefore lost? Have his powers been wasted?

I do not dare to say it, for I see Bourne on the pinnacle ofprosperity, but still looking sadly for his castles in Spain; I seeTitbottom, an old deputy bookkeeper, whom nobody knows, but with hischivalric heart loyal to children, his generous and humane spirit, full of sweet hope and faith and devotion; I see the superb Auriel, solovely that the Indians would call her a smile of the Great Spirit, and as beneficent as a saint of the calendar--how shall I say what islost and what is won. I know that in every way and by all Hispreachers God is served and His purposes accomplished. How shall Iexplain or understand? I, who am only an old bookkeeper in an oldcravat. 

ARTEMUS WARD

 Born in 1834, died in England in 1867; his real name Charles Farrar Browne; noted as a humorous lecturer here and in England; published "Artemus Ward: His Book" in 1862; "Artemus Ward: His Travels" in 1865; "Artemus Ward in London" in 1867. 

FORREST AS OTHELLO[56]

Durin a recent visit to New York the undersined went to see EdwinForrest. As I am into the moral show biziness myself I ginrally go toBarnum's moral museum, where only moral peeple air admitted, particklyon Wednesday arternoons. But this time I thot I'd go and see Ed. Edhas bin actin out on the stage for many years. There is varis 'pinionsabout his actin, Englishmen ginrally bleevin that he's far superior toMister Macready; but on one pint all agree, & that is that Ed drawslike a six-ox team. Ed was actin at Niblo's Garding, which looksconsiderable more like a parster than a garding, but let that pars. Isot down in the pit, took out my spectacles and commenced peroosin theevenin's bill. The awjince was all-fired large & the boxes was full ofthe elitty of New York. Several opery glasses was leveled at me byGotham's fairest darters, but I didn't let on as tho I noticed it, thomebby I did take out my sixteen-dollar silver watch & brandish itround more than was necessary. But the best of us has our weaknesses &if a man has gewelry let him show it. As I was peroosin the bill agrave young man who sot near me axed me if I'd ever seen Forrestdance the Essence of Old Virginny, "He's immense in that, " sed theyoung man. "He also does a fair champion jig, " the young mancontinnered, "but his Big Thing is the Essence of Old Virginny. " SezI, "Fair youth, do you know what I'd do with you if you was my sun?"

[Footnote 56: From "Artemus Ward: His Book. "]

"No, " sez he. 

"Wall, " sez I, "I'd appint your funeral to-morrow arternoon, & the_korps should be ready_. You're too smart to live on this yerth. "

He didn't try any more of his capers on me. But another pussylanermussindividooul in a red vest and patent leather boots told me his namewas Bill Astor & axed me to lend him 50 cents till early in themornin. I told him I'd probly send it round to him before he retiredto his virtoous couch, but if I didn't he might look for it next fallas soon as I'd cut my corn. 

The orchestry was now fiddling with all their might & as the peepledidn't understan anything about it they applaudid versifrusly. Presently old Ed cum out. The play was Otheller or More of Veniss. Otheller was writ by Wm. Shakspeer. The seene is laid in Veniss. Otheller was a likely man & was a ginral in the Veniss army. He elopedwith Desdemony, a darter of the Hon. Mr. Brabantio who represented oneof the back districks in the Veneshun legislater. Old Brabantio was asmad as thunder at this & tore round considerable, but finally cooleddown, telling Otheller, howsoever, that Desdemony had come it over herpar, & that he had better look out or she'd come it over himlikewise. 

Mr. And Mrs. Otheller git along very comfortable-like for a spell. Sheis sweet-tempered and lovin--a nice, sensible female, never goin infor he-female conventions, green cotton umbrellers, and pickled beats. Otheller is a good provider and thinks all the world of his wife. Shehas a lazy time of it, the hird girl doin all the cookin and washin. Desdemony in fact don't have to git the water to wash her own handswith. But a low cuss named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git Othellerout of his snug government birth, now goes to work & upsets theOtheller family in most outrajus stile. Iago falls in with a brainlessyouth named Roderigo & wins all his money at poker. (Iago allersplayed foul. ) He thus got money enuff to carry out his onprincipledskeem. Mike Cassio, a Irishman, is selected as a tool by Iago. Mikewas a clever feller & a orficer in Otheller's army. He liked his todstoo well, howsoever, & they floored him as they have many otherpromisin young men. Iago injuces Mike to drink with him, Iago slilythrowin his whiskey over his shoulder. Mike gits as drunk as a biledowl & allows that he can lick a yard full of the Veneshun fancy beforebreakfast, without sweating a hair. He meets Roderigo & proceeds forto smash him. A feller named Mentano undertakes to slap Cassio, whenthat infatooated person runs his sword into him. 

That miserble man, Iago, pretends to be very sorry to see Mike conduckhisself in this way & undertakes to smooth the thing over to Otheller, who rushes in with a drawn sword & wants to know what's up. Iagocunningly tells his story & Otheller tells Mike that he thinks a gooddeal of him but that he cant train no more in his regiment. Desdemonysympathizes with poor Mike & interceds for him with Otheller. Iagomakes him bleeve she does this because she thinks more of Mike thanshe does of hisself. Otheller swallers Iagos lying tail & goes tomakin a noosence of hisself ginrally. He worries poor Desdemonyterrible by his vile insinuations & finally smothers her to death witha piller. Mrs. Iago comes in just as Otheller has finished the fowldeed & givs him fits right & left, showin him that he has been orfullygulled by her miserble cuss of a husband. Iago cums in & his wifecommences rakin him down also, when he stabs her. Otheller jaws him aspell & then cuts a small hole in his stummick with his sword. Iagopints to Desdemony's deth bed & goes orf with a sardonic smile ontohis countenance. Otheller tells the peeple that he has dun the statesome service & they know it; axes them to do as fair a thing as theycan for him under the circumstances, & kills hisself with afish-knife, which is the most sensible thing he can do. This is abreef skedule of the synopsis of the play. 

Edwin Forrest is a grate acter. I thot I saw Otheller before me allthe time he was actin &, when the curtin fell, I found my spectacleswas still mistened with salt-water, which had run from my eyes whilepoor Desdemony was dyin. Betsy Jane--Betsy Jane! let us pray that ourdomestic bliss may never be busted up by a Iago!

Edwin Forrest makes money acting out on the stage. He gits fivehundred dollars a nite & his board & washin. I wish I had such aForrest in my Garding!

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

 Born in 1836; died in 1908; a literary man in New York in early life; removing to Boston, became editor of _Every Saturday_ in 1870-74; editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_ in 1881-1890; among his works "The Ballad of Babie Bell" published in 1856, "Cloth of Gold" in 1874, "Flower and Thorn" in 1876, "Story of a Bad Boy" in 1870, "Marjorie Daw" in 1873, "Prudence Palfrey" in 1874, "The Queen of Sheba" in 1877, "The Stillwater Tragedy" in 1880, "From Ponkapog to Pesth" in 1883, "The Sister's Tragedy" in 1891. 

I

A SUNRISE IN STILLWATER[57]

It is close upon daybreak. The great wall of pines and hemlocks thatkeep off the east wind from Stillwater stretches black andindeterminate against the sky. At intervals a dull, metallic sound, like the guttural twang of a violin string, rises from thefrog-invested swamp skirting the highway. Suddenly the birds stir intheir nests over there in the woodland, and break into that wildjargoning chorus with which they herald the advent of a new day. Inthe apple orchards and among the plum-trees of the few gardens inStillwater the wrens and the robins and the blue-jays catch up thecrystal crescendo, and what a melodious racket they make of it withtheir fifes and flutes and flageolets!

[Footnote 57: From Chapter I of "The Stillwater Tragedy. " Copyright, 1880, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Published by Houghton, MifflinCompany. ]

The village lies in a trance like death. Possibly not a soul hearsthis music, unless it is the watchers at the bedside of Mr. LeonardTappleton, the richest man in town, who has lain dying these threedays, and can not last till sunrise. Or perhaps some mother, drowsilyhushing her wakeful baby, pauses a moment and listens vacantly to thebirds singing. But who else?

The hubbub suddenly ceases--ceases as suddenly as it began--and all isstill again in the woodland. But it is not so dark as before. A faintglow of white light is discernible behind the ragged line of the treetops. The deluge of darkness is receding from the face of the earth, as the mighty waters receded of old. 

The roofs and tall factory chimneys of Stillwater are slowly takingshape in the gloom. Is that a cemetery coming into view yonder, withits ghostly architecture of obelisks and broken columns and huddledheadstones? No, that is only Slocum's marble yard, with the finishedand unfinished work heaped up like snowdrifts--a cemetery in embryo. Here and there in an outlying farm a lantern glimmers in thebarn-yard: the cattle are having their fodder betimes. Scarlet-cappedchanticleer gets himself on the nearest rail fence and lifts up hisrancorous voice like some irate old cardinal launching the curse ofRome. Something crawls swiftly along the gray of the serpentineturnpike--a cart, with the driver lashing a jaded horse. A quick windgoes shivering by, and is lost in the forest. 

Now a narrow strip of two-colored gold stretches along the horizon. 

Stillwater is gradually coming to its senses. The sun has begun totwinkle on the gilt cross of the Catholic chapel and make itself knownto the doves in the stone belfry on the South Church. The patches ofcobweb that here and there cling tremulously to the coarse grass ofthe inundated meadows have turned into silver nets, and themill-pond--it will be steel-blue later--is as smooth and white as ifit had been paved with one vast unbroken slab out of Slocum's marbleyard. Through a row of buttonwoods on the northern skirt of thevillage is seen a square, lap-streaked building, painted adisagreeable brown, and surrounded on three sides by a platform--oneof seven or eight similar stations strung like Indian beads on abranch thread of the Great Sagamore Railway. 

Listen! That is the jingle of the bells on the baker's cart as itbegins its rounds. From innumerable chimneys the curled smoke givesevidence that the thrifty housewife--or, what is rarer in Stillwater, the hired girl--has lighted the kitchen fire. 

The chimney-stack of one house at the end of a small court--the lasthouse on the easterly edge of the village, and standing quitealone--sends up no smoke. Yet the carefully trained ivy over theporch, and the lemon verbena in a tub at the foot of the steps, intimate that the place is not unoccupied. Moreover, the littleschooner which acts as weathercock on one of the gables, and is nowheading due west, has a new topsail. It is a story-and-a-half cottage, with a large expanse of roof, which, covered with porous, unpaintedshingles, seems to repel the sunshine that now strikes full upon it. The upper and lower blinds on the main building, as well as those onthe extensions, are tightly closed. The sun appears to beat in vain atthe casements of this silent house, which has a curiously sullen anddefiant air, as if it had desperately and successfully barricadeditself against the approach of morning; yet if one were standing inthe room that leads from the bedchamber on the ground floor--the roomwith the latticed window--one would see a ray of light thrust througha chink of the shutters, and pointing like a human finger at an objectwhich lies by the hearth. 

This finger, gleaming, motionless, and awful in its precision, pointsto the body of old Mr. Lemuel Shackford, who lies there dead in hisnight-dress, with a gash across his forehead. 

In the darkness of that summer night a deed darker than the nightitself had been done in Stillwater. 

II

THE FIGHT AT SLATTER'S HILL[58]

The memory of man, even that of the oldest inhabitant runneth not backto the time when there did not exist a feud between the North End andthe South End boys of Rivermouth. 

[Footnote 58: From Chapter XIII of "The Story of a Bad Boy. "Copyright, 1869, 1877, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Published byHoughton, Mifflin Company. ]

The origin of the feud is involved in mystery; it is impossible to saywhich party was the first aggressor in the far-off anterevolutionary ages;but the fact remains that the youngsters of those antipodal sectionsentertained a mortal hatred for each other, and that this hatred had beenhanded down from generation to generation, like Miles Standish'spunch-bowl. 

I know not what laws, natural or unnatural, regulated the warmth ofthe quarrel; but at some seasons it raged more violently than atothers. This winter both parties were unusually lively andantagonistic. Great was the wrath of the South-Enders when theydiscovered that the North-Enders had thrown up a fort on the crown ofSlatter's Hill. 

Slatter's Hill, or No-man's-land, as it was generally called, was arise of ground covering, perhaps, an acre and a quarter, situated onan imaginary line marking the boundary between the two districts. Animmense stratum of granite, which here and there thrust out a wrinkledboulder, prevented the site from being used for building purposes. Thestreet ran on either side of the hill, from one part of which aquantity of rock had been removed to form the underpinning of the newjail. This excavation made the approach from that point all butimpossible, especially when the ragged ledges were a-glitter with ice. You see what a spot it was for a snow-fort. 

One evening twenty or thirty of the North-Enders quietly tookpossession of Slatter's Hill, and threw up a strong line ofbreastworks. The rear of the entrenchment, being protected by thequarry, was left open. The walls were four feet high, and twenty-twoinches thick, strengthened at the angles by stakes driven firmly intothe ground. 

Fancy the rage of the South-Enders the next day, when they spied oursnowy citadel, with Jack Harris's red silk pocket-handkerchieffloating defiantly from the flagstaff. 

In less than an hour it was known all over town, in military circlesat least, that the "puddle-dockers" and the "river-rats" (these werethe derisive sub-titles bestowed on our South End foes) intended toattack the fort that Saturday afternoon. 

At two o'clock all the fighting boys of the Temple Grammar School, andas many recruits as we could muster, lay behind the walls of FortSlatter, with three hundred compact snowballs piled up in pyramids, awaiting the approach of the enemy. The enemy was not slow in makinghis approach--fifty strong, headed by one Mat Ames. Our forces wereunder the command of General J. Harris. 

Before the action commenced a meeting was arranged between the rivalcommanders, who drew up and signed certain rules and regulationsrespecting the conduct of the battle. As it was impossible for theNorth-Enders to occupy the fort permanently, it was stipulated thatthe South-Enders should assault it only on Wednesday and Saturdayafternoons between the hours of two and six. For them to takepossession of the place at any other time was not to constitute acapture, but, on the contrary, was to be considered a dishonorable andcowardly act. 

The North-Enders, on the other hand, agreed to give up the fortwhenever ten of the storming party succeeded in obtaining at one timea footing on the parapet, and were able to hold the same for the spaceof two minutes. Both sides were to abstain from putting pebbles intotheir snowballs, nor was it permissible to use frozen ammunition. Asnowball soaked in water and left out to cool was a projectile whichin previous years had been resorted to with disastrous results. 

These preliminaries settled, the commanders retired to theirrespective corps. The interview had taken place on the hillsidebetween the opposing lines. 

General Harris divided his men into two bodies; the first comprizedthe most skilful marksmen, or gunners; the second, the reserve force, was composed of the strongest boys, whose duty it was to repel thescaling parties, and to make occasional sallies for the purpose ofcapturing prisoners, who were bound by the articles of treaty tofaithfully serve under our flag until they were exchanged at the closeof the day. 

The repellers were called light infantry; but when they carried on theoperations beyond the fort they became cavalry. It was also theirduty, when not otherwise engaged, to manufacture snowballs. TheGeneral's staff consisted of five Templars (I among the number, withthe rank of major), who carried the General's orders and looked afterthe wounded. 

General Mat Ames, a veteran commander, was no less wide-awake in thedisposition of his army. Five companies, each numbering but six men, in order not to present too big a target to our sharpshooters, wereto charge the fort from different points, their advance being coveredby a heavy fire from the gunners posted in the rear. Each scaler wasprovided with only two rounds of ammunition, which were not to be useduntil he had mounted the breastwork and could deliver his shots on ourheads. 

The thrilling moment had now arrived. If I had been going into a realengagement I could not have been more deeply imprest by the importanceof the occasion. 

The fort opened fire first--a single ball from the dextrous hand ofGeneral Harris taking General Ames in the very pit of his stomach. Acheer went up from Fort Slatter. In an instant the air was thick withflying missiles, in the midst of which we dimly descried the stormingparties sweeping up the hill, shoulder to shoulder. The shouts of theleaders, and the snowballs bursting like shells about our ears made itvery lively. 

Not more than a dozen of the enemy succeeded in reaching the crest ofthe hill; five of these clambered upon the icy walls, where they wereinstantly grabbed by the legs and jerked into the fort. The restretired confused and blinded by our well-directed fire. 

When General Harris (with his right eye bunged up) said, "Soldiers, Iam proud of you!" my heart swelled in my bosom. 

The victory, however, had not been without its price. SixNorth-Enders, having rushed out to harass the discomfited enemy, weregallantly cut off by General Ames and captured. Among these wereLieutenant P. Whitcomb (who had no business to join in the charge, being weak in the knees) and Captain Fred Langdon, of General Harris'sstaff. Whitcomb was one of the most notable shots on our side, tho hewas not much to boast of in a rough-and-tumble fight, owing to theweakness before mentioned. General Ames put him among the gunners, andwe were quickly made aware of the loss we had sustained by receiving afrequent artful ball which seemed to light with unerring instinct onany nose that was the least bit exposed. I have known one of Pepper'ssnowballs, fired point-blank, to turn a corner and hit a boy whoconsidered himself absolutely safe. 

But we had no time for vain regrets. The battle raged. Already therewere two bad cases of black eye, and one of nose-bleed, in thehospital. 

It was glorious excitement, those pell-mell onslaughts andhand-to-hand struggles. Twice we were within an ace of being drivenfrom our stronghold, when General Harris and his staff leaptrecklessly upon the ramparts and hurled the besiegers heels over headdown hill. 

At sunset the garrison of Fort Slatter was still unconquered, and theSouth-Enders, in a solid phalanx, marched off whistling "YankeeDoodle, " while we cheered and jeered them until they were out ofhearing. 

III

ON RETURNING FROM EUROPE[59]

This page will be wafted possibly through a snow-storm to the reader'shand; but it is written while a few red leaves are still clinging tothe maple bough, and the last steamer of the year from across theocean has not yet discharged on our shores the final cargo ofreturning summer tourists. How glad they will be, like those who cameover in previous ships, to sight that fantomish, white strip of Yankeeland called Sandy Hook! It is thinking of them that I write. 

[Footnote 59: From Chapter IX of "From Ponkapog to Pesth. " Copyright, 1883, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Published by Houghton, MifflinCompany. ]

Some one--that anonymous person who is always saying the wisest andmost delightful things just as you are on the point of saying themyourself--has remarked that one of the greatest pleasures of foreigntravel is to get home again. But no one--that irresponsible personforever to blame in railway accidents, but whom, on the whole, Ivastly prefer to his garrulous relative quoted above--no one, Irepeat, has pointed out the composite nature of this pleasure, ornamed the ingredient in it which gives the chief charm to this gettingback. It is pleasant to feel the pressure of friendly hands once more;it is pleasant to pick up the threads of occupation which you droptabruptly, or perhaps neatly knotted together and carefully laid away, just before you stept on board the steamer; it is very pleasant, whenthe summer experience has been softened and sublimated by time, to sitof a winter night by the cheery wood fire, or even at the register, since one must make one's self comfortable in so humiliating afashion, and let your fancy wander back in the old footprints; to formyour thoughts into happy summer pilgrims, and dispatch them to Arlesor Nuremberg, or up the vine-clad heights of Monte Cassino, or embarkthem at Vienna for a cruise down the swift Danube to Budapest. But innone of these things lies the subtle charm I wish to indicate. It liesin the refreshing, short-lived pleasure of being able to look at yourown land with the eyes of an alien; to see novelty blossoming on themost commonplace and familiar stems; to have the old manner and thethreadbare old custom to present themselves to you as absolutelynew--or if not new, at least strange. 

After you have escaped from the claws of the custom-houseofficers--who are not nearly as affable birds as you once thoughtthem--and are rattling in an oddly familiar hack through well-knownbut half-unrecognizable streets, you are struck by something comicalin the names on the shop signs--are American names comical, asEnglishmen seem to think?--by the strange fashion of the ironlamp-post at the corner, by peculiarities in the architecture, whichyou ought to have noticed, but never did notice until now. The candidincivility of the coachman, who does not touch his hat to you, butswears at you, has the vague charm of reminiscence. You regard him asthe guests regarded the poor relation at table in Lamb's essay; youhave an impression that you have seen him somewhere before. The truthis, for the first time in your existence, you have a full, unprejudiced look at the shell of the civilization from which youemerged when you went abroad. Is it a pretty shell? Is it asatisfactory shell? Not entirely. It has strange excrescences andblotches on it. But it is a shell worth examining; it is the best youcan ever have; and it is expedient to study it very carefully the twoor three weeks immediately following your return to it, for yourprivilege of doing so is of the briefest tenure. Some precious thingsyou do not lose, but your newly acquired vision fails you shortly. Suddenly, while you are comparing, valuing, and criticizing, the oldscales fall over your eyes, you insensibly slip back into thewell-worn grooves, and behold all outward and most inward things innearly the same light as your untraveled neighbor, who has never known

 "The glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. "

You will have to go abroad again to renew those magical spectacleswhich enabled you for a few weeks to see your native land. 

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

 Born in Ohio in 1837; consul to Venice in 1861-65; editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_ in 1871-81; associate editor of _Harper's Magazine_ since 1886; among his many works, "Venetian Life" published in 1866, "Italian Journeys" in 1869, "Poems" in 1867, "Their Wedding Journey" in 1872, "A Chance Acquaintance" in 1873, "The Lady of the Aroostook" in 1875, "The Undiscovered Country" in 1880, "A Modern Instance" in 1882, "Silas Lapham" in 1885, "Annie Kilburn" in 1888. 

TO ALBANY BY THE NIGHT BOAT[60]

There is little proportion about either pain or pleasure: a headachedarkens the universe while it lasts, a cup of tea really lightens thespirit bereft of all reasonable consolation. Therefore I do not thinkit trivial or untrue to say that there is for the moment nothing moresatisfactory in life than to have bought your ticket on the night boatup the Hudson and secured your stateroom key an hour or two beforedeparture, and some time even before the pressure at the clerk'soffice has begun. In the transaction with this castellated baron, youhave, of course, been treated with haughtiness, but not with ferocity, and your self-respect swells with a sense of having escaped positiveinsult; your key clicks cheerfully in your pocket against itsgutta-percha number, and you walk up and down the gorgeouslycarpeted, single-columned, two-story cabin, amid a multitude of plushsofas and chairs, a glitter of glass, and a tinkle of prismaticchandeliers overhead, unawed even by the aristocratic gloom of theyellow waiters. Your own stateroom, as you enter it from time to time, is an ever new surprize of splendors, a magnificent effect ofamplitude, of mahogany bedstead, of lace curtains, and of marble toptwashstand. In the mere wantonness of an unalloyed prosperity you sayto the saffron nobleman nearest your door, "Bring me a pitcher ofice-water, quick, please!" and you do not find the half-hour that heis gone very long. 

[Footnote 60: From Chapter III of "Their Wedding Journey. " Copyright, 1871, 1888, Houghton, Mifflin Company. ]

If the ordinary wayfarer experiences so much pleasure from thesethings, then imagine the infinite comfort of our wedding journeyers, transported from Broadway on that pitiless afternoon to the shelterand the quiet of that absurdly palatial steamboat. It was not yetcrowded, and by the river-side there was almost a freshness in theair. They disposed of their troubling bags and packages; theycomplimented the ridiculous princeliness of their stateroom, and thenthey betook themselves to the sheltered space aft of the saloon, wherethey sat down for the tranquiller observance of the wharf and whatevershould come to be seen by them. Like all people who have just escapedwith their lives from some menacing calamity, they were veryphilosophical in spirit; and having got aboard of their own motion, and being neither of them apparently the worse for the ordeal they hadpassed through, were of a light, conversational temper. 

"What an amusingly superb affair!" Basil cried as they glanced throughan open window down the long vista of the saloon. "Good heavens!Isabel, does it take all this to get us plain republicans to Albany incomfort and safety, or are we really a nation of princes in disguise?Well, I shall never be satisfied with less hereafter, " he added. "I amspoiled for ordinary paint and upholstery from this hour; I am aruinous spendthrift, and a humble three-story swell-front up at theSouth End is no longer the place for me. Dearest, 'Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, '

never to leave this Aladdin's-palace-like steamboat, but spend ourlives in perpetual trips up and down the Hudson. "

To which not very costly banter Isabel responded in kind, and rapidlysketched the life they could lead aboard. Since they could not helpit, they mocked the public provision which, leaving no intervalbetween disgraceful squalor and ludicrous splendor, accommodates ourdemocratic menage to the taste of the richest and most extravagantplebeian amongst us. He, unhappily, minds danger and oppression aslittle as he minds money, so long as he has a spectacle and asensation, and it is this ruthless imbecile who will have lacecurtains to the steamboat berth into which he gets with his pantaloonson, and out of which he may be blown by an exploding boiler at anymoment; it is he who will have for supper that overgrown and shapelessdinner in the lower saloon, and will not let any one else buy tea ortoast for a less sum than he pays for his surfeit; it is he whoperpetuates the insolence of the clerk and the reluctance of thewaiters; it is he, in fact, who now comes out of the saloon, with hiswomenkind, and takes chairs under the awning where Basil and Isabelsit. Personally, he is not so bad; he is good-looking, like all of us;he is better drest than most of us; he behaves himself quietly, if noteasily; and no lord so loathes a scene. Next year he is going toEurope, where he will not show to so much advantage as here; but forthe present it would be hard to say in what way he is vulgar, andperhaps vulgarity is not so common a thing after all. 

JOHN HAY

 Born in Indiana in 1838, died in 1905; graduated from Brown University in 1858; admitted to the bar in Illinois; one of the private secretaries of President Lincoln; secretary of Legation in Paris, Madrid and Vienna; Assistant Secretary of State in 1879-81; president of the International Sanitary Commission in 1891; ambassador to England in 1897-98; Secretary of State in 1898; author of "Castilian Days, " published in 1871, "Pike County Ballads" in 1871, "Abraham Lincoln: a History, " in collaboration with John G. Nicolay in 1890. 

LINCOLN'S EARLY FAME[61]

His death seemed to have marked a step in the education of the peopleeverywhere. It requires years, perhaps centuries, to build thestructure of a reputation which rests upon the opinion of thosedistinguished for learning or intelligence; the progress of opinionfrom the few to the many is slow and painful. But in the case ofLincoln the many imposed their opinion all at once; he was canonized, as he lay on his bier, by the irresistible decree of countlessmillions. The greater part of the aristocracy of England thoughtlittle of him; but the burst of grief from the English people silencedin an instant every discordant voice. It would have been as imprudentto speak slightingly of him in London as it was in New York. Especially among the Dissenters was honor and reverence shown to hisname. The humbler people instinctively felt that their order had lostits wisest champion. 

[Footnote 61: From Volume X, Chapter XVIII, of "Abraham Lincoln: aHistory. " Copyright, 1886, 1890, by John G. Nicolay and John Hay. Published by the Century Co. ]

Not only among those of Saxon blood was this outburst of emotion seen. In France a national manifestation took place, which the governmentdisliked but did not think it wise to suppress. The students of Parismarched in a body to the American Legation to express their sympathy. A two-cent subscription was started to strike a massive gold medal;the money was soon raised, but the committee was forced to have thework done in Switzerland. A committee of French liberals brought themedal to the American minister, to be sent to Mrs. Lincoln. "Tellher, " said Eugène Pelletan, "the heart of France is in that littlebox. " The inscription had a double sense; while honoring the deadrepublican, it struck at the Empire: "Lincoln--the Honest Man;abolished Slavery, reestablished the Union; Saved the Republic, without veiling the Statue of Liberty. "

Everywhere on the Continent the same swift apotheosis of the people'shero was seen. An Austrian deputy said to the writer, "Among my peoplehis memory has already assumed superhuman proportions; he has become amyth, a type of ideal democracy. " Almost before the earth closed overhim he began to be the subject of fable. The Freemasons of Europegenerally regard him as one of them--his portrait in masonic garb isoften displayed; yet he was not one of that brotherhood. Thespiritualists claim him as their most illustrious adept, but he wasnot a spiritualist; and there is hardly a sect in the Western world, from the Calvinist to the atheist, but affects to believe he was oftheir opinion. 

A collection of the expressions of sympathy and condolence which cameto Washington from foreign governments, associations, and publicbodies of all sorts, was made by the State Department, and afterwardpublished by order of Congress. It forms a large quarto of a thousandpages, and embraces the utterances of grief and regret from everycountry under the sun, in almost every language spoken by man. 

But admired and venerated as he was in Europe, he was best understoodand appreciated at home. It is not to be denied that in his case, asin that of all heroic personages who occupy a great place in history, a certain element of legend mingles with his righteous fame. He was aman, in fact, especially liable to legend. .. . 

Because Lincoln kept himself in such constant sympathy with the commonpeople, whom he respected too highly to flatter or mislead, he wasrewarded by a reverence and a love hardly ever given to a human being. Among the humble working people of the South whom he had made freethis veneration and affection easily passed into the supernatural. Ata religious meeting among the negroes of the Sea Islands a young manexprest the wish that he might see Lincoln. A gray-headed negrorebuked the rash aspiration: "No man see Linkum. Linkum walk as Jesuswalk; no man see Linkum. ". .. 

The quick instinct by which the world recognized him even at themoment of his death as one of its greatest men, was not deceived. Ithas been confirmed by the sober thought of a quarter of a century. The writers of each nation compare him with their first popular hero. The French find points of resemblance in him to Henry IV; the Dutchliken him to William of Orange: the cruel stroke of murder and treasonby which all three perished in the height of their power naturallysuggests the comparison, which is strangely justified in both cases, tho the two princes were so widely different in character. Lincoln hadthe wit, the bonhomie, the keen practical insight into affairs, of theBéarnais; and the tyrannous moral sense, the wide comprehension, theheroic patience of the Dutch patriot, whose motto might have servedequally well for the American President--_"Sævis tranquillus inundis. "_ European historians speak of him in words reserved for themost illustrious names. 

In this country, where millions still live who were hiscontemporaries, and thousands who knew him personally; where theenvies and jealousies which dog the footsteps of success still lingerin the hearts of a few; where journals still exist that loaded hisname for four years with daily calumny, and writers of memoirs vainlytry to make themselves important by belittling him--his fame hasbecome as universal as the air, as deeply rooted as the hills. Thefaint discords are not heard in the wide chorus that hails him secondto none and equaled by Washington alone. The eulogies of him form aspecial literature. Preachers, poets, soldiers, and statesmen employthe same phrases of unconditional love and reverence. Men speakingwith the authority of fame use unqualified superlatives. .. . 

It is not difficult to perceive the basis of this sudden andworld-wide fame, nor rash to predict its indefinite duration. Thereare two classes of men whose names are more enduring than anymonument: the great writers, and the men of great achievement--thefounders of states, the conquerors. Lincoln has the singular fortuneto belong to both these categories; upon these broad and stablefoundations his renown is securely built. Nothing would have moreamazed him while he lived than to hear himself called a man ofletters; but this age has produced few greater writers. We are onlyrecording here the judgment of his peers. Emerson ranks him with Æsopand Pilpay, in his lighter moods. .. . 

The more his writings are studied in connection with the importanttransactions of his age, the higher will his reputation stand in theopinion of the lettered class. But the men of study and research arenever numerous; and it is principally as a man of action that theworld at large will regard him. It is the story of his objective lifethat will forever touch and hold the heart of mankind. His birthrightwas privation and ignorance--not peculiar to his family, but theuniversal environment of his place and time; he burst through thoseenchaining conditions by the force of native genius and will: vice hadno temptation for him; his course was as naturally upward as theskylark's; he won, against all conceivable obstacles, a high place inan exacting profession and an honorable position in public and privatelife; he became the foremost representative of a party founded on anuprising of the national conscience against a secular wrong, and thuscame to the awful responsibilities of power in a time of terror andgloom. He met them with incomparable strength and virtue. Caring fornothing but the public good, free from envy or jealous fears, hesurrounded himself with the leading men of his party, his mostformidable rivals in public esteem, and through four years ofstupendous difficulties he was head and shoulders above them all inthe vital qualities of wisdom, foresight, knowledge of men, andthorough comprehension of measures. Personally opposed, as theradicals claim, by more than half of his own party in Congress, andbitterly denounced and maligned by his open adversaries, he yet borehimself with such extraordinary discretion and skill that he obtainedfor the government all the legislation it required, and so impresthimself upon the national mind that without personal effort orsolicitation he became the only possible candidate of his party forreelection, and was chosen by an almost unanimous vote of theelectoral colleges. .. . 

To these qualifications of high literary excellence, and easypractical mastery of affairs of transcendent importance we must add, as an explanation of his immediate and world-wide fame, his possessionof certain moral qualities rarely combined in such high degree in oneindividual. His heart was so tender that he would dismount from hishorse in a forest to replace in their nest young birds which hadfallen by the roadside; he could not sleep at night if he knew that asoldier-boy was under sentence of death; he could not, even at thebidding of duty or policy, refuse the prayer of age or helplessness indistress. Children instinctively loved him; they never found hisrugged features ugly; his sympathies were quick and seeminglyunlimited. He was absolutely without prejudice of class or condition. Frederick Douglass says he was the only man of distinction he ever metwho never reminded him, by word or manner, of his color; he was asjust and generous to the rich and well-born as to the poor andhumble--a thing rare among politicians. He was tolerant even of evil:tho no man can ever have lived with a loftier scorn of meanness andselfishness, he yet recognized their existence and counted with them. He said one day, with a flash of cynical wisdom worthy of a LaRochefoucauld, that honest statesmanship was the employment ofindividual meanness for the public good. He never asked perfection ofany one; he did not even insist, for others, upon the high standardshe set up for himself. At a time before the word was invented he wasthe first of opportunists. With the fire of a reformer and a martyr inhis heart, he yet proceeded by the ways of cautious and practicalstatecraft. He always worked with things as they were, while neverrelinquishing the desire and effort to make them better. To a hopewhich saw the delectable mountains of absolute justice and peace inthe future, to a faith that God in his own time would give to all menthe things convenient to them, he added a charity which embraced inits deep bosom all the good and the bad, all the virtues and theinfirmities of men, and a patience like that of nature, which in itsvast and fruitful activity knows neither haste nor rest. 

A character like this is among the precious heirlooms of therepublic; and by a special good fortune every part of the country hasan equal claim and pride in it. Lincoln's blood came from the veins ofNew England emigrants, of Middle State Quakers, of Virginia planters, of Kentucky pioneers; he himself was one of the men who grew up withthe earliest growth of the great West. Every jewel of his mind or hisconduct sheds radiance on each portion of the nation. The marveloussymmetry and balance of his intellect and character may have owedsomething to this varied environment of his race, and they may fitlytypify the variety and solidity of the republic. It may not beunreasonable to hope that his name and his renown may be forever abond of union to the country which he loved with an affection soimpartial, and served, in life and in death, with such entiredevotion. 

HENRY ADAMS

 Born in Boston in 1838; graduated from Harvard in 1858, private secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, American Minister to England in 1861-68; a professor at Harvard in 1870-77; editor of the _North American Review_ in 1870-76; author of "Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law, " "Life of Albert Gallatin, " and a "History of the United States" in nine volumes. 

JEFFERSON'S RETIREMENT[62]

The repeal of the embargo, which received the President's signatureMarch 1, closed the long reign of President Jefferson; and with butone exception the remark of John Randolph was destined to remain true, that "never has there been any administration which went out of officeand left the nation in a state so deplorable and calamitous. " That theblame for this failure rested wholly upon Jefferson might be doubted;but no one felt more keenly than he the disappointment under which hisold hopes and ambitions were crusht. 

[Footnote 62: From the final chapter of the "History of the UnitedStates in the Administration of Thomas Jefferson. " Copyright, 1889, byCharles Scribners' Sons. ]

Loss of popularity was his bitterest trial. He who longed like asensitive child for sympathy and love left office as strongly andalmost as generally disliked as the least popular president whopreceded or followed him. He had undertaken to create a governmentwhich should interfere in no way with private action, and he hadcreated one which interfered directly in the concerns of every privatecitizen in the land. He had come into power as the champion of staterights, and had driven states to the verge of armed resistance. He hadbegun by claiming credit for stern economy, and ended by exceeding theexpenditure of his predecessors. He had invented a policy of peace, and his invention resulted in the necessity of fighting at once thetwo greatest powers in the world. .. . 

In truth, the disaster was appalling; and Jefferson described it inmoderate terms by admitting that the policy of peaceable coercionbrought upon him mortification such as no other president eversuffered. So complete was his overthrow that his popular influencedeclined even in the South. Twenty years elapsed before his politicalauthority recovered power over the Northern people; for not until theembargo and its memories faded from men's minds did the mighty shadowof Jefferson's Revolutionary name efface the ruin of his presidency. Yet he clung with more and more tenacity to the faith that his theoryof peaceable coercion was sound; and when within a few months of hisdeath he alluded for the last time to the embargo, he spoke of it as"a measure which, persevered in a little longer, we had subsequent andsatisfactory assurance would have effected its object completely. "

A discomfiture so conspicuous could not fail to bring in its train aswarm of petty humiliations which for the moment were more painfulthan the great misfortune. Jefferson had hoped to make his countryforever pure and free; to abolish war with its train of debt, extravagance, corruption and tyranny; to build up a government devotedonly to useful and moral objects; to bring upon earth a new era ofpeace and good-will among men. Throughout the twistings and windingsof his course as president he clung to this main idea; or if he seemedfor a moment to forget it, he never failed to return and to persistwith almost heroic obstinacy in enforcing its lessons. By repealingthe embargo, Congress avowedly and even maliciously rejected andtrampled upon the only part of Jefferson's statesmanship which claimedoriginality, or which in his own opinion entitled him to rank asphilosophic legislator. The mortification he felt was natural andextreme, but such as every great statesman might expect, and such asmost of them experienced. The supreme bitterness of the moment layrather in the sudden loss of respect and consideration which at alltimes marked the decline of power, but became most painful when thesurrender of office followed a political defeat at the hands ofsupposed friends. .. . 

In his style of life as President, Jefferson had indulged in such easyand liberal expenses as suited the place he held. Far from showingextravagance, the White House and its surroundings had in his time theoutward look of a Virginia plantation. The President was required topay the expenses of the house and grounds. In consequence, the groundswere uncared for, the palings broken or wanting, the paths undefined, and the place a waste, running imperceptibly into the barren fieldsabout it. Within, the house was as simple as without, after the usualstyle of Virginia houses, where the scale was often extravagant butthe details plain. Only in his table did Jefferson spend an unusualamount of money with excellent results for his political influence, for no president ever understood better than Jefferson the art ofentertaining; yet his table cost him no excessive sums. For the bestchampagne he paid less than a dollar a bottle; for the best Bordeauxhe paid a dollar; and the Madeira which was drunk in pipes at theWhite House cost between fifty and sixty cents a bottle. His Frenchcook and cook's assistant were paid about four hundred dollars a year. On such a scale his salary of twenty-five thousand dollars wasequivalent to fully sixty thousand dollars of modern money; and hisaccounts showed that for the first and probably the most expensiveyear of his presidency he spent only $16, 800 which could properly becharged to his public and official character. A mode of life so simpleand so easily controlled should in a village like Washington have leftno opening for arrears of debt; but when Jefferson, about to quit theWhite House forever, attempted to settle his accounts, he discoveredthat he had exceeded his income. Not his expenses as President, buthis expenses as planter dragged him down. At first he thought that hisdebts would reach seven or eight thousand dollars, which must bedischarged from a private estate hardly exceeding two hundred thousanddollars in value at the best of times, and rendered almost worthlessby neglect and by the embargo. The sudden demand for this sum ofmoney, coming at the moment of his political mortifications, wrungfrom him cries of genuine distress such as no public disaster hadcalled out. .. . 

On horseback, over roads impassable to wheels, through snow and storm, he hurried back to Monticello to recover in the quiet of home thepeace of mind he had lost in the disappointments of his statesmanship. He arrived at Monticello March 15, and never again passed beyond thebounds of a few adjacent counties. 

BRET HARTE

 Born in 1839, died in 1902; removed to California in 1854, where in 1868 he founded _The Overland Monthly_; professor in the University of California in 1870; removed to New York in 1871; consul at Crefeld, Germany, in 1878-80, and at Glasgow in 1880-85; published "The Luck of Roaring Camp" in 1868, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" in 1869, "Poems" in 1871, "Stories of the Sierras" in 1872, "Tales of the Argonauts" in 1875, "Gabriel Conroy" in 1876, "Two Men of Sandy Bar" (a play) in 1877, "A Phyllis of the Sierras" in 1888. 

I

PEGGY MOFFAT'S INHERITANCE[63]

The first intimation given of the eccentricity of the testator was, Ithink, in the spring of 1854. He was at that time in possession of aconsiderable property, heavily mortgaged to one friend, and a wife ofsome attraction, on whose affections another friend held anencumbering lien. One day it was found that he had secretly dug, orcaused to be dug, a deep trap before the front door of his dwelling, into which a few friends in the course of the evening casually andfamiliarly dropt. This circumstance, slight in itself, seemed to pointto the existence of a certain humor in the man, which might eventuallyget into literature; altho his wife's lover--a man of quickdiscernment, whose leg was broken by the fall--took other views. Itwas some weeks later that while dining with certain other friends ofhis wife, he excused himself from the table, to quietly reappear atthe front window with a three-quarter-inch hydraulic pipe, and astream of water projected at the assembled company. An attempt wasmade to take public cognizance of this; but a majority of the citizensof Red Dog who were not at dinner decided that a man had a right tochoose his own methods of diverting his company. Nevertheless, therewere some hints of his insanity: his wife recalled other acts clearlyattributable to dementia; the crippled lover argued from his ownexperience that the integrity of her limbs could only be secured byleaving her husband's house; and the mortgagee, fearing a furtherdamage to his property, foreclosed. But here the cause of all thisanxiety took matters into his own hands and disappeared. 

[Footnote 63: From "The Twins of Table Mountain. " Copyright, 1879, byHoughton, Mifflin Company. ]

When we next heard from him, he had in some mysterious way beenrelieved alike of his wife and property and was living alone atRockville, fifty miles away, and editing a newspaper. But thatoriginality he had displayed when dealing with the problems of his ownprivate life, when applied to politics in the columns of _TheRockville Vanguard_ was singularly unsuccessful. An amusingexaggeration, purporting to be an exact account of the manner in whichthe opposing candidate had murdered his Chinese laundryman, was, Iregret to say, answered only by assault and battery. A gratuitous andpurely imaginative description of a great religious revival inCalaveras, in which the sheriff of the county--a notoriously profaneskeptic--was alleged to have been the chief exhorter, resulted onlyin the withdrawal of the county advertising from the paper. 

In the midst of this practical confusion he suddenly died. It was thendiscovered, as a crowning proof of his absurdity, that he had left awill, bequeathing his entire effects to a freckle-faced maid-servantat the Rockville Hotel. But that absurdity became serious when it wasalso discovered that among these effects were a thousand shares in theRising Sun Mining Company, which a day or two after his demise, andwhile people were still laughing at his grotesque benefaction, suddenly sprang into opulence and celebrity. Three millions of dollarswas roughly estimated as the value of the estate thus wantonlysacrificed. For it is only fair to state, as a just tribute to theenterprise and energy of that young and thriving settlement, thatthere was not probably a single citizen who did not feel himselfbetter able to control the deceased humorist's property. Some hadexprest a doubt of their ability to support a family; others had feltperhaps too keenly the deep responsibility resting upon them whenchosen from the panel as jurors, and had evaded their public duties; afew had declined office and a low salary; but no one shrank from thepossibility of having been called upon to assume the functions ofPeggy Moffat the heiress. 

The will was contested--first by the widow, who it now appeared hadnever been legally divorced from the deceased; next by four of hiscousins, who awoke, only too late, to a consciousness of his moral andpecuniary worth. But the humble legatee--a singularly plain, unpretending, uneducated Western girl--exhibited a dogged pertinacityin claiming her rights. She rejected all compromises. A rough sense ofjustice in the community, while doubting her ability to take care ofthe whole fortune, suggested that she ought to be content with threehundred thousand dollars. "She's bound to throw even that away on somederned skunk of a man, natoorally; but three millions is too much togive a chap for makin' her onhappy. It's offerin' a temptation tocussedness. "

The only opposing voice to this counsel came from the sardonic lips ofMr. Jack Hamlin. "Suppose, " suggested that gentleman, turning abruptlyon the speaker, "suppose, when you won twenty thousand dollars of melast Friday night--suppose that instead of handing you over the moneyas I did--suppose I'd got up on my hind legs and said, 'Look yer, BillWethersbee, you're a d----d fool. If I give ye that twenty thousandyou'll throw it away in the first skin game in 'Frisco, and hand itover to the first short card-sharp you'll meet. There's athousand--enough for you to fling away--take it and get!' Suppose whatI'd said to you was the frozen truth, and you knowed it, would thathave been the square thing to play on you?"

But here Wethersbee quickly pointed out the inefficiency of thecomparison by stating that he had won the money fairly with a stake. 

"And how do you know, " demanded Hamlin savagely, bending his blackeyes on the astonished casuist, "how do you know that the gal hezn'tput down a stake?"

The man stammered an unintelligible reply. 

The gambler laid his white hand on Wethersbee's shoulder. 

"Look yer, old man, " he said, "every gal stakes her whole pile--youcan bet your life on that--whatever's her little game. If she took tokeerds instead of her feelings, if she'd put up chips instead o' bodyand soul, she'd burst every bank 'twixt this and 'Frisco! You hearme?"

Somewhat of this idea was conveyed, I fear not quite as sentimentally, to Peggy Moffat herself. The best legal wisdom of San Francisco, retained by the widow and relatives, took occasion, in a privateinterview with Peggy, to point out that she stood in thequasi-criminal attitude of having unlawfully practised upon theaffections of an insane elderly gentleman, with a view of gettingpossession of his property; and suggested to her that no vestige ofher moral character would remain after the trial, if she persisted inforcing her claims to that issue. It is said that Peggy, on hearingthis, stopt washing the plate she had in her hands, and twisting thetowel around her fingers, fixt her small pale blue eyes on the lawyer. 

"And ez that the kind o' chirpin' these critters keep up?"

"I regret to say, my dear young lady, " responded the lawyer, "that theworld is censorious. I must add, " he continued, with engagingfrankness, "that we professional lawyers are apt to study the opinionof the world, and that such will be the theory of--our side. "

"Then, " said Peggy stoutly, "ez I allow I've got to go into court todefend my character, I might as well pack in them three millionstoo. "

There is hearsay evidence that Peg added to this speech a wish anddesire to "bust the crust" of her traducers, and remarking that "thatwas the kind of hair-pin" she was, closed the conversation with anunfortunate accident to the plate, that left a severe contusion on thelegal brow of her companion. But this story, popular in the bar-roomsand gulches, lacked confirmation in higher circles. .. . 

The case came to trial. Everybody remembers it--how for six weeks itwas the daily food of Calaveras County; how for six weeks theintellectual and moral and spiritual competency of Mr. James Byways todispose of his property was discust with learned and formal obscurityin the court, and with unlettered and independent prejudice bycamp-fires and in bar-rooms. At the end of that time, when it waslogically established that at least nine-tenths of the population ofCalaveras were harmless lunatics, and everybody else's reason seemedto totter on its throne, an exhausted jury succumbed one day to thepresence of Peg in the courtroom. It was not a prepossessing presenceat any time; but the excitement, and an injudicious attempt toornament herself, brought her defects into a glaring relief that wasalmost unreal. Every freckle on her face stood out and asserted itselfsingly; her pale blue eyes, that gave no indication of her force ofcharacter, were weak and wandering, or stared blankly at the judge;her over-sized head, broad at the base, terminating in the scantiestpossible light colored braid in the middle of her narrow shoulders, was as hard and uninteresting as the wooden spheres that topt therailing against which she sat. The jury, who for six weeks had hadher described to them by the plaintiffs as an arch, wily enchantress, who had sapped the failing reason of Jim Byways, revolted to a man. There was something so appallingly gratuitous in her plainness that itwas felt that three millions was scarcely a compensation for it. "Efthat money was give to her, she earned it sure, boys; it wasn't nosoftness of the old man, " said the foreman. When the jury retired, itwas felt that she had cleared her character; when they reentered theroom with their verdict, it was known that she had been awarded threemillions damages for its defamation. 

She got the money. But those who had confidently expected to see hersquander it were disappointed: on the contrary, it was presentlywhispered that she was exceeding penurious. That admirable woman Mrs. Stiver of Red Dog, who accompanied her to San Francisco to assist herin making purchases, was loud in her indignation. "She cares more fortwo bits than I do for five dollars. She wouldn't buy anything at the'City of Paris' because it was 'too expensive, ' and at last riggedherself out a perfect guy at some cheap slop-shops in Market Street. And after all the care Jane and me took of her, giving up our time andexperience to her, she never so much as made Jane a single present. "Popular opinion, which regarded Mrs. Stiver's attention as purelyspeculative, was not shocked at this unprofitable denouement; but whenPeg refused to give anything to clear the mortgage off the newPresbyterian church, and even declined to take shares in the UnionDitch, considered by many as an equally sacred and safe investment, she began to lose favor. Nevertheless, she seemed to be as regardlessof public opinion as she had been before the trial; took a smallhouse, in which she lived with an old woman who had once been a fellowservant, on apparently terms of perfect equality, and looked after hermoney. 

I wish I could say that she did this discreetly; but the fact is, sheblundered. The same dogged persistency she had displayed in claimingher rights was visible in her unsuccessful ventures. She sunk twohundred thousand dollars in a worn-out shaft originally projected bythe deceased testator; she prolonged the miserable existence of _TheRockville Vanguard_ long after it had ceased to interest even itsenemies; she kept the doors of the Rockville Hotel open when itscustom had departed; she lost the cooperation and favor of a fellowcapitalist through a trifling misunderstanding in which she wasderelict and impenitent; she had three lawsuits on her hands thatcould have been settled for a trifle. I note these defects to showthat she was by no means a heroine. I quote her affair with JackFolinsbee to show she was scarcely the average woman. .. . 

Nothing was known definitely until Jack a month later turned up inSacramento, with a billiard cue in his hand, and a heart overchargedwith indignant emotion. 

"I don't mind saying to you gentlemen in confidence, " said Jack to acircle of sympathizing players, "I don't mind telling you regardingthis thing, that I was as soft on that freckle-faced, red-eyed, tallow-haired gal as if she'd been--a--a--an actress. And I don't mindsaying, gentlemen, that as far as I understand women, she was just assoft on me. You kin laugh; but it's so. One day I took her outbuggy-riding--in style too--and out on the road I offered to do thesquare thing, just as if she'd been a lady--offered to marry her thenand there. And what did she do?" said Jack with a hysterical laugh. "Why, blank it all! offered me twenty-five dollars a weekallowance--pay to be stopt when I wasn't at home!" The roar oflaughter that greeted this frank confession was broken by a quietvoice asking, "And what did you say?" "Say?" screamed Jack, "I justtold her to go to ---- with her money. ". .. 

During the following year she made several more foolish ventures andlost heavily. In fact, a feverish desire to increase her store atalmost any risk seemed to possess her. At last it was announced thatshe intended to reopen the infelix Rockville Hotel, and keep itherself. Wild as this scheme appeared in theory, when put intopractical operation there seemed to be some chance of success. Muchdoubtless was owing to her practical knowledge of hotel-keeping, butmore to her rigid economy and untiring industry. The mistress ofmillions, she cooked, washed, waited on table, made the beds, andlabored like a common menial. Visitors were attracted by this novelspectacle. The income of the house increased as their respect for thehostess lessened. No anecdote of her avarice was too extravagant forcurrent belief. It was even alleged that she had been known to carrythe luggage of guests to their rooms, that she might anticipate theusual porter's gratuity. She denied herself the ordinary necessariesof life. She was poorly clad, she was ill-fed--but the hotel wasmaking money. 

It was the particular fortune of Mr. Jack Hamlin to be able to set theworld right on this and other questions regarding her. 

A stormy December evening had set in when he chanced to be a guest ofthe Rockville Hotel. .. . At midnight, when he was about to retire, hewas a little surprized however by a tap on his door, followed by thepresence of Mistress Peg Moffat, heiress, and landlady of RockvilleHotel. 

Mr. Hamlin, despite his previous defense of Peg, had no liking forher. His fastidious taste rejected her uncomeliness; his habits ofthought and life were all antagonistic to what he had heard of herniggardliness and greed. As she stood there in a dirty calico wrapper, still redolent with the day's _cuisine_, crimson with embarrassmentand the recent heat of the kitchen range, she certainly was not analluring apparition. Happily for the lateness of the hour, herloneliness, and the infelix reputation of the man before her, she wasat least a safe one. And I fear the very consciousness of thisscarcely relieved her embarrassment. .. . 

"I wanted to ask ye a favor about Mr. --about--Jack Folinsbee, " beganPeg hurriedly. "He's ailin' agin, and is mighty low. And he's losin' aheap o' money here and thar, and mostly to you. You cleaned him out oftwo thousand dollars last night--all he had. "

"Well?" said the gambler coldly. 

"Well, I thought as you woz a friend o' mine, I'd ask ye to let up alittle on him, " said Peg with an affected laugh. "You kin do it. Don't let him play with ye. "

"Mistress Margaret Moffat, " said Jack with lazy deliberation, taking offhis watch and beginning to wind it up, "ef you're that much stuck afterJack Folinsbee, you kin keep him off of me much easier than I kin. You're arich woman. Give him enough money to break my bank, or break himself forgood and all; but don't keep him foolin' round me in hopes to make a raise. It don't pay, Mistress Moffat--it don't pay!". .. 

"When Jim Byways left me this yer property, " she began, lookingcautiously around, "he left it to me on conditions; not conditions ezwaz in his written will, but conditions ez waz spoken. A promise Imade him in this very room, Mr. Hamlin--this very room, and on thatvery bed you're sittin' on, in which he died. "

Like most gamblers, Mr. Hamlin was superstitious. He rose hastily fromthe bed, and took a chair beside the window. The wind shook it as ifthe discontented spirit of Mr. Byways were without, reenforcing hislast injunction. 

"I don't know if you remember him, " said Peg feverishly. "He was a manez hed suffered. All that he loved--wife, fammerly, friends--had goneback on him. He tried to make light of it afore folks; but with me, being a poor gal, he let himself out. I never told anybody this. Idon't know why he told me; I don't know, " continued Peggy with asniffle, "why he wanted to make me unhappy too. But he made me promisethat if he left me his fortune, I'd never, never--so help meGod!--never share it with any man or woman that I loved. I didn'tthink it would be hard to keep that promise then, Mr. Hamlin, for Iwas very poor, and hedn't a friend nor a living bein' that was kind tome but him. "

"But you've as good as broken your promise already, " said Hamlin. "You've given Jack money, as I know. "

"Only what I made myself. Listen to me, Mr. Hamlin. When Jack proposedto me, I offered him about what I kalkilated I could earn myself. Whenhe went away, and was sick and in trouble, I came here and took thishotel. I knew that by hard work I could make it pay. Don't laugh atme, please. I did work hard, and did make it pay--without takin' onecent of the fortin'. And all I made, workin' by night and day, I gaveto him; I did, Mr. Hamlin. I ain't so hard to him as you think, tho Imight be kinder, I know. "

Mr. Hamlin rose, deliberately resumed his coat, watch, hat, andovercoat. When he was completely drest again, he turned to Peg. 

"Do you mean to say that you've been givin' all the money you madehere to this A1 first-class cherubim?"

"Yes; but he didn't know where I got it. O Mr. Hamlin! he didn't knowthat. "

"Do I understand you that he's been bucking agin faro with the moneythat you raised on hash? and you makin' the hash?"

"But he didn't know that. He wouldn't hev took it if I'd told him. "

"No, he'd hev died fust!" said Mr. Hamlin gravely. "Why, he's thatsensitive that it nearly kills him to take money even of me. "

II

JOHN CHINAMAN[64]

The expression of the Chinese face in the aggregate is neithercheerful nor happy. In an acquaintance of half a dozen years, I canonly recall one or two exceptions to this rule. There is an abidingconsciousness of degradation--a secret pain or self-humiliationvisible in the lines of the mouth and eye. Whether it is only amodification of Turkish gravity, or whether it is the dread Valley ofthe Shadow of the Drug through which they are continually straying, Ican not say. They seldom smile, and their laughter is of such anextraordinary and sardonic nature--so purely a mechanical spasm, quiteindependent of any mirthful attribute--that to this day I am doubtfulwhether I ever saw a Chinaman laugh. A theatrical representation bynatives, one might think, would have set my mind at ease on thispoint; but it did not. Indeed, a new difficulty presented itself--theimpossibility of determining whether the performance was a tragedy orfarce. I thought I detected the low comedian in an active youth whoturned two somersaults, and knocked everybody down on entering thestage. But, unfortunately, even this classic resemblance to thelegitimate farce of our civilization was deceptive. Another brocadedactor, who represented the hero of the play, turned threesomersaults, and not only upset my theory and his fellow actors at thesame time, but apparently ran amuck behind the scenes for some timeafterward. I looked around at the glinting white teeth to observe theeffect of these two palpable hits. They were received with equalacclamation, and apparently equal facial spasms. One or two beheadingswhich enlivened the play produced the same sardonic effect, and leftupon my mind a painful anxiety to know what was the serious businessof life in China. It was noticeable, however, that my unrestrainedlaughter had a discordant effect, and that triangular eyes sometimesturned ominously toward the "Fanqui devil"; but as I retireddiscreetly before the play was finished, there were no seriousresults. I have only given the above as an instance of theimpossibility of deciding upon the outward and superficial expressionof Chinese mirth. Of its inner and deeper existence I have someprivate doubts. An audience that will view with a serious aspect thehero, after a frightful and agonizing death, get up and quietly walkoff the stage, can not be said to have remarkable perceptions of theludicrous. 

[Footnote 64: From "The Luck of Roaring Camp. " Copyright, 1871, 1899, Houghton, Mifflin Company. ]

I have often been struck with the delicate pliability of the Chineseexpression and taste that might suggest a broader and deeper criticismthan is becoming these pages. A Chinaman will adopt the Americancostume, and wear it with a taste of color and detail that willsurpass those "native, and to the manner born. " To look at a Chineseslipper, one might imagine it impossible to shape the original foot toanything less cumbrous and roomy, yet a neater-fitting boot than thatbelonging to the Americanized Chinaman is rarely seen on this side ofthe continent. When the loose sack or paletot takes the place of hisbrocade blouse, it is worn with a refinement and grace that mightbring a jealous pang to the exquisite of our more refinedcivilization. Pantaloons fall easily and naturally over legs that haveknown unlimited freedom and bagginess, and even garrote collars meetcorrectly around sun-tanned throats. The new expression seldomoverflows in gaudy cravats. I will back my Americanized Chinamanagainst any neophyte of European birth in the choice of that article. While in our own State, the greaser resists one by one the garments ofthe Northern invader, and even wears the livery of his conqueror witha wild and buttonless freedom, the Chinaman, abused and degraded as heis, changes by correctly graded transition to the garments ofChristian civilization. There is but one article of European wear thathe avoids. These Bohemian eyes have never yet been pained by thespectacle of a tall hat on the head of an intelligent Chinaman. 

My acquaintance with John has been made up of weekly interviews, involving the adjustment of the washing accounts, so that I have notbeen able to study his character from a social viewpoint or observehim in the privacy of the domestic circle. I have gathered enough tojustify me in believing him to be generally honest, faithful, simple, and painstaking. Of his simplicity let me record an instance where asad and civil young Chinaman brought me certain shirts with most ofthe buttons missing and others hanging on delusively by a singlethread. In a moment of unguarded irony I informed him that unity wouldat least have been preserved if the buttons were removed altogether. He smiled sadly and went away. I thought I had hurt his feelings, until the next week, when he brought me my shirts with a look ofintelligence, and the buttons carefully and totally erased. At anothertime, to guard against his general disposition to carry off anythingas soiled clothes that he thought could hold water, I requested him toalways wait until he saw me. Coming home late one evening, I found thehousehold in great consternation over an immovable Celestial who hadremained seated on the front door-step during the day, sad andsubmissive, firm but also patient, and only betraying any animation ortoken of his mission when he saw me coming. This same Chinaman evincedsome evidences of regard for a little girl in the family, who in herturn reposed such faith in his intellectual qualities as to presenthim with a preternaturally uninteresting Sunday-school book, her ownproperty. This book John made a point of carrying ostentatiously withhim in his weekly visits. It appeared usually on the top of the cleanclothes, and was sometimes painfully clasped outside of the big bundleof soiled linen. Whether John believed he unconsciously imbibed somespiritual life through its pasteboard cover, as the Prince in the"Arabian Nights" imbibed the medicine through the handle of themallet, or whether he wished to exhibit a due sense of gratitude, orwhether he hadn't any pockets, I have never been able to ascertain. Inhis turn he would sometimes cut marvelous imitation roses fromcarrots for his little friend. I am inclined to think that the fewroses strewn in John's path were such scentless imitations. The thornsonly were real. From the persecutions of the young and old of acertain class his life was a torment. I don't know what was the exactphilosophy that Confucius taught, but it is to be hoped that poor Johnin his persecution is still able to detect the conscious hate and fearwith which inferiority always regards the possibility of even-handedjustice, and which is the keynote to the vulgar clamor about servileand degraded races. 

III

M'LISS GOES TO SCHOOL[65]

Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler undulations, and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side of a great redmountain, stands "Smith's Pocket. " Seen from the red road at sunset, in the red light and the red dust, its white houses look like theoutcroppings of quartz on the mountain-side. The red stage topped withred-shirted passengers is lost to view half a dozen times in thetortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly in out-of-the-way places, and vanishing altogether within a hundred yards of the town. It isprobably owing to this sudden twist in the road that the advent of astranger at Smith's Pocket is usually attended with a peculiarcircumstance. Dismounting from the vehicle at the stage office, thetoo confident traveler is apt to walk straight out of town under theimpression that it lies in quite another direction. It is related thatone of the tunnelmen, two miles from town, met one of theseself-reliant passengers with a carpet-bag, umbrella, _Harper'sMagazine_, and other evidences of "civilization and refinement, "plodding along over the road he had just ridden, vainly endeavoring tofind the settlement of Smith's Pocket. 

[Footnote 65: From M'Liss, one of the stories in "The Luck of RoaringCamp" volume. Copyright, 1871, 1899. Houghton, Mifflin Company. ]

An observant traveler might have found some compensation for hisdisappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity. There were hugefissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil, resembling more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than thework of man; while, half-way down, a long flume straddled its narrowbody and disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous fossilof some forgotten antediluvian. At every step smaller ditches crossedthe road, hiding in their sallow depths unlovely streams that creptaway to a clandestine union with the great yellow torrent below, andhere and there were the ruins of some cabin with the chimney aloneleft intact and the hearthstone open to the skies. 

The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its origin to the finding of a"pocket" on its site by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars weretaken out of it in one half-hour by Smith. Three thousand dollars wereexpended by Smith and others in erecting a flume and in tunnelling. And then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a pocket, and subject, like other pockets, to depletion. Altho Smith pierced the bowels ofthe great red mountain, that five thousand dollars was the first andlast return of his labor. The mountain grew reticent of its goldensecrets, and the flume steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith'sfortune. Then Smith went into quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling;then into hydraulics and ditching, and then by easy degrees intosaloon-keeping. Presently it was whispered that Smith was drinking agreat deal; then it was known that Smith was a habitual drunkard, andthen people began to think, as they are apt to, that he had never beenanything else. But the settlement of Smith's Pocket, like that of mostdiscoveries, was happily not dependent on the fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected tunnels and found pockets. So Smith'spocket became a settlement with its two fancy stores, its two hotels, its one express office, and its two first families. Occasionally itsone long straggling street was overawed by the assumption of thelatest San Francisco fashions, imported per express, exclusively tothe first families; making outraged Nature, in the ragged outline ofher furrowed surface, look still more homely, and putting personalinsult on that greater portion of the population to whom the Sabbath, with a change of linen, brought merely the necessity of cleanliness, without the luxury of adornment. Then there was a Methodist church, and hard by a Monte bank, and a little beyond, on the mountain-side, agraveyard; and then a little schoolhouse. 

"The Master, " as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one nightin the schoolhouse, with some open copy-books before him, carefullymaking those bold and full characters which are supposed to combinethe extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and had got asfar as "Riches are deceitful, " and was elaborating the noun with aninsincerity of flourish that was quite in the spirit of his text, whenhe heard a gentle tapping. The woodpeckers had been busy about theroof during the day, and the noise did not disturb his work. But theopening of the door, and the tapping continuing from the inside, caused him to look up. He was slightly startled by the figure of ayoung girl, dirty and shabbily clad. Still her great black eyes, hercoarse, uncombed, lusterless black hair falling over her sun-burnedface, her red arms and feet streaked with the red soil, were allfamiliar to him. It was Melissa Smith--Smith's motherless child. 

"What can she want here?" thought the master. Everybody knew "M'liss, "as she was called, throughout the length and height of Red Mountain. Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce, ungovernabledisposition, her mad freaks and lawless character were in their way asproverbial as the story of her father's weaknesses, and asphilosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with andfought the schoolboys with keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She followed the trails with a woodman's craft, and the master had mether before, miles away, shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded, on themountain road. The miners' camps along the stream supplied her withsubsistence during these voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offeredalms. Not but that a larger protection had been previously extended toM'liss. The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, "stated" preacher, had placed herin the hotel as servant, by way of preliminary refinement, and hadintroduced her to his scholars at Sunday school. But she threw platesoccasionally at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheapwitticisms of the guests, and created in the Sabbath school asensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dulness and placidityof that institution, that, with a decent regard for the starchedfrocks and unblemished morals of the two pink-and-white-faced childrenof the first families, the reverend gentleman had her ignominiouslyexpelled. Such were the antecedents, and such the character of M'liss, as she stood before the master. It was shown in the ragged dress, theunkempt hair, and bleeding feet, and asked his pity. It flashed fromher black, fearless eyes, and commanded his respect. 

"I come here to-night, " she said rapidly and boldly, keeping her hardglance on his, "because I knew you was alone. I wouldn't come herewhen them gals was here. I hate 'em and they hates me. That's why. Youkeep school, don't you? I want to be teached!"

If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness of her tangledhair and dirty face she had added the humility of tears, the masterwould have extended to her the usual moiety of pity, and nothing more. But with the natural, tho illogical instincts of his species, herboldness awakened in him something of that respect which all originalnatures pay unconsciously to one another in any grade. And he gazed ather the more fixedly as she went on still rapidly, her hand on thatdoor-latch and her eyes on his:

"My name's M'liss--M'liss Smith! You can bet your life on that. Myfather's Old Smith--Old Bummer Smith--that's what's the matter withhim. M'liss Smith--and I'm coming to school!"

"Well?" said the master. 

Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly, forno other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her nature, the master's phlegm evidently took her by surprize. She stopt; shebegan to twist a lock of her hair between her fingers; and the rigidline of upper lip, drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed andquivered slightly. Then her eyes dropt, and something like a blushstruggled up to her cheek, and tried to assert itself through thesplashes of redder soil, and the sunburn of years. Suddenly she threwherself forward, calling on God to strike her dead, and fell quiteweak and helpless, with her face on the master's desk, crying andsobbing as if her heart would break. 

HENRY JAMES

 Born in 1843; son of the elder Henry James; educated in Europe; studied law at Harvard; began to write for periodicals in 1866; has lived mostly in England since 1869; "A Passionate Pilgrim" published in 1875, "The American" in 1877, "French Poets and Novelists" in 1878, "Daisy Miller" in 1878, "Life of Hawthorne" in 1879, "Portrait of a Lady" in 1881, "A Little Tour in France" in 1884, "The Bostonians" in 1886, "What Maisie Knew" in 1897, "The Awkward Age" in 1899, "The Sacred Fount" in 1901. 

I

AMONG THE MALVERN HILLS[66]

Between the fair boundaries of the counties of Hereford and Worcesterrise in a long undulation the sloping pastures of the Malvern Hills. Consulting a big red book on the castles and manors of England, wefound Lockley Park to be seated near the base of this grassy range, tho in which county I forget. In the pages of this genial volumeLockley Park and its appurtenances made a very handsome figure. Wetook up our abode at a certain little wayside inn, at which in thedays of leisure the coach must have stopt for lunch, and burnishedpewters of rustic ale been tenderly exalted to "outsides" athirst withbreezy progression. Here we stopt, for sheer admiration of its steepthatched roof, its latticed windows, and its homely porch. We alloweda couple of days to elapse in vague undirected strolls and sweetsentimental observance of the land, before we prepared to execute theespecial purpose of our journey. This admirable region is a compendiumof the general physiognomy of England. The noble friendliness of thescenery, its subtle old friendliness, the magical familiarity ofmultitudinous details, appealed to us at every step and at everyglance. Deep in our souls a natural affection answered. The wholeland, in the full, warm rains of the last of April, had burst intosudden perfect spring. The dark walls of the hedge-rows had turnedinto blooming screens; the sodden verdure of lawn and meadow wasstreaked with a ranker freshness. We went forth without loss of timefor a long walk on the hills. Reaching their summits, you find halfEngland unrolled at your feet. A dozen broad counties, within the vastrange of your vision, commingle their green exhalations. Closelybeneath us lay the dark, rich flats of hedgy Worcestershire and thecopse-checkered slopes of rolling Hereford, white with the blossom ofapples. At widely opposite points of the large expanse two greatcathedral towers rise sharply, taking the light, from the settledshadow of the circling towns--the light, the ineffable English light!"Out of England, " cried Searle, "it's but a garish world!"

[Footnote 66: From "A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales. " Copyright, 1875. Houghton, Mifflin Company. ]

The whole vast sweep of our surrounding prospect lay answering in amyriad fleeting shades the cloudy process of the tremendous sky. TheEnglish heaven is a fit antithesis to the complex English earth. Wepossess in America the infinite beauty of the blue; England possessesthe splendor of combined and animated clouds. Over against us, fromour station on the hills, we saw them piled and dissolved, compactedand shifted, blotting the azure with sullen rain-spots, stretching, breeze-fretted, into dappled fields of gray, bursting into a storm oflight or melting into a drizzle of silver. We made our way along therounded summits of these well-grazed heights--mild, breezy inlanddowns--and descended through long-drawn slopes of fields, green tocottage doors, to where a rural village beckoned us from its seatamong the meadows. Close beside it, I admit, the railway shootsfiercely from its tunnel in the hills; and yet there broods upon thischarming hamlet an old-time quietude and privacy, which seems to makeit a violation of confidence to tell its name so far away. We struckthrough a narrow lane, a green lane, dim with its height of hedges; itled us to a superb old farm-house, now jostled by the multiplied lanesand roads which have curtailed its ancient appanage. It stands instubborn picturesqueness, at the receipt of sad-eyed contemplation andthe sufferance of "sketches. " I doubt whether out of Nuremberg--orPompeii!--you may find so forcible an image of the domiciliary geniusof the past. It is cruelly complete; its bended beams and joists, beneath the burden of its gables, seem to ache and groan with memoriesand regrets. The short, low windows, where lead and glass combine inequal proportions to hint to the wondering stranger of the medievalgloom within, still prefer their darksome office to the grace ofmodern day. 

Such an old house fills an American with an indefinable feeling ofrespect. So propt and patched and tinkered with clumsy tenderness, clustered so richly about its central English sturdiness, its oakenvertebrations, so humanized with ages of use and touches of beneficentaffection, it seemed to offer to our grateful eyes a small, rudesynthesis of the great English social order. Passing out upon thehighroad, we came to the common browsing-patch, the "village green" ofthe tales of our youth. Nothing was wanting; the shaggy, mouse-coloreddonkey, nosing the turf with his mild and huge proboscis, the geese, the old woman--the old woman, in person, with her red cloak and blackbonnet, frilled about the face and double-frilled beside her decent, placid cheeks--the towering plowman with his white smock-frock, puckered on chest and back, his short corduroys, his mighty calves, his big, red, rural face. We greeted these things as children greetthe loved pictures in a story book, lost and mourned and found again. It was marvelous how well we knew them. Beside the road we saw aplow-boy straddle, whistling on a stile. Gainsborough might havepainted him. Beyond the stile, across the level velvet of a meadow, afootpath lay, like a thread of darker woof. We followed it from fieldto field and from stile to stile. It was the way to church. At thechurch we finally arrived, lost in its rook-haunted churchyard, hiddenfrom the work-day world by the broad stillness of pastures--a gray, gray tower, a huge black yew, a cluster of village graves, withcrooked headstones, in grassy, low relief. The whole scene was deeplyecclesiastical. My companion was overcome. 

"You must bury me here, " he cried. "It's the first church I have seenin my life. How it makes a Sunday where it stands!"

The next day we saw a church of statelier proportions. We walked overto Worcester, through such a mist of local color that I felt like oneof Smollett's pedestrian heroes, faring tavern-ward for a night ofadventures. As we neared the provincial city we saw the steepled massof the cathedral, long and high, rise far into the cloud-freckledblue. And as we came nearer still, we stopt on the bridge and viewedthe solid minster reflected in the yellow Severn. And going fartheryet we entered the town--where surely Miss Austen's heroines, inchariots and curricles, must often have come a-shopping forswan's-down boas and high lace mittens; we lounged about the gentleclose and gazed insatiably at that most soul-soothing sight, thewaning, wasting afternoon light, the visible ether which feels thevoices of the chimes, far aloft on the broad perpendicular field ofthe cathedral tower; saw it linger and nestle and abide, as it lovesto do on all bold architectural spaces, converting them graciouslyinto registers and witnesses of nature; tasted, too, as deeply of thepeculiar stillness of this clerical precinct; saw a rosy English ladcome forth and lock the door of the old foundation school, whichmarries its hoary basement to the soaring Gothic of the church, andcarry his big responsible key into one of the quiet canonical houses;and then stood musing together on the effect on one's mind of havingin one's boyhood haunted such cathedral shades as a King's scholar, and yet kept ruddy with much cricket in misty meadows by the Severn. On the third morning we betook ourselves to Lockley Park, havinglearned that the greater part of it was open to visitors, and that, indeed, on application, the house was occasionally shown. 

Within its broad enclosure many a declining spur of the great hillsmelted into parklike slopes and dells. A long avenue wound and circledfrom the outermost gate through an untrimmed woodland, whence youglanced at further slopes and glades and copses and bosky recesses--ateverything except the limits of the place. It was as free and wild anduntended as the villa of an Italian prince; and I have never seen thestern English fact of property put on such an air of innocence. Theweather had just become perfect; it was one of the dozen exquisitedays of the English year--days stamped with a refinement of purityunknown in more liberal climes. It was as if the mellow brightness, astender as that of the primroses which starred the dark waysides likepetals wind-scattered over beds of moss, had been meted out to us bythe cubic foot--tempered, refined, recorded!

II

TURGENEFF'S WORLD[67]

We hold to the good old belief that the presumption, in life, is infavor of the brighter side, and we deem it, in art, an indispensablecondition of our interest in a deprest observer that he should have atleast tried his best to be cheerful. The truth, we take it, lies forthe pathetic in poetry and romance very much where it lies for the"immoral. " Morbid pathos is reflective pathos; ingenious pathos, pathos not freshly born of the occasion; noxious immorality issuperficial immorality, immorality without natural roots in thesubject. We value most the "realists" who have an ideal of delicacyand the elegiasts who have an ideal of joy. 

[Footnote 67: From "French Poets and Novelists, " published byMacmillan & Company, of London. ]

"Picturesque gloom, possibly, " a thick and thin admirer of M. Turgeneff's may say to us, "at least you will admit that it ispicturesque. " This we heartily concede, and, recalled to a sense ofour author's brilliant diversity and ingenuity, we bring ourrestrictions to a close. To the broadly generous side of hisimagination it is impossible to pay exaggerated homage, or, indeed, for that matter, to its simple intensity and fecundity. No romancerhas created a greater number of the figures that breathe and move andspeak, in their habits as they might have lived; none, on the whole, seems to us to have had such a masterly touch in portraiture, nonehas mingled so much ideal beauty with so much unsparing reality. Hissadness has its element of error, but it has also its larger elementof wisdom. Life is, in fact, a battle. On this point optimists andpessimists agree. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting butrare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant;wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, peopleof sense in small, and mankind generally, unhappy. But the world as itstands is no illusion, no fantasm, no evil dream of a night; we wakeup to it again for ever and ever; we can neither forget it nor deny itnor dispense with it. We can welcome experience as it comes, and giveit what it demands, in exchange for something which it is idle topause to call much or little so long as it contributes to swell thevolume of consciousness. In this there is mingled pain and delight, but over the mysterious mixture there hovers a visible rule, that bidsus learn to will and seek to understand. 

So much as this we seem to decipher between the lines of M. Turgeneff's minutely written chronicle. He himself has sought tounderstand as zealously as his most eminent competitors. He gives, atleast, no meager account of life, and he has done liberal justice toits infinite variety. This is his great merit; his great defect, roughly stated, is a tendency to the abuse of irony. He remains, nevertheless, to our sense, a very welcome mediator between the worldand our curiosity. If we had space, we should like to set forth thathe is by no means our ideal story-teller--this honorable geniuspossessing, attributively, a rarer skill than the finest required forproducing an artful _réchauffé_ of the actual. But even for betterromancers we must wait for a better world. Whether the world in itshigher state of perfection will occasionally offer color to scandal, we hesitate to pronounce; but we are prone to conceive of the ultimatenovelist as a personage altogether purged of sarcasm. The imaginativeforce now expended in this direction he will devote to describingcities of gold and heavens of sapphire. But, for the present, wegratefully accept M. Turgeneff, and reflect that his manner suits themost frequent mood of the greater number of readers. If he were adogmatic optimist we suspect that, as things go, we should long agohave ceased to miss him from our library. The personal optimism ofmost of us no romancer can confirm or dissipate, and our personaltroubles, generally, place fictions of all kinds in an impertinentlight. To our usual working mood the world is apt to seem M. Turgeneff's hard world, and when, at moments, the strain and thepressure deepen, the ironical element figures not a little in our formof address to those short-sighted friends who have whispered that itis an easy one. 

END OF VOL. X

INDEX TO THE TEN VOLUMES

[Roman numerals indicate volumes, Arabic numerals indicate pages]

Adams, Henry; biographical note on, X, 219; Jefferson's retirement, 219. 

Adams, John; biographical note on, IX, 87; articles by--on his nomination of Washington to be commander-in-chief, 87; an estimate of Franklin, 90. 

Adams, John Quincy; biographical note on, IX, 133; articles by--of his mother, 133; the moral taint inherent in slavery, 135. 

Addison, Joseph; biographical note on, III, 236; articles by--in Westminster Abbey, 236; Will Honeycomb and his marriage, 240; on pride of birth, 246; Sir Roger and his home, 251. 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey; biographical note on, X, 195; articles by--a sunrise in Stillwater, 195; the fight at Slatter's Hill, 198; on returning from Europe, 204. 

Andersen, Hans Christian; biographical note on, VIII, 231; the Emperor's new clothes, 231. 

Aquinas, St. Thomas; biographical note on, VII, 12; a definition of happiness, 12. 

Aristotle; biographical note on, I, 149; articles by--what things are pleasant, 149; the lite most desirable, 155; ideal husbands and wives, 158; happiness as an end of human action, 165. 

Arnold, Matthew; biographical note on, VI, 208; on the motive for culture, 208. 

Ascham, Roger; biographical note on, III, 40; article by--on gentle methods in teaching, 40. 

Aucassin and Nicolette; note on the authorship of the work bearing that name, VII, 30; a passage from the book, 30. 

Audubon, John James; biographical note on, IX, 144; where the mocking-bird dwells, 144. 

Augustine, Aurelius St. ; biographical note on, VII, 3; on imperial power for good and bad men 3. 

Bacon, Francis; biographical note on, III, 53; essays by--of travel, 53; of riches, 56; of youth and age, 60; of revenge, 63; of marriage and single life, 65; of envy, 67; of goodness and goodness of nature, 74; of studies, 77; of regiment of health, 79. 

Balzac, Honoré de; biographical note on, VII, 210; articles by--the death of Père Goriot, 210; Birotteau's early married life, 215. 

Bancroft, George; biographical note on, IX, 217; the fate of Evangeline's countrymen, 217. 

Beaconsfield, Lord; biographical note on, VI, 31; on Jerusalem by moonlight, 31. 

Bellay, Joachim du; biographical note on, VII, 87; why old French was not as rich as Greek and Latin, 87. 

Blackstone, Sir William; biographical note on, IV, 169; on professional soldiers in free countries, 169. 

Boccaccio, Giovanni; biographical note on, VIII, 167; the patient Griselda, 167. 

Boethius, Anicius; biographical note on, VII, 6; on the highest happiness, 6. 

Bolingbroke, Lord; biographical note on, IV, 32; articles by--of the shortness of human life, 32; rules for the study of history, 36. 

Boswell, James; biographical note on V, 3; articles by--Boswell's introduction to Dr. Johnson, 3; Johnson's audience with George III, 8; the meeting of Johnson and John Wilkes, 15; Johnson's wedding-day, 21. 

Bradford, William; biographical note on, IX, 11; his account of the landing of the Pilgrims, 11. 

Bronté, Charlotte; biographical note on, VI, 119; of the author of "Vanity Fair, " 119. 

Brown, John; biographical note on, VI, 56; of Rab and the game chicken, 56. 

Browne, Sir Thomas; biographical note on, III, 114; articles by--of charity in judgments, 114; nothing strictly immortal, 116. 

Bryant, William Cullen; biographical note on, IX, 194; an October day in Florence, 194. 

Buckle, Henry Thomas; biographical note on, VI, 198; articles by--the isolation of Spain, 198; George III and the elder Pitt, 204. 

Bunyan, John; biographical note on, III, 165; articles by--a dream of the Celestial City, 165; the death of Valiant-for-truth and of Stand-fast, 169; ancient Vanity Fair, 172. 

Burke, Edmund; biographical note on, IV, 194; articles by--the principles of good taste, 194; a letter to a noble lord, 207; on the death of his son, 212; Marie Antoinette, 214. 

Burnet, Gilbert; biographical note on, III, 195; on Charles II, 195. 

Bury, Richard de; biographical note on, III, 3; in praise of books, 3. 

Byrd, William; biographical note on, IX, 38; at the home of Colonel Spotswood, 38. 

Byron, Lord; biographical note on, V, 134; articles by--his mother's treatment of him, 134; to his wife after the separation, 138; to Sir Walter Scott, 140; of art and nature as poetical subjects, 143. 

Cæsar, Julius; biographical note on, II, 61; articles by--the building of the bridge across the Rhine, 61; the invasion of Britain, 64; overcoming the Nervii, 71; the Battle of Pharsalia and the death of Pompey, 78. 

Calvin, John; biographical note on, VII, 84; of freedom for the will, 84. 

Carlyle, Thomas; biographical note on, V, 179; articles by--Charlotte Corday, 179; the blessedness of work, 187; Cromwell, 190; in praise of those who toil, 201; the certainty of justice, 202; the greatness of Scott, 206; Boswell and his book, 214; might Burns have been saved, 223. 

Casanova, Jacques (Chevalier de Seingalt); biographical note on, VIII, 200; an interview with Frederick the Great, 200. 

Cato, the Censor; biographical note on, II, 3; on work on a Roman Farm, 3. 

Caxton, William; biographical note on, III, 22; on true nobility and chivalry, 22. 

Cellini, Benvenuto; biographical note on, VIII, 182; the casting of his Perseus and Medusa, 182. 

Cervantes, Miguel de; biographical note on, VIII, 218; articles by--the beginnings of Don Quixote's Career, 218; how Don Quixote died, 224. 

Channing, William E. ; biographical note on, IX, 139; of greatness in Napoleon, 139. 

Chateaubriand, Viscomte de; biographical note on, VII, 182; in an American forest, 182. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey; biographical note on, III, 17; on acquiring and using riches, 17. 

Chesterfield, Lord; biographical note on, IV, 66; articles by--on good manners, dress and the world, 66; of attentions to ladies, 71. 

Cicero; biographical note on, II, 8; articles by--the blessings of old age, 8; on the death of his daughter Tullia, 34; of brave and elevated spirits, 37; of Scipio's death and of friendship, 43. 

Clarendon, Lord; biographical note on, III, 144; on Charles I, 144. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor; biographical note on, V, 70; articles by--does fortune favor fools? 70; the destiny of the United States, 76. 

Comines, Philipe de; biographical note on, VII, 46; the character of Louis XI, 46. 

Cooper, James Fenimore; biographical note on, IX, 170; articles by--his father's arrival at Otsego Lake, 170; running the gantlet, 178; Leather-stocking's farewell, 185. 

Cowley, Abraham; biographical note on, III, 156; articles by--of obscurity, 156; of procrastination, 159. 

Cowper, William; biographical note on, IV, 217; articles by--on keeping one's self employed, 217; Johnson's treatment of Milton, 219; the publication of his books, 221. 

Curtis, George William; biographical note on, X, 183; our cousin the curate, 183. 

Dana, Charles A. ; biographical note on, X, 146; Greeley as a man of genius, 146. 

Dana, Richard Henry (the younger); biographical note on, X, 93; a fierce gale under a clear sky, 93. 

D'Angoulême, Marguerite; biographical note on, VII, 53; of husbands who are unfaithful, 53. 

Dante Alighieri; biographical note on, VIII, 152; articles by--that long descent makes no man noble, 152; of Beatrice and her death, 157. 

Darwin, Charles; biographical note on, VI, 47; articles by--on variations in mammals, birds and fishes, 47; on the genesis of his great book, 51. 

Daudet, Alphonse; biographical note on, VIII, 55; articles by--a great man's widow, 55; his first dress coat, 61. 

Defoe, Daniel; biographical note on, III, 201; the shipwreck of Crusoe, 201; the rescue of Man Friday, 204; the time of the great plague, 211. 

De Quincey, Thomas; biographical note on, V, 115; articles by--dreams of an opium eater, 115; Joan of Arc, 123; Charles Lamb, 128. 

Descartes, René; biographical note on, VII, 107; of material things and of the existence of God, 107. 

Dickens, Charles; biographical note on, VI, 86; articles by--Sydney Carton's death, 86; Bob Sawyer's party, 88; Dick Swiveler and the Marchioness, 97; a happy return of the day, 105. 

Dryden, John; biographical note on, III, 181; of Elizabethan dramatists, 181. 

Dumas, Alexander; biographical note on, VII, 241; the shoulder, the belt and the handkerchief, 241. 

Edwards, Jonathan; biographical note on, IX, 44; on liberty and moral agencies, 44. 

Eliot, George; biographical note on, VI, 167; the Hall Farm, 167. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo; biographical note on, IX, 223; articles by--Thoreau's broken task, 223; the intellectual honesty of Montaigne, 229; his visit to Carlyle at Craigenputtock, 231. 

Epictetus; biographical note on, I, 223; articles by--on freedom, 223; on friendship, 229; the philosopher and the crowd, 235. 

Erasmus, Desiderius; biographical note on, VIII, 209; specimens of his wit and wisdom, 209. 

Fielding, Henry; biographical note on, IV, 75; articles by--Tom the hero enters the stage, 75; Partridge sees Garrick at the play, 83; Mr. Adams in a political light, 89. 

Flaubert, Gustave; biographical note on, VIII, 22; Yonville and its people, 22. 

Fox, George; biographical note on, III, 161; an interview with Oliver Cromwell, 161. 

Foxe, John; biographical note on, III, 45; on the death of Anne Boleyn, 45. 

Franklin, Benjamin; biographical note on, IX, 51; articles by--his first entry into Philadelphia, 51; warnings Braddock did not heed, 55; how to draw lightning from the clouds, 59; the way to wealth, 61; a dialog with the gout, 68; a proposal to Madame Helvetius, 76. 

Freeman, Edward A. ; biographical note on, VI, 214; the death of William the Conqueror, 214. 

Froissart, Jean; biographical note on, VII, 39; the battle of Crécy, 39. 

Froude, James Anthony; biographical note on, VI, 122; articles by--of history as a science, 122; the character of Henry VIII, 132; Cæsar's mission, 136. 

Fuller, Margaret; biographical note on, X, 52; articles by--her visit to George Sand, 52; two glimpses of Carlyle, 54. 

Fuller, Thomas; biographical note on, III, 149; on the qualities of the good school-master, 149. 

Gautier, Theophile; biographical note on, VIII, 14; Pharaoh's entry into Thebes, 14. 

Gibbon, Edward; biographical note on, IV, 226; articles by--the romance of his youth, 226; the inception and completion of his "Decline and Fall, " 229; the fall of Zenobia, 230; Alaric's entry into Rome, 237; the death of Hosein, 242; the causes of the destruction of the city of Rome, 246. 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von; biographical note on, VIII, 95; articles by--on first reading Shakespeare, 95; the coronation of Joseph II, 99. 

Goldsmith, Oliver; biographical note on, IV, 177; articles by--the ambitions of the vicar's family, 177; sagacity in insects, 182; a Chinaman's view of London, 188. 

Gray, Thomas; biographical note on, IV, 141; articles by--Warwick Castle, 141; to his friend Mason on the death of Mason's mother, 143; on his own writings, 144; his friendship for Bonstetten, 146. 

Greeley, Horace; biographical note on, X, 58; the fatality of self-seeking in editors and authors, 58. 

Green, John Richard; biographical note on, VI, 242; on George Washington, 242. 

Grote, George; biographical note on, V, 165; articles by--the mutilation of the Hermæ, 165; if Alexander had lived, 172. 

Guizot, François; biographical note on, VII, 189; Shakespeare as an example of civilization, 189. 

Hamilton, Alexander; biographical note on, IX, 123; articles by--of the failure of the Confederation, 123; his reasons for not declining Burr's challenge, 129. 

Harrison, Frederick; biographical note on, VI, 230; the great books of the world, 230. 

Harte, Bret; biographical note on, X, 224; articles by--Peggy Moffat's inheritance, 224; John Chinaman, 236; M'liss goes to school, 240. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel; biographical note on, IX, 235; articles by--occupants of an old manse, 235; Arthur Dimmesdale on the scaffold, 242; of life at Brook Farm, 248; the death of Judge Pyncheon, 252. 

Hay, John; biographical note on, X, 211; Lincoln's early fame, 211. 

Hazlitt, William; biographical note on, V, 111; on Hamlet, 111. 

Heine, Heinrich; biographical note on, VIII, 139; reminiscences of Napoleon, 139. 

Herodotus; biographical note on, I, 3; articles by--Solon's words of wisdom to Croesus, 3; Babylon and its capture by Cyrus, 9; the pyramid of Cheops, 18; the story of Periander's son, 20. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell; biographical note on, X, 31; articles by--of doctors, lawyers and ministers, 31; of the genius of Emerson, 36; the house in which the professor lived, 42; of women who put on airs, 49. 

Howell, James; biographical note on, III, 106; articles by--the Bucentaur in Venice, 106; the city of Rome in 1621, 109. 

Howells, William Dean; biographical note on, X, 207; to Albany by the night boat, 207. 

Hugo, Victor; biographical note on, VII, 228; articles by--the Battle of Waterloo, 228; the beginnings and expansions of Paris, 235. 

Humboldt, Alexander von; biographical note on, VIII, 130; an essay on man, 130. 

Hume, David; biographical note on, IV, 110; articles by--on the character of Queen Elizabeth, 110; the defeat of the Armada, 113; the first principles of government, 118. 

Huxley, Thomas Henry; biographical note on, VI, 219; a piece of chalk, 219. 

Ibsen, Henrik; biographical note on, VIII, 245; the thought child, 245. 

Irving, Washington; biographical note on, IX, 147; articles by--the last of the Dutch governors of New York, 147; the awakening of Rip Van Winkle, 151; at Abbotsford with Scott, 161. 

James, Henry; biographical note on, X, 246; articles by--among the Malvern Hills, 246; Turgeneff's world, 252. 

Jefferson, Thomas; biographical note on, IX, 98; articles by--when the Bastile fell, 98; the futility of disputes, 106; of blacks and whites in the South, 108; his account of Logan's famous speech, 114. 

Johnson, Samuel; biographical note on, IV, 94; articles by--on publishing his "Dictionary, " 94; Pope and Dryden compared, 97; his letter to Chesterfield on the completion of his "Dictionary, " 101; on the advantage of living in a garret, 104. 

Joinville, Jean de; biographical note on, VII, 27; Greek fire in battle described, 27. 

Jonson, Ben; biographical note on, III, 87; of Shakespeare and other wits, 87. 

Kempis, Thomas à; biographical note on VII, 16; of eternal life and of striving for it, 16. 

Kinglake, Alexander W. ; biographical note on, VI, 42; articles by--on mocking at the Sphinx, 42; on the beginnings of the Crimean war 44. 

Knox, John; biographical note on, III, 36; his account of his interview with Mary Queen of Scots, 36. 

Lamartine, Alphonse de; biographical note on, VII, 195; of Mirabeau's origin and place in history, 195. 

Lamb, Charles; biographical note on, V, 93; articles by--dream children, 93; poor relations, 99; the origin of roast pig, 102; that we should rise with the lark, 107. 

Landor, Walter Savage; biographical note on, V, 87; articles by--the death of Hofer, 87; Napoleon and Pericles, 91. 

La Rochefoucauld, Duc de; biographical note on, VII, 112; selections from the "Maxims, " 112. 

Le Sage, Alain René; biographical note on, VII, 129; articles by--in the service of Dr. Sangrado, 129; as an archbishop's favorite, 135. 

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim; biographical note on, VIII, 86; articles by--poetry and painting compared, 86; of suffering in restraint, 89. 

Livy; biographical note on, II, 105; articles by--Horatius Cocles at the bridge, 105; Hannibal's crossing of the Alps, 108; Hannibal and Scipio at Zama, 117. 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth; biographical note on, X, 3; musings in Père Lachaise, 3. 

Lowell, James Russell; biographical note on, X, 125; articles by--the poet as prophet, 125; the first of the moderns, 129; of faults found in Shakespeare, 133; Americans as successors of the Dutch, 138. 

Lucian; biographical note on, I, 237; articles by--a descent to the unknown, 237; among the philosophers, 243; of liars and lying, 253. 

Luther, Martin; biographical note on, VIII, 79; some of his table talk and sayings, 79. 

Lytton, Edward Bulwer; biographical note on, VI, 21; his description of the descent of Vesuvius on Pompeii, 21. 

Macaulay, Lord; biographical note on, V, 233; articles by--Puritan and Royalist, 233; Cromwell's army, 238; the opening of the trial of Warren Hastings, 242; the gift of Athens to man, 248; the pathos of Byron's life, 251. 

Machiavelli, Niccolo; biographical note on, VIII, 178; ought princes to keep their promises, 178. 

Malory, Sir Thomas; biographical note on, III, 26; article by--on the finding of a sword for Arthur, 26. 

Mandeville, Sir John; biographical note on, III, 8; articles by--the route from England to Constantinople, 8; at the court of the great Chan, 11. 

Marcus Aurelius; biographical note on, II, 248; his debt to others, 248. 

Mather, Cotton; biographical note on, IX, 33; in praise of John Eliot, 33. 

Maupassant, Guy de; biographical note on, VIII, 69; Madame Jeanne's last days, 69. 

Merivale, Charles; biographical note on, VI, 37; on the personality of Augustus, 37. 

Milton, John; biographical note on, III, 121; articles by--on his own literary ambitions, 121; a complete education defined, 126; on reading in his youth, 129; in defense of books, 131; a noble and puissant nation, 135; of fugitive and cloistered virtue, 141. 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley; biographical note on, IV, 58; articles by--on happiness in the matrimonial state, 58; inoculation for the smallpox, 63. 

Montaigne, Michel de; biographical note on, VII, 90; articles by--a word to his readers, 90; of society and solitude, 92; of his own library, 94; that the soul discharges her passions among false objects where true ones are wanting, 99; that men are not to judge of our happiness until after death, 102. 

Montesquieu, Baron de; biographical note on, VII, 150; articles by--of the causes which destroyed Rome, 150; of the relation of laws to different human beings, 156. 

More, Sir Thomas; biographical note on, III, 29; on life in Utopia, 29. 

Morley, John; biographical note on, VI, 244; on Voltaire as an author and man of action, 244. 

Morris, Gouverneur; biographical note on, IX, 117; articles by--the opening of the French States-General, 117; the execution of Louis XVI, 120. 

Motley, John Lothrop; biographical note on, X, 68; articles by--Charles V and Phillip II in Brussels, 63; the arrival of the Spanish Armada, 74; "The Spanish Fury, " 84. 

Musset, Alfred de; biographical note on, VIII, 8; Titian's son after a night at play, 8. 

Newman, John Henry; biographical note on, VI, 3; articles by--on the beginnings of tractarianism, 3; on his submission to the Catholic Church, 7; of Athens as a true university, 13. 

Paine, Thomas; biographical note on, IX, 94; in favor of the separation of the colonies from Great Britain, 94. 

Parkman, Francis; biographical note on, X, 157; articles by--Champlain's battle with the Iroquois, 157; the death of LaSalle, 161; the coming of Frontenae to Canada, 167; the death of Isaac Jogues, 171; why New France failed, 176; the return of the Coureurs-de-Bois, 179. 

Parton, James; biographical note on, X, 150; Aaron Burr and Madame Jumel, 150. 

Pascal, Blaise; biographical note on, VII, 118; of the prevalence of self-love, 118. 

Pepys, Samuel; biographical note on, III, 185; on various doings of Mr. And Mrs. Pepys, 185; of England without Cromwell, 191. 

Petrarch, Francis; biographical note on, VIII, 162; of good and evil fortune, 162. 

Plato; biographical note on, I, 95; articles by--the image of the cave, 95; of good and evil, 103; Socrates in praise of love, 108; the praise of Socrates by Alcibiades, 121; the refusal of Socrates to escape from prison, 133; the death of Socrates, 143. 

Pliny, the Elder; biographical note on, II, 162; articles by--the qualities of the dog, 162; three great artists of Greece, 165. 

Pliny, the younger; biographical note on, II, 218; articles by--the Christians in his province, 218; to Tacitus on the eruption of Vesuvius, 222. 

Plutarch; biographical note on, I, 190; articles by--Demosthenes and Cicero compared, 190; the assassination of Cæsar, 197; Cleopatra's barge, 207; the death of Antony and Cleopatra, 211. 

Poe, Edgar Allan; biographical note on, X, 11; articles by--the cask of Amontillado, 11; of Hawthorne and the short story, 19; of Willis, Bryant, Halleck and Macaulay, 25. 

Polo, Marco; biographical note on, VIII, 147; a description of Japan, 147. 

Polybius; biographical note on, I, 171; articles by--the battle of Cannæ, 171; Hannibal's advance on Rome, 178; the defense of Syracuse by Archimedes, 183. 

Pope, Alexander; biographical note on, IV, 41; articles by--an ancient English country seat, 41; his compliments to Lady Mary, 47; how to make an epic poem, 52. 

Prescott, William H. ; biographical note on, IX, 198; articles by--the fate of Egmont and Hoorne, 198; the genesis of "Don Quixote, " 209. 

Quintillian; biographical note on, II, 171; articles by--on the orator as a good man, 171. 

Rabelais, François; biographical note on, VII, 58; articles by--Gargantua and his childhood, 58; Gargantua's education, 64; of the founding of an ideal abbey, 74. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter; biographical note on, III, 49; on the mutability of human affairs, 49. 

Renan, Joseph Ernest; biographical note on, VIII, 30; the Roman empire in robust youth, 30. 

Rousseau, Jean Jacques; biographical note on, VII, 170; articles by--of Christ and Socrates, 170; of the management of children, 173. 

Ruskin, John; biographical note on, VI, 140; articles by--of the history and sovereignty of Venice, 140; St. Marks at Venice, 151; of water, 159. 

Saint-Simon, Duc de; biographical note on, VII, 141; articles by--the death of the Dauphin, 141; the public watching the king and madame, 145. 

Sallust; biographical note on, II, 91; articles by--the genesis of Catiline, 91; the fate of the conspirators, 98. 

Sand, George; biographical note on, VII, 250; Leila and the poet, 250. 

Schiller, Friedrich von; biographical note on, VIII, 107; articles by--the battle of Lutzen, 107; Philip II and the Netherlands, 117. 

Schlegel, August Wilhelm von; biographical note on, VIII, 124; on Shakespeare's "Macbeth, " 124. 

Scott, Sir Walter; biographical note on, V, 31; articles by--the arrival of the master of Ravenswood, 31; the death of Meg Merriles, 35; a vision of Rob Roy, 40; Queen Elizabeth and Amy Robsart at Kenilworth, 48; the illness and death of Lady Scott, 62. 

Seneca; biographical note on, II, 128; articles by--the wise man, 128; consolation for the loss of friends, 134; to Nero on clemency, 141; the pilot, 149; a happy life, 153. 

Sévigné, Madame de; biographical note on, VII, 123; articles by--great news from Paris, 123; an imposing funeral described, 125. 

Sewall, Samuel; biographical note on, IX, 19; his account of how he courted Madame Winthrop, 19. 

Shakespeare, William; biographical note on, III, 82; the speech of Brutus to his countrymen, 82; Shylock in defense of his race, 83; Hamlet to the players, 85. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe; biographical note on, V, 151; articles by--in defense of poetry, 151; the baths of Caracalla, 155; the ruins of Pompeii, 158. 

Smith, Adam; biographical note on, IV, 163; articles by--of ambition misdirected, 163; the advantages of a division of labor, 166. 

Smith, John; biographical note on, IX, 3; his story of Pocahontas, 3. 

Southey, Robert; biographical note on, V, 80; Nelson's death at Trafalgar, 80. 

Spencer, Herbert; biographical note on, VI, 173; articles by--the origin of professional occupations, 173; self-dependence and paternalism, 181; the ornamental and the useful in education, 186; reminiscences of his boyhood, 191; a tribute to E. L. Youmans, 195; why he never married, 197. 

Staël, Madame de; biographical note on, VII, 178; of Napoleon Bonaparte, 178. 

Steele, Sir Richard; biographical note on, IV, 3; articles by--of companions and flatterers, 3; the story-teller and his art, 7; Sir Roger and the widow, 10; the Coverley family portraits, 16; on certain symptoms of greatness, 21; how to be happy tho married, 26. 

Sterne, Laurence; biographical note on, IV, 123; articles by--the starling in captivity, 123; to Moulines with Maria, 127; the death of LeFevre, 129; passages from the romance of my Uncle Toby and the widow, 131. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis; biographical note on, VI, 247; articles by--Francis Villon's terrors, 247; the lantern bearers, 251. 

Suetonius; biographical note on, II, 231; articles by--the last days of Augustus, 231; the good deeds of Nero, 236; the death of Nero, 241. 

Swift, Jonathan; biographical note on, III, 216; on pretense in philosophers, 216; on the hospitality of the vulgar, 221; the art of lying in politics, 224; a meditation upon a broomstick, 228; Gulliver among the giants, 230. 

Tacitus; biographical note on, II, 177; articles by--from Republican to Imperial Rome, 177; the funeral of Germanicus, 183; the death of Seneca, 189; the burning of Rome by order of Nero, 193; the burning of the capitol at Rome, 202; the siege of Cremona, 205; Agricola, 212. 

Taine, Hippolite Adolphe; biographical note on, VIII, 38; articles by--on Thackeray as a satirist, 38; on the king's getting up for the day, 43. 

Taylor, Jeremy; biographical note on, III, 153; on the benefits of adversity, 153. 

Thackeray, William M. ; biographical note on, VI, 62; articles by--the imperturbable Marlborough, 62; the ball before the battle of Waterloo, 65; the death of Colonel Newcome, 75; London in the time of the first George, 80. 

Thiers, Louis Adolph; biographical note on, VII, 201; the burning of Moscow, 201. 

Thoreau, Henry David; biographical note on, X, 99; articles by--the building of his house at Walden Pond, 99; how to make two small ends meet, 103; on reading the ancient classics, 115; of society and solitude, 120. 

Thucydides; biographical note on, I, 25; articles by--the Athenians and Spartans contrasted, 25; the plague at Athens, 38; the sailing of the Athenian fleet for Sicily, 45; the completion of the Athenian defeat at Syracuse, 52. 

Tocqueville, Alexis de; biographical note on, VIII, 3; on the tyranny of the American majority, 3. 

Tolstoy, Count Leo; biographical note on, VIII, 252; Shakespeare not a great genius, 252. 

Turgeneff, Ivan; biographical note on, VIII, 239; Bazarov's death, 239. 

Vasari, Giorgio; biographical note on, VIII, 192; of Raphael and his early death, 192. 

Vigny, Alfred de; biographical note on, VII, 222; Richelieu's way with his master, 222. 

Ville-Hardouin, Geoffrey de; biographical note on, VII, 23; the sack of Constantinople, 23. 

Voltaire, François Arouet; biographical note on, VII, 160; articles by--of Bacon's greatness, 160; England's regard for men of letters, 164. 

Walpole, Horace; biographical note on, IV, 149; articles by--on Hogarth, 149; the war in America, 154; the death of George II, 155. 

Walton, Izaak; biographical note on, III, 92; articles by--the antiquity of angling, 92; of the trout, 96; the death of George Herbert, 101. 

Ward, Artemus; biographical note on, X, 191; Forrest as Othello, 191. 

Washington, George; biographical note on, IX, 79; articles by--to his wife on taking command of the army, 79; of his army in Cambridge, 81; to the Marquis de Chastellux on his marriage, 84. 

White, Gilbert; biographical note on, IV, 158; on the chimney swallow, 158. 

Wordsworth, William; biographical note on, V, 23; a poet defined, 23. 

Wyclif, John; biographical note on, III, 4; a passage from his translation of the Bible, 14. 

Xenophon; biographical note on, I, 68; articles by--the character of Cyrus the younger, 68; the Greek army in the snows of Armenia, 75; the battle of Leuctra, 81; the army of the Spartans, 84; how to choose and manage saddle horses, 87. 

Zola, Emile; biographical note on, VIII, 48; Napoleon III in time of war, 48. 

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