COMPLETE PROSE WORKS

Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Good Bye My Fancy

By

WALT WHITMAN

CONTENTS

SPECIMEN DAYS

 A Happy Hour's Command Answer to an Insisting Friend Genealogy--Van Velsor and Whitman The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries The Maternal Homestead Two Old Family Interiors Paumanok, and my Life on it as Child and Young Man My First Reading--Lafayette Printing Office--Old Brooklyn Growth--Health--Work My Passion for Ferries Broadway Sights Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers Plays and Operas too Through Eight Years Sources of Character--Results--1860 Opening of the Secession War National Uprising and Volunteering Contemptuous Feeling Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861 The Stupor Passes--Something Else Begins Down at the Front After First Fredericksburg Back to Washington Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field Hospital Scenes and Persons Patent-Office Hospital The White House by Moonlight An Army Hospital Ward A Connecticut Case Two Brooklyn Boys A Secesh Brave The Wounded from Chancellorsville A Night Battle over a Week Since Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier Some Specimen Cases My Preparations for Visits Ambulance Processions Bad Wounds--the Young The Most Inspiriting of all War's Shows Battle of Gettysburg A Cavalry Camp A New York Soldier Home-Made Music Abraham Lincoln Heated Term Soldiers and Talks Death of a Wisconsin Officer Hospitals Ensemble A Silent Night Ramble Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers Cattle Droves about Washington Hospital Perplexity Down at the Front Paying the Bounties Rumors, Changes, Etc. Virginia Summer of 1864 A New Army Organization fit for America Death of a Hero Hospital Scenes--Incidents A Yankee Soldier Union Prisoners South Deserters A Glimpse of War's Hell-Scenes Gifts--Money--Discrimination Items from My Note Books A Case from Second Bull Run Army Surgeons--Aid Deficiencies The Blue Everywhere A Model Hospital Boys in the Army Burial of a Lady Nurse Female Nurses for Soldiers Southern Escapees The Capitol by Gas-Light The Inauguration Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War The Weather--Does it Sympathize with These Times? Inauguration Ball Scene at the Capitol A Yankee Antique Wounds and Diseases Death of President Lincoln Sherman's Army Jubilation--its Sudden Stoppage No Good Portrait of Lincoln Releas'd Union Prisoners from South Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier The Armies Returning The Grand Review Western Soldiers A Soldier on Lincoln Two Brothers, one South, one North Some Sad Cases Yet Calhoun's Real Monument Hospitals Closing Typical Soldiers "Convulsiveness" Three Years Summ'd up The Million Dead, too, Summ'd up The Real War will never get in the Books An Interregnum Paragraph New Themes Enter'd Upon Entering a Long Farm-Lane To the Spring and Brook An Early Summer Reveille Birds Migrating at Midnight Bumble-Bees Cedar-Apples Summer Sights and Indolences Sundown Perfume--Quail-Notes--the Hermit Thrush A July Afternoon by the Pond Locusts and Katy-Dids The Lesson of a Tree Autumn Side-Bits The Sky--Days and Nights--Happiness Colors--A Contrast November 8, '76 Crows and Crows A Winter-Day on the Sea-Beach Sea-Shore Fancies In Memory of Thomas Paine A Two Hours' Ice-Sail Spring Overtures--Recreations One of the Human Kinks An Afternoon Scene The Gates Opening The Common Earth, the Soil Birds and Birds and Birds Full-Starr'd Nights Mulleins and Mulleins Distant Sounds A Sun-Bath--Nakedness The Oaks and I A Quintette The First Frost--Mems Three Young Men's Deaths February Days A Meadow Lark Sundown Lights Thoughts Under an Oak--A Dream Clover and Hay Perfume An Unknown Bird Whistling Horse-Mint Three of Us Death of William Cullen Bryant Jaunt up the Hudson Happiness and Raspberries A Specimen Tramp Family Manhattan from the Bay Human and Heroic New York Hours for the Soul Straw-Color'd and other Psyches A Night Remembrance Wild Flowers A Civility Too Long Neglected Delaware River--Days and Nights Scenes on Ferry and River--Last Winter's Nights The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street Up the Hudson to Ulster County Days at J. B. 's--Turf Fires--Spring Songs Meeting a Hermit An Ulster County Waterfall Walter Dumont and his Medal Hudson River Sights Two City Areas Certain Hours Central Park Walks and Talks A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6 Departing of the Big Steamers Two Hours on the Minnesota Mature Summer Days and Night Exposition Building--New City Hall--River-Trip Swallows on the River Begin a Long Jaunt West In the Sleeper Missouri State Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas The Prairies--(and an Undeliver'd Speech) On to Denver--A Frontier Incident An Hour on Kenosha Summit An Egotistical "Find" New Scenes--New Joys Steam-Power, Telegraphs, Etc. America's Back-Bone The Parks Art Features Denver Impressions I Turn South and then East Again Unfulfill'd Wants--the Arkansas River A Silent Little Follower--the Coreopsis The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry The Spanish Peaks--Evening on the Plains America's Characteristic Landscape Earth's Most Important Stream Prairie Analogies--the Tree Question Mississippi Valley Literature An Interviewer's Item The Women of the West The Silent General President Hayes's Speeches St. Louis Memoranda Nights on the Mississippi Upon our Own Land Edgar Poe's Significance Beethoven's Septette A Hint of Wild Nature Loafing in the Woods A Contralto Voice Seeing Niagara to Advantage Jaunting to Canada Sunday with the Insane Reminiscence of Elias Hicks Grand Native Growth A Zollverein between the U. S. And Canada The St. Lawrence Line The Savage Saguenay Capes Eternity and Trinity Chicoutimi, and Ha-ha Bay The Inhabitants--Good Living Cedar-Plums Like--Names Death of Thomas Carlyle Carlyle from American Points of View A Couple of Old Friends--A Coleridge Bit A Week's Visit to Boston The Boston of To-Day My Tribute to Four Poets Millet's Pictures--Last Items Birds--and a Caution Samples of my Common-Place Book My Native Sand and Salt Once More Hot Weather New York "Ouster's Last Rally" Some Old Acquaintances--Memories A Discovery of Old Age A Visit, at the Last, to R. W. Emerson Other Concord Notations Boston Common--More of Emerson An Ossianic Night--Dearest Friends Only a New Ferry Boat Death of Longfellow Starting Newspapers The Great Unrest of which We are Part By Emerson's Grave At Present Writing--Personal After Trying a Certain Book Final Confessions--Literary Tests Nature and Democracy--Morality

COLLECT

ONE OR TWO INDEX ITEMS

DEMOCRATIC VISTAS

ORIGINS OF ATTEMPTED SECESSION

PREFACES TO "LEAVES OF GRASS"

 Preface, 1855, to first issue of "Leaves of Grass" Preface, 1872, to "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free" Preface, 1876, to L. Of G. And "Two Rivulets"

POETRY TO-DAY IN AMERICA--SHAKESPEARE--THE FUTURE

A MEMORANDUM AT A VENTURE

DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

TWO LETTERS

NOTES LEFT OVER

 Nationality (and Yet) Emerson's Books (the Shadows of Them) Ventures, on an Old Theme British Literature Darwinism (then Furthermore) "Society" The Tramp and Strike Questions Democracy in the New World Foundation Stages--then Others General Suffrage, Elections, Etc. Who Gets the Plunder? Friendship (the Real Article) Lacks and Wants Yet Rulers Strictly Out of the Masses Monuments--the Past and Present Little or Nothing New After All A Lincoln Reminiscence Freedom Book-Classes-America's Literature Our Real Culmination An American Problem The Last Collective Compaction

PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH

 Dough Face Song Death in the School-Room One Wicked Impulse The Last Loyalist Wild Frank's Return The Boy Lover The Child and the Profligate Lingave's Temptation Little Jane Dumb Kate Talk to an Art Union Blood-Money Wounded in the House of Friends Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight

NOVEMBER BOUGHS

OUR EMINENT VISITORS, Past, Present and Future

THE BIBLE AS POETRY

FATHER TAYLOR (AND ORATORY)

THE SPANISH ELEMENT IN OUR NATIONALITY

WHAT LURKS BEHIND SHAKSPERE'S HISTORICAL PLAYS?

A THOUGHT ON SHAKSPERE

ROBERT BURNS AS POET AND PERSON

A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON

SLANG IN AMERICA

AN INDIAN BUREAU REMINISCENCE

SOME DIARY NOTES AT RANDOM

 Negro Slaves in New York Canada Nights Country Days and Nights Central Park Notes Plate Glass Notes

SOME WAR MEMORANDA

 Washington Street Scenes The 195th Pennsylvania Left-hand Writing by Soldiers Central Virginia in '64 Paying the First Color'd Troops

FIVE THOUSAND POEMS

THE OLD BOWERY

NOTES TO LATE ENGLISH BOOKS

 Preface to Reader in British Islands Additional Note, 1887 Preface to English Edition "Democratic Vistas"

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

NEW ORLEANS IN 1848

SMALL MEMORANDA

 Attorney General's Office, 1865 A Glint Inside of Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet Appointments Note to a Friend Written Impromptu in an Album The Place Gratitude fills in a Fine Character

LAST OF THE WAR CASES

ELIAS HICKS, Notes (such as they are)

 George Fox and Shakspere

GOOD-BYE MY FANCY

AN OLD MAN'S REJOINDER

OLD POETS

 Ship Ahoy For Queen Victoria's Birthday

AMERICAN NATIONAL LITERATURE

GATHERING THE CORN

A DEATH BOUQUET

SOME LAGGARDS YET

 The Perfect Human Voice Shakspere for America "Unassailed Renown" Inscription for a Little Book on Giordano Bruno Splinters Health (Old Style) Gay-heartedness As in a Swoon L. Of G. After the Argument For Us Two, Reader Dear

MEMORANDA

 A World's Show New York--the Bay--the Old Name A Sick Spell To be Present Only "Intestinal Agitation" "Walt Whitman's Last 'Public'" Ingersoll's Speech Feeling Fairly Old Brooklyn Days Two Questions Preface to a Volume An Engineer's Obituary Old Actors, Singers, Shows, Etc. , in New York Some Personal and Old Age Jottings Out in the Open Again America's Bulk Average Last Saved Items

WALT WHITMAN'S LAST

SPECIMEN DAYS

A HAPPY HOUR'S COMMAND

_Down in the Woods, July 2d, 1882_. -If I do it at all I must delay nolonger. Incongruous and full of skips and jumps as is that huddle ofdiary-jottings, war-memoranda of 1862-'65, Nature-notes of 1877-'81, with Western and Canadian observations afterwards, all bundled up andtied by a big string, the resolution and indeed mandate comes to methis day, this hour, --(and what a day! What an hour just passing! theluxury of riant grass and blowing breeze, with all the shows of sunand sky and perfect temperature, never before so filling me, bodyand soul), --to go home, untie the bundle, reel out diary-scraps andmemoranda, just as they are, large or small, one after another, intoprint-pages, [1] and let the melange's lackings and wants of connectiontake care of themselves. It will illustrate one phase of humanityanyhow; how few of life's days and hours (and they not by relativevalue or proportion, but by chance) are ever noted. Probably anotherpoint, too, how we give long preparations for some object, planningand delving and fashioning, and then, when the actual hour for doingarrives, find ourselves still quite unprepared, and tumble the thingtogether, letting hurry and crudeness tell the story better thanfine work. At any rate I obey my happy hour's command, which seemscuriously imperative. May be, if I don't do anything else, I shallsend out the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed. 

Note:

[1] The pages from 1 to 15 are nearly verbatim an off-hand letter ofmine in January, 1882, to an insisting friend. Following, I give somegloomy experiences. The war of attempted secession has, of course, been the distinguishing event of my time. I commenced at the close of1862, and continued steadily through '63, '64 and '65, to visit thesick and wounded of the army, both on the field and in the hospitalsin and around Washington city. From the first I kept little note-booksfor impromptu jottings in pencil to refresh my memory of names andcircumstances, and what was specially wanted, &c. In these, I brief'dcases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the bed-side, and notseldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratch'd down fromnarratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tendingsomebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little note-books left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full ofassociations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could conveyto the reader the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'dlivraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small tocarry in the pocket, and fasten'd with a pin. I leave them just as Ithrew them by after the war, blotch'd here and there with more than oneblood-stain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinique, not seldomamid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or gettingready for it, or a march. Most of the pages from 20 to 75 are verbatimcopies of those lurid and blood-smuch'd little notebooks. 

Very different are most of the memoranda that follow. Some time afterthe war ended I had a paralytic stroke, which prostrated me forseveral years. In 1876 I began to get over the worst of it. From thisdate, portions of several seasons, especially summers, I spent at asecluded haunt down in Camden county, New Jersey--Timber creek, quitea little river (it enters from the great Delaware, twelve milesaway)--with primitive solitudes, winding stream, recluse and woodybanks, sweet-feeding springs, and all the charms that birds, grass, wild-flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, &c. , canbring. Through these times, and on these spots, the diary from page 76onward was mostly written. 

The COLLECT afterwards gathers up the odds and ends of whatever piecesI can now lay hands on, written at various times past, and swoops alltogether like fish in a net. 

I suppose I publish and leave the whole gathering, first, from thateternal tendency to perpetuate and preserve which is behind allNature, authors included; second, to symbolize two or three specimeninteriors, personal and other, out of the myriads of my time, themiddle range of the Nineteenth century in the New World; a strange, unloosen'd, wondrous time. But the book is probably without anydefinite purpose that can be told in a statement. 

ANSWER TO AN INSISTING FRIEND

You ask for items, details of my early life--of genealogy andparentage, particularly of the women of my ancestry, and of itsfar-back Netherlands stock on the maternal side--of the region whereI was born and raised, and my mother and father before me, and theirsbefore them--with a word about Brooklyn and New York cities, the timesI lived there as lad and young man. You say you want to get at thesedetails mainly as the go-befores and embryons of "Leaves of Grass. "Very good; you shall have at least some specimens of them all. Ihave often thought of the meaning of such things--that one can onlyencompass and complete matters of that kind by 'exploring behind, perhaps very far behind, themselves directly, and so into theirgenesis, antecedents, and cumulative stages. Then as luck would haveit, I lately whiled away the tedium of a week's half-sicknessand confinement, by collating these very items for another (yetunfulfilled, probably abandon'd, ) purpose; and if you will besatisfied with them, authentic in date-occurrence and fact simply, andtold my own way, garrulous-like, here they are. I shall not hesitateto make extracts, for I catch at anything to save labor; but thosewill be the best versions of what I want to convey. 

GENEALOGY--VAN VELSOR AND WHITMAN

The later years of the last century found the Van Velsor family, mymother's side, living on their own farm at Cold Spring, Long Island, New York State, near the eastern edge of Queen's county, about a milefrom the harbor. [2] My father's side--probably the fifth generationfrom the first English arrivals in New England--were at the same timefarmers on their own land--(and a fine domain it was, 500 acres, allgood soil, gently sloping east and south, about one-tenth woods, plenty of grand old trees, ) two or three miles off, at West Hills, Suffolk county. The Whitman name in the Eastern States, and so branchand South, starts undoubtedly from one John Whitman, born 1602, in OldEngland, where he grew up, married, and his eldest son was born in1629. He came over in the "True Love" in 1640 to America, and livedin Weymouth, Mass. , which place became the mother-hive of theNew-Englanders of the name; he died in 1692. His brother, Rev. Zechariah Whitman, also came over in the "True Love, " either atthat time or soon after, and lived at Milford, Conn. A son of thisZechariah, named Joseph, migrated to Huntington, Long Island, andpermanently settled there. Savage's "Genealogical Dictionary" (vol. Iv, p. 524) gets the Whitman family establish'd at Huntington, per this Joseph, before 1664. It is quite certain that from thatbeginning, and from Joseph, the West Hill Whitmans, and all others inSuffolk county, have since radiated, myself among the number. John andZechariah both went to England and back again divers times; they hadlarge families, and several of their children were born in the oldcountry. We hear of the father of John and Zechariah, Abijah Whitman, who goes over into the 1500's, but we know little about him, exceptthat he also was for some time in America. 

These old pedigree-reminiscences come up to me vividly from a visit Imade not long since (in my 63d year) to West Hills, and to the burialgrounds of my ancestry, both sides. I extract from notes of thatvisit, written there and then:

Note:

[2] Long Island was settled first on the west end by the Dutch fromHolland, then on the east end by the English--the dividing line of thetwo nationalities being a little west of Huntington where my father'sfolks lived, and where I was born. 

THE OLD WHITMAN AND VAN VELSOR CEMETERIES

_July 29, 1881_. --After more than forty years' absence, (except abrief visit, to take my father there once more, two years before hedied, ) went down Long Island on a week' s jaunt to the place whereI was born, thirty miles from New York city. Rode around the oldfamiliar spots, viewing and pondering and dwelling long upon them, every-thing coming back to me. Went to the old Whitman homestead onthe upland and took a view eastward, inclining south, over the broadand beautiful farm lands of my grandfather (1780, ) and my father. There was the new house (1810, ) the big oak a hundred and fifty or twohundred years old; there the well, the sloping kitchen-garden, anda little way off even the well-kept remains of the dwelling of mygreat-grandfather (1750-'60) still standing, with its mighty timbersand low ceilings. Near by, a stately grove of tall, vigorousblack-walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like, the sons or grandsons, nodoubt, of black-walnuts during or before 1776. On the other side ofthe road spread the famous apple orchard, over twenty acres, the treesplanted by hands long mouldering in the grave (my uncle Jesse's, ) butquite many of them evidently capable of throwing out their annualblossoms and fruit yet. 

I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubtless of acentury since at least) on the burial hill of the Whitmans of manygenerations. Fifty or more graves are quite plainly traceable, andas many more decay'd out of all form--depress'd mounds, crumbled andbroken stones, cover'd with moss--the gray and sterile hill, theclumps of chestnuts outside, the silence, just varied by the soughingwind. There is always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in anyof these ancient graveyards of which Long Island has so many; so whatmust this one have been to me? My whole family history, with itssuccession of links, from the first settlement down to date, toldhere--three centuries concentrate on this sterile acre. 

The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal locality, and ifpossible was still more penetrated and impress'd. I write thisparagraph on the burial hul of the Van Velsors, near Cold Spring, the most significant depository of the dead that could be imagin'd, without the slightest help from art, but far ahead of it, soilsterile, a mostly bare plateau-flat of half an acre, the top of ahill, brush and well grown trees and dense woods bordering all around, very primi-tive, secluded, no visitors, no road (you cannot drivehere, you have to bring the dead on foot, and follow on foot. ) Two orthree-score graves quite plain; as many more almost rubb'd out. Mygrandfather Cornelius and my grandmother Amy (Naomi) and numerousrelatives nearer or remoter, on my mother's side, lie buried here. Thescene as I stood or sat, the delicate and wild odor of the woods, aslightly drizzling rain, the emotional atmosphere of the place, andthe inferr'd reminiscences, were fitting accompaniments. 

THE MATERNAL HOMESTEAD

I went down from this ancient grave place eighty or ninety rods to thesite of the Van Velsor homestead, where my mother was born (1795, )and where every spot had been familiar to me as a child and youth(1825-'40. ) Then stood there a long rambling, dark-gray, shingle-sidedhouse, with sheds, pens, a great barn, and much open road-space. Nowof all those not a vestige left; all had been pull'd down, erased, and the plough and harrow pass'd over foundations, road-spaces andeverything, for many summers; fenced in at present, and grain andclover growing like any other fine fields. Only a big hole from thecellar, with some little heaps of broken stone, green with grass andweeds, identified the place. Even the copious old brook and springseem'd to have mostly dwindled away. The whole scene, with what itarous'd, memories of my young days there half a century ago, the vastkitchen and ample fireplace and the sitting-room adjoining, the plainfurniture, the meals, the house full of merry people, my grandmotherAmy's sweet old face in its Quaker cap, my grandfather "theMajor, " jovial, red, stout, with sonorous voice and characteristicphysiognomy, with the actual sights themselves, made the mostpronounc'd half-day's experience of my whole jaunt. 

For there with all those wooded, hilly, healthy surroundings, mydearest mother, Louisa Van Velsor, grew up--(her mother, Amy Williams, of the Friends' or Quakers' denomination--the Williams family, sevensisters and one brother--the father and brother sailors, both of whommet their deaths at sea. ) The Van Velsor people were noted for finehorses, which the men bred and train'd from blooded stock. My mother, as a young woman, was a daily and daring rider. As to the head of thefamily himself, the old race of the Netherlands, so deeply grafted onManhattan island and in Kings and Queens counties, never yielded amore mark'd and full Americanized specimen than Major Cornelius VanVelsor. 

TWO OLD FAMILY INTERIORS

Of the domestic and inside life of the middle of Long Island, at andjust before that time, here are two samples:

"The Whitmans, at the beginning of the present century, lived in along story-and-a-half farm-house, hugely timber'd, which is stillstanding. A great smoke-canopied kitchen, with vast hearth andchimney, form'd one end of the house. The existence of slavery in NewYork at that time, and the possession by the family of some twelveor fifteen slaves, house and field servants, gave things quite apatriarchial look. The very young darkies could be seen, a swarm ofthem, toward sundown, in this kitchen, squatted in a circle on thefloor, eating their supper of Indian pudding and milk. In the house, and in food and furniture, all was rude, but substantial. No carpetsor stoves were known, and no coffee, and tea or sugar only for thewomen. Rousing wood fires gave both warmth and light on winter nights. Pork, poultry, beef, and all the ordinary vegetables and grains wereplentiful. Cider was the men's common drink, and used at meals. Theclothes were mainly homespun. Journeys were made by both men and womenon horseback. Both sexes labor'd with their own hands-the men on thefarm--the women in the house and around it. Books were scarce. Theannual copy of the almanac was a treat, and was pored over through thelong winter evenings. I must not forget to mention that both thesefamilies were near enough to the sea to behold it from the highplaces, and to hear in still hours the roar of the surf; the latter, after a storm, giving a peculiar sound at night. Then all hands, maleand female, went down frequently on beach and bathing parties, and themen on practical expeditions for cutting salt hay, and for clammingand fishing. "--_John Burroughs's_ NOTES. 

"The ancestors of Walt Whitman, on both the paternal and maternalsides, kept a good table, sustained the hospitalities, decorums, andan excellent social reputation in the county, and they were often ofmark'd individuality. If space permitted, I should consider some ofthe men worthy special description; and still more some of the women. His great-grandmother on the paternal side, for instance, was a largeswarthy woman, who lived to a very old age. She smoked tobacco, rodeon horseback like a man, managed the most vicious horse, and, becominga widow in later life, went forth every day over her farm-lands, frequently in the saddle, directing the labor of her slaves, inlanguage in which, on exciting occasions, oaths were not spared. Thetwo immediate grandmothers were, in the best sense, superior women. The maternal one (Amy Williams before marriage) was a Friend, orQuakeress, of sweet, sensible character, house-wifely proclivities, and deeply intuitive and spiritual. The other (Hannah Brush, ) was anequally noble, perhaps stronger character, lived to be very old, had quite a family of sons, was a natural lady, was in early life aschool-mistress, and had great solidity of mind. W. W. Himself makesmuch of the women of his ancestry. "--_The Same_. 

Out from these arrieres of persons and scenes, I was born May31, 1819. And now to dwell awhile on the locality itself--as thesuccessive growth-stages of my infancy, childhood, youth and manhoodwere all pass'd on Long Island, which I sometimes feel as if I hadincorporated. I roam'd, as boy and man, and have lived in nearly allparts, from Brooklyn to Montauk point. 

PAUMANOK, AND MY LIFE ON IT AS CHILD AND YOUNG MAN

Worth fully and particularly investigating indeed this Paumanok, (togive the spot its aboriginal name[3], ) stretching east through Kings, Queens and Suffolk counties, 120 miles altogether--on the north LongIsland sound, a beautiful, varied and picturesque series of inlets, "necks" and sea-like expansions, for a hundred miles to Orient point. On the ocean side the great south bay dotted with countless hummocks, mostly small, some quite large, occasionally long bars of sand out twohundred rods to a mile-and-a-half from the shore. While now and then, as at Rockaway and far east along the Hamptons, the beach makes righton the island, the sea dashing up without intervention. Severallight-houses on the shores east; a long history of wrecks tragedies, some even of late years. As a youngster, I was in the atmosphere andtraditions of many of these wrecks--of one or two almost an observer. Off Hempstead beach for example, was the loss of the ship "Mexico" in1840, (alluded to in "the Sleepers" in L. Of G. ) And at Hampton, some years later, the destruction of the brig "Elizabeth, " a fearfulaffair, in one of the worst winter gales, where Margaret Fuller wentdown, with her husband and child. 

Inside the outer bars or beach this south bay is everywherecomparatively shallow; of cold winters all thick ice on the surface. As a boy I often went forth with a chum or two, on those frozenfields, with hand-sled, axe and eel-spear, after messes of eels. Wewould cut holes in the ice, sometimes striking quite an eel-bonanza, and filling our baskets with great, fat, sweet, white-meated fellows. The scenes, the ice, drawing the hand-sled, cutting holes, spearingthe eels, &c. , were of course just such fun as is dearest to boyhood. The shores of this bay, winter and summer, and my doings there inearly life, are woven all through L. Of G. One sport I was very fondof was to go on a bay-party in summer to gather sea-gull's eggs. (Thegulls lay two or three eggs, more than half the size of hen's eggs, right on the sand, and leave the sun's heat to hatch them. )

The eastern end of Long Island, the Peconic bay region, I knew quitewell too--sail'd more than once around Shelter island, and down toMontauk--spent many an hour on Turtle hill by the old light-house, on the extreme point, looking out over the ceaseless roll of theAtlantic. I used to like to go down there and fraternize with theblue-fishers, or the annual squads of sea-bass takers. Sometimes, along Montauk peninsula, (it is some 15 miles long, and good grazing, )met the strange, unkempt, half-barbarous herdsmen, at that time livingthere entirely aloof from society or civilization, in charge, on thoserich pasturages, of vast droves of horses, kine or sheep, own'd byfarmers of the eastern towns. Sometimes, too, the few remainingIndians, or half-breeds, at that period left on Montauk peninsula, butnow I believe altogether extinct. 

More in the middle of the island were the spreading Hempstead plains, then (1830-'40) quite prairie-like, open, uninhabited, rather sterile, cover'd with kill-calf and huckleberry bushes, yet plenty of fairpasture for the cattle, mostly milch-cows, who fed there by hundreds, even thousands, and at evening, (the plains too were own'd by thetowns, and this was the use of them in common, ) might be seen takingtheir way home, branching off regularly in the right places. I haveoften been out on the edges of these plains toward sundown, and canyet recall in fancy the interminable cow-processions, and hear themusic of the tin or copper bells clanking far or near, and breathethe cool of the sweet and slightly aromatic evening air, and note thesunset. 

Through the same region of the island, but further east, extendedwide central tracts of pine and scrub-oak, (charcoal was largely madehere, ) monotonous and sterile. But many a good day or half-day didI have, wandering through those solitary crossroads, inhaling thepeculiar and wild aroma. Here, and all along the island and itsshores, I spent intervals many years, all seasons, sometimes riding, sometimes boating, but generally afoot, (I was always then a goodwalker, ) absorbing fields, shores, marine incidents, characters, thebay-men, farmers, pilots-always had a plentiful acquaintance with thelatter, and with fishermen--went every summer on sailing trips--alwaysliked the bare sea-beach, south side, and have some of my happiesthours on it to this day. 

As I write, the whole experience comes back to me after the lapse offorty and more years--the soothing rustle of the waves, and the salinesmell--boyhood's times, the clam-digging, bare-foot, and withtrowsers roll'd up--hauling down the creek--the perfume ofthe sedge-meadows--the hay-boat, and the chowder and fishingexcursions;--or, of later years, little voyages down and out New Yorkbay, in the pilot boats. Those same later years, also, while living inBrooklyn, (1836-'50) I went regularly every week in the mild seasonsdown to Coney Island, at that time a long, bare unfrequented shore, which I had all to myself, and where I loved, after bathing, to raceup and down the hard sand, and declaim Homer or Shakspere to the surfand sea gulls by the hour. But I am getting ahead too rapidly, andmust keep more in my traces. 

Note:

[3] "Paumanok, (or Paumanake, or Paumanack, the Indian name of LongIsland, ) over a hundred miles long; shaped like a fish--plenty of seashore, sandy, stormy, uninviting, the horizon boundless, the air toostrong for invalids, the bays a wonderful resort for aquatic birds, the south-side meadows cover'd with salt hay, the soil of the islandgenerally tough, but good for the locust-tree, the apple orchard, andthe blackberry, and with numberless springs of the sweetest water inthe world. Years ago, among the bay-men--a strong, wild race, nowextinct, or rather entirely changed--a native of Long Island wascalled a _Paumanacker_, or _Creole-'Paumanacker_. "--_John Burroughs_. 

MY FIRST READING--LAFAYETTE

From 1824 to '28 our family lived in Brooklyn in Front, Cranberry andJohnson streets. In the latter my father built a nice house for ahome, and afterwards another in Tillary street. We occupied them, oneafter the other, but they were mortgaged, and we lost them. I yetremember Lafayette's visit. [4] Most of these years I went to thepublic schools. It must have been about 1829 or '30 that I went withmy father and mother to hear Elias Hicks preach in a ball-room onBrooklyn heights. At about the same time employ'd as a boy in anoffice, lawyers', father and two sons, Clarke's, Fulton street, nearOrange. I had a nice desk and window-nook to myself; Edward C. Kindlyhelp'd me at my handwriting and composition, and, (the signal eventof my life up to that time, ) subscribed for me to a big circulatinglibrary. For a time I now revel'd in romance-reading of all kinds;first, the "Arabian Nights, " all the volumes, an amazing treat. Then, with sorties in very many other directions, took in Walter Scott'snovels, one after another, and his poetry, (and continue to enjoynovels and poetry to this day. )

Note:

[4] "On the visit of General Lafayette to this country, in 1824, he came over to Brooklyn in state, and rode through the city. Thechildren of the schools turn'd out to join in the welcome. An edificefor a free public library for youths was just then commencing, andLafayette consented to stop on his way and lay the corner-stone. Numerous children arriving on the ground, where a huge irregularexcavation for the building was already dug, surrounded with heaps ofrough stone, several gentlemen assisted in lifting the childrento safe or convenient spots to see the ceremony. Among the rest, Lafayette, also helping the children, took up the five-year-old WaltWhitman, and pressing the child a moment to his breast, and givinghim a kiss, handed him down to a safe spot in the excavation. "--JohnBurroughs. 

PRINTING OFFICE--OLD BROOKLYN

After about two years went to work in a weekly newspaper and printingoffice, to learn the trade. The paper was the "Long Island Patriot, "owned by S. E. Clements, who was also postmaster. An old printer inthe office, William Hartshorne, a revolutionary character, who hadseen Washington, was a special friend of mine, and I had many a talkwith him about long past times. The apprentices, including myself, boarded with his grand-daughter. I used occasionally to go out ridingwith the boss, who was very kind to us boys; Sundays he took us all toa great old rough, fortress-looking stone church, on Joralemon street, near where the Brooklyn city hall now is--(at that time broad fieldsand country roads everywhere around. [5]) Afterward I work'd on the"Long Island Star, " Alden Spooner's paper. My father all these yearspursuing his trade as carpenter and builder, with varying fortune. There was a growing family of children--eight of us--my brother Jessethe oldest, myself the second, my dear sisters Mary and Hannah Louisa, my brothers Andrew, George, Thomas Jefferson, and then my youngestbrother, Edward, born 1835, and always badly crippled, as I am myselfof late years. 

Note:

[5] Of the Brooklyn of that time (1830-40) hardly anything remains, except the lines of the old streets. The population was then betweenten and twelve thousand. For a mile Fulton street was lined withmagnificent elm trees. The character of the place was thoroughlyrural. As a sample of comparative values, it may be mention'd thattwenty-five acres in what is now the most costly part of the city, bounded by Flatbush and Fulton avenues, were then bought by MrParmentier, a French _emigre_, for $4000. Who remembers the old placesas they were? Who remembers the old citizens of that time? Among theformer were Smith & Wood's, Coe Downing's, and other public houses atthe ferry, the old Ferry itself, Love lane, the Heights as then, theWallabout with the wooden bridge, and the road out beyond Fultonstreet to the old toll-gate. Among the latter were the majestic andgenial General Jeremiah Johnson, with others, Gabriel Furman, Rev. E. M. Johnson, Alden Spooner, Mr. Pierrepont, Mr. Joralemon, SamuelWilloughby, Jonathan Trotter, George Hall, Cyrus P. Smith, N. B. Morse, John Dikeman, Adrian Hegeman, William Udall, and old Mr. Duflon, with his military garden. 

GROWTH--HEALTH--WORK

I develop'd (1833-4-5) into a healthy, strong youth (grew too fast, though, was nearly as big as a man at 15 or 16. ) Our family at thisperiod moved back to the country, my dear mother very ill for a longtime, but recover'd. All these years I was down Long Island more orless every summer, now east, now west, sometimes months at a stretch. At 16, 17, and so on, was fond of debating societies, and had anactive membership with them, off and on, in Brooklyn and one or twocountry towns on the island. A most omnivorous novel-reader, these andlater years, devour'd everything I could get. Fond of the theatre, also, in New York, went whenever I could--sometimes witnessing fineperformances. 

1836-7, work'd as compositor in printing offices in New York city. Then, when little more than 18, and for a while afterwards, went toteaching country schools down in Queens and Suffolk counties, LongIsland, and "boarded round. " (This latter I consider one of my bestexperiences and deepest lessons in human nature behind the scenes andin the masses. ) In '39, '40, I started and publish'd a weekly paperin my native town, Huntington. Then returning to New York city andBrooklyn, work'd on as printer and writer, mostly prose, but anoccasional shy at "poetry". 

MY PASSION FOR FERRIES

Living in Brooklyn or New York city from this time forward, my life, then, and still more the following years, was curiously identifiedwith Fulton ferry, already becoming the greatest of its sort inthe world for general importance, volume, variety, rapidity, andpicturesqueness. Almost daily, later, ('50 to '60, ) I cross'd on theboats, often up in the pilot-houses where I could get a full sweep, absorbing shows, accompaniments, surroundings. What oceaniccurrents, eddies, underneath--the great tides of humanity also, withever-shifting movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion forferries; to me they afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems. The river and bay scenery, all about New York island, any time of a fine day--the hurrying, splashing sea-tides--thechanging panorama of steamers, all sizes, often a string of big onesoutward bound to distant ports--the myriads of white-sail'd schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvellously beautiful yachts--the majesticsound boats as they rounded the Battery and came along towards 5, afternoon, eastward bound--the prospect off towards Staten Island, ordown the Narrows, or the other way up the Hudson--what refreshment ofspirit such sights and experiences gave me years ago (and many a timesince. ) My old pilot friends, the Balsirs, Johnny Cole, Ira Smith, William White, and my young ferry friend, Tom Gere--how well Iremember them all. 

BROADWAY SIGHTS

Besides Fulton ferry, off and on for years, I knew and frequentedBroadway--that noted avenue of New York's crowded and mixed humanity, and of so many notables. Here I saw, during those times, AndrewJackson, Webster, Clay, Seward, Martin Van Buren, filibuster Walker, Kossuth, Fitz Greene Halleck, Bryant, the Prince of Wales, CharlesDickens, the first Japanese ambassadors, and lots of other celebritiesof the time. Always something novel or inspiriting; yet mostly to methe hurrying and vast amplitude of those never-ending human currents. I remember seeing James Fenimore Cooper in a court-room in Chambersstreet, back of the city hall, where he was carrying on a law case--(Ithink it was a charge of libel he had brought against some one. ) Ialso remember seeing Edgar A. Poe, and having a short interview withhim, (it must have been in 1845 or '6, ) in his office, second story ofa corner building, (Duane or Pearl street. ) He was editor and owner orpart owner of "the Broadway Journal. " The visit was about a piece ofmine he had publish'd. Poe was very cordial, in a quiet way, appear'dwell in person, dress, &c. I have a distinct and pleasing remembranceof his looks, voice, manner and matter; very kindly and human, butsubdued, perhaps a little jaded. For another of my reminiscences, hereon the west side, just below Houston street, I once saw (it must havebeen about 1832, of a sharp, bright January day) a bent, feeble butstout-built very old man, bearded, swathed in rich furs, with a greatermine cap on his head, led and assisted, almost carried, down thesteps of his high front stoop (a dozen friends and servants, emulous, carefully holding, guiding him) and then lifted and tuck'd in agorgeous sleigh, envelop'd in other furs, for a ride. The sleigh wasdrawn by as fine a team of horses as I ever saw. (You needn'tthink all the best animals are brought up nowadays; never was suchhorseflesh as fifty years ago on Long Island, or south, or in New Yorkcity; folks look'd for spirit and mettle in a nag, not tame speedmerely. ) Well, I, a boy of perhaps 13 or 14, stopp'd and gazed long atthe spectacle of that fur-swathed old man, surrounded by friends andservants, and the careful seating of him in the sleigh. I rememberthe spirited, champing horses, the driver with his whip, and afellow-driver by his side, for extra prudence. The old man, thesubject of so much attention, I can almost see now. It was John JacobAstor. 

The years 1846, '47, and there along, see me still in New York City, working as writer and printer, having my usual good health, and a goodtime generally. 

OMNIBUS JAUNTS AND DRIVERS

One phase of those days must by no means go unrecorded--namely, theBroadway omnibuses, with their drivers. 

The vehicles still (I write this paragraph in 1881) give a portionof the character of Broadway--the Fifth avenue, Madison avenue, andTwenty-third street lines yet running. But the flush days of theold Broadway stages, characteristic and copious, are over. TheYellow-birds, the Red-birds, the original Broadway, the Fourth avenue, the Knickerbocker, and a dozen others of twenty or thirty years ago, are all gone. And the men specially identified with them, and givingvitality and meaning to them--the drivers--a strange, natural, quick-eyed and wondrous race--(not only Rabelais and Cervantes wouldhave gloated upon them, but Homer and Shakspere would)--how well Iremember them, and must here give a word about them. How many hours, forenoons and afternoons--how many exhilarating night-times I havehad--perhaps June or July, in cooler air-riding the whole length ofBroadway, listening to some yarn, (and the most vivid yarns ever spun, and the rarest mimicry)--or perhaps I declaiming some stormy passagefrom Julius Caesar or Richard, (you could roar as loudly as you chosein that heavy, dense, uninterrupted street-bass. ) Yes, I knew all thedrivers then, Broadway Jack, Dressmaker, Balky Bill, George Storms, Old Elephant, his brother Young Elephant (who came afterward, ) Tippy, Pop Rice, Big Frank, Yellow Joe, Pete Callahan, Patsey Dee, and dozensmore; for there were hundreds. They had immense qualities, largelyanimal--eating, drinking; women--great personal pride, in theirway--perhaps a few slouches here and there, but I should have trustedthe general run of them, in their simple good-will and honor, under all circumstances. Not only for comradeship, and sometimesaffection--great studies I found them also. (I suppose the criticswill laugh heartily, but the influence of those Broadway omnibusjaunts and drivers and declamations and escapades undoubtedly enter'dinto the gestation of "Leaves of Grass. ")

PLAYS AND OPERAS TOO

And certain actors and singers, had a good deal to do with thebusiness. All through these years, off and on, I frequented the oldPark, the Bowery, Broadway and Chatham-square theatres, and theItalian operas at Chambers-street, Astor-place or the Battery--manyseasons was on the free list, writing for papers even as quite ayouth. The old Park theatre--what names, reminiscences, the wordsbring back! Placide, Clarke, Mrs. Vernon, Fisher, Clara F. , Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Seguin, Ellen Tree, Hackett, the younger Kean, Macready, Mrs. Richardson, Rice--singers, tragedians, comedians. What perfectacting! Henry Placide in "Napoleon's Old Guard" or "GrandfatherWhitehead, "--or "the Provoked Husband" of Gibber, with Fanny Kembleas Lady Townley--or Sheridan Knowles in his own "Virginius"--orinimitable Power in "Born to Good Luck. " These, and many more, theyears of youth and onward. Fanny Kemble--name to conjure up greatmimic scenes withal--perhaps the greatest. I remember well herrendering of Bianca in "Fazio, " and Marianna in "the Wife. " Nothingfiner did ever stage exhibit--the veterans of all nations said so, and my boyish heart and head felt it in every minute cell. The ladywas just matured, strong, better than merely beautiful, born from thefootlights, had had three years' practice in London and through theBritish towns, and then she came to give America that young maturityand roseate power in all their noon, or rather forenoon, flush. It wasmy good luck to see her nearly every night she play'd at the oldPark--certainly in all her principal characters. I heard, these years, well render'd, all the Italian and other operas in vogue, "Sonnambula, ""the Puritans, " "Der Freischutz, " "Huguenots, " "Fille d'Regiment, ""Faust, " "Etoile du Nord, " "Poliuto, " and others. Verdi's "Ernani, ""Rigoletto, " and "Trovatore, " with Donnizetti's "Lucia" or "Favorita"or "Lucrezia, " and Auber's "Massaniello, " or Rossini's "William Tell"and "Gazza Ladra, " were among my special enjoyments. I heard Albonievery time she sang in New York and vicinity--also Grisi, the tenorMario, and the baritone Badiali, the finest in the world. 

This musical passion follow'd my theatrical one. As a boy or young manI had seen, (reading them carefully the day beforehand, ) quite allShakspere's acting dramas, play'd wonderfully well. Even yet I cannotconceive anything finer than old Booth in "Richard Third, " or "Lear, "(I don't know which was best, ) or Iago, (or Pescara, or SirGiles Overreach, to go outside of Shakspere)--or Tom Hamblin in"Macbeth"--or old Clarke, either as the ghost in "Hamlet, " or asProspero in "the Tempest, " with Mrs. Austin as Ariel, and PeterRichings as Caliban. Then other dramas, and fine players in them, Forrest as Metamora or Damon or Brutus--John R. Scott as Tom Cringleor Rolla--or Charlotte Cushman's Lady Gay Spanker in "LondonAssurance. " Then of some years later, at Castle Garden, Battery, Iyet recall the splendid seasons of the Havana musical troupe underMaretzek--the fine band, the cool sea-breezes, the unsurpass'dvocalism--Steffan'one, Bosio, Truffi, Marini in "Marino Faliero, " "DonPasquale, " or "Favorita. " No better playing or singing ever in NewYork. It was here too I afterward heard Jenny Lind. (The Battery--itspast associations--what tales those old trees and walks and sea-wallscould tell!)

THROUGH EIGHT YEARS. 

In 1848, '49, I was occupied as editor of the "daily Eagle" newspaper, in Brooklyn. The latter year went off on a leisurely journey andworking expedition (my brother Jeff with me) through all the middleStates, and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Lived awhile in NewOrleans, and work'd there on the editorial staff of "daily Crescent"newspaper. After a time plodded back northward, up the Mississippi, and around to, and by way of the great lakes, Michigan, Huron, andErie, to Niagara falls and lower Canada, finally returning throughcentral New York and down the Hudson; traveling altogetherprobably 8, 000 miles this trip, to and fro. '51, '53, occupied inhouse-building in Brooklyn. (For a little of the first part of thattime in printing a daily and weekly paper, "the Freeman. ") '55, lostmy dear father this year by death. Commenced putting "Leaves of Grass"to press for good, at the job printing office of my friends, thebrothers Rome, in Brooklyn, after many MS. Doings and undoings--(I hadgreat trouble in leaving out the stock "poetical" touches, butsucceeded at last. ) I am now (1856-'7) passing through my 37th year. 

SOURCES OF CHARACTER--RESULTS--1860

To sum up the foregoing from the outset (and, of course, far, far moreunrecorded, ) I estimate three leading sources and formative stamps tomy own character, now solidified for good or bad, and its subsequentliterary and other outgrowth--the maternal nativity-stock broughthither from far-away Netherlands, for one, (doubtless the best)--thesubterranean tenacity and central bony structure (obstinacy, wilfulness) which I get from my paternal English elements, foranother--and the combination of my Long Island birth-spot, sea-shores, childhood's scenes, absorptions, with teeming Brooklyn and New York--with, I suppose, my experiences afterward in the secession outbreak, for the third. 

For, in 1862, startled by news that my brother George, an officerin the 51st New York volunteers, had been seriously wounded (firstFredericksburg battle, December 13th, ) I hurriedly went down to thefield of war in Virginia. But I must go back a little. 

OPENING OF THE SECESSION WAR

News of the attack on fort Sumter and _the flag_ at Charleston harbor, S. C. , was receiv'd in New York city late at night (13th April, 1861, )and was immediately sent out in extras of the newspapers. I hadbeen to the opera in Fourteenth street that night, and after theperformance was walking down Broadway toward twelve o'clock, on myway to Brooklyn, when I heard in the distance the loud cries of thenewsboys, who came presently tearing and yelling up the street, rushing from side to side even more furiously than usual. I bought anextra and cross'd to the Metropolitan hotel (Niblo's) where the greatlamps were still brightly blazing, and, with a crowd of others, whogather'd impromptu, read the news, which was evidently authentic. Forthe benefit of some who had no papers, one of us read the telegramaloud, while all listen'd silently and attentively. No remark was madeby any of the crowd, which had increas'd to thirty or forty, but allstood a minute or two, I remember, before they dispers'd. I can almostsee them there now, under the lamps at midnight again. 

NATIONAL UPRISING AND VOLUNTEERING

I have said somewhere that the three Presidentiads preceding 1861show'd how the weakness and wickedness of rulers are just as eligiblehere in America under republican, as in Europe under dynasticinfluences. But what can I say of that prompt and splendid wrestlingwith secession slavery, the arch-enemy personified, the instant heunmistakably show'd his face? The volcanic upheaval of the nation, after that firing on the flag at Charleston, proved for certainsomething which had been previously in great doubt, and at oncesubstantially settled the question of disunion. In my judgment it willremain as the grandest and most encouraging spectacle yet vouchsafedin any age, old or new, to political progress and democracy. Itwas not for what came to the surface merely--though that wasimportant--but what it indicated below, which was of eternalimportance. Down in the abysms of New World humanity there had form'dand harden'd a primal hardpan of national Union will, determin'd andin the majority, refusing to be tamper'd with or argued against, confronting all emergencies, and capable at any time of bursting allsurface bonds, and breaking out like an earthquake. It is, indeed, the best lesson of the century, or of America, and it is a mightyprivilege to have been part of it. (Two great spectacles, immortalproofs of democracy, unequall'd in all the history of the past, arefurnish'd by the secession war--one at the beginning, the other atits close. Those are, the general, voluntary, arm'd upheaval, and thepeaceful and harmonious disbanding of the armies in the summer of1865. )

CONTEMPTUOUS FEELING

Even after the bombardment of Sumter, however, the gravity of therevolt, and the power and will of the slave States for a strong andcontinued military resistance to national authority, were not at allrealized at the North, except by a few. Nine-tenths of the peopleof the free States look'd upon the rebellion, as started in SouthCarolina, from a feeling one-half of contempt, and the other halfcomposed of anger and incredulity. It was not thought it would bejoin'd in by Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia. A great andcautious national official predicted that it would blow over "in sixtydays, " and folks generally believ'd the prediction. I remember talkingabout it on a Fulton ferry-boat with the Brooklyn mayor, who said heonly "hoped the Southern fire-eaters would commit some overt act ofresistance, as they would then be at once so effectually squelch'd, we would never hear of secession again--but he was afraid they neverwould have the pluck to really do anything. "

I remember, too, that a couple of companies of the ThirteenthBrooklyn, who rendezvou'd at the city armory, and started thence asthirty days' men, were all provided with pieces of rope, conspicuouslytied to their musket-barrels, with which to bring back each man aprisoner from the audacious South, to be led in a noose, on our men'searly and triumphant return!

BATTLE OF BULL RUN, JULY, 1861

All this sort of feeling was destin'd to be arrested and revers'd bya terrible shock--the battle of first Bull Run--certainly, as we nowknow it, one of the most singular fights on record. (All battles, andtheir results, are far more matters of accident than is generallythought; but this was throughout a casualty, a chance. Each sidesupposed it had won, till the last moment. One had, in point of fact, just the same right to be routed as the other. By a fiction, or seriesof fictions, the national forces at the last moment exploded in apanic and fled from the field. ) The defeated troops commenced pouringinto Washington over the Long Bridge at daylight on Monday, 22d--daydrizzling all through with rain. The Saturday and Sunday of the battle(20th, 21st, ) had been parch'd and hot to an extreme--the dust, thegrime and smoke, in layers, sweated in, follow'd by other layersagain sweated in, absorb'd by those excited souls--their clothes allsaturated with the clay-powder filling the air--stirr'd up everywhereon the dry roads and trodden fields by the regiments, swarming wagons, artillery, &c. --all the men with this coating of murk and sweat andrain, now recoiling back, pouring over the Long Bridge--a horriblemarch of twenty miles, returning to Washington baffed, humiliated, panic-struck. Where are the vaunts, and the proud boasts with whichyou went forth? Where are your banners, and your bands of music, andyour ropes to bring back your prisoners? Well, there isn't a bandplaying--and there isn't a flag but clings ashamed and lank to itsstaff. 

The sun rises, but shines not. The men appear, at first sparselyand shame-faced enough, then thicker, in the streets of Washington--appear in Pennsylvania avenue, and on the steps and basemententrances. They come along in disorderly mobs, some in squads, stragglers, companies. Occasionally, a rare regiment, in perfectorder, with its officers (some gaps, dead, the true braves, ) marchingin silence, with lowering faces, stern, weary to sinking, all blackand dirty, but every man with his musket, and stepping alive; butthese are the exceptions. Sidewalks of Pennsylvania avenue, Fourteenthstreet, &c. , crowded, jamm'd with citizens, darkies, clerks, everybody, lookers-on; women in the windows, curious expressions fromfaces, as those swarms of dirt-cover'd return'd soldiers there (willthey never end?) move by; but nothing said, no comments; (half ourlookers-on secesh of the most venomous kind--they say nothing; but thedevil snickers in their faces. ) During the forenoon Washington getsall over motley with these defeated soldiers--queer-looking objects, strange eyes and faces, drench'd (the steady rain drizzles on allday) and fearfully worn, hungry, haggard, blister'd in the feet. Goodpeople (but not over-many of them either, ) hurry up something fortheir grub. They put wash-kettles on the fire, for soup, for coffee. They set tables on the side-walks--wagon-loads of bread are purchas'd, swiftly cut in stout chunks. Here are two aged ladies, beautiful, thefirst in the city for culture and charm, they stand with store ofeating and drink at an improvis'd table of rough plank, and give food, and have the store replenished from their house every half-hourall that day; and there in the rain they stand, active, silent, white-hair'd, and give food, though the tears stream down theircheeks, almost without intermission, the whole time. Amid the deepexcitement, crowds and motion, and desperate eagerness, it seemsstrange to see many, very many, of the soldiers sleeping--in the midstof all, sleeping sound. They drop down anywhere, on the steps ofhouses, up close by the basements or fences, on the sidewalk, aside onsome vacant lot, and deeply sleep. A poor 17 or 18 year old boylies there, on the stoop of a grand house; he sleeps so calmly, soprofoundly. Some clutch their muskets firmly even in sleep. Some insquads; comrades, brothers, close together--and on them, as they lay, sulkily drips the rain. 

As afternoon pass'd, and evening came, the streets, the bar-rooms, knots everywhere, listeners, questioners, terrible yarns, bugaboo, mask'd batteries, our regiment all cut up, &c. --stories andstory-tellers, windy, bragging, vain centres of street-crowds. Resolution, manliness, seem to have abandon'd Washington. Theprincipal hotel, Willard's, is full of shoulder-straps--thick, crush'd, creeping with shoulder-straps. (I see them, and must have aword with them. There you are, shoulder-straps!--but where are yourcompanies? where are your men? Incompetents! never tell me of chancesof battle, of getting stray'd, and the like. I think this is yourwork, this retreat, after all. Sneak, blow, put on airs there inWillard's sumptuous parlors and bar-rooms, or anywhere--no explanationshall save you. Bull Run is your work; had you been half or one-tenthworthy your men, this would never have happen'd. )

Meantime, in Washington, among the great persons and their entourage, a mixture of awful consternation, uncertainty, rage, shame, helplessness, and stupefying disappointment. The worst is not onlyimminent, but already here. In a few hours--perhaps before the nextmeal--the secesh generals, with their victorious hordes, will be uponus. The dream of humanity, the vaunted Union we thought so strong, so impregnable--lo! it seems already smash'd like a china plate. Onebitter, bitter hour--perhaps proud America will never again knowsuch an hour. She must pack and fly--no time to spare. Those whitepalaces--the dome-crown'd capitol there on the hill, so stately overthe trees--shall they be left--or destroy'd first? For it is certainthat the talk among certain of the magnates and officers and clerksand officials everywhere, for twenty-four hours in and aroundWashington after Bull Run, was loud and undisguised for yielding outand out, and substituting the southern rule, and Lincoln promptlyabdicating and departing. If the secesh officers and forces hadimmediately follow'd, and by a bold Napoleonic movement had enter'dWashington the first day, (or even the second, ) they could have hadthings their own way, and a powerful faction north to back them. Oneof our returning colonels express'd in public that night, amid a swarmof officers and gentlemen in a crowded room, the opinion that it wasuseless to fight, that the southerners had made their title clear, and that the best course for the national government to pursue was todesist from any further attempt at stopping them, and admit them againto the lead, on the best terms they were willing to grant. Not a voicewas rais'd against this judgment, amid that large crowd of officersand gentlemen. (The fact is, the hour was one of the three or four ofthose crises we had then and afterward, during the fluctuations offour years, when human eyes appear'd at least just as likely to seethe last breath of the Union as to see it continue. )

THE STUPOR PASSES--SOMETHING ELSE BEGINS

But the hour, the day, the night pass'd, and whatever returns, anhour, a day, a night like that can never again return. The President, recovering himself, begins that very night--sternly, rapidly setsabout the task of reorganizing his forces, and placing himself inpositions for future and surer work. If there were nothing else ofAbraham Lincoln for history to stamp him with, it is enough to sendhim with his wreath to the memory of all future time, that he enduredthat hour, that day, bitterer than gall--indeed a crucifixionday--that it did not conquer him--that he unflinchingly stemm'd it, and resolv'd to lift himself and the Union out of it. 

Then the great New York papers at once appear'd, (commencing thatevening, and following it up the next morning, and incessantly throughmany days afterwards, ) with leaders that rang out over the land withthe loudest, most reverberating ring of clearest bugles, full ofencouragement, hope, inspiration, unfaltering defiance; Thosemagnificent editorials! they never flagg'd for a fortnight. The"Herald" commenced them--I remember the articles well. The "Tribune"was equally cogent and inspiriting--and the "Times, " "Evening Post, "and other principal papers, were not a whit behind. They came in goodtime, for they were needed. For in the humiliation of Bull Run, thepopular feeling north, from its extreme of superciliousness, recoil'dto the depth of gloom and apprehension. 

(Of all the days of the war, there are two especially I can neverforget. Those were the day following the news, in New York andBrooklyn, of that first Bull Run defeat, and the day of AbrahamLincoln's death. I was home in Brooklyn on both occasions. The dayof the murder we heard the news very early in the morning. Motherprepared breakfast--and other meals afterward--as usual; but not amouthful was eaten all day by either of us. We each drank half a cupof coffee; that was all. Little was said. We got every newspapermorning and evening, and the frequent extras of that period, andpass'd them silently to each other. )

DOWN AT THE FRONT

FALMOUTH, VA. , _opposite Fredericksburgh, December 21, 1862_. --Begin myvisits among the camp hospitals in the army of the Potomac. Spend a goodpart of the day in a large brick mansion on the banks of the Rappahannock, used as a hospital since the battle--seems to have receiv'd only theworst cases. Out doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of thefront of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, &c. , a full load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near, eachcover'd with its brown woolen blanket. In the door-yard, towards theriver, are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces ofarrel-staves or broken boards, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodieswere subsequently taken up and transported north to their friends. ) Thelarge mansion is quite crowded upstairs and down, everything impromptu, no system, all bad enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done;all the wounds pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel soldiers and officers, prisoners. One, a Mississippian, a captain, hit badly in leg, I talk'dwith some time; he ask'd me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw himthree months afterward in Washington, with his leg amputated, doing well. )I went through the rooms, downstairs and up. Some of the men were dying. I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks home, mothers, &c. Also talk'd to three or four, who seem'd most susceptible toit, and needing it. 

AFTER FIRST FREDERICKSBURG

_December 23 to 31_. --The results of the late battle are exhibitedeverywhere about here in thousands of cases, (hundreds die every day, )in the camp, brigade, and division hospitals. These are merely tents, and sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, luckyif their blankets are spread on layers of pine or hemlock twigs, orsmall leaves. No cots; seldom even a mattress. It is pretty cold. Theground is frozen hard, and there is occasional snow. I go around fromone case to another. I do not see that I do much good to these woundedand dying; but I cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngsterholds on to me convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him and sit near him for hours, if he wishes it. 

Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours throughthe camps, talking with the men, &c. Sometimes at night among thegroups around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. These are curious shows, full of characters and groups. I soon getacquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always wellused. Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best. As to rations, the army here at present seems to be tolerably wellsupplied, and the men have enough, such as it is, mainly salt porkand hard tack. Most of the regiments lodge in the flimsy littleshelter-tents. A few have built themselves huts of logs and mud, withfire-places. 

BACK TO WASHINGTON

_January, '63_. --Left camp at Falmouth, with some wounded, a few dayssince, and came here by Aquia creek railroad, and so on governmentsteamer up the Potomac. Many wounded were with us on the cars andboat. The cars were just common platform ones. The railroad journeyof ten or twelve miles was made mostly before sunrise. The soldiersguarding the road came out from their tents or shebangs of bushes withrumpled hair and half-awake look. Those on duty were walking theirposts, some on banks over us, others down far below the level of thetrack. I saw large cavalry camps off the road. At Aquia creek landingwere numbers of wounded going north. While I waited some three hours, I went around among them. Several wanted word sent home to parents, brothers, wives, &c. , which I did for them, (by mail the next day fromWashington. ) On the boat I had my hands full. One poor fellow diedgoing up. 

I am now remaining in and around Washington, daily visiting thehospitals. Am much in Patent-office, Eighth street, H street, Armory-square, and others. Am now able to do a little good, havingmoney, (as almoner of others home, ) and getting experience. To-day, Sunday afternoon and till nine in the evening, visited Campbellhospital; attended specially to one case in ward I, very sick withpleurisy and typhoid fever, young man, farmer's son, D. F. Russell, company E, 60th New York, downhearted and feeble; a long time beforehe would take any interest; wrote a letter home to his mother, inMalone, Franklin county, N. Y. , at his request; gave him some fruitand one or two other gifts; envelop'd and directed his letter, &c. Then went thoroughly through ward 6, observ'd every case in the ward, without, I think, missing one; gave perhaps from twenty to thirtypersons, each one some little gift, such as oranges, apples, sweetcrackers, figs, &c. 

_Thursday, Jan. 21. _--Devoted the main part of the day toArmory-square hospital; went pretty thoroughly through wards F, G, H, and I; some fifty cases in each ward. In ward F supplied the menthroughout with writing paper and stamp'd envelope each; distributedin small portions, to proper subjects, a large jar of first-ratepreserv'd berries, which had been donated to me by a lady--her owncooking. Found several cases I thought good subjects for small sums ofmoney, which I furnish'd. (The wounded men often come up broke, and ithelps their spirits to have even the small sum I give them. ) My paperand envelopes all gone, but distributed a good lot of amusing readingmatter; also, as I thought judicious, tobacco, oranges, apples, &c. Interesting cases in ward I; Charles Miller, bed 19, company D, 53dPennsylvania, is only 16 years of age, very bright, courageous boy, left leg amputated below the knee; next bed to him, another younglad very sick; gave each appropriate gifts. In the bed above, also, amputation of the left leg; gave him a little jar of raspberries; bedJ, this ward, gave a small sum; also to a soldier on crutches, sittingon his bed near.... (I am more and more surprised at the very greatproportion of youngsters from fifteen to twenty-one in the army. Iafterwards found a still greater proportion among the southerners. )

Evening, same day, went to see D. F. R. , before alluded to; found himremarkably changed for the better; up and dress'd--quite a triumph; heafterwards got well, and went back to his regiment. 

Distributed in the wards a quantity of note-paper, and forty or fiftystamp'd envelopes, of which I had recruited my stock, and the men weremuch in need. 

FIFTY HOURS LEFT WOUNDED ON THE FIELD

Here is a case of a soldier I found among the crowded cots in thePatent-office. He likes to have some one to talk to, and we willlisten to him. He got badly hit in his leg and side at Fredericksburghthat eventful Saturday, 13th of December. He lay the succeeding twodays and nights helpless on the field, between the city and those grimterraces of batteries; his company and regiment had been compell'd toleave him to his fate. To make matters worse, it happen'd he lay withhis head slightly down hill, and could not help himself. At the end ofsome fifty hours he was brought off, with other wounded, under a flagof truce. I ask him how the rebels treated him as he lay duringthose two days and nights within reach of them--whether they came tohim--whether they abused him? He answers that several of the rebels, soldiers and others, came to him at one time and another. A couple ofthem, who were together, spoke roughly and sarcastically, but nothingworse. One middle-aged man, however, who seem'd to be moving aroundthe field, among the dead and wounded, for benevolent purposes, cameto him in a way he will never forget; treated our soldier kindly, bound up his wounds, cheer'd him, gave him a couple of biscuits and adrink of whiskey and water; asked him if he could eat some beef. Thisgood secesh, however, did not change our soldier's position, for itmight have caused the blood to burst from the wounds, clotted andstagnated. Our soldier is from Pennsylvania; has had a pretty severetime; the wounds proved to be bad ones. But he retains a good heart, and is at present on the gain. (It is not uncommon for the men toremain on the field this way, one, two, or even four or five days. )

HOSPITAL SCENES AND PERSONS

_Letter Writing_. --When eligible, I encourage the men to write, and myself, when called upon, write all sorts of letters for them(including love letters, very tender ones. ) Almost as I reel off thesememoranda, I write for a new patient to his wife. M. De F. , of the17th Connecticut, company H, has just come up (February 17th) fromWindmill point, and is received in ward H, Armory-square. He is anintelligent looking man, has a foreign accent, black-eyed and hair'd, a Hebraic appearance. Wants a telegraphic message sent to his wife, New Canaan, Conn. I agree to send the message--but to make things sureI also sit down and write the wife a letter, and despatch it to thepost-office immediately, as he fears she will come on, and he does notwish her to, as he will surely get well. 

_Saturday, January 30th. _--Afternoon, visited Campbell hospital. Sceneof cleaning up the ward, and giving the men all clean clothes--throughthe ward (6) the patients dressing or being dress'd--the naked upperhalf of the bodies--the good-humor and fun--the shirts, drawers, sheets of beds, &c. , and the general fixing up for Sunday. Gave J. L. 50 cents. 

_Wednesday, February 4th. _--Visited Armory-square hospital, wentpretty thoroughly through wards E and D. Supplied paper and envelopesto all who wish'd--as usual, found plenty of men who needed thosearticles. Wrote letters. Saw and talk'd with two or three members ofthe Brooklyn 14th regt. A poor fellow in ward D, with a fearful woundin a fearful condition, was having some loose splinters of bone takenfrom the neighborhood of the wound. The operation was long, and one ofgreat pain--yet, after it was well commenced, the soldier bore it insilence. He sat up, propp'd--was much wasted--had lain a long timequiet in one position (not for days only but weeks, ) a bloodless, brown-skinn'd face, with eyes full of determination--belong'd to aNew York regiment. There was an unusual cluster of surgeons, medicalcadets, nurses, &c. , around his bed--I thought the whole thing wasdone with tenderness, and done well. In one case, the wife sat bythe side of her husband, his sickness typhoid fever, pretty bad. Inanother, by the side of her son, a mother--she told me she had sevenchildren, and this was the youngest. (A fine, kind, healthy, gentlemother, good-looking, not very old, with a cap on her head, anddress'd like home--what a charm it gave to the whole ward. ) I likedthe woman nurse in ward E--I noticed how she sat a long time by a poorfellow who just had, that morning, in addition to his other sickness, bad hemorrhage--she gently assisted him, reliev'd him of the blood, holding a cloth to his mouth, as he coughed it up--he was so weak hecould only just turn his head over on the pillow. 

One young New York man, with a bright, handsome face, had been lyingseveral months from a most disagreeable wound, receiv'd at Bull Run. A bullet had shot him right through the bladder, hitting him front, low in the belly, and coming out back. He had suffer'd much--thewater came out of the wound, by slow but steady quantities, for manyweeks--so that he lay almost constantly in a sort of puddle--and therewere other disagreeable circumstances. He was of good heart, however. At present comparatively comfortable, had a bad throat, was delightedwith a stick of horehound candy I gave him, with one or two othertrifles. 

PATENT-OFFICE HOSPITAL

_February 23. _--I must not let the great hospital at the Patent-officepass away without some mention. A few weeks ago the vast area of thesecond story of that noblest of Washington buildings was crowded closewith rows of sick, badly wounded and dying soldiers. They were placedin three very large apartments. I went there many times. It was astrange, solemn, and, with all its features of suffering and death, a sort of fascinating sight. I go sometimes at night to soothe andrelieve particular cases. Two of the immense apartments are fill'dwith high and ponderous glass cases, crowded with models in miniatureof every kind of utensil, machine or invention, it ever enter'dinto the mind of man to conceive; and with curiosities and foreignpresents. Between these cases are lateral openings, perhaps eight feetwide and quite deep, and in these were placed the sick, besides agreat long double row of them up and down through the middle of thehall. Many of them were very bad cases, wounds and amputations. Thenthere was a gallery running above the hall in which there were bedsalso. It was, indeed, a curious scene, especially at night when litup. The glass cases, the beds, the forms lying there, the galleryabove, and the marble pavement under foot--the suffering, and thefortitude to bear it in various degrees--occasionally, from some, thegroan that could not be repress'd--sometimes a poor fellow dying, withemaciated face and glassy eye, the nurse by his side, the doctor alsothere, but no friend, no relative--such were the sights but lately inthe Patent-office. (The wounded have since been removed from there, and it is now vacant again. )

THE WHITE HOUSE BY MOONLIGHT

_February 24th. _--A spell of fine soft weather. I wander about a gooddeal, sometimes at night under the moon. Tonight took a long look atthe President's house. The white portico--the palace-like, tall, round columns, spotless as snow--the walls also--the tender andsoft moonlight, flooding the pale marble, and making peculiar faintlanguishing shades, not shadows--everywhere a soft transparenthazy, thin, blue moon-lace, hanging in the air--the brilliant andextra-plentiful clusters of gas, on and around the facade, columns, portico, &c. --everything so white, so marbly pure and dazzling, yetsoft--the White House of future poems, and of dreams and dramas, therein the soft and copious moon--the gorgeous front, in the trees, underthe lustrous flooding moon, full of realty, full of illusion--theforms of the trees, leafless, silent, in trunk and myriad--angles ofbranches, under the stars and sky--the White House of the land, and ofbeauty and night--sentries at the gates, and by the portico, silent, pacing there in blue overcoats--stopping you not at all, but eyeingyou with sharp eyes, whichever way you move. 

AN ARMY HOSPITAL WARD

Let me specialize a visit I made to the collection of barrack-likeone-story edifices, Campbell hospital, out on the flats, at the endof the then horse railway route, on Seventh street. There is along building appropriated to each ward. Let us go into ward 6. Itcontains, to-day, I should judge, eighty or a hundred patients, half sick, half wounded. The edifice is nothing but boards, wellwhitewash'd inside, and the usual slender-framed iron bedsteads, narrow and plain. You walk down the central passage, with a row oneither side, their feet towards you, and their heads to the wall. There are fires in large stoves, and the prevailing white of thewalls is reliev'd by some ornaments, stars, circles, &c. , made ofevergreens. The view of the whole edifice and occupants can be takenat once, for there is no partition. You may hear groans or othersounds of unendurable suffering from two or three of the cots, but inthe main there is quiet--almost a painful absence of demonstration;but the pallid face, the dull'd eye, and the moisture of the lip, aredemonstration enough. Most of these sick or hurt are evidently youngfellows from the country, farmers' sons, and such like. Look at thefine large frames, the bright and broad countenances, and the manyyet lingering proofs of strong constitution and physique. Look at thepatient and mute manner of our American wounded as they lie in sucha sad collection; representatives from all New England, and from NewYork, and New Jersey, and Pennsylvania--indeed from all the Statesand all the cities--largely from the west. Most of them are entirelywithout friends or acquaintances here--no familiar face, and hardly aword of judicious sympathy or cheer, through their sometimes long andtedious sickness, or the pangs of aggravated wounds. 

A CONNECTICUT CASE

This young man in bed 25 is H. D. B. Of the 27th Connecticut, companyB. His folks live at Northford, near New Haven. Though not more thantwenty-one, or thereabouts, he has knock'd much around the world, onsea and land, and has seen some fighting on both. When I first saw himhe was very sick, with no appetite. He declined offers of money--saidhe did not need anything. As I was quite anxious to do something, he confess'd that he had a hankering for a good home-made ricepudding--thought he could relish it better than anything. At thistime his stomach was very weak. (The doctor, whom I consulted, saidnourishment would do him more good than anything; but things in thehospital, though better than usual, revolted him. ) I soon procured B. His rice pudding. A Washington lady, (Mrs. O'C. ), hearing his wish, made the pudding herself, and I took it up to him the next day. Hesubsequently told me he lived upon it for three or four days. ThisB. Is a good sample of the American eastern young man--the typicalYankee. I took a fancy to him, and gave him a nice pipe for akeepsake. He receiv'd afterwards a box of things from home, andnothing would do but I must take dinner with him, which I did, and avery good one it was. 

TWO BROOKLYN BOYS

Here in this same ward are two young men from Brooklyn, members of the51st New York. I had known both the two as young lads at home, so theyseem near to me. One of them, J. L. , lies there with an amputatedarm, the stump healing pretty well. (I saw him lying on the groundat Fredericksburgh last December, all bloody, just after the arm wastaken off. He was very phlegmatic about it, munching away at a crackerin the remaining hand--made no fuss. ) He will recover, and thinks andtalks yet of meeting Johnny Rebs. 

A SECESH BRAVE

The grand soldiers are not comprised in those of one side, any morethan the other. Here is a sample of an unknown southerner, a ladof seventeen. At the War department, a few days ago, I witness'da presentation of captured flags to the Secretary. Among others asoldier named Gant, of the 104th Ohio volunteers, presented a rebelbattle-flag, which one of the officers stated to me was borne to themouth of our cannon and planted there by a boy but seventeen yearsof age, who actually endeavor'd to stop the muzzle of the gun withfence-rails. He was kill'd in the effort, and the flag-staff wassever'd by a shot from one of our men. 

THE WOUNDED FROM CHANCELLORSVILLE

_May '63_. --As I write this, the wounded have begun to arrive fromHooker's command from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among thefirst arrivals. The men in charge told me the bad cases were yet tocome. If that is so I pity them, for these are bad enough. You oughtto see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here at thefoot of Sixth street, at night. Two boat loads came about half-pastseven last night. A little after eight it rain'd a long and violentshower. The pale, helpless soldiers had been debark'd, and lay aroundon the wharf and neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them; at any rate they were exposed to it. The few torcheslight up the spectacle. All around--on the wharf, on the ground, outon side places--the men are lying on blankets, old quilts, &c. , withbloody rags bound round heads, arms, and legs. The attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also--only a few hard-work'd transportationmen and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be common, and peoplegrow callous. ) The men, whatever their condition, lie there, andpatiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by, theambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another iscall'd to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off onstretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever theirsufferings. A few groans that cannot be suppress'd, and occasionallya scream of pain as they lift a man into the ambulance. To-day, asI write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the next daymore, and so on for many days. Quite often they arrive at the rate of1000 a day. 

A NIGHT BATTLE OVER A WEEK SINCE

_May 12_. --There was part of the late battle at Chancellorsville, (second Fredericksburgh, ) a little over a week ago, Saturday, Saturdaynight and Sunday, under Gen. Joe Hooker, I would like to give just aglimpse of--(a moment's look in a terrible storm at sea--of which afew suggestions are enough, and full details impossible. ) The fightinghad been very hot during the day, and after an intermission the latterpart, was resumed at night, and kept up with furious energy till 3o'clock in the morning. That afternoon (Saturday) an attack suddenand strong by Stonewall Jackson had gain'd a great advantage to thesouthern army, and broken our lines, entering us like a wedge, andleaving things in that position at dark. But Hooker at 11 at nightmade a desperate push, drove the secesh forces back, restored hisoriginal lines, and resumed his plans. This night scrimmage was veryexciting, and afforded countless strange and fearful pictures. Thefighting had been general both at Chancellorsville and northeast atFredericksburgh. (We hear of some poor fighting, episodes, skedaddlingon our part. I think not of it. I think of the fierce bravery, thegeneral rule. ) One corps, the 6th, Sedgewick's, fights four dashingand bloody battles in thirty-six hours, retreating in great jeopardy, losing largely but maintaining itself, fighting with the sternestdesperation under all circumstances, getting over the Rappahannockonly by the skin of its teeth, yet getting over. It lost many, manybrave men, yet it took vengeance, ample vengeance. 

But it was the tug of Saturday evening, and through the night andSunday morning, I wanted to make a special note of. It was largelyin the woods, and quite a general engagement. The night was verypleasant, at times the moon shining out full and clear, all Nature socalm in itself, the early summer grass so rich, and foliage of thetrees--yet there the battle raging, and many good fellows lyinghelpless, with new accessions to them, and every minute amid therattle of muskets and crash of cannon, (for there was an artillerycontest too, ) the red life-blood oozing out from heads or trunks orlimbs upon that green and dew-cool grass. Patches of the woods takefire, and several of the wounded, unable to move, are consumed--quitelarge spaces are swept over, burning the dead also--some of the menhave their hair and beards singed--some, burns on their faces andhands--others holes burnt in their clothing. The flashes of firefrom the cannon, the quick flaring flames and smoke, and the immenseroar--the musketry so general, the light nearly bright enough foreach side to see the other--the crashing, tramping of men--theyelling--close quarters--we hear the secesh yells--our men cheerloudly back, especially if Hooker is in sight--hand to hand conflicts, each side stands up to it, brave, determin'd as demons, they oftencharge upon us--a thousand deeds are done worth to write newer greaterpoems on--and still the woods on fire--still many are not onlyscorch'd--too many, unable to move, are burned to death. 

Then the camps of the wounded--O heavens, what scene is this?--isthis indeed _humanity_--these butchers' shambles? There areseveral of them. There they lie, in the largest, in an open space inthe woods, from 200 to 300 poor fellows--the groans and screams--theodor of blood, mixed with the fresh scent of the night, the grass, thetrees--that slaughter-house! O well is it their mothers, their sisterscannot see them--cannot conceive, and never conceiv'd, these things. One man is shot by a shell, both in the arm and leg--both areamputated--there lie the rejected members. Some have their legs blownoff--some bullets through the breast--some indescribably horrid woundsin the face or head, all mutilated, sickening, torn, gouged out--somein the abdomen--some mere boys--many rebels, badly hurt--they taketheir regular turns with the rest, just the same as any--the surgeonsuse them just the same. Such is the camp of the wounded--such afragment, a reflection afar off of the bloody scene--while all overthe clear, large moon comes out at times softly, quietly shining. Amidthe woods, that scene of flitting souls--amid the crack and crashand yelling sounds--the impalpable perfume of the woods--and yet thepungent, stifling smoke--the radiance of the moon, looking from heavenat intervals so placid--the sky so heavenly the clear-obscure upthere, those buoyant upper oceans--a few large placid stars beyond, coming silently and languidly out, and then disappearing--themelancholy, draperied night above, around. And there, upon the roads, the fields, and in those woods, that contest, never one more desperatein any age or land--both parties now in force--masses--no fancybattle, no semi-play, but fierce and savage demons fightingthere--courage and scorn of death the rule, exceptions almost none. 

What history, I say, can ever give--for who can know--the mad, determin'd tussle of the armies, in all their separate large andlittle squads--as this--each steep'd from crown to toe in desperate, mortal purports? Who know the conflict, hand-to-hand--the manyconflicts in the dark, those shadowy-tangled, flashing moonbeam'dwoods--the writhing groups and squads--the cries, the din, thecracking guns and pistols--the distant cannon--the cheers and callsand threats and awful music of the oaths--the indescribable mix--theofficers' orders, persuasions, encouragements--the devils fully rous'din human hearts--the strong shout, _Charge, men, charge_--the flashof the naked sword, and rolling flame and smoke? And still the broken, clear and clouded heaven--and still again the moonlight pouringsilvery soft its radiant patches over all. Who paint the scene, the sudden partial panic of the afternoon, at dusk? Who paint theirrepressible advance of the second division of the Third corps, underHooker himself, suddenly order'd up--those rapid-filing phantomsthrough the woods? Who show what moves there in the shadows, fluid andfirm--to save, (and it did save, ) the army's name, perhaps the nation?as there the veterans hold the field. (Brave Berry falls not yet--butdeath has mark'd him--soon he falls. )

UNNAMED REMAINS THE BRAVEST SOLDIER

Of scenes like these, I say, who writes--whoe'er can write the story?Of many a score--aye, thousands, north and south, of unwrit heroes, unknown heroisms, incredible, impromptu, first-class desperations--whotells? No history ever--no poem sings, no music sounds, those bravestmen of all--those deeds. No formal general's report, nor book in thelibrary, norcolumn in the paper, embalms the bravest, north or south, east or west. Unnamed, unknown, remain, and still remain, the bravestsoldiers. Our manliest--our boys--our hardy darlings; no picture givesthem. Likely, the typic one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds, thousands, ) crawls aside to some bush-clump, or ferny tuft, onreceiving his death-shot--there sheltering a little while, soakingroots, grass and soil, with red blood--the battle advances, retreats, flits from the scene, sweeps by--and there, haply with pain andsuffering (yet less, far less, than is supposed, ) the last lethargywinds like a serpent round him--the eyes glaze in death----nonerecks--perhaps the burial-squads, in truce, a week afterwards, searchnot the secluded spot--and there, at last, the Bravest Soldiercrumbles in mother earth, unburied and unknown. 

SOME SPECIMEN CASES

_June 18th_. --In one of the hospitals I find Thomas Haley, company M, 4th New York cavalry--a regular Irish boy, a fine specimen of youthfulphysical manliness--shot through the lungs--inevitably dying--cameover to this country from Ireland to enlist--has not a single friendor acquaintance here--is sleeping soundly at this moment, (but it isthe sleep of death)--has a bullet-hole straight through the lung. Isaw Tom when first brought here, three days since, and didn't supposehe could live twelve hours--(yet he looks well enough in the face toa casual observer. ) He lies there with his frame exposed above thewaist, all naked, for coolness, a fine built man, the tan not yetbleach'd from his cheeks and neck. It is useless to talk to him, aswith his sad hurt, and the stimulants they give him, and the utterstrangeness of every object, face, furniture, &c. , the poor fellow, even when awake, is like some frighten'd, shy animal. Much of the timehe sleeps, or half sleeps. (Sometimes I thought he knew more thanhe show'd. ) I often come and sit by him in perfect silence; he willbreathe for ten minutes as softly and evenly as a young babe asleep. Poor youth, so handsome, athletic, with profuse beautiful shininghair. One time as I sat looking at him while he lay asleep, hesuddenly, without the least start, awaken'd, open'd his eyes, gave mea long steady look, turning his face very slightly to gaze easier--onelong, clear, silent look--a slight sigh--then turn'd back and wentinto his doze again. Little he knew, poor death-stricken boy, theheart of the stranger that hover'd near. 

_W. H. E. , Co. F, 2nd N. Y. _--His disease is pneumonia. He lay sick atthe wretched hospital below Aquia creek, for seven or eight daysbefore brought here. He was detail'd from his regiment to go thereand help as nurse, but was soon taken down himself. Is an elderly, sallow-faced, rather gaunt, gray-hair'd man, a widower, with children. He express'd a great desire for good, strong green tea. An excellentlady, Mrs. W. , of Washington, soon sent him a package; also a smallsum of money. The doctor said give him the tea at pleasure; it layon the table by his side, and he used it every day. He slept a greatdeal; could not talk much, as he grew deaf. Occupied bed 15, ward I, Armory. (The same lady above, Mrs. W. , sent the men a large package oftobacco. )

J. G. Lies in bed 52, ward I; is of company B, 7th Pennsylvania. Igave him a small sum of money, some tobacco, and envelopes. To a manadjoining also gave twenty-five cents; he flush'd in the face when Ioffer'd it--refused at first, but as I found he had not a cent, andwas very fond of having the daily papers to read, I prest it on him. He was evidently very grateful, but said little. 

J. T. L. , of company F, 9th New Hampshire, lies in bed 37, ward I. Isvery fond of tobacco. I furnish him some; also with a little money. Has gangrene of the feet; a pretty bad case; will surely have to losethree toes. Is a regular specimen of an old-fashion'd, rude, hearty, New England countryman, impressing me with his likeness to thatcelebrated singed cat, who was better than she look'd. 

Bed 3, ward E, Armory, has a great hankering for pickles, somethingpungent. After consulting the doctor, I gave him a small bottle ofhorse-radish; also some apples; also a book. Some of the nurses areexcellent. The woman-nurse in this ward I like very much. (Mrs. Wright--a year afterwards I found her in Mansion house hospital, Alexandria--she is a perfect nurse. )

In one bed a young man, Marcus Small, company K, 7th Maine--sick withdysentery and typhoid fever--pretty critical case--I talk with himoften--he thinks he will die--looks like it indeed. I write a letterfor him home to East Livermore, Maine--I let him talk to me a little, but not much, advise him to keep very quiet--do most of the talkingmyself--stay quite a while with him, as he holds on to my hand--talkto him in a cheering, but slow, low and measured manner--talk abouthis furlough, and going home as soon as he is able to travel. 

Thomas Lindly, 1st Pennsylvania cavalry, shot very badly through thefoot--poor young man, he suffers horridly, has to be constantly dosedwith morphine, his face ashy and glazed, bright young eyes--I give hima large handsome apple, lay it in sight, tell him to have it roastedin the morning, as he generally feels easier then, and can eat alittle breakfast. I write two letters for him. 

Opposite, an old Quaker lady sits by the side of her son, Amer Moore, 2d U. S. Artillery--shot in the head two weeks since, very low, quiterational--from hips down paralyzed--he will surely die. I speak a veryfew words to him every day and evening--he answers pleasantly--wantsnothing--(he told me soon after he came about his home affairs, his mother had been an invalid, and he fear'd to let her know hiscondition. ) He died soon after she came. 

MY PREPARATIONS FOR VISITS

In my visits to the hospitals I found it was in the simple matter ofpersonal presence, and emanating ordinary cheer and magnetism, that Isucceeded and help'd more than by medical nursing, or delicacies, or gifts of money, or anything else. During the war I possess'd theperfection of physical health. My habit, when practicable, was toprepare for starting out on one of those daily or nightly toursof from a couple to four or five hours, by fortifying myself withprevious rest, the bath, clean clothes, a good meal, and as cheerfulan appearance as possible. 

AMBULANCE PROCESSIONS

_June 23, Sundown. _--As I sit writing this paragraph I see a train ofabout thirty huge four-horse wagons, used as ambulances, fill'd withwounded, passing up Fourteenth street, on their way, probably, toColumbian, Carver, and Mount Pleasant hospitals. This is the way themen come in now, seldom in small numbers, but almost always in theselong, sad processions. Through the past winter, while our army layopposite Fredericksburg, the like strings of ambulances were offrequent occurrence along Seventh street, passing slowly up from thesteamboat wharf, with loads from Aquia creek. 

BAD WOUNDS--THE YOUNG

The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than isgenerally supposed--I should say nine-tenths are native-born. Amongthe arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men fearfully burnt from the explosions of artillerycaissons. One ward has a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was perhaps worse than usual. Amputations are going on--theattendants are dressing wounds. As you pass by, you must be on yourguard where you look. I saw the other day a gentlemen, a visitorapparently from curiosity, in one of the wards, stop and turn a momentto look at an awful wound they were probing. He turn'd pale, and in amoment more he had fainted away and fallen to the floor. 

THE MOST INSPIRITING OF ALL WAR'S SHOWS

_June 29. _--Just before sundown this evening a very large cavalryforce went by--a fine sight. The men evidently had seen service. Firstcame a mounted band of sixteen bugles, drums and cymbals, playing wildmartial tunes--made my heart jump. Then the principal officers, thencompany after company, with their officers at their heads, making ofcourse the main part of the cavalcade; then a long train of men withled horses, lots of mounted negroes with special horses--and a longstring of baggage-wagons, each drawn by four horses--and then a motleyrear guard. 

It was a pronouncedly warlike and gay show; the sabres clank'd, themen look'd young and healthy and strong; the electric tramping of somany horses on the hard road, and the gallant bearing, fine seat, andbright faced appearance of a thousand and more handsome young Americanmen, were so good to see. An hour later another troop went by, smaller in numbers, perhaps three hundred men. They too look'd likeserviceable men, campaigners used to field and fight. 

_July 3_. --This forenoon, for more than an hour, again long stringsof cavalry, several regiments, very fine men and horses, four or fiveabreast. I saw them in Fourteenth street, coming in town from north. Several hundred extra horses, some of the mares with colts, trottingalong. (Appear'd to be a number of prisoners too. ) How inspiritingalways the cavalry regiments. Our men are generally well mounted, feelgood, are young, gay on the saddle, their blankets in a roll behindthem, their sabres clanking at their sides. This noise and movementand the tramp of many horses' hoofs has a curious effect upon one. Thebugles play--presently you hear them afar off, deaden'd, mix'd withother noises. Then just as they had all pass'd, a string of ambulancescommenc'd from the other way, moving up Fourteenth street north, slowly wending along, bearing a large lot of wounded to the hospitals. 

BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG

_July 4th_. --The weather to-day, upon the whole, is very fine, warm, but from a smart rain last night, fresh enough, and no dust, whichis a great relief for this city. I saw the parade about noon, Pennsylvania avenue, from Fifteenth street down toward the capitol. There were three regiments of infantry, (I suppose the ones doingpatrol duty here, ) two or three societies of Odd Fellows, a lot ofchildren in barouches, and a squad of policemen. (A useless impositionupon the soldiers--they have work enough on their backs without pilingthe like of this. )

As I went down the Avenue, saw a big flaring placard on the bulletinboard of a newspaper office, announcing "Glorious Victory for theUnion Army!" Meade had fought Lee at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, yesterday and day before, and repuls'd him most signally, taken 3, 000prisoners, &c. (I afterwards saw Meade's despatch, very modest, and asort of order of the day from the President himself, quite religious, giving thanks to the Supreme, and calling on the people to do thesame. )

I walk'd on to Armory hospital--took along with me several bottlesof blackberry and cherry syrup, good and strong, but innocent. Wentthrough several of the wards, announc'd to the soldiers the news fromMeade, and gave them all a good drink of the syrups with ice water, quite refreshing--prepar'd it all myself, and serv'd it around. Meanwhile the Washington bells are ringing their sun-down peals forFourth of July, and the usual fusilades of boys' pistols, crackers, and guns. 

A CAVALRY CAMP

I am writing this, nearly sundown, watching a cavalry company (actingSignal service, ) just come in through a shower, making their night'scamp ready on some broad, vacant ground, a sort of hill, in full viewopposite my window. There are the men in their yellow-striped jackets. All are dismounted; the freed horses stand with drooping heads andwet sides; they are to be led off presently in groups, to water. Thelittle wall-tents and shelter tents spring up quickly. I see the firesalready blazing, and pots and kettles over them. Some among the menare driving in tent-poles, wielding their axes with strong, slowblows. I see great huddles of horses, bundles of hay, groups of men(some with unbuckled sabres yet on their sides, ) a few officers, pilesof wood, the flames of the fires, saddles, harness, &c. The smokestreams upward, additional men arrive and dismount--some drive instakes, and tie their horses to them; some go with buckets for water, some are chopping wood, and so on. 

_July 6th_. --A steady rain, dark and thick and warm. A train ofsix-mule wagons has just pass'd bearing pontoons, great square-endflatboats, and the heavy planking for overlaying them. We hear thatthe Potomac above here is flooded, and are wondering whether Lee willbe able to get back across again, or whether Meade will indeed breakhim to pieces. The cavalry camp on the hill is a ceaseless field ofobservation for me. This forenoon there stand the horses, tether'dtogether, dripping, steaming, chewing their hay. The men emerge fromtheir tents, dripping also. The fires are half quench'd. 

_July 10th_. --Still the camp opposite--perhaps fifty or sixty tents. Some of the men are cleaning their sabres (pleasant to-day, ) somebrushing boots, some laying off, reading, writing--some cooking, somesleeping. On long temporary cross-sticks back of the tents are cavalryaccoutrements--blankets and overcoats are hung out to air--there arethe squads of horses tether'd, feeding, continually stamping andwhisking their tails to keep off flies. I sit long in my thirdstory window and look at the scene--a hundred little things goingon--peculiar objects connected with the camp that could not bedescribed, any one of them justly, without much minute drawing andcoloring in words. 

A NEW YORK SOLDIER

This afternoon, July 22d, I have spent a long time with Oscar F. Wilber, company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhoea, anda bad wound also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the NewTestament. I complied, and ask'd him what I should read. He said, "Make your own choice. " I open'd at the close of one of the firstbooks of the evangelists, and read the chapters describing the latterhours of Christ, and the scenes at the crucifixion. The poor, wastedyoung man ask'd me to read the following chapter also, how Christ roseagain. I read very slowly, for Oscar was feeble. It pleased himvery much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He ask'd me if I enjoy'dreligion. I said, "Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you mean, and yet, may-be, it is the same thing. " He said, "It is my chief reliance. " Hetalk'd of death, and said he did not fear it. I said, "Why, Oscar, don't you think you will get well?" He said, "I may, but it is notprobable. " He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad, it discharg'd much. Then the diarrhoea had prostrated him, and I feltthat he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly andaffectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he return'dfourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany pest-office, Cattaraugus county, N. Y. I had several suchinterviews with him. He died a few days after the one just described. 

HOME-MADE MUSIC

_August 8th_. --To-night, as I was trying to keep cool, sitting by awounded soldier in Armory-square, I was attracted by some pleasantsinging in an adjoining ward. As my soldier was asleep, I left him, and entering the ward where the music was, I walk'd halfway downand took a seat by the cot of a young Brooklyn friend, S. R. , badlywounded in the hand at Chancellorsville, and who has suffer'd much, but at that moment in the evening was wide awake and comparativelyeasy. He had turn'd over on his left side to get a better view of thesingers, but the mosquito-curtains of the adjoining cots obstructedthe sight. I stept round and loop'd them all up, so that he had aclear show, and then sat down again by him, and look'd and listen'd. The principal singer was a young lady-nurse of one of the wards, accompanying on a melodeon, and join'd by the lady-nurses of otherwards. They sat there, making a charming group, with their handsome, healthy faces, and standing up a little behind them were some ten orfifteen of the convalescent soldiers, young men, nurses, &c. , withbooks in their hands, singing. Of course it was not such a performanceas the great soloists at the New York opera house take a hand in, yetI am not sure but I receiv'd as much pleasure under the circumstances, sitting there, as I have had from the best Italian compositions, express'd by world-famous performers. The men lying up and down thehospital, in their cots, (some badly wounded--some never to risethence, ) the cots themselves, with their drapery of white curtains, and the shadows down the lower and upper parts of the ward; then thesilence of the men, and the attitudes they took--the whole was a sightto look around upon again and again. And there sweetly rose thosevoices up to the high, whitewash'd wooden roof, and pleasantly theroof sent it all back again. They sang very well, mostly quaint oldsongs and declamatory hymns, to fitting tunes. Here, for instance:

 My days are swiftly gliding by, and I a pilgrim stranger, Would not detain them as they fly, those hours of toil and danger; For O we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over, And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover. We'll gird our loins my brethren dear, our distant home discerning, Our absent Lord has left us word, let every lamp be burning, For O we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over, And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

_August 12th_. --I see the President almost every day, as I happen tolive where he passes to or from his lodgings out of town. He neversleeps at the White House during the hot season, but has quarters ata healthy location some three miles north of the city, the Soldiers'home, a United States military establishment. I saw him this morningabout 8 1/2 coming in to business, riding on Vermont avenue, near Lstreet. He always has a company of twenty-five or thirty cavalry, withsabres drawn and held upright over their shoulders. They say thisguard was against his personal wish, but he let his counselors havetheir way. The party makes no great show in uniform or horses. Mr. Lincoln on the saddle generally rides a good-sized, easy-going grayhorse, is dress'd in plain black, somewhat rusty and dusty, wears ablack stiff hat, and looks about as ordinary in attire, &c. , as thecommonest man. A lieutenant, with yellow straps, rides at his left, and following behind, two by two, come the cavalry men, in theiryellow-striped jackets. They are generally going at a slow trot, asthat is the pace set them by the one they wait upon. The sabres andaccoutrements clank, and the entirely unornamental _cortege_ as ittrots towards Lafayette square arouses no sensation, only some curiousstranger stops and gazes. I see very plainly ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S darkbrown face, with the deep-cut lines, the eyes, always to me with adeep latent sadness in the expression. We have got so that we exchangebows, and very cordial ones. Sometimes the President goes and comes inan open barouche. The cavalry always accompany him, with drawn sabres. Often I notice as he goes out evenings--and sometimes in the morning, when he returns early--he turns off and halts at the large andhandsome residence of the Secretary of War, on K street, and holdsconference there. If in his barouche, I can see from my window he doesnot alight, but sits in his vehicle, and Mr. Stanton comes out toattend him. Sometimes one of his sons, a boy of ten or twelve, accompanies him, riding at his right on a pony. Earlier in the summerI occasionally saw the President and his wife, toward the latter partof the afternoon, out in a barouche, on a pleasure ride through thecity. Mrs. Lincoln was dress'd in complete black, with a long crapeveil. The equipage is of the plainest kind, only two horses, and theynothing extra. They pass'd me once very close, and I saw the Presidentin the face fully, as they were moving slowly, and his look, thoughabstracted, happen'd to be directed steadily in my eye. He bow'd andsmiled, but far beneath his smile I noticed well the expression Ihave alluded to. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There issomething else there. One of the great portrait painters of two orthree centuries ago is needed. 

HEATED TERM

There has lately been much suffering here from heat; we have had itupon us now eleven days. I go around with an umbrella and a fan. I sawtwo cases of sun-stroke yesterday, one in Pennsylvania avenue, andanother in Seventh street. The City railroad company loses some horsesevery day. Yet Washington is having a livelier August, and is probablyputting in a more energetic and satisfactory summer, than ever beforeduring its existence. There is probably more human electricity, morepopulation to make it, more business, more light-heartedness, than ever before. The armies that swiftly circumambiated fromFredericksburgh--march'd, struggled, fought, had out their mightyclinch and hurl at Gettysburg--wheel'd, circumambiated again, return'dto their ways, touching us not, either at their going or coming. AndWashington feels that she has pass'd the worst; perhaps feels that sheis henceforth mistress. So here she sits with her surrounding hillsspotted with guns, and is conscious of a character and identitydifferent from what it was five or six short weeks ago, and veryconsiderably pleasanter and prouder. 

SOLDIERS AND TALKS

Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, you meet everywhere about the city, often superb-looking men, though invalids dress'd in worn uniforms, and carrying canes or crutches. I often have talks with them, occasionally quite long and interesting. One, for instance, will havebeen all through the peninsula under McClellan--narrates to me thefights, the marches, the strange, quick changes of that eventfulcampaign, and gives glimpses of many things untold in any officialreports or books or journals. These, indeed, are the things that aregenuine and precious. The man was there, has been out two years, hasbeen through a dozen fights, the superfluous flesh of talking is longwork'd off him, and he gives me little but the hard meat and sinew. I find it refreshing, these hardy, bright, intuitive, American youngmen, (experienc'd soldiers with all their youth. ) The vocal play andsignificance moves one more than books. Then there hangs somethingmajestic about a man who has borne his part in battles, especially ifhe is very quiet regarding it when you desire him to unbosom. I amcontinually lost at the absence of blowing and blowers among theseold-young American militaires. I have found some man or other who hasbeen in every battle since the war began, and have talk'd with themabout each one in every part of the United States, and many of theengagements on the rivers and harbors too. I find men here from everyState in the Union, without exception. (There are more Southerners, especially border State men, in the Union army than is generallysupposed. [A]) I now doubt whether one can get a fair idea ofwhat this war practically is, or what genuine America is, and hercharacter, without some such experience as this I am having. 

DEATH OF A WISCONSIN OFFICER

Another characteristic scene of that dark and bloody 1863, from notesof my visit to Armory-square hospital, one hot but pleasant summerday. In ward H we approach the cot of a young lieutenant of one of theWisconsin regiments. Tread the bare board floor lightly here, for thepain and panting of death are in this cot. I saw the lieutenant whenhe was first brought here from Chancellorsville, and have been withhim occasionally from day to day and night to night. He had beengetting along pretty well till night before last, when a suddenhemorrhage that could not be stopt came upon him, and to-day it stillcontinues at intervals. Notice that water-pail by the side of the bed, with a quantity of blood and bloody pieces of muslin, nearly full;that tells the story. The poor young man is struggling painfully forbreath, his great dark eyes with a glaze already upon them, and thechoking faint but audible in his throat. An attendant sits by him, andwill not leave him till the last; yet little or nothing can be done. He will die here in an hour or two, without the presence of kith orkin. Meantime the ordinary chat and business of[6] the ward a littleway off goes on indifferently. Some of the inmates are laughing andjoking, others are playing checkers or cards, others are reading, &c. 

I have noticed through most of the hospitals that as long as there isany chance for a man, no matter how bad he may be, the surgeon andnurses work hard, sometimes with curious tenacity, for his life, doing everything, and keeping somebody by him to execute the doctor'sorders, and minister to him every minute night and day. See thatscreen there. As you advance through the dusk of early candle-light, anurse will step forth on tip-toe, and silently but imperiously forbidyou to make any noise, or perhaps to come near at all. Some soldier'slife is flickering there, suspended between recovery and death. Perhaps at this moment the exhausted frame has just fallen into alight sleep that a step might shake. You must retire. The neighboringpatients must move in their stocking feet. I have been several timesstruck with such mark'd efforts--everything bent to save a life fromthe very grip of the destroyer. But when that grip is once firmlyfix'd, leaving no hope or chance at all, the surgeon abandons thepatient. If it is a case where stimulus is any relief, the nurse givesmilk-punch or brandy, or whatever is wanted, _ad libitum_. There is nofuss made. Not a bit of sentimentalism or whining have I seen about asingle death-bed in hospital or on the field, but generally impassiveindifference. All is over, as far as any efforts can avail; it isuseless to expend emotions or labors. While there is a prospect theystrive hard--at least most surgeons do; but death certain and evident, they yield the field. 

Note:

[6]MR. GARFIELD (_In the House of Representatives, April 15, '79_. ) "Dogentlemen know that (leaving out all the border States) there werefifty regiments and seven companies of white men in our army fightingfor the Union from the States that went into rebellion? Do they knowthat from the single State of Kentucky more Union soldiers foughtunder our flag than Napoleon took into the battle of Waterloo? morethan Wellington took with all the allied armies against Napoleon? Dothey remember that 186, 000 color'd men fought under our flag againstthe rebellion and for the Union, and that of that number 90, 000 werefrom the States which went into rebellion?"

HOSPITALS ENSEMBLE

_Aug. , Sept. , and Oct. , '63. _--I am in the habit of going to all, andto Fairfax seminary, Alexandria, and over Long bridge to the greatConvalescent camp. The journals publish a regular directory of them--a long list. As a specimen of almost any one of the larger of thesehospitals, fancy to yourself a space of three to twenty acres ofground, on which are group'd ten or twelve very large wooden barracks, with, perhaps, a dozen or twenty, and sometimes more than that number, small buildings, capable altogether of accommodating from five hundredto a thousand or fifteen hundred persons. Sometimes these woodenbarracks or wards, each of them perhaps from a hundred to a hundredand fifty feet long, are rang'd in a straight row, evenly frontingthe street; others are plann'd so as to form an immense V; and othersagain are ranged around a hollow square. They make altogether ahuge cluster, with the additional tents, extra wards for contagiousdiseases, guard-houses, sutler's stores, chaplain's house; in themiddle will probably be an edifice devoted to the offices of thesurgeon in charge and the ward surgeons, principal attaches, clerks, &c. The wards are either letter'd alphabetically, ward G, ward K, orelse numerically, 1, 2, 3, &c. Each has its ward surgeon and corpsof nurses. Of course, there is, in the aggregate, quite a muster ofemployes, and over all the surgeon in charge. Here in Washington, when these army hospitals are all fill'd, (as they have been alreadyseveral times, ) they contain a population more numerous in itself thanthe whole of the Washington of ten or fifteen years ago. Within sightof the capitol, as I write, are some thirty or forty such collections, at times holding from fifty to seventy thousand men. Looking from anyeminence and studying the topography in my rambles, I use them aslandmarks. Through the rich August verdure of the trees, see thatwhite group of buildings off yonder in the outskirts; then anothercluster half a mile to the left of the first; then another a mile tothe right, and another a mile beyond, and still another between usand the first. Indeed, we can hardly look in any direction but theseclusters are dotting the landscape and environs. That little town, asyou might suppose it, off there on the brow of a hill, is indeed atown, but of wounds, sickness, and death. It is Finley hospital, northeast of the city, on Kendall green, as it used to be call'd. Thatother is Campbell hospital. Both are large establishments. I haveknown these two alone to have from two thousand to twenty-five hundredinmates. Then there is Carver hospital, larger still, a wall'd andmilitary city regularly laid out, and guarded by squads of sentries. Again, off east, Lincoln hospital, a still larger one; and half a milefurther Emory hospital. Still sweeping the eye around down the rivertoward Alexandria, we see, to the right, the locality where theConvalescent camp stands, with its five, eight, or sometimes tenthousand inmates. Even all these are but a portion. The Harewood, Mount Pleasant, Armory-square, Judiciary hospitals, are some of therest, and all large collections. 

A SILENT NIGHT RAMBLE

_October 20th_. --To-night, after leaving the hospital at 10 o'clock, (I had been on self-imposed duty some five hours, pretty closelyconfined, ) I wander'd a long time around Washington. The night wassweet, very clear, sufficiently cool, a voluptuous halfmoon, slightlygolden, the space near it of a transparent blue-gray tinge. I walk'dup Pennsylvania avenue, and then to Seventh street, and a long whilearound the Patent-office. Somehow it look'd rebukefully strong, majestic, there in the delicate moonlight. The sky, the planets, theconstellations all so bright, so calm, so expressively silent, sosoothing, after those hospital scenes. I wander'd to and fro till themoist moon set, long after midnight. 

SPIRITUAL CHARACTERS AMONG THE SOLDIERS

Every now and then, in hospital or camp, there are beings Imeet--specimens of unworldliness, disinterestedness, and animal purityand heroism--perhaps some unconscious Indianian, or from Ohio orTennessee--on whose birth the calmness of heaven seems to havedescended, and whose gradual growing up, whatever the circumstancesof work-life or change, or hardship, or small or no education thatattended it, the power of a strange spiritual sweetness, fibre andinward health, have also attended. Something veil'd and abstracted isoften a part of the manners of these beings. I have met them, I say, not seldom in the army, in camp, and in the hospitals. The Westernregiments contain many of them. They are often young men, obeyingthe events and occasions about them, marching, soldiering, righting, foraging, cooking, working on farms or at some trade before thewar--unaware of their own nature, (as to that, who is aware of his ownnature?) their companions only understanding that they are differentfrom the rest, more silent, "something odd about them, " and apt to gooff and meditate and muse in solitude. 

CATTLE DROVES ABOUT WASHINGTON

Among other sights are immense droves of cattle with their drivers, passing through the streets of the city. Some of the men have a wayof leading the cattle by a peculiar call, a wild, pensive hoot, quitemusical, prolong'd, indescribable, sounding something between thecooing of a pigeon and the hoot of an owl. I like to stand and look atthe sight of one of these immense droves--a little way off--(as thedust is great. ) There are always men on horseback, cracking theirwhips and shouting--the cattle low--some obstinate ox or steerattempts to escape--then a lively scene--the mounted men, alwaysexcellent riders and on good horses, dash after the recusant, andwheel and turn--a dozen mounted drovers, their great slouch'd, broad-brim'd hats, very picturesque--another dozen on foot--everybodycover'd with dust--long goads in their hands--an immense drove ofperhaps 1000 cattle--the shouting, hooting, movement, &c. 

HOSPITAL PERPLEXITY

To add to other troubles, amid the confusion of this great army ofsick, it is almost impossible for a stranger to find any friend orrelative, unless he has the patient's specific address to start upon. Besides the directory printed in the newspapers here, there are oneor two general directories of the hospitals kept at provost'shead-quarters, but they are nothing like complete; they are never upto date, and, as things are, with the daily streams of coming andgoing and changing, cannot be. I have known cases, for instance suchas a farmer coming here from northern New York to find a woundedbrother, faithfully hunting round for a week, and then compell'd toleave and go home without getting any trace of him. When he got homehe found a letter from the brother giving the right address. 

DOWN AT THE FRONT

CULPEPPER, VA. , _Feb. '64. _--Here I am FRONT pretty well down towardthe extreme front. Three or four days ago General S. , who is now inchief command, (I believe Meade is absent, sick, ) moved a strongforce southward from camp as if intending business. They went to theRapidan; there has since been some manoeuvering and a little fighting, but nothing of consequence. The telegraphic accounts given Mondaymorning last, make entirely too much of it, I should say. WhatGeneral S. Intended we here know not, but we trust in that competentcommander. We were somewhat excited, (but not so very much either, ) onSunday, during the day and night, as orders were sent out to packup and harness, and be ready to evacuate, to fall back towardsWashington. But I was very sleepy and went to bed. Some tremendousshouts arousing me during the night, I went forth and found it wasfrom the men above mention'd, who were returning. I talk'd with someof the men; as usual I found them full of gayety, endurance, and manyfine little outshows, the signs of the most excellent good manlinessof the world. It was a curious sight to see those shadowy columnsmoving through the night. I stood unobserv'd in the darkness andwatch'd them long. The mud was very deep. The men had their usualburdens, overcoats, knapsacks, guns and blankets. Along and along theyfiled by me, with often a laugh, a song, a cheerful word, but neveronce a murmur. It may have been odd, but I never before so realizedthe majesty and reality of the American people _en masse_. It fellupon me like a great awe. The strong ranks moved neither fast norslow. They had march'd seven or eight miles already through theslipping unctuous mud. The brave First corps stopt here. The equallybrave Third corps moved on to Brandy station. The famous Brooklyn 14thare here, guarding the town. You see their red legs actively movingeverywhere. Then they have a theatre of their own here. They givemusical performances, nearly everything done capitally. Of coursethe audience is a jam. It is good sport to attend one of theseentertainments of the 14th. I like to look around at the soldiers, andthe general collection in front of the curtain, more than the scene onthe stage. 

PAYING THE BOUNTIES

One of the things to note here now is the arrival of the paymasterwith his strong box, and the payment of bounties to veteransre-enlisting. Major H. Is here to-day, with a small mountain ofgreenbacks, rejoicing the hearts of the 2d division of the Firstcorps. In the midst of a rickety shanty, behind a little table, sitthe major and clerk Eldridge, with the rolls before them, and muchmoneys. A re-enlisted man gets in cash about $200 down, (and heavyinstalments following, as the pay-days arrive, one after another. ) Theshow of the men crowding around is quite exhilarating; I like tostand and look. They feel elated, their pockets full, and the ensuingfurlough, the visit home. It is a scene of sparkling eyes and flush'dcheeks. The soldier has many gloomy and harsh experiences, and thismakes up for some of them. Major H. Is order'd to pay first all there-enlisted men of the First corps their bounties and back pay, andthen the rest. You hear the peculiar sound of the rustling of the newand crisp greenbacks by the hour, through the nimble fingers of themajor and my friend clerk E. 

RUMORS, CHANGES, ETC. 

About the excitement of Sunday, and the orders to be ready to start, I have heard since that the said orders came from some cautious minorcommander, and that the high principalities knew not and thought notof any such move; which is likely. The rumor and fear here intimated along circuit by Lee, and flank attack on our right. But I cast my eyesat the mud, which was then at its deepest and palmiest condition, andretired composedly to rest. Still it is about time for Culpepper tohave a change. Authorities have chased each other here like clouds ina stormy sky. Before the first Bull Run this was the rendezvous andcamp of instruction of the secession troops. I am stopping at thehouse of a lady who has witness'd all the eventful changes of the war, along this route of contending armies. She is a widow, with a familyof young children, and lives here with her sister in a large handsomehouse. A number of army officers board with them. 

VIRGINIA

Dilapidated, fenceless, and trodden with war as Virginia is, whereverI move across her surface, I find myself rous'd to surprise andadmiration. What capacity for products, improvements, human life, nourishment and expansion. Everywhere that I have been in the OldDominion, (the subtle mockery of that title now!) such thoughtshave fill'd me. The soil is yet far above the average of any of thenorthern States. And how full of breadth the scenery, everywheredistant mountains, everywhere convenient rivers. Even yet prodigal inforest woods, and surely eligible for all the fruits, orchards, andflowers. The skies and atmosphere most luscious, as I feel certain, from more than a year's residence in the State, and movements hitherand yon. I should say very healthy, as a general thing. Then a richand elastic quality, by night and by day. The sun rejoices in hisstrength, dazzling and burning, and yet, to me, never unpleasantlyweakening. It is not the panting tropical heat, but invigorates. Thenorth tempers it. The nights are often unsurpassable. Last evening(Feb. 8, ) I saw the first of the new moon, the outlined old moon clearalong with it; the sky and air so clear, such transparent hues ofcolor, it seem'd to me I had never really seen the new moon before. Itwas the thinnest cut crescent possible. It hung delicate just abovethe sulky shadow of the Blue mountains. Ah, if it might prove an omenand good prophecy for this unhappy State. 

SUMMER OF 1864

I am back again in Washington, on my regular daily and nightly rounds. Of course there are many specialties. Dotting a ward here and thereare always cases of poor fellows, long-suffering under obstinatewounds, or weak and dishearten'd from typhoid fever, or the like;mark'd cases, needing special and sympathetic nourishment. These I sitdown and either talk to, or silently cheer them up. They always likeit hugely, (and so do I. ) Each case has its peculiarities, and needssome new adaptation. I have learnt to thus conform--learnt a good dealof hospital wisdom. Some of the poor young chaps, away from home forthe first time in their lives, hunger and thirst for affection; thisis sometimes the only thing that will reach their condition. The menlike to have a pencil, and something to write in. I have given themcheap pocket-diaries, and almanacs for 1864, interleav'd with blankpaper. For reading I generally have some old pictorial magazines orstory papers--they are always acceptable. Also the morning or eveningpapers of the day. The best books I do not give, but lend to readthrough the wards, and then take them to others, and so on; they arevery punctual about returning the books. In these wards, or on thefield, as I thus continue to go round, I have come to adapt myselfto each emergency, after its kind or call, however trivial, howeversolemn, every one justified and made real under its circumstances--not only visits and cheering talk and little gifts--not only washingand dressing wounds, (I have some cases where the patient is unwillingany one should do this but me)--but passages from the Bible, expounding them, prayer at the bedside, explanations of doctrine, &c. (I think I see my friends smiling at this confession, but I was nevermore in earnest in my life. ) In camp and everywhere, I was in thehabit of reading or giving recitations to the men. They were very fondof it, and liked declamatory poetical pieces. We would gather in alarge group by ourselves, after supper, and spend the time in suchreadings, or in talking, and occasionally by an amusing game calledthe game of twenty questions. 

A NEW ARMY ORGANIZATION FIT FOR AMERICA

It is plain to me out of the events of the war, north and south, andout of all considerations, that the current military theory, practice, rules and organization, (adopted from Europe from the feudalinstitutes, with, of course, the "modern improvements, " largely fromthe French, ) though tacitly follow'd, and believ'd in by the officersgenerally, are not at all consonant with the United States, nor ourpeople, nor our days. What it will be I know not--but I know that asentire an abnegation of the present military system, and the navaltoo, and a building up from radically different root-bases and centresappropriate to us, must eventually result, as that our politicalsystem has resulted and become establish'd, different from feudalEurope, and built up on itself from original, perennial, democraticpremises. We have undoubtedly in the United States the greatestmilitary power--an exhaustless, intelligent, brave and reliable rankand file--in the world, any land, perhaps all lands. The problem is toorganize this in the manner fully appropriate to it, to the principlesof the republic, and to get the best service out of it. In the presentstruggle, as already seen and review'd, probably three-fourths of thelosses, men, lives, &c. , have been sheer superfluity, extravagance, waste. 

DEATH OF A HERO

I wonder if I could ever convey to another--to you, for instance, reader dear--the tender and terrible realities of such cases, (many, many happen'd, ) as the one I am now going to mention. Stewart C. Glover, company E, 5th Wisconsin--was wounded May 5, in one of thosefierce tussles of the Wilderness-died May 21--aged about 20. He was asmall and beardless young man--a splendid soldier--in fact almost anideal American, of his age. He had serv'd nearly three years, andwould have been entitled to his discharge in a few days. He was inHancock's corps. The fighting had about ceas'd for the day, and thegeneral commanding the brigade rode by and call'd for volunteers tobring in the wounded. Glover responded among the first--went outgayly--but while in the act of bearing in a wounded sergeant to ourlines, was shot in the knee by a rebel sharpshooter; consequence, amputation and death. He had resided with his father, John Glover, anaged and feeble man, in Batavia, Genesee county, N. Y. , but was atschool in Wisconsin, after the war broke out, and there enlisted--soontook to soldier-life, liked it, was very manly, was belov'd byofficers and comrades. He kept a little diary, like so many of thesoldiers. On the day of his death he wrote the following in it, _to-day the doctor says I must die--all is over with me--ah, so youngto die_. On another blank leaf he pencill'd to his brother, _dearbrother Thomas, I have been brave but wicked--pray for me. _

HOSPITAL SCENES--INCIDENTS

It is Sunday afternoon, middle of summer, hot and oppressive, and verysilent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, nowlying in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel, fromthe 8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly wounded, and lately had his leg amputated; it is not doing verywell. Right opposite me is a sick soldier-boy, laid down with hisclothes on, sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. Istep softly over and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st Maine cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan. 

_Ice Cream Treat_. --One hot day toward the middle of June, I gave theinmates of Carver hospital a general ice cream treat, purchasing alarge quantity, and, under convoy of the doctor or head nurse, goingaround personally through the wards to see to its distribution. _AnIncident_. --In one of the rights before Atlanta, a rebel soldier, oflarge size, evidently a young man, was mortally wounded top of thehead, so that the brains partially exuded. He lived three days, lyingon his back on the spot where he first dropt. He dug with his heel inthe ground during that time a hole big enough to put in a couple ofordinary knapsacks. He just lay there in the open air, and with littleintermission kept his heel going night and day. Some of our soldiersthen moved him to a house, but he died in a few minutes. 

_Another_. --After the battles at Columbia, Tennessee, where werepuls'd about a score of vehement rebel charges, they left a greatmany wounded on the ground, mostly within our range. Whenever anyof these wounded attempted to move away by any means, generally bycrawling off, our men without exception brought them down by a bullet. They let none crawl away, no matter what his condition. 

A YANKEE SOLDIER

As I turn'd off the Avenue one cool October evening into Thirteenthstreet, a soldier with knapsack and overcoat stood at the cornerinquiring his way. I found he wanted to go part of the road in mydirection, so we walk'd on together. We soon fell into conversation. He was small and not very young, and a tough little fellow, as Ijudged in the evening light, catching glimpses by the lamps we pass'd. His answers were short, but clear. His name was Charles Carroll; hebelong'd to one of the Massachusetts regiments, and was born in ornear Lynn. His parents were living, but were very old. There were foursons, and all had enlisted. Two had died of starvation and misery inthe prison at Andersonville, and one had been kill'd in the west. He only was left. He was now going home, and by the way he talk'd Iinferr'd that his time was nearly out. He made great calculations onbeing with his parents to comfort them the rest of their days. 

UNION PRISONERS SOUTH

Michael Stansbury, 48 years of age, a seafaring man, a southerner bybirth and raising, formerly captain of U. S. Light ship Long Shoal, station'd at Long Shoal point, Pamlico sound--though a southerner, afirm Union man--was captur'd Feb. 17, 1863, and has been nearly twoyears in the Confederate prisons; was at one time order'd releas'd byGovernor Vance, but a rebel officer re-arrested him; then sent on toRichmond for exchange--but instead of being exchanged was sent down(as a southern citizen, not a soldier, ) to Salisbury, N. C. , where heremain'd until lately, when he escap'd among the exchang'd by assumingthe name of a dead soldier, and coming up via Wilmington with therest. Was about sixteen months in Salisbury. 

Subsequent to October, '64, there were about 11, 000 Union prisonersin the stockade; about 100 of them southern unionists, 200 U. S. Deserters. During the past winter 1500 of the prisoners, to save theirlives, join'd the confederacy, on condition of being assign'd merelyto guard duty. Out of the 11, 000 not more than 2500 came out; 500 ofthese were pitiable, helpless wretches--the rest were in a conditionto travel. There were often 60 dead bodies to be buried in themorning; the daily average would be about 40. The regular food was ameal of corn, the cob and husk ground together, and sometimes once aweek a ration of sorghum molasses. A diminutive ration of meat mightpossibly come once a month, not oftener. In the stockade, containingthe 11, 000 men, there was a partial show of tents, not enough for2000. A large proportion of the men lived in holes in the ground, inthe utmost wretchedness. Some froze to death, others had their handsand feet frozen. The rebel guards would occasionally, and on the leastpretence, fire into the prison from mere demonism and wantonness. Allthe horrors that can be named, starvation, lassitude, filth, vermin, despair, swift loss of self-respect, idiocy, insanity, and frequentmurder, were there. Stansbury has a wife and child living inNewbern--has written to them from here--is in the U. S. Light-houseemploy still--(had been home to Newbern to see his family, and on hisreturn to the ship was captured in his boat. ) Has seen men broughtthere to Salisbury as hearty as you ever see in your life--in afew weeks completely dead gone, much of it from thinking on theircondition--hope all gone. Has himself a hard, sad, strangely deaden'dkind of look, as of one chill' d for years in the cold and dark, wherehis good manly nature had no room to exercise itself. 

DESERTERS

_Oct. 24_. --Saw a large squad of our own deserters (over 300)surrounded with a cordon of arm'd guards, marching along Pennsylvaniaavenue. The most motley collection I ever saw, all sorts of rig, allsorts of hats and caps, many fine-looking young fellows, some of themshame-faced, some sickly, most of them dirty, shirts very dirty andlong worn, &c. They tramp'd along without order, a huge huddling mass, not in ranks. I saw some of the spectators laughing, but I felt likeanything else but laughing. These deserters are far more numerous thanwould be thought. Almost every day I see squads of them, sometimes twoor three at a time, with a small guard; sometimes ten or twelve, undera larger one. (I hear that desertions from the army now in the fieldhave often averaged 10, 000 a month. One of the commonest sights inWashington is a squad of deserters. )

A GLIMPSE OF WAR'S HELL-SCENES

In one of the late movements of our troops in the valley, (nearUpperville, I think, ) a strong force of Moseby's mounted guerillasattack'd a train of wounded, and the guard of cavalry convoying them. The ambulances contain'd about 60 wounded, quite a number of themofficers of rank. The rebels were in strength, and the capture ofthe train and its partial guard after a short snap was effectuallyaccomplish'd. No sooner had our men surrender'd, the rebels instantlycommenced robbing the train and murdering their prisoners, even thewounded. Here is the scene, or a sample of it, ten minutes after. Among the wounded officers in the ambulances were one, a lieutenant ofregulars, and another of higher rank. These two were dragg'd out onthe ground on their backs, and were now surrounded by the guerillas, a demoniac crowd, each member of which was stabbing them in differentparts of their bodies. One of the officers had his feet pinn'd firmlyto the ground by bayonets stuck through them and thrust into theground. These two officers, as afterwards found on examination, hadreceiv'd about twenty such thrusts, some of them through the mouth, face, &c. The wounded had all been dragg'd (to give a better chancealso for plunder, ) out of their wagons; some had been effectuallydispatch'd, and their bodies were lying there lifeless and bloody. Others, not yet dead, but horribly mutilated, were moaning orgroaning. Of our men who surrender'd, most had been thus maim'd orslaughter'd. 

At this instant a force of our cavalry, who had been following thetrain at some interval, charged suddenly upon the secesh captors, whoproceeded at once to make the best escape they could. Most of them gotaway, but we gobbled two officers and seventeen men, in the very actsjust described. The sight was one which admitted of little discussion, as may be imagined. The seventeen captur'd men and two officers wereput under guard for the night, but it was decided there and then thatthey should die. The next morning the two officers were taken in thetown, separate places, put in the centre of the street, and shot. Theseventeen men were taken to an open ground, a little one side. Theywere placed in a hollow square, half-encompass'd by two of our cavalryregiments, one of which regiments had three days before found thebloody corpses of three of their men hamstrung and hung up by theheels to limbs of trees by Moseby's guerillas, and the other had notlong before had twelve men, after surrendering, shot and then hung bythe neck to limbs of trees, and jeering inscriptions pinn'd to thebreast of one of the corpses, who had been a sergeant. Those three, and those twelve, had been found, I say, by these environingregiments. Now, with revolvers, they form'd the grim cordon of theseventeen prisoners. The latter were placed in the midst of the hollowsquare, unfasten'd, and the ironical remark made to them that theywere now to be given "a chance for themselves. " A few ran for it. Butwhat use? From every side the deadly pills came. In a few minutes theseventeen corpses strew'd the hollow square. I was curious to knowwhether some of the Union soldiers, some few, (some one or two atleast of the youngsters, ) did not abstain from shooting on thehelpless men. Not one. There was no exultation, very little said, almost nothing, yet every man there contributed his shot. 

Multiply the above by scores, aye hundreds--verify it in all the formsthat different circumstances, individuals, places, could afford--lightit with every lurid passion, the wolf's, the lion's lapping thirstfor blood--the passionate, boiling volcanoes of human revenge forcomrades, brothers slain--with the light of burning farms, andheaps of smutting, smouldering black embers--and in the human hearteverywhere black, worse embers--and you have an inkling of this war. 

GIFTS--MONEY--DISCRIMINATION

As a very large proportion of the wounded came up from the frontwithout a cent of money in their pockets, I soon discover'd that itwas about the best thing I could do to raise their spirits, and showthem that somebody cared for them, and practically felt a fatherly orbrotherly interest in them, to give them small sums in such cases, using tact and discretion about it. I am regularly supplied with fundsfor this purpose by good women and men in Boston, Salem, Providence, Brooklyn, and New York. I provide myself with a quantity of bright newten-cent and five-cent bills, and, when I think it incumbent, I give25 or 30 cents, or perhaps 50 cents, and occasionally a still largersum to some particular case. As I have started this subject, Itake opportunity to ventilate the financial question. My supplies, altogether voluntary, mostly confidential, often seeming quiteProvidential, were numerous and varied. For instance, there were twodistant and wealthy ladies, sisters, who sent regularly, for twoyears, quite heavy sums, enjoining that their names should be keptsecret. The same delicacy was indeed a frequent condition. Fromseveral I had _carte blanche_. Many were entire strangers. From thesesources, during from two to three years, in the manner described, inthe hospitals, I bestowed, as almoner for others, many, many thousandsof dollars. I learn'd one thing conclusively--that beneath all theostensible greed and heartlessness of our times there is no end to thegenerous benevolence of men and women in the United States, when oncesure of their object. Another thing became clear to me--while _cash_is not amiss to bring up the rear, tact and magnetic sympathy andunction are, and ever will be, sovereign still. 

ITEMS FROM MY NOTE BOOKS

Some of the half-eras'd, and not over-legible when made, memorandaof things wanted by one patient or another, will convey quite a fairidea. D. S. G. , bed 52, wants a good book; has a sore, weak throat;would like some horehound candy; is from New Jersey, 28th regiment. C. H. L. , 145th Pennsylvania, lies in bed 6, with jaundice anderysipelas; also wounded; stomach easily nauseated; bring him someoranges, also a little tart jelly; hearty, full-blooded youngfellow--(he got better in a few days, and is now home on a furlough. )J. H. G. , bed 24, wants an undershirt, drawers, and socks; has not hada change for quite a while; is evidently a neat, clean boy from NewEngland--(I supplied him; also with a comb, tooth-brush, and somesoap and towels; I noticed afterward he was the cleanest of the wholeward. ) Mrs. G. , lady-nurse, ward F, wants a bottle of brandy--hastwo patients imperatively requiring stimulus--low with wounds andexhaustion. (I supplied her with a bottle of first-rate brandy fromthe Christian commission rooms. )

A CASE FROM SECOND BULL RUN

Well, Poor John Mahay is dead. He died yesterday. His was a painfuland long-lingering case (see p. 24 _ante_. ) I have been with him attimes for the past fifteen months. He belonged to company A, 101st NewYork, and was shot through the lower region of the abdomen at secondBull Run, August, '62. One scene at his bedside will suffice for theagonies of nearly two years. The bladder had been perforated by abullet going entirely through him. Not long since I sat a good part ofthe morning by his bedside, ward E, Armory square. The water ran outof his eyes from the intense pain, and the muscles of his face weredistorted, but he utter'd nothing except a low groan now and then. Hotmoist cloths were applied, and reliev'd him somewhat. Poor Mahay, amere boy in age, but old in misfortune. He never knew the love ofparents, was placed in infancy in one of the New York charitableinstitutions, and subsequently bound out to a tyrannical master inSullivan county, (the scars of whose cowhide and club remain'd yet onhis back. ) His wound here was a most disagreeable one, for he wasa gentle, cleanly, and affectionate boy. He found friends in hishospital life, and, indeed, was a universal favorite. He had quite afuneral ceremony. 

ARMY SURGEONS--AID DEFICIENCIES

I must bear my most emphatic testimony to the zeal, manliness, andprofessional spirit and capacity, generally prevailing among thesurgeons, many of them young men, in the hospitals and the army. Iwill not say much about the exceptions, for they are few; (but I havemet some of those few, and very incompetent and airish they were. )I never ceas'd to find the best men, and the hardest and mostdisinterested workers, among the surgeons in the hospitals. They arefull of genius, too. I have seen many hundreds of them and this is mytestimony. There are, however, serious deficiencies, wastes, sadwant of system, in the commissions, contributions, and in all thevoluntary, and a great part of the governmental nursing, edibles, medicines, stores, &c. (I do not say surgical attendance, becausethe surgeons cannot do more than human endurance permits. ) Whateverpuffing accounts there may be in the papers of the North, this isthe actual fact. No thorough previous preparation, no system, noforesight, no genius. Always plenty of stores, no doubt, but neverwhere they are needed, and never the proper application. Of allharrowing experiences, none is greater than that of the days followinga heavy battle. Scores, hundreds of the noblest men on earth, uncomplaining, lie helpless, mangled, faint, alone, and so bleed todeath, or die from exhaustion, either actually untouch'd at all, ormerely the laying of them down and leaving them, when there ought tobe means provided to save them. 

THE BLUE EVERYWHERE

This city, its suburbs, the capitol, the front of the White House, theplaces of amusement, the Avenue, and all the main streets, swarm withsoldiers this winter, more than ever before. Some are out from thehospitals, some from the neighboring camps, &c. One source or another, they pour plenteously, and make, I should say, the mark'd feature inthe human movement and costume-appearance of our national city. Theirblue pants and overcoats are everywhere. The clump of crutchesis heard up the stairs of the paymasters' offices, and there arecharacteristic groups around the doors of the same, often waiting longand wearily in the cold. Toward the latter part of the afternoon, yousee the furlough'd men, sometimes singly, sometimes in small squads, making their way to the Baltimore depot. At all times, except earlyin the morning, the patrol detachments are moving around, especiallyduring the earlier hours of evening, examining passes, and arrestingall soldiers without them. They do not question the one-legged, ormen badly disabled or main'd, but all others are stopt. They also goaround evenings through the auditoriums of the theatres, and makeofficers and all show their passes, or other authority, for beingthere. 

A MODEL HOSPITAL

_Sunday, January 29th, 1865_. --Have been in Armory-square thisafternoon. The wards are very comfortable, new floors and plasterwalls, and models of neatness. I am not sure but this is a modelhospital after all, in important respects. I found several sad casesof old lingering wounds. One Delaware soldier, William H. Millis, fromBridgeville, whom I had been with after the battles of the Wilderness, last May, where he receiv'd a very bad wound in the chest, withanother in the left arm, and whose case was serious (pneumonia had setin) all last June and July, I now find well enough to do light duty. For three weeks at the time mention'd he just hovered between life anddeath. 

BOYS IN THE ARMY

As I walk'd home about sunset, I saw in Fourteenth street a very youngsoldier, thinly clad, standing near the house I was about to enter. Istopt a moment in front of the door and call'd him to me. I knewthat an old Tennessee regiment, and also an Indiana regiment, weretemporarily stopping in new barracks, near Fourteenth street. This boyI found belonged to the Tennessee regiment. But I could hardly believehe carried a musket. He was but 15 years old, yet had been twelvemonths a soldier, and had borne his part in several battles, evenhistoric ones. I ask'd him if he did not suffer from the cold, andif he had no overcoat. No, he did not suffer from cold, and had noovercoat, but could draw one whenever he wish'd. His father was dead, and his mother living in some part of East Tennessee; all the men werefrom that part of the country. The next forenoon I saw the Tennesseeand Indiana regiments marching down the Avenue. My boy was with theformer, stepping along with the rest. There were many other boys noolder. I stood and watch'd them as they tramp'd along with slow, strong, heavy, regular steps. There did not appear to be a man over 30years of age, and a large proportion were from 15 to perhaps 22 or 23. They had all the look of veterans, worn, stain'd, impassive, and acertain unbent, lounging gait, carrying in addition to their regulararms and knapsacks, frequently a frying-pan, broom, &c. They were allof pleasant physiognomy; no refinement, nor blanch'd with intellect, but as my eye pick'd them, moving along, rank by rank, there did notseem to be a single repulsive, brutal or markedly stupid face amongthem. 

BURIAL OF A LADY NURSE

Here is an incident just occurr'd in one of the hospitals. A ladynamed Miss or Mrs. Billings, who has long been a practical friend ofsoldiers, and nurse in the army, and had become attached to it in away that no one can realize but him or her who has had experience, wastaken sick, early this winter, linger'd some time, and finally died inthe hospital. It was her request that she should be buried amongthe soldiers, and after the military method. This request was fullycarried out. Her coffin was carried to the grave by soldiers, with theusual escort, buried, and a salute fired over the grave. This was atAnnapolis a few days since. 

FEMALE NURSES FOR SOLDIERS

There are many women in one position or another, among the hospitals, mostly as nurses here in Washington, and among the military stations;quite a number of them young ladies acting as volunteers. They are ahelp in certain ways, and deserve to be mention'd with respect. Thenit remains to be distinctly said that few or no young ladies, underthe irresistible conventions of society, answer the practicalrequirements of nurses for soldiers. Middle-aged or healthy and goodcondition'd elderly women, mothers of children, are always best. Manyof the wounded must be handled. A hundred things which cannot begainsay'd, must occur and must be done. The presence of a goodmiddle-aged or elderly woman, the magnetic touch of hands, theexpressive features of the mother, the silent soothing of herpresence, her words, her knowledge and privileges arrived at onlythrough having had children, are precious and final qualifications. It is a natural faculty that is required; it is not merely having agenteel young woman at a table in a ward. One of the finest nurses Imet was a red-faced illiterate old Irish woman; I have seen her takethe poor wasted naked boys so tenderly up in her arms. There areplenty of excellent clean old black women that would make tip-topnurses. 

SOUTHERN ESCAPEES

_Feb. 23, '65_. --I saw a large procession of young men from the rebelarmy, (deserters they are call'd, but the usual meaning of the worddoes not apply to them, ) passing the Avenue to-day. There were nearly200, come up yesterday by boat from James river. I stood and watch'dthem as they shuffled along, in a slow, tired, worn sort of way; alarge proportion of light-hair'd, blonde, light gray-eyed young menamong them. Their costumes had a dirt-stain'd uniformity; most hadbeen originally gray; some had articles of our uniform, pants on one, vest or coat on another; I think they were mostly Georgia and NorthCarolina boys. They excited little or no attention. As I stood quiteclose to them, several good looking enough youths, (but O what a taleof misery their appearance told, ) nodded or just spoke to me, withoutdoubt divining pity and fatherliness out of my face, for my heart wasfull enough of it. Several of the couples trudg'd along with theirarms about each other, some probably brothers, as if they were afraidthey might somehow get separated. They nearly all look'd what onemight call simple, yet intelligent, too. Some had pieces of oldcarpet, some blankets, and others old bags around their shoulders. Some of them here and there had fine faces, still it was a processionof misery. The two hundred had with them about half a dozen arm'dguards. Along this week I saw some such procession, more or lessin numbers, every day, as they were brought up by the boat. Thegovernment does what it can for them, and sends them north and west. 

_Feb. 27_. --Some three or four hundred more escapees from theconfederate army came up on the boat. As the day has been verypleasant indeed, (after a long spell of bad weather, ) I have beenwandering around a good deal, without any other object than to beout-doors and enjoy it; have met these escaped men in all directions. Their apparel is the same ragged, long-worn motley as beforedescribed. I talk'd with a number of the men. Some are quite brightand stylish, for all their poor clothes--walking with an air, wearingtheir old head-coverings on one side, quite saucily. I find the old, unquestionable proofs, as all along the past four years, of theunscrupulous tyranny exercised by the secession government inconscripting the common people by absolute force everywhere, andpaying no attention whatever to the men's time being up--keepingthem in military service just the same. One gigantic young fellow, a Georgian, at least six feet three inches high, broad-sized inproportion, attired in the dirtiest, drab, well smear'd rags, tiedwith strings, his trousers at the knees all strips and streamers, was complacently standing eating some bread and meat. He appear'dcontented enough. Then a few minutes after I saw him slowly walkingalong. It was plain he did not take anything to heart. 

_Feb. 28. _--As I pass'd the military headquarters of the city, not farfrom the President's house, I stopt to interview some of the crowd ofescapees who were lounging there. In appearance they were the same aspreviously mention'd. Two of them, one about 17, and the other perhaps25 or '6, I talk'd with some time. They were from North Carolina, bornand rais'd there, and had folks there. The elder had been in the rebelservice four years. He was first conscripted for two years. He wasthen kept arbitrarily in the ranks. This is the case with a largeproportion of the secession army. There was nothing downcast in theseyoung men's manners; the younger had been soldiering about a year; hewas conscripted; there were six brothers (all the boys of the family)in the army, part of them as conscripts, part as volunteers; three hadbeen kill'd; one had escaped about four months ago, and now thisone had got away; he was a pleasant and well-talking lad, with thepeculiar North Carolina idiom (not at all disagreeable to my ears. ) Heand the elder one were of the same company, and escaped together--andwish'd to remain together. They thought of getting transportation awayto Missouri, and working there; but were not sure it was judicious. Iadvised them rather to go to some of the directly northern States, andget farm work for the present. The younger had made six dollars on theboat, with some tobacco he brought; he had three and a half left. Theelder had nothing; I gave him a trifle. Soon after, met John Wormley, 9th Alabama, a West Tennessee rais' d boy, parents both dead--hadthe look of one for a long time on short allowance--saidvery little--chew'd tobacco at a fearful rate, spitting inproportion--large clear dark-brown eyes, very fine--didn't know whatto make of me--told me at last he wanted much to get some cleanunderclothes, and a pair of decent pants. Didn't care about coat orhat fixings. Wanted a chance to wash himself well, and put on theunderclothes. I had the very great pleasure of helping him toaccomplish all those wholesome designs. 

_March 1st_. --Plenty more butternut or clay-color'd escapees everyday. About 160 came in to-day, a large portion South Carolinians. Theygenerally take the oath of allegiance, and are sent north, west, orextreme south-west if they wish. Several of them told me that thedesertions in their army, of men going home, leave or no leave, arefar more numerous than their desertions to our side. I saw a veryforlorn looking squad of about a hundred, late this afternoon, ontheir way to the Baltimore depot. 

THE CAPITOL BY GAS-LIGHT

To-night I have been wandering awhile in the capitol, which is all litup. The illuminated rotunda looks fine. I like to stand aside and looka long, long while, up at the dome; it comforts me somehow. The Houseand Senate were both in session till very late. I look'd in uponthem, but only a few moments; they were hard at work on tax andappropriation bills. I wander'd through the long and rich corridorsand apartments under the Senate; an old habit of mine, former winters, and now more satisfaction than ever. Not many persons down there, occasionally a flitting figure in the distance. 

THE INAUGURATION

_March 4th. _--The President very quietly rode down to the capitol inhis own carriage, by himself, on a sharp trot, about noon, eitherbecause he wish'd to be on hand to sign bills, or to get rid ofmarching in line with the absurd procession, the muslin temple ofliberty and pasteboard monitor. I saw him on his return, at threeo'clock, after the performance was over. He was in his plain two-horsebarouche, and look'd very much worn and tired; the lines, indeed, ofvast responsibilities, intricate questions, and demands of life anddeath, cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face; yet all the oldgoodness, tenderness, sadness, and canny shrewdness, underneath thefurrows. (I never see that man without feeling that he is one tobecome personally attach'd to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native western form of manliness. ) By hisside sat his little boy, of ten years. There were no soldiers, onlya lot of civilians on horseback, with huge yellow scarfs over theirshoulders, riding around the carriage. (At the inauguration four yearsago, he rode down and back again surrounded by a dense mass of arm'dcavalrymen eight deep, with drawn sabres; and there were sharpshootersstation'd at every corner on the route. ) I ought to make mention ofthe closing levee of Saturday night last. Never before was such acompact jam in front of the White House--all the grounds fill'd, andaway out to the spacious sidewalks. I was there, as I took a notionto go--was in the rush inside with the crowd--surged along thepassage-ways, the blue and other rooms, and through the great eastroom. Crowds of country people, some very funny. Fine music from theMarine band, off in a side place. I saw Mr. Lincoln, drest all inblack, with white kid gloves and a claw-hammer coat, receiving, as induty bound, shaking hands, looking very disconsolate, and as if hewould give anything to be somewhere else. 

ATTITUDE OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS DURING THE WAR

Looking over my scraps, I find I wrote the following during 1864. Thehappening to our America, abroad as well as at home, these years, isindeed most strange. The democratic republic has paid her today theterrible and resplendent compliment of the united wish of all thenations of the world that her union should be broken, her future cutoff, and that she should be compell'd to descend to the level ofkingdoms and empires ordinarily great. There is certainly not onegovernment in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, withthe ardent prayer that the United States may be effectually split, crippled, and dismember'd by it. There is not one but would helptoward that dismemberment, if it dared. I say such is the ardentwish to-day of England and of France, as governments, and of all thenations of Europe, as governments. I think indeed it is to-day thereal, heartfelt wish of all the nations of the world, with the singleexception of Mexico--Mexico, the only one to whom we have ever reallydone wrong, and now the only one who prays for us and for our triumph, with genuine prayer. Is it not indeed strange? America, made up ofall, cheerfully from the beginning opening her arms to all, the resultand justifier of all, of Britain, Germany, France and Spain--allhere--the accepter, the friend, hope, last resource and general houseof all--she who has harm'd none, but been bounteous to so many, tomillions, the mother of strangers and exiles, all nations--should now, I say, be paid this dread compliment of general governmental fear andhatred. Are we indignant? alarm'd? Do we feel jeopardized? No; help'd, braced, concentrated, rather. We are all too prone to wander fromourselves, to affect Europe, and watch her frowns and smiles. We needthis hot lesson of general hatred, and henceforth must neverforget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstractfriendliness of a single _government_ of the old world. 

THE WEATHER--DOES IT SYMPATHIZE WITH THESE TIMES?

Whether the rains, the heat and cold, and what underlies them all, are affected with what affects man in masses, and follow his play ofpassionate action, strain'd stronger than usual, and on a larger scalethan usual--whether this, or no, it is certain that there is now, andhas been for twenty months or more, on this American continent north, many a remarkable, many an unprecedented expression of the subtileworld of air above us and around us. There, since this war, andthe wide and deep national agitation, strange analogies, differentcombinations, a different sunlight, or absence of it; differentproducts even out of the ground. After every great battle, a greatstorm. Even civic events the same. On Saturday last, a forenoon likewhirling demons, dark, with slanting rain, full of rage; and then theafternoon, so calm, so bathed with flooding splendor from heaven'smost excellent sun, with atmosphere of sweetness; so clear, it show'dthe stars, long long before they were due. As the President came outon the capitol portico, a curious little white cloud, the only one inthat part of the sky, appear'd like a hovering bird, right over him. 

Indeed, the heavens, the elements, all the meteorological influences, have run riot for weeks past. Such caprices, abruptest alternation offrowns and beauty, I never knew. It is a common remark that (as lastsummer was different in its spells of intense heat from any precedingit, ) the winter just completed has been without parallel. It hasremain'd so down to the hour I am writing. Much of the daytime ofthe past month was sulky, with leaden heaviness, fog, interstices ofbitter cold, and some insane storms. But there have been samplesof another description. Nor earth nor sky ever knew spectacles ofsuperber beauty than some of the nights lately here. The western star, Venus, in the earlier hours of evening, has never been so large, so clear; it seems as if it told something, as if it held rapportindulgent with humanity, with us Americans. Five or six nights since, it hung close by the moon, then a little past its first quarter. Thestar was wonderful, the moon like a young mother. The sky, dark blue, the transparent night, the planets, the moderate west wind, theelastic temperature, the miracle of that great star, and the young andswelling moon swimming in the west, suffused the soul. Then I heard, slow and clear, the deliberate notes of a bugle come up out of thesilence, sounding so good through the night's mystery, no hurry, butfirm and faithful, floating along, rising, falling leisurely, withhere and there a long-drawn note; the bugle, well play'd, soundingtattoo, in one of the army hospitals near here, where the wounded(some of them personally so dear to me, ) are lying in their cots, and many a sick boy come down to the war from Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the rest. 

INAUGURATION BALL

_March 6_. --I have been up to look at the dance and supper-rooms, for the inauguration ball at the Patent office; and I could not helpthinking, what a different scene they presented to my view a whilesince, fill'd with a crowded mass of the worst wounded of the war, brought in from second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburgh. To-night, beautiful women, perfumes, the violin's sweetness, the polkaand the waltz; then the amputation, the blue face, the groan, theglassy eye of the dying, the clotted rag, the odor of wounds andblood, and many a mother's son amid strangers, passing away untendedthere, (for the crowd of the badly hurt was great, and much for nurseto do, and much for surgeon. )

SCENE AT THE CAPITOL

I must mention a strange scene at the capitol, the hall ofRepresentatives, the morning of Saturday last, (March 4th. ) Theday just dawn'd, but in half-darkness, everything dim, leaden, andsoaking. In that dim light, the members nervous from long drawn duty, exhausted, some asleep, and many half asleep. The gas-light, mix'dwith the dingy day-break, produced an unearthly effect. The poorlittle sleepy, stumbling pages, the smell of the hall, the memberswith heads leaning on their desks, the sounds of the voices speaking, with unusual intonations--the general moral atmosphere also of theclose of this important session--the strong hope that the war isapproaching its close--the tantalizing dread lest the hope may be afalse one--the grandeur of the hall itself, with its effect of vastshadows up toward the panels and spaces over the galleries--all madea mark'd combination. 

In the midst of this, with the suddenness of a thunderbolt, burst oneof the most angry and crashing storms of rain and hail ever heard. Itbeat like a deluge on the heavy glass roof of the hall, and the windliterally howl'd and roar'd. For a moment, (and no wonder, ) thenervous and sleeping Representatives were thrown into confusion. Theslumberers awaked with fear, some started for the doors, some look'dup with blanch'd cheeks and lips to the roof, and the little pagesbegan to cry; it was a scene. But it was over almost as soon as thedrowsied men were actually awake. They recover'd themselves; the stormraged on, beating, dashing, and with loud noises at times. But theHouse went ahead with its business then, I think, as calmly and withas much deliberation as at any time in its career. Perhaps the shockdid it good. (One is not without impression, after all, amid thesemembers of Congress, of both the Houses, that if the flat routine oftheir duties should ever be broken in upon by some great emergencyinvolving real danger, and calling for first-class personal qualities, those qualities would be found generally forthcoming, and from men notnow credited with them. )

A YANKEE ANTIQUE

_March 27, 1865_. --Sergeant Calvin F. Harlowe, company C, 29thMassachusetts, 3d brigade, 1st division, Ninth corps--a mark'd sampleof heroism and death, (some may say bravado, but I say heroism, ofgrandest, oldest order)--in the late attack by the rebel troops, andtemporary capture by them, of fort Steadman, at night. The fort wassurprised at dead of night. Suddenly awaken'd from their sleep, andrushing from their tents, Harlowe, with others, found himself in thehands of the secesh--they demanded his surrender--he answer'd, _Neverwhile I live_. (Of course it was useless. The others surrender'd; theodds were too great. ) Again he was ask'd to yield, this time by arebel captain. Though surrounded, and quite calm, he again refused, call'd sternly to his comrades to fight on, and himself attempted todo so. The rebel captain then shot him--but at the same instant heshot the captain. Both fell together mortally wounded. Harlowe diedalmost instantly. The rebels were driven out in a very short time. Thebody was buried next day, but soon taken up and sent home, (Plymouthcounty, Mass. ) Harlowe was only 22 years of age--was a tall, slim, dark-hair'd, blue-eyed young man--had come out originally withthe 29th; and that is the way he met his death, after four years'campaign. He was in the Seven Days fight before Richmond, in secondBull Run, Antietam, first Fredericksburgh, Vicksburgh, Jackson, Wilderness, and the campaigns following--was as good a soldier as everwore the blue, and every old officer in the regiment will bear thattestimony. Though so young, and in a common rank, he had a spirit asresolute and brave as any hero in the books, ancient or modern--Itwas too great to say the words "I surrender"--and so he died. (When Ithink of such things, knowing them well, all the vast and complicatedevents of the war, on which history dwells and makes its volumes, fallaside, and for the moment at any rate I see nothing but young CalvinHarlowe's figure in the night, disdaining to surrender. )

WOUNDS AND DISEASES

The war is over, but the hospitals are fuller than ever, from formerand current cases. A large' majority of the wounds are in the arms andlegs. But there is every kind of wound, in every part of the body. I should say of the sick, from my observation, that the prevailingmaladies are typhoid fever and the camp fevers generally, diarrhoea, catarrhal affections and bronchitis, rheumatism and pneumonia. Theseforms of sickness lead; all the rest follow. There are twice as manysick as there are wounded. The deaths range from seven to ten percent, of those under treatment. [7]

Note:

[7] In the U. S. Surgeon-General's office since, there is a formalrecord and treatment of 153, 142 cases of wounds by governmentsurgeons. What must have been the number unofficial, indirect--to saynothing of the Southern armies?

DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

_April 16, '65_. --I find in my notes of the time, this passage onthe death of Abraham Lincoln: He leaves for America's history andbiography, so far, not only its most dramatic reminiscence--heleaves, in my opinion, the greatest, best, most characteristic, artistic, moral personality. Not but that he had faults, and show'dthem in the Presidency; but honesty, goodness, shrewdness, conscience, and (a new virtue, unknown to other lands, and hardly yet really knownhere, but the foundation and tie of all, as the future will grandlydevelop, ) UNIONISM, in its truest and amplest sense, form'd thehard-pan of his character. These he seal'd with his life. The tragicsplendor of his death, purging, illuminating all, throws round hisform, his head, an aureole that will remain and will grow brighterthrough time, while history lives, and love of country lasts. By manyhas this Union been help'd; but if one name, one man, must be pick'dout, he, most of all, is the conservator of it, to the future. He wasassassinated--but the Union is not assassinated--_ca ira_! One fallsand another falls. The soldier drops, sinks like a wave--but the ranksof the ocean eternally press on. Death does its work, obliterates ahundred, a thousand--President, general, captain, private, --but theNation is immortal. 

SHERMAN'S ARMY'S JUBILATION--ITS SUDDEN STOPPAGE

When Sherman's armies, (long after they left Atlanta, ) were marchingthrough Southand North Carolina--after leaving Savannah, the news ofLee's capitulation having been receiv'd--the men never mov'd a milewithout from some part of the line sending up continued, inspiritingshouts. At intervals all day long sounded out the wild music of thosepeculiar army cries. They would be commenc'd by one regiment orbrigade, immediately taken up by others, and at length whole corps andarmies would join in these wild triumphant choruses. It was one of thecharacteristic expressions of the western troops, and became a habit, serving as a relief and outlet to the men--a vent for their feelingsof victory, returning peace, &c. Morning, noon, and afternoon, spontaneous, for occasion or without occasion, these huge, strangecries, differing from any other, echoing through the open air for manya mile, expressing youth, joy, wildness, irrepressible strength, and the ideas of advance and conquest, sounded along the swamps anduplands of the South, floating to the skies. ("There never were menthat kept in better spirits in danger or defeat--what then could theydo in victory?"--said one of the 15th corps to me, afterwards. ) Thisexuberance continued till the armies arrived at Raleigh. There thenews of the President's murder was receiv'd. Then no more shouts oryells, for a week. All the marching was comparatively muffled. Itwas very significant--hardly a loud word or laugh in many of theregiments. A hush and silence pervaded all. 

NO GOOD PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN

Probably the reader has seen physiognomies (often old farmers, sea-captains, and such) that, behind their homeliness, or evenugliness, held superior points so subtle, yet so palpable, making thereal life of their faces almost as impossible to depict as a wildperfume or fruit-taste, or a passionate tone of the living voice--andsuch was Lincoln's face, the peculiar color, the lines of it, theeyes, mouth, expression. Of technical beauty it had nothing--but tothe eye of a great artist it furnished a rare study, a feast andfascination. The current portraits are all failures--most of themcaricatures. 

RELEAS'D UNION PRISONERS FROM SOUTH

The releas'd prisoners of war are now coming up from the southernprisons. I have seen a number of them. The sight is worse than anysight of battle-fields, or any collection of wounded, even thebloodiest. There was, (as a sample, ) one large boat load, of severalhundreds, brought about the 25th, to Annapolis; and out of the wholenumber only three individuals were able to walk from the boat. Therest were carried ashore and laid down in one place or another. Canthose be _men_--those little livid brown, ash-streak'd, monkey-lookingdwarfs?--are they really not mummied, dwindled corpses? They laythere, most of them, quite still, but with a horrible look in theireyes and skinny lips (often with not enough flesh on the lips to covertheir teeth. ) Probably no more appalling sight was ever seen on thisearth. (There are deeds, crimes, that may be forgiven; but this isnot among them. It steeps its perpetrators in blackest, escapeless, endless damnation. Over 50, 000 have been compell' d to die the deathof starvation--reader, did you ever try to realize what _starvation_actually is?--in those prisons--and in a land of plenty. ) Anindescribable meanness, tyranny, aggravating course of insults, almostincredible--was evidently the rule of treatment through all thesouthern military prisons. The dead there are not to be pitied as muchas some of the living that come from there--if they can be call'd living--many of them are mentally imbecile, and will neverrecuperate. [8]

Note:

[8] _From a review of_ "ANDERSONVILLE, A STORY OF SOUTHERN MILTTARYPRISONS, " _published serially in the Toledo "Blade" in 1879, andafterwards in book form_. 

"There is a deep fascination in the subject of Andersonville--for thatGolgotha, in which lie the whitening bones of 13, 000 gallant youngmen, represents the dearest and costliest sacrifice of the war for thepreservation of our national unity. It is a type, too, of its class. Its more than hundred hecatombs of dead represent several times thatnumber of their brethren, for whom the prison gates of Belle Isle, Danville, Salisbury, Florence, Columbia, and Cahaba open'd only ineternity. There are few families in the North who have not at leastone dear relative or friend among these 60, 000 whose sad fortune itwas to end their service for the Union by lying down and dying for itin a southern prison pen. The manner of their death, the horrors thatcluster'd thickly around every moment of their existence, the loyal, unfaltering steadfastness with which they endured all that fate hadbrought them, has never been adequately told. It was not with them aswith their comrades in the field, whose every act was perform'd in thepresence of those whose duty it was to observe such matters and reportthem to the world. Hidden from the view of their friends in the northby the impenetrable veil which the military operations of the rebelsdrew around the so-called confederacy, the people knew next to nothingof their career or their sufferings. Thousands died there less heededeven than the hundreds who perish'd on the battlefield. Grant did notlose as many men kill'd outright, in the terrible campaign from theWilderness to the James river--43 days of desperate fighting--as diedin July and August at Andersonville. Nearly twice as many died in thatprison as fell from the day that Grant cross'd the Rapidan, till hesettled down in the trenches before Petersburg. More than four timesas many Union dead lie under the solemn soughing pines about thatforlorn little village in southern Georgia, than mark the course ofSherman from Chattanooga to Atlanta. The nation stands aghast at theexpenditure of life which attended the two bloody campaigns of 1864, which virtually crush'd the confederacy, but no one remembers thatmore Union soldiers died in the rear of the rebel lines than werekill'd in the front of them. The great military events which stamp'dout the rebellion drew attention away from the sad drama whichstarvation and disease play'd in those gloomy pens in the far recessesof sombre southern forests. "

_From a letter of "Johnny Bouquet, " in N. Y. "Tribune, " March 27, '81. _

"I visited at Salisbury, N. C. , the prison pen or the site of it, fromwhich nearly 11, 000 victims of southern politicians were buried, beingconfined in a pen without shelter, exposed to all the elements coulddo, to all the disease herding animals together could create, and toall the starvation and cruelty an incompetent and intense caitiffgovernment could accomplish. From the conversation and almost from therecollection of the northern people this place has dropp' d, but notso in the gossip of the Salisbury people, nearly all of whom say thatthe half was never told; that such was the nature of habitual outragehere that when Federal prisoners escaped the townspeople harbor'd themin their barns, afraid the vengeance of God would fall on them, todeliver even their enemies back to such cruelty. Said one old man atthe Boyden House, who join'd in the conversation one evening: 'Therewere often men buried out of that prison pen still alive. I have thetestimony of a surgeon that he had seen them pull'd out of the deadcart with their eyes open and taking notice, but too weak to lift afinger. There was not the least excuse for such treatment, as theconfederate government had seized every sawmill in the region, andcould just as well have put up shelter for these prisoners as not, wood being plentiful here. It will be hard to make any honest manin Salisbury say that there was the slightest necessity for thoseprisoners having to live in old tents, caves and holes half-full ofwater. Representations were made to the Davis government against theofficers in charge of it, but no attention was paid to them. Promotionwas the punishment for cruelty there. The inmates were skeletons. Hellcould have no terrors for any man who died there, except the inhumankeepers. '"

DEATH OF A PENNSYLVANIA SOLDIER

_Frank H. Irwin, company E, 93rd Pennsylvania--died May 1, '65--Myletter to his mother_--Dear madam: No doubt you and Frank's friendshave heard the sad fact of his death in hospital here, through hisuncle, or the lady from Baltimore, who took his things. (I have notseen them, only heard of them visiting Frank. ) I will write you afew lines--as a casual friend that sat by his death-bed. Your son, corporal Frank H. Irwin, was wounded near fort Fisher, Virginia, March25th, 1865--the wound was in the left knee, pretty bad. He was sent upto Washington, was receiv'd in ward C, Armory-square hospital, March28th--the wound became worse, and on the 4th of April the leg wasamputated a little above the knee--the operation was perform' d byDr. Bliss, one of the best surgeons in the army--he did the wholeoperation himself--there was a good deal of bad matter gather'd--thebullet was found in the knee. For a couple of weeks afterwards he wasdoing pretty well. I visited and sat by him frequently, as he was fondof having me. The last ten or twelve days of April I saw that his casewas critical. He previously had some fever, with cold spells. The lastweek in April he was much of the time flighty--but always mild andgentle. He died first of May. The actual cause of death was pyaemia, (the absorption of the matter in the system instead of its discharge. )Frank, as far as I saw, had everything requisite in surgicaltreatment, nursing, &c. He had watches much of the time. He was sogood and well-behaved and affectionate, I myself liked him very much. I was in the habit of coming in afternoons and sitting by him, andsoothing him, and he liked to have me--liked to put his arm out andlay his hand on my knee--would keep it so a long while. Toward thelast he was more restless and flighty at night--often fancied himselfwith his regiment--by his talk sometimes seem'd as if his feelingswere hurt by being blamed by his officers for something he wasentirely innocent of--said, "I never in my life was thought capable ofsuch a thing, and never was. " At other times he would fancy himselftalking as it seem'd to children or such like, his relatives Isuppose, and giving them good advice; would talk to them a long while. All the time he was out of his head not one single bad word or ideaescaped him. It was remark'd that many a man's conversation in hissenses was not half as good as Frank's delirium. He seem'd quitewilling to die--he had become very weak and had suffer'd a good deal, and was perfectly resign'd, poor boy. I do not know his past life, butI feel as if it must have been good. At any rate what I saw of himhere, under the most trying circumstances, with a painful wound, andamong strangers, I can say that he behaved so brave, so composed, andso sweet and affectionate, it could not be surpass'd. And now likemany other noble and good men, after serving his country as a soldier, he has yielded up his young life at the very outset in her service. Such things are gloomy--yet there is a text, "God doeth all thingswell"--the meaning of which, after due time, appears to the soul. 

I thought perhaps a few words, though from a stranger, about your son, from one who was with him at the last, might be worth while--for Iloved the young man, though I but saw him immediately to lose him. Iam merely a friend visiting the hospitals occasionally to cheer thewounded and sick. 

W. W. 

THE ARMIES RETURNING

_May 7_. --Sunday. --To-day as I was walking a mile or two south ofAlexandria, I fell in with several large squads of the returningWestern army, (Sherman's men as they call'd themselves) abouta thousand in all, the largest portion of them half sick, someconvalescents, on their way to a hospital camp. These fragmentaryexcerpts, with the unmistakable Western physiognomy and idioms, crawling along slowly--after a great campaign, blown this way, as itwere, out of their latitude--I mark'd with curiosity, and talk'd withoff and on for over an hour. Here and there was one very sick; but allwere able to walk, except some of the last, who had given out, andwere seated on the ground, faint and despondent. These I tried tocheer, told them the camp they were to reach was only a little wayfurther over the hill, and so got them up and started, accompanyingsome of the worst a little way, and helping them, or putting themunder the support of stronger comrades. 

_May 21_. --Saw General Sheridan and his cavalry to-day; a strong, attractive sight; the men were mostly young, (a few middle-aged, )superb-looking fellows, brown, spare, keen, with well-worn clothing, many with pieces of water-proof cloth around their shoulders, hangingdown. They dash'd along pretty fast, in wide close ranks, allspatter'd with mud; no holiday soldiers; brigade after brigade. Icould have watch'd for a week. Sheridan stood on a balcony, under abig tree, coolly smoking a cigar. His looks and manner impress'd mefavorably. 

_May 22_. --Have been taking a walk along Pennsylvania avenue andSeventh street north. The city is full of soldiers, running aroundloose. Officers everywhere, of all grades. All have the weatherbeatenlook of practical service. It is a sight I never tire of. All thearmies are now here (or portions of them, ) for to-morrow's review. Yousee them swarming like bees everywhere. 

THE GRAND REVIEW

For two days now the broad spaces of Pennsylvania avenue along toTreasury hill, and so by detour around to the President's house, andso up to Georgetown, and across the aqueduct bridge, have been alivewith a magnificent sight, the returning armies. In their wide ranksstretching clear across the Avenue, I watch them march or ridealong, at a brisk pace, through two whole days--infantry, cavalry, artillery--some 200, 000 men. Some days afterwards one or two othercorps; and then, still afterwards, a good part of Sherman's immensearmy, brought up from Charleston, Savannah, &c. 

WESTERN SOLDIERS

_May 26-7_. --The streets, the public buildings and grounds ofWashington, still swarm with soldiers from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, and all the Western States. I am continually meetingand talking with them. They often speak to me first, and always showgreat sociability, and glad to have a good interchange of chat. TheseWestern soldiers are more slow in their movements, and in theirintellectual quality also; have no extreme alertness. They are largerin size, have a more serious physiognomy, are continually lookingat you as they pass in the street. They are largely animal, andhandsomely so. During the war I have been at times with theFourteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Twentieth Corps. I always feeldrawn toward the men, and like their personal contact when we arecrowded close together, as frequently these days in the street-cars. They all think the world of General Sherman; call him "old Bill, " orsometimes "uncle Billy. "

A SOLDIER ON LINCOLN

_May 28_. --As I sat by the bedside of a sick Michigan soldier inhospital to-day, a convalescent from the adjoining bed rose and cameto me, and presently we began talking. He was a middleaged man, belonged to the 2d Virginia regiment, but lived in Racine, Ohio, andhad a family there. He spoke of President Lincoln, and said: "Thewar is over, and many are lost. And now we have lost the best, thefairest, the truest man in America. Take him altogether, he was thebest man this country ever produced. It was quite a while I thoughtvery different; but some time before the murder, that's the way I haveseen it. " There was deep earnestness in the soldier. (I found uponfurther talk he had known Mr. Lincoln personally, and quite closely, years before. ) He was a veteran; was now in the fifth year of hisservice; was a cavalry man, and had been in a good deal of hardfighting. 

TWO BROTHERS, ONE SOUTH, ONE NORTH

_May 28-9_. --I staid to-night a long time by the bedside of a newpatient, a young Baltimorean, aged about 19 years, W. S. P. , (2dMaryland, southern, ) very feeble, right leg amputated, can't sleephardly at all--has taken a great deal of morphine, which, as usual, is costing more than it comes to. Evidently very intelligent and wellbred--very affectionate--held on to my hand, and put it by his face, not willing to let me leave. As I was lingering, soothing him in hispain, he says to me suddenly, "I hardly think you know who I am--Idon't wish to impose upon you--I am a rebel soldier. " I said I did notknow that, but it made no difference. Visiting him daily for about twoweeks after that, while he lived, (death had mark'd him, and he wasquite alone, ) I loved him much, always kiss'd him, and he did me. Inan adjoining ward I found his brother, an officer of rank, a Unionsoldier, a brave and religious man, (Col. Clifton K. Prentiss, sixthMaryland infantry, Sixth corps, wounded in one of the engagements atPetersburgh, April 2--linger'd, suffer'd much, died in Brooklyn, Aug. 20, '65). It was in the same battle both were hit. One was a strongUnionist, the other Secesh; both fought on their respective sides, both badly wounded, and both brought together here after a separationof four years. Each died for his cause. 

SOME SAD CASES YET

_May 31_. --James H. Williams, aged 21, 3d Virginia cavalry. -Aboutas mark'd a case of a strong man brought low by a complication ofdiseases, (laryngitis, fever, debility and diarrhoea, ) as I have everseen--has superb physique, remains swarthy yet, and flushed and redwith fever-is altogether flighty--flesh of his great breast and armstremulous, and pulse pounding away with treble quickness--lies agood deal of the time in a partial sleep, but with low muttering andgroans--a sleep in which there is no rest. Powerful as he is, and soyoung, he will not be able to stand many more days of the strain andsapping heat of yesterday and to-day. His throat is in a bad way, tongue and lips parch'd. When I ask him how he feels, he is able justto articulate, "I feel pretty bad yet, old man, " and looks at me withhis great bright eyes. Father, John Williams, Millensport, Ohio. 

_June 9-10_. --I have been sitting late to-night by the bedside ofa wounded captain, a special friend of mine, lying with a painfulfracture of left leg in one of the hospitals, in a large wardpartially vacant. The lights were put out, all but a little candle, far from where I sat. The full moon shone in through the windows, making long, slanting silvery patches on the floor. All was still, myfriend too was silent, but could not sleep; so I sat there by him, slowly wafting the fan, and occupied with the musings that arose outof the scene, the long shadowy ward, the beautiful ghostly moonlighton the floor, the white beds, here and there an occupant with huddledform, the bed-clothes thrown off. The hospitals have a number of casesof sun-stroke and exhaustion by heat, from the late reviews. Thereare many such from the Sixth corps, from the hot parade of day beforeyesterday. (Some of these shows cost the lives of scores of men. )

_Sunday, Sep. 10_. --Visited Douglas and Stanton hospitals. They arequite full. Many of the cases are bad ones, lingering wounds, andold sickness. There is a more than usual look of despair on thecountenances of many of the men; hope has left them. I went throughthe wards, talking as usual. There are several here from theconfederate army whom I had seen in other hospitals, and theyrecognized me. Two were in a dying condition. 

CALHOUN'S REAL MONUMENT

In one of the hospital tents for special cases, as I sat to-daytending a new amputation, I heard a couple of neighboring soldierstalking to each other from their cots. One down with fever, butimproving, had come up belated from Charleston not long before. The other was what we now call an "old veteran, " (_i. E. _, he was aConnecticut youth, probably of less than the age of twenty-five years, the four last of which he had spent in active service in the war inall parts of the country. ) The two were chatting of one thing andanother. The fever soldier spoke of John C. Calhoun's monument, whichhe had seen, and was describing it. The veteran said: "I have seenCalhoun's monument. That you saw is not the real monument. But Ihave seen it. It is the desolated, ruined south; nearly the wholegeneration of young men between seventeen and thirty destroyed ormaim'd; all the old families used up--the rich impoverish'd, theplantations cover'd with weeds, the slaves unloos'd and become themasters, and the name of southerner blacken'd with every shame--allthat is Calhoun's real monument. "

HOSPITALS CLOSING

October 3_. --There are two army hospitals now remaining. I went to thelargest of these (Douglas) and spent the afternoon and evening. Thereare many sad cases, old wounds, incurable sickness, and some of thewounded from the March and April battles before Richmond. Few realizehow sharp and bloody those closing battles were. Our men exposedthemselves more than usual; press'd ahead without urging. Then thesoutherners fought with extra desperation. Both sides knew that withthe successful chasing of the rebel cabal from Richmond, and theoccupation of that city by the national troops, the game was up. The dead and wounded were unusually many. Of the wounded the lastlingering driblets have been brought to hospital here. I find manyrebel wounded here, and have been extra busy to-day 'tending to theworst cases of them with the rest. 

_Oct. , Nov. And Dec. , '65--Sundays_--Every Sunday of these monthsvisited Harewood hospital out in the woods, pleasant and recluse, sometwo and a half or three miles north of the capitol. The situation ishealthy, with broken ground, grassy slopes and patches of oak woods, the trees large and fine. It was one of the most extensive of thehospitals, now reduced to four or five partially occupied wards, the numerous others being vacant. In November, this became the lastmilitary hospital kept up by the government, all the others beingclosed. Cases of the worst and most incurable wounds, obstinateillness, and of poor fellows who have no homes to go to, are foundhere. 

_Dec. 10--Sunday_--Again spending a good part of the day at Harewood. I write this about an hour before sundown. I have walk'd out for a fewminutes to the edge of the woods to soothe myself with the hour andscene. It is a glorious, warm, golden-sunny, still afternoon. The onlynoise is from a crowd of cawing crows, on some trees three hundredyards distant. Clusters of gnats swimming and dancing in the air inall directions. The oak leaves are thick under the bare trees, andgive a strong and delicious perfume. Inside the wards everything isgloomy. Death is there. As I enter'd, I was confronted by it the firstthing; a corpse of a poor soldier, just dead, of typhoid fever. Theattendants had just straighten'd the limbs, put coppers on the eyes, and were laying it out. 

_The roads_--A great recreation, the past three years, has been intaking long walks out from Washington, five, seven, perhaps ten milesand back; generally with my friend Peter Doyle, who is as fond of itas I am. Fine moonlight nights, over the perfect military roads, hardand smooth--or Sundays--we had these delightful walks, never to beforgotten. The roads connecting Washington and the numerous fortsaround the city, made one useful result, at any rate, out of the war. 

TYPICAL SOLDIERS

Even the typical soldiers I have been personally intimate with, --itseems to me if I were to make a list of them it would be like a citydirectory. Some few only have I mention'd in the foregoing pages--mostare dead--a few yet living. There is Reuben Farwell, of Michigan, (little "Mitch;") Benton H. Wilson, color-bearer, 185th New York; Wm. Stansberry; Manvill Winterstein, Ohio; Bethuel Smith; Capt. Simms, of 51st New York, (kill'd at Petersburgh mine explosion, ) Capt. Sam. Pooley and Lieut. Fred. McReady, same reg't. Also, same reg't. , mybrother, George W. Whitman--in active service all through, fouryears, re-enlisting twice--was promoted, step by step, (several timesimmediately after battles, ) lieutenant, captain, major and lieut. Colonel--was in the actions at Roanoke, Newbern, 2d Bull Run, Chantilly, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburgh, Vicksburgh, Jackson, the bloody conflicts of the Wilderness, and at Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, and afterwards around Petersburgh; at one of these latterwas taken prisoner, and pass'd four or five months in secesh militaryprisons, narrowly escaping with life, from a severe fever, fromstarvation and half-nakedness in the winter. (What a history that51st New York had! Went out early--march'd, fought everywhere--was instorms at sea, nearly wreck'd--storm'd forts--tramp'd hither and yonin Virginia, night and day, summer of '62--afterwards Kentucky andMississippi--re-enlisted--was in all the engagements and campaigns, asabove. ) I strengthen and comfort myself much with the certainty thatthe capacity for just such regiments, (hundreds, thousands of them) isinexhaustible in the United States, and that there isn't a county nora township in the republic--nor a street in any city--but could turnout, and, on occasion, would turn out, lots of just such typicalsoldiers, whenever wanted. 

"CONVULSIVENESS"

As I have look'd over the proof-sheets of the preceding pages, I haveonce or twice fear'd that my diary would prove, at best, but a batchof convulsively written reminiscences. Well, be it so. 

They are but parts of the actual distraction, heat, smoke andexcitement of those times. The war itself, with the temper ofsociety preceding it, can indeed be best described by that very word_convulsiveness_. 

THREE YEARS SUMM'D UP

During those three years in hospital, camp or field, I made over sixhundred visits or tours, and went, as I estimate, counting all, amongfrom eighty thousand to a hundred thousand of the wounded and sick, assustainer of spirit and body in some degree, in time of need. Thesevisits varied from an hour or two, to all day or night; for with dearor critical cases I generally watch'd all night. Sometimes I took upmy quarters in the hospital, and slept or watch'd there several nightsin succession. Those three years I consider the greatest privilegeand satisfaction, (with all their feverish excitements and physicaldeprivations and lamentable sights, ) and, of course, the most profoundlesson of my life. I can say that in my ministerings I comprehendedall, whoever came in my way, northern or southern, and slighted none. It arous'd and brought out and decided undream'd-of depths of emotion. It has given me my most fervent views of the true _ensemble_ andextent of the States. While I was with wounded and sick in thousandsof cases from the New England States, and from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and all the Western States, I was with more or less from allthe States, North and South, without exception. I was with many fromthe border States, especially from Maryland and Virginia, and found, during those lurid years 1862-63, far more Union southerners, especially Tennesseans, than is supposed. I was with many rebelofficers and men among our wounded, and gave them always what Ihad, and tried to cheer them the same as any. I was among the armyteamsters considerably, and, indeed, always found myself drawn tothem. Among the black soldiers, wounded or sick, and in the contrabandcamps, I also took my way whenever in their neighborhood, and did whatI could for them. 

THE MILLION DEAD, TOO, SUMM'D UP

The dead in this war--there they lie, strewing the fields andwoods and valleys and battle-fields of the south--Virginia, the Peninsula--Malvern hill and Fair Oaks--the banks of theChickahominy--the terraces of Fredericksburgh--Antietambridge--the grisly ravines of Manassas--the bloody promenade of theWilderness--the varieties of the _strayed_ dead, (the estimate of theWar department is 25, 000 national soldiers kill'd in battle and neverburied at all, 5, 000 drown'd--15, 000 inhumed by strangers, or on themarch in haste, in hitherto unfound localities--2, 000 graves cover'dby sand and mud by Mississippi freshets, 3, 000 carried awayby caving-in of banks, &c. , )--Gettysburgh, the West, Southwest--Vicksburgh--Chattanooga--the trenches of Petersburgh--thenumberless battles, camps, hospitals everywhere--the crop reap'd bythe mighty reapers, typhoid, dysentery, inflammations--and blackestand loathesomest of all, the dead and living burial-pits, theprison-pens of Andersonville, Salisbury, Belle-Isle, &c. , (not Dante'spictured hell and all its woes, its degradations, filthy torments, excell'd those prisons)--the dead, the dead, the dead--_our_ dead--orSouth or North, ours all, (all, all, all, finally dear to me)--or Eastor West--Atlantic coast or Mississippi valley--somewhere theycrawl'd to die, alone, in bushes, low gullies, or on the sides ofhills--(there, in secluded spots, their skeletons, bleach'd bones, tufts of hair, buttons, fragments of clothing, are occasionally foundyet)--our young men once so handsome and so joyous, taken from us--theson from the mother, the husband from the wife, the dear friendfrom the dear friend--the clusters of camp graves, in Georgia, theCarolinas, and in Tennessee--the single graves left in the woods or bythe roadside, (hundreds, thousands, obliterated)--the corpses floateddown the rivers, and caught and lodged, (dozens, scores, floated downthe upper Potomac, after the cavalry engagements, the pursuit of Lee, following Gettysburgh)--some lie at the bottom of the sea--the generalmillion, and the special cemeteries in almost all the States--theinfinite dead--(the land entire saturated, perfumed with theirimpalpable ashes' exhalation in Nature's chemistry distill'd, andshall be so forever, in every future grain of wheat and ear of corn, and every flower that grows, and every breath we draw)--not onlyNorthern dead leavening Southern soil--thousands, aye tens ofthousands, of Southerners, crumble to-day in Northern earth. 

And everywhere among these countless graves--everywhere in the manysoldier Cemeteries of the Nation, (there are now, I believe, over seventy of them)--as at the time in the vast trenches, thedepositories of slain, Northern and Southern, after the greatbattles--not only where the scathing trail passed those years, butradiating since in all the peaceful quarters of the land--we see, andages yet may see, on monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens of thousands, the significant word UNKNOWN. 

(In some of the cemeteries nearly all the dead are unknown. AtSalisbury, N. C. , for instance, the known are only 85, while theunknown are 12, 027, and 11, 700 of these are buried in trenches. Anational monument has been put up here, by order of Congress, to markthe spot--but what visible, material monument can ever fittinglycommemorate that spot?)

THE REAL WAR WILL NEVER GET IN THE BOOKS

And so good-bye to the war. I know not how it may have been, ormay be, to others--to me the main interest I found, (and still, onrecollection, find, ) in the rank and file of the armies, both sides, and in those specimens amid the hospitals, and even the dead on thefield. To me the points illustrating the latent personal characterand eligibilities of these States, in the two or three millions ofAmerican young and middle-aged men, North and South, embodied in thosearmies--and especially the one-third or one-fourth of their number, stricken by wounds or disease at some time in the course of thecontest--were of more significance even than the political interestsinvolved. (As so much of a race depends on how it faces death, and howit stands personal anguish and sickness. As, in the glints of emotionsunder emergencies, and the indirect traits and asides in Plutarch, weget far profounder clues to the antique world than all its more formalhistory. )

Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernalbackground of countless minor scenes and interiors, (not the officialsurface-courteousness of the Generals, not the few great battles) ofthe Secession war; and it is best they should not--the real war willnever get in the books. In the mushy influences of current times, too, the fervid atmosphere and typical events of those years are in dangerof being totally forgotten. I have at night watch'd by the side of asick man in the hospital, one who could not live many hours. I haveseen his eyes flash and burn as he raised himself and recurr'd to thecruelties on his surrender'd brother, and mutilations of thecorpse afterward. (See in the preceding pages, the incident atUpperville--the seventeen kill'd as in the description, were leftthere on the ground. After they dropt dead, no one touch'd them--allwere made sure of, however. The carcasses were left for the citizensto bury or not, as they chose. )

Such was the war. It was not a quadrille in a ball-room. Its interiorhistory will not only never be written--its practicality, minutia; ofdeeds and passions, will never be even suggested. The actual soldierof 1862-'65, North and South, with all his ways, his incredibledauntlessness, habits, practices, tastes, language, his fiercefriendship, his appetite, rankness, his superb strength and animality, lawless gait, and a hundred unnamed lights and shades of camp, I say, will never be written--perhaps must not and should not be. 

The preceding notes may furnish a few stray glimpses into that life, and into those lurid interiors, never to be fully convey'd to thefuture. The hospital part of the drama from '61 to '65, deservesindeed to be recorded. Of that many-threaded drama, with its suddenand strange surprises, its confounding of prophecies, its momentsof despair, the dread of foreign interference, the interminablecampaigns, the bloody battles, the mighty and cumbrous and greenarmies, the drafts and bounties--the immense money expenditure, like aheavy-pouring constant rain--with, over the whole land, the last threeyears of the struggle, an unending, universal mourning-wail of women, parents, orphans--the marrow of the tragedy concentrated in those ArmyHospitals--(it seem'd sometimes as if the whole interest of the land, North and South, was one vast central hospital, and all the rest ofthe affair but flanges)--those forming the untold and unwritten historyof the war--infinitely greater (like life's) than the few scraps anddistortions that are ever told or written. Think how much, and ofimportance, will be--how much, civic and military, has already been--buried in the grave, in eternal darkness. 

AN INTERREGNUM PARAGRAPH

Several years now elapse before I resume my diary. I continued atWashington working in the Attorney-General's department through '66and '67, and some time afterward. In February '73 I was stricken downby paralysis, gave up my desk, and migrated to Camden, New Jersey, where I lived during '74 and '75, quite unwell--but after that beganto grow better; commenc'd going for weeks at a time, even for months, down in the country, to a charmingly recluse and rural spot alongTimber creek, twelve or thirteen miles from where it enters theDelaware river. Domicil'd at the farm-house of my friends, theStaffords, near by, I lived half the time along this creek and itsadjacent fields and lanes. And it is to my life here that I, perhaps, owe partial recovery (a sort of second wind, or semi-renewal of thelease of life) from the prostration of 1874-'75. If the notes of thatoutdoor life could only prove as glowing to you, reader dear, as theexperience itself was to me. Doubtless in the course of thefollowing, the fact of invalidism will crop out, (I call myself _ahalf-Paralytic_ these days, and reverently bless the Lord it is noworse, ) between some of the lines--but I get my share of fun andhealthy hours, and shall try to indicate them. (The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much ofnegatives, and of mere daylight and the skies. )

NEW THEMES ENTERED UPON

_1876, '77_. --I find the woods in mid-May and early June my bestplaces for composition. [9] Seated on logs or stumps there, or restingon rails, nearly all the following memoranda have been jotted down. Wherever I go, indeed, winter or summer, city or country, alone athome or traveling, I must take notes--(the ruling passion strong inage and disablement, and even the approach of--but I must not say ityet. ) Then underneath the following excerpta--crossing the _t's_ anddotting the _i's_ of certain moderate movements of late years--I amfain to fancy the foundations of quite a lesson learn'd. After youhave exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on--have found that none of these finally satisfy, orpermanently wear--what remains? Nature remains; to bring out fromtheir torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the openair, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons--the sun by day andthe stars of heaven by night. We will begin from these convictions. Literature flies so high and is so hotly spiced, that our notes mayseem hardly more than breaths of common air, or draughts of water todrink. But that is part of our lesson. 

Dear, soothing, healthy, restoration-hours--after three confiningyears of paralysis--after the long strain of the war, and its woundsand death. 

Note:

[9] Without apology for the abrupt change of field andatmosphere--after what I have put in the preceding fifty or sixtypages--temporary episodes, thank heaven!--I restore my book to thebracing and buoyant equilibrium of concrete outdoor Nature, the onlypermanent reliance for sanity of book or human life. 

Who knows, (I have it in my fancy, my ambition, ) but the pages nowensuing may carry ray of sun, or smell of grass or corn, or call ofbird, or gleam of stars by night, or snow-flakes falling freshand mystic, to denizen of heated city house, or tired workman orworkwoman?--or may-be in sick-room or prison--to serve as coolingbreeze, or Nature's aroma, to some fever'd mouth or latent pulse. 

ENTERING A LONG FARM-LANE

As every man has his hobby-liking, mine is for a real farm-lane fencedby old chestnut-rails gray-green with dabs of moss and lichen, copiousweeds and briers growing in spots athwart the heaps of stray-pick' dstones at the fence bases--irregular paths worn between, and horse andcow tracks--all characteristic accompaniments marking and scentingthe neighborhood in their seasons--apple-tree blossoms in forwardApril--pigs, poultry, a field of August buckwheat, and in another thelong flapping tassels of maize--and so to the pond, the expansion ofthe creek, the secluded-beautiful, with young and old trees, and suchrecesses and vistas. 

TO THE SPRING AND BROOK

So, still sauntering on, to the spring under the willows--musical assoft clinking glasses-pouring a sizeable stream, thick as my neck, pure and clear, out from its vent where the bank arches over likea great brown shaggy eyebrow or mouth-roof--gurgling, gurglingceaselessly--meaning, saying something, of course (if one could onlytranslate it)--always gurgling there, the whole year through--nevergiving out--oceans of mint, blackberries in summer--choice of lightand shade--just the place for my July sun-baths and water-bathstoo--but mainly the inimitable soft sound-gurgles of it, as I sitthere hot afternoons. How they and all grow into me, day afterday--everything in keeping--the wild, just-palpable perfume, and thedappled leaf-shadows, and all the natural-medicinal, elemental-moralinfluences of the spot. 

Babble on, O brook, with that utterance of thine! I too will expresswhat I have gather'd in my days and progress, native, subterranean, past--and now thee. Spin and wind thy way--I with thee, a littlewhile, at any rate. As I haunt thee so often, season by season, thouknowest, reckest not me, (yet why be so certain? who can tell?)--butI will learn from thee, and dwell on thee--receive, copy, print fromthee. 

AN EARLY SUMMER REVEILLE

Away then to loosen, to unstring the divine bow, so tense, so long. Away, from curtain, carpet, sofa, book--from "society"--from cityhouse, street, and modern improvements and luxuries--away to theprimitive winding, aforementioned wooded creek, with its untrimm'dbushes and turfy banks--away from ligatures, tight boots, buttons, and the whole cast-iron civilized life--from entourage of artificialstore, machine, studio, office, parlor--from tailordom and fashion'sclothes--from any clothes, perhaps, for the nonce, the summer heatsadvancing, there in those watery, shaded solitudes. Away, thou soul, (let me pick thee out singly, reader dear, and talk in perfectfreedom, negligently, confidentially, ) for one day and night at least, returning to the naked source-life of us all--to the breast of thegreat silent savage all-acceptive Mother. Alas! how many of us areso sodden--how many have wander'd so far away, that return is almostimpossible. 

But to my jottings, taking them as they come, from the heap, withoutparticular selection. There is little consecutiveness in dates. Theyrun any time within nearly five or six years. Each was carelesslypencilled in the open air, at the time and place. The printers willlearn this to some vexation perhaps, as much of their copy is fromthose hastily-written first notes. 

BIRDS MIGRATING AT MIDNIGHT

Did you ever chance to hear the midnight flight of birds passingthrough the air and darkness overhead, in countless armies, changingtheir early or late summer habitat? It is something not to beforgotten. A friend called me up just after 12 last night to mark thepeculiar noise of unusually immense flocks migrating north (ratherlate this year. ) In the silence, shadow and delicious odor of thehour, (the natural perfume belonging to the night alone, ) I thought itrare music. You could _hear_ the characteristic motion--once or twice"the rush of mighty wings, " but often a velvety rustle, long drawnout--sometimes quite near--with continual calls and chirps, and somesong-notes. It all lasted from 12 till after 3. Once in a while thespecies was plainly distinguishable; I could make out the bobolink, tanager, Wilson's thrush, white-crown'd sparrow, and occasionally fromhigh in the air came the notes of the plover. 

BUMBLE-BEES

May-month--month of swarming, singing, mating birds--the bumble-beemonth--month of the flowering lilac-(and then my own birth-month. ) AsI jot this paragraph, I am out just after sunrise, and down towardsthe creek. The lights, perfumes, melodies--the blue birds, grass birdsand robins, in every direction--the noisy, vocal, natural concert. For undertones, a neighboring wood-pecker tapping his tree, and thedistant clarion of chanticleer. Then the fresh-earth smells--thecolors, the delicate drabs and thin blues of the perspective. Thebright green of the grass has receiv'd an added tinge from the lasttwo days' mildness and moisture. How the sun silently mounts in thebroad clear sky, on his day's journey! How the warm beams bathe all, and come streaming kissingly and almost hot on my face. 

A while since the croaking of the pond-frogs and the first white ofthe dog-wood blossoms. Now the golden dandelions in endless profusion, spotting the ground everywhere. The white cherry and pear-blows--thewild violets, with their blue eyes looking up and saluting my feet, asI saunter the wood-edge--the rosy blush of budding apple-trees--thelight-clear emerald hue of the wheat-fields--the darker green of therye--a warm elasticity pervading the air--the cedar-bushesprofusely deck'd with their little brown apples--the summer fullyawakening--the convocation of black birds, garrulous flocks of them, gathering on some tree, and making the hour and place noisy as I sitnear. 

_Later. _--Nature marches in procession, in sections, like the corps ofan army. All have done much for me, and still do. But for the last twodays it has been the great wild bee, the humble-bee, or "bumble, " asthe children call him. As I walk, or hobble, from the farm-house downto the creek, I traverse the before-mention'd lane, fenced by oldrails, with many splits, splinters, breaks, holes, &c. , the choicehabitat of those crooning, hairy insects. Up and down and by andbetween these rails, they swarm and dart and fly in countless myriads. As I wend slowly along, I am often accompanied with a moving cloudof them. They play a leading part in my morning, midday or sunsetrambles, and often dominate the landscape in a way I never beforethought of--fill the long lane, not by scores or hundreds only, but bythousands. Large and vivacious and swift, with wonderful momentumand a loud swelling, perpetual hum, varied now and then by somethingalmost like a shriek, they dart to and fro, in rapid flashes, chasingeach other, and (little things as they are, ) conveying to me a new andpronounc'd sense of strength, beauty, vitality and movement. Are theyin their mating season? or what is the meaning of this plenitude, swiftness, eagerness, display? As I walk'd, I thought I was follow'dby a particular swarm, but upon observation I saw that it was a rapidsuccession of changing swarms, one after another. 

As I write, I am seated under a big wild-cherry tree--the warm daytemper'd by partial clouds and a fresh breeze, neither too heavy norlight--and here I sit long and long, envelop'd in the deep musicaldrone of these bees, flitting, balancing, darting to and fro about meby hundreds--big fellows with light yellow jackets, great glisteningswelling bodies, stumpy heads and gauzy wings--humming theirperpetual rich mellow boom. (Is there not a hint in it for a musicalcomposition, of which it should be the back-ground? some bumble-beesymphony?) How it all nourishes, lulls me, in the way most needed; theopen air, the rye-fields, the apple orchards. The last two days havebeen faultless in sun, breeze, temperature and everything; never twomore perfect days, and I have enjoy'd them wonderfully. My health issomewhat better, and my spirit at peace. (Yet the anniversary of thesaddest loss and sorrow of my life is close at hand. )

Another jotting, another perfect day: forenoon, from 7 to 9, twohours envelop'd in sound of bumble-bees and bird-music. Down inthe apple-trees and in a neighboring cedar were three or fourrusset-back'd thrushes, each singing his best, and roulading in ways Inever heard surpass'd. Two hours I abandon myself to hearing them, and indolently absorbing the scene. Almost every bird I notice has aspecial time in the year--sometimes limited to a few days--whenit sings its best; and now is the period of these russet-backs. Meanwhile, up and down the lane, the darting, droning, musicalbumble-bees. A great swarm again for my entourage as I return home, moving along with me as before. 

As I write this, two or three weeks later, I am sitting near the brookunder a tulip tree, 70 feet high, thick with the fresh verdure of itsyoung maturity--a beautiful object--every branch, every leaf perfect. From top to bottom, seeking the sweet juice in the blossoms, it swarmswith myriads of these wild bees, whose loud and steady humming makesan undertone to the whole, and to my mood and the hour. All of which Iwill bring to a close by extracting the following verses from Henry A. Beers's little volume:

 As I lay yonder in tall grass A drunken bumble-bee went past

 Delirious with honey toddy. The golden sash about his body Scarce kept it in his swollen belly Distent with honeysuckle jelly. Rose liquor and the sweet-pea wine Had fill' d his soul with song divine; Deep had he drunk the warm night through, His hairy thighs were wet with dew. Full many an antic he had play'd While the world went round through sleep and shade. Oft had he lit with thirsty lip Some flower-cup's nectar'd sweets to sip, When on smooth petals he would slip, Or over tangled stamens trip, And headlong in the pollen roll'd, Crawl out quite dusted o'er with gold; Or else his heavy feet would stumble Against some bud, and down he'd tumble Amongst the grass; there lie and grumble In low, soft bass--poor maudlin bumble!

CEDAR-APPLES

As I journey'd to-day in a light wagon ten or twelve miles through thecountry, nothing pleas'd me more, in their homely beauty and novelty(I had either never seen the little things to such advantage, or hadnever noticed them before) than that peculiar fruit, with its profuseclear-yellow dangles of inch-long silk or yarn, in boundless profusionspotting the dark green cedar bushes--contrasting well with theirbronze tufts--the flossy shreds covering the knobs all over, like ashock of wild hair on elfin pates. On my ramble afterward down bythe creek I pluck'd one from its bush, and shall keep it. Thesecedar-apples last only a little while however, and soon crumble andfade. 

SUMMER SIGHTS AND INDOLENCIES

_June 10th_. --As I write, 5-1/2 P. M. , here by the creek, nothing canexceed the quiet splendor and freshness around me. We had a heavyshower, with brief thunder and lightning, in the middle of the day;and since, overhead, one of those not uncommon yet indescribableskies (in quality, not details or forms) of limpid blue, with rollingsilver-fringed clouds, and a pure-dazzling sun. For underlay, treesin fulness of tender foliage--liquid, reedy, long-drawn notes ofbirds--based by the fretful mewing of a querulous cat-bird, and thepleasant chippering-shriek of two kingfishers. I have been watchingthe latter the last half hour, on their regular evening frolic overand in the stream; evidently a spree of the liveliest kind. Theypursue each other, whirling and wheeling around, with many a jocunddownward dip, splashing the spray in jets of diamonds--and then offthey swoop, with slanting wings and graceful flight, sometimes so nearme I can plainly see their dark-gray feather-bodies and milk-whitenecks. 

SUNDOWN PERFUME--QUAILNOTES--THE HERMIT-THRUSH

_June 19th, 4 to 6-1/2, P. M. _--Sitting alone by the creek--solitudehere, but the scene bright and vivid enough--the sun shining, andquite a fresh wind blowing (some heavy showers last night, ) the grassand trees looking their best--the clare-obscure of different greens, shadows, half-shadows, and the dappling glimpses of the water, throughrecesses--the wild flageolet-note of a quail near by--the just-heardfretting of some hylas down there in the pond--crows cawing in thedistance--a drove of young hogs rooting in soft ground near the oakunder which I sit--some come sniffing near me, and then scamper away, with grunts. And still the clear notes of the quail--the quiver ofleaf-shadows over the paper as I write--the sky aloft, with whiteclouds, and the sun well declining to the west--the swift darting ofmany sand-swallows coming and going, their holes in a neighboringmarl-bank--the odor of the cedar and oak, so palpable, as eveningapproaches--perfume, color, the bronze-and-gold of nearly ripen'dwheat--clover-fields, with honey-scent--the well-up maize, with longand rustling leaves--the great patches of thriving potatoes, duskygreen, fleck'd all over with white blossoms--the old, warty, venerableoak above me--and ever, mix'd with the dual notes of the quail, thesoughing of the wind through some near-by pines. 

As I rise for return, I linger long to a delicious song-epilogue (isit the hermit-thrush?) from some bushy recess off there in the swamp, repeated leisurely and pensively over and over again. This, to thecircle-gambols of the swallows flying by dozens in concentric rings inthe last rays of sunset, like flashes of some airy wheel. 

A JULY AFTER-NOON BY THE POND

The fervent heat, but so much more endurable in this pure air--thewhite and pink pond-blossoms, with great heart-shaped leaves; theglassy waters of the creek, the banks, with dense bushery, and thepicturesque beeches and shade and turf; the tremulous, reedy call ofsome bird from recesses, breaking the warm, indolent, half-voluptuoussilence; an occasional wasp, hornet, honey-bee or bumble (they hovernear my hands or face, yet annoy me not, nor I them, as they appear toexamine, find nothing, and away they go)--the vast space of the skyoverhead so clear, and the buzzard up there sailing his slow whirl inmajestic spirals and discs; just over the surface of the pond, twolarge slate-color'd dragon-flies, with wings of lace, circling anddarting and occasionally balancing themselves quite still, theirwings quivering all the time, (are they not showing off for myamusement?)--the pond itself, with the sword-shaped calamus; thewater snakes--occasionally a flitting blackbird, with red dabs on hisshoulders, as he darts slantingly by--the sounds that bring out thesolitude, warmth, light and shade--the quawk of some pond duck--(thecrickets and grasshoppers are mute in the noon heat, but I hear thesong of the first cicadas;)--then at some distance the rattle andwhirr of a reaping machine as the horses draw it on a rapid walkthrough a rye field on the opposite side of the creek--(what was theyellow or light-brown bird, large as a young hen, with short neck andlong-stretch'd legs I just saw, in flapping and awkward flight overthere through the trees?)--the prevailing delicate, yet palpable, spicy, grassy, clovery perfume to my nostrils; and over all, encircling all, to my sight and soul, the free space of the sky, transparent and blue--and hovering there in the west, a mass ofwhite-gray fleecy clouds the sailors call "shoals of mackerel"--thesky, with silver swirls like locks of toss'd hair, spreading, expanding--a vast voiceless, formless simulacrum--yet may-be the mostreal reality and formulator of everything--who knows?

LOCUSTS AND KATY-DIDS

_Aug. 22_. --Reedy monotones of locust, or sounds of katydid--I hearthe latter at night, and the other both day and night. I thought themorning and evening warble of birds delightful; but I find I canlisten to these strange insects with just as much pleasure. A singlelocust is now heard near noon from a tree two hundred feet off, as Iwrite--a long whirring, continued, quite loud noise graded in distinctwhirls, or swinging circles, increasing in strength and rapidity up toa certain point, and then a fluttering, quietly tapering fall. Eachstrain is continued from one to two minutes. The locust-song is veryappropriate to the scene--gushes, has meaning, is masculine, is likesome fine old wine, not sweet, but far better than sweet. 

But the katydid--how shall I describe its piquant utterances? Onesings from a willow-tree just outside my open bedroom window, twentyyards distant; every clear night for a fortnight past has sooth'd meto sleep. I rode through a piece of woods for a hundred rods the otherevening, and heard the katydids by myriads--very curious for once; butI like better my single neighbor on the tree. Let me say more aboutthe song of the locust, even to repetition; a long, chromatic, tremulous crescendo, like a brass disk whirling round and round, emitting wave after wave of notes, beginning with a certain moderatebeat or measure, rapidly increasing in speed and emphasis, reachinga point of great energy and significance, and then quicklyand gracefully dropping down and out. Not the melody of thesinging-bird--far from it; the common musician might think withoutmelody, but surely having to the finer ear a harmony of its own;monotonous--but what a swing there is in that brassy drone, round andround, cymballine--or like the whirling of brass quoits. 

THE LESSON OF A TREE

_Sept. 1_. --I should not take either the biggest or the mostpicturesque tree to illustrate it. Here is one of my favorites nowbefore me, a fine yellow poplar, quite straight, perhaps 90 feet high, and four thick at the butt. How strong, vital, enduring! how dumblyeloquent! What suggestions of imperturbability and _being_, asagainst the human trait of mere _seeming_. Then the qualities, almostemotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent andharmless, yet so savage. It _is_, yet says nothing. How it rebukesby its tough and equable serenity all weathers, this gusty-temper'dlittle whiffet, man, that runs indoors at a mite of rain or snow. Science (or rather half-way science) scoffs at reminiscence of dryadand hamadryad, and of trees speaking. But, if they don't, they do aswell as most speaking, writing, poetry, sermons--or rather they doa great deal better. I should say indeed that those olddryad-reminiscences are quite as true as any, and profounder than mostreminiscences we get. ("Cut this out, " as the quack mediciners say, and keep by you. ) Go and sit in a grove or woods, with one or more ofthose voiceless companions, and read the foregoing, and think. 

One lesson from affiliating a tree--perhaps the greatest moral lessonanyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of _what is_, without the least regard to what the looker-on (thecritic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. Whatworse--what more general malady pervades each and all of us, ourliterature, education, attitude toward each other, (even towardourselves, ) than a morbid trouble about _seems_, (generallytemporarily seems too, ) and no trouble at all, or hardly any, aboutthe sane, slow-growing, perennial, real parts of character, books, friendship, marriage--humanity's invisible foundations andhold-together? (As the all-basis, the nerve, the great-sympathetic, the plenum within humanity, giving stamp to everything, is necessarilyinvisible. )

_Aug. 4, 6 P. M. _--Lights and shades and rare effects on tree-foliageand grass--transparent greens, grays, &c. , all in sunset pomp anddazzle. The clear beams are now thrown in many new places, on thequilted, seam'd, bronze-drab, lower tree-trunks, shadow'd except atthis hour--now flooding their young and old columnar ruggedness withstrong light, unfolding to my sense new amazing features ofsilent, shaggy charm, the solid bark, the expression of harmlessimpassiveness, with many a bulge and gnarl unreck'd before. In therevealings of such light, such exceptional hour, such mood, one doesnot wonder at the old story fables, (indeed, why fables?) of peoplefalling into love-sickness with trees, seiz'd extatic with the mysticrealism of the resistless silent strength in them--_strength_, whichafter all is perhaps the last, completest, highest beauty. 

_Trees I am familiar with here_. 

Oaks, (many kinds--one sturdy Willows. Old fellow, vital, green, bushy, Catalpas. Five feet thick at the butt, I sit Persimmons. Under every day, ) Mountain-ash. Cedars plenty. Hickories. Tulip trees, (_Liriodendron, _) is of Maples, many kinds. The magnolia family--I have Locusts. Seen it in Michigan and southern Birches. Illinois, 140 feet high and Dogwood. 8 feet thick at the butt [A]; does Pine. Not transplant well; best rais'd the Elm. From seeds--the lumbermen Chesnut. Call it yellow poplar. ) Linden. Sycamores. Aspen. Gum trees, both sweet and sour. Spruce. Beeches. Hornbeam. Black-walnuts. Laurel. Sassafras. Holly. 

AUTUMN SIDE-BITS

_Sept. 20_. --Under an old black oak, glossy and green, exhalingaroma--amid a grove the Albic druids might have chosen--envelop'd inthe warmth and light of the noonday sun, and swarms[10] of flittinginsects--with the harsh cawing of many crows a hundred rods away--hereI sit in solitude, absorbing, enjoying all. The corn, stack'd in itscone-shaped stacks, russet-color'd and sere--a large field spottedthick with scarlet-gold pumpkins--an adjoining one of cabbages, showing well in their green and pearl, mottled by much lightand shade--melon patches, with their bulging ovals, and greatsilver-streak'd, ruffled, broad-edged leaves--and many an autumn sightand sound beside--the distant scream of a flock of guinea-hens--andpour'd over all the September breeze, with pensive cadence through thetree tops. 

_Another Day_. --The ground in all directions strew'd with _debris_from a storm. Timber creek, as I slowly pace its banks, has ebb'd low, and shows reaction from the turbulent swell of the late equinoctial. As I look around, I take account of stock--weeds and shrubs, knolls, paths, occasional stumps, some with smooth'd tops, (several I use asseats of rest, from place to place, and from one I am now jottingthese lines, )--frequent wild-flowers, little white, star-shapedthings, or the cardinal red of the lobelia, or the cherry-ball seedsof the perennial rose, or the many-threaded vines winding up andaround trunks of trees. 

_Oct. 1, 2 and 3_. --Down every day in the solitude of the creek. Aserene autumn sun and westerly breeze to-day (3d) as I sit here, thewater surface prettily moving in wind-ripples before me. On a stoutold beech at the edge, decayed and slanting, almost fallen to thestream, yet with life and leaves in its mossy limbs, a gray squirrel, exploring, runs up and down, flirts his tail, leaps to the ground, sits on his haunches upright as he sees me, (a Darwinian hint?) andthen races up the tree again. 

_Oct. 4_. --Cloudy and coolish; signs of incipient winter. Yet pleasanthere, the leaves thick-falling, the ground brown with them already;rich coloring, yellows of all hues, pale and dark-green, shades fromlightest to richest red--all set in and toned down by the prevailingbrown of the earth and gray of the sky. So, winter is coming; and Iyet in my sickness. I sit here amid all these fair sights and vitalinfluences, and abandon myself to that thought, with its wanderingtrains of speculation. 

Note:

[10] There is a tulip poplar within sight of Woodstown, which istwenty feet around, three feet from the ground, four feet across abouteighteen feet up the trunk, which is broken off about three or fourfeet higher up. On the south side an arm has shot out from whichrise two stems, each to about ninety-one or ninety-two feet from theground. Twenty-five (or more) years since the cavity in the butt waslarge enough for, and nine men at one time, ate dinner therein. It issupposed twelve to fifteen men could now, at one time, stand withinits trunk. The severe winds of 1877 and 1878 did not seem to damageit, and the two stems send out yearly many blossoms, scenting theair immediately about it with their sweet perfume. It is entirelyunprotected by other trees, on a hill. --_Woodstown, N. J. , "Register, "April 15, '79_. 

THE SKY--DAYS AND NIGHTS--HAPPINESS

_Oct. 20_. --A clear, crispy day--dry and breezy air, full of oxygen. Out of the sane, silent, beauteous miracles that envelope and fuseme--trees, water, grass, sunlight, and early frost--the one I amlooking at most to-day is the sky. It has that delicate, transparentblue, peculiar to autumn, and the only clouds are little or largerwhite ones, giving their still and spiritual motion to the greatconcave. All through the earlier day (say from 7 to 11) it keeps apure, yet vivid blue. But as noon approaches the color gets lighter, quite gray for two or three hours--then still paler for a spell, tillsun-down--which last I watch dazzling through the interstices of aknoll of big trees--darts of fire and a gorgeous show of light-yellow, liver-color and red, with a vast silver glaze askant on the water--thetransparent shadows, shafts, sparkle, and vivid colors beyond all thepaintings ever made. 

I don't know what or how, but it seems to me mostly owing to theseskies, (every now and then I think, while I have of course seen themevery day of my life, I never really saw the skies before, ) have hadthis autumn some wondrously contented hours--may I not say perfectlyhappy ones? As I have read, Byron just before his death told a friendthat he had known but three happy hours during his whole existence. Then there is the old German legend of the king's bell, to the samepoint. While I was out there by the wood, that beautiful sunsetthrough the trees, I thought of Byron's and the bell story, and thenotion started in me that I was having a happy hour. (Though perhapsmy best moments I never jot down; when they come I cannot afford tobreak the charm by inditing memoranda. I just abandon myself to themood, and let it float on, carrying me in its placid extasy. )

What is happiness, anyhow? Is this one of its hours, or the like ofit?--so impalpable--a mere breath, an evanescent tinge? I am notsure--so let me give myself the benefit of the doubt. Hast Thou, pellucid, in Thy azure depths, medicine for case like mine? (Ah, thephysical shatter and troubled spirit of me the last three years. ) Anddost Thou subtly mystically now drip it through the air invisibly uponme?

_Night of Oct. 28. _--The heavens unusually transparent--the stars outby myriads--the great path of the Milky Way, with its branch, onlyseen of very clear nights--Jupiter, setting in the west, looks like ahuge hap-hazard splash, and has a little star for companion. 

 Clothed in his white garments, Into the round and clear arena slowly entered the brahmin, Holding a little child by the hand, Like the moon with the planet Jupiter in a cloudless night-sky. 

 _Old Hindu Poem. _

_Early in November. _--At its farther end the lane already describedopens into a broad grassy upland field of over twenty acres, slightlysloping to the south. Here I am accustom'd to walk for sky views andeffects, either morning or sundown. To-day from this field my soulis calm'd and expanded beyond description, the whole forenoon by theclear blue arching over all, cloudless, nothing particular, only skyand daylight. Their soothing accompaniments, autumn leaves, the cooldry air, the faint aroma--crows cawing in the distance--two greatbuzzards wheeling gracefully and slowly far up there--the occasionalmurmur of the wind, sometimes quite gently, then threatening throughthe trees--a gang of farm-laborers loading cornstalks in a field insight, and the patient horses waiting. 

COLORS--A CONTRAST

Such a play of colors and lights, different seasons, different hoursof the day--the lines of the far horizon where the faint-tinged edgeof the landscape loses itself in the sky. As I slowly hobble up thelane toward day-close, an incomparable sunset shooting in moltensapphire and gold, shaft after shaft, through the ranks of thelong-leaved corn, between me and the west. _Another day_--Therich dark green of the tulip-trees and the oaks, the gray of theswamp-willows, the dull hues of the sycamores and black-walnuts, the emerald of the cedars (after rain, ) and the light yellow of thebeeches. 

NOVEMBER 8, '76

The forenoon leaden and cloudy, not cold or wet, but indicating both. As I hobble down here and sit by the silent pond, how different fromthe excitement amid which, in the cities, millions of people are nowwaiting news of yesterday's Presidential election, or receiving anddiscussing the result--in this secluded place uncared-for, unknown. 

CROWS AND CROWS

_Nov. 14_. --As I sit here by the creek, resting after my walk, a warmlanguor bathes me from the sun. No sound but a cawing of crows, and nomotion but their black flying figures from over-head, reflected inthe mirror of the pond below. Indeed a principal feature of the sceneto-day is these crows, their incessant cawing, far or near, and theircountless flocks and processions moving from place to place, and attimes almost darkening the air with their myriads. As I sit a momentwriting this by the bank, I see the black, clear-cut reflection ofthem far below, flying through the watery looking-glass, by ones, twos, or long strings. All last night I heard the noises from theirgreat roost in a neighboring wood. 

A WINTER DAY ON THE SEA-BEACH

One bright December mid-day lately I spent down on the New Jerseysea-shore, reaching it by a little more than an hour's railroad tripover the old Camden and Atlantic. I had started betimes, fortified bynice strong coffee and a good breakfast (cook'd by the hands I love, my dear sister Lou's--how much better it makes the victuals taste, and then assimilate, strengthen you, perhaps make the whole daycomfortable afterwards. ) Five or six miles at the last, our trackenter'd a broad region of salt grass meadows, intersected by lagoons, and cut up everywhere by watery runs. The sedgy perfume, delightfulto my nostrils, reminded me of "the mash" and south bay of my nativeisland. I could have journey'd contentedly till night through theseflat and odorous sea-prairies. From half-past 11 till 2 I was nearlyall the time along the beach, or in sight of the ocean, listeningto its hoarse murmur, and inhaling the bracing and welcome breezes. First, a rapid five-mile drive over the hard sand--our carriage wheelshardly made dents in it. Then after dinner (as there were nearly twohours to spare) I walk'd off in another direction, (hardly met or sawa person, ) and taking possession of what appear'd to have been thereception-room of an old bath-house range, had a broad expanse of viewall to myself--quaint, refreshing, unimpeded--a dry area of sedgeand Indian grass immediately before and around me--space, simple, unornamented space. Distant vessels, and the far-off, just visibletrailing smoke of an inward bound steamer; more plainly, ships, brigs, schooners, in sight, most of them with every sail set to the firm andsteady wind. 

The attractions, fascinations there are in sea and shore! How onedwells on their simplicity, even vacuity! What is it in us, arous'd bythose indirections and directions? That spread of waves and gray-whitebeach, salt, monotonous, senseless--such an entire absence of art, books, talk, elegance--so indescribably comforting, even this winterday--grim, yet so delicate-looking, so spiritual--striking emotional, impalpable depths, subtler than all the poems, paintings, music, I have ever read, seen, heard. (Yet let me be fair, perhaps it isbecause I have read those poems and heard that music. )

SEA-SHORE FANCIES

Even as a boy, I had the fancy, the wish, to write a piece, perhaps apoem, about the sea-shore--that suggesting, dividing line, contact, junction, the solid marrying the liquid--that curious, lurkingsomething, (as doubtless every objective form finally becomes to thesubjective spirit, ) which means far more than its mere first sight, grand as that is--blending the real and ideal, and each made portionof the other. Hours, days, in my Long Island youth and early manhood, I haunted the shores of Rockaway or Coney island, or away east tothe Hamptons or Montauk. Once, at the latter place, (by the oldlighthouse, nothing but sea-tossings in sight in every direction asfar as the eye could reach, ) I remember well, I felt that I must oneday write a book expressing this liquid, mystic theme. Afterward, Irecollect, how it came to me that instead of any special lyrical orepical or literary attempt, the sea-shore should be an invisible_influence_, a pervading gauge and tally for me, in my composition. (Let me give a hint here to young writers. I am not sure but I haveunwittingly follow'd out the same rule with other powers besides seaand shores--avoiding them, in the way of any dead set at poetizingthem, as too big for formal handling--quite satisfied if I couldindirectly show that we have met and fused, even if only once, butenough--that we have really absorb'd each other and understand eachother. )

There is a dream, a picture, that for years at intervals, (sometimesquite long ones, but surely again, in time, ) has come noiselessly upbefore me, and I really believe, fiction as it is, has enter'd largelyinto my practical life--certainly into my writings, and shapedand color'd them. It is nothing more or less than a stretch ofinterminable white-brown sand, hard and smooth and broad, with theocean perpetually, grandly, rolling in upon it, with slow-measuredsweep, with rustle and hiss and foam, and many a thump as of low bassdrums. This scene, this picture, I say, has risen before me at timesfor years. Sometimes I wake at night and can hear and see it plainly. 

IN MEMORY OF THOMAS PAINE. 

_Spoken at Lincoln Hall, Philadelphia, Sunday, Jan. 28, '77, for 140thanniversary of T. P. 's birthday. _

Some thirty-five years ago, in New York city, at Tammany hall, ofwhich place I was then a frequenter, I happen'd to become quitewell acquainted with Thomas Paine's perhaps most intimate chum, andcertainly his later years' very frequent companion, a remarkably fineold man, Col. Fellows, who may yet be remember'd by some stray relicsof that period and spot. If you will allow me, I will first give adescription of the Colonel himself. He was tall, of military bearing, aged about 78, I should think, hair white as snow, clean-shaved onthe face, dress'd very neatly, a tail-coat of blue cloth with metalbuttons, buff vest, pantaloons of drab color, and his neck, breast andwrists showing the whitest of linen. Under all circumstances, finemanners; a good but not profuse talker, his wits still fully abouthim, balanced and live and undimm'd as ever. He kept pretty fairhealth, though so old. For employment--for he was poor--he had a postas constable of some of the upper courts. I used to think him verypicturesque on the fringe of a crowd holding a tall staff, with hiserect form, and his superb, bare, thick-hair'd, closely-cropt whitehead. The judges and young lawyers, with whom he was ever a favorite, and the subject of respect, used to call him Aristides. It was thegeneral opinion among them that if manly rectitude and the instinctsof absolute justice remain'd vital anywhere about New York City Hall, or Tammany, they were to be found in Col. Fellows. He liked young men, and enjoy'd to leisurely talk with them over a social glass of toddy, after his day's work, (he on these occasions never drank but oneglass, ) and it was at reiterated meetings of this kind in oldTammany's back parlor of those days, that he told me much about ThomasPaine. At one of our interviews he gave me a minute account of Paine'ssickness and death. In short, from those talks, I was and am satisfiedthat my old friend, with his mark'd advantages, had mentally, morallyand emotionally gauged the author of "Common Sense, " and besidesgiving me a good portrait of his appearance and manners, had taken thetrue measure of his interior character. 

Paine's practical demeanor, and much of his theoretical belief, was amixture of the French and English schools of a century ago, and thebest of both. Like most old-fashion'd people, he drank a glass or twoevery day, but was no tippler, nor intemperate, let alone being adrunkard. He lived simply and economically, but quite well--wasalways cheery and courteous, perhaps occasionally a little blunt, having very positive opinions upon politics, religion, and so forth. That he labor'd well and wisely for the States in the trying period oftheir parturition, and in the seeds of their character, there seems tome no question. I dare not say how much of what our Union is owningand enjoying to-day--its independence--its ardent belief in, andsubstantial practice of radical human rights--and the severance ofits government from all ecclesiastical and superstitious dominion--Idare not say how much of all this is owing to Thomas Paine, but I aminclined to think a good portion of it decidedly is. 

But I was not going either into an analysis or eulogium of the man. I wanted to carry you back a generation or two, and give you byindirection a moment's glance--and also to ventilate a very earnestand I believe authentic opinion, nay conviction, of that time, thefruit of the interviews I have mention'd, and of questioning andcross-questioning, clench'd by my best information since, that ThomasPaine had a noble personality, as exhibited in presence, face, voice, dress, manner, and what may be call'd his atmosphere and magnetism, especially the later years of his life. I am sure of it. Of the fouland foolish fictions yet told about the circumstances of his decease, the absolute fact is that as he lived a good life, after its kind, hedied calmly and philosophically, as became him. He served the embryoUnion with most precious service--a service that every man, womanand child in our thirty-eight States is to some extent receiving thebenefit of to-day--and I for one here cheerfully, reverently throwmy pebble on the cairn of his memory. As we all know, the seasondemands--or rather, will it ever be out of season?--that America learnto better dwell on her choicest possession, the legacy of her good andfaithful men--that she well preserve their fame, if unquestion'd--or, if need be, that she fail not to dissipate what clouds have intrudedon that fame, and burnish it newer, truer and brighter, continually. 

A TWO HOURS ICE-SAIL

_Feb. 3, '77_--From 4 to 6 P. M. Crossing the Delaware, (back againat my Camden home, ) unable to make our landing, through the ice; ourboat stanch and strong and skilfully piloted, but old and sulky, andpoorly minding her helm. (_Power_, so important in poetry and war, isalso first point of all in a winter steamboat, with long stretches ofice-packs to tackle. ) For over two hours we bump'd and beat about, the invisible ebb, sluggish but irresistible, often carrying us longdistances against our will. In the first tinge of dusk, as I look'daround, I thought there could not be presented a more chilling, arctic, grim-extended, depressing scene. Everything was yet plainlyvisible; for miles north and south, ice, ice, ice, mostly broken, but some big cakes, and no clear water in sight. The shores, piers, surfaces, roofs, shipping, mantled with snow. A faint winter vaporhung a fitting accompaniment around and over the endless whitishspread, and gave it just a tinge of steel and brown. 

_Feb. 6_. --As I cross home in the 6 P. M. Boat again, the transparentshadows are filled everywhere with leisurely falling, slightlyslanting, curiously sparse but very large, flakes of snow. On theshores, near and far, the glow of just-lit gas-clusters at intervals. The ice, sometimes in hummocks, sometimes floating fields, throughwhich our boat goes crunching. The light permeated by that peculiarevening haze, right after sunset, which sometimes renders quitedistant objects so distinctly. 

SPRING OVERTURES--RECREATIONS

_Feb. 10_. --The first chirping, almost singing, of a bird to-day. ThenI noticed a couple of honey-bees spirting and humming about the openwindow in the sun. 

_Feb. 11_. --In the soft rose and pale gold of the declining light, this beautiful evening, I heard the first hum and preparation ofawakening spring--very faint--whether in the earth or roots, orstarting of insects, I know not--but it was audible, as I lean'd on arail (I am down in my country quarters awhile, ) and look'd long at thewestern horizon. Turning to the east, Sirius, as the shadows deepen'd, came forth in dazzling splendor. And great Orion; and a little to thenorth-east the big Dipper, standing on end. 

_Feb. 20_. --A solitary and pleasant sundown hour at the pond, exercising arms, chest, my whole body, by a tough oak sapling thick asmy wrist, twelve feet high--pulling and pushing, inspiring the goodair. After I wrestle with the tree awhile, I can feel its young sapand virtue welling up out of the ground and tingling through me fromcrown to toe, like health's wine. Then for addition and variety Ilaunch forth in my vocalism; shout declamatory pieces, sentiments, sorrow, anger, &c. , from the stock poets or plays--or inflate my lungsand sing the wild tunes and refrains I heard of the blacks down south, or patriotic songs I learn'd in the army. I make the echoes ring, Itell you! As the twilight fell, in a pause of these ebullitions, anowl somewhere the other side of the creek sounded _too-oo-oo-oo-oo_, soft and pensive (and I fancied a little sarcastic) repeated four orfive times. Either to applaud the negro songs--or perhaps an ironicalcomment on the sorrow, anger, or style of the stock poets. 

ONE OF THE HUMAN KINKS

How is it that in all the serenity and lonesomeness of solitude, awayoff here amid the hush of the forest, alone, or as I have found inprairie wilds, or mountain stillness, one is never entirely withoutthe instinct of looking around, (I never am, and others tell me thesame of themselves, confidentially, ) for somebody to appear, orstart up out of the earth, or from behind some tree or rock? Is it alingering, inherited remains of man's primitive wariness, from thewild animals? or from his savage ancestry far back? It is not at allnervousness or fear. Seems as if something unknown were possiblylurking in those bushes, or solitary places. Nay, it is quite certainthere is--some vital unseen presence. 

AN AFTERNOON SCENE

_Feb. 22_. --Last night and to-day rainy and thick, till mid-afternoon, when the wind chopp'd round, the clouds swiftly drew off likecurtains, the clear appear'd, and with it the fairest, grandest, most wondrous rainbow I ever saw, all complete, very vivid at itsearth-ends, spreading vast effusions of illuminated haze, violet, yellow, drab-green, in all directions overhead, through which the sunbeam'd--an indescribable utterance of color and light, so gorgeous yetso soft, such as I had never witness'd before. Then its continuance: afull hour pass'd before the last of those earth-ends disappear'd. Thesky behind was all spread in translucent blue, with many little whiteclouds and edges. To these a sunset, filling, dominating the estheticand soul senses, sumptuously, tenderly, full. I end this note by thepond, just light enough to see, through the evening shadows, thewestern reflections in its water-mirror surface, with inverted figuresof trees. I hear now and then the _flup_ of a pike leaping out, andrippling the water. 

THE GATES OPENING

_April 6_. --Palpable spring indeed, or the indications of it. I amsitting in bright sunshine, at the edge of the creek, the surface justrippled by the wind. All is solitude, morning freshness, negligence. For companions my two kingfishers sailing, winding, darting, dipping, sometimes capriciously separate, then flying together. I hear theirguttural twittering again and again; for awhile nothing but thatpeculiar sound. As noon approaches other birds warm up. The reedynotes of the robin, and a musical passage of two parts, one a cleardelicious gurgle, with several other birds I cannot place. To whichis join'd, (yes, I just hear it, ) one low purr at intervals from someimpatient hylas at the pond-edge. The sibilant murmur of a prettystiff breeze now and then through the trees. Then a poor little deadleaf, long frost-bound, whirls from somewhere up aloft in one wildescaped freedom-spree in space and sunlight, and then dashes down tothe waters, which hold it closely and soon drown it out of sight. Thebushes and trees are yet bare, but the beeches have their wrinkledyellow leaves of last season's foliage largely left, frequent cedarsand pines yet green, and the grass not without proofs of comingfullness. And over all a wonderfully fine dome of clear blue, the playof light coming and going, and great fleeces of white clouds swimmingso silently. 

THE COMMON EARTH, THE SOIL

The soil, too--let others pen-and-ink the sea, the air, (as Isometimes try)--but now I feel to choose the common soil fortheme--naught else. The brown soil here, (just between winter-closeand opening spring and vegetation)--the rain-shower at night, andthe fresh smell next morning--the red worms wriggling out of theground--the dead leaves, the incipient grass, and the latent lifeunderneath--the effort to start something--already in shelter'd spotssome little flowers--the distant emerald show of winter wheat andthe rye-fields--the yet naked trees, with clear insterstices, givingprospects hidden in summer--the tough fallow and the plow-team, andthe stout boy whistling to his horses for encouragement--and there thedark fat earth in long slanting stripes upturn'd. 

BIRDS AND BIRDS AND BIRDS

_A little later--bright weather_. --An unusual melodiousness, thesedays, (last of April and first of May) from the blackbirds; indeed allsorts of birds, darting, whistling, hopping or perch'd on trees. Neverbefore have I seen, heard, or been in the midst of, and got so floodedand saturated with them and their performances, as this current month. Such oceans, such successions of them. Let me make a list of those Ifind here:

Black birds (plenty, ) Meadow-larks (plenty, )Ring doves, Cat-birds (plenty, )Owls, Cuckoos, Woodpeckers, Pond snipes (plenty, )King-birds, Cheewinks, Crows (plenty, ) Quawks, Wrens, Ground robins, Kingfishers, Ravens, Quails, Gray snipes, Turkey-buzzards, Eagles, Hen-hawks, High-holes, Yellow birds, Herons, Thrushes, Tits, Reed birds, Woodpigeons. 

Early came the

Blue birds, Meadow-lark, Killdeer, White-bellied swallow, Plover, Sandpiper, Robin, Wilson's thrush, Woodcock, Flicker. 

FULL-STARR'D NIGHTS

_May 2l_. --Back in Camden. Again commencing one of those unusuallytransparent, full-starr'd, blue-black nights, as if to show thathowever lush and pompous the day may be, there is something leftin the not-day that can outvie it. The rarest, finest sample oflong-drawn-out clear-obscure, from sundown to 9 o'clock. I went downto the Delaware, and cross'd and cross'd. Venus like blazing silverwell up in the west. The large pale thin crescent of the new moon, half an hour high, sinking languidly under a bar-sinister of cloud, and then emerging. Arcturus right overhead. A faint fragrant sea-odorwafted up from the south. The gloaming, the temper'd coolness, withevery feature of the scene, indescribably soothing and tonic--oneof those hours that give hints to the soul, impossible to put in astatement. (Ah, where would be any food for spirituality without nightand the stars?) The vacant spaciousness of the air, and the veil'dblue of the heavens, seem'd miracles enough. 

As the night advanc'd it changed its spirit and garments to amplerstateliness. I was almost conscious of a definite presence, Naturesilently near. The great constellation of the Water-Serpent stretch'dits coils over more than half the heavens. The Swan with outspreadwings was flying down the Milky Way. The northern Crown, the Eagle, Lyra, all up there in their places. From the whole dome shot downpoints of light, rapport with me, through the clear blue-black. Allthe usual sense of motion, all animal life, seem'd discarded, seem'd afiction; a curious power, like the placid rest of Egyptian gods, tookpossession, none the less potent for being impalpable. Earlier I hadseen many bats, balancing in the luminous twilight, darting theirblack forms hither and yon over the river; but now they altogetherdisappear'd. The evening star and the moon had gone. Alertness andpeace lay camly couching together through the fluid universal shadows. 

_Aug. 26_. --Bright has the day been, and my spirits an equal_forzando_. Then comes the night, different, inexpressibly pensive, with its own tender and temper'd splendor. Venus lingers in the westwith a voluptuous dazzle unshown hitherto this summer. Mars risesearly, and the red sulky moon, two days past her full; Jupiter atnight's meridian, and the long curling-slanted Scorpion stretchingfull view in the south, Aretus-neck'd. Mars walks the heavenslord-paramount now; all through this month I go out after supper andwatch for him; sometimes getting up at midnight to take another lookat his unparallel'd lustre. (I see lately an astronomer has made outthrough the new Washington telescope that Mars has certainly onemoon, perhaps two. ) Pale and distant, but near in the heavens, Saturnprecedes him. 

MULLEINS AND MULLEINS

Large, placid mulleins, as summer advances, velvety in texture, of alight greenish-drab color, growing everywhere in the fields--at firstearth's big rosettes in their broad-leav'd low cluster-plants, eight, ten, twenty leaves to a plant--plentiful on the fallow twenty-acrelot, at the end of the lane, and especially by the ridge-sides of thefences--then close to the ground, but soon springing up--leaves asbroad as my hand, and the lower ones twice as long--so fresh and dewyin the morning--stalks now four or five, even seven or eight feethigh. The farmers, I find, think the mullein a mean unworthy weed, but I have grown to a fondness for it. Every object has its lesson, enclosing the suggestion of everything else--and lately I sometimesthink all is concentrated for me in these hardy, yellow-flower'dweeds. As I come down the lane early in the morning, I pause beforetheir soft wool-like fleece and stem and broad leaves, glittering withcountless diamonds. Annually for three summers now, they and I havesilently return'd together; at such long intervals I stand or sitamong them, musing--and woven with the rest, of so many hours andmoods of partial rehabilitation--of my sane or sick spirit, here asnear at peace as it can be. 

DISTANT SOUNDS

The axe of the wood-cutter, the measured thud of a singlethreshing-flail, the crowing of chanticleer in the barn-yard, (withinvariable responses from other barn-yards, ) and the lowing ofcattle--but most of all, or far or near, the wind--through the hightree-tops, or through low bushes, laving one's face and hands sogently, this balmy-bright noon, the coolest for a long time, (Sept. 2)--I will not call it _sighing_, for to me it is always a firm, sane, cheery expression, through a monotone, giving many varieties, or swiftor slow, or dense or delicate. The wind in the patch of pine woods offthere--how sibilant. Or at sea, I can imagine it this moment, tossingthe waves, with spirits of foam flying far, and the free whistle, andthe scent of the salt--and that vast paradox somehow with all itsaction and restlessness conveying a sense of eternal rest. 

Other adjuncts. _--But the sun and the moon here and these times. Asnever more wonderful by day, the gorgeous orb imperial, so vast, soardently, lovingly hot--so never a more glorious moon of nights, especially the last three or four. The great planets too--Mars neverbefore so flaming bright, so flashing-large, with slight yellow tinge, (the astronomers say--is it true?--nearer to us than any time the pastcentury)--and well up, lord Jupiter, (a little while since close bythe moon)--and in the west, after the sun sinks, voluptuous Venus, nowlanguid and shorn of her beams, as if from some divine excess. 

A SUN-BATH-NAKEDNESS

_Sunday, Aug. 27_. --Another day quite free from mark'd prostration andpain. It seems indeed as if peace and nutriment from heaven subtlyfilter into me as I slowly hobble down these country lanes and acrossfields, in the good air--as I sit here in solitude with Nature--open, voiceless, mystic, far removed, yet palpable, eloquent Nature. I mergemyself in the scene, in the perfect day. Hovering over the clearbrook-water, I am sooth'd by its soft gurgle in one place, andthe hoarser murmurs of its three-foot fall in another. Come, yedisconsolate, in whom any latent eligibility is left--come get thesure virtues of creek-shore, and wood and field. Two months (July andAugust, '77, ) have I absorb'd them, and they begin to make a new manof me. Every day, seclusion--every day at least two or three hours offreedom, bathing, no talk, no bonds, no dress, no books, no _manners_. 

Shall I tell you, reader, to what I attribute my already much-restoredhealth? That I have been almost two years, off and on, without drugsand medicines, and daily in the open air. Last summer I found aparticularly secluded little dell off one side by my creek, originallya large dug-out marl-pit, now abandon'd, fill'd, with bushes, trees, grass, a group of willows, a straggling bank, and a spring ofdelicious water running right through the middle of it, with two orthree little cascades. Here I retreated every hot day, and follow itup this summer. Here I realize the meaning of that old fellow who saidhe was seldom less alone than when alone. Never before did I get soclose to Nature; never before did she come so close to me. By oldhabit, I pencill'd down from time to time, almost automatically, moods, sights, hours, tints and outlines, on the spot. Let mespecially record the satisfaction of this current forenoon, so sereneand primitive, so conventionally exceptional, natural. 

An hour or so after breakfast I wended my way down to the recesses ofthe aforesaid dell, which I and certain thrushes, cat-birds, &c. , hadall to ourselves. A light south-west wind was blowing through thetree-tops. It was just the place and time for my Adamic air-bath andflesh-brushing from head to foot. So hanging clothes on a rail nearby, keeping old broadbrim straw on head and easy shoes on feet, havn'tI had a good time the last two hours! First with the stiff-elasticbristles rasping arms, breast, sides, till they turn'd scarlet--thenpartially bathing in the clear waters of the running brook--takingeverything very leisurely, with many rests and pauses--stepping aboutbarefooted every few minutes now and then in some neighboring blackooze, for unctuous mud-bath to my feet--a brief second and thirdrinsing in the crystal running waters--rubbing with the fragranttowel--slow negligent promenades on the turf up and down in thesun, varied with occasional rests, and further frictions of thebristle-brush--sometimes carrying my portable chair with me fromplace to place, as my range is quite extensive here, nearly a hundredrods, feeling quite secure from intrusion, (and that indeed I am notat all nervous about, if it accidentally happens. )

As I walk'd slowly over the grass, the sun shone out enough to showthe shadow moving with me. Somehow I seem'd to get identity with eachand every thing around me, in its condition. Nature was naked, and Iwas also. It was too lazy, soothing, and joyous-equable to speculateabout. Yet I might have thought somehow in this vein: Perhaps theinner never-lost rapport we hold with earth, light, air, trees, &c. , is not to be realized through eyes and mind only, but through thewhole corporeal body, which I will not have blinded or bandaged anymore than the eyes. Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature!--ah ifpoor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you oncemore! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is yourthought, your sophistication, your tear, your respectability, that isindecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only tooirksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or sheto whom the free exhilarating extasy of nakedness in Nature has neverbeen eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really knownwhat purity is--nor what faith or art or health really is. (Probablythe whole curriculum of first-class philosophy, beauty, heroism, form, illustrated by the old Hellenic race--the highest height and deepestdepth known to civilization in those departments--came from theirnatural and religious idea of Nakedness. )

Many such hours, from time to time, the last two summers--I attributemy partial rehabilitation largely to them. Some good people may thinkit a feeble or half-crack'd way of spending one's time and thinking. May-be it is. 

THE OAKS AND I

_Sept. 5, '77. _--I write this, 11 A. M. , shelter'd under a dense oak bythe bank, where I have taken refuge from a sudden rain. I came downhere, (we had sulky drizzles all the morning, but an hour ago a lull, )for the before-mention'd daily and simple exercise I am fond of--topull on that young hickory sapling out there--to sway and yield to itstough-limber upright stem--haply to get into my old sinews some ofits elastic fibre and clear sap. I stand on the turf and take thesehealth-pulls moderately and at intervals for nearly an hour, inhalinggreat draughts of fresh air. Wandering by the creek, I have three orfour naturally favorable spots where I rest--besides a chair Ilug with me and use for more deliberate occasions. At other spotsconvenient I have selected, besides the hickory just named, strong andlimber boughs of beech or holly, in easy-reaching distance, for mynatural gymnasia, for arms, chest, trunk-muscles. I can soon feelthe sap and sinew rising through me, like mercury to heat. I holdon boughs or slender trees caressingly there in the sun and shade, wrestle with their innocent stalwartness--and _know_ the virtuethereof passes from them into me. (Or may-be we interchange--may-bethe trees are more aware of it all than I ever thought. )

But now pleasantly imprison'd here under the big oak--the raindripping, and the sky cover'd with leaden clouds--nothing but the pondon one side, and the other a spread of grass, spotted with the milkyblossoms of the wild carrot--the sound of an axe wielded at somedistant wood-pile--yet in this dull scene, (as most folks wouldcall it, ) why am I so (almost) happy here and alone? Why would anyintrusion, even from people I like, spoil the charm? But am I alone?Doubtless there comes a time--perhaps it has come to me--when onefeels through his whole being, and pronouncedly the emotional part, that identity between himself subjectively and Nature objectivelywhich Schelling and Fichte are so fond of pressing. How it is I knownot, but I often realize a presence here--in clear moods I am certainof it, and neither chemistry nor reasoning nor esthetics will give theleast explanation. All the past two summers it has been strengtheningand nourishing my sick body and soul, as never before. Thanks, invisible physician, for thy silent delicious medicine, thy day andnight, thy waters and thy airs, the banks, the grass, the trees, ande'en the weeds!

A QUINTETTE

While I have been kept by the rain under the shelter of my greatoak, (perfectly dry and comfortable, to the rattle of the dropsall around, ) I have pencill'd off the mood of the hour in a littlequintette, which I will give you:

 At vacancy with Nature, Acceptive and at ease, Distilling the present hour, Whatever, wherever it is, And over the past, oblivion. 

Can you get hold of it, reader dear? and how do you like it anyhow?

THE FIRST FROST--MEMS

Where I was stopping I saw the first palpable frost, on my sunrisewalk, October 6; all over the yet-green spread a light blue-gray veil, giving a new show to the entire landscape. I had but little timeto notice it, for the sun rose cloudless and mellow-warm, and as Ireturned along the lane it had turn'd to glittering patches of wet. AsI walk I notice the bursting pods of wild-cotton, (Indian hemp theycall it here, ) with flossy-silky contents, and dark red-brown seeds--astartled rabbit--I pull a handful of the balsamic life-ever-lastingand stuff it down in my trowsers-pocket for scent. 

THREE YOUNG MEN'S DEATHS

_December 20_. --Somehow I got thinking to-day of young men'sdeaths--not at all sadly or sentimentally, but gravely, realistically, perhaps a little artistically. Let me give the following three casesfrom budgets of personal memoranda, which I have been turning over, alone in my room, and resuming and dwelling on, this rainy afternoon. Who is there to whom the theme does not come home? Then I don't knowhow it may be to others, but to me not only is there nothing gloomy ordepressing in such cases--on the contrary, as reminiscences, I findthem soothing, bracing, tonic. 

ERASTUS HASKELL. --[I just transcribe verbatim from a letter writtenby myself in one of the army hospitals, 16 years ago, during thesecession war. ] _Washington, July 28, 1863. _--Dear M. , --I am writingthis in the hospital, sitting by the side of a soldier, I do notexpect to last many hours. His fate has been a hard one--he seems tobe only about 19 or 20--Erastus Haskell, company K, 141st N. Y. --hasbeen out about a year, and sick or half-sick more than half thattime--has been down on the peninsula--was detail'd to go in the bandas fifer-boy. While sick, the surgeon told him to keep up with therest--(probably work'd and march'd too long. ) He is a shy, and seemsto me a very sensible boy--has fine manners--never complains--was sickdown on the peninsula in an old storehouse--typhoid fever. Thefirst week this July was brought up here--journey very bad, noaccommodations, no nourishment, nothing but hard jolting, and exposureenough to make a well man sick; (these fearful journeys do the job formany)--arrived here July 11th--a silent dark-skinn'd Spanish-lookingyouth, with large very dark blue eyes, peculiar looking. Doctor F. Here made light of his sickness--said he would recover soon, etc. ; butI thought very different, and told F. So repeatedly; (I came nearquarreling with him about it from the first)--but he laugh'd, andwould not listen to me. About four days ago, I told Doctor he would inmy opinion lose the boy without doubt--but F. Again laugh'd at me. The next day he changed his opinion--brought the head surgeon of thepost--he said the boy would probably die, but they would make a hardfight for him. 

The last two days he has been lying panting for breath--a pitifulsight. I have been with him some every day or night since he arrived. He suffers a great deal with the heat--says little or nothing--isflighty the last three days, at times--knows me always, however--calls me "Walter"--(sometimes calls the name over and over and overagain, musingly, abstractedly, to himself. ) His father lives atBreesport, Chemung county, N. Y. , is a mechanic with large family--isa steady, religious man; his mother too is living. I have written tothem, and shall write again to-day--Erastus has not receiv'd a wordfrom home for months. 

As I sit here writing to you, M. , I wish you could see the wholescene. This young man lies within reach of me, flat on his back, hishands clasp'd across his breast, his thick black hair cut close; he isdozing, breathing hard, every breath a spasm--it looks so cruel. He isa noble youngster, --I consider him past all hope. Often there is noone with him for a long while. I am here as much as possible. 

WILLIAM ALCOTT, fireman. _Camden, Nov. , 1874_. --Last Monday afternoonhis widow, mother, relatives, mates of the fire department, and hisother friends, (I was one, only lately it is true, but our love grewfast and close, the days and nights of those eight weeks by the chairof rapid decline, and the bed of death, ) gather'd to the funeralof this young man, who had grown up, and was well-known here. Withnothing special, perhaps, to record, I would give a word or two to hismemory. He seem'd to me not an inappropriate specimen in character andelements, of that bulk of the average good American race that ebbs andflows perennially beneath this scum of eructations on the surface. Always very quiet in manner, neat in person and dress, goodtemper'd--punctual and industrious at his work, till he could work nolonger--he just lived his steady, square, unobtrusive life, in its ownhumble sphere, doubtless unconscious of itself. (Though I think therewere currents of emotion and intellect undevelop'd beneath, far deeperthan his acquaintances ever suspected--or than he himself ever did. )He was no talker. His troubles, when he had any, he kept to himself. As there was nothing querulous about him in life, he made nocomplaints during his last sickness. He was one of those persons thatwhile his associates never thought of attributing any particulartalent or grace to him, yet all insensibly, really, liked BillyAlcott. 

I, too, loved him. At last, after being with him quite a good deal--after hours and days of panting for breath, much of the timeunconscious, (for though the consumption that had been lurking in hissystem, once thoroughly started, made rapid progress, there was stillgreat vitality in him, and indeed for four or five days he lay dying, before the close, ) late on Wednesday night, Nov. 4th, where wesurrounded his bed in silence, there came a lull--a longer drawnbreath, a pause, a faint sigh--another--a weaker breath, another sigh--a pause again and just a tremble--and the face of the poor wastedyoung man (he was just 26, ) fell gently over, in death, on my hand, onthe pillow. 

CHARLES CASWELL. --[I extract the following, verbatim, from a letterto me dated September 29, from my friend John Burroughs, atEsopus-on-Hudson, New York State. ] S. Was away when your picture came, attending his sick brother, Charles--who has since died--an eventthat has sadden'd me much. Charlie was younger than S. , and a mostattractive young fellow. He work'd at my father's and had done so fortwo years. He was about the best specimen of a young country farm-handI ever knew. You would have loved him. He was like one of yourpoems. With his great strength, his blond hair, his cheerfulness andcontentment, his universal good will, and his silent manly ways, hewas a youth hard to match. He was murder'd by an old doctor. He hadtyphoid fever, and the old fool bled him twice. He lived to wear outthe fever, but had not strength to rally. He was out of his headnearly all the time. In the morning, as he died in the afternoon, S. Was standing over him, when Charlie put up his arms around S. 's neck, and pull'd his face down and kiss'd him. S. Said he knew then the endwas near. (S. Stuck to him day and night to the last. ) When I was homein August, Charlie was cradling on the hill, and it was a picture tosee him walk through the grain. All work seem'd play to him. He had novices, any more than Nature has, and was belov'd by all who knew him. 

I have written thus to you about him, for such young men belong toyou; he was of your kind. I wish you could have known him. He had thesweetness of a child, and the strength and courage and readiness of ayoung Viking. His mother and father are poor; they have a rough, hardfarm. His mother works in the field with her husband when the workpresses. She has had twelve children. 

FEBRUARY DAYS

_February 7, 1878_. --Glistening sun today, with slight haze, warmenough, and yet tart, as I sit here in the open air, down in mycountry retreat, under an old cedar. For two hours I have been idlywandering around the woods and pond, lugging my chair, picking outchoice spots to sit awhile--then up and slowly on again. All is peacehere. Of course, none of the summer noises or vitality; to-day hardlyeven the winter ones. I amuse myself by exercising my voice inrecitations, and in ringing the changes on all the vocal andalphabetical sounds. Not even an echo; only the cawing of a solitarycrow, flying at some distance. The pond is one bright, flat spread, without a ripple--a vast Claude Lorraine glass, in which I study thesky, the light, the leafless trees, and an occasional crow, withflapping wings, flying overhead. The brown fields have a few whitepatches of snow left. 

_Feb. 9_. --After an hour's ramble, now retreating, resting, sittingclose by the pond, in a warm nook, writing this, shelter'd from thebreeze, just before noon. The _emotional_ aspects and influences ofNature! I, too, like the rest, feel these modern tendencies (fromall the prevailing intellections, literature and poems, ) to turneverything to pathos, ennui, morbidity, dissatisfaction, death. Yethow clear it is to me that those are not the born results, influencesof Nature at all, but of one's own distorted, sick or silly soul. Here, amid this wild, free scene, how healthy, how joyous, how cleanand vigorous and sweet!

_Mid-afternoon_. --One of my nooks is south of the barn, and here I amsitting now, on a log, still basking in the sun, shielded from thewind. Near me are the cattle, feeding on corn-stalks. Occasionally acow or the young bull (how handsome and bold he is!) scratches andmunches the far end of the log on which I sit. The fresh milky odoris quite perceptible, also the perfume of hay from the barn. Theperpetual rustle of dry corn-stalks, the low sough of the wind roundthe barn gables, the grunting of pigs, the distant whistle of alocomotive, and occasional crowing of chanticleers, are the sounds. 

_Feb. 19. _--Cold and sharp last night--clear and not much wind--thefull moon shining, and a fine spread of constellations and little andbig stars--Sirius very bright, rising early, preceded by many-orb'dOrion, glittering, vast, sworded, and chasing with his dog. The earthhard frozen, and a stiff glare of ice over the pond. Attracted by thecalm splendor of the night, I attempted a short walk, but was drivenback by the cold. Too severe for me also at 9 o'clock, when I cameout this morning, so I turn'd back again. But now, near noon, I havewalk'd down the lane, basking all the way in the sun (this farm has apleasant southerly exposure, ) and here I am, seated under the lee ofa bank, close by the water. There are bluebirds already flying about, and I hear much chirping and twittering and two or three real songs, sustain'd quite awhile, in the mid-day brilliance and warmth. (There!that is a true carol, coming out boldly and repeatedly, as if thesinger meant it. ) Then as the noon strengthens, the reedy trill of therobin--to my ear the most cheering of bird-notes. At intervals, likebars and breaks (out of the low murmur that in any scene, howeverquiet, is never entirely absent to a delicate ear, ) the occasionalcrunch and cracking of the ice-glare congeal'd over the creek, as itgives way to the sunbeams--sometimes with low sigh--sometimes withindignant, obstinate tug and snort. 

(Robert Burns says in one of his letters: "There is scarcely anyearthly object gives me more--I do not know if I should call itpleasure--but something which exalts me--something which enrapturesme--than to walk in the shelter' d side of a wood in a cloudy winterday, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees, and ravingover the plain. It is my best season of devotion. " Some of his mostcharacteristic poems were composed in such scenes and seasons. )

A MEADOW LARK

_March 16_. --Fine, clear, dazzling morning, the sun an hour high, theair just tart enough. What a stamp in advance my whole day receivesfrom the song of that meadow lark perch'd on a fence-stake twenty rodsdistant! Two or three liquid-simple notes, repeated at intervals, fullof careless happiness and hope. With its peculiar shimmering slowprogress and rapid-noiseless action of the wings, it flies on a way, lights on another stake, and so on to another, shimmering and singingmany minutes. 

SUNDOWN LIGHTS

_May 6, 5 P. M. _--This is the hour for strange effects in light andshade-enough to make a colorist go delirious--long spokes of moltensilver sent horizontally through the trees (now in their brightesttenderest green, ) each leaf and branch of endless foliage a lit-upmiracle, then lying all prone on the youthful-ripe, interminablegrass, and giving the blades not only aggregate but individualsplendor, in ways unknown to any other hour. I have particular spotswhere I get these effects in their perfection. One broad splash lieson the water, with many a rippling twinkle, offset by the rapidlydeepening black-green murky-transparent shadows behind, and atintervals all along the banks. These, with great shafts of horizontalfire thrown among the trees and along the grass as the sun lowers, give effects more and more peculiar, more and more superb, unearthly, rich and dazzling. 

THOUGHTS UNDER AN OAK--A DREAM

_June 2_. --This is the fourth day of a dark northeast storm, wind andrain. Day before yesterday was my birthday. I have now enter'd onmy 60th year. Every day of the storm, protected by overshoes and awaterproof blanket, I regularly come down to the pond, and ensconcemyself under the lee of the great oak; I am here now writing theselines. The dark smoke-color'd clouds roll in furious silence athwartthe sky; the soft green leaves dangle all around me; the wind steadilykeeps up its hoarse, soothing music over my head--Nature's mightywhisper. Seated here in solitude I have been musing over mylife--connecting events, dates, as links of a chain, neither sadly norcheerily, but somehow, to-day here under the oak, in the rain, in anunusually matter-of-fact spirit. 

But my great oak--sturdy, vital, green-five feet thick at the butt. Isit a great deal near or under him. Then the tulip tree near by--theApollo of the woods--tall and graceful, yet robust and sinewy, inimitable in hang of foliage and throwing-out of limb; as if thebeauteous, vital, leafy creature could walk, if it only would. (I hada sort of dream-trance the other day, in which I saw my favorite treesstep out and promenade up, down and around, very curiously--with awhisper from one, leaning down as he pass'd me, _We do all this on thepresent occasion, exceptionally, just for you_. )

CLOVER AND HAY PERFUME

_July 3d, 4th, 5th. _--Clear, hot, favorable weather--has been a goodsummer--the growth of clover and grass now generally mow'd. Thefamiliar delicious perfume fills the barns and lanes. As you go alongyou see the fields of grayish white slightly tinged with yellow, theloosely stack'd grain, the slow-moving wagons passing, and farmers inthe fields with stout boys pitching and loading the sheaves. The cornis about beginning to tassel. All over the middle and southern statesthe spear-shaped battalia, multitudinous, curving, flaunting--long, glossy, dark-green plumes for the great horseman, earth. I hear thecheery notes of my old acquaintance Tommy quail; but too late for thewhip-poor-will, (though I heard one solitary lingerer night beforelast. ) I watch the broad majestic flight of a turkey-buzzard, sometimes high up, sometimes low enough to see the lines of his form, even his spread quills, in relief against the sky. Once or twicelately I have seen an eagle here at early candle-light flying low. 

AN UNKNOWN

_June 15_. --To-day I noticed a new large bird, size of a nearly grownhen--a haughty, white-bodied dark-wing'd hawk--I suppose a hawk fromhis bill and general look--only he had a clear, loud, quite musical, sort of bell-like call, which he repeated again and again, atintervals, from a lofty dead tree-top, overhanging the water. Satthere a long time, and I on the opposite bank watching him. Then hedarted down, skimming pretty close to the stream--rose slowly, amagnificent sight, and sail'd with steady wide-spread wings, noflapping at all, up and down the pond two or three times, near me, incircles in clear sight, as if for my delectation. Once he came quiteclose over my head; I saw plainly his hook'd bill and hard restlesseyes. 

BIRD-WHISTLING

How much music (wild, simple, savage, doubtless, but so tart-sweet, )there is in mere whistling. It is four-fifths of the utterance ofbirds. There are all sorts and styles. For the last half-hour, now, while I have been sitting here, some feather'd fellow away off in thebushes has been repeating over and over again what I may call a kindof throbbing whistle. And now a bird about the robin size has justappear'd, all mulberry red, flitting among the bushes--head, wings, body, deep red, not very bright--no song, as I have heard. _4. O'clock_: There is a real concert going on around me--a dozendifferent birds pitching in with a will. There have been occasionalrains, and the growths all show its vivifying influences. As I finishthis, seated on a log close by the pond-edge, much chirping andtrilling in the distance, and a feather'd recluse in the woods near byis singing deliciously--not many notes, but full of music of almosthuman sympathy--continuing for a long, long while. 

HORSE-MINT

_Aug. 22_. --Not a human being, and hardly the evidence of one, insight. After my brief semi-daily bath, I sit here for a bit, the brookmusically brawling, to the chromatic tones of a fretful cat-birdsomewhere off in the bushes. On my walk hither two hours since, through fields and the old lane, I stopt to view, now the sky, nowthe mile-off woods on the hill, and now the apple orchards. What acontrast from New York's or Philadelphia's streets! Everywhere greatpatches of dingy-blossom'd horse-mint wafting a spicy odor through theair, (especially evenings. ) Everywhere the flowering boneset, and therose-bloom of the wild bean. 

THREE OF US

_July 14_. --My two kingfishers still haunt the pond. In the bright sunand breeze and perfect temperature of to-day, noon, I am sitting hereby one of the gurgling brooks, dipping a French water-pen in thelimpid crystal, and using it to write these lines, again watching thefeather'd twain, as they fly and sport athwart the water, so close, almost touching into its surface. Indeed there seem to be three of us. For nearly an hour I indolently look and join them while they dartand turn and take their airy gambols, sometimes far up the creekdisappearing for a few moments, and then surely returning again, andperforming most of their flight within sight of me, as if they knew Iappreciated and absorb'd their vitality, spirituality, faithfulness, and the rapid, vanishing, delicate lines of moving yet quietelectricity they draw for me across the spread of the grass, thetrees, and the blue sky. While the brook babbles, babbles, and theshadows of the boughs dapple in the sunshine around me, and the coolwest-by-nor'-west wind faintly soughs in the thick bushes and treetops. 

Among the objects of beauty and interest now beginning to appear quiteplentifully in this secluded spot, I notice the humming-bird, thedragon-fly with its wings of slate-color'd guaze, and many varietiesof beautiful and plain butterflies, idly flapping among the plants andwild posies. The mullein has shot up out of its nest of broad leaves, to a tall stalk towering sometimes five or six feet high, now studdedwith knobs of golden blossoms. The milk-weed, (I see a great gorgeouscreature of gamboge and black lighting on one as I write, ) is inflower, with its delicate red fringe; and there are profuse clustersof a feathery blossom waving in the wind on taper stems. I see lots ofthese and much else in every direction, as I saunter or sit. Forthe last half hour a bird has persistently kept up a simple, sweet, melodious song, from the bushes. (I have a positive conviction thatsome of these birds sing, and others fly and flirt about here for myspecial benefit. )

DEATH OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

_New York City_. --Came on from West Philadelphia, June 13, in the 2 P. M. Train to Jersey City, and so across and to my friends, Mr. And Mrs. J. H. J. , and their large house, large family (and large hearts, )amid which I feel at home, at peace--away up on Fifth avenue, nearEighty-sixth street, quiet, breezy, overlooking the dense woodyfringe of the park--plenty of space and sky, birds chirping, and aircomparatively fresh and odorless. Two hours before starting, saw theannouncement of William Cullen Bryant's funeral, and felt a strongdesire to attend. I had known Mr. Bryant over thirty years ago, and hehad been markedly kind to me. Off and on, along that time for years asthey pass'd, we met and chatted together. I thought him very sociablein his way, and a man to become attach'd to. We were both walkers, and when I work'd in Brooklyn he several times came over, middle ofafternoons, and we took rambles miles long, till dark, out towardsBedford or Flatbush, in company. On these occasions he gave me clearaccounts of scenes in Europe--the cities, looks, architecture, art, especially Italy--where he had travel'd a good deal. 

_June 14. --The Funeral_. --And so the good, stainless, noble oldcitizen and poet lies in the closed coffin there--and this is hisfuneral. A solemn, impressive, simple scene, to spirit and senses. Theremarkable gathering of gray heads, celebrities--the finely render'danthem, and other music--the church, dim even now at approaching noon, in its light from the mellow-stain'd windows-the pronounc'd eulogy onthe bard who loved Nature so fondly, and sung so well her shows andseasons--ending with these appropriate well-known lines:

 I gazed upon the glorious sky, And the green mountains round, And thought that when I came to lie At rest within the ground, 'Twere pleasant that in flowery June, When brooks send up a joyous tune, And groves a cheerful sound, The sexton's hand, my grave to make, The rich green mountain turf should break. 

JAUNT UP THE HUDSON

_June 2Oth_. --On the "Mary Powell, " enjoy'd everything beyondprecedent. The delicious tender summer day, just warm enough--theconstantly changing but ever beautiful panorama on both sides of theriver--(went up near a hundred miles)--the high straight walls ofthe stony Palisades--beautiful Yonkers, and beautiful Irvington--thenever-ending hills, mostly in rounded lines, swathed withverdure, --the distant turns, like great shoulders in blue veils--thefrequent gray and brown of the tall-rising rocks--the river itself, now narrowing, now expanding--the white sails of the many sloops, yachts, &c. , some near, some in the distance--the rapid succession ofhandsome villages and cities, (our boat is a swift traveler, andmakes few stops)--the Race--picturesque West Point, and indeed allalong--the costly and often turreted mansions forever showing in somecheery light color, through the woods--make up the scene. 

HAPPINESS AND RASPBERRIES

_June 21_. --Here I am, on the west bank of the Hudson, 80 milesnorth of New York, near Esopus, at the handsome, roomy, honeysuckle-and-rose-enbower'd cottage of John Burroughs. The place, the perfect June days and nights, (leaning toward crisp and cool, )the hospitality of J. And Mrs. B. , the air, the fruit, (especially myfavorite dish, currants and raspberries, mixed, sugar'd, fresh andripe from the bushes--I pick 'em myself)--the room I occupy at night, the perfect bed, the window giving an ample view of the Hudson and theopposite shores, so wonderful toward sunset, and the rolling musicof the RR. Trains, far over there--the peaceful rest--the earlyVenus-heralded dawn--the noiseless splash of sunrise, the light andwarmth indescribably glorious, in which, (soon as the sun is well up, )I have a capital rubbing and rasping with the flesh-brush--withan extra scour on the back by Al. J. , who is here with us--allinspiriting my invalid frame with new life, for the day. Then, aftersome whiffs of morning air, the delicious coffee of Mrs. B. , with thecream, strawberries, and many substantials, for breakfast. 

A SPECIMEN TRAMP FAMILY

_June 22_. --This afternoon we went out (J. B. , Al. And I) on quite adrive around the country. The scenery, the perpetual stone fences, (some venerable old fellows, dark-spotted with lichens)--the manyfine locust-trees--the runs of brawling water, often over descents ofrock--these, and lots else. It is lucky the roads are first-rate here, (as they are, ) for it is up or down hill everywhere, and sometimessteep enough. B. Has a tip-top horse, strong, young, and both gentleand fast. There is a great deal of waste land and hills on the riveredge of Ulster county, with a wonderful luxuriance of wild flowersand bushes--and it seems to me I never saw more vitality oftrees--eloquent hemlocks, plenty of locusts and fine maples, andthe balm of Gilead, giving out aroma. In the fields and along theroad-sides unusual crops of the tall-stemm'd wild daisy, white as milkand yellow as gold. 

We pass'd quite a number of tramps, singly or in couples--one squad, afamily in a rickety one-horse wagon, with some baskets evidently theirwork and trade--the man seated on a low board, in front, driving--thegauntish woman by his side, with a baby well bundled in her arms, itslittle red feet and lower legs sticking out right towards us as wepass'd--and in the wagon behind, we saw two (or three) crouchinglittle children. It was a queer, taking, rather sad picture. If I hadbeen alone and on foot, I should have stopp'd and held confab. But onour return nearly two hours afterward, we found them a ways furtheralong the same road, in a lonesome open spot, haul'd aside, unhitch'd, and evidently going to camp for the night. The freed horse was not faroff, quietly cropping the grass. The man was busy at the wagon, theboy had gather'd some dry wood, and was making a fire--and as we wenta little further we met the woman afoot. I could not see her face, inits great sun-bonnet, but somehow her figure and gait told misery, terror, destitution. She had the rag-bundled, half-starv'd infantstill in her arms, and in her hands held two or three baskets, whichshe had evidently taken to the next house for sale. A little barefootfive-year old girl-child, with fine eyes, trotted behind her, clutching her gown. We stopp'd, asking about the baskets, which webought. As we paid the money, she kept her face hidden in the recessesof her bonnet. Then as we started, and stopp'd again, Al. , (whosesympathies were evidently arous'd, ) went back to the camping group toget another basket. He caught a look of her face, and talk'd with hera little. Eyes, voice and manner were those of a corpse, animated byelectricity. She was quite young--the man she was traveling with, middle-aged. Poor woman--what story was it, out of her fortunes, toaccount for that inexpressibly scared way, those glassy eyes, and thathollow voice?

MANHATTAN FROM THE BAY

_June 25_. --Returned to New York last night. Out to-day on the watersfor a sail in the wide bay, southeast of Staten island--a rough, tossing ride, and a free sight--the long stretch of Sandy Hook, thehighlands of Navesink, and the many vessels outward and inward bound. We came up through the midst of all, in the full sun. I especiallyenjoy'd the last hour or two. A moderate sea-breeze had set in; yetover the city, and the waters adjacent, was a thin haze, concealingnothing, only adding to the beauty. From my point of view, as I writeamid the soft breeze, with a sea-temperature, surely nothing on earthof its kind can go beyond this show. To the left the North riverwith its far vista--nearer, three or four war-ships, anchor'dpeacefully--the Jersey side, the banks of Weehawken, the Palisades, and the gradually receding blue, lost in the distance--to the rightthe East river--the mast-hemm'd shores--the grand obelisk-like towersof the bridge, one on either side, in haze, yet plainly defin'd, giantbrothers twain, throwing free graceful interlinking loops high acrossthe tumbled tumultuous current below--(the tide is just changing toits ebb)--the broad water-spread everywhere crowded--no, not crowded, but thick as stars in the sky--with all sorts and sizes of sail andsteam vessels, plying ferry-boats, arriving and departing coasters, great ocean Dons, iron-black, modern, magnificent in size and power, fill'd with their incalculable value of human life and preciousmerchandise--with here and there, above all, those daring, careeningthings of grace and wonder, those white and shaded swift-dartingfish-birds, (I wonder if shore or sea elsewhere can outvie them, ) everwith their slanting spars, and fierce, pure, hawk-like beauty andmotion--first-class New York sloop or schooner yachts, sailing, thisfine day, the free sea in a good wind. And rising out of the midst, tall-topt, ship-hemm'd, modern, American, yet strangely oriental, V-shaped Manhattan, with its compact mass, its spires, itscloud-touching edifices group'd at the centre--the green of the trees, and all the white, brown and gray of the architecture well blended, as I see it, under a miracle of limpid sky, delicious light of heavenabove, and June haze on the surface below. 

HUMAN AND HEROIC NEW YORK

The general subjective view of New York and Brooklyn--(will not thetime hasten when the two shall be municipally united in one, and namedManhattan?)--what I may call the human interior and exterior of thesegreat seething oceanic populations, as I get it in this visit, is tome best of all. After an absence of many years, (I went away at theoutbreak of the secession war, and have never been back to staysince, ) again I resume with curiosity the crowds, the streets, I knewso well, Broadway, the ferries, the west side of the city, democraticBowery--human appearances and manners as seen in all these, and alongthe wharves, and in the perpetual travel of the horse-cars, or thecrowded excursion steamers, or in Wall and Nassau streets by day--inthe places of amusement at night--bubbling and whirling and movinglike its own environment of waters--endless humanity in allphases--Brooklyn also--taken in for the last three weeks. No need tospecify minutely--enough to say that (making all allowances for theshadows and side-streaks of a million-headed-city) the brief total ofthe impressions, the human qualities, of these vast cities, is to mecomforting, even heroic, beyond statement. Alertness, generally finephysique, clear eyes that look straight at you, a singular combinationof reticence and self-possession, with good nature and friendliness--aprevailing range of according manners, taste and intellect, surelybeyond any elsewhere upon earth--and a palpable outcropping of thatpersonal comradeship I look forward to as the subtlest, strongestfuture hold of this many-item'd Union--are not only constantly visiblehere in these mighty channels of men, but they form the rule andaverage. To-day, I should say--defiant of cynics and pessimists, andwith a full knowledge of all their exceptions--an appreciative andperceptive study of the current humanity of New York gives thedirectest proof yet of successful Democracy, and of the solutionof that paradox, the eligibility of the free and fully developedindividual with the paramount aggregate. In old age, lame and sick, pondering for years on many a doubt and danger for this republic ofours--fully aware of all that can be said on the other side--I findin this visit to New York, and the daily contact and rapport with itsmyriad people, on the scale of the oceans and tides, the best, mosteffective medicine my soul has yet partaken--the grandest physicalhabitat and surroundings of land and water the globe affords--namely, Manhattan island and Brooklyn, which the future shall join in one city--city of superb democracy, amid superb surroundings. 

HOURS FOR THE SOUL

_July 22d, 1878_. --Living down in the country again. A wonderfulconjunction of all that goes to make those sometime miracle-hoursafter sunset--so near and yet so far. Perfect, or nearly perfect days, I notice, are not so very uncommon; but the combinations that makeperfect nights are few, even in a life time. We have one of thoseperfections to-night. Sunset left things pretty clear; the largerstars were visible soon as the shades allow'd. A while after 8, threeor four great black clouds suddenly rose, seemingly from differentpoints, and sweeping with broad swirls of wind but no thunder, underspread the orbs from view everywhere, and indicated a violentheatstorm. But without storm, clouds, blackness and all, sped andvanish'd as suddenly as they had risen; and from a little after 9till 11 the atmosphere and the whole show above were in that stateof exceptional clearness and glory just alluded to. In the northwestturned the Great Dipper with its pointers round the Cynosure. A littlesouth of east the constellation of the Scorpion was fully up, with redAntares glowing in its neck; while dominating, majestic Jupiter swam, an hour and a half risen, in the east--(no moon till after 11. )A large part of the sky seem'd just laid in great splashes ofphosphorus. You could look deeper in, farther through, than usual;the orbs thick as heads of wheat in a field. Not that there was anyspecial brilliancy either--nothing near as sharp as I have seen ofkeen winter nights, but a curious general luminousness throughoutto sight, sense, and soul. The latter had much to do with it. (I amconvinced there are hours of Nature, especially of the atmosphere, mornings and evenings, address'd to the soul. Night transcends, forthat purpose, what the proudest day can do. ) Now, indeed, if neverbefore, the heavens declared the glory of God. It was to the full skyof the Bible, of Arabia, of the prophets, and of the oldest poems. There, in abstraction and stillness, (I had gone off by myself toabsorb the scene, to have the spell unbroken, ) the copiousness, theremovedness, vitality, loose-clear-crowdedness, of that stellarconcave spreading overhead, softly absorb'd into me, rising so free, interminably high, stretching east, west, north, south--and I, thoughbut a point in the centre below, embodying all. 

As if for the first time, indeed, creation noiselessly sank into andthrough me its placid and untellable lesson, beyond--O, so infinitelybeyond!--anything from art, books, sermons, or from science, old ornew. The spirit's hour--religion's hour--the visible suggestion of Godin space and time--now once definitely indicated, if never again. Theuntold pointed at--the heavens all paved with it. The Milky Way, as ifsome superhuman symphony, some ode of universal vagueness, disdainingsyllable and sound--a flashing glance of Deity, address'd to thesoul. All silently--the indescribable night and stars--far off andsilently. 

THE DAWN. --_July 23_. --This morning, between one and two hours beforesunrise, a spectacle wrought on the same background, yet of quitedifferent beauty and meaning. The moon well up in the heavens, and past her half, is shining brightly--the air and sky of thatcynical-clear, Minerva-like quality, virgin cool--not the weightof sentiment or mystery, or passion's ecstasy indefinable--not thereligious sense, the varied All, distill'd and sublimated into one, ofthe night just described. Every star now clear-cut, showing forjust what it is, there in the colorless ether. The character of theheralded morning, ineffably sweet and fresh and limpid, but forthe esthetic sense alone, and for purity without sentiment. I haveitemized the night--but dare I attempt the cloudless dawn? (Whatsubtle tie is this between one's soul and the break of day? Alike, andyet no two nights or morning shows ever exactly alike. ) Preceded by animmense star, almost unearthly in its effusion of white splendor, withtwo or three long unequal spoke-rays of diamond radiance, sheddingdown through the fresh morning air below--an hour of this, and thenthe sunrise. 

THE EAST. --What a subject for a poem! Indeed, where else a morepregnant, more splendid one? Where one more idealistic-real, moresubtle, more sensuous-delicate? The East, answering all lands, allages, peoples; touching all senses, here, immediate, now--and yet soindescribably far off--such retrospect! The East--long-stretching--solosing itself--the orient, the gardens of Asia, the womb of historyand song--forth-issuing all those strange, dim cavalcades--Florid withblood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion. Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garment. With sunburnt visage, intense soul andglittering eyes. Always the East--old, how incalculably old! And yethere the same--ours yet, fresh as a rose, to every morning, every life, to-day--and always will be. 

_Sept. 17_. Another presentation--same theme--just before sunriseagain, (a favorite hour with me. ) The clear gray sky, a faint glowin the dull liver-color of the east, the cool fresh odor and themoisture--the cattle and horses off there grazing in the fields--thestar Venus again, two hours high. For sounds, the chirping of cricketsin the grass, the clarion of chanticleer, and the distant cawing of anearly crow. Quietly over the dense fringe of cedars and pines risesthat dazzling, red, transparent disk of flame, and the low sheets ofwhite vapor roll and roll into dissolution. 

THE MOON. --_May 18_. --I went to bed early last night, but found myselfwaked shortly after 12, and, turning awhile, sleepless and mentallyfeverish, I rose, dress'd myself, sallied forth and walk'd down thelane. The full moon, some three or four hours up--a sprinkle of lightand less-light clouds just lazily moving--Jupiter an hour high inthe east, and here and there throughout the heavens a random starappearing and disappearing. So beautifully veiled and varied--the air, with that early-summer perfume, not at all damp or raw--at timesLuna languidly emerging in richest brightness for minutes, and thenpartially envelop'd again. Far off a poor whip-poor-will plied hisnotes incessantly. It was that silent time between 1 and 3. 

The rare nocturnal scene, how soon it sooth'd and pacified me! Isthere not something about the moon, some relation or reminder, whichno poem or literature has yet caught? (In very old and primitiveballads I have come across lines or asides that suggest it. ) After awhile the clouds mostly clear'd, and as the moon swam on, she carried, shimmering and shifting, delicate color-effects of pellucid green andtawny vapor. Let me conclude this part with an extract, (some writerin the "Tribune, " May 16, 1878):

 No one ever gets tired of the moon. Goddess that she is by dower of her eternal beauty, she is a true woman by her tact--knows the charm of being seldom seen, of coming by surprise and staying but a little while; never wears the same dress two nights running, nor all night the same way; commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her usefulness, and makes her uselessness adored by poets, artists, and all lovers in all lands; lends herself to every symbolism and to every emblem; is Diana's bow and Venus's mirror and Mary's throne; is a sickle, a scarf, an eyebrow, his face or her face, and look'd at by her or by him; is the madman's hell, the poet's heaven, the baby's toy, the philosopher's study; and while her admirers follow her footsteps, and hang on her lovely looks, she knows how to keep her woman's secret--her other side--unguess'd and unguessable. 

_Furthermore. February 19, 1880_. --Just before 10 P. M. Cold andentirely clear again, the show overhead, bearing southwest, ofwonderful and crowded magnificence. The moon in her third quarter--the clusters of the Hyades and Pleiades, with the planet Marsbetween--in full crossing sprawl in the sky the great Egyptian X, (Sirius, Procyon, and the main stars in the constellations of theShip, the Dove, and of Orion;) just north of east Bootes, and in hisknee Arcturus, an hour high, mounting the heaven, ambitiously largeand sparkling, as if he meant to challenge with Sirius the stellarsupremacy. 

With the sentiment of the stars and moon such nights I get allthe free margins and indefiniteness of music or poetry, fused ingeometry's utmost exactness. 

STRAW-COLOR'D AND OTHER PSYCHES

_Aug. 4_. --A pretty sight! Where I sit in the shade--a warm day, thesun shining from cloudless skies, the forenoon well advanc'd--I lookover a ten-acre field of luxuriant clover-hay, (the second crop)--thelivid-ripe red blossoms and dabs of August brown thickly spottingthe prevailing dark-green. Over all flutter myriads of light-yellowbutterflies, mostly skimming along the surface, dipping andoscillating, giving a curious animation to the scene. The beautiful, spiritual insects! straw-color'd Psyches! Occasionally one of themleaves his mates, and mounts, perhaps spirally, perhaps in a straightline in the air, fluttering up, up, till literally out of sight. Inthe lane as I came along just now I noticed one spot, ten feet squareor so, where more than a hundred had collected, holding a revel, agyration-dance, or butterfly good-time, winding and circling, down andacross, but always keeping within the limits. The little creatureshave come out all of a sudden the last few days, and are now veryplentiful. As I sit outdoors, or walk, I hardly look around withoutsomewhere seeing two (always two) fluttering through the air inamorous dalliance. Then their inimitable color, their fragility, peculiar motion--and that strange, frequent way of one leaving thecrowd and mounting up, up in the free ether, and apparently neverreturning. As I look over the field, these yellow-wings everywheremildly sparkling, many snowy blossoms of the wild carrot gracefullybending on their tall and taper stems--while for sounds, the distantguttural screech of a flock of guinea-hens comes shrilly yet somehowmusically to my ears. And now a faint growl of heat-thunder in thenorth--and ever the low rising and falling wind-purr from the tops ofthe maples and willows. 

_Aug. 20_. --Butterflies and butterflies, (taking the place of thebumble-bees of three months since, who have quite disappear'd, )continue to flit to and fro, all sorts, white, yellow, brown, purple--now and then some gorgeous fellow flashing lazily by on wingslike artists' palettes dabb'd with every color. Over the breast ofthe pond I notice many white ones, crossing, pursuing their idlecapricious flight. Near where I sit grows a tall-stemm'd weed toptwith a profusion of rich scarlet blossoms, on which the snowy insectsalight and dally, sometimes four or five of them at a time. By-and-bya humming-bird visits the same, and I watch him coming and going, daintily balancing and shimmering about. These white butterflies givenew beautiful contrasts to the pure greens of the August foliage, (wehave had some copious rains lately, ) and over the glistening bronze ofthe pond-surface. You can tame even such insects; I have one big andhandsome moth down here, knows and comes to me, likes me to hold himup on my extended hand. 

_Another Day, later_. --A grand twelve-acre field of ripe cabbages withtheir prevailing hue of malachite green, and floating-flying over andamong them in all directions myriads of these same white butterflies. As I came up the lane to-day I saw a living globe of the same, two orthree feet in diameter, many scores cluster'd together and rollingalong in the air, adhering to their ball-shape, six or eight feetabove the ground. 

A NIGHT REMEMBRANCE

_Aug. 23, 9-10 A. M. _--I sit by the pond, everything quiet, the broadpolish'd surface spread before me--the blue of the heavens and thewhite clouds reflected from it--and flitting across, now and then, the reflection of some flying bird. Last night I was down here witha friend till after midnight; everything a miracle of splendor--theglory of the stars, and the completely rounded moon--the passingclouds, silver and luminous-tawny--now and then masses of vaporyilluminated scud--and silently by my side my dear friend. The shadesof the trees, and patches of moonlight on the grass--the softlyblowing breeze, and just-palpable odor of the neighboring ripeningcorn--the indolent and spiritual night, inexpressibly rich, tender, suggestive--something altogether to filter through one's soul, andnourish and feed and soothe the memory long afterwards. 

WILD FLOWERS

This has been and is yet a great season for wild flowers; oceansof them line the roads through the woods, border the edges of thewater-runlets, grow all along the old fences, and are scatter'd inprofusion over the fields. An eight-petal'd blossom of gold-yellow, clear and bright, with a brown tuft in the middle, nearly as largeas a silver half-dollar, is very common; yesterday on a long drive Inoticed it thickly lining the borders of the brooks everywhere. Thenthere is a beautiful weed cover'd with blue flowers, (the blue of theold Chinese teacups treasur'd by our grand-aunts, ) I am continuallystopping to admire--a little larger than a dime, and very plentiful. White, however, is the prevailing color. The wild carrot I have spokenof; also the fragrant life-everlasting. But there are all hues andbeauties, especially on the frequent tracts of half-opened scrub-oakand dwarf cedar hereabout--wild asters of all colors. Notwithstandingthe frost-touch the hardy little chaps maintain themselves in alltheir bloom. The tree-leaves, too, some of them are beginning to turnyellow or drab or dull green. The deep wine-color of the sumachs andgum-treesis already visible, and the straw-color of the dog-wood andbeech. Let me give the names of some of these perennial blossoms andfriendly weeds I have made acquaintance with hereabout one season oranother in my walks:

wild azalea, dandelionswild honeysuckle, yarrow, wild roses, coreopsis, golden rod, wild pea, larkspur, woodbine, early crocus, elderberry, sweet flag, (great patches of it, ) poke-weed, creeper, trumpet-flower, sun-flower, scented marjoram, chamomile, snakeroot, violets, Solomon's seal, clematis, sweet balm, bloodrootmint, (great plenty, ) swamp magnolia, wild geranium, milk-weed, wild heliotrope, wild daisy, (plenty, )burdock, wild chrysanthemum. 

A CIVILITY TOO LONG NEGLECTED

The foregoing reminds me of something. 

As the individualities I would mainly portray have certainly beenslighted by folks who make pictures, volumes, poems, out of them--asa faint testimonial of my own gratitude for many hours of peace andcomfort in half-sickness, (and not by any means sure but they willsomehow get wind of the compliment, ) I hereby dedicate the last halfof these Specimen Days to the

bees, glow-worms, (swarming millionsblack-birds, of them indescribablydragon-flies, strange and beautiful at nightpond-turtles, over the pond and creek, )mulleins, tansy, peppermint, water-snakes, moths, (great and little, some crows, splendid fellows, ) millers, mosquitoes, cedars, butterflies, tulip-trees, (and all other trees, )wasps and hornets, and to the spots and memoriescat-birds, (and all other birds, ) of those days, and the creek. 

DELAWARE RIVER--DAYS AND NIGHTS

_April 5, 1879_. -With the return of spring to the skies, airs, watersof the Delaware, return the sea-gulls. I never tire of watching theirbroad and easy flight, in spirals, or as they oscillate with slowunflapping wings, or look down with curved beak, or dipping to thewater after food. The crows, plenty enough all through the winter, have vanish'd with the ice. Not one of them now to be seen. Thesteamboats have again come forth--bustling up, handsome, freshlypainted, for summer work--the Columbia, the Edwin Forrest, (theRepublic not yet out, ) the Reybold, Nelly White, the Twilight, theAriel, the Warner, the Perry, the Taggart, the Jersey Blue--even thehulky old Trenton--not forgetting those saucy little bull-pups of thecurrent, the steamtugs. 

But let me bunch and catalogue the affair--the river itself, all theway from the sea--Cape island on one side and Henlopen light on theother--up the broad bay north, and so to Philadelphia, and on furtherto Trenton;--the sights I am most familiar with, (as I live a goodpart of the time in Camden, I view matters from that outlook)--thegreat arrogant, black, full-freighted ocean steamers, inwardor outward bound--the ample width here between the two cities, intersected by Windmill island--an occasional man-of-war, sometimes aforeigner, at anchor, with her guns and port-holes, and the boats, and the brown-faced sailors, and the regular oar-strokes, and the gaycrowds of "visiting day"--the frequent large and handsome three-mastedschooners, (a favorite style of marine build, hereabout of lateyears, ) some of them new and very jaunty, with their white-gray sailsand yellow pine spars--the sloops dashing along in a fair wind--(Isee one now, coming up, under broad canvas, her gaff-topsail shiningin the sun, high and picturesque--what a thing of beauty amid the skyand waters!)--the crowded wharf-slips along the city--the flags ofdifferent nationalities, the sturdy English cross on its ground ofblood, the French tricolor, the banner of the great North Germanempire, and the Italian and the Spanish colors--sometimes, of anafternoon, the whole scene enliven'd by a fleet of yachts, in a halfcalm, lazily returning from a race down at Gloucester;--theneat, rakish, revenue steamer "Hamilton" in mid-stream, with herperpendicular stripes flaunting aft--and, turning the eyes north, thelong ribands of fleecy-white steam, or dingy-black smoke, stretchingfar, fan-shaped, slanting diagonally across from the Kensington orRichmond shores, in the west-by-south-west wind. 

SCENES ON FERRY AND RIVER--LAST WINTER'S NIGHTS

Then the Camden ferry. What exhilaration, change, people, business, byday. What soothing, silent, wondrous hours, at night, crossing on theboat, most all to myself--pacing the deck, alone, forward or aft. Whatcommunion with the waters, the air, the exquisite _chiaroscuro_--thesky and stars, that speak no word, nothing to the intellect, yet soeloquent, so communicative to the soul. And the ferry men--little theyknow how much they have been to me, day and night--how many spellsof listlessness, ennui, debility, they and their hardy ways havedispell'd. And the pilots--captains Hand, Walton, and Giberson by day, and captain Olive at night; Eugene Crosby, with his strong young armso often supporting, circling, convoying me over the gaps of thebridge, through impediments, safely aboard. Indeed all my ferryfriends--captain Frazee the superintendent, Lindell, Hiskey, FredRauch, Price, Watson, and a dozen more. And the ferry itself, with itsqueer scenes--sometimes children suddenly born in the waiting-houses(an actual fact--and more than once)--sometimes a masquerade party, going over at night, with a band of music, dancing and whirling likemad on the broad deck, in their fantastic dresses; sometimes theastronomer, Mr. Whitall, (who posts me up in points about the starsby a living lesson there and then, and answering every question)--sometimes a prolific family group, eight, nine, ten, even twelve!(Yesterday, as I cross'd, a mother, father, and eight children, waiting in the ferry-house, bound westward somewhere. )

I have mention'd the crows. I always watch them from the boats. Theyplay quite a part in the winter scenes on the river, by day. Theirblack splatches are seen in relief against the snow and ice everywhereat that season--sometimes flying and flapping--sometimes on little orlarger cakes, sailing up or down the stream. One day the river wasmostly clear--only a single long ridge of broken ice making a narrowstripe by itself, running along down the current for over a mile, quite rapidly. On this white stripe the crows were congregated, hundreds of them--a funny procession--("half mourning" was the commentof some one. )

Then the reception room, for passengers waiting--life illustratedthoroughly. Take a March picture I jotted there two or three weekssince. Afternoon, about 3-1/2 o'clock, it begins to snow. There hasbeen a matinee performance at the theater--from 4-1/2 to 5 comes astream of homeward bound ladies. I never knew the spacious room topresent a gayer, more lively scene--handsome, well-drest Jersey womenand girls, scores of them, streaming in for nearly an hour--thebright eyes and glowing faces, coming in from the air--a sprinklingof snow on bonnets or dresses as they enter--the five or ten minutes'waiting--the chatting and laughing--(women can have capitaltimes among themselves, with plenty of wit, lunches, jovialabandon)--Lizzie, the pleasant-manner'd waiting-room woman--for sound, the bell-taps and steam-signals of the departing boats with theirrhythmic break and undertone--the domestic pictures, mothers withbevies of daughters, (a charming sight)--children, countrymen--therailroad men in their blue clothes and caps--all the variouscharacters of city and country represented or suggested. Then outsidesome belated passenger frantically running, jumping after the boat. Towards six o' clock the human stream gradually thickening--now apressure of vehicles, drays, piled railroad crates--now a drove ofcattle, making quite an excitement, the drovers with heavy sticks, belaboring the steaming sides of the frighten'd brutes. Insidethe reception room, business bargains, flirting, love-making, _eclaircissements_, proposals--pleasant, sober-faced Phil coming inwith his burden of afternoon papers--or Jo, or Charley (who jump'din the dock last week, and saved a stout lady from drowning, ) toreplenish the stove, and clearing it with long crow-bar poker. 

Besides all this "comedy human, " the river affords nutriment of ahigher order. Here are some of my memoranda of the past winter, justas pencill'd down on the spot. 

_A January Night_. --Fine trips across the wide Delaware to-night. Tidepretty high, and a strong ebb. River, a little after 8, full ofice, mostly broken, but some large cakes making our strong-timber'dsteamboat hum and quiver as she strikes them. In the clear moonlightthey spread, strange, unearthly, silvery, faintly glistening, as faras I can see. Bumping, trembling, sometimes hissing like a thousandsnakes, the tide-procession, as we wend with or through it, affordinga grand undertone, in keeping with the scene. Overhead, the splendorindescribable; yet something haughty, almost supercilious, in thenight. Never did I realize more latent sentiment, almost _passion_, inthose silent interminable stars up there. One can understand, such anight, why, from the days of the Pharaohs or Job, the dome of heaven, sprinkled with planets, has supplied the subtlest, deepest criticismon human pride, glory, ambition. 

_Another Winter Night_. --I don't know anything more _filling_ thanto be on the wide firm deck of a powerful boat, a clear, cool, extra-moonlight night, crushing proudly and resistlessly through thisthick, marbly, glistening ice. The whole river is now spread with it--some immense cakes. There is such weirdness about the scene--partlythe quality of the light, with its tinge of blue, the lunar twilight--only the large stars holding their own in the radiance of the moon. Temperature sharp, comfortable for motion, dry, full of oxygen. Butthe sense of power--the steady, scornful, imperious urge of our strongnew engine, as she ploughs her way through the big and little cakes. 

_Another_. --For two hours I cross'd and recross'd, merely forpleasure--for a still excitement. Both sky and river went throughseveral changes. The first for awhile held two vast fan-shapedechelons of light clouds, through which the moon waded, now radiating, carrying with her an aureole of tawny transparent brown, and nowflooding the whole vast with clear vapory light-green, through which, as through an illuminated veil, she moved with measur'd womanlymotion. Then, another trip, the heavens would be absolutely clear, and Luna in all her effulgence. The big Dipper in the north, with thedouble star in the handle much plainer than common. Then thesheeny track of light in the water, dancing and rippling. Suchtransformations; such pictures and poems, inimitable. 

_Another_. --I am studying the stars, under advantages, as I crosstonight. (It is late in February, and again extra clear. ) High towardthe west, the Pleiades, tremulous with delicate sparkle, in the softheavens, --Aldebaran, leading the V-shaped Hyades--and overhead Capellaand her kids. Most majestic of all, in full display in the high south, Orion, vast-spread, roomy, chief historian of the stage, with hisshiny yellow rosette on his shoulder, and his three kings--and alittle to the east, Sirius, calmly arrogant, most wondrous singlestar. Going late ashore, (I couldn't give up the beauty, andsoothingness of the night, ) as I staid around, or slowly wander'd Iheard the echoing calls of the railroad men in the West Jersey depotyard, shifting and switching trains, engines, etc. ; amid the generalsilence otherways, and something in the acoustic quality of the air, musical, emotional effects, never thought of before. I linger'd longand long, listening to them. 

_Night of March 18, '79_. --One of the calm, pleasantly cool, exquisitely clear and cloudless, early spring nights--the atmosphereagain that rare vitreous blue-black, welcom'd by astronomers. Just at8, evening, the scene overhead of certainly solemnest beauty, neversurpass'd. Venus nearly down in the west, of a size and lustre as iftrying to outshow herself, before departing. Teeming, maternal orb--Itake you again to myself. I am reminded of that spring precedingAbraham Lincoln's murder, when I, restlessly haunting the Potomacbanks, around Washington city, watch'd you, off there, aloof, moody asmyself:

 As we walk'd up and down in the dark blue so mystic, As we walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night, As I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night after night, As you droop from the sky low down, as if to my side, (while the other stars all look'd on, ) As we wander'd together the solemn night. 

With departing Venus, large to the last, and shining even to theedge of the horizon, the vast dome presents at this moment, sucha spectacle! Mercury was visible just after sunset--a rare sight. Arcturus is now risen, just north of east. In calm glory all the starsof Orion hold the place of honor, in meridian, to the south, --with theDog-star a little to the left. And now, just rising, Spica, late, low, and slightly veil'd. Castor, Regulus and the rest, all shiningunusually clear, (no Mars or Jupiter or moon till morning. ) On theedge of the river, many lamps twinkling--with two or three hugechimneys, a couple of miles up, belching forth molten, steady flames, volcano-like, illuminating all around--and sometimes an electricor calcium, its Dante-Inferno gleams, in far shafts, terrible, ghastly-powerful. Of later May nights, crossing, I like to watch thefishermen's little buoy-lights--so pretty, so dreamy--like corpsecandles--undulating delicate and lonesome on the surface of theshadowy waters, floating with the current. 

THE FIRST SPRING DAY ON CHESTNUT STREET

Winter relaxing its hold, has already allow'd us a foretaste ofspring. As I write, yesterday afternoon's softness and brightness, (after the morning fog, which gave it a better setting, by contrast, )show'd Chestnut street--say between Broad and Fourth--to moreadvantage in its various asides, and all its stores, and gay-dress'dcrowds generally, than for three months past. I took a walk therebetween one and two. Doubtless, there were plenty of hard-up folksalong the pavements, but nine-tenths of the myriad-moving humanpanorama to all appearance seem'd flush, well-fed, and fully-provided. At all events it was good to be on Chestnut street yesterday. The peddlers on the sidewalk--("sleeve-buttons, three for fivecents")--the handsome little fellow with canary-bird whistles--thecane men, toy men, toothpick men--the old woman squatted in a heap onthe cold stone flags, with her basket of matches, pins andtape--the young negro mother, sitting, begging, with her twolittle coffee-color'd twins on her lap--the beauty of the cramm'dconservatory of rare flowers, flaunting reds, yellows, snowy lilies, incredible orchids, at the Baldwin mansion near Twelfth street--the show of fine poultry, beef, fish, at the restaurants--the chinastores, with glass and statuettes--the luscious tropical fruits--thestreet cars plodding along, with their tintinnabulating bells--thefat, cab-looking, rapidly driven one-horse vehicles of thepost-office, squeez'd full of coming or going letter-carriers, sohealthy and handsome and manly-looking, in their gray uniforms--thecostly books, pictures, curiosities, in the windows--the giganticpolicemen at most of the corners will all be readily remember'd andrecognized as features of this principal avenue of Philadelphia. Chestnut street, I have discover'd, is not without individuality, andits own points, even when compared with the great promenade-streetsof other cities. I have never been in Europe, but acquired years'familiar experience with New York's, (perhaps the world's) greatthoroughfare, Broadway, and possess to some extent a personal andsaunterer's knowledge of St. Charles street in New Orleans, Tremontstreet in Boston, and the broad trottoirs of Pennsylvania avenue inWashington. Of course it is a pity that Chestnut were not two or threetimes wider; but the street, any fine day, shows vividness, motion, variety, not easily to be surpass'd. (Sparkling eyes, human faces, magnetism, well-dress'd women, ambulating to and fro--with lots ofine things in the windows--are they not about the same, the civilizedworld over?)

 How fast the flitting figures come! The mild, the fierce, the stony face; Some bright with thoughtless smiles--and some Where secret tears have left their trace. 

A few days ago one of the six-story clothing stores along here had thespace inside its plate-glass show-window partition'd into a littlecorral, and litter'd deeply with rich clover and hay, (I could smellthe odor outside, ) on which reposed two magnificent fat sheep, full-sized but young--the handsomest creatures of the kind I ever saw. I stop's long and long, with the crowd, to view them--one lying downchewing the cud, and one standing up, looking out, with dense-fringedpatient eyes. Their wool, of a clear tawny color, with streaks ofglistening black--altogether a queer sight amidst that crowdedpromenade of dandies, dollars and dry-goods. 

UP THE HUDSON TO ULSTER COUNTY

_April 23. _--Off to New York on a little tour and visit. Leaving thehospitable, home-like quarters of my valued friends, Mr. And Mrs. J. H. Johnston--took the 4 P. M. Boat, bound up the Hudson, 100 milesor so. Sunset and evening fine. Especially enjoy'd the hour afterwe passed Cozzens's landing--the night lit by the crescent moon andVenus, now swimming in tender glory, and now hid by the high rocks andhills of the western shore, which we hugg'd close. (Where I spend thenext ten days is in Ulster county and its neighborhood, with frequentmorning and evening drives, observations of the river, and shortrambles. )

_April 24--Noon. _--A little more and the sun would be oppressive. Thebees are out gathering their bread from willows and other trees. Iwatch them returning, darting through the air or lighting on thehives, their thighs covered with the yellow forage. A solitary robinsings near. I sit in my shirt sleeves and gaze from an open bay-windowon the indolent scene--the thin haze, the Fishkill hills in thedistance--off on the river, a sloop with slanting mainsail, and two orthree little shad-boats. Over on the railroad opposite, long freighttrains, sometimes weighted by cylinder-tanks of petroleum, thirty, forty, fifty cars in a string, panting and rumbling along in fullview, but the sound soften'd by distance. 

DAYS AT J. B. 'S TURF-FIRES--SPRING SONGS

_April 26_. --At sunrise, the pure clear sound of the meadow lark. Anhour later, some notes, few and simple, yet delicious and perfect, from the bush-sparrow-towards noon the reedy trill of the robin. To-day is the fairest, sweetest yet--penetrating warmth--a lovelyveil in the air, partly heat-vapor and partly from the turf-fireseverywhere in patches on the farms. A group of soft maples near bysilently bursts out in crimson tips, buzzing all day with busy bees. The white sails of sloops and schooners glide up and down the river;and long trains of cars, with ponderous roll, or faint bell notes, almost constantly on the opposite shore. The earliest wild flowers inthe woods and fields, spicy arbutus, blue liverwort, frail anemone, and the pretty white blossoms of the bloodroot. I launch out in slowrambles, discovering them. As I go along the roads I like to see thefarmers' fires in patches, burning the dry brush, turf, debris. Howthe smoke crawls along, flat to the ground, slanting, slowly rising, reaching away, and at last dissipating. I like its acrid smell--whiffsjust reaching me--welcomer than French perfume. 

The birds are plenty; of any sort, or of two or three sorts, curiously, not a sign, till suddenly some warm, gushing, sunny April(or even March) day--lo! there they are, from twig to twig, or fenceto fence, flirting, singing, some mating, preparing to build. But mostof them _en passant_--a fortnight, a month in these parts, and thenaway. As in all phases, Nature keeps up her vital, copious, eternalprocession. Still, plenty of the birds hang around all or most of theseason--now their love-time, and era of nest-building. I find flyingover the river, crows, gulls and hawks. I hear the afternoon shriek ofthe latter, darting about, preparing to nest. The oriole will soonbe heard here, and the twanging _meoeow_ of the cat-bird; also theking-bird, cuckoo and the warblers. All along, there are threepeculiarly characteristic spring songs--the meadow-lark's, so sweet, so alert and remonstrating (as if he said, "don't you see?" or, "can'tyou understand?")--the cheery, mellow, human tones of the robin--(Ihave been trying for years to get a brief term, or phrase, that wouldidentify and describe that robin call)--and the amorous whistle of thehigh-hole. Insects are out plentifully at midday. 

_April 29_. --As we drove lingering along the road we heard, just aftersundown, the song of the wood-thrush. We stopp'd without a word, andlisten'd long. The delicious notes--a sweet, artless, voluntary, simple anthem, as from the flute-stops of some organ, wafted throughthe twilight--echoing well to us from the perpendicular high rock, where, in some thick young trees' recesses at the base, sat the bird--fill'd our senses, our souls. 

MEETING A HERMIT

I found in one of my rambles up the hills a real hermit, living in alonesome spot, hard to get at, rocky, the view fine, with a littlepatch of land two rods square. A man of youngish middle age, city bornand raised, had been to school, had travel'd in Europe and California. I first met him once or twice on the road, and pass'd the time of day, with some small talk; then, the third time, he ask'd me to go alonga bit and rest in his hut (an almost unprecedented compliment, as Iheard from others afterwards. ) He was of Quaker stock, I think; talk'dwith ease and moderate freedom, but did not unbosom his life, orstory, or tragedy, or whatever it was. 

AN ULSTER COUNTY WATERFALL

I jot this mem, in a wild scene of woods and hills, where we have cometo visit a waterfall. I never saw finer or more copious hemlocks, many of them large, some old and hoary. Such a sentiment to them, secretive, shaggy--what I call weather-beaten and let-alone--a richunderlay of ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spottedwith the early summer wild-flowers. Enveloping all, the monotone andliquid gurgle from the hoarse impetuous copious fall--the greenish-tawny, darkly transparent waters, plunging with velocity down therocks, with patches of milk-white foam--a stream of hurrying amber, thirty feet wide, risen far back in the hills and woods, now rushingwith volume--every hundred rods a fall, and sometimes three or four inthat distance. A primitive forest, druidical, solitary and savage--notten visitors a year--broken rocks everywhere--shade overhead, thickunderfoot with leaves--a just palpable wild and delicate aroma. 

WALTER DUMONT AND HIS MEDAL

As I saunter'd along the high road yesterday, I stopp'd to watch a mannear by, ploughing a rough stony field with a yoke of oxen. Usuallythere is much geeing and hawing, excitement, and continual noise andexpletives, about a job of this kind. But I noticed how different, howeasy and wordless, yet firm and sufficient, the work of this youngploughman. His name was Walter Dumont, a farmer, and son of afarmer, working for their living. Three years ago, when the steamer"Sunnyside" was wreck'd of a bitter icy night on the west bankhere, Walter went out in his boat--was the first man on hand withassistance--made a way through the ice to shore, connected a line, perform'd work of first-class readiness, daring, danger, and savednumerous lives. Some weeks after, one evening when he was up atEsopus, among the usual loafing crowd at the country store andpost-office, there arrived the gift of an unexpected official goldmedal for the quiet hero. The impromptu presentation was made to himon the spot, but he blush'd, hesitated as he took it, and had nothingto say. 

HUDSON RIVER SIGHTS

It was a happy thought to build the Hudson river railroad right alongthe shore. The grade is already made by nature; you are sure ofventilation one side--and you are in nobody's way. I see, hear, thelocomotives and cars, rumbling, roaring, flaming, smoking, constantly, away off there, night and day--less than a mile distant, and in fullview by day. I like both sight and sound. Express trains thunder andlighten along; of freight trains, most of them very long, there cannotbe less than a hundred a day. At night far down you see the headlightapproaching, coming steadily on like a meteor. The river at night hasits special character-beauties. The shad fishermen go forth in theirboats and pay out their nets--one sitting forward, rowing, and onestanding up aft dropping it properly-marking the line with littlefloats bearing candles, conveying, as they glide over the water, anindescribable sentiment and doubled brightness. I like to watch thetows at night, too, with their twinkling lamps, and hear the huskypanting of the steamers; or catch the sloops' and schooners' shadowyforms, like phantoms, white, silent, indefinite, out there. Then theHudson of a clear moonlight night. 

But there is one sight the very grandest. Sometimes in the fiercestdriving storm of wind, rain, hail or snow, a great eagle will appearover the river, now soaring with steady and now overbended wings--always confronting the gale, or perhaps cleaving into, or at timesliterally _sitting_ upon it. It is like reading some first-classnatural tragedy or epic, or hearing martial trumpets. The splendidbird enjoys the hubbub--is adjusted and equal to it--finishes it soartistically. His pinions just oscillating--the position of his headand neck--his resistless, occasionally varied flight--now a swirl, now an upward movement--the black clouds driving--the angry washbelow--the hiss of rain, the wind's piping (perhaps the ice colliding, grunting)--he tacking or jibing--now, as it were, for a change, abandoning himself to the gale, moving with it with such velocity--andnow, resuming control, he comes up against it, lord of the situationand the storm--lord, amid it, of power and savage joy. 

Sometimes (as at present writing, ) middle of sunny afternoon, the old"Vanderbilt" steamer stalking ahead--I plainly hear her rhythmic, slushing paddles--drawing by long hawsers an immense and variedfollowing string, ("an old sow and pigs, " the river folks call it. )First comes a big barge, with a house built on it, and spars toweringover the roof; then canal boats, a lengthen'd, clustering train, fasten'd and link'd together--the one in the middle, with high staff, flaunting a broad and gaudy flag--others with the almost invariablelines of new-wash'd clothes, drying; two sloops and a schooner asidethe tow--little wind, and that adverse--with three long, dark, emptybarges bringing up the rear. People are on the boats: men lounging, women in sun-bonnets, children, stovepipes with streaming smoke. 

TWO CITY AREAS, CERTAIN HOURS

NEW YORK, _May 24, '79_. --Perhaps no quarters of this city (I havereturn'd again for awhile, ) make more brilliant, animated, crowded, spectacular human presentations these fine May afternoons than the twoI am now going to describe from personal observation. First: thatarea comprising Fourteenth street (especially the short range betweenBroadway and Fifth avenue) with Union square, its adjacencies, and soretrostretching down Broadway for half a mile. All the walks here arewide, and the spaces ample and free--now flooded with liquid gold fromthe last two hours of powerful sunshine. The whole area at 5 o'clock, the days of my observations, must have contain'd from thirty toforty thousand finely-dress'd people, all in motion, plenty of themgood-looking, many beautiful women, often youths and children, the latter in groups with their nurses--the trottoirs everywhereclose-spread, thick-tangled, (yet no collision, no trouble, ) withmasses of bright color, action, and tasty toilets; (surely the womendress better than ever before, and the men do too. ) As if New Yorkwould show these afternoons what it can do in its humanity, itschoicest physique and physiognomy, and its countless prodigality oflocomotion, dry goods, glitter, magnetism, and happiness. 

Second: also from 5 to 7 P. M. The stretch of Fifth avenue, all the wayfrom the Central Park exits at Fifty-ninth street, down to Fourteenth, especially along the high grade by Fortieth street, and down the hill. A Mississippi of horses and rich vehicles, not by dozens and scores, but hundreds and thousands--the broad avenue filled and cramm'd withthem--a moving, sparkling, hurrying crush, for more than two miles. (I wonder they don't get block'd, but I believe they never do. )Altogether it is to me the marvel sight of New York. I like to get inone of the Fifth avenue stages and ride up, stemming the swift-movingprocession. I doubt if London or Paris or any city in the world canshow such a carriage carnival as I have seen here five or six timesthese beautiful May afternoons. 

CENTRAL PARK WALKS AND TALKS

_May 16 to 22_. --I visit Central Park now almost every day, sitting, orslowly rambling, or riding around. The whole place presents its verybest appearance this current month--the full flush of the trees, theplentiful white and pink of the flowering shrubs, the emerald green ofthe grass spreading everywhere, yellow dotted still with dandelions--the specialty of the plentiful gray rocks, peculiar to these grounds, cropping out, miles and miles--and over all the beauty and purity, three days out of four, of our summer skies. As I sit, placidly, earlyafternoon, off against Ninetieth street, the policeman, C. C. , awell-form'd sandy-complexion'd young fellow, comes over and standsnear me. We grow quite friendly and chatty forth-with. He is a NewYorker born and raised, and in answer to my questions tells me aboutthe life of a New York Park policeman, (while he talks keeping hiseyes and ears vigilantly open, occasionally pausing and moving wherehe can get full views of the vistas of the road, up and down, and thespaces around. ) The pay is $2. 40 a day (seven days to a week)--themen come on and work eight hours straight ahead, which is all that isrequired of them out of the twenty-four. The position has more risksthan one might suppose--for instance if a team or horse runs away(which happens daily) each man is expected not only to be prompt, butto waive safety and stop wildest nag or nags--(_do it_, and don't bethinking of your bones or face)--give the alarm-whistle too, so thatother guards may repeat, and the vehicles up and down the tracks bewarn'd. Injuries to the men are continually happening. There is muchalertness and quiet strength. (Few appreciate, I have often thought, the Ulyssean capacity, derring do, quick readiness in emergencies, practicality, unwitting devotion and heroism, among our Americanyoung men and working-people--the firemen, the railroad employes, thesteamer and ferry men, the police, the conductors and drivers--thewhole splendid average of native stock, city and country. ) It is goodwork, though; and upon the whole, the Park force members like it. They see life, and the excitement keeps them up. There is not so muchdifficulty as might be supposed from tramps, roughs, or in keepingpeople "off the grass. " The worst trouble of the regular Park employeis from malarial fever, chills, and the like. 

A FINE AFTERNOON, 4 TO 6

Ten thousand vehicles careering through the Park this perfectafternoon. Such a show! and I have seen all--watch'd it narrowly, and at my leisure. Private barouches, cabs and coupes, some finehorseflesh--lapdogs, footmen, fashions, foreigners, cockades on hats, crests on panels--the full oceanic tide of New York's wealth and"gentility. " It was an impressive, rich, interminable circus on agrand scale, full of action and color in the beauty of the day, underthe clear sun and moderate breeze. Family groups, couples, singledrivers--of course dresses generally elegant--much "style, " (yetperhaps little or nothing, even in that direction, that fullyjustified itself. ) Through the windows of two or three of the richestcarriages I saw faces almost corpse-like, so ashy and listless. Indeedthe whole affair exhibited less of sterling America, either inspirit or countenance, than I had counted on from such a selectmass-spectacle. I suppose, as a proof of limitless wealth, leisure, and the aforesaid "gentility, " it was tremendous. Yet what I saw thosehours (I took two other occasions, two other afternoons to watchthe same scene, ) confirms a thought that haunts me every additionalglimpse I get of our top-loftical general or rather exceptional phasesof wealth and fashion in this country--namely, that they are ill atease, much too conscious, cased in too many cerements, and far fromhappy--that there is nothing in them which we who are poor and plainneed at all envy, and that instead of the perennial smell of thegrass and woods and shores, their typical redolence is of soaps andessences, very rare may be, but suggesting the barber shop--somethingthat turns stale and musty in a few hours anyhow. 

Perhaps the show on the horseback road was prettiest. Many groups(threes a favorite number, ) some couples, some singly--manyladies--frequently horses or parties dashing along on a full run--fineriding the rule--a few really first-class animals. As the afternoonwaned, the wheel'd carriages grew less, but the saddle-riders seemedto increase. They linger'd long--and I saw some charming forms andfaces. 

DEPARTING OF THE BIG STEAMERS

_May 25. _--A three hours' bay-trip from 12 to 3 this afternoon, accompanying "the City of Brussels" down as far as the Narrows, inbehoof of some Europe-bound friends, to give them a good send off. Ourspirited little tug, the "Seth Low, " kept close to the great black"Brussels, " sometimes one side, sometimes the other, always up toher, or even pressing ahead, (like the blooded pony accompanying theroyal elephant. ) The whole affair, from the first, was an animated, quick-passing, characteristic New York scene; the large, good-looking, well-dress'd crowd on the wharf-end--men and women come to see theirfriends depart, and bid them God-speed--the ship's sides swarming withpassengers--groups of bronze-faced sailors, with uniform' d officersat their posts--the quiet directions, as she quickly unfastens andmoves out, prompt to a minute--the emotional faces, adieus andfluttering handkerchiefs, and many smiles and some tears onthe wharf--the answering faces, smiles, tears and flutteringhandkerchiefs, from the ship--(what can be subtler and finer than thisplay of faces on such occasions in these responding crowds?--what gomore to one's heart?)--the proud, steady, noiseless cleaving of thegrand oceaner down the bay--we speeding by her side a few miles, and then turning, wheeling, --amid a babel of wild hurrahs, shoutedpartings, ear-splitting steam whistles, kissing of hands and waving ofhandkerchiefs. 

This departing of the big steamers, noons or afternoons--there is nobetter medicine when one is listless or vapory. I am fond of goingdown Wednesdays and Saturdays--their more special days--to watch themand the crowds on the wharves, the arriving passengers, the generalbustle and activity, the eager looks from the faces, the clear-tonedvoices, (a travel'd foreigner, a musician, told me the other day shethinks an American crowd has the finest voices in the world, ) thewhole look of the great, shapely black ships themselves, and theirgroups and lined sides--in the setting of our bay with the blue skyoverhead. Two days after the above I saw the "Britannic, " the "Donau, "the "Helvetia" and the "Schiedam" steam out, all off for Europe--amagnificent sight. 

TWO HOURS ON THE MINNESOTA

From 7 to 9, aboard the United States school-ship Minnesota, lying upthe North river. Captain Luce sent his gig for us about sundown, to the foot of Twenty-third street, and receiv'd us aboard withofficer-like hospitality and sailor heartiness. There are severalhundred youths on the Minnesota to be train'd for efficiently manningthe government navy. I like the idea much; and, so far as I have seento-night, I like the way it is carried out on this huge vessel. Below, on the gun-deck, were gather'd nearly a hundred of the boys, to giveus some of their singing exercises, with a melodeon accompaniment, play'd by one of their number. They sang with a will. The best part, however, was the sight of the young fellows themselves. I wentover among them before the singing began, and talk'd a few minutesinformally. They are from all the States; I asked for the Southerners, but could only find one, a lad from Baltimore. In age, apparently, they range from about fourteen years to nineteen or twenty. They areall of American birth, and have to pass a rigid medical examination;well-grown youths, good flesh, bright eyes, looking straight at you, healthy, intelligent, not a slouch among them, nor a menial--in everyone the promise of a man. I have been to many public aggregations ofyoung and old, and of schools and colleges, in my day, but I confess Ihave never been so near satisfied, so comforted, (both from the factof the school itself, and the splendid proof of our country, our composite race, and the sample-promises of its good averagecapacities, its future, ) as in the collection from all parts of theUnited States on this navy training ship. ("Are there going to be _anymen_ there?" was the dry and pregnant reply of Emerson to one who hadbeen crowding him with the rich material statistics and possibilitiesof some western or Pacific region. )

_May 26_. --Aboard the Minnesota again. Lieut. Murphy kindly came forme in his boat. Enjoy'd specially those brief trips to and fro--thesailors, tann'd, strong, so bright and able-looking, pulling theiroars in long side-swing, man-of-war style, as they row'd me across. Isaw the boys in companies drilling with small arms; had a talk withChaplain Rawson. At 11 o'clock all of us gathered to breakfast arounda long table in the great ward room--I among the rest--a genial, plentiful, hospitable affair every way--plenty to eat, and of thebest; became acquainted with several new officers. This second visit, with its observations, talks, (two or three at random with the boys, )confirm'd my first impressions. 

MATURE SUMMER DAYS AND NIGHTS

_Aug. 4_. --Forenoon--as I sit under the willow shade, (have retreateddown in the country again, ) a little bird is leisurely dousingand flirting himself amid the brook almost within reach of me. He evidently fears me not--takes me for some concomitant of theneighboring earthy banks, free bushery and wild weeds. _6 p. M. _--Thelast three days have been perfect ones for the season, (four nightsago copious rains, with vehement thunder and lightning. ) I write thissitting by the creek watching my two kingfishers at their sundownsport. The strong, beautiful, joyous creatures! Their wings glisten inthe slanted sunbeams as they circle and circle around, occasionallydipping and dashing the water, and making long stretches up and downthe creek. Wherever I go over fields, through lanes, in by-places, blooms the white-flowering wild-carrot, its delicate pat ofsnow-flakes crowning its slender stem, gracefully oscillating in thebreeze, EXPOSITION BUILDING--NEW CITY HALL--RIVER TRIP

PHILADELPHIA, _Aug. 26_. --Last night and to-night of unsurpass'dclearness, after two days' rain; moon splendor and star splendor. Being out toward the great Exposition building, West Philadelphia, Isaw it lit up, and thought I would go in. There was a ball, democraticbut nice; plenty of young couples waltzing and quadrilling--music bya good string-band. To the sight and hearing of these--to moderatestrolls up and down the roomy spaces--to getting off aside, resting inan arm-chair and looking up a long while at the grand high roof withits graceful and multitudinous work of iron rods, angles, gray colors, plays of light and shade, receding into dim outlines--to absorbing(in the intervals of the string band, ) some capital voluntariesand rolling caprices from the big organ at the other end of thebuilding--to sighting a shadow'd figure or group or couple of loversevery now and then passing some near or farther aisle--I abandon'dmyself for over an hour. 

Returning home, riding down Market street in an open summer car, something detain'd us between Fifteenth and Broad, and I got out toview better the new, three-fifths-built marble edifice, the City Hall, of magnificent proportions--a majestic and lovely show there in themoonlight--flooded all over, facades, myriad silver-white lines andcarv'd heads and mouldings, with the soft dazzle--silent, weird, beautiful--well, I know that never when finish'd will that magnificentpile impress one as it impress'd me those fifteen minutes. 

To-night, since, I have been long on the river. I watch the C-shapedNorthern Crown, (with the star Alshacca that blazed out so suddenly, alarmingly, one night a few years ago. ) The moon in her third quarter, and up nearly all night. And there, as I look eastward, my long-absentPleiades, welcome again to sight. For an hour I enjoy the soothingand vital scene to the low splash of waves--new stars steadily, noiselessly rising in the east. 

As I cross the Delaware, one of the deck-hands, F. R. , tells me howa woman jump'd overboard and was drown'd a couple of hours since. Ithappen'd in mid-channel--she leap'd from the forward part of theboat, which went over her. He saw her rise on the other side in theswift running water, throw her arms and closed hands high up, (whitehands and bare forearms in the moonlight like a flash, ) and then shesank. (I found out afterwards that this young fellow had promptlyjump'd in, swam after the poor creature, and made, thoughunsuccessfully, the bravest efforts to rescue her; but he didn'tmention that part at all in telling me the story. )

SWALLOWS ON THE RIVER

_Sept. 3_--Cloudy and wet, and wind due east; air without palpablefog, but very heavy with moisture--welcome for a change. Forenoon, crossing the Delaware, I noticed unusual numbers of swallows inflight, circling, darting, graceful beyond description, close to thewater. Thick, around the bows of the ferry-boat as she lay tied in herslip, they flew; and as we went out I watch'd beyond the pier-heads, and across the broad stream, their swift-winding loop-ribands ofmotion, down close to it, cutting and intersecting. Though I had seenswallows all my life, seem'd as though I never before realized theirpeculiar beauty and character in the landscape. (Some time ago, foran hour, in a huge old country barn, watching these birds flying, recall'd the 22d book of the Odyssey, where Ulysses slays the suitors, bringing things to _eclaircissement_, and Minerva, swallow-bodied, darts up through the spaces of the hall, sits high on a beam, lookscomplacently on the show of slaughter, and feels in her element, exulting, joyous. )

BEGIN A LONG JAUNT WEST

The following three or four months (Sept. To Dec. '79) I made quite awestern journey, fetching up at Denver, Colorado, and penetrating theRocky Mountain region enough to get a good notion of it all. Left WestPhiladelphia after 9 o'clock one night, middle of September, in acomfortable sleeper. Oblivious of the two or three hundred milesacross Pennsylvania; at Pittsburgh in the morning to breakfast. Pretty good view of the city and Birmingham--fog and damp, smoke, coke-furnaces, flames, discolor'd wooden houses, and vast collectionsof coal-barges. Presently a bit of fine region, West Virginia, thePanhandle, and crossing the river, the Ohio. By day through the latterState--then Indiana--and so rock'd to slumber for a second night, flying like lightning through Illinois. 

IN THE SLEEPER

What a fierce weird pleasure to lie in my berth at night in theluxurious palace-car, drawn by the mighty Baldwin--embodying, andfilling me, too, full of the swiftest motion, and most resistlessstrength! It is late, perhaps midnight or after--distances join'd likemagic--as we speed through Harrisburg, Columbus, Indianapolis. The element of danger adds zest to it all. On we go, rumbling andflashing, with our loud whinnies thrown out from time to time, ortrumpet-blasts, into the darkness. Passing the homes of men, thefarms, barns, cattle--the silent villages. And the car itself, thesleeper, with curtains drawn and lights turn'd down--in the berths theslumberers, many of them women and children--as on, on, on, we flylike lightning through the night--how strangely sound and sweet theysleep! (They say the French Voltaire in his time designated the grandopera and a ship of war the most signal illustrations of the growth ofhumanity's and art's advance beyond primitive barbarism. Perhaps ifthe witty philosopher were here these days, and went in the same carwith perfect bedding and feed from New York to San Francisco, he wouldshift his type and sample to one of our American sleepers. )

MISSOURI STATE

We should have made the run of 960 miles from Philadelphia to St. Louis in thirty-six hours, but we had a collision and bad locomotivesmash about two-thirds of the way, which set us back. So merelystopping over night that time in St. Louis, I sped on westward. As Icross'd Missouri State the whole distance by the St. Louis and KansasCity Northern Railroad, a fine early autumn day, I thought my eyeshad never looked on scenes of greater pastoral beauty. For over twohundred miles successive rolling prairies, agriculturally perfectview'd by Pennsylvania and New Jersey eyes, and dotted here andthere with fine timber. Yet fine as the land is, it isn't the finestportion; (there is a bed of impervious clay and hard-pan beneath thissection that holds water too firmly, "drowns the land in wet weather, and bakes it in dry, " as a cynical farmer told me. ) South are somericher tracts, though perhaps the beauty-spots of the State are thenorthwestern counties. Altogether, I am clear, (now, and from whatI have seen and learn'd since, ) that Missouri, in climate, soil, relative situation, wheat, grass, mines, railroads, and everyimportant materialistic respect, stands in the front rank of theUnion. Of Missouri averaged politically and socially I have heard allsorts of talk, some pretty severe--but I should have no fear myself ofgetting along safely and comfortably anywhere among the Missourians. They raise a good deal of tobacco. You see at this time quantitiesof the light greenish-gray leaves pulled and hanging out to dry ontemporary frameworks or rows of sticks. Looks much like the mulleinfamiliar to eastern eyes. 

LAWRENCE AND TOPEKA, KANSAS

We thought of stopping in Kansas City, but when we got there we founda train ready and a crowd of hospitable Kansians to take us on toLawrence, to which I proceeded. I shall not soon forget my good daysin L. , in company with Judge Usher and his sons, (especially John andLinton, ) true westerners of the noblest type. Nor the similar days inTopeka. Nor the brotherly kindness of my RR. Friends there, and thecity and State officials. Lawrence and Topeka are large, bustling, half-rural, handsome cities. I took two or three long drives about thelatter, drawn by a spirited team over smooth roads. 

THE PRAIRIES (_and an Undeliver'd Speech_)

At a large popular meeting at Topeka--the Kansas State Silver Wedding, fifteen or twenty thousand people--I had been erroneously bill'd todeliver a poem. As I seem'd to be made much of, and wanted to begood-natured, I hastily pencill'd out the following little speech. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, ) I had such a good time and rest, andtalk and dinner, with the U. Boys, that I let the hours slip away anddidn't drive over to the meeting and speak my piece. But here it isjust the same:

"My friends, your bills announce me as giving a poem; but I have nopoem--have composed none for this occasion. And I can honestly sayI am now glad of it. Under these skies resplendent in Septemberbeauty--amid the peculiar landscape you are used to, but which is newto me--these interminable and stately prairies--in the freedom andvigor and sane enthusiasm of this perfect western air and autumnsunshine--it seems to me a poem would be almost an impertinence. Butif you care to have a word from me, I should speak it about these veryprairies; they impress me most, of all the objective shows I see orhave seen on this, my first real visit to the West. As I have roll'drapidly hither for more than a thousand miles, through fair Ohio, through bread-raising Indiana and Illinois--through ample Missouri, that contains and raises everything; as I have partially explor'd yourcharming city during the last two days, and, standing on Oread hill, by the university, have launch'd my view across broad expanses ofliving green, in every direction--I have again been most impress'd, I say, and shall remain for the rest of my life most impress'd, withthat feature of the topography of your western central world--thatvast Something, stretching out on its own unbounded scale, unconfined, which there is in these prairies, combining the real and ideal, andbeautiful as dreams. 

"I wonder indeed if the people of this continental inland West knowhow much of first-class _art_ they have in these prairies--howoriginal and all your own--how much of the influences of a characterfor your future humanity, broad, patriotic, heroic and new? howentirely they tally on land the grandeur and superb monotony of theskies of heaven, and the ocean with its waters? how freeing, soothing, nourishing they are to the soul?

"Then is it not subtly they who have given us our leading modernAmericans, Lincoln and Grant?--vast-spread, average men--theirforegrounds of character altogether practical and real, yet (to thosewho have eyes to see) with finest backgrounds of the ideal, toweringhigh as any. And do we not see, in them, foreshadowings of the futureraces that shall fill these prairies?

"Not but what the Yankee and Atlantic States, and every otherpart--Texas, and the States flanking the south-east and the Gulf ofMexico--the Pacific shore empire--the Territories and Lakes, and theCanada line (the day is not yet, but it will come, including Canadaentire)--are equally and integrally and indissolubly this Nation, the_sine qua non_ of the human, political and commercial New World. Butthis favor'd central area of (in round numbers) two thousand milessquare seems fated to be the home both of what I would call America'sdistinctive ideas and distinctive realities. "

ON TO DENVER--A FRONTIER INCIDENT

The jaunt of five or six hundred miles from Topeka to Denver took methrough a variety of country, but all unmistakably prolific, western, American, and on the largest scale. For a long distance we follow theline of the Kansas river, (I like better the old name, Kaw, ) a stretchof very rich, dark soil, famed for its wheat, and call'd the GoldenBelt--then plains and plains, hour after hour--Ellsworth county, the centre of the State--where I must stop a moment to tell acharacteristic story of early days--scene the very spot where I ampassing--time 1868. In a scrimmage at some public gathering in thetown, A. Had shot B. Quite badly, but had not kill'd him. The sobermen of Ellsworth conferr'd with one another and decided that A. Deserv'd punishment. As they wished to set a good example andestablish their reputation the reverse of a Lynching town, they openan informal court and bring both men before them for deliberate trial. Soon as this trial begins the wounded man is led forward to give histestimony. Seeing his enemy in durance and unarm'd, B. Walks suddenlyup in a fury and shoots A. Through the head--shoots him dead. Thecourt is instantly adjourn'd, and its unanimous members, without aword of debate, walk the murderer B. Out, wounded as he is, and hanghim. 

In due time we reach Denver, which city I fall in love with from thefirst, and have that feeling confirm'd, the longer I stay there. Oneof my pleasantest days was a jaunt, via Platte canon, to Leadville. 

AN HOUR ON KENOSHA SUMMIT

Jottings from the Rocky Mountains, mostly pencill'd during a day'strip over the South Park RR. , returning from Leadville, and especiallythe hour we were detain'd, (much to my satisfaction, ) at Kenoshasummit. As afternoon advances, novelties, far-reaching splendors, accumulate under the bright sun in this pure air. But I had bettercommence with the day. 

The confronting of Platte canon just at dawn, after a ten miles' ridein early darkness on the rail from Denver--the seasonable stoppage atthe entrance of the canon, and good breakfast of eggs, trout, and nicegriddle-cakes--then as we travel on, and get well in the gorge, allthe wonders, beauty, savage power of the scene--the wild stream ofwater, from sources of snows, brawling continually in sight oneside--the dazzling sun, and the morning lights on the rocks--suchturns and grades in the track, squirming around corners, or up anddown hills--far glimpses of a hundred peaks, titanic necklaces, stretching north and south--the huge rightly-named Dome-rock--and aswe dash along, others similar, simple, monolithic, elephantine. 

AN EGOTISTICAL "FIND"

"I have found the law of my own poems, " was the unspoken butmore-and-more decided feeling that came to me as I pass'd, hour afterhour, amid all this grim yet joyous elemental abandon--this plenitudeof material, entire absence of art, untrammel'd play of primitiveNature--the chasm, the gorge, the crystal mountain stream, repeatedscores, hundreds of miles--the broad handling and absoluteuncrampedness--the fantastic forms, bathed in transparent browns, faint reds and grays, towering sometimes a thousand, sometimes twoor three thousand feet high--at their tops now and then huge massespois'd, and mixing with the clouds, with only their outlines, hazed inmisty lilac, visible. ("In Nature's grandest shows, " says an old Dutchwriter, an ecclesiastic, "amid the ocean's depth, if so might be, orcountless worlds rolling above at night, a man thinks of them, weighsall, not for themselves or the abstract, but with reference to his ownpersonality, and how they may affect him or color his destinies. ")

NEW SENSES: NEW JOYS

We follow the stream of amber and bronze brawling along its bed, with its frequent cascades and snow-white foam. Through the canon wefly--mountains not only each side, but seemingly, till we get near, right in front of us--every rood a new view flashing, and each flashdefying description--on the almost perpendicular sides, clingingpines, cedars, spruces, crimson sumach bushes, spots of wildgrass--but dominating all, those towering rocks, rocks, rocks, bathedin delicate vari-colors, with the clear sky of autumn overhead. Newsenses, new joys, seem develop'd. Talk as you like, a typical RockyMountain canon, or a limitless sea-like stretch of the great Kansasor Colorado plains, under favoring circumstances, tallies, perhaps expresses, certainly awakes, those grandest and subtlestelement-emotions in the human soul, that all the marble templesand sculptures from Phidias to Thorwaldsen--all paintings, poems, reminiscences, or even music, probably never can. 

STEAM-POWER, TELEGRAPHS, ETC

I get out on a ten minutes' stoppage at Deer creek, to enjoy theunequal'd combination of hill, stone and wood. As we speed again, the yellow granite in the sunshine, with natural spires, minarets, castellated perches far aloft--then long stretches of straight-uprightpalisades, rhinoceros color--then gamboge and tinted chromos. Everthe best of my pleasures the cool-fresh Colorado atmosphere, yetsufficiently warm. Signs of man's restless advent and pioneerage, hard as Nature's face is--deserted dug-outs by dozens in theside-hills--the scantling-hut, the telegraph-pole, the smoke of someimpromptu chimney or outdoor fire--at intervals little settlements oflog-houses, or parties of surveyors or telegraph builders, with theircomfortable tents. Once, a canvas office where you could send amessage by electricity anywhere around the world! Yes, pronounc'dsigns of the man of latest dates, dauntlessly grappling with thesegrisliest shows of the old kosmos. At several places steam saw-mills, with their piles of logs and boards, and the pipes puffing. Occasionally Platte canon expanding into a grassy flat of a few acres. At one such place, toward the end, where we stop, and I get out tostretch my legs, as I look skyward, or rather mountain-topward, a hugehawk or eagle (a rare sight here) is idly soaring, balancing along theether, now sinking low and coming quite near, and then up again instately-languid circles--then higher, higher, slanting to the north, and gradually out of sight. 

AMERICA'S BACK-BONE

I jot these lines literally at Kenosha summit, where we return, afternoon, and take a long rest, 10, 000 feet above sea-level. Atthis immense height the South Park stretches fifty miles before me. Mountainous chains and peaks in every variety of perspective, everyhue of vista, fringe the view, in nearer, or middle, or far-dimdistance, or fade on the horizon. We have now reach'd, penetrated theRockies, (Hayden calls it the Front Range, ) for a hundred miles orso; and though these chains spread away in every direction, speciallynorth and south, thousands and thousands farther, I have seenspecimens of the utmost of them, and know henceforth at least whatthey are, and what they look like. Not themselves alone, for theytypify stretches and areas of half the globe--are, in fact, thevertebrae or back-bone of our hemisphere. As the anatomists say a manis only a spine, topp'd, footed, breasted and radiated, so the wholeWestern world is, in a sense, but an expansion of these mountains. InSouth America they are the Andes, in Central America and Mexico theCordilleras, and in our States they go under different names--inCalifornia the Coast and Cascade ranges--thence more eastwardly theSierra Nevadas--but mainly and more centrally here the Rocky Mountainsproper, with many an elevation such as Lincoln's, Grey's, Harvard's, Yale's, Long's and Pike's peaks, all over 14, 000 feet high. (East, thehighest peaks of the Alleghanies, the Adirondacks, the Catskills, and the White Mountains, range from 2000 to 5500 feet-only MountWashington, in the latter, 6300 feet. )

THE PARKS

In the midst of all here, lie such beautiful contrasts as the sunkenbasins of the North, Middle, and South Parks, (the latter I am now onone side of, and overlooking, ) each the size of a large, level, almostquandrangular, grassy, western county, wall'd in by walls of hills, and each park the source of a river. The ones I specify are thelargest in Colorado, but the whole of that State, and of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and western California, through their sierras andravines, are copiously mark'd by similar spreads and openings, manyof the small ones of paradisiac loveliness and perfection, with theiroffsets of mountains, streams, atmosphere and hues beyond compare. 

ART FEATURES

Talk, I say again, of going to Europe, of visiting the ruins of feudalcastles, or Coliseum remains, or kings' palaces--when you can come_here_. The alternations one gets, too; after the Illinois and Kansasprairies of a thousand miles--smooth and easy areas of the corn andwheat of ten million democratic farms in the future----here start upin every conceivable presentation of shape, these non-utilitarianpiles, coping the skies, emanating a beauty, terror, power, more thanDante or Angelo ever knew. Yes, I think the chyle of not only poetryand painting, but oratory, and even the metaphysics and music fitfor the New World, before being finally assimilated, need first andfeeding visits here. 

_Mountain streams. _--The spiritual contrast and etheriality of thewhole region consist largely to me in its never-absent peculiarstreams--the snows of inaccessible upper areas melting and runningdown through the gorges continually. Nothing like the water ofpastoral plains, or creeks with wooded banks and turf, or anything ofthe kind elsewhere. The shapes that element takes in the shows of theglobe cannot be fully understood by an artist until he has studiedthese unique rivulets. 

_Aerial effects. _--But perhaps as I gaze around me the rarest sightof all is in atmospheric hues. The prairies--as I cross'd them in myjourney hither--and these mountains and parks, seem to me toafford new lights and shades. Everywhere the aerial gradationsand sky-effects inimitable; nowhere else such perspectives, suchtransparent lilacs and grays. I can conceive of some superiorlandscape painter, some fine colorist, after sketching awhile outhere, discarding all his previous work, delightful to stock exhibitionamateurs, as muddy, raw and artificial. Near one's eye ranges aninfinite variety; high up, the bare whitey-brown, above timber line;in certain spots afar patches of snow any time of year; (no trees, noflowers, no birds, at those chilling altitudes. ) As I write I see theSnowy Range through the blue mist, beautiful and far off, I plainlysee the patches of snow. 

DENVER IMPRESSIONS

Through the long-lingering half-light of the most superb of eveningswe return'd to Denver, where I staid several days leisurely exploring, receiving impressions, with which I may as well taper off thismemorandum, itemizing what I saw there. The best was the men, three-fourths of them large, able, calm, alert, American. And cash!why they create it here. Out in the smelting works, (the biggest andmost improv'd ones, for the precious metals, in the world, ) I saw longrows of vats, pans, cover'd by bubbling-boiling water, and fill'd withpure silver, four or five inches thick, many thousand dollars' worthin a pan. The foreman who was showing me shovel'd it carelessly upwith a little wooden shovel, as one might toss beans. Then largesilver bricks, worth $2000 a brick, dozens of piles, twenty in a pile. In one place in the mountains, at a mining camp, I had a few daysbefore seen rough bullion on the ground in the open air, like theconfectioner's pyramids at some swell dinner in New York. (Such asweet morsel to roll over with a poor author's pen and ink--andappropriate to slip in here--that the silver product of Colorado andUtah, with the gold product of California, New Mexico, Nevada andDakota, foots up an addition to the world's coin of considerably overa hundred millions every year. )

A city, this Denver, well-laid out--Laramie street, and 15th and 16thand Champa streets, with others, particularly fine--some with tallstorehouses of stone or iron, and windows of plate-glass--all thestreets with little canals of mountain water running along thesides--plenty of people, "business, " modernness--yet not without acertain racy wild smack, all its own. A place of fast horses, (manymares with their colts, ) and I saw lots of big greyhounds for antelopehunting. Now and then groups of miners, some just come in, somestarting out, very picturesque. 

One of the papers here interview'd me, and reported me as sayingoff-hand: "I have lived in or visited all the great cities on theAtlantic third of the republic--Boston, Brooklyn with its hills, NewOrleans, Baltimore, stately Washington, broad Philadelphia, teemingCincinnati and Chicago, and for thirty years in that wonder, wash'dby hurried and glittering tides, my own New York, not only the NewWorld's but the world's city--but, newcomer to Denver as I am, andthreading its streets, breathing its air, warm'd by its sunshine, andhaving what there is of its human as well as aerial ozone flash'd uponme now for only three or four days, I am very much like a man feelssometimes toward certain people he meets with, and warms to, andhardly knows why. I, too, can hardly tell why, but as I enter'd thecity in the slight haze of a late September afternoon, and havebreath'd its air, and slept well o' nights, and have roam'd or rodeleisurely, and watch'd the comers and goers at the hotels, andabsorb'd the climatic magnetism of this curiously attractive region, there has steadily grown upon me a feeling of affection for the spot, which, sudden as it is, has become so definite and strong that I mustput it on record. "

So much for my feeling toward the Queen city of the plains and peaks, where she sits in her delicious rare atmosphere, over 5000 feet abovesea-level, irrigated by mountain streams, one way looking east overthe prairies for a thousand miles, and having the other, westward, in constant view by day, draped in their violet haze, mountain topsinnumerable. Yes, I fell in love with Denver, and even felt a wish tospend my declining and dying days there. 

I TURN SOUTH AND THEN EAST AGAIN

Leave Denver at 8 A. M. By the Rio Grande RR. Going south. Mountainsconstantly in sight in the apparently near distance, veil'd slightly, but still clear and very grand--their cones, colors, sides, distinctagainst the sky--hundreds, it seem'd thousands, interminablenecklaces of them, their tops and slopes hazed more or less slightlyin that blue-gray, under the autumn sun, for over a hundred miles--themost spiritual show of objective Nature I ever beheld, or ever thoughtpossible. Occasionally the light strengthens, making a contrast ofyellow-tinged silver on one side, with dark and shaded gray onthe other. I took a long look at Pike's peak, and was a littledisappointed. (I suppose I had expected something stunning. ) Our viewover plains to the left stretches amply, with corrals here and there, the frequent cactus and wild sage, and herds of cattle feeding. Thusabout 120 miles to Pueblo. At that town we board the comfortable andwell-equipt Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe RR. , now striking east. 

UNFULFILLED WANTS--THE ARKANSAS RIVER

I had wanted to go to the Yellowstone river region--wanted speciallyto see the National Park, and the geysers and the "hoodoo" or goblinland of that country; indeed, hesitated a little at Pueblo, theturning point--wanted to thread the Veta pass--wanted to go over theSanta Fe trail away southwestward to New Mexico--but turn'd and setmy face eastward--leaving behind me whetting glimpse-tastes ofsoutheastern Colorado, Pueblo, Bald mountain, the Spanish peaks, Sangre de Christos, Mile-Shoe-curve (which my veteran friend on thelocomotive told me was "the boss railroad curve of the universe, ")fort Garland on the plains, Veta, and the three great peaks of theSierra Blancas. The Arkansas river plays quite a part in the wholeof this region--I see it, or its high-cut rocky northern shore, formiles, and cross and recross it frequently, as it winds and squirmslike a snake. The plains vary here even more than usual--sometimesa long sterile stretch of scores of miles--then green, fertile andgrassy, an equal length. Some very large herds of sheep. (One wantsnew words in writing about these plains, and all the inland AmericanWest--the terms, _far, large, vast_, &c. , are insufficient. )

A SILENT LITTLE FOLLOWER-THE COREOPSIS

Here I must say a word about a little follower, present even nowbefore my eyes. I have been accompanied on my whole journey fromBarnegat to Pike's peak by a pleasant floricultural friend, or rathermillions of friends--nothing more or less than a hardy little yellowfive-petal'd September and October wild-flower, growing I thinkeverywhere in the middle and northern United States. I had seen it onthe Hudson and over Long Island, and along the banks of the Delawareand through New Jersey, (as years ago up the Connecticut, and onefall by Lake Champlain. ) This trip it follow'd me regularly, with itsslender stem and eyes of gold, from Cape May to the Kaw valley, andso through the canons and to these plains. In Missouri I saw immensefields all bright with it. Toward western Illinois I woke up onemorning in the sleeper and the first thing when I drew the curtain ofmy berth and look'd out was its pretty countenance and bending neck. 

_Sept. 25th_. --Early morning--still going east after we leaveSterling, Kansas, where I stopp'd a day and night. The sun up abouthalf an hour; nothing can be fresher or more beautiful than this time, this region. I see quite a field of my yellow flower in full bloom. Atintervals dots of nice two-story houses, as we ride swiftly by. Overthe immense area, flat as a floor, visible for twenty miles inevery direction in the clear air, a prevalence of autumn-drab andreddish-tawny herbage--sparse stacks of hay and enclosures, breakingthe landscape--as we rumble by, flocks of prairie-hens starting up. Between Sterling and Florence a fine country. (Remembrances to E. L. , my old-young soldier friend of war times, and his wife and boy at S. )

THE PRAIRIES AND GREAT PLAINS IN POETRY

(_After traveling Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado_) Grand asis the thought that doubtless the child is already born who will seea hundred millions of people, the most prosperous and advanc'd of theworld, inhabiting these Prairies, the great Plains, and the valley ofthe Mississippi, I could not help thinking it would be grander stillto see all those inimitable American areas fused in the alembic ofa perfect poem, or other esthetic work, entirely western, fresh andlimitless--altogether our own, without a trace or taste of Europe'ssoil, reminiscence, technical letter or spirit. My days and nights, asI travel here--what an exhilaration!--not the air alone, and the senseof vastness, but every local sight and feature. Everywhere somethingcharacteristic--the cactuses, pinks, buffalo grass, wild sage--thereceding perspective, and the far circle-line of the horizon all timesof day, especially forenoon--the clear, pure, cool, rarefied nutrimentfor the lungs, previously quite unknown--the black patches and streaksleft by surface-conflagrations--the deep-plough'd furrow of the"fire-guard"--the slanting snow-racks built all along to shieldthe railroad from winter drifts--the prairie-dogs and the herds ofantelope--the curious "dry rivers"--occasionally a "dug-out" orcorral--Fort Riley and Fort Wallace--those towns of the northernplains, (like ships on the sea, ) Eagle-Tail, Coyote, Cheyenne, Agate, Monotony, Kit Carson--with ever the ant-hill and thebuffalo-wallow--ever the herds of cattle and the cow-boys("cow-punchers") to me a strangely interesting class, bright-eyedas hawks, with their swarthy complexions and their broad-brimm'dhats--apparently always on horseback, with loose arms slightly raisedand swinging as they ride. 

THE SPANISH PEAKS--EVENING ON THE PLAINS

Between Pueblo and Bent's fort, southward, in a clear afternoonsun-spell I catch exceptionally good glimpses of the Spanish peaks. We are in southeastern Colorado--pass immense herds of cattle as ourfirst-class locomotive rushes us along--two or three times crossingthe Arkansas, which we follow many miles, and of which river I getfine views, sometimes for quite a distance, its stony, upright, notvery high, palisade banks, and then its muddy flats. We pass FortLyon--lots of adobie houses--limitless pasturage, appropriatelyfleck'd with those herds of cattle--in due time the declining sun inthe west--a sky of limpid pearl over all--and so evening on the greatplains. A calm, pensive, boundless landscape--the perpendicular rocksof the north Arkansas, hued in twilight--a thin line of violet onthe southwestern horizon--the palpable coolness and slight aroma--abelated cow-boy with some unruly member of his herd--an emigrant wagontoiling yet a little further, the horses slow and tired--two men, apparently father and son, jogging along on foot--and around all theindescribable _chiaroscuro_ and sentiment, (profounder than anythingat sea, ) athwart these endless wilds. 

AMERICA'S CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE

Speaking generally as to the capacity and sure future destiny of thatplain and prairie area (larger than any European kingdom) it is theinexhaustible land of wheat, maize, wool, flax, coal, iron, beef andpork, butter and cheese, apples and grapes--land of ten million virginfarms--to the eye at present wild and unproductive--yet experts saythat upon it when irrigated may easily be grown enough wheat to feedthe world. Then as to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling, )while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara falls, theupper Yellowstone and the like, afford the greatest natural shows, Iam not so sure but the Prairies and the Plains, while less stunning atfirst sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede allthe rest, and make North America's characteristic landscape. 

Indeed through the whole of this journey, with all its shows andvarieties, what most impress'd me, and will longest remain with me, are these same prairies. Day after day, and night after night, to myeyes, to all my senses--the esthetic one most of all--they silentlyand broadly unfolded. Even their simplest statistics are sublime. 

EARTH'S MOST IMPORTANT STREAM

The valley of the Mississippi river and its tributaries, (this streamand its adjuncts involve a big part of the question, ) comprehends morethan twelve hundred thousand square miles, the greater part prairies. It is by far the most important stream on the globe, and would seemto have been marked out by design, slow-flowing from north to south, through a dozen climates, all fitted for man's healthy occupancy, its outlet unfrozen all the year, and its line forming a safe, cheapcontinental avenue for commerce and passage from the north temperateto the torrid zone. Not even the mighty Amazon (though larger involume) on its line of east and west--not the Nile in Africa, nor theDanube in Europe, nor the three great rivers of China, compare withit. Only the Mediterranean sea has play'd some such part in history, and all through the past, as the Mississippi is destined to play inthe future. By its demesnes, water'd and welded by its branches, theMissouri, the Ohio, the Arkansas, the Red, the Yazoo, the St. Francisand others, it already compacts twenty-five millions of people, notmerely the most peaceful and money-making, but the most restless andwarlike on earth. Its valley, or reach, is rapidly concentrating thepolitical power of the American Union. One almost thinks it _is_ theUnion--or soon will be. Take it out, with its radiations, and whatwould be left? From the car windows through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, or stopping some days along the Topeka and Santa Fe road, insouthern Kansas, and indeed wherever I went, hundreds and thousandsof miles through this region, my eyes feasted on primitive and richmeadows, some of them partially inhabited, but far, immensely far moreuntouch'd, unbroken--and much of it more lovely and fertile in itsunplough'd innocence than the fair and valuable fields of New York's, Pennsylvania's, Maryland's or Virginia's richest farms. 

PRAIRIE ANALOGIES--THE TREE QUESTION

The word Prairie is French, and means literally meadow. The cosmicalanalogies of our North American plains are the Steppes of Asia, thePampas and Llanos of South America, and perhaps the Saharas of Africa. Some think the plains have been originally lake-beds; others attributethe absence of forests to the fires that almost annually sweep overthem--(the cause, in vulgar estimation, of Indian summer. ) The treequestion will soon become a grave one. Although the Atlantic slope, the Rocky mountain region, and the southern portion of the Mississippivalley, are well wooded, there are here stretches of hundreds andthousands of miles where either not a tree grows, or often uselessdestruction has prevail'd; and the matter of the cultivation andspread of forests may well be press'd upon thinkers who look to thecoming generations of the prairie States. 

MISSISSIPPI VALLEY LITERATURE

Lying by one rainy day in Missouri to rest after quite a longexploration--first trying a big volume I found there of "Milton, Young, Gray, Beattie and Collins, " but giving it up for a badjob--enjoying however for awhile, as often before, the reading ofWalter Scott's poems, "Lay of the Last Minstrel, " "Marmion, " and soon--I stopp'd and laid down the book, and ponder'd the thought of apoetry that should in due time express and supply the teeming region Iwas in the midst of, and have briefly touch'd upon. One's mind needsbut a moment's deliberation anywhere in the United States to seeclearly enough that all the prevalent book and library poets, eitheras imported from Great Britain, or follow'd and _doppel-gang'd_ here, are foreign to our States, copiously as they are read by us all. Butto fully understand not only how absolutely in opposition to our timesand lands, and how little and cramp'd, and what anachronisms andabsurdities many of their pages are, for American purposes, one mustdwell or travel awhile in Missouri, Kansas and Colorado, and getrapport with their people and country. 

Will the day ever come--no matter how long deferr'd--when those modelsand lay-figures from the British islands--and even the precioustraditions of the classics--will be reminiscences, studies only? Thepure breath, primitiveness, boundless prodigality and amplitude, strange mixture of delicacy and power, of continence, of real andideal, and of all original and first-class elements, of theseprairies, the Rocky mountains, and of the Mississippi and Missouririvers--will they ever appear in, and in some sort form a standard forour poetry and art? (I sometimes think that even the ambition of myfriend Joaquin Miller to put them in, and illustrate them, places himahead of the whole crowd. )

Not long ago I was down New York bay, on a steamer, watching thesunset over the dark green heights of Navesink, and viewing all thatinimitable spread of shore, shipping and sea, around Sandy Hook. Butan intervening week or two, and my eyes catch the shadowy outlines ofthe Spanish peaks. In the more than two thousand miles between, thoughof infinite and paradoxical variety, a curious and absolute fusion isdoubtless steadily annealing, compacting, identifying all. But subtlerand wider and more solid, (to produce such compaction, ) than the lawsof the States, or the common ground of Congress, or the SupremeCourt, or the grim welding of our national wars, or the steel ties ofrailroads, or all the kneading and fusing processes of our materialand business history, past or present, would in my opinion be a greatthrobbing, vital, imaginative work, or series of works, or literature, in constructing which the Plains, the Prairies, and the Mississippiriver, with the demesnes of its varied and ample valley, should bethe concrete background, and America's humanity, passions, struggles, hopes, there and now--an _eclaircissement_ as it is and is to be, on the stage of the New World, of all Time's hitherto drama of war, romance and evolution--should furnish the lambent fire, the ideal. 

AN INTERVIEWER'S ITEM

Oct. 17, '79_. --To-day one of the newspapers of St. Louis prints thefollowing informal remarks of mine on American, especially Westernliterature: "We called on Mr. Whitman yesterday and after a somewhatdesultory conversation abruptly asked him: 'Do you think we are tohave a distinctively American literature?' 'It seems to me, ' saidhe, 'that our work at present is to lay the foundations of a greatnation in products, in agriculture, in commerce, in networks ofintercommunication, and in all that relates to the comforts of vastmasses of men and families, with freedom of speech, ecclesiasticism, &c. These we have founded and are carrying out on a grander scalethan ever hitherto, and Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas andColorado, seem to me to be the seat and field of these very facts andideas. Materialistic prosperity in all its varied forms, with thoseother points that I mentioned, intercommunication and freedom, arefirst to be attended to. When those have their results and getsettled, then a literature worthy of us will begin to be defined. OurAmerican superiority and vitality are in the bulk of our people, notin a gentry like the old world. The greatness of our army during thesecession war, was in the rank and file, and so with the nation. Otherlands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in thebulk of the people. Our leading men are not of much account and neverhave been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond allhistory. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and artincluded, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. Wewill not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great averagebulk, unprecedentedly great. '"

THE WOMEN OF THE WEST

_Kansas City_. --I am not so well satisfied with what I see of thewomen of the prairie cities. I am writing this where I sit leisurelyin a store in Main street, Kansas City, a streaming crowd on thesidewalks flowing by. The ladies (and the same in Denver) are allfashionably drest, and have the look of "gentility" in face, mannerand action, but they do _not_ have, either in physique or thementality appropriate to them, any high native originality of spiritor body, (as the men certainly have, appropriate to them. ) They are"intellectual" and fashionable, but dyspeptic-looking and generallydoll-like; their ambition evidently is to copy their eastern sisters. Something far different and in advance must appear, to tally andcomplete the superb masculinity of the west, and maintain and continueit. 

THE SILENT GENERAL

_Sept. 28, '79_. --So General Grant, after circumambiating theworld, has arrived home again, landed in San Francisco yesterday, fromthe ship City of Tokio from Japan. What a man he is! what a history!what an illustration--his life--of the capacities of that Americanindividuality common to us all. Cynical critics are wondering "whatthe people can see in Grant" to make such a hubbub about. They aver(and it is no doubt true) that he has hardly the average of our day'sliterary and scholastic culture, and absolutely no pronounc'd geniusor conventional eminence of any sort. Correct: but he proves howan average western farmer, mechanic, boatman, carried by tides ofcircumstances, perhaps caprices, into a position of incrediblemilitary or civic responsibilities, (history has presented none moretrying, no born monarch's, no mark more shining for attack or envy, )may steer his way fitly and steadily through them all, carrying thecountry and himself with credit year after year--command over amillion armed men--fight more than fifty pitch'd battles--rulefor eight years a land larger than all the kingdoms of Europecombined--and then, retiring, quietly (with a cigar in his mouth) makethe promenade of the whole world, through its courts and coteries, andkings and czars and mikados, and splendidest glitters and etiquettes, as phlegmatically as he ever walk'd the portico of a Missouri hotelafter dinner. I say all this is what people like--and I am sure I likeit. Seems to me it transcends Plutarch. How those old Greeks, indeed, would have seized on him! A mere plain man--no art, no poetry--onlypractical sense, ability to do, or try his best to do, whatdevolv'd upon him. A common trader, money-maker, tanner, farmer ofIllinois--general for the republic, in its terrific struggle withitself, in the war of attempted secession--President following, (atask of peace, more difficult than the war itself)--nothing heroic, as the authorities put it--and yet the greatest hero. The gods, thedestinies, seem to have concentrated upon him. 

PRESIDENT HAYES'S SPEECHES

_Sept. 30_. --I see President Hayes has come out West, passing quiteinformally from point to point, with his wife and a small cortegeof big officers, receiving ovations, and making daily and sometimesdouble-daily addresses to the people. To these addresses--allimpromptu, and some would call them ephemeral--I feel to devote amemorandum. They are shrewd, good-natur'd, face-to-face speeches, on easy topics not too deep; but they give me some revised ideas oforatory--of a new, opportune theory and practice of that art, quite changed from the classic rules, and adapted to our days, ouroccasions, to American democracy, and to the swarming populations ofthe West. I hear them criticised as wanting in dignity, but to me theyare just what they should be, considering all the circumstances, whothey come from, and who they are address'd to. Underneath, hisobjects are to compact and fraternize the States, encourage theirmaterialistic and industrial development, soothe and expand theirself-poise, and tie all and each with resistless double ties not onlyof inter-trade barter, but human comradeship. 

From Kansas City I went on to St. Louis, where I remain'd nearly threemonths, with my brother T. J. W. , and my dear nieces. 

ST. LOUIS MEMORANDA

_Oct. , Nov. , and Dec. , '79_. --The points of St. Louis are itsposition, its absolute wealth, (the long accumulations of time andtrade, solid riches, probably a higher average thereof than any city, )the unrivall'd amplitude of its well-laid-out environage of broadplateaus, for future expansion--and the great State of which it is thehead. It fuses northern and southern qualities, perhaps native andforeign ones, to perfection, rendezvous the whole stretch of theMississippi and Missouri rivers, and its American electricity goeswell with its German phlegm. Fourth, Fifth and Third streets arestore-streets, showy, modern, metropolitan, with hurrying crowds, vehicles, horse-cars, hubbub, plenty of people, rich goods, plate-glass windows, iron fronts often five or six stories high. Youcan purchase anything in St. Louis (in most of the big western citiesfor the matter of that) just as readily and cheaply as in the Atlanticmarts. Often in going about the town you see reminders of old, evendecay'd civilization. The water of the west, in some places, is notgood, but they make it up here by plenty of very fair wine, andinexhaustible quantities of the best beer in the world. There areimmense establishments for slaughtering beef and pork--and I sawflocks of sheep, 5000 in a flock. (In Kansas City I had visited apacking establishment that kills and packs an average of 2500 hogs aday the whole year round, for export. Another in Atchison, Kansas, same extent; others nearly equal elsewhere. And just as big oneshere. )

NIGHTS ON THE MISSISSIPPI

_Oct. 29th, 30th, and 31st_. --Wonderfully fine, with the full harvestmoon, dazzling and silvery. I have haunted the river every nightlately, where I could get a look at the bridge by moonlight. It isindeed a structure of perfection and beauty unsurpassable, and I nevertire of it. The river at present is very low; I noticed to-day it hadmuch more of a blue-clear look than usual. I hear the slight ripples, the air is fresh and cool, and the view, up or down, wonderfullyclear, in the moonlight. I am out pretty late: it is so fascinating, dreamy. The cool night-air, all the influences, the silence, withthose far-off eternal stars, do me good. I have been quite ill oflate. And so, well-near the centre of our national demesne, thesenight views of the Mississippi. 

UPON OUR OWN LAND

"Always, after supper, take a walk half a mile long, " says an oldproverb, dryly adding, "and if convenient let it be upon your ownland. " I wonder does any other nation but ours afford opportunity forsuch a jaunt as this? Indeed has any previous period afforded it?No one, I discover, begins to know the real geographic, democratic, indissoluble American Union in the present, or suspect it in thefuture, until he explores these Central States, and dwells awhileobservantly on their prairies, or amid their busy towns, and themighty father of waters. A ride of two or three thousand miles, "onone's own land, " with hardly a disconnection, could certainly be hadin no other place than the United States, and at no period beforethis. If you want to see what the railroad is, and how civilizationand progress date from it--how it is the conqueror of crude nature, which it turns to man's use, both on small scales and on thelargest--come hither to inland America. 

I return'd home, east, Jan. 5, 1880, having travers'd, to and fro andacross, 10, 000 miles and more. I soon resumed my seclusions downin the woods, or by the creek, or gaddings about cities, and anoccasional disquisition, as will be seen following. 

EDGAR POE'S SIGNIFICANCE

_Jan. 1, '80_. --In diagnosing this disease called humanity--to assumefor the nonce what seems a chief mood of the personality and writingsof my subject--I have thought that poets, somewhere or other on thelist, present the most mark'd indications. Comprehending artists in amass, musicians, painters, actors, and so on, and considering each andall of them as radiations or flanges of that furious whirling wheel, poetry, the centre and axis of the whole, where else indeed may we sowell investigate the causes, growths, tally-marks of the time--theage's matter and malady?

By common consent there is nothing better for man or woman than aperfect and noble life, morally without flaw, happily balanced inactivity, physically sound and pure, giving its due proportion, and nomore, to the sympathetic, the human emotional element--a life, in allthese, unhasting, unresting, untiring to the end. And yet there isanother shape of personality dearer far to the artist-sense, (whichlikes the play of strongest lights and shades, ) where the perfectcharacter, the good, the heroic, although never attain'd, is neverlost sight of, but through failures, sorrows, temporary downfalls, isreturn'd to again and again, and while often violated, is passionatelyadhered to as long as mind, muscles, voice, obey the power we callvolition. This sort of personality we see more or less in Burns, Byron, Schiller, and George Sand. But we do not see it in Edgar Poe. (All this is the result of reading at intervals the last three days anew volume of his poems--I took it on my rambles down by the pond, andby degrees read it all through there. ) While to the character firstoutlined the service Poe renders is certainly that entire contrast andcontradiction which is next best to fully exemplifying it. 

Almost without the first sign of moral principle, or of the concreteor its heroisms, or the simpler affections of the heart, Poe's versesillustrate an intense faculty for technical and abstract beauty, withthe rhyming art to excess, an incorrigible propensity toward nocturnalthemes, a demoniac undertone behind every page--and, by finaljudgment, probably belong among the electric lights of imaginativeliterature, brilliant and dazzling, but with no heat. There is anindescribable magnetism about the poet's life and reminiscences, aswell as the poems. To one who could work out their subtle retracingand retrospect, the latter would make a close tally no doubt betweenthe author's birth and antecedents, his childhood and youth, hisphysique, his so-call'd education, his studies and associates, theliterary and social Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia and New York, ofthose times--not only the places and circumstances in themselves, butoften, very often, in a strange spurning of, and reaction from themall. 

The following from a report in the Washington "Star" of November 16, 1875, may afford those who care for it something further of my pointof view toward this interesting figure and influence of our era. Thereoccurr'd about that date in Baltimore a public reburial of Poe'sremains, and dedication of a monument over the grave:

"Being in Washington on a visit at the time, 'the old gray' went overto Baltimore, and though ill from paralysis, consented to hobble upand silently take a seat on the platform, but refused to make anyspeech, saying, 'I have felt a strong impulse to come over and behere to-day myself in memory of Poe, which I have obey'd, but not theslightest impulse to make a speech, which, my dear friends, must alsobe obeyed. ' In an informal circle, however, in conversation after theceremonies, Whitman said: 'For a long while, and until lately, I had adistaste for Poe's writings. I wanted, and still want for poetry, theclear sun shining, and fresh air blowing--the strength and power ofhealth, not of delirium, even amid the stormiest passions--with alwaysthe background of the eternal moralities. Non-complying with theserequirements, Poe's genius has yet conquer'd a special recognition foritself, and I too have come to fully admit it, and appreciate it andhim. 

"'In a dream I once had, I saw a vessel on the sea, at midnight, ina storm. It was no great full-rigg'd ship, nor majestic steamer, steering firmly through the gale, but seem'd one of those superblittle schooner yachts I had often seen lying anchor'd, rocking sojauntily, in the waters around New York, or up Long Island sound--nowflying uncontroll'd with torn sails and broken spars through the wildsleet and winds and waves of the night. On the deck was a slender, slight, beautiful figure, a dim man, apparently enjoying all theterror, the murk, and the dislocation of which he was the centre andthe victim. That figure of my lurid dream might stand for EdgarPoe, his spirit, his fortunes, and his poems--themselves all luriddreams. '"

Much more may be said, but I most desired to exploit the idea put atthe beginning. By its popular poets the calibres of an age, the weakspots of its embankments, its sub-currents, (often more significantthan the biggest surface ones, ) are unerringly indicated. The lush andthe weird that have taken such extraordinary possession of Nineteenthcentury verse-lovers--what mean they? The inevitable tendency ofpoetic culture to morbidity, abnormal beauty--the sickliness of alltechnical thought or refinement in itself--the abnegation of theperennial and democratic concretes at first hand, the body, the earthand sea, sex and the like--and the substitution of something forthem at second or third hand--what bearings have they on currentpathological study?

BEETHOVEN'S SEPTETTE

_Feb. 11, '80_. --At a good concert to-night in the foyer of the operahouse, Philadelphia--the band a small but first-rate one. Never didmusic more sink into and soothe and fill me--never so prove itssoul-rousing power, its impossibility of statement. Especially in therendering of one of Beethoven's master septettes by the well-chosenand perfectly-combined instruments (violins, viola, clarionet, horn, 'cello and contrabass, ) was I carried away, seeing, absorbing manywonders. Dainty abandon, sometimes as if Nature laughing on a hillsidein the sunshine; serious and firm monotonies, as of winds; a hornsounding through the tangle of the forest, and the dying echoes;soothing floating of waves, but presently rising in surges, angrily lashing, muttering, heavy; piercing peals of laughter, forinterstices; now and then weird, as Nature herself is in certainmoods--but mainly spontaneous, easy, careless--often the sentiment ofthe postures of naked children playing or sleeping. It did me goodeven to watch the violinists drawing their bows so masterly--everymotion a study. I allow'd myself, as I sometimes do, to wander out ofmyself. The conceit came to me of a copious grove of singing birds, and in their midst a simple harmonic duo, two human souls, steadilyasserting their own pensiveness, joyousness. 

A HINT OF WILD NATURE

_Feb. 13_. --As I was crossing the Delaware to-day, saw a large flockof wild geese, right overhead, not very high up, ranged in V-shape, in relief against the noon clouds of light smoke-color. Had a capitalthough momentary view of them, and then of their course on and onsoutheast, till gradually fading--(my eyesight yet first rate for theopen air and its distances, but I use glasses for reading. ) Queerthoughts melted into me the two or three minutes, or less, seeingthese creatures cleaving the sky--the spacious, airy realm--even theprevailing smoke-gray color everywhere, (no sun shining)--thewaters below--the rapid flight of the birds, appearing just for aminute--flashing to me such a hint of the whole spread of Nature, withher eternal unsophisticated freshness, her never-visited recesses ofsea, sky, shore--and then disappearing in the distance. 

LOAFING IN THE WOODS

_March 8_. --I write this down in the country again, but in a new spot, seated on a log in the woods, warm, sunny, midday. Have been loafinghere deep among the trees, shafts of tall pines, oak, hickory, witha thick undergrowth of laurels and grapevines--the ground cover'deverywhere by debris, dead leaves, breakage, moss--everythingsolitary, ancient, grim. Paths (such as they are) leading hither andyon--(how made I know not, for nobody seems to come here, nor mannor cattle-kind. ) Temperature to-day about 60, the wind through thepine-tops; I sit and listen to its hoarse sighing above (and to the_stillness_) long and long, varied by aimless rambles in the old roadsand paths, and by exercise-pulls at the young saplings, to keep myjoints from getting stiff. Blue-birds, robins, meadow-larks begin toappear. 

_Next day, 9th_. --A snowstorm in the morning, and continuing most ofthe day. But I took a walk over two hours, the same woods and paths, amid the falling flakes. No wind, yet the musical low murmur throughthe pines, quite pronounced, curious, like waterfalls, now still'd, now pouring again. All the senses, sight, sound, smell, delicatelygratified. Every snowflake lay where it fell on the evergreens, holly-trees, laurels, &c. , the multitudinous leaves and branchespiled, bulging-white, defined by edge-lines of emerald--the tallstraight columns of the plentiful bronze-topt pines--a slight resinousodor blending with that of the snow. (For there is a scent toeverything, even the snow, if you can only detect it--no two places, hardly any two hours, anywhere, exactly alike. How different the odorof noon from midnight, or winter from summer, or a windy spell from astill one. )

A CONTRALTO VOICE

_May 9, Sunday_. --Visit this evening to my friends the J. 's--goodsupper, to which I did justice--lively chat with Mrs. J. And I. AndJ. As I sat out front on the walk afterward, in the evening air, thechurch-choir and organ on the corner opposite gave Luther's hymn, _Einfeste berg_, very finely. The air was borne by a rich contralto. Fornearly half an hour there in the dark (there was a good string ofEnglish stanzas, ) came the music, firm and unhurried, with longpauses. The full silver star-beams of Lyra rose silently over thechurch's dim roof-ridge. Vari-color'd lights from the stain'd glasswindows broke through the tree-shadows. And under all--under theNorthern Crown up there, and in the fresh breeze below, and the_chiaroscuro_ of the night, that liquid-full contralto. 

SEEING NIAGARA TO ADVANTAGE

_June 4, '80_. --For really seizing a great picture or book, or pieceof music, or architecture, or grand scenery--or perhaps for the firsttime even the common sunshine, or landscape, or may-be even themystery of identity, most curious mystery of all--there comes somelucky five minutes of a man's life, set amid a fortuitous concurrenceof circumstances, and bringing in a brief flash the culmination ofyears of reading and travel and thought. The present case about twoo'clock this afternoon, gave me Niagara, its superb severity of actionand color and majestic grouping, in one short, indescribable show. We were very slowly crossing the Suspension bridge-not a full stopanywhere, but next to it--the day clear, sunny, still--and I out onthe platform. The falls were in plain view about a mile off, but verydistinct, and no roar--hardly a murmur. The river tumbling green andwhite, far below me; the dark high banks, the plentiful umbrage, manybronze cedars, in shadow; and tempering and arching all the immensemateriality, a clear sky overhead, with a few white clouds, limpid, spiritual, silent. Brief, and as quiet as brief, that picture--aremembrance always afterwards. Such are the things, indeed, I lay awaywith my life's rare and blessed bits of hours, reminiscent, past--thewild sea-storm I once saw one winter day, off Fire island--the elderBooth in Richard, that famous night forty years ago in the oldBowery--or Alboni in the children's scene in Norma--or night-views, I remember, on the field, after battles in Virginia--or the peculiarsentiment of moonlight and stars over the great Plains, westernKansas--or scooting up New York bay, with a stiff breeze and a goodyacht, off Navesink. With these, I say, I henceforth place that view, that afternoon, that combination complete, that five minutes' perfectabsorption of Niagara--not the great majestic gem alone by itself, butset complete in all its varied, full, indispensable surroundings. 

JAUNTING TO CANADA

To go back a little, I left Philadelphia, 9th and Green streets, at 8o'clock P. M. , June 3, on a first-class sleeper, by the Lehigh Valley(North Pennsylvania) route, through Bethlehem, Wilkesbarre, Waverly, and so (by Erie) on through Corning to Hornellsville, where we arrivedat 8, morning, and had a bounteous breakfast. I must say I never putin such a good night on any railroad track--smooth, firm, the minimumof jolting, and all the swiftness compatible with safety. So withoutchange to Buffalo, and thence to Clifton, where we arrived earlyafternoon; then on to London, Ontario, Canada, in four more--less thantwenty-two hours altogether. I am domiciled at the hospitable house ofmy friends Dr. And Mrs. Bucke, in the ample and charming garden andlawns of the asylum. 

SUNDAY WITH THE INSANE

_June 6_. --Went over to the religious services (Episcopal) main Insaneasylum, held in a lofty, good-sized hall, third story. Plain boards, whitewash, plenty of cheap chairs, no ornament or color, yet allscrupulously clean and sweet. Some three hundred persons present, mostly patients. Everything, the prayers, a short sermon, the firm, orotund voice of the minister, and most of all, beyond any portraying, or suggesting, _that audience_, deeply impress'd me. I was furnish'dwith an arm-chair near the pulpit, and sat facing the motley, yetperfectly well-behaved and orderly congregation. The quaint dressesand bonnets of some of the women, several very old and gray, here andthere like the heads in old pictures. O the looks that came from thosefaces! There were two or three I shall probably never forget. Nothingat all markedly repulsive or hideous--strange enough I did not see onesuch. Our common humanity, mine and yours, everywhere:

 "The same old blood--the same red, running blood;"

yet behind most, an inferr'd arriere of such storms, such wrecks, suchmysteries, fires, love, wrong, greed for wealth, religious problems, crosses--mirror'd from those crazed faces (yet now temporarily socalm, like still waters, ) all the woes and sad happenings of life anddeath--now from every one the devotional element radiating--was itnot, indeed, _the peace of God that passeth all understanding_, strange as it may sound? I can only say that I took long and searchingeyesweeps as I sat there, and it seem'd so, rousing unprecedentedthoughts, problems unanswerable. A very fair choir, and melodeonaccompaniment. They sang "Lead, kindly light, " after the sermon. Many join'd in the beautiful hymn, to which the minister read theintroductory text, _In the daytime also He led them with a cloud, andall the night with a light of fire_. Then the words:

 Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on. The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead thou me on. Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me. 

 I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that thou Should'st lead me on; I lov'd to choose and see my path; but now Lead thou me on. I loved the garish day, and spite of fears Pride ruled my will; remember not past years. 

A couple of days after, I went to the "Refractory building, " underspecial charge of Dr. Beemer, and through the wards pretty thoroughly, both the men's and women's. I have since made many other visits of thekind through the asylum, and around among the detach'd cottages. Asfar as I could see, this is among the most advanced, perfected, andkindly and rationally carried on, of all its kind in America. It is atown in itself, with many buildings and a thousand inhabitants. 

I learn that Canada, and especially this ample and populous province, Ontario, has the very best and plentiest benevolent institutions inall departments. 

REMINISCENCE OF ELIAS HICKS

_June 8_. --To-day a letter from Mrs. E. S. L. , Detroit, accompanied ina little post-office roll by a rare old engraved head of Elias Hicks, (from a portrait in oil by Henry Inman, painted for J. V. S. , musthave been 60 years or more ago, in New York)--among the rest thefollowing excerpt about E. H. In the letter:

 "I have listen'd to his preaching so often when a child, and sat with my mother at social gatherings where he was the centre, and every one so pleas'd and stirr'd by his conversation. I hear that you contemplate writing or speaking about him, and I wonder'd whether you had a picture of him. As I am the owner of two, I send you one. "

GRAND NATIVE GROWTH

In a few days I go to lake Huron, and may have something to say ofthat region and people. From what I already see, I should say theyoung native population of Canada was growing up, forming a hardy, democratic, intelligent, radically sound, and just as American, good-natured and _individualistic_ race, as the average range of bestspecimens among us. As among us, too, I please myself by consideringthat this element, though it may not be the majority, promises to bethe leaven which must eventually leaven the whole lump. 

A ZOLLVEREIN BETWEEN THE U. S. AND CANADA

Some of the more liberal of the presses here are discussing thequestion of a zollverein between the United States and Canada. Itis proposed to form a union for commercial purposes--to altogetherabolish the frontier tariff line, with its double sets of custom houseofficials now existing between the two countries, and to agree uponone tariff for both, the proceeds of this tariff to be divided betweenthe two governments on the basis of population. It is said that alarge proportion of the merchants of Canada are in favor of thisstep, as they believe it would materially add to the business of thecountry, by removing the restrictions that now exist on trade betweenCanada and the States. Those persons who are opposed to the measurebelieve that it would increase the material welfare or the country, but it would loosen the bonds between Canada and England; and thissentiment overrides the desire for commercial prosperity. Whether thesentiment can continue to bear the strain put upon it is a question. It is thought by many that commercial considerations must in the endprevail. It seems also to be generally agreed that such a zollverein, or common customs union, would bring practically more benefits tothe Canadian provinces than to the United States. (It seems to me acertainty of time, sooner or later, that Canada shall form two orthree grand States, equal and independent, with the rest of theAmerican Union. The St. Lawrence and lakes are not for a frontierline, but a grand interior or mid-channel. )

THE ST. LAWRENCE LINE

_August 20_. --Premising that my three or four months in Canada wereintended, among the rest, as an exploration of the line of the St. Lawrence, from lake Superior to the sea, (the engineers here insistupon considering it as one stream, over 2000 miles long, includinglakes and Niagara and all)--that I have only partially carried out myprogramme; but for the seven or eight hundred miles so far fulfill'd, I find that the _Canada question_ is absolutely control'd by thisvast water line, with its first-class features and points of trade, humanity, and many more--here I am writing this nearly a thousandmiles north of my Philadelphia starting-point (by way of Montrealand Quebec) in the midst of regions that go to a further extremeof grimness, wildness of beauty, and a sort of still and pagan_scaredness_, while yet Christian, inhabitable, and partially fertile, than perhaps any other on earth. The weather remains perfect; somemight call it a little cool, but I wear my old gray overcoat and findit just right. The days are full of sunbeams and oxygen. Most of theforenoons and afternoons I am on the forward deck of the steamer. 

THE SAVAGE SAGUENAY

Up these black waters, over a hundred miles--always strong, deep, (hundreds of feet, sometimes thousands, ) ever with high, rocky hillsfor banks, green and gray--at times a little like some parts ofthe Hudson, but much more pronounc'd and defiant. The hills risehigher--keep their ranks more unbroken. The river is straighter andof more resolute flow, and its hue, though dark as ink, exquisitelypolish'd and sheeny under the August sun. Different, indeed, thisSaguenay from all other rivers--different effects--a bolder, morevehement play of lights and shades. Of a rare charm of singleness andsimplicity. (Like the organ-chant at midnight from the old Spanishconvent, in "Favorita"--one strain only, simple and monotonous andunornamented--but indescribably penetrating and grand and masterful. )Great place for echoes: while our steamer was tied at the wharf atTadousac (taj-oo-sac) waiting, the escape-pipe letting off steam, Iwas sure I heard a band at the hotel up in the rocks--could even makeout some of the tunes. Only when our pipe stopp'd, I knew what causedit. Then at cape Eternity and Trinity rock, the pilot with his whistleproducing similar marvellous results, echoes indescribably weird, aswe lay off in the still bay under their shadows. 

CAPES ETERNITY AND TRINITY

But the great, haughty, silent capes themselves; I doubt if any crackpoints, or hills, or historic places of note, or anything of the kindelsewhere in the world, outvies these objects--(I write while Iam before them face to face. ) They are very simple, they do notstartle--at least they did not me--but they linger in one's memoryforever. They are placed very near each other, side by side, each amountain rising flush out of the Saguenay. A good thrower could throwa stone on each in passing--at least it seems so. Then they are asdistinct in form as a perfect physical man or a perfect physicalwoman. Cape Eternity is bare, rising, as just said, sheer out of thewater, rugged and grim (yet with an indescribable beauty) nearly twothousand feet high. Trinity rock, even a little higher, also risingflush, top-rounded like a great head with close-cut verdure of hair. I consider myself well repaid for coming my thousand miles to get thesight and memory of the unrivall'd duo. They have stirr'd me moreprofoundly than anything of the kind I have yet seen. If Europe orAsia had them, we should certainly hear of them in all sorts ofsent-back poems, rhapsodies, &c. , a dozen times a year through ourpapers and magazines. 

CHICOUTIMI AND HA-HA BAY

No indeed--life and travel and memory have offer'd and will preserveto me no deeper-cut incidents, panorama, or sights to cheer my soul, than these at Chicoutimi and Ha-ha bay, and my days and nights up anddown this fascinating savage river--the rounded mountains, some bareand gray, some dull red, some draped close all over with matted greenverdure or vines--the ample, calm, eternal rocks everywhere--the longstreaks of motley foam, a milk-white curd on the glistening breastof the stream--the little two-masted schooner, dingy yellow, withpatch'd sails, set wing-and-wing, nearing us, coming saucily up thewater with a couple of swarthy, black-hair'd men aboard--the strongshades falling on the light gray or yellow outlines of the hills allthrough the forenoon, as we steam within gunshot of them--while everthe pure and delicate sky spreads over all. And the splendid sunsets, and the sights of evening--the same old stars, (relatively a littledifferent, I see, so far north) Arcturus and Lyra, and the Eagle, and great Jupiter like a silver globe, and the constellation of theScorpion. Then northern lights nearly every night. 

THE INHABITANTS--GOOD LIVING

Grim and rocky and black-water'd as the demesne hereabout is, however, you must not think genial humanity, and comfort, and good-living arenot to be met. Before I began this memorandum I made a first-ratebreakfast of sea-trout, finishing off with wild raspberries. I findsmiles and courtesy everywhere--physiognomies in general curiouslylike those in the United States--(I was astonish'd to find the sameresemblance all through the province of Quebec. ) In general theinhabitants of this rugged country (Charlevoix, Chicoutimi andTadousac counties, and lake St. John region) a simple, hardypopulation, lumbering, trapping furs, boating, fishing, berry-pickingand a little farming. I was watching a group of young boatmen eatingtheir early dinner--nothing but an immense loaf of bread, hadapparently been the size of a bushel measure, from which they cutchunks with a jack-knife. Must be a tremendous winter country this, when the solid frost and ice fully set in. 

CEDAR-PLUMS LIKE-NAMES (_Back again in Camden and down in Jersey_)

One time I thought of naming this collection "Cedar-Plums Like" (whichI still fancy wouldn't have been a bad name nor inappropriate. ) Amelange of loafing, looking, hobbling, sitting, traveling--a littlethinking thrown in for salt, but very little--not only summer but allseasons--not only days but nights--some literary meditations--books, authors examined, Carlyle, Poe, Emerson tried, (always under mycedar-tree, in the open air, and never in the library)--mostly thescenes everybody sees, but some of my own caprices, meditations, egotism--truly an open air and mainly summer formation--singly, orin clusters--wild and free and somewhat acrid--indeed more likecedar-plums than you might guess at first glance. 

But do you know what they are? (To city man, or some sweet parlorlady, I now talk. ) As you go along roads, or barrens, or acrosscountry, anywhere through these States, middle, eastern, western, orsouthern, you will see, certain seasons of the year, the thick woollytufts of the cedar mottled with bunches of china-blue berries, aboutas big as fox-grapes. But first a special word for the tree itself:everybody knows that the cedar is a healthy, cheap, democratic wood, streak'd red and white--an evergreen--that it is not a _cultivated_tree--that it keeps away moths--that it grows inland or seaboard, allclimates, hot or cold, any soil--in fact rather prefers sand andbleak side spots--content if the plough, the fertilizer and thetrimming-axe, will but keep away and let it alone. After a long rain, when everything looks bright, often have I stopt in my wood-saunters, south or north, or far west, to take in its dusky green, wash'd cleanand sweet, and speck'd copiously with its fruit of clear, hardy blue. The wood of the cedar is of use--but what profit on earth are thosesprigs of acrid plums? A question impossible to answer satisfactorily. True, some of the herb doctors give them for stomachic affections, butthe remedy is as bad as the disease. Then in my rambles down in Camdencounty I once found an old crazy woman gathering the clusterswith zeal and joy. She show'd, as I was told afterward, a sort ofinfatuation for them, and every year placed and kept profuse buncheshigh and low about her room. They had a strange charm on her uneasyhead, and effected docility and peace. (She was harmless, and livednear by with her well-off married daughter. ) Whether there is anyconnection between those bunches, and being out of one's wits, Icannot say, but I myself entertain a weakness for them. Indeed, I lovethe cedar, anyhow--its naked ruggedness, its just palpable odor, (so different from the perfumer's best, ) its silence, its equableacceptance of winter's cold and summer's heat, of rain or drouth--itsshelter to me from those, at times--its associations--(well, I nevercould explain _why_ I love anybody, or anything. ) The service I nowspecially owe to the cedar is, while I cast around for a name for myproposed collection, hesitating, puzzled--after rejecting a long, longstring, I lift my eyes, and lo! the very term I want. At any rate, Igo no further--I tire in the search. I take what some invisible kindspirit has put before me. Besides, who shall say there is not affinityenough between (at least the bundle of sticks that produced) manyof these pieces, or granulations, and those blue berries? theiruselessness growing wild--a certain aroma of Nature I would so liketo have in my pages--the thin soil whence they come--their contentin being let alone--their stolid and deaf repugnance to answeringquestions, (this latter the nearest, dearest trait affinity of all. )

Then reader dear, in conclusion, as to the point of the name for thepresent collection, let us be satisfied to _have_ a name--something toidentify and bind it together, to concrete all its vegetable, mineral, personal memoranda, abrupt raids of criticism, crude gossip ofphilosophy, varied sands and clumps--without bothering ourselvesbecause certain pages do not present themselves to you or me as comingunder their own name with entire fitness or amiability. (It is aprofound, vexatious never-explicable matter--this of names. I havebeen exercised deeply about it my whole life. [11])

After all of which the name "Cedar-Plums Like" got its nose put outof joint; but I cannot afford to throw away what I pencill'd down thelane there, under the shelter of my old friend, one warm October noon. Besides, it wouldn't be civil to the cedar tree. 

Note:

[11] In the pocket of my receptacle-book I find a list of suggestedand rejected names for this volume, or parts of it--such as thefollowing:

 _As the wild bee hums in May, & August mulleins grow, & Winter snow-flakes fall, & stars in the sky roll round. _

 _Away from Books--away from Art, Now for the Day and Night--the lessons done, Now for the Sun and Stars. _

 _Notes of a Half-Paralytic, As Voices in the Dusk, from Week in and Week out, Speakers far or hid, Embers of Ending Days, Autochthons.... Embryons, Ducks and Drakes, Wing-and-Wing, Flood Tide and Ebb, Notes and Recalles. Gossip at Early Candle-light, Only Mulleins and Bumble-Bees, Echoes and Escapades, Pond-Babble.... Tete-a-Tetes, Such as I.... Evening Dews, Echoes of a Life in the 19th Notes and Writing a Book, Century in the New World, Far and Near at 63, Flanges of Fifty Years, Drifts and Cumulus, Abandons.... Hurry Notes, Maize-Tassels.... Kindlings, A Life-Mosaic.... Native Moments, Fore and Aft.... Vestibules, Types and Semi-Tones, Scintilla at 60 and after, Oddments.... Sand-Drifts, Sands on the Shores of 64, Again and Again. _

DEATH OF THOMAS CARLYLE

_Feb. 10, '81_. --And so the flame of the lamp, after long wasting andflickering, has gone out entirely. 

As a representative author, a literary figure, no man else willbequeath to the future more significant hints of our stormy era, itsfierce paradoxes, its din, and its struggling parturition periods, than Carlyle. He belongs to our own branch of the stock too; neitherLatin nor Greek, but altogether Gothic. Rugged, mountainous, volcanic, he was himself more a French revolution than any of his volumes. Insome respects, so far in the Nineteenth century, the best equipt, keenest mind, even from the college point of view, of all Britain;only he had an ailing body. Dyspepsia is to be traced in every page, and now and then fills the page. One may include among the lessonsof his life--even though that life stretch'd to amazing length--howbehind the tally of genius and morals stands the stomach, and gives asort of casting vote. 

Two conflicting agonistic elements seem to have contended in theman, sometimes pulling him different ways like wild horses. He was acautious, conservative Scotchman, fully aware what a foetid gas-bagmuch of modern radicalism is; but then his great heart demandedreform, demanded change--often terribly at odds with his scornfulbrain. No author ever put so much wailing and despair into his books, sometimes palpable, oftener latent. He reminds me of that passage inYoung's poems where as death presses closer and closer for his prey, the soul rushes hither and thither, appealing, shrieking, berating, toescape the general doom. 

Of short-comings, even positive blur-spots, from an American point ofview, he had serious share. 

Not for his merely literary merit, (though that was great)--not as"maker of books, " but as launching into the self-complacent atmosphereof our days a rasping, questioning, dislocating agitation and shock, is Carlyle's final value. It is time the English-speaking peoples hadsome true idea about the verteber of genius, namely power. As if theymust always have it cut and bias'd to the fashion, like a lady'scloak! What a needed service he performs! How he shakes ourcomfortable reading circles with a touch of the old Hebraic anger andprophecy--and indeed it is just the same. Not Isaiah himself morescornful, more threatening: "The crown of pride, the drunkards ofEphraim, shall be trodden under feet: And the glorious beauty whichis on the head of the fat valley shall be a fading flower. " (The wordprophecy is much misused; it seems narrow'd to prediction merely. Thatis not the main sense of the Hebrew word translated "prophet;" itmeans one whose mind bubbles up and pours forth as a fountain, frominner, divine spontaneities revealing God. Prediction is a very minorpart of prophecy. The great matter is to reveal and outpour theGod-like suggestions pressing for birth in the soul. This is brieflythe doctrine of the Friends or Quakers. )

Then the simplicity and amid ostensible frailty the towering strengthof this man--a hardy oak knot, you could never wear out--an oldfarmer dress'd in brown clothes, and not handsome--his very foiblesfascinating. Who cares that he wrote about Dr. Francia, and "ShootingNiagara"--and "the Nigger Question, "--and didn't at all admire ourUnited States? (I doubt if he ever thought or said half as bad wordsabout us as we deserve. ) How he splashes like leviathan in the seas ofmodern literature and politics! Doubtless, respecting the latter, oneneeds first to realize, from actual observation, the squalor, vice anddoggedness ingrain'd in the bulk-population of the British islands, with the red tape, the fatuity, the flunkeyism everywhere, tounderstand the last meaning in his pages. Accordingly, though he wasno chartist or radical, I consider Carlyle's by far the most indignantcomment or protest anent the fruits of feudalism to-day in GreatBritain--the increasing poverty and degradation of the homeless, landless twenty millions, while a few thousands, or rather a fewhundreds, possess the entire soil, the money, and the fat berths. Trade and shipping, and clubs and culture, and prestige, and guns, and a fine select class of gentry and aristocracy, with everymodern improvement, cannot begin to salve or defend such stupendoushoggishness. 

The way to test how much he has left his country were to consider, or try to consider, for a moment, the array of British thought, theresultant _ensemble_ of the last fifty years, as existing to-day, _butwith Carlyle left out_. It would be like an army with no artillery. The show were still a gay and rich one--Byron, Scott, Tennyson, andmany more--horsemen and rapid infantry, and banners flying--but thelast heavy roar so dear to the ear of the train'd soldier, and thatsettles fate and victory, would be lacking. 

For the last three years we in America have had transmitted glimpsesof a thin-bodied, lonesome, wifeless, childless, very old man, lyingon a sofa, kept out of bed by indomitable will, but, of late, neverwell enough to take the open air. I have noted this news from time totime in brief descriptions in the papers. A week ago I read such anitem just before I started out for my customary evening stroll betweeneight and nine. In the fine cold night, unusually clear, (Feb. 5, '81, ) as I walk'd some open grounds adjacent, the condition ofCarlyle, and his approaching--perhaps even then actual--death, filledme with thoughts eluding statement, and curiously blending with thescene. The planet Venus, an hour high in the west, with all her volumeand lustre recover'd, (she has been shorn and languid for nearly ayear, ) including an additional sentiment I never noticed before--notmerely voluptuous, Paphian, steeping, fascinating--now with calmcommanding seriousness and hauteur--the Milo Venus now. Upward to thezenith, Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon past her quarter, trailing inprocession, with the Pleiades following, and the constellation Taurus, and red Aldebaran. Not a cloud in heaven. Orion strode through thesoutheast, with his glittering belt--and a trifle below hung the sunof the night, Sirius. Every star dilated, more vitreous, nearer thanusual. Not as in some clear nights when the larger stars entirelyoutshine the rest. Every little star or cluster just as distinctlyvisible, and just as nigh. Berenice's hair showing every gem, andnew ones. To the northeast and north the Sickle, the Goat and kids, Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, and the two Dippers. While through thewhole of this silent indescribable show, inclosing and bathing mywhole receptivity, ran the thought of Carlyle dying. (To soothe andspiritualize, and, as far as may be, solve the mysteries of death andgenius, consider them under the stars at midnight. )

And now that he has gone hence, can it be that Thomas Carlyle, soon tochemically dissolve in ashes and by winds, remains an identity still?In ways perhaps eluding all the statements, lore and speculationsof ten thousand years--eluding all possible statements to mortalsense--does he yet exist, a definite, vital being, a spirit, anindividual--perhaps now wafted in space among those stellar systems, which, suggestive and limitless as they are, merely edge morelimitless, far more suggestive systems? I have no doubt of it. Insilence, of a fine night, such questions are answer'd to the soul, thebest answers that can be given. With me, too, when depress'd by somespecially sad event, or tearing problem, I wait till I go out underthe stars for the last voiceless satisfaction. 

CARLYLE FROM AMERICAN POINTS OF VIEW

_Later Thoughts and Jottings_

There is surely at present an inexplicable _rapport_ (all the morepiquant from its contradictoriness) between that deceas'd author andour United States of America--no matter whether it lasts or not[13]As we Westerners assume definite shape, and result in formations andfruitage unknown before, it is curious with what a new sense our eyesturn to representative outgrowths of crises and personages in the OldWorld. Beyond question, since Carlyle's death, and the publicationof Froude's memoirs, not only the interest in his books, but everypersonal bit regarding the famous Scotchman--his dyspepsia, hisbuffetings, his parentage, his paragon of a wife, his career inEdinburgh, in the lonesome nest on Craigenputtock moor, and then somany years in London--is probably wider and livelier to-day in thiscountry than in his own land. Whether I succeed or no, I, too, reaching across the Atlantic and taking the man's dark fortune-tellingof humanity and politics, would offset it all, (such is the fancythat comes to me, ) by a far more profound horoscope-casting of thosethemes--G. F. Hegel's. [14]

First, about a chance, a never-fulfill'd vacuity of this pale cast ofthought--this British Hamlet from Cheyne row, more puzzling than theDanish one, with his contrivances for settling the broken andspavin'd joints of the world's government, especially its democraticdislocation. Carlyle's grim fate was cast to live and dwell in, andlargely embody, the parturition agony and qualms of the old order, amid crowded accumulations of ghastly morbidity, giving birth to thenew. 

But conceive of him (or his parents before him) coming to America, recuperated by the cheering realities and activity of our people andcountry--growing up and delving face-to-face resolutely among us here, especially at the West--inhaling and exhaling our limitless air andeligibilities--devoting his mind to the theories and developmentsof this Republic amid its practical facts as exemplified in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, or Louisiana. I say _facts_, andface-to-face confrontings--so different from books, and all thosequiddities and mere reports in the libraries, upon which the man (itwas wittily said of him at the age of thirty, that there was no one inScotland who had glean'd so much and seen so little, ) almost whollyfed, and which even his sturdy and vital mind but reflected at best. 

Something of the sort narrowly escaped happening. In 1835, after morethan a dozen years of trial and non-success, the author of "SartorResartus" removing to London, very poor, a confirmed hypochondriac, "Sartor" universally scoffed at, no literary prospects ahead, deliberately settled on one last casting throw of the literarydice--resolv'd to compose and launch forth a book on the subject of_the French Revolution_--and if that won no higher guerdon or prizethan hitherto, to sternly abandon the trade of author forever, andemigrate for good to America. But the venture turn'd out a lucky one, and there was no emigration. 

Carlyle's work in the sphere of literature as he commenced and carriedit out, is the same in one or two leading respects that ImmanuelKant's was in speculative philosophy. But the Scotchman had none ofthe stomachic phlegm and never-perturb'd placidity of the Konigsbergsage, and did not, like the latter, understand his own limits, andstop when he got to the end of them. He clears away jungle andpoisonvines and underbrush--at any rate hacks valiantly at them, smiting hip and thigh. Kant did the like in his sphere, and it was allhe profess'd to do; his labors have left the ground fully preparedever since--and greater service was probably never perform'd by mortalman. But the pang and hiatus of Carlyle seem to me to consist inthe evidence everywhere that amid a whirl of fog and fury andcross-purposes, he firmly believ'd he had a clue to the medication ofthe world's ills, and that his bounden mission was to exploit it. [15]

There were two anchors, or sheet-anchors, for steadying, as a lastresort, the Carlylean ship. One will be specified presently. Theother, perhaps the main, was only to be found in some mark'd form ofpersonal force, an extreme degree of competent urge and will, a manor men "born to command. " Probably there ran through every vein andcurrent of the Scotchman's blood something that warm'd up to this kindof trait and character above aught else in the world, and whichmakes him in my opinion the chief celebrater and promulger of it inliterature--more than Plutarch, more than Shakspere. The great massesof humanity stand for nothing--at least nothing but nebulous rawmaterial; only the big planets and shining suns for him. To ideasalmost invariably languid or cold, a number-one forceful personalitywas sure to rouse his eulogistic passion and savage joy. In such case, even the standard of duty hereinafter rais'd, was to be instantlylower'd and vail'd. All that is comprehended under the termsrepublicanism and democracy were distasteful to him from the first, and as he grew older they became hateful and contemptible. For anundoubtedly candid and penetrating faculty such as his, the bearingshe persistently ignored were marvellous. For instance, the promise, nay certainty of the democratic principle, to each and every State ofthe current world, not so much of helping it to perfect legislatorsand executives, but as the only effectual method for surely, howeverslowly, training people on a large scale toward voluntarily rulingand managing themselves (the ultimate aim of political and all otherdevelopment)--to gradually reduce the fact of _governing_ to itsminimum, and to subject all its staffs and their doings to thetelescopes and microscopes of committees and parties--and greatest ofall, to afford (not stagnation and obedient content, which went wellenough with the feudalism and ecclesiasticism of the antique andmedieval world, but) a vast and sane and recurrent ebb and tide actionfor those floods of the great deep that have henceforth palpablyburst forever their old bounds--seem never to have enter'd Carlyle'sthought. It was splendid how he refus'd any compromise to the last. Hewas curiously antique. In that harsh, picturesque, most potent voiceand figure, one seems to be carried back from the present of theBritish islands more than two thousand years, to the range betweenJerusalem and Tarsus. His fullest best biographer justly says of him:

He was a teacher and a prophet, in the Jewish sense of the word. Theprophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah have become a part of the permanentspiritual inheritance of mankind, because events proved that theyhad interpreted correctly the sign of their own times, and theirprophecies were fulfill'd. Carlyle, like them, believ'd that he had aspecial message to deliver to the present age. Whether he was correctin that belief, and whether his message was a true message, remainsto be seen. He has told us that our most cherish'd ideas of politicalliberty, with their kindred corollaries, are mere illusions, and thatthe progress which has seem'd to go along with them is a progresstowards anarchy and social dissolution. If he was wrong, he hasmisused his powers. The principles of his teachings are false. He hasoffer'd himself as a guide upon a road of which he had no knowledge;and his own desire for himself would be the speediest oblivion both ofhis person and his works. If, on the other hand, he has been right;if, like his great predecessors, he has read truly the tendencies ofthis modern age of ours, and his teaching is authenticated by facts, then Carlyle, too, will take his place among the inspired seers. 

To which I add an amendment that under no circumstances, and no matterhow completely time and events disprove his lurid vaticinations, should the English-speaking world forget this man, nor fail to hold inhonor his unsurpass'd conscience, his unique method, and his honestfame. Never were convictions more earnest and genuine. Never was thereless of a flunkey or temporizer. Never had political progressivism afoe it could more heartily respect. 

The second main point of Carlyle's utterance was the idea of _dutybeing done_. (It is simply a new codicil--if it be particularlynew, which is by no means certain--on the time-honor'd bequest ofdynasticism, the mould-eaten rules of legitimacy and kings. ) He seemsto have been impatient sometimes to madness when reminded by personswho thought at least as deeply as himself, that this formula, thoughprecious, is rather a vague one, and that there are many otherconsiderations to a philosophical estimate of each and everydepartment either. 

Altogether, I don't know anything more amazing than these persistentstrides and throbbings so far through our Nineteenth century of perhapsits biggest, sharpest, and most erudite brain, in defiance anddiscontent with everything; contemptuously ignoring, (either fromconstitutional inaptitude, ignorance itself, or more likely because hedemanded a definite cure-all here and now, ) the only solace and solventto be had. 

There is, apart from mere intellect, in the make-up of every superiorhuman identity, (in its moral completeness, considered as _ensemble_, not for that moral alone, but for the whole being, includingphysique, ) a wondrous something that realizes without argument, frequently without what is called education, (though I think it thegoal and apex of all education deserving the name)--an intuitionof the absolute balance, in time and space, of the whole of thismultifarious, mad chaos of fraud, frivolity, hoggishness--this revelof fools, and incredible make-believe and general unsettledness, wecall _the world_; a soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen threadwhich holds the whole congeries of things, all history and time, andall events, however trivial, however momentous, like a leash'd dogin the hand of the hunter. Such soul-sight and root-centre for themind--mere optimism explains only the surface or fringe of it--Carlylewas mostly, perhaps entirely without. He seems instead to have beenhaunted in the play of his mental action by a spectre, never entirelylaid from first to last, (Greek scholars, I believe, find thesame mocking and fantastic apparition attending Aristophanes, hiscomedies, )--the spectre of world-destruction. 

How largest triumph or failure in human life, in war or peace, maydepend on some little hidden centrality, hardly more than a drop ofblood, a pulse-beat, or a breath of air! It is certain that all theseweighty matters, democracy in America, Carlyleism, and the temperamentfor deepest political or literary exploration, turn on a simple pointin speculative philosophy. 

The most profound theme that can occupy the mind of man--the problemon whose solution science, art, the bases and pursuits of nations, andeverything else, including intelligent human happiness, (here to-day, 1882, New York, Texas, California, the same as all times, all lands, )subtly and finally resting, depends for competent outset and argument, is doubtless involved in the query: What is the fusing explanation andtie--what the relation between the (radical, democratic) Me, the humanidentity of understanding, emotions, spirit, &c. , on the one side, of and with the (conservative) Not Me, the whole of the materialobjective universe and laws, with what is behind them in time andspace, on the other side? Immanuel Kant, though he explain'dor partially explain'd, as may be said, the laws of the humanunderstanding, left this question an open one. Schelling's answer, orsuggestion of answer, is (and very valuable and important, as far asit goes, ) that the same general and particular intelligence, passion, even the standards of right and wrong, which exist in a consciousand formulated state in man, exist in an unconscious state, or inperceptible analogies, throughout the entire universe of externalNature, in all its objects large or small, and all its movements andprocesses--thus making the impalpable human mind, and concrete nature, notwithstanding their duality and separation, convertible, and incentrality and essence one. But G. F. Hegel's fuller statement of thematter probably remains the last best word that has been said upon it, up to date. Substantially adopting the scheme just epitomized, he socarries it out and fortifies it and merges everything in it, withcertain serious gaps now for the first time fill'd, that it becomes acoherent metaphysical system, and substantial answer (as far as therecan be any answer) to the foregoing question--a system which, while Idistinctly admit that the brain of the future may add to, revise, andeven entirely reconstruct, at any rate beams forth to-day, in itsentirety, illuminating the thought of the universe, and satisfying themystery thereof to the human mind, with a more consoling scientificassurance than any yet. 

According to Hegel the whole earth, (an old nucleus-thought, as in theVedas, and no doubt before, but never hitherto brought so absolutelyto the front, fully surcharged with modern scientism and facts, andmade the sole entrance to each and all, ) with its infinite variety, the past, the surroundings of to-day, or what may happen in thefuture, the contrarieties of material with spiritual, and of naturalwith artificial, are all, to the eye of the _ensemblist_, butnecessary sides and unfoldings, different steps or links, in theendless process of Creative thought, which, amid numberless apparentfailures and contradictions, is held together by central andnever-broken unity--not contradictions or failures at all, butradiations of one consistent and eternal purpose; the whole massof everything steadily, unerringly tending and flowing toward thepermanent _utile_ and _morale_, as rivers to oceans. As life is thewhole law and incessant effort of the visible universe, and death onlythe other or invisible side of the same, so the _utile_, so truth, sohealth are the continuous-immutable laws of the moral universe, andvice and disease, with all their perturbations, are but transient, even if ever so prevalent expressions. 

To politics throughout, Hegel applies the like catholic standard andfaith. Not any one party, or any one form of government, is absolutelyand exclusively true. Truth consists in the just relations of objectsto each other. A majority or democracy may rule as outrageously and doas great harm as an oligarchy or despotism--though far less likely todo so. But the great evil is either a violation of the relations justreferr'd to, or of the moral law. The specious, the unjust, the cruel, and what is called the unnatural, though not only permitted but in acertain sense, (like shade to light, ) inevitable in the divine scheme, are by the whole constitution of that scheme, partial, inconsistent, temporary, and though having ever so great an ostensible majority, arecertainly destin'd to failures, after causing great suffering. 

Theology, Hegel translates into science. [16] All apparentcontradictions in the statement of the Deific nature by differentages, nations, churches, points of view, are but fractional andimperfect expressions of one essential unity, from which they allproceed--crude endeavors or distorted parts, to be regarded both asdistinct and united. In short (to put it in our own form, or summingup, ) that thinker or analyzer or overlooker who by an inscrutablecombination of train'd wisdom and natural intuition most fully acceptsin perfect faith the moral unity and sanity of the creative scheme, inhistory, science, and all life and time, present and future, isboth the truest cosmical devotee or religioso, and the profoundestphilosopher. While he who, by the spell of himself and hiscircumstance, sees darkness and despair in the sum of the workings ofGod's providence, and who, in that, denies or prevaricates, is, nomatter how much piety plays on his lips, the most radical sinner andinfidel. 

I am the more assured in recounting Hegel a little freely here, [17]not only for offsetting the Carlylean letter and spirit-cutting itout all and several from the very roots, and below the roots--but tocounterpoise, since the late death and deserv'd apotheosis of Darwin, the tenets of the evolutionists. Unspeakably precious as those are tobiology, and henceforth indispensable to a right aim and estimate instudy, they neither comprise or explain everything--and the last wordor whisper still remains to be breathed, after the utmost of thoseclaims, floating high and forever above them all, and above technicalmetaphysics. While the contributions which German Kant and Fichte andSchelling and Hegel have bequeath'd to humanity--and which EnglishDarwin has also in his field--are indispensable to the erudition ofAmerica's future, I should say that in all of them, and the best ofthem, when compared with the lightning flashes and flights of the oldprophets and _exaltes_, the spiritual poets and poetry of all lands, (as in the Hebrew Bible, ) there seems to be, nay certainly is, something lacking--something cold, a failure to satisfy the deepestemotions of the soul--a want of living glow, fondness, warmth, whichthe old _exaltes_ and poets supply, and which the keenest modernphilosophers so far do not. 

Upon the whole, and for our purposes, this man's name certainlybelongs on the list with the just-specified, first-class moralphysicians of our current era--and with Emerson and two or threeothers--though his prescription is drastic, and perhaps destructive, while theirs is assimilating, normal and tonic. Feudal at the core, and mental offspring and radiation of feudalism as are his books, theyafford ever-valuable lessons and affinities to democratic America. Nations or individuals, we surely learn deepest from unlikeness, froma sincere opponent, from the light thrown even scornfully on dangerousspots and liabilities. (Michel Angelo invoked heaven's specialprotection against his friends and affectionate flatterers; palpablefoes he could manage for himself. ) In many particulars Carlyle wasindeed, as Froude terms him, one of those far-off Hebraic utterers, a new Micah or Habbakuk. His words at times bubble forth with abysmicinspiration. Always precious, such men; as precious now as any time. His rude, rasping, taunting, contradictory tones--what ones aremore wanted amid the supple, polish'd, money--worshipping, Jesus-and-Judas-equalizing, suffrage-sovereignty echoes of currentAmerica? He has lit up our Nineteenth century with the light of apowerful, penetrating, and perfectly honest intellect of the firstclass, turn'd on British and European politics, social life, literature, and representative personages--thoroughly dissatisfiedwith all, and mercilessly exposing the illness of all. But while heannounces the malady, and scolds and raves about it, he himself, bornand bred in the same atmosphere, is a mark'd illustration of it. 

Notes:

[13] It will be difficult for the future--judging by his books, personal dissympathies, &c. , --to account for the deep hold this authorhas taken on the present age, and the way he has color'd its methodand thought. I am certainly at a loss to account for it all asaffecting myself. But there could be no view, or even partial picture, of the middle and latter part of our Nineteenth century, that didnot markedly include Thomas Carlyle. In his case (as so many others, literary productions, works of art, personal identities, events, )there has been an impalpable something more effective than thepalpable. Then I find no better text, (it is always important to havea definite, special, even oppositional, living man to start from, ) forsending out certain speculations and comparisons for home use. Let ussee what they amount to--those reactionary doctrines, fears, scornfulanalyses of democracy--even from the most erudite and sincere mind ofEurope. 

[14] Not the least mentionable part of the case, (a streak, it maybe, of that humor with which history and fate love to contrast theirgravity, ) is that although neither of my great authorities duringtheir lives consider'd the United States worthy of serious mention, all the principal works of both might not inappropriately be this daycollected and bound up under the conspicuous title: _Speculations forthe use of North America, and Democracy there with the relationsof the same to Metaphysics, including Lessons and Warnings(encouragements too, and of the vastest, ) from the Old World to theNew. _

[15] I hope I shall not myself fall into the error I charge uponhim, of prescribing a specific for indispensable evils. My utmostpretension is probably but to offset that old claim of the exclusivelycurative power of first-class individual men, as leaders and rulers, by the claims, and general movement and result, of ideas. Somethingof the latter kind seems to me the distinctive theory of America, of democracy, and of the modern--or rather, I should say, it _is_democracy, and _is_ the modern. 

[16] I am much indebted to J. Gostick's abstract. 

[17] I have deliberately repeated it all, not only in offset toCarlyle' s everlurking pessimism and world-decadence, but aspresenting the most thoroughly _American points of view_ I know. Inmy opinion the above formulas of Hegel are an essential and crowningjustification of New World democracy in the creative realms of timeand space. There is that about them which only the vastness, the multiplicity and the vitality of America would seem able tocomprehend, to give scope and illustration to, or to be fit for, oreven originate. It is strange to me that they were born in Germany, orin the old world at all. While a Carlyle, I should say, is quite thelegitimate European product to be expected. 

A COUPLE OF OLD FRIENDS--A COLERIDGE BIT

_Latter April_. --Have run down in my country haunt for a couple ofdays, and am spending them by the pond. I had already discover'd mykingfisher here (but only one--the mate not here yet. ) This finebright morning, down by the creek, he has come out for a spree, circling, flirting, chirping at a round rate. While I am writing theselines he is disporting himself in scoots and rings over the widerparts of the pond, into whose surface he dashes, once or twice makinga loud _souse_--the spray flying in the sun--beautiful! I see hiswhite and dark-gray plumage and peculiar shape plainly, as he hasdeign'd to come very near me. The noble, graceful bird! Now heis sitting on the limb of an old tree, high up, bending over thewater--seems to be looking at me while I memorandize. I almost fancyhe knows me. _Three days later. _--My second kingfisher is here withhis (or her) mate. I saw the two together flying and whirling around. I had heard, in the distance, what I thought was the clear raspingstaccato of the birds several times already--but I couldn't be surethe notes came from both until I saw them together. To-day at noonthey appear'd, but apparently either on business, or for a littlelimited exercise only. No wild frolic now, full of free fun andmotion, up and down for an hour. Doubtless, now they have cares, duties, incubation responsibilities. The frolics are deferr'd tillsummer-close. 

I don't know as I can finish to-day's memorandum better than withColeridge's lines, curiously appropriate in more ways than one:

 All Nature seems at work--slugs leave their lair, The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing, And winter, slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring; And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. 

A WEEK'S VISIT TO BOSTON

_May 1, '81. _--Seems as if all the ways and means of American travelto-day had been settled, not only with reference to speed anddirectness, but for the comfort of women, children, invalids, and oldfellows like me. I went on by a through train that runs daily fromWashington to the Yankee metropolis without change. You get in asleeping-car soon after dark in Philadelphia, and after ruminating anhour or two, have your bed made up if you like, draw the curtains, andgo to sleep in it--fly on through Jersey to New York--hear inyour half-slumbers a dull jolting and bumping sound or two--areunconsciously toted from Jersey City by a midnight steamer aroundthe Battery and under the big bridge to the track of the New Havenroad--resume your flight eastward, and early the next morning you wakeup in Boston. All of which was my experience. I wanted to go to theRevere house. A tall unknown gentleman, (a fellow-passenger on his wayto Newport he told me, I had just chatted a few moments before withhim, ) assisted me out through the depot crowd, procured a hack, put mein it with my traveling bag, saying smilingly and quietly, "Now I wantyou to let this be _my_ ride, " paid the driver, and before I couldremonstrate bow'd himself off. 

The occasion of my jaunt, I suppose I had better say here, was fora public reading of "the death of Abraham Lincoln" essay, on thesixteenth anniversary of that tragedy; which reading duly came off, night of April 15. Then I linger'd a week in Boston--felt pretty well(the mood propitious, my paralysis lull'd)--went around everywhere, and saw all that was to be seen, especially human beings. Boston'simmense material growth--commerce, finance, commission stores, theplethora of goods, the crowded streets and sidewalks--made of coursethe first surprising show. In my trip out West, last year, I thoughtthe wand of future prosperity, future empire, must soon surelybe wielded by St. Louis, Chicago, beautiful Denver, perhaps SanFrancisco; but I see the said wand stretch'd out just as decidedly inBoston, with just as much certainty of staying; evidences of copiouscapital--indeed no centre of the New World ahead of it, (half the bigrailroads in the West are built with Yankees' money, and they takethe dividends. ) Old Boston with its zigzag streets and multitudinousangles, (crush up a sheet of letter-paper in your hand, throw it down, stamp it flat, and that is a map of old Boston)--new Boston withits miles upon miles of large and costly houses--Beacon street, Commonwealth avenue, and a hundred others. But the best new departuresand expansions of Boston, and of all the cities of New England, are inanother direction. 

THE BOSTON OF TO-DAY

In the letters we get from Dr. Schliemann (interesting but fishy)about his excavations there in the far-off Homeric area, I noticecities, ruins, &c. , as he digs them out of their graves, are certainto be in layers--that is to say, upon the foundation of an oldconcern, very far down indeed, is always another city or set of ruins, and upon that another superadded--and sometimes upon that stillanother--each representing either a long or rapid stage of growth anddevelopment, different from its predecessor, but unerringly growingout of and resting on it. In the moral, emotional, heroic, and humangrowths, (the main of a race in my opinion, ) something of this kindhas certainly taken place in Boston. The New England metropolis ofto-day may be described as sunny, (there is something else that makeswarmth, mastering even winds and meteorologies, though those arenot to be sneez'd at, ) joyous, receptive, full of ardor, sparkle, acertain element of yearning, magnificently tolerant, yet not to befool'd; fond of good eating and drinking--costly in costume as itspurse can buy; and all through its best average of houses, streets, people, that subtle something (generally thought to be climate, butit is not--it is something indefinable in the _race_, the turn ofits development) which effuses behind the whirl of animation, study, business, a happy and joyous public spirit, as distinguish'd from asluggish and saturnine one. Makes me think of the glints we get (as inSymonds's books) of the jolly old Greek cities. Indeed there is agood deal of the Hellenic in B. , and the people are getting handsomertoo--padded out, with freer motions, and with color in their faces. I never saw (although this is not Greek) so many _fine-lookinggray-hair'd women_. At my lecture I caught myself pausing morethan once to look at them, plentiful everywhere through theaudience--healthy and wifely and motherly, and wonderfully charmingand beautiful--I think such as no time or land but ours could show. 

MY TRIBUTE TO FOUR POETS

_April 16_. --A short but pleasant visit to Longfellow. I am not one ofthe calling kind, but as the author of "Evangeline" kindly took thetrouble to come and see me three years ago in Camden, where I was ill, I felt not only the impulse of my own pleasure on that occasion, but aduty. He was the only particular eminence I called on in Boston, andI shall not soon forget his lit-up face and glowing warmth andcourtesy, in the modes of what is called the old school. 

And now just here I feel the impulse to interpolate something aboutthe mighty four who stamp this first American century with itsbirthmarks of poetic literature. In a late magazine one of myreviewers, who ought to know better, speaks of my "attitude ofcontempt and scorn and intolerance" toward the leading poets--of my"deriding" them, and preaching their "uselessness. " If anybody caresto know what I think--and have long thought and avow'd--about them, I am entirely willing to propound. I can't imagine any better luckbefalling these States for a poetical beginning and initiation thanhas come from Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, and Whittier. Emerson, tome, stands unmistakably at the head, but for the others I am at a losswhere to give any precedence. Each illustrious, each rounded, eachdistinctive. Emerson for his sweet, vital-tasting melody, rhym'dphilosophy, and poems as amber-clear as the honey of the wild beehe loves to sing. Longfellow for rich color, graceful forms andincidents--all that makes life beautiful and love refined--competingwith the singers of Europe on their own ground, and, with oneexception, better and finer work than that of any of them. Bryantpulsing the first interior verse-throbs of a mighty world--bard of theriver and the wood, ever conveying a taste of open air, with scentsas from hayfields, grapes, birch-borders--always lurkingly fond ofthrenodies--beginning and ending his long career with chants of death, with here and there through all, poems, or passages of poems, touchingthe highest universal truths, enthusiasms, duties--morals as grim andeternal, if not as stormy and fateful, as anything in Eschylus. Whilein Whittier, with his special themes--(his outcropping love of heroismand war, for all his Quakerdom, his verses at times like the measur'dstep of Cromwell's old veterans)--in Whittier lives the zeal, themoral energy, that founded New England--the splendid rectitude andardor of Luther, Milton, George Fox--I must not, dare not, say thewilfulness and narrowness--though doubtless the world needs now, and always will need, almost above all, just such narrowness andwilfulness. 

MILLET'S PICTURES LAST ITEMS

_April 18_. --Went out three or four miles to the house of Quincy Shaw, to see a collection of J. F. Millet's pictures. Two rapt hours. Neverbefore have I been so penetrated by this kind of expression. I stoodlong and long before "the Sower. " I believe what the picture-mendesignate "the first Sower, " as the artist executed a second copy, anda third, and, some think, improved in each. But I doubt it. Thereis something in this that could hardly be caught again--a sublimemurkiness and original pent fury. Besides this masterpiece, there weremany others, (I shall never forget the simple evening scene, "Wateringthe Cow, ") all inimitable, all perfect as pictures, works of mere art;and then it seem'd to me, with that last impalpable ethic purpose fromthe artist (most likely unconscious to himself) which I am alwayslooking for. To me all of them told the full story of what went beforeand necessitated the great French revolution--the long precedentcrushing of the masses of a heroic people into the earth, in abjectpoverty, hunger--every right denied, humanity attempted to be put backfor generations--yet Nature's force, titanic here, the strongerand hardier for that repression--waiting terribly to break forth, revengeful--the pressure on the dykes, and the bursting at last--thestorming of the Bastile--the execution of the king and queen--thetempest of massacres and blood. Yet who can wonder?

 Could we wish humanity different? Could we wish the people made of wood or stone? Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?

The true France, base of all the rest, is certainly in these pictures. I comprehend "Field-People Reposing, " "the Diggers, " and "the Angelus"in this opinion. Some folks always think of the French as a smallrace, five or five and a half feet high, and ever frivolous andsmirking. Nothing of the sort. The bulk of the personnel of France, before the revolution, was large-sized, serious, industrious as now, and simple. The revolution and Napoleon's wars dwarf'd the standard ofhuman size, but it will come up again. If for nothing else, I shoulddwell on my brief Boston visit for opening to me the new world ofMillet's pictures. Will America ever have such an artist out of herown gestation, body, soul?

_Sunday, April 17. _--An hour and a half, late this afternoon, insilence and half light, in the great nave of Memorial hall, Cambridge, the walls thickly cover'd with mural tablets, bearing the names ofstudents and graduates of the university who fell in the secessionwar. 

_April 23. _--It was well I got away in fair order, for if I had staidanother week I should have been killed with kindness, and with eatingand drinking. 

BIRDS--AND A CAUTION

_May 14. _--Home again; down temporarily in the Jersey woods. Between8 and 9 A. M. A full concert of birds, from different quarters, inkeeping with the fresh scent, the peace, the naturalness all aroundme. I am lately noticing the russet-back, size of the robin ora trifle less, light breast and shoulders, with irregular darkstripes--tail long--sits hunch'd up by the hour these days, top ofa tall bush, or some tree, singing blithely. I often get near andlisten, as he seems tame; I like to watch the working of his bill andthroat, the quaint sidle of his body, and flex of his long tail. Ihear the woodpecker, and night and early morning the shuttle of thewhip-poor-will--noons, the gurgle of thrush delicious, and _meo-o-ow_of the cat-bird. Many I cannot name; but I do not very particularlyseek information. (You must not know too much, or be too preciseor scientific about birds and trees and flowers and water-craft;a certain free margin, and even vagueness--perhaps ignorance, credulity--helps your enjoyment of these things, and of the sentimentof feather'd, wooded, river, or marine Nature generally. I repeat it--don't want to know too exactly, or the reasons why. My own notes havebeen written off-hand in the latitude of middle New Jersey. Thoughthey describe what I saw--what appear'd to me--I dare say the expertornithologist, botanist or entomologist will detect more than one slipin them. )

SAMPLES OF MY COMMON-PLACE BOOK

I ought not to offer a record of these days, interests, recuperations, without including a certain old, well-thumb'd common-place book, [18]filled with favorite excerpts, I carried in my pocket for threesummers, and absorb'd over and over again, when the mood invited. I find so much in having a poem or fine suggestion sink into me (alittle then goes a great ways) prepar'd by these vacant-sane andnatural influences. 

Note:

[18] _Samples of my common-place book down at the creek:_

I have--says old Pindar--many swift arrows in my quiver which speak tothe wise, though they need an interpreter to the thoughtless. Such aman as it takes ages to make, and ages to understand. _H. D. Thoreau. _

If you hate a man, don't kill him, but let him live. --_Buddhistic. _Famous swords are made of refuse scraps, thought worthless. 

Poetry is the only verity--the expression of a sound mind speakingafter the ideal--and not after the apparent. --_Emerson_. 

The form of oath among the Shoshone Indians is, "The earth hears me. The sun hears me. Shall I lie?"

The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size ofcities, nor the crops--no, but the kind of a man the country turnsout. --_Emerson_. 

 The whole wide ether is the eagle's sway: The whole earth is a brave man's fatherland. --_Euripides_. 

 Spices crush'd, their pungence yield, Trodden scents their sweets respire; Would you have its strength reveal'd? Cast the incense in the fire. 

Matthew Arnold speaks of "the huge Mississippi of falsehood calledHistory. "

 The wind blows north, the wind blows south, The wind blows east and west; No matter how the free wind blows, Some ship will find it best. 

Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you, andbe silent. --_Epictetus_. 

Victor Hugo makes a donkey meditate and apostrophize thus:

 My brother, man, if you would know the truth, We both are by the same dull walls shut in; The gate is massive and the dungeon strong. But you look through the key-hole out beyond, And call this knowledge; yet have not at hand The key wherein to turn the fatal lock. 

"William Cullen Bryant surprised me once, " relates a writer in aNew York paper, "by saying that prose was the natural language ofcomposition, and he wonder'd how anybody came to write poetry. "

 Farewell! I did not know thy worth; But thou art gone, and now 'tis prized: So angels walk'd unknown on earth, But when they flew were recognized. --_Hood_. 

John Burroughs, writing of Thoreau, says: "He improves with age--infact requires age to take off a little of his asperity, and fullyripen him. The world likes a good hater and refuser almost as well asit likes a good lover and accepter--only it likes him farther off. "

_Louise Michel at the burial of Blanqui, (1881. )_

Blanqui drill'd his body to subjection to his grand conscience and hisnoble passions, and commencing as a young man, broke with all thatis sybaritish in modern civilization. Without the power to sacrificeself, great ideas will never bear fruit. 

 Out of the leaping furnace flame A mass of molten silver came; Then, beaten into pieces three, Went forth to meet its destiny. The first a crucifix was made, Within a soldier's knapsack laid; The second was a locket fair, Where a mother kept her dead child's hair; The third--a bangle, bright and warm, Around a faithless woman's arm. 

 A mighty pain to love it is, And'tis a pain that pain to miss; But of all pain the greatest pain, It is to love, but love in vain. 

_Maurice F. Egan on De Guerin. _

 A pagan heart, a Christian soul had he, He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sigh'd, Till earth and heaven met within his breast: As if Theocritus in Sicily Had come upon the Figure crucified, And lost his gods in deep, Christ-given rest. 

 And if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me, Is, leave the mind that now I bear, And give me Liberty. --_Emily Bronte. _

 I travel on not knowing, I would not if I might; I would rather walk with God in the dark, Than go alone in the light; I would rather walk with Him by faith Than pick my way by sight

MY NATIVE SAND AND SALT ONCE MORE

_July 25, '81_. --Far Rockaway, L. I. _--A good day here, on a jaunt, amid the sand and salt, a steady breeze setting in from the sea, thesun shining, the sedge-odor, the noise of the surf, a mixture ofhissing and booming, the milk-white crest curling. I had a leisurelybath and naked ramble as of old, on the warm-gray shore-sands, mycompanions off in a oat in deeper water--(I shouting to them Jupiter'smenaces against the gods, from Pope's Homer) _July 28--to LongBranch_--8-1/2 A. M. , on the steamer "Plymouth Rock, " foot of 23dstreet, New York, for Long Branch. Another fine day, fine sights, theshores, the shipping and bay--everything comforting to the body andspirit of me. (I find the human and objective atmosphere of New Yorkcity and Brooklyn more affiliative to me than any other. ) _An hourlater_--Still on the steamer, now sniffing the salt very plainly--thelong pulsating _swash_ as our boat steams seaward--the hills ofNavesink and many passing vessels--the air the best part of all. AtLong Branch the bulk of the day, stopt at a good hotel, took all veryleisurely, had an excellent dinner, and then drove for over two hoursabout the place, especially Ocean avenue, the finest drive one canimagine, seven or eight miles right along the beach. In all directionscostly villas, palaces, millionaires--(but few among them I opine likemy friend George W. Childs, whose personal integrity, generosity, unaffected simplicity, go beyond all worldly wealth. )

HOT WEATHER NEW YORK

_August_. --In the big city awhile. Even the height of the dog-days, there is a good deal of fun about New York, if you only avoid fluster, and take all the buoyant wholesomeness that offers. More comfort, too, than most folks think. A middle-aged man, with plenty of money in hispocket, tells me that he has been off for a month to all the swellplaces, has disburs'd a small fortune, has been hot and out of kiltereverywhere, and has return' d home and lived in New York city the lasttwo weeks quite contented and happy. People forget when it is hothere, it is generally hotter still in other places. 

New York is so situated, with the great ozonic brine on both sides, itcomprises the most favorable health-chances in the world. (If only thesuffocating crowding of some of its tenement houses could be brokenup. ) I find I never sufficiently realized how beautiful are the uppertwo-thirds of Manhattan island. I am stopping at Mott Haven, and havebeen familiar now for ten days with the region above One-hundredthstreet, and along the Harlem river and Washington heights. Am dwellinga few days with my friends Mr. And Mrs. J. H. J. , and a merry housefulof young ladies. Am putting the last touches on the printer's copy ofmy new volume of "Leaves of Grass"--the completed book at last. Workat it two or three hours, and then go down and loaf along the Harlemriver; have just had a good spell of this recreation. The sunsufficiently veil'd, a soft south breeze, the river full of small orlarge shells (light taper boats) darting up and down, some singly, nowand then long ones with six or eight young fellows practicing--veryinspiriting sights. Two fine yachts lie anchor'd off the shore. Ilinger long, enjoying the sundown, the glow, the streak'd sky, theheights, distances, shadows. _Aug. 10. _--As I haltingly ramble an houror two this forenoon by the more secluded parts of the shore, or situnder an old cedar half way up the hill, the city near in view, manyyoung parties gather to bathe or swim, squads of boys, generally twosor threes, some larger ones, along the sand-bottom, or off an old pierclose by. A peculiar and pretty carnival--at its height a hundred ladsor young men, very democratic, but all decent behaving. The laughter, voices, calls, re-responses--the springing and diving of the bathersfrom the great string-piece of the decay'd pier, where climb or standlong ranks of them, naked, rose-color'd, with movements, posturesahead of any sculpture. To all this, the sun, so bright, thedark-green shadow of the hills the other side, the amber-rollingwaves, changing as the tide comes in to a trans-parent tea-color--thefrequent splash of the playful boys, sousing--the glittering dropssparkling, and the good western breeze blowing. 

CUSTER'S LAST RALLY

Went to-day to see this just-finish'd painting by John Mulvany, whohas been out in far Dakota, on the spot, at the forts, and among thefrontiersmen, soldiers and Indians, for the last two years, on purposeto sketch it in from reality, or the best that could be got of it. Satfor over an hour before the picture, completely absorb'd in the firstview. A vast canvas, I should say twenty or twenty-two feet by twelve, all crowded, and yet not crowded, conveying such a vivid play ofcolor, it takes a little time to get used to it. There are no tricks;there is no throwing of shades in masses; it is all at first painfullyreal, overwhelming, needs good nerves to look at it. Forty or fiftyfigures, perhaps more, in full finish and detail in the mid-ground, with three times that number, or more, through the rest--swarms uponswarms of savage Sioux, in their war-bonnets, frantic, mostly onponies, driving through the background, through the smoke, like ahurricane of demons. A dozen of the figures are wonderful. Altogethera western, autochthonic phase of America, the frontiers, culminating, typical, deadly, heroic to the uttermost--nothing in the books likeit, nothing in Homer, nothing in Shakspere; more grim and sublimethan either, all native, all our own, and all a fact. A great lotof muscular, tan-faced men, brought to bay under terriblecircumstances--death ahold of them, yet every man undaunted, not onelosing his head, wringing out every cent of the pay before they selltheir lives. Custer (his hair cut short stands in the middle), withdilated eye and extended arm, aiming a huge cavalry pistol. CaptainCook is there, partially wounded, blood on the white handkerchiefaround his head, aiming his carbine coolly, half kneeling--(hisbody was afterwards found close by Custer's. ) The slaughter'd orhalf-slaughter'd horses, for breastworks, make a peculiar feature. Two dead Indians, herculean, lie in the foreground, clutching theirWinchester rifles, very characteristic. The many soldiers, their facesand attitudes, the carbines, the broad-brimm'd western hats, thepowder-smoke in puffs, the dying horses with their rolling eyesalmost human in their agony, the clouds of war-bonneted Sioux in thebackground, the figures of Custer and Cook--with indeed the wholescene, dreadful, yet with an attraction and beauty that will remainin my memory. With all its color and fierce action, a certain Greekcontinence pervades it. A sunny sky and clear light envelop all. There is an almost entire absence of the stock traits of European warpictures. The physiognomy of the work is realistic and Western. I onlysaw it for an hour or so; but it needs to be seen many times--needs tobe studied over and over again. I could look on such a work at briefintervals all my life without tiring; it is very tonic to me; then ithas an ethic purpose below all, as all great art must have. The artistsaid the sending of the picture abroad, probably to London, had beentalk'd of. I advised him if it went abroad to take it to Paris. Ithink they might appreciate it there--nay, they certainly would. ThenI would like to show Messieur Crapeau that some things can be done inAmerica as well as others. 

SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES--MEMORIES

_Aug. 16. _--"Chalk a big mark for today, " was one of the sayings ofan old sportsman-friend of mine, when he had had unusually goodluck--come home thoroughly tired, but with satisfactory results offish or birds. 

Well, to-day might warrant such a mark for me. Everything propitiousfrom the start. An hour's fresh stimulation, coming down ten miles ofManhattan island by railroad and 8 o'clock stage. Then an excellentbreakfast at Pfaff's restaurant, 24th street. Our host himself, an oldfriend of mine, quickly appear'd on the scene to welcome me and bringup the news, and, first opening a big fat bottle of the best wine inthe cellar, talk about ante-bellum times, '59 and '60, and the jovialsuppers at his then Broadway place, near Bleecker street. Ah, thefriends and names and frequenters, those times, that place. Mostare dead--Ada Clare, Wilkins, Daisy Sheppard, O'Brien, Henry Clapp, Stanley, Mullin, Wood, Brougham, Arnold--all gone. And there Pfaff andI, sitting opposite each other at the little table, gave a remembranceto them in a style they would have themselves fully confirm'd, namely, big, brimming, fill'd-up champagne-glasses, drain'd in abstractedsilence, very leisurely, to the last drop. (Pfaff is a generous German_restaurateur_, silent, stout, jolly, and I should say the bestselecter of champagne in America. )

A DISCOVERY OF OLD AGE

Perhaps the best is always cumulative. One's eating and drinking onewants fresh, and for the nonce, right off, and have done with it--butI would not give a straw for that person or poem, or friend, or city, or work of art, that was not more grateful the second time than thefirst--and more still the third. Nay, I do not believe any grandesteligibility ever comes forth at first. In my own experience, (persons, poems, places, characters, ) I discover the best hardly ever at first, (no absolute rule about it, however, ) sometimes suddenly burstingforth, or stealthily opening to me, perhaps after years of unwittingfamiliarity, unappreciation, usage. 

A VISIT, AT THE LAST, TO R. W. EMERSON

_Concord, Mass. _--Out here on a visit--elastic, mellow, Indian-summeryweather. Came to-day from Boston, (a pleasant ride of 40 minutes bysteam, through Somerville, Belmont, Waltham, Stony Brook, and otherlively towns, ) convoy'd by my friend F. B. Sanborn, and to his amplehouse, and the kindness and hospitality of Mrs. S. And their finefamily. Am writing this under the shade of some old hickories andelms, just after 4 P. M. , on the porch, within a stone's throw ofthe Concord river. Off against me, across stream, on a meadow andside-hill, haymakers are gathering and wagoning-in probably theirsecond or third crop. The spread of emerald-green and brown, theknolls, the score or two of little haycocks dotting the meadow, theloaded-up wagons, the patient horses, the slow-strong action of themen and pitchforks--all in the just-waning afternoon, with patches ofyellow sun-sheen, mottled by long shadows--a cricket shrilly chirping, herald of the dusk--a boat with two figures noiselessly gliding alongthe little river, passing under the stone bridge-arch--the slightsettling haze of aerial moisture, the sky and the peacefulnessexpanding in all directions and overhead--fill and soothe me. 

_Same Evening. _--Never had I a better piece of luck befall me: a longand blessed evening with Emerson, in a way I couldn't have wish'dbetter or different. For nearly two hours he has been placidly sittingwhere I could see his face in the best light, near me. Mrs. S. 'sback-parlor well fill'd with people, neighbors, many fresh andcharming faces, women, mostly young, but some old. My friend A. B. Alcott and his daughter Louisa were there early. A good deal of talk, the subject Henry Thoreau--some new glints of his life and fortunes, with letters to and from him--one of the best by Margaret Fuller, others by Horace Greeley, Channing, &c. --one from Thoreau himself, most quaint and interesting. (No doubt I seem'd very stupid to theroomful of company, taking hardly any part in the conversation; but Ihad "my own pail to milk in, " as the Swiss proverb puts it. ) My seatand the relative arrangement were such that, without being rude, oranything of the kind, I could just look squarely at E. , which I did agood part of the two hours. On entering, he had spoken very brieflyand politely to several of the company, then settled himself in hischair, a trifle push'd back, and, though a listener and apparently analert one, remain'd silent through the whole talk and discussion. Alady friend quietly took a seat next him, to give special attention. Agood color in his face, eyes clear, with the well-known expression ofsweetness, and the old clear-peering aspect quite the same. 

_Next Day_. --Several hours at E. 's house, and dinner there. Anold familiar house, (he has been in it thirty-five years, ) withsurroundings, furnishment, roominess, and plain elegance and fullness, signifying democratic ease, sufficient opulence, and an admirableold-fashioned simplicity--modern luxury, with its mere sumptuousnessand affectation, either touch'd lightly upon or ignored altogether. Dinner the same. Of course the best of the occasion (Sunday, September18, '81) was the sight of E. Himself. As just said, a healthy color inthe cheeks, and good light in the eyes, cheery expression, and justthe amount of talking that best suited, namely, a word or short phraseonly where needed, and almost always with a smile. Besides Emersonhimself, Mrs. E. , with their daughter Ellen, the son Edward and hiswife, with my friend F. S. And Mrs. S. , and others, relatives andintimates. Mrs. Emerson, resuming the subject of the evening before, (I sat next to her, ) gave me further and fuller information aboutThoreau, who, years ago, during Mr. E. 's absence in Europe, had livedfor some time in the family, by invitation. 

OTHER CONCORD NOTATIONS

Though the evening at Mr. And Mrs. Sanborn's, and the memorable familydinner at Mr. And Mrs. Emerson's, have most pleasantly and permanentlyfill'd my memory, I must not slight other notations of Concord. Iwent to the old Manse, walk'd through the ancient garden, enter'd therooms, noted the quaintness, the unkempt grass and bushes, the littlepanes in the windows, the low ceilings, the spicy smell, the creepersembowering the light. Went to the Concord battle ground, which isclose by, scann'd French's statue, "the Minute Man, " read Emerson'spoetic inscription on the base, linger'd a long while on the bridge, and stopp'd by the grave of the unnamed British soldiers buried therethe day after the fight in April, '75. Then riding on, (thanks to myfriend Miss M. And her spirited white ponies, she driving them, ) ahalf hour at Hawthorne's and Thoreau's graves. I got out and went upof course on foot, and stood a long while and ponder'd. They lie closetogether in a pleasant wooded spot well up the cemetery hill, "SleepyHollow. " The flat surface of the first was densely cover'd by myrtle, with a border of arbor-vitae, and the other had a brown headstone, moderately elaborate, with inscriptions. By Henry's side lies hisbrother John, of whom much was expected, but he died young. Then toWalden pond, that beautiful embower'd sheet of water, and spent overan hour there. On the spot in the woods where Thoreau had his solitaryhouse is now quite a cairn of stones, to mark the place; I too carriedone and deposited on the heap. As we drove back, saw the "School ofPhilosophy, " but it was shut up, and I would not have it open'd forme. Near by stopp'd at the house of W. T. Harris, the Hegelian, whocame out, and we had a pleasant chat while I sat in the wagon. I shallnot soon forget those Concord drives, and especially that charmingSunday forenoon one with my friend Miss M. , and the white ponies. 

BOSTON COMMON--MORE OF EMERSON

_Oct. 10-13. _--I spend a good deal of time on the Common, thesedelicious days and nights--every mid-day from 11. 30 to about 1--andalmost every sunset another hour. I know all the big trees, especiallythe old elms along Tremont and Beacon streets, and have come to asociable silent understanding with most of them, in the sunlit air, (yet crispy-cool enough, ) as I saunter along the wide unpaved walks. Up and down this breadth by Beacon street, between these same oldelms, I walk'd for two hours, of a bright sharp February mid-daytwenty-one years ago, with Emerson, then in his prime, keen, physically and morally magnetic, arm'd at every point, and when hechose, wielding the emotional just as well as the intellectual. Duringthose two hours he was the talker and I the listener. It was anargument-statement, reconnoitring, review, attack, and pressing home, (like an army corps in order, artillery, cavalry, infantry, ) ofall that could be said against that part (and a main part) in theconstruction of my poems, "Children of Adam. " More precious than goldto me that dissertion--it afforded me, ever after, this strange andparadoxical lesson; each point of E. 's statement was unanswerable, nojudge's charge ever more complete or convincing, I could never hearthe points better put--and then I felt down in my soul the clear andunmistakable conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way. "Whathave you to say then to such things?" said E. , pausing in conclusion. "Only that while I can't answer them at all, I feel more settled thanever to adhere to my own theory, and exemplify it, " was my candidresponse. Whereupon we went and had a good dinner at the AmericanHouse. And thenceforward I never waver'd or was touch'd with qualms, (as I confess I had been two or three times before. )

AN OSSIANIC NIGHT--DEAREST FRIENDS

Nov. , '81_. --Again back in Camden. As I cross the Delaware in longtrips tonight, between 9 and 11, the scene overhead is a peculiarone--swift sheets of flitting vapor-gauze, follow'd by dense cloudsthrowing an inky pall on everything. Then a spell of that transparentsteel-gray black sky I have noticed under similar circumstances, onwhich the moon would beam for a few moments with calm lustre, throwingdown a broad dazzle of highway on the waters; then the mists careeringagain. All silently, yet driven as if by the furies they sweep along, sometimes quite thin, sometimes thicker--a real Ossianic night--amidthe whirl, absent or dead friends, the old, the past, somehowtenderly suggested--while the Gael-strains chant themselves fromthe mists--"Be thy soul blest, O Carril! in the midst of thy eddyingwinds. O that thou wouldst come to my hall when I am alone by night!And thou dost come, my friend. I hear often thy light hand on my harp, when it hangs on the distant wall, and the feeble sound touches myear. Why dost thou not speak to me in my grief, and tell me when Ishall behold my friends? But thou passest away in thy murmuring blast;the wind whistles through the gray hairs of Ossian. "

But most of all, those changes of moon and sheets of hurrying vaporand black clouds, with the sense of rapid action in weird silence, recall the far-back Erse belief that such above were the preparationsfor receiving the wraiths of just-slain warriors--["We sat that nightin Selma, round the strength of the shell. The wind was abroad inthe oaks. The spirit of the mountain roar'd. The blast came rustlingthrough the hall, and gently touch'd my harp. The sound was mournfuland low, like the song of the tomb. Fingal heard it the first. Thecrowded sighs of his bosom rose. Some of my heroes are low, said thegray-hair'd king of Morven. I hear the sound of death on the harp. Ossian, touch the trembling string. Bid the sorrow rise, that theirspirits may fly with joy to Morven's woody hills. I touch'd the harpbefore the king; the sound was mournful and low. Bend forward fromyour clouds, I said, ghosts of my fathers! bend. Lay by the red terrorof your course. Receive the falling chief; whether he comes from adistant land, or rises from the rolling sea. Let his robe of mist benear; his spear that is form'd of a cloud. Place a half-extinguish'dmeteor by his side, in the form of a hero's sword. And oh! let hiscountenance be lovely, that his friends may delight in his presence. Bend from your clouds, I said, ghosts of my fathers, bend. Such was mysong in Selma, to the lightly trembling harp. "]

How or why I know not, just at the moment, but I too muse and thinkof my best friends in their distant homes--of William O'Connor, ofMaurice Bucke, of John Burroughs, and of Mrs. Gilchrist--friends of mysoul--stanchest friends of my other soul, my poems. 

ONLY A NEW FERRY-BOAT

_Jan. 12, '82_. --Such a show as the Delaware presented an hour beforesundown yesterday evening, all along between Philadelphia and Camden, is worth weaving into an item. It was full tide, a fair breeze fromthe southwest, the water of a pale tawny color, and just enough motionto make things frolicsome and lively. Add to these an approachingsunset of unusual splendor, a broad tumble of clouds, with much goldenhaze and profusion of beaming shaft and dazzle. In the midst of all, in the clear drab of the afternoon light, there steam'd up the riverthe large, new boat, "the Wenonah, " as pretty an object as you couldwish to see, lightly and swiftly skimming along, all trim and white, cover'd with flags, transparent red and blue, streaming out in thebreeze. Only a new ferry-boat, and yet in its fitness comparable withthe prettiest product of Nature's cunning, and rivaling it. High upin the transparent ether gracefully balanced and circled four or fivegreat sea hawks, while here below, amid the pomp and picturesquenessof sky and river, swam this creation of artificial beauty and motionand power, in its way no less perfect. 

DEATH OF LONGFELLOW

_Camden, April, '82_. --I have just return'd from an old forest haunt, where I love to go occasionally away from parlors, pavements, and thenewspapers and magazines--and where, of a clear forenoon, deep in theshade of pines and cedars and a tangle of old laurel-trees and vines, the news of Longfellow's death first reach'd me. For want of anythingbetter, let me lightly twine a sprig of the sweet ground-ivy trailingso plentifully through the dead leaves at my feet, with reflectionsof that half hour alone, there in the silence, and lay it as mycontribution on the dead bard's grave. 

Longfellow in his voluminous works seems to me not only to be eminentin the style and forms of poetical expression that mark the presentage, (an idiosyncrasy, almost a sickness, of verbal melody, ) but tobring what is always dearest as poetry to the general human heartand taste, and probably must be so in the nature of things. He iscertainly the sort of bard and counteractant most needed for ourmaterialistic, self-assertive, money-worshipping, Anglo-Saxon races, and especially for the present age in America--an age tyrannicallyregulated with reference to the manufacturer, the merchant, thefinancier, the politician and the day workman--for whom and amongwhom he comes as the poet of melody, courtesy, deference--poet of themellow twilight of the past in Italy, Germany, Spain, and in NorthernEurope--poet of all sympathetic gentleness--and universal poet ofwomen and young people. I should have to think long if I were ask'd toname the man who has done more, and in more valuable directions, forAmerica. 

I doubt if there ever was before such a fine intuitive judge andselecter of poems. His translations of many German and Scandinavianpieces are said to be better than the vernaculars. He does not urge orlash. His influence is like good drink or air. He is not tepid either, but always vital, with flavor, motion, grace. He strikes a splendidaverage, and does not sing exceptional passions, or humanity's jaggedescapades. He is not revolutionary, brings nothing offensive or new, does not deal hard blows. On the contrary, his songs soothe and heal, or if they excite, it is a healthy and agreeable excitement. His veryanger is gentle, is at second hand, (as in the "Quadroon Girl" and the"Witnesses. ")

There is no undue element of pensiveness in Longfellow's strains. Evenin the early translation, the Manrique, the movement is as of strongand steady wind or tide, holding up and buoying. Death is not avoidedthrough his many themes, but there is something almost winning in hisoriginal verses and renderings on that dread subject--as, closing "theHappiest Land" dispute, And then the landlord's daughter Up to heaven rais'd her hand, And said, "Ye may no more contend, There lies the happiest land. "

To the ungracious complaint-charge of his want of racy nativity andspecial originality, I shall only say that America and the world maywell be reverently thankful--can never be thankful enough--for anysuch singing-bird vouchsafed out of the centuries, without askingthat the notes be different from those of other songsters; adding whatI have heard Longfellow himself say, that ere the New World can beworthily original, and announce herself and her own heroes, she mustbe well saturated with the originality of others, and respectfullyconsider the heroes that lived before Agamemnon. 

STARTING NEWSPAPERS

_Reminiscences (From the "Camden Courier")_. As I sat taking my eveningsail across the Delaware in the staunch ferry-boat "Beverly, " a nightor two ago, I was join'd by two young reporter friends. "I have amessage for you, " said one of them; "the C. Folks told me to say theywould like a piece sign'd by your name, to go in their first number. Can you do it for them?" "I guess so, " said I; "what might it beabout?" "Well, anything on newspapers, or perhaps what you've doneyourself, starting them. " And off the boys went, for we had reach'dthe Philadelphia side. The hour was fine and mild, the brighthalf-moon shining; Venus, with excess of splendor, just setting in thewest, and the great Scorpion rearing its length more than half up inthe southeast. As I cross'd leisurely for an hour in the pleasantnight-scene, my young friend's words brought up quite a string ofreminiscences. 

I commenced when I was but a boy of eleven or twelve writingsentimental bits for the old "Long Island Patriot, " in Brooklyn; thiswas about 1832. Soon after, I had a piece or two in George P. Morris'sthen celebrated and fashionable "Mirror, " of New York city. I rememberwith what half-suppress'd excitement I used to watch for the big, fat, red-faced, slow-moving, very old English carrier who distributed the"Mirror" in Brooklyn; and when I got one, opening and cutting theleaves with trembling fingers. How it made my heart double-beat to see_my piece_ on the pretty white paper, in nice type. 

My first real venture was the "Long Islander, " in my own beautifultown of Huntington, in 1839. I was about twenty years old. I had beenteaching country school for two or three years in various parts ofSuffolk and Queens counties, but liked printing; had been at it whilea lad, learn'd the trade of compositor, and was encouraged to starta paper in the region where I was born. I went to New York, boughta press and types, hired some little help, but did most of the workmyself, including the press-work. Everything seem'd turning out well;(only my own restlessness prevented me gradually establishing apermanent property there. ) I bought a good horse, and every week wentall round the country serving my papers, devoting one day and night toit. I never had happier jaunts--going over to south side, to Babylon, down the south road, across to Smithtown and Comac, and back home. Theexperiences of those jaunts, the dear old-fashion'd farmers and theirwives, the stops by the hay-fields, the hospitality, nice dinners, occasional evenings, the girls, the rides through the brush, come upin my memory to this day. 

I next went to the "Aurora" daily in New York city--a sort of freelance. Also wrote regularly for the "Tattler, " an evening paper. Withthese and a little outside work I was occupied off and on, until Iwent to edit the "Brooklyn Eagle, " where for two years I had one ofthe pleasantest sits of my life--a good owner, good pay, and easy workand hours. The troubles in the Democratic party broke forth aboutthose times (1848-'49) and I split off with the radicals, which led torows with the boss and "the party, " and I lost my place. 

Being now out of a job, I was offer'd impromptu, (it happen'd betweenthe acts one night in the lobby of the old Broadway theatre near Pearlstreet, New York city, ) a good chance to go down to New Orleans on thestaff of the "Crescent, " a daily to be started there with plenty ofcapital behind it. One of the owners, who was north buying material, met me walking in the lobby, and though that was our firstacquaintance, after fifteen minutes' talk (and a drink) we made aformal bargain, and he paid me two hundred dollars down to bind thecontract and bear my expenses to New Orleans. I started two daysafterwards; had a good leisurely time, as the paper wasn't to beout in three weeks. I enjoy'd my journey and Louisiana life much. Returning to Brooklyn a year or two afterward I started the"Freeman, " first as a weekly, then daily. Pretty soon the secessionwar broke out, and I, too, got drawn in the current southward, andspent the following three years there, (as memorandized preceding. )

Besides starting them as aforementioned, I have had to do, one time oranother, during my life, with a long list of papers, at divers places, sometimes under queer circumstances. During the war, the hospitals atWashington, among other means of amusement, printed a little sheetamong themselves, surrounded by wounds and death, the "Armory SquareGazette, " to which I contributed. The same long afterward, casually, to a paper--I think it was call'd the "Jimplecute"--out in Coloradowhere I stopp'd at the time. When I was in Quebec province, in Canada, in 1880, I went into the queerest little old French printing-officenear Tadousac. It was far more primitive and ancient than my Camdenfriend William Kurtz's place up on Federal street. I remember, as ayoungster, several characteristic old printers of a kind hard to beseen these days. 

THE GREAT UNREST OF WHICH WE ARE PART

My thoughts went floating on vast and mystic currents as I sat to-dayin solitude and half-shade by the creek--returning mainly to twoprincipal centres. One of my cherish'd themes for a never-achiev'dpoem has been the two impetuses of man and the universe--in thelatter, creation's incessant unrest, [19] exfoliation, (Darwin'sevolution, I suppose. ) Indeed, what is Nature but change, in all itsvisible, and still more its invisible processes? Or what is humanityin its faith, love, heroism, poetry, even morals, but _emotion_?

Note:

[19] "Fifty thousand years ago the constellation of the Great Bearor Dipper was a starry cross; a hundred thousand years hence theimaginary Dipper will be upside down, and the stars which form thebowl and handle will have changed places. The misty nebulae aremoving, and besides are whirling around in great spirals, some oneway, some another. Every molecule of matter in the whole universe isswinging to and fro; every particle of ether which fills space isin jelly-like vibration. Light is one kind of motion, heat another, electricity another, magnetism another, sound another. Every humansense is the result of motion; every perception, every thought isbut motion of the molecules of the brain translated by thatincomprehensible thing we call mind. The processes of growth, ofexistence, of decay, whether in worlds, or in the minutest organisms, are but motion. "

BY EMERSON'S GRAVE

_May 6, '82. _--We stand by Emerson's new-made grave withoutsadness--indeed a solemn joy and faith, almost hauteur--oursoul-benison no mere

 "Warrior, rest, thy task is done, "

for one beyond the warriors of the world lies surely symboll'd here. Ajust man, poised on himself, all-loving, all-inclosing, and sane andclear as the sun. Nor does it seem so much Emerson himself we are hereto honor--it is conscience, simplicity, culture, humanity's attributesat their best, yet applicable if need be to average affairs, andeligible to all. So used are we to suppose a heroic death can onlycome from out of battle or storm, or mighty personal contest, or amiddramatic incidents or danger, (have we not been taught so for agesby all the plays and poems?) that few even of those who mostsympathizingly mourn Emerson's late departure will fully appreciatethe ripen'd grandeur of that event, with its play of calm and fitness, like evening light on the sea. 

How I shall henceforth dwell on the blessed hours when, not longsince, I saw that benignant face, the clear eyes, the silently smilingmouth, the form yet upright in its great age--to the very last, withso much spring and cheeriness, and such an absence of decrepitude, that even the term _venerable_ hardly seem'd fitting. 

Perhaps the life now rounded and completed in its mortal development, and which nothing can change or harm more, has its most illustrioushalo, not in its splendid intellectual or esthetic products, but asforming in its entirety one of the few (alas! how few!) perfect andflawless excuses for being, of the entire literary class. 

We can say, as Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, It is not we who come toconsecrate the dead--we reverently come to receive, if so it may be, some consecration to ourselves and daily work from him. 

AT PRESENT WRITING--PERSONAL

_A letter to a German friend--extract_

_May 31, '82. _--"From to-day I enter upon my 64th year. The paralysisthat first affected me nearly ten years ago, has since remain'd, withvarying course--seems to have settled quietly down, and will probablycontinue. I easily tire, am very clumsy, cannot walk far; but myspirits are first-rate. I go around in public almost every day--nowand then take long trips, by railroad or boat, hundreds of miles--livelargely in the open air--am sunburnt and stout, (weigh 190)--keep upmy activity and interest in life, people, progress, and the questionsof the day. About two-thirds of the time I am quite comfortable. Whatmentality I ever had remains entirely unaffected; though physicallyI am a half-paralytic, and likely to be so, long as I live. But theprincipal object of my life seems to have been accomplish'd--Ihave the most devoted and ardent of friends, and affectionaterelatives--and of enemies I really make no account. "

AFTER TRYING A CERTAIN BOOK

I tried to read a beautifully printed and scholarly volume on "theTheory of Poetry, " received by mail this morning from England--butgave it up at last for a bad job. Here are some capricious pencillingsthat follow'd, as I find them in my notes:

In youth and maturity Poems are charged with sunshine and varied pompof day; but as the soul more and more takes precedence, (the sensuousstill included, ) the Dusk becomes the poet's atmosphere. I too havesought, and ever seek, the brilliant sun, and make my songs according. But as I grow old, the half-lights of evening are far more to me. 

The play of Imagination, with the sensuous objects of Nature forsymbols and Faith--with Love and Pride as the unseen impetus andmoving-power of all, make up the curious chess-game of a poem. 

Common teachers or critics are always asking "What does it mean?"Symphony of fine musician, or sunset, or sea-waves rolling up thebeach--what do they mean? Undoubtedly in the most subtle-elusive sensethey mean something--as love does, and religion does, and the bestpoem;--but who shall fathom and define those meanings? (I do notintend this as a warrant for wildness and frantic escapades--but tojustify the soul's frequent joy in what cannot be defined to theintellectual part, or to calculation. )

At its best, poetic lore is like what may be heard of conversation inthe dusk, from speakers far or hid, of which we get only a few brokenmurmurs. What is not gather'd is far more--perhaps the main thing. 

Grandest poetic passages are only to be taken at free removes, as wesometimes look for stars at night, not by gazing directly toward them, but off one side. 

(_To a poetic student and friend. _)--I only seek to put you inrapport. Your own brain, heart, evolution, must not only understandthe matter, but largely supply it. 

FINAL CONFESSIONS--LITERARY TESTS

So draw near their end these garrulous notes. There have doubtlessoccurr'd some repetitions, technical errors in the consecutiveness ofdates, in the minutiae of botanical, astronomical, &c. , exactness, and perhaps elsewhere;--for in gathering up, writing, peremptorilydispatching copy, this hot weather, (last of July and through August, '82, ) and delaying not the printers, I have had to hurry along, notime to spare. But in the deepest veracity of all--in reflections ofobjects, scenes, Nature's outpourings, to my senses and receptivity, as they seem'd to me--in the work of giving those who care for it, some authentic glints, specimen-days of my life--and in the _bonafide_ spirit and relations, from author to reader, on all the subjectsdesign'd, and as far as they go, I feel to make unmitigated claims. 

The synopsis of my early life, Long Island, New York city, and soforth, and the diary-jottings in the Secession war, tell their ownstory. My plan in starting what constitutes most of the middle of thebook, was originally for hints and data of a Nature-poem that shouldcarry one's experiences a few hours, commencing at noon-flush, and sothrough the after-part of the day--I suppose led to such idea by myown life-afternoon now arrived. But I soon found I could move atmore ease, by giving the narrative at first hand. (Then there is ahumiliating lesson one learns, in serene hours, of a fine day ornight. Nature seems to look on all fixed-up poetry and art assomething almost impertinent. )

Thus I went on, years following, various seasons and areas, spinningforth my thought beneath the night and stars, (or as I was confined tomy room by half-sickness, ) or at midday looking out upon the sea, orfar north steaming over the Saguenay's black breast, jotting all downin the loosest sort of chronological order, and here printing from myimpromptu notes, hardly even the seasons group'd together, or anythingcorrected--so afraid of dropping what smack of outdoors or sun orstarlight might cling to the lines, I dared not try to meddle withor smooth them. Every now and then, (not often, but for a foil, ) Icarried a book in my pocket--or perhaps tore out from some broken orcheap edition a bunch of loose leaves; most always had something ofthe sort ready, but only took it out when the mood demanded. In thatway, utterly out of reach of literary conventions, I re-read manyauthors. 

I cannot divest my appetite of literature, yet I find myselfeventually trying it all by Nature--_first premises_ many call it, butreally the crowning results of all, laws, tallies and proofs. (Has itnever occur'd to any one how the last deciding tests applicable to abook are entirely outside of technical and grammatical ones, and thatany truly first-class production has little or nothing to do with therules and calibres of ordinary critics? or the bloodless chalk ofAllibone's Dictionary? I have fancied the ocean and the daylight, themountain and the forest, putting their spirit in a judgment on ourbooks. I have fancied some disembodied human soul giving its verdict. )

NATURE AND DEMOCRACY--MORALITY

Democracy most of all affiliates with the open air, is sunny andhardy and sane only with Nature--just as much as Art is. Something isrequired to temper both--to check them, restrain them from excess, morbidity. I have wanted, before departure, to bear special testimonyto a very old lesson and requisite. American Democracy, in its myriadpersonalities, in factories, work-shops, stores, offices--throughthe dense streets and houses of cities, and all their manifoldsophisticated life--must either be fibred, vitalized, by regularcontact with out-door light and air and growths, farm-scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth and free skies, or it will certainlydwindle and pale. We cannot have grand races of mechanics, workpeople, and commonalty, (the only specific purpose of America, ) onany less terms. I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements ofDemocracy in the United States, or of Democracy maintaining itselfat all, without the Nature-element forming a main part--to be itshealth-element and beauty-element--to really underlie the wholepolitics, sanity, religion and art of the New World. 

Finally, the morality: "Virtue, " said Marcus Aurelius, "what is it, only a living and enthusiastic sympathy with Nature?" Perhaps indeedthe efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures, all ages, have been, and ever will be, our time and times to come, essentially the same--to bring people back from their persistentstrayings and sickly abstractions, to the costless average, divine, original concrete. 

COLLECT

ONE OR TWO INDEX ITEMS

Though the ensuing COLLECT and preceding SPECIMEN DAYS are bothlargely from memoranda already existing, the hurried peremptory needsof copy for the printers, already referr'd to--(the musicians' storyof a composer up in a garret rushing the middle body and last of hisscore together, while the fiddlers are playing the first parts downin the concert-room)--of this haste, while quite willing to get theconsequent stimulus of life and motion, I am sure there must haveresulted sundry technical errors. If any are too glaring they will becorrected in a future edition. 

A special word about PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH at the end. On jaunts overLong Island, as boy and young fellow, nearly half a century ago, I heard of, or came across in my own experience, characters, true occurrences, incidents, which I tried my 'prentice hand atrecording--(I was then quite an "abolitionist" and advocate of the"temperance" and "anti-capital-punishment" causes)--and publish'dduring occasional visits to New York city. A majority of the sketchesappear'd first in the "Democratic Review, " others in the "ColumbianMagazine, " or the "American Review, " of that period. My serious wishwere to have all those crude and boyish pieces quietly dropp'd inoblivion--but to avoid the annoyance of their surreptitious issue, (aslately announced, from outsiders, ) I have, with some qualms, tack'dthem on here. _A Dough-Face Song_ came out first in the "EveningPost"--_Blood-Money_, and _Wounded in the House of Friends_, in the"Tribune. "

_Poetry To-day in America_, &c. , first appear'd (under the name of"_The Poetry of the Future_, ") in "The North American Review" forFebruary, 1881. _A Memorandum at a Venture_, in same periodical, sometime afterward. 

Several of the convalescent out-door scenes and literary items, preceding, originally appear'd in the fortnightly "Critic, " of NewYork. 

DEMOCRATIC VISTAS

As the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe are perhaps thelessons of variety and freedom, the same present the greatest lessonsalso in New World politics and progress. If a man were ask'd, forinstance, the distinctive points contrasting modern European andAmerican political and other life with the old Asiatic cultus, aslingering-bequeath'd yet in China and Turkey, he might find the amountof them in John Stuart Mill's profound essay on Liberty in the future, where he demands two main constituents, or sub-strata, for a trulygrand nationality--1st, a large variety of character--and 2d, fullplay for human nature to expand itself in numberless and evenconflicting directions--(seems to be for general humanity much likethe influences that make up, in their limitless field, that perennialhealth-action of the air we call the weather--an infinite numberof currents and forces, and contributions, and temperatures, andcross-purposes, whose ceaseless play of counterpart upon counterpartbrings constant restoration and vitality. ) With this thought--and notfor itself alone, but all it necessitates, and draws after it--let mebegin my speculations. 

America, filling the present with greatest deeds and problems, cheerfully accepting the past, including feudalism, (as, indeed, thepresent is but the legitimate birth of the past, including feudalism, )counts, as I reckon, for her justification and success, (for who, asyet, dare claim success?) almost entirely on the future. Nor is thathope unwarranted. To-day, ahead, though dimly yet, we see, in vistas, a copious, sane, gigantic offspring. For our New World I consider farless important for what it has done, or what it is, than for resultsto come. Sole among nationalities, these States have assumed thetask to put in forms of lasting power and practicality, on areas ofamplitude rivaling the operations of the physical kosmos, the moralpolitical speculations of ages, long, long deferr'd, the democraticrepublican principle, and the theory of development and perfection byvoluntary standards, and self-reliance. Who else, indeed, except theUnited States, in history, so far, have accepted in unwitting faith, and, as we now see, stand, act upon, and go security for, thesethings? But preluding no longer, let me strike the key-note of thefollowing strain. First premising that, though the passages of it havebeen written at widely different times, (it is, in fact, a collectionof memoranda, perhaps for future designers, comprehenders, ) and thoughit may be open to the charge of one part contradicting another--forthere are opposite sides to the great question of democracy, as toevery great question--I feel the parts harmoniously blended in my ownrealization and convictions, and present them to be read only in suchoneness, each page and each claim and assertion modified and temper'dby the others. Bear in mind, too, that they are not the resultof studying up in political economy, but of the ordinary sense, observing, wandering among men, these States, these stirring years ofwar and peace. I will not gloss over the appaling dangers of universalsuffrage in the United States. In fact, it is to admit and face thesedangers I am writing. To him or her within whose thought rages thebattle, advancing, retreating, between democracy's convictions, aspirations, and the people's crudeness, vice, caprices, I mainlywrite this essay. I shall use the words America and democracy asconvertible terms. Not an ordinary one is the issue. The United Statesare destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of feudalism, orelse prove the most tremendous failure of time. Not the least doubtfulam I on any prospects of their material success. The triumphant futureof their business, geographic and productive departments, on largerscales and in more varieties than ever, is certain. In those respectsthe republic must soon (if she does not already) outstrip all exampleshitherto afforded, and dominate the world. [20]

Admitting all this, with the priceless value of our politicalinstitutions, general suffrage, (and fully acknowledging the latest, widest opening of the doors, ) I say that, far deeper than these, what finally and only is to make of our western world a nationalitysuperior to any hither known, and out-topping the past, must bevigorous, yet unsuspected Literatures, perfect personalities andsociologies, original, transcendental, and expressing (what, inhighest sense, are not yet express'd at all, ) democracy and themodern. With these, and out of these, I promulge new races ofTeachers, and of perfect Women, indispensable to endow the birth-stockof a New World. For feudalism, caste, the ecclesiastic traditions, though palpably retreating from political institutions, still holdessentially, by their spirit, even in this country, entire possessionof the more important fields, indeed the very subsoil, of education, and of social standards and literature. 

I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until itfounds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been producedanywhere in the past, under opposite influences. It is curious to methat while so many voices, pens, minds, in the press, lecture-rooms, in our Congress, &c. , are discussing intellectual topics, pecuniarydangers, legislative problems, the suffrage, tariff and laborquestions, and the various business and benevolent needs of America, with propositions, remedies, often worth deep attention, there is oneneed, a hiatus the profoundest, that no eye seems to perceive, novoice to state. Our fundamental want to-day in the United States, withclosest, amplest reference to present conditions, and to the future, is of a class, and the clear idea of a class, of native authors, literatuses, far different, far higher in grade than any yet known, sacerdotal, modern, fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeatingthe whole mass of American mentality, taste, belief, breathing into ita new breath of life, giving it decision, affecting politics farmore than the popular superficial suffrage, with results inside andunderneath the elections of Presidents or Congresses--radiating, begetting appropriate teachers, schools, manners, and, as its grandestresult, accomplishing, (what neither the schools nor the churches andtheir clergy have hitherto accomplish'd, and without which this nationwill no more stand, permanently, soundly, than a house will standwithout a substratum, ) a religious and moral character beneath thepolitical and productive and intellectual bases of the States. Forknow you not, dear, earnest reader, that the people of our land mayall read and write, and may all possess the right to vote--and yet themain things may be entirely lacking?--(and this to suggest them. )

View'd, to-day, from a point of view sufficiently over-arching, the problem of humanity all over the civilized world is social andreligious, and is to be finally met and treated by literature. Thepriest departs, the divine literatus comes. Never was anything morewanted than, to-day, and here in the States, the poet of the modern iswanted, or the great literatus of the modern. At all times, perhaps, the central point in any nation, and that whence it is itselfreally sway'd the most, and whence it sways others, is its nationalliterature, especially its archetypal poems. Above all previous lands, a great original literature is surely to become the justification andreliance, (in some respects the sole reliance, ) of American democracy. 

Few are aware how the great literature penetrates all, gives hue toall, shapes aggregates and individuals, and, after subtle ways, withirresistible power, constructs, sustains, demolishes at will. Whytower, in reminiscence, above all the nations of the earth, twospecial lands, petty in themselves, yet inexpressibly gigantic, beautiful, columnar? Immortal Judah lives, and Greece immortal lives, in a couple of poems. 

Nearer than this. It is not generally realized, but it is true, as thegenius of Greece, and all the sociology, personality, politics andreligion of those wonderful states, resided in their literature oresthetics, that what was afterwards the main support of Europeanchivalry, the feudal, ecclesiastical, dynastic world overthere--forming its osseous structure, holding it together forhundreds, thousands of years, preserving its flesh and bloom, givingit form, decision, rounding it out, and so saturating it in theconscious and unconscious blood, breed, belief, and intuitions of men, that it still prevails powerful to this day, in defiance of the mightychanges of time--was its literature, permeating to the very marrow, especially that major part, its enchanting songs, ballads, andpoems. [21]

To the ostent of the senses and eyes, I know, the influences whichstamp the world's history are wars, uprisings or downfalls ofdynasties, changeful movements of trade, important inventions, navigation, military or civil governments, advent of powerfulpersonalities, conquerors, etc.. These of course play their part; yet, it may be, a single new thought, imagination, abstract principle, even literary style, fit for the time, put in shape by some greatliteratus, and projected among mankind, may duly cause changes, growths, removals, greater than the longest and bloodiest war, or themost stupendous merely political, dynastic, or commercial overturn. 

In short, as, though it may not be realized, it is strictly true, thata few first-class poets, philosophs, and authors, have substantiallysettled and given status to the entire religion, education, law, sociology, &c. , of the hitherto civilized world, by tinging and oftencreating the atmospheres out of which they have arisen, such also muststamp, and more than ever stamp, the interior and real democraticconstruction of this American continent, to-day, and days to come. Remember also this fact of difference, that, while through the antiqueand through the mediaeval ages, highest thoughts and ideals realizedthemselves, and their expression made its way by other arts, as muchas, or even more than by, technical literature, (not open to themass of persons, or even to the majority of eminent persons, ) suchliterature in our day and for current purposes, is not only moreeligible than all the other arts put together, but has become the onlygeneral means of morally influencing the world. Painting, sculpture, and the dramatic theatre, it would seem, no longer play anindispensable or even important part in the workings and mediumshipof intellect, utility, or even high esthetics. Architecture remains, doubtless with capacities, and a real future. Then music, thecombiner, nothing more spiritual, nothing more sensuous, a god, yetcompletely human, advances, prevails, holds highest place; supplyingin certain wants and quarters what nothing else could supply. Yet inthe civilization of to-day it is undeniable that, over all the arts, literature dominates, serves beyond all--shapes the character ofchurch and school--or, at any rate, is capable of doing so. Includingthe literature of science, its scope is indeed unparallel'd. 

Before proceeding further, it were perhaps well to discriminate oncertain points. Literature tills its crops in many fields, and somemay flourish, while others lag. What I say in these Vistas has itsmain bearing on imaginative literature, especially poetry, the stockof all. In the department of science, and the specialty of journalism, there appear, in these States, promises, perhaps fulfilments, ofhighest earnestness, reality, and life, These, of course, are modern. But in the region of imaginative, spinal and essential attributes, something equivalent to creation is, for our age and lands, imperatively demanded. For not only is it not enough that the newblood, new frame of democracy shall be vivified and held togethermerely by political means, superficial suffrage, legislation, &c. , butit is clear to me that, unless it goes deeper, gets at least as firmand as warm a hold in men's hearts, emotions and belief, as, in theirdays, feudalism or ecclesiasticism, and inaugurates its own perennialsources, welling from the centre forever, its strength will bedefective, its growth doubtful, and its main charm wanting. I suggest, therefore, the possibility, should some two or three really originalAmerican poets, (perhaps artists or lecturers, ) arise, mounting thehorizon like planets, stars of the first magnitude, that, from theireminence, fusing contributions, races, far localities, &c. , together, they would give more compaction and more moral identity, (the qualityto-day most needed, ) to these States, than all its Constitutions, legislative and judicial ties, and all its hitherto political, warlike, or materialistic experiences. As, for instance, there couldhardly happen anything that would more serve the States, with alltheir variety of origins, their diverse climes, cities, standards, &c. , than possessing an aggregate of heroes, characters, exploits, sufferings, prosperity or misfortune, glory or disgrace, common toall, typical of all--no less, but even greater would it be to possessthe aggregation of a cluster of mighty poets, artists, teachers, fitfor us, national expressers, comprehending and effusing for the menand women of the States, what is universal, native, common to all, inland and seaboard, northern and southern. The historians say ofancient Greece, with her ever-jealous autonomies, cities, and states, that the only positive unity she ever own'd or receiv'd, was the sadunity of a common subjection, at the last, to foreign conquerors. Subjection, aggregation of that sort, is impossible to America; butthe fear of conflicting and irreconcilable interiors, and the lack ofa common skeleton, knitting all close, continually haunts me. Or, ifit does not, nothing is plainer than the need, a long period to come, of a fusion of the States into the only reliable identity, the moraland artistic one. For, I say, the true nationality of the States, thegenuine union, when we come to a moral crisis, is, and is to be, afterall, neither the written law, nor, (as is generally supposed, ) eitherself-interest, or common pecuniary or material objects--but the fervidand tremendous IDEA, melting everything else with resistless heat, and solving all lesser and definite distinctions in vast, indefinite, spiritual, emotional power. 

It may be claim'd, (and I admit the weight of the claim, ) that commonand general worldly prosperity, and a populace well-to-do, and withall life's material comforts, is the main thing, and is enough. It maybe argued that our republic is, in performance, really enacting to-daythe grandest arts, poems, &c. , by beating up the wilderness intofertile farms, and in her railroads, ships, machinery, &c. And itmay be ask'd, Are these not better, indeed, for America, than anyutterances even of greatest rhapsode, artist, or literatus?

I too hail those achievements with pride and joy: then answer that thesoul of man will not with such only--nay, not with such at all--befinally satisfied; but needs what, (standing on these and on allthings, as the feet stand on the ground, ) is address'd to theloftiest, to itself alone. 

Out of such considerations, such truths, arises for treatment inthese Vistas the important question of character, of an Americanstock-personality, with literatures and arts for outlets andreturn-expressions, and, of course, to correspond, within outlinescommon to all. To these, the main affair, the thinkers of the UnitedStates, in general so acute, have either given feeblest attention, orhave remain'd, and remain, in a state of somnolence. 

For my part, I would alarm and caution even the political and businessreader, and to the utmost extent, against the prevailing delusionthat the establishment of free political institutions, and plentifulintellectual smartness, with general good order, physical plenty, industry, &c. , (desirable and precious advantages as they all are, )do, of themselves, determine and yield to our experiment of democracythe fruitage of success. With such advantages at present fully, oralmost fully, possess'd--the Union just issued, victorious, from thestruggle with the only foes it need ever fear, (namely, those withinitself, the interior ones, ) and with unprecedented materialisticadvancement--society, in these States, is canker'd, crude, superstitious, and rotten. Political, or law-made society is, andprivate, or voluntary society, is also. In any vigor, the element ofthe moral conscience, the most important, the verteber to State orman, seems to me either entirely lacking, or seriously enfeebled orungrown. 

I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in theUnited States. Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlyingprinciples of the States are not honestly believ'd in, (for all thishectic glow, and these melo-dramatic screamings, ) nor is humanityitself believ'd in. What penetrating eye does not everywhere seethrough the mask? The spectacle is appaling. We live in an atmosphereof hypocrisy throughout. The men believe not in the women, nor thewomen in the men. A scornful superciliousness rules in literature. Theaim of all the _litterateurs_ is to find something to make fun of. Alot of churches, sects, &c. , the most dismal phantasms I know, usurpthe name of religion. Conversation is a mass of badinage. From deceitin the spirit, the mother of all false deeds, the offspring is alreadyincalculable. An acute and candid person, in the revenue department inWashington, who is led by the course of his employment to regularlyvisit the cities, north, south and west, to investigate frauds, hastalk'd much with me about his discoveries. The depravity of thebusiness classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all their branches and departments, exceptthe judiciary, are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; and the judiciary is tainted. The great citiesreek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery andscoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid amours, weakinfidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time. Inbusiness, (this all-devouring modern word, business, ) the one soleobject is, by any means, pecuniary gain. The magician's serpent inthe fable ate up all the other serpents; and money-making is ourmagician's serpent, remaining today sole master of the field. The bestclass we show, is but a mob of fashionably dress'd speculators andvulgarians. True, indeed, behind this fantastic farce, enacted on thevisible stage of society, solid things and stupendous labors are tobe discover'd, existing crudely and going on in the background, toadvance and tell themselves in time. Yet the truths are none the lessterrible. I say that our New World democracy, however great a successin uplifting the masses out of their sloughs, in materialisticdevelopment, products, and in a certain highly-deceptive superficialpopular intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in itssocial aspects, and in really grand religious, moral, literary, andesthetic results. In vain do we march with unprecedented strides toempire so colossal, outvying the antique, beyond Alexander's, beyondthe proudest sway of Rome. In vain have we annex'd Texas, California, Alaska, and reach north for Canada and south for Cuba. It is as ifwe were somehow being endow'd with a vast and more and morethoroughly-appointed body, and then left with little or no soul. 

Let me illustrate further, as I write, with current observations, localities, &c. The subject is important, and will bear repetition. After an absence, I am now again (September, 1870) in New York cityand Brooklyn, on a few weeks' vacation. The splendor, picturesqueness, and oceanic amplitude and rush of these great cities, the unsurpass'dsituation, rivers and bay, sparkling sea-tides, costly and loftynew buildings, facades of marble and iron, of original grandeur andelegance of design, with the masses of gay color, the preponderance ofwhite and blue, the flags flying, the endless ships, the tumultuousstreets, Broadway, the heavy, low, musical roar, hardly everintermitted, even at night; the jobbers' houses, the rich shops, thewharves, the great Central Park, and the Brooklyn Park of hills, (asI wander among them this beautiful fall weather, musing, watching, absorbing)--the assemblages of the citizens in their groups, conversations, trades, evening amusements, or along theby-quarters--these, I say, and the like of these, completely satisfymy senses of power, fulness, motion, &c. , and give me, through suchsenses and appetites, and through my esthetic conscience, a continuedexaltation and absolute fulfilment. Always and more and more, as Icross the East and North rivers, the ferries, or with the pilotsin their pilot-houses, or pass an hour in Wall street, or the goldexchange, I realize, (if we must admit such partialisms, ) that notNature alone is great in her fields of freedom and the open air, in her storms, the shows of night and day, the mountains, forests, seas--but in the artificial, the work of man too is equally great--inthis profusion of teeming humanity--in these ingenuities, streets, goods, houses, ships--these hurrying, feverish, electric crowdsof men, their complicated business genius, (not least among thegeniuses, ) and all this mighty, many-threaded wealth and industryconcentrated here. 

But sternly discarding, shutting our eyes to the glow and grandeur ofthe general superficial effect, coming down to what is of the onlyreal importance, Personalities, and examining minutely, we question, we ask, Are there, indeed, _men_ here worthy the name? Are thereathletes? Are there perfect women, to match the generous materialluxuriance? Is there a pervading atmosphere of beautiful manners? Arethere crops of fine youths, and majestic old persons? Are there artsworthy freedom and a rich people? Is there a great moral and religiouscivilization--the only justification of a great material one? Confessthat to severe eyes, using the moral microscope upon humanity, a sortof dry and flat Sahara appears, these cities, crowded with pettygrotesques, malformations, phantoms, playing meaningless antics. 

Confess that everywhere, in shop, street, church, theatre, bar-room, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity--everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurelyripe--everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male, female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, badblood, the capacity for good motherhood deceasing or deceas'd, shallownotions of beauty, with a range of manners, or rather lack of manners, (considering the advantages enjoy'd, ) probably the meanest to be seenin the world. [22]

Of all this, and these lamentable conditions, to breathe into themthe breath recuperative of sane and heroic life, I say a new foundedliterature, not merely to copy and reflect existing surfaces, orpander to what is called taste--not only to amuse, pass away time, celebrate the beautiful, the refined, the past, or exhibit technical, rhythmic, or grammatical dexterity--but a literature underlying life, religious, consistent with science, handling the elements and forceswith competent power, teaching and training men--and, as perhaps themost precious of its results, achieving the entire redemption of womanout of these incredible holds and webs of silliness, millinery, andevery kind of dyspeptic depletion--and thus insuring to the States astrong and sweet Female Race, a race of perfect Mothers--is what isneeded. 

And now, in the full conception of these facts and points, and allthat they infer, pro and con--with yet unshaken faith in the elementsof the American masses, the composites, of both sexes, and evenconsider'd as individuals--and ever recognizing in them the broadestbases of the best literary and esthetic appreciation--I proceed withmy speculations, Vistas. 

First, let us see what we can make out of a brief, general, sentimental consideration of political democracy, and whence it hasarisen, with regard to some of its current features, as an aggregate, and as the basic structure of our future literature and authorship. We shall, it is true, quickly and continually find the origin-idea ofthe singleness of man, individualism, asserting itself, and croppingforth, even from the opposite ideas. But the mass, or lump character, for imperative reasons, is to be ever carefully weigh'd, borne inmind, and provided for. Only from it, and from its proper regulationand potency, comes the other, comes the chance of individualism. Thetwo are contradictory, but our task is to reconcile them. [23]

The political history of the past may be summ'd up as having grown outof what underlies the words, order, safety, caste, and especially outof the need of some prompt deciding authority, and of cohesion at allcost. Leaping time, we come to the period within the memory of peoplenow living, when, as from some lair where they had slumber'd long, accumulating wrath, sprang up and are yet active, (1790, and oneyen to the present, 1870, ) those noisy eructations, destructiveiconoclasms, a fierce sense of wrongs, amid which moves the form, wellknown in modern history, in the old world, stain'd with much blood, and mark'd by savage reactionary clamors and demands. These bear, mostly, as on one inclosing point of need. 

For after the rest is said--after the many time-honor'd and reallytrue things for subordination, experience, rights of property, &c. , have been listen'd to and acquiesced in--after the valuable andwell-settled statement of our duties and relations in society isthoroughly conn'd over and exhausted--it remains to bring forward andmodify everything else with the idea of that Something a man is, (lastprecious consolation of the drudging poor, ) standing apart fromall else, divine in his own right, and a woman in hers, sole anduntouchable by any canons of authority, or any rule derived fromprecedent, state-safety, the acts of legislatures, or even from whatis called religion, modesty, or art. The radiation of this truth isthe key of the most significant doings of our immediately precedingthree centuries, and has been the political genesis and life ofAmerica. Advancing visibly, it still more advances invisibly. Underneath the fluctuations of the expressions of society, as well asthe movements of the politics of the leading nations of the world, we see steadily pressing ahead and strengthening itself, even in themidst of immense tendencies toward aggregation, this image ofcompleteness in separatism, of individual personal dignity, of a singleperson, either male or female, characterized in the main, not fromextrinsic acquirements or position, but in the pride of himself orherself alone; and, as an eventual conclusion and summing up, (or elsethe entire scheme of things is aimless, a cheat, a crash, ) the simpleidea that the last, best dependence is to be upon humanity itself, andits own inherent, normal, fullgrown qualities, without any superstitioussupport whatever. This idea of perfect individualism it is indeed thatdeepest tinges and gives character to the idea of the aggregate. For itis mainly or altogether to serve independent separatism that we favora strong generalization, consolidation. As it is to give the bestvitality and freedom to the rights of the States, (every bit asimportant as the right of nationality, the union, ) that we insist onthe identity of the Union at all hazards. 

The purpose of democracy--supplanting old belief in the necessaryabsoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only securityagainst chaos, crime, and ignorance--is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures, toillustrate, at all hazards, this doctrine or theory that man, properlytrain'd in sanest, highest freedom, may and must become a law, andseries of laws, unto himself, surrounding and providing for, not onlyhis own personal control, but all his relations to other individuals, and to the State; and that, while other theories, as in the pasthistories of nations, have proved wise enough, and indispensableperhaps for their conditions, _this, _ as matters now stand in ourcivilized world, is the only scheme worth working from, as warrantingresults like those of Nature's laws, reliable, when once establish'd, to carry on themselves. 

The argument of the matter is extensive, and, we admit, by no meansall on one side. What we shall offer will be far, far from sufficient. But while leaving unsaid much that should properly even preparethe way for the treatment of this many-sided question of politicalliberty, equality, or republicanism--leaving the whole history andconsideration of the feudal plan and its products, embodying humanity, its politics and civilization, through the retrospect of past time, (which plan and products, indeed, make up all of the past, and a largepart of the present)--leaving unanswer'd, at least by any specific andlocal answer, many a well-wrought argument and instance, and many aconscientious declamatory cry and warning--as, very lately, from aneminent and venerable person abroad[24]--things, problems, full ofdoubt, dread, suspense, (not new to me, but old occupiers of many ananxious hour in city's din, or night's silence, ) we still may give apage or so, whose drift is opportune. Time alone can finally answerthese things. But as a substitute in passing, let us, even iffragmentarily, throw forth a short direct or indirect suggestion ofthe premises of that other plan, in the new spirit, under the newforms, started here in our America. 

As to the political section of Democracy, which introduces and breaksground for further and vaster sections, few probably are the minds, even in these republican States, that fully comprehend the aptness ofthat phrase, "THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THEPEOPLE, " which we inherit from the lips of Abraham Lincoln; a formulawhose verbal shape is homely wit, but whose scope includes both thetotality and all minutiae of the lesson. 

The People! Like our huge earth itself, which, to ordinary scansion, is full of vulgar contradictions and offence, man, viewed in thelump, displeases, and is a constant puzzle and affront to the merelyeducated classes. The rare, cosmical, artist-mind, lit with theInfinite, alone confronts his manifold and oceanic qualities--buttaste, intelligence and culture, (so-called, ) have been against themasses, and remain so. There is plenty of glamour about the mostdamnable crimes and hoggish meannesses, special and general, of thefeudal and dynastic world over there, with its _personnel_ of lordsand queens and courts, so well-dress'd and so handsome. But the Peopleare ungrammatical, untidy, and their sins gaunt and ill-bred. 

Literature, strictly consider'd, has never recognized the People, and, whatever may be said, does not to-day. Speaking generally, thetendencies of literature, as hitherto pursued, have been to makemostly critical and querulous men. It seems as if, so far, there weresome natural repugnance between a literary and professional life, and the rude rank spirit of the democracies. There is, in laterliterature, a treatment of benevolence, a charity business, rifeenough it is true; but I know nothing more rare, even in this country, than a fit scientific estimate and reverent appreciation of thePeople--of their measureless wealth of latent power and capacity, their vast, artistic contrasts of lights and shades--with, in America, their entire reliability in emergencies, and a certain breadth ofhistoric grandeur, of peace or war, far surpassing all the vauntedsamples of book-heroes, or any _haut ton_ coteries, in all the recordsof the world. 

The movements of the late secession war, and their results, to anysense that studies well and comprehends them, show that populardemocracy, whatever its faults and dangers, practically justifiesitself beyond the proudest claims and wildest hopes of itsenthusiasts. Probably no future age can know, but I well know, howthe gist of this fiercest and most resolute of the world's war-likecontentions resided exclusively in the unnamed, unknown rank andfile; and how the brunt of its labor of death was, to all essentialpurposes, volunteer'd. The People, of their own choice, fighting, dying for their own idea, insolently attack'd by thesecession-slave-power, and its very existence imperil'd. Descendingto detail, entering any of the armies, and mixing with the privatesoldiers, we see and have seen august spectacles. We have seen thealacrity with which the American-born populace, the peaceablestand most good-natured race in the world, and the most personallyindependent and intelligent, and the least fitted to submit to theirksomeness and exasperation of regimental discipline, sprang, at thefirst tap of the drum, to arms--not for gain, nor even glory, nor torepel invasion--but for an emblem, a mere abstraction--for the life, _the safety of the flag_. We have seen the unequal'd docility andobedience of these soldiers. We have seen them tried long and long byhopelessness, mismanagement, and by defeat; have seen the incredibleslaughter toward or through which the armies (as at firstFredericksburg, and afterward at the Wilderness, ) still unhesitatinglyobey'd orders to advance. We have seen them in trench, or crouchingbehind breastwork, or tramping in deep mud, or amid pouring rain orthick-falling snow, or under forced marches in hottest summer (as onthe road to get to Gettysburg)--vast suffocating swarms, divisions, corps, with every single man so grimed and black with sweat and dust, his own mother would not have known him--his clothes all dirty, stain'd and torn, with sour, accumulated sweat for perfume--many acomrade, perhaps a brother, sun-struck, staggering out, dying, bythe roadside, of exhaustion--yet the great bulk bearing steadilyon, cheery enough, hollow-bellied from hunger, but sinewy withunconquerable resolution. 

We have seen this race proved by wholesale by drearier, yet morefearful tests--the wound, the amputation, the shatter'd face or limb, the slow hot fever, long impatient anchorage in bed, and all the formsof maiming, operation and disease. Alas! America have we seen, thoughonly in her early youth, already to hospital brought. There have wewatch'd these soldiers, many of them only boys in years--mark'dtheir decorum, their religious nature and fortitude, and their sweetaffection. Wholesale, truly. For at the front, and through the camps, in countless tents, stood the regimental, brigade and divisionhospitals; while everywhere amid the land, in or near cities, roseclusters of huge, white-wash'd, crowded, one-story wooden barracks;and there ruled agony with bitter scourge, yet seldom brought a cry;and there stalk'd death by day and night along the narrow aislesbetween the rows of cots, or by the blankets on the ground, andtouch'd lightly many a poor sufferer, often with blessed, welcometouch. 

I know not whether I shall be understood, but I realize that it isfinally from what I learn'd personally mixing in such scenes that I amnow penning these pages. One night in the gloomiest period of the war, in the Patent-office hospital in Washington city, as I stood bythe bedside of a Pennsylvania soldier, who lay, conscious of quickapproaching death, yet perfectly calm, and with noble, spiritualmanner, the veteran surgeon, turning aside, said to me, that though hehad witness'd many, many deaths of soldiers, and had been a worker atBull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, &c. , he had not seen yet the firstcase of man or boy that met the approach of dissolution with cowardlyqualms or terror. My own observation fully bears out the remark. 

What have we here, if not, towering above all talk and argument, the plentifully-supplied, last-needed proof of democracy, in itspersonalities? Curiously enough, too, the proof on this point comes, I should say, every bit as much from the south, as from the north. Although I have spoken only of the latter, yet I deliberately includeall. Grand, common stock! to me the accomplish'd and convincinggrowth, prophetic of the future; proof undeniable to sharpest sense, of perfect beauty, tenderness and pluck, that never feudal lord, norGreek, nor Roman breed, yet rival'd. Let no tongue ever speak indisparagement of the American races, north or south, to one who hasbeen through the war in the great army hospitals. 

Meantime, general humanity, (for to that we return, as, for ourpurposes, what it really is, to bear in mind, ) has always, in everydepartment, been full of perverse maleficence, and is so yet. Indowncast hours the soul thinks it always will be--but soon recoversfrom such sickly moods. I myself see clearly enough the crude, defective streaks in all the strata of the common people; thespecimens and vast collections of the ignorant, the credulous, theunfit and uncouth, the incapable, and the very low and poor. Theeminent person just mention'd sneeringly asks whether we expect toelevate and improve a nation's politics by absorbing such morbidcollections and qualities therein. The point is a formidable one, and there will doubtless always be numbers of solid and reflectivecitizens who will never get over it. Our answer is general, andis involved in the scope and letter of this essay. We believe theulterior object of political and all other government, (having, ofcourse, provided for the police, the safety of life, property, and forthe basic statute and common law, and their administration, alwaysfirst in order, ) to be among the rest, not merely to rule, to repressdisorder, &c. , but to develop, to open up to cultivation, to encouragethe possibilities of all beneficent and manly outcroppage, and of thataspiration for independence, and the pride and self-respect latent inall characters. (Or, if there be exceptions, we cannot, fixing oureyes on them alone, make theirs the rule for all. )

I say the mission of government, henceforth, in civilized lands, isnot repression alone, and not Authority alone, not even of law, norby that favorite standard of the eminent writer, the rule of the bestmen, the born heroes and captains of the race, (as if such ever, or one time out of a hundred, get into the big places, elective ordynastic)--but higher than the highest arbitrary rule, to traincommunities through all their grades, beginning with individuals andending there again, to rule themselves. What Christ appear'd for inthe moral-spiritual field for human-kind, namely, that in respect tothe absolute soul, there is in the possession of such by each singleindividual, something so transcendent, so incapable of gradations, (like life, ) that, to that extent, it places all beings on a commonlevel, utterly regardless of the distinctions of intellect, virtue, station, or any height or lowliness whatever--is tallied in likemanner, in this other field, by democracy's rule that men, the nation, as a common aggregate of living identities, affording in each aseparate and complete subject for freedom, worldly thrift andhappiness, and for a fair chance for growth, and for protection incitizenship, &c. , must, to the political extent of the suffrage orvote, if no further, be placed, in each and in the whole, on onebroad, primary, universal, common platform. 

The purpose is not altogether direct; perhaps it is more indirect. Forit is not that democracy is of exhaustive account, in itself. Perhaps, indeed, it is, (like Nature, ) of no account in itself. It is that, aswe see, it is the best, perhaps only, fit and full means, formulater, general caller-forth, trainer, for the million, not for grand materialpersonalities only, but for immortal souls. To be a voter with therest is not so much; and this, like every institute, will have itsimperfections. 

But to become an enfranchised man, and now, impediments removed, tostand and start without humiliation, and equal with the rest; tocommence, or have the road clear'd to commence, the grand experimentof development, whose end, (perhaps requiring several generations, )may be the forming of a full-grown man or woman--that _is_ something. To ballast the State is also secured, and in our times is to besecured, in no other way. 

We do not, (at any rate I do not, ) put it either on the ground thatthe People, the masses, even the best of them, are, in their latent orexhibited qualities, essentially sensible and good--nor on the groundof their rights; but that good or bad, rights or no rights, thedemocratic formula is the only safe and preservative one for comingtimes. We endow the masses with the suffrage for their own sake, nodoubt; then, perhaps still more, from another point of view, forcommunity's sake. Leaving the rest to the sentimentalists, wepresent freedom as sufficient in its scientific aspect, cold as ice, reasoning, deductive, clear and passionless as crystal. 

Democracy too is law, and of the strictest, amplest kind. Manysuppose, (and often in its own ranks the error, ) that it means athrowing aside of law, and running riot. But, briefly, it is thesuperior law, not alone that of physical force, the body, which, adding to, it supersedes with that of the spirit. Law is theunshakable order of the universe forever; and the law over all, andlaw of laws, is the law of successions; that of the superior law, intime, gradually supplanting and overwhelming the inferior one. (While, for myself, I would cheerfully agree--first covenanting that theformative tendencies shall be administer'd in favor, or at least notagainst it, and that this reservation be closely construed--thatuntil the individual or community show due signs, or be so minorand fractional as not to endanger the State, the condition ofauthoritative tutelage may continue, and self-government must abideits time. ) Nor is the esthetic point, always an important one, withoutfascination for highest aiming souls. The common ambition strainsfor elevations, to become some privileged exclusive. The master seesgreatness and health in being part of the mass; nothing will do aswell as common ground. Would you have in yourself the divine, vast, general law? Then merge yourself in it. 

And, topping democracy, this most alluring record, that it alone canbind, and ever seeks to bind, all nations, all men, of however variousand distant lands, into a brotherhood, a family. It is the old, yetever-modern dream of earth, out of her eldest and her youngest, herfond philosophers and poets. Not that half only, individualism, whichisolates. There is another half, which is adhesiveness or love, that fuses, ties and aggregates, making the races comrades, andfraternizing all. Both are to be vitalized by religion, (soleworthiest elevator of man or State, ) breathing into the proud, material tissues, the breath of life. For I say at the core ofdemocracy, finally, is the religious element. All the religions, old and new, are there. Nor may the scheme step forth, clothed inresplendent beauty and command, till these, bearing the best, thelatest fruit, the spiritual, shall fully appear. 

A portion of our pages we might indite with reference toward Europe, especially the British part of it, more than our own land, perhaps notabsolutely needed for the home reader. But the whole question hangstogether, and fastens and links all peoples. The liberalist of to-dayhas this advantage over antique or mediaeval times, that his doctrineseeks not only to individualize but to universalize. The great wordSolidarity has arisen. Of all dangers to a nation, as things exist inour day, there can be no greater one than having certain portions ofthe people set off from the rest by a line drawn--they not privilegedas others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account. Much quackeryteems, of course, even on democracy's side, yet does not really affectthe orbic quality of the matter. To work in, if we may so term it, and justify God, his divine aggregate, the People, (or, the veritablehorn'd and sharp-tail'd Devil, _his_ aggregate, if there be whoconvulsively insist upon it)--this, I say, is what democracy is for;and this is what our America means, and is doing--may I not say, hasdone? If not, she means nothing more, and does nothing more, thanany other land. And as, by virtue of its kosmical, antiseptic power, Nature's stomach is fully strong enough not only to digest themorbific matter always presented, not to be turn'd aside, and perhaps, indeed, intuitively gravitating thither--but even to change suchcontributions into nutriment for highest use and life--so Americandemocracy's. That is the lesson we, these days, send over to Europeanlands by every western breeze. 

And, truly, whatever may be said in the way of abstract argument, foror against the theory of a wider democratizing of institutions in anycivilized country, much trouble might well be saved to all Europeanlands by recognizing this palpable fact, (for a palpable fact it is, )that some form of such democratizing is about the only resource nowleft. _That_, or chronic dissatisfaction continued, mutterings whichgrow annually louder and louder, till, in due course, and prettyswiftly in most cases, the inevitable crisis, crash, dynastic ruin. Anything worthy to be call'd statesmanship in the Old World, I shouldsay, among the advanced students, adepts, or men of any brains, doesnot debate to-day whether to hold on, attempting to lean back andmonarchize, or to look forward and democratize--but _how_, and in whatdegree and part, most prudently to democratize. 

The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers andrevolutionists are indispensable, to counterbalance the inertness andfossilism making so large a part of human institutions. The latterwill always take care of themselves--the danger being that theyrapidly tend to ossify us. The former is to be treated withindulgence, and even with respect. As circulation to air, so isagitation and a plentiful degree of speculative license to politicaland moral sanity. Indirectly, but surely, goodness, virtue, law, (ofthe very best, ) follow freedom. These, to democracy, are what the keelis to the ship, or saltness to the ocean. 

The true gravitation-hold of liberalism in the United States will bea more universal ownership of property, general homesteads, generalcomfort--a vast, intertwining reticulation of wealth. As the humanframe, or, indeed, any object in this manifold universe, is best kepttogether by the simple miracle of its own cohesion, and the necessity, exercise and profit thereof, so a great and varied nationality, occupying millions of square miles, were firmest held and knit by theprinciple of the safety and endurance of the aggregate of its middlingproperty owners. So that, from another point of view, ungracious asit may sound, and a paradox after what we have been saying, democracylooks with suspicious, ill-satisfied eye upon the very poor, theignorant, and on those out of business. She asks for men and womenwith occupations, well-off, owners of houses and acres, and with cashin the bank--and with some cravings for literature, too; and musthave them, and hastens to make them. Luckily, the seed is alreadywell-sown, and has taken ineradicable root. [25]

Huge and mighty are our days, our republican lands--and most in theirrapid shiftings, their changes, all in the interest of the cause. AsI write this particular passage, (November, 1868, ) the din ofdisputation rages around me. Acrid the temper of the parties, vitalthe pending questions. Congress convenes; the President sends hismessage; reconstruction is still in abeyance; the nomination and thecontest for the twenty-first Presidentiad draw close, with loudestthreat and bustle. Of these, and all the like of these, theeventuations I know not; but well I know that behind them, andwhatever their eventuations, the vital things remain safe andcertain, and all the needed work goes on. Time, with soon or latersuperciliousness, disposes of Presidents, Congressmen, partyplatforms, and such. Anon, it clears the stage of each and any mortalshred that thinks itself so potent to its day; and at and after which, (with precious, golden exceptions once or twice in a century, ) allthat relates to sir potency is flung to moulder in a burial-vault, and no one bothers himself the least bit about it afterward. Butthe People ever remain, tendencies continue, and all the idiocratictransfers in unbroken chain go on. 

In a few years the dominion-heart of America will be far inland, toward the west. Our future national capital may not be where thepresent one is. It is possible, nay likely, that in less than fiftyyears, it will migrate a thousand or two miles, will be re-founded, and every thing belonging to it made on a different plan, original, far more superb. The main social, political, spine-character of theStates will probably run along the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippirivers, and west and north of them, including Canada. Those regions, with the group of powerful brothers toward the Pacific, (destined tothe mastership of that sea and its countless paradises of islands, )will compact and settle the traits of America, with all the oldretain'd, but more expanded, grafted on newer, hardier, purelynative stock. A giant growth, composite from the rest, getting theircontribution, absorbing it, to make it more illustrious. From thenorth, intellect, the sun of things, also the idea of unswayablejustice, anchor amid the last, the wildest tempests. From the souththe living soul, the animus of good and bad, haughtily admitting nodemonstration but its own. While from the west itself comessolid personality, with blood and brawn, and the deep quality ofall-accepting fusion. 

Political democracy, as it exists and practically works in America, with all its threatening evils, supplies a training-school for makingfirst-class men. It is life's gymnasium, not of good only, but of all. We try often, though we fall back often. A brave delight, fit forfreedom's athletes, fills these arenas, and fully satisfies, outof the action in them, irrespective of success. Whatever we do notattain, we at any rate attain the experiences of the fight, thehardening of the strong campaign, and throb with currents of attemptat least. Time is ample. Let the victors come after us. Not fornothing does evil play its part among us. Judging from the mainportions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always injeopardy, peace walks amid hourly pitfalls, and of slavery, misery, meanness, the craft of tyrants and the credulity of the populace, insome of their protean forms, no voice can at any time say, They arenot. The clouds break a little, and the sun shines out--but soon andcertain the lowering darkness falls again, as if to last forever. Yetis there an immortal courage and prophecy in every sane soul thatcannot, must not, under any circumstances, capitulate. _Vive_, theattack--the perennial assault! _Vive_, the unpopular cause--the spiritthat audaciously aims--the never-abandon'd efforts, pursued the sameamid opposing proofs and precedents. 

Once, before the war, (alas! I dare not say how many times the moodhas come!) I, too, was fill'd with doubt and gloom. A foreigner, anacute and good man, had impressively said to me, that day--putting inform, indeed, my own observations: "I have travel'd much in the UnitedStates, and watch'd their politicians, and listen'd to the speechesof the candidates, and read the journals, and gone into the publichouses, and heard the unguarded talk of men. And I have found yourvaunted America honeycomb'd from top to toe with infidelism, even toitself and its own programme. I have mark'd the brazen hell-facesof secession and slavery gazing defiantly from all the windows anddoorways. I have everywhere found, primarily, thieves and scalliwagsarranging the nominations to offices, and sometimes filling theoffices themselves. I have found the north just as full of bad stuffas the south. Of the holders of public office in the Nation or theStates or their municipalities, I have found that not one in a hundredhas been chosen by any spontaneous selection of the outsiders, thepeople, but all have been nominated and put through by little or largecaucuses of the politicians, and have got in by corrupt rings andelectioneering, not capacity or desert. I have noticed how themillions of sturdy farmers and mechanics are thus the helplesssupple-jacks of comparatively few politicians. And I have noticed moreand more, the alarming spectacle of parties usurping the government, and openly and shamelessly wielding it for party purposes. "

Sad, serious, deep truths. Yet are there other, still deeper, amplyconfronting, dominating truths. Over those politicians and great andlittle rings, and over all their insolence and wiles, and over thepowerfulest parties, looms a power, too sluggish maybe, but everholding decisions and decrees in hand, ready, with stern process, to execute them as soon as plainly needed--and at times, indeed, summarily crushing to atoms the mightiest parties, even in the hour oftheir pride. 

In saner hours far different are the amounts of these things fromwhat, at first sight, they appear. Though it is no doubt important whois elected governor, mayor, or legislator, (and full of dismay whenincompetent or vile ones get elected, as they sometimes do, ) there areother, quieter contingencies, infinitely more important. Shams, &c. , will always be the show, like ocean's scum; enough, if waters deepand clear make up the rest. Enough, that while the piled embroider'dshoddy gaud and fraud spreads to the superficial eye, the hidden warpand weft are genuine, and will wear forever. Enough, in short, thatthe race, the land which could raise such as the late rebellion, couldalso put it down. The average man of a land at last only is important. He, in these States, remains immortal owner and boss, deriving gooduses, somehow, out of any sort of servant in office, even the basest;(certain universal requisites, and their settled regularity andprotection, being first secured, ) a nation like ours, in a sort ofgeological formation state, trying continually new experiments, choosing new delegations, is not served by the best men only, butsometimes more by those that provoke it--by the combats they arouse. Thus national rage, fury, discussions, &c. , better than content. Thus, also, the warning signals, invaluable for after times. 

What is more dramatic than the spectacle we have seen repeated, anddoubtless long shall see--the popular judgment taking the successfulcandidates on trial in the offices--standing off, as it were, andobserving them and their doings for a while, and always giving, finally, the fit, exactly due reward? I think, after all, thesublimest part of political history, and its culmination, is currentlyissuing from the American people. I know nothing grander, betterexercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, thetriumphant result of faith in human-kind, than a well-contestedAmerican national election. 

Then still the thought returns, (like the thread-passage inovertures, ) giving the key and echo to these pages. When I pass to andfro, different latitudes, different seasons, beholding the crowds ofthe great cities, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, New Orleans, Baltimore--when I mix withthese interminable swarms of alert, turbulent, good-natured, independent citizens, mechanics, clerks, young persons--at the ideaof this mass of men, so fresh and free, so loving and so proud, asingular awe falls upon me. I feel, with dejection and amazement, thatamong our geniuses and talented writers or speakers, few or none haveyet really spoken to this people, created a single image-making workfor them, or absorb'd the central spirit and the idiosyncrasies whichare theirs--and which, thus, in highest ranges, so far remain entirelyuncelebrated, unexpress'd. 

Dominion strong is the body's; dominion stronger is the mind's. Whathas fill'd, and fills to-day our intellect, our fancy, furnishingthe standards therein, is yet foreign. The great poems, Shakspereincluded, are poisonous to the idea of the pride and dignity ofthe common people, the life-blood of democracy. The models of ourliterature, as we get it from other lands, ultra-marine, have hadtheir birth in courts, and bask'd and grown in castle sunshine; allsmells of princes' favors. Of workers of a certain sort, we have, indeed, plenty, contributing after their kind; many elegant, manylearn'd, all complacent. But touch'd by the national test, or tried bythe standards of democratic personality, they wither to ashes. I say Ihave not seen a single writer, artist, lecturer, or what-not, thathas confronted the voiceless but ever erect and active, pervading, underlying will and typic aspiration of the land, in a spirit kindredto itself. Do you call those genteel little creatures American poets?Do you term that perpetual, pistareen, paste-pot work, American art, American drama, taste, verse? I think I hear, echoed as from somemountain-top afar in the west, the scornful laugh of the Genius ofthese States. 

Democracy, in silence, biding its time, ponders its own ideals, not ofliterature and art only--not of men only, but of women. The idea ofthe women of America, (extricated from this daze, this fossil andunhealthy air which hangs about the word _lady_, ) develop'd, raised tobecome the robust equals, workers, and, it may be, even practicaland political deciders with the men--greater than man, we may admit, through their divine maternity, always their towering, emblematicalattribute--but great, at any rate, as man, in all departments; or, rather, capable of being so, soon as they realize it, and can bringthemselves to give up toys and fictions, and launch forth, as men do, amid real, independent, stormy life. 

Then, as towards our thought's finale, (and, in that, overarching thetrue scholar's lesson, ) we have to say there can be no complete orepical presentation of democracy in the aggregate, or anything likeit, at this day, because its doctrines will only be effectuallyincarnated in any one branch, when, in all, their spirit is at theroot and centre. Far, far, indeed, stretch, in distance, our Vistas!How much is still to be disentangled, freed! How long it takes to makethis American world see that it is, in itself, the final authority andreliance!

Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, forpolitics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use therethat it may pass on and come to its flower and fruits in manners, inthe highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs--inreligion, literature, colleges, and schools--democracy in all publicand private life, and in the army and navy. [26] I have intimatedthat, as a paramount scheme, it has yet few or no full realizers andbelievers. I do not see, either, that it owes any serious thanks tonoted propagandists or champions, or has been essentially help'd, though often harm'd, by them. It has been and is carried on by all themoral forces, and by trade, finance, machinery, intercommunications, and, in fact, by all the developments of history, and can no more bestopp'd than the tides, or the earth in its orbit. Doubtless, also, itresides, crude and latent, well down in the hearts of the fair averageof the American-born people, mainly in the agricultural regions. Butit is not yet, there or anywhere, the fully-receiv'd, the fervid, theabsolute faith. 

I submit, therefore, that the fruition of democracy, on aught like agrand scale, resides altogether in the future. As, under any profoundand comprehensive view of the gorgeous-composite feudal world, we seein it, through the long ages and cycles of ages, the results of adeep, integral, human and divine principle, or fountain, from whichissued laws, ecclesia, manners, institutes, costumes, personalities, poems, (hitherto unequall'd, ) faithfully partaking of their source, and indeed only arising either to betoken it, or to furnish parts ofthat varied-flowing display, whose centre was one and absolute--so, long ages hence, shall the due historian or critic make at least anequal retrospect, an equal history for the democratic principle. Ittoo must be adorn'd, credited with its results--then, when it, withimperial power, through amplest time, has dominated mankind--has beenthe source and test of all the moral, esthetic, social, political, and religious expressions and institutes of the civilized world--hasbegotten them in spirit and in form, and has carried them to itsown unprecedented heights--has had, (it is possible, ) monastics andascetics, more numerous, more devout than the monks and priests ofall previous creeds--has sway'd the ages with a breadth and rectitudetallying Nature's own--has fashion'd, systematized, and triumphantlyfinish'd and carried out, in its own interest, and with unparallel'dsuccess, a new earth and a new man. 

Thus we presume to write, as it were, upon things that exist not, andtravel by maps yet unmade, and a blank. But the throes of birth areupon us; and we have something of this advantage in seasons of strongformations, doubts, suspense--for then the afflatus of such themeshaply may fall upon us, more or less; and then, hot from surroundingwar and revolution, our speech, though without polish'd coherence, anda failure by the standard called criticism, comes forth, real at leastas the lightnings. 

And may-be we, these days, have, too, our own reward--(for there areyet some, in all lands, worthy to be so encouraged. ) Though not forus the joy of entering at the last the conquer'd city--not ours thechance ever to see with our own eyes the peerless power and splendid_eclat_ of the democratic principle, arriv'd at meridian, filling theworld with effulgence and majesty far beyond those of past history'skings, or all dynastic sway--there is yet, to whoever is eligibleamong us, the prophetic vision, the joy of being toss'd in the braveturmoil of these times--the promulgation and the path, obedient, lowlyreverent to the voice, the gesture of the god, or holy ghost, whichothers see not, hear not--with the proud consciousness that amidwhatever clouds, seductions, or heart-wearying postponements, we havenever deserted, never despair'd, never abandon'd the faith. 

So much contributed, to be conn'd well, to help prepare and brace ouredifice, our plann'd Idea--we still proceed to give it in anotherof its aspects--perhaps the main, the high facade of all. For todemocracy, the leveler, the unyielding principle of the average, issurely join'd another principle, equally unyielding, closely trackingthe first, indispensable to it, opposite, (as the sexes are opposite, )and whose existence, confronting and ever modifying the other, oftenclashing, paradoxical, yet neither of highest avail without the other, plainly supplies to these grand cosmic politics of ours, and to thelaunch'd-forth mortal dangers of republicanism, to-day or any day, thecounterpart and offset whereby Nature restrains the deadly originalrelentlessness of all her first-class laws. This second principle isindividuality, the pride and centripetal isolation of a human being inhimself--identity--personalism. Whatever the name, its acceptance andthorough infusion through the organizations of political commonaltynow shooting Aurora-like about the world, are of utmost importance, asthe principle itself is needed for very life's sake. It forms, in asort, or is to form, the compensating balance-wheel of the successfulworking machinery of aggregate America. 

And, if we think of it, what does civilization itself rest upon--andwhat object has it, with its religions, arts, schools, &c. , but rich, luxuriant, varied personalism? To that, all bends; and it is becausetoward such result democracy alone, on anything like Nature's scale, breaks up the limitless fallows of humankind, and plants the seed, andgives fair play, that its claims now precede the rest. The literature, songs, esthetics, &c. , of a country are of importance principallybecause they furnish the materials and suggestions of personality forthe women and men of that country, and enforce them in a thousandeffective ways. [27] As the topmost claim of a strong consolidatingof the nationality of these States, is, that only by such powerfulcompaction can the separate States secure that full and free swingwithin their spheres, which is becoming to them, each after its kind, so will individuality, with unimpeded branchings, flourish best underimperial republican forms. 

Assuming Democracy to be at present in its embryo condition, and thatthe only large and satisfactory justification of it resides in thefuture, mainly through the copious production of perfect charactersamong the people, and through the advent of a sane and pervadingreligiousness, it is with regard to the atmosphere and spaciousnessfit for such characters, and of certain nutriment and cartoon-draftingsproper for them, and indicating them for New-World purposes, that Icontinue the present statement--an exploration, as of new ground, wherein, like other primitive surveyors, I must do the best I can, leaving it to those who come after me to do much better. (The service, in fact, if any, must be to break a sort of first path or track, nomatter how rude and ungeometrical. )

We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too oftenrepeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quiteunawaken'd, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempestsout of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is agreat word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because thathistory has yet to be enacted. It is, in some sort, younger brother ofanother great and often-used word, Nature, whose history also waitsunwritten. As I perceive, the tendencies of our day, in the States, (and I entirely respect them, ) are toward those vast and sweepingmovements, influences, moral and physical, of humanity, now and alwayscurrent over the planet, on the scale of the impulses of the elements. Then it is also good to reduce the whole matter to the considerationof a single self, a man, a woman, on permanent grounds. Even for thetreatment of the universal, in politics, metaphysics, or anything, sooner or later we come down to one single, solitary soul. 

There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises, independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shiningeternal. This is the thought of identity--yours for you, whoever youare, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, mostspiritual and vaguest of earth's dreams, yet hardest basic fact, andonly entrance to all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of thesignificant wonders of heaven and earth, (significant only because ofthe Me in the centre, ) creeds, conventions, fall away and become ofno account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of realvision, it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarfin the fable, 'once liberated and look'd upon, it expands over thewhole earth, and spreads to the roof of heaven. 

The quality of BEING, in the object's self, according to its owncentral idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto--notcriticism by other standards, and adjustments thereto--is the lessonof Nature. True, the full man wisely gathers, culls, absorbs; butif, engaged disproportionately in that, he slights or overlays theprecious idiocrasy and special nativity and intention that he is, theman's self, the main thing, is a failure, however wide his generalcultivation. Thus, in our times, refinement and delicatesse are notonly attended to sufficiently, but threaten to eat us up, like acancer. Already, the democratic genius watches, ill-pleased, thesetendencies. Provision for a little healthy rudeness, savage virtue, justification of what one has in one's self, whatever it is, isdemanded. Negative qualities, even deficiencies, would be a relief. Singleness and normal simplicity and separation, amid this more andmore complex, more and more artificialized state of society--howpensively we yearn for them! how we would welcome their return!

In some such direction, then--at any rate enough to preserve thebalance--we feel called upon to throw what weight we can, not forabsolute reasons, but current ones. To prune, gather, trim, conform, and ever cram and stuff, and be genteel and proper, is the pressureof our days. While aware that much can be said even in behalf of allthis, we perceive that we have not now to consider the question ofwhat is demanded to serve a half-starved and barbarous nation, or setof nations, but what is most applicable, most pertinent, for numerouscongeries of conventional, over-corpulent societies, already becomingstifled and rotten with flatulent, infidelistic literature, and politeconformity and art. In addition to establish'd sciences, we suggesta science as it were of healthy average personalism, onoriginal-universal grounds, the object of which should be to raise upand supply through the States a copious race of superb American menand women, cheerful, religious, ahead of any yet known. 

America has yet morally and artistically originated nothing. She seemssingularly unaware that the models of persons, books, manners, &c. , appropriate for former conditions and for European lands, are butexiles and exotics here. No current of her life, as shown on thesurfaces of what is authoritatively called her society, accepts orruns into social or esthetic democracy; but all the currents setsquarely against it. Never, in the Old World, was thoroughlyupholster'd exterior appearance and show, mental and other, builtentirely on the idea of caste, and on the sufficiency of mere outsideacquisition--never were glibness, verbal intellect, more the test, theemulation--more loftily elevated as head and sample--than they are onthe surface of our republican States this day. The writers of a timehint the mottoes of its gods. The word of the modern, say thesevoices, is the word Culture. 

We find ourselves abruptly in close quarters with the enemy. This wordCulture, or what it has come to represent, involves, by contrast, ourwhole theme, and has been, indeed, the spur, urging us to engagement. Certain questions arise. As now taught, accepted and carried out, arenot the processes of culture rapidly creating a class of superciliousinfidels, who believe in nothing? Shall a man lose himself incountless masses of adjustments, and be so shaped with reference tothis, that, and the other, that the simply good and healthy and braveparts of him are reduced and clipp'd away, like the bordering of boxin a garden? You can cultivate corn and roses and orchards--but whoshall cultivate the mountain peaks, the ocean, and the tumblinggorgeousness of the clouds? Lastly--is the readily-given reply thatculture only seeks to help, systematize, and put in attitude, theelements of fertility and power, a conclusive reply?

I do not so much object to the name, or word, but I should certainlyinsist, for the purposes of these States, on a radical change ofcategory, in the distribution of precedence. I should demand aprogramme of culture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or forthe parlors or lecture-rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the west, the working-men, the facts of farms and jack-planes andengineers, and of the broad range of the women also of the middle andworking strata, and with reference to the perfect equality of women, and of a grand and powerful motherhood. I should demand of thisprogramme or theory a scope generous enough to include the widesthuman area. It must have for its spinal meaning the formation of atypical personality of character, eligible to the uses of the highaverage of men--and _not_ restricted by conditions ineligible tothe masses. The best culture will always be that of the manlyand courageous instincts, and loving perceptions, and ofself-respect--aiming to form, over this continent, an idiocrasy ofuniversalism, which, true child of America, will bring joy to itsmother, returning to her in her own spirit, recruiting myriads ofoffspring, able, natural, perceptive, tolerant, devout believers inher, America, and with some definite instinct why and for what she hasarisen, most vast, most formidable of historic births, and is, now andhere, with wonderful step, journeying through Time. 

The problem, as it seems to me, presented to the New World, is, under permanent law and order, and after preserving cohesion, (ensemble-individuality, ) at all hazards, to vitalize man's free playof special Personalism, recognizing in it something that calls evermore to be consider'd, fed, and adopted as the substratum for the bestthat belongs to us, (government indeed is for it, ) including the newesthetics of our future. 

To formulate beyond this present vagueness--to help line and putbefore us the species, or a specimen of the species, of the democraticethnology of the future, is a work toward which the genius of ourland, with peculiar encouragement, invites her well-wishers. Alreadycertain limnings, more or less grotesque, more or less fading andwatery, have appear'd. We too, (repressing doubts and qualms, ) willtry our hand. 

Attempting, then, however crudely, a basic model or portrait ofpersonality for general use for the manliness of the States, (anddoubtless that is most useful which is most simple and comprehensivefor all, and toned low enough, ) we should prepare the canvas wellbeforehand. Parentage must consider itself in advance. (Will the timehasten when fatherhood and motherhood shall become a science--andthe noblest science?) To our model, a clear-blooded, strong-fibredphysique, is indispensable; the questions of food, drink, air, exercise, assimilation, digestion, can never be intermitted. Out ofthese we descry a well-begotten selfhood--in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring, full of adventure; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor sombre; of the bodily figure, the movementseasy, the complexion showing the best blood, somewhat flush'd, breastexpanded, an erect attitude, a voice whose sound outvies music, eyesof calm and steady gaze, yet capable also of flashing--and a generalpresence that holds its own in the company of the highest. (For it isnative personality, and that alone, that endows a man to stand beforepresidents or generals, or in any distinguish'd collection, with_aplomb_--and _not_ culture, or any knowledge or intellect whatever. )With regard to the mental-educational part of our model, enlargementof intellect, stores of cephalic knowledge, &c. , the concentrationthitherward of all the customs of our age, especially in America, isso overweening, and provides so fully for that part, that, importantand necessary as it is, it really needs nothing from us here--except, indeed, a phrase of warning and restraint. Manners, costumes, too, though important, we need not dwell upon here. Like beauty, grace ofmotion, &c. , they are results. Causes, original things, being attendedto, the right manners unerringly follow. Much is said, among artists, of "the grand style, " as if it were a thing by itself. When a man, artist or whoever, has health, pride, acuteness, noble aspirations, he has the motive-elements of the grandest style. The rest is butmanipulation, (yet that is no small matter. )

Leaving still unspecified several sterling parts of any model fit forthe future personality of America, I must not fail, again and ever, to pronounce myself on one, probably the least attended to in moderntimes--a hiatus, indeed, threatening its gloomiest consequences afterus. I mean the simple, unsophisticated Conscience, the primary moralelement. If I were asked to specify in what quarter lie the grounds ofdarkest dread, respecting the America of our hopes, I should have topoint to this particular. I should demand the invariable applicationto individuality, this day and any day, of that old, ever-trueplumb-rule of persons, eras, nations. Our triumphant modern civilizee, with his all-schooling and his wondrous appliances, will still showhimself but an amputation while this deficiency remains. Beyond, (assuming a more hopeful tone, ) the vertebration of the manly andwomanly personalism of our western world, can only be, and is, indeed, to be, (I hope, ) its all-penetrating Religiousness. 

The ripeness of Religion is doubtless to be looked for in this fieldof individuality, and is a result that no organization or church canever achieve. As history is poorly retain'd by what the technists callhistory, and is not given out from their pages, except the learner hasin himself the sense of the well-wrapt, never yet written, perhapsimpossible to be written, history--so Religion, although casuallyarrested, and, after a fashion, preserv'd in the churches and creeds, does not depend at all upon them, but is a part of the identifiedsoul, which, when greatest, knows not bibles in the old way, but innew ways--the identified soul, which can really confront Religion whenit extricates itself entirely from the churches, and not before. 

Personalism fuses this, and favors it. I should say, indeed, that onlyin the perfect uncontamination and solitariness of individuality maythe spirituality of religion positively come forth at all. Only here, and on such terms, the meditation, the devout ecstasy, the soaringflight. Only here, communion with the mysteries, the eternal problems, whence? whither? Alone, and identity, and the mood--and the soulemerges, and all statements, churches, sermons, melt away like vapors. Alone, and silent thought and awe, and aspiration--and then theinterior consciousness, like a hitherto unseen inscription, in magicink, beams out its wondrous lines to the sense. Bibles may convey, andpriests expound, but it is exclusively for the noiseless operation ofone's isolated Self, to enter the pure ether of veneration, reach thedivine levels, and commune with the unutterable. 

To practically enter into politics is an important part of Americanpersonalism. To every young man, north and south, earnestly studyingthese things, I should here, as an offset to what I have said informer pages, now also say, that may be to views of very largestscope, after all, perhaps the political, (perhaps the literary andsociological, ) America goes best about its development its ownway--sometimes, to temporary sight, appaling enough. It is the fashionamong dillettants and fops (perhaps I myself am not guiltless, ) todecry the whole formulation of the active politics of America, asbeyond redemption, and to be carefully kept away from. See you thatyou do not fall into this error. America, it may be, is doing verywell upon the whole, notwithstanding these antics of the parties andtheir leaders, these half-brain'd nominees, the many ignorant ballots, and many elected failures and blatherers. It is the dillettants, andall who shirk their duty, who are not doing well. As for you, I adviseyou to enter more strongly yet into politics. I advise every young manto do so. Always inform yourself; always do the best you can; alwaysvote. Disengage yourself from parties. They have been useful, andto some extent remain so; but the floating, uncommitted electors, farmers, clerks, mechanics, the masters of parties--watching aloof, inclining victory this side or that side--such are the ones mostneeded, present and future. For America, if eligible at all todownfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without; for Isee clearly that the combined foreign world could not beat her down. But these savage, wolfish parties alarm me. Owning no law but theirown will, more and more combative, less and less tolerant of the ideaof ensemble and of equal brotherhood, the perfect equality of theStates, the ever-overarching American ideas, it behooves you to conveyyourself implicitly to no party, nor submit blindly to their dictators, but steadily hold yourself judge and master over all of them. 

So much, (hastily toss'd together, and leaving far more unsaid, ) foran ideal, or intimations of an ideal, toward American manhood. But theother sex, in our land, requires at least a basis of suggestion. 

I have seen a young American woman, one of a large family ofdaughters, who, some years since, migrated from her meagre countryhome to one of the northern cities, to gain her own support. She soonbecame an expert seamstress, but finding the employment too confiningfor health and comfort, she went boldly to work for others, tohouse-keep, cook, clean, &c. After trying several places, she fellupon one where she was suited. She has told me that she finds nothingdegrading in her position; it is not inconsistent with personaldignity, self-respect, and the respect of others. She confers benefitsand receives them. She has good health; her presence itself ishealthy and bracing; her character is unstain'd; she has made herselfunderstood, and preserves her independence, and has been able to helpher parents, and educate and get places for her sisters; and hercourse of life is not without opportunities for mental improvement, and of much quiet, uncosting happiness and love. 

I have seen another woman who, from taste and necessity conjoin'd, hasgone into practical affairs, carries on a mechanical business, partlyworks at it herself, dashes out more and more into real hardy life, isnot abash'd by the coarseness of the contact, knows how to be firm andsilent at the same time, holds her own with unvarying coolness anddecorum, and will compare, any day, with superior carpenters, farmers, and even boatmen and drivers. For all that, she has not lost thecharm of the womanly nature, but preserves and bears it fully, thoughthrough such rugged presentation. 

Then there is the wife of a mechanic, mother of two children, a womanof merely passable English education, but of fine wit, with all hersex's grace and intuitions, who exhibits, indeed, such a noble femalepersonality, that I am fain to record it here. Never abnegating herown proper independence, but always genially preserving it, and whatbelongs to it--cooking, washing, child-nursing, house-tending--shebeams sunshine out of all these duties, and makes them illustrious. Physiologically sweet and sound, loving work, practical, she yet knowsthat there are intervals, however few, devoted to recreation, music, leisure, hospitality--and affords such intervals. Whatever she does, and wherever she is, that charm, that indescribable perfume of genuinewomanhood attends her, goes with her, exhales from her, which belongsof right to all the sex, and is, or ought to be, the invariableatmosphere and common aureola of old as well as young. 

My dear mother once described to me a resplendent person, down on LongIsland, whom she knew in early days. She was known by the name of thePeacemaker. She was well toward eighty years old, of happy and sunnytemperament, had always lived on a farm, and was very neighborly, sensible and discreet, an invariable and welcom'd favorite, especiallywith young married women. She had numerous children and grandchildren. She was uneducated, but possess'd a native dignity. She had come tobe a tacitly agreed upon domestic regulator, judge, settler ofdifficulties, shepherdess, and reconciler in the land. She was asight to draw near and look upon, with her large figure, her profusesnow-white hair, (uncoil'd by any head-dress or cap, ) dark eyes, clearcomplexion, sweet breath, and peculiar personal magnetism. 

The foregoing portraits, I admit, are frightfully out of line fromthese imported models of womanly personality--the stock femininecharacters of the current novelists, or of the foreign court poems, (Ophelias, Enids, princesses, or ladies of one thing or another, )which fill the envying dreams of so many poor girls, and are acceptedby our men, too, as supreme ideals of feminine excellence to be soughtafter. But I present mine just for a change. 

Then there are mutterings, (we will not now stop to heed them here, but they must be heeded, ) of something more revolutionary. The day iscoming when the deep questions of woman's entrance amid the arenas ofpractical life, politics, the suffrage, &c. , will not only be arguedall around us, but may be put to decision, and real experiment. 

Of course, in these States, for both man and woman, we must entirelyrecast the types of highest personality from what the oriental, feudal, ecclesiastical worlds bequeath us, and which yet possess theimaginative and esthetic fields of the United States, pictorial andmelodramatic, not without use as studies, but making sad work, andforming a strange anachronism upon the scenes and exigencies aroundus. Of course, the old undying elements remain. The task is, tosuccessfully adjust them to new combinations, our own days. Nor isthis so incredible. I can conceive a community, to-day and here, inwhich, on a sufficient scale, the perfect personalities, without noisemeet; say in some pleasant western settlement or town, where a coupleof hundred best men and women, of ordinary worldly status, have byluck been drawn together, with nothing extra of genius or wealth, but virtuous, chaste, industrious, cheerful, resolute, friendly anddevout. I can conceive such a community organized in running order, powers judiciously delegated--farming, building, trade, courts, mails, schools, elections, all attended to; and then the rest of life, themain thing, freely branching and blossoming in each individual, andbearing golden fruit. I can see there, in every young and old man, after his kind, and in every woman after hers, a true personality, develop'd, exercised proportionately in body, mind, and spirit. I canimagine this case as one not necessarily rare or difficult, but inbuoyant accordance with the municipal and general requirements of ourtimes. And I can realize in it the culmination of something betterthan any stereotyped _eclat_ of history or poems. Perhaps, unsung, undramatized, unput in essays or biographies--perhaps even some suchcommunity already exists, in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, or somewhere, practically fulfilling itself, and thus outvying, in cheapest vulgarlife, all that has been hitherto shown in best ideal pictures. 

In short, and to sum up, America, betaking herself to formativeaction, (as it is about time for more solid achievement, and lesswindy promise, ) must, for her purposes, cease to recognize a theory ofcharacter grown of feudal aristocracies, or form'd by merely literarystandards, or from any ultramarine, full-dress formulas of culture, polish, caste, &c. , and must sternly promulgate her own new standard, yet old enough, and accepting the old, the perennial elements, andcombining them into groups, unities, appropriate to the modern, thedemocratic, the west, and to the practical occasions and needs of ourown cities, and of the agricultural regions. Ever the most precious inthe common. Ever the fresh breeze of field, or hill, or lake, is morethan any palpitation of fans, though of ivory, and redolent withperfume; and the air is more than the costliest perfumes. 

And now, for fear of mistake, we may not intermit to beg ourabsolution from all that genuinely is, or goes along with, evenCulture. Pardon us, venerable shade! if we have seem'd to speaklightly of your office. The whole civilization of the earth, we know, is yours, with all the glory and the light thereof. It is, indeed, inyour own spirit, and seeking to tally the loftiest teachings of it, that we aim these poor utterances. For you, too, mighty minister! knowthat there is something greater than you, namely, the fresh, eternalqualities of Being. From them, and by them, as you, at your best, wetoo evoke the last, the needed help, to vitalize our country and ourdays. Thus we pronounce not so much against the principle of culture;we only supervise it, and promulge along with it, as deep, perhaps adeeper, principle. As we have shown the New World including in itselfthe all-leveling aggregate of democracy, we show it also including theall-varied, all-permitting, all-free theorem of individuality, anderecting therefor a lofty and hitherto unoccupied framework orplatform, broad enough for all, eligible to every farmer andmechanic--to the female equally with the male--a towering selfhood, not physically perfect only--not satisfied with the mere mind's andlearning's stores, but religious, possessing the idea of the infinite, (rudder and compass sure amid this troublous voyage, o'er darkest, wildest wave, through stormiest wind, of man's or nation'sprogress)--realizing, above the rest, that known humanity, in deepestsense, is fair adhesion to itself, for purposes beyond--and that, finally, the personality of mortal life is most important withreference to the immortal, the unknown, the spiritual, the onlypermanently real, which as the ocean waits for and receives therivers, waits for us each and all. 

Much is there, yet, demanding line and outline in our Vistas, not onlyon these topics, but others quite unwritten. Indeed, we could talk thematter, and expand it, through lifetime. But it is necessary to returnto our original premises. In view of them, we have again pointedly toconfess that all the objective grandeurs of the world, for highestpurposes, yield themselves up, and depend on mentality alone. Here, and here only, all balances, all rests. For the mind, which alonebuilds the permanent edifice, haughtily builds it to itself. By it, with what follows it, are convey'd to mortal sense the culminations ofthe materialistic, the known, and a prophecy of the unknown. Totake expression, to incarnate, to endow a literature with grand andarchetypal models--to fill with pride and love the utmost capacity, and to achieve spiritual meanings, and suggest the future--these, andthese only, satisfy the soul. We must not say one word against realmaterials; but the wise know that they do not become real till touchedby emotions, the mind. Did we call the latter imponderable? Ah, let usrather proclaim that the slightest song-tune, the countless ephemeraof passions arous'd by orators and tale-tellers, are more dense, moreweighty than the engines there in the great factories, or the graniteblocks in their foundations. 

Approaching thus the momentous spaces, and considering with referenceto a new and greater personalism, the needs and possibilities ofAmerican imaginative literature, through the medium-light of what wehave already broach'd, it will at once be appreciated that a vastgulf of difference separates the present accepted condition of thesespaces, inclusive of what is floating in them, from any conditionadjusted to, or fit for, the world, the America, there sought to beindicated, and the copious races of complete men and women, alongthese Vistas crudely outlined. It is, in some sort, no less adifference than lies between that long-continued nebular state andvagueness of the astronomical worlds, compared with the subsequentstate, the definitely-form'd worlds themselves, duly compacted, clustering in systems, hung up there, chandeliers of the universe, beholding and mutually lit by each other's lights, serving for groundof all substantial foothold, all vulgar uses--yet serving still moreas an undying chain and echelon of spiritual proofs and shows. Aboundless field to fill! A new creation, with needed orbic workslaunch'd forth, to revolve in free and lawful circuits--to move, self-poised, through the ether, and shine like heaven's own suns! Withsuch, and nothing less, we suggest that New World literature, fit torise upon, cohere, and signalize in time, these States. 

What, however, do we more definitely mean by New World literature? Arewe not doing well enough here already? Are not the United States thisday busily using, working, more printer's type, more presses, thanany other country? uttering and absorbing more publications than anyother? Do not our publishers fatten quicker and deeper? (helpingthemselves, under shelter of a delusive and sneaking law, or ratherabsence of law, to most of their forage, poetical, pictorial, historical, romantic, even comic, without money and without price--andfiercely resisting the timidest proposal to pay for it. ) Many willcome under this delusion--but my purpose is to dispel it. I say thata nation may hold and circulate rivers and oceans of very readableprint, journals, magazines, novels, library-books, "poetry, " &c. --suchas the States to-day possess and circulate--of unquestionable aid andvalue--hundreds of new volumes annually composed and brought outhere, respectable enough, indeed unsurpass'd in smartness anderudition--with further hundreds, or rather millions, (as by freeforage or theft aforemention'd, ) also thrown into the market--and yet, all the while, the said nation, land, strictly speaking, may possessno literature at all. 

Repeating our inquiry, what, then, do we mean by real literature?especially the democratic literature of the future? Hard questions tomeet. The clues are inferential, and turn us to the past. At best, wecan only offer suggestions, comparisons, circuits. 

It must still be reiterated, as, for the purpose of these memoranda, the deep lesson of history and time, that all else in thecontributions of a nation or age, through its politics, materials, heroic personalities, military eclat, &c. , remains crude, and defers, in any close and thorough-going estimate, until vitalized by national, original archetypes in literature. They only put the nation in form, finally tell anything--prove, complete anything--perpetuate anything. Without doubt, some of the richest and most powerful and populouscommunities of the antique world, and some of the grandestpersonalities and events, have, to after and present times, leftthemselves entirely unbequeath'd. Doubtless, greater than any thathave come down to us, were among those lands, heroisms, persons, thathave not come down to us at all, even by name, date, orlocation. Others have arrived safely, as from voyages over wide, century-stretching seas. The little ships, the miracles that havebuoy'd them, and by incredible chances safely convey'd them, (or thebest of them, their meaning and essence, ) overlong wastes, darkness, lethargy, ignorance, &c. , have been a few inscriptions--a fewimmortal compositions, small in size, yet compassing what measurelessvalues of reminiscence, contemporary portraitures, manners, idioms andbeliefs, with deepest inference, hint and thought, to tie and touchforever the old, new body, and the old, new soul! These! and stillthese! bearing the freight so dear--dearer than pride--dearer thanlove. All the best experience of humanity, folded, saved, freightedto us here. Some of these tiny ships we call Old and New Testament, Homer, Eschylus, Plato, Juvenal, &c. Precious minims! I think, if wewere forced to choose, rather than have you, and the likes of you, andwhat belongs to, and has grown of you, blotted out and gone, we couldbetter afford, appaling as that would be, to lose all actual ships, this day fasten'd by wharf, or floating on wave, and see them, withall their cargoes, scuttled and sent to the bottom. 

Gather'd by geniuses of city, race or age, and put by them in highestof art's forms, namely, the literary form, the peculiar combinationsand the outshows of that city, age, or race, its particular modes ofthe universal attributes and passions, its faiths, heroes, lovers andgods, wars, traditions, struggles, crimes, emotions, joys, (or thesubtle spirit of these, ) having been pass'd on to us to illumine ourown selfhood, and its experiences--what they supply, indispensableand highest, if taken away, nothing else in all the world's boundlessstore-houses could make up to us, or ever again return. 

For us, along the great highways of time, those monuments stand--those forms of majesty and beauty. For us those beacons burn throughall the nights. Unknown Egyptians, graving hieroglyphs; Hindus, withhymn and apothegm and endless epic; Hebrew prophet, with spirituality, as in flashes of lightning, conscience like red-hot iron, plaintivesongs and screams of vengeance for tyrannies and enslavement; Christ, with bent head, brooding love and peace, like a dove; Greek, creatingeternal shapes of physical and esthetic proportion; Roman, lord ofsatire, the sword, and the codex;--of the figures, some far off andveil'd, others nearer and visible; Dante, stalking with lean form, nothing but fibre, not a grain of superfluous flesh; Angelo, and thegreat painters, architects, musicians; rich Shakspere, luxuriant asthe sun, artist and singer of feudalism in its sunset, with all thegorgeous colors, owner thereof, and using them at will; and so to suchas German Kant and Hegel, where they, though near us, leaping over theages, sit again, impassive, imperturbable, like the Egyptian gods. Ofthese, and the like of these, is it too much, indeed, to return to ourfavorite figure, and view them as orbs and systems of orbs, moving infree paths in the spaces of that other heaven, the kosmic intellect, the soul?

Ye powerful and resplendent ones! ye were, in your atmospheres, grown not for America, but rather for her foes, the feudal and theold--while our genius is democratic and modern. Yet could ye, indeed, but breathe your breath of life into our New World's nostrils--not toenslave us, as now, but, for our needs, to breed a spirit like yourown--perhaps, (dare we to say it?) to dominate, even destroy, what youyourselves have left! On your plane, and no less, but even higher andwider, must we mete and measure for to-day and here. I demand races oforbic bards, with unconditional uncompromising sway. Come forth, sweetdemocratic despots of the west!

By points like these we, in reflection, token what we mean by anyland's or people's genuine literature. And thus compared and tested, judging amid the influence of loftiest products only, what do ourcurrent copious fields of print, covering in manifold forms, theUnited States, better, for an analogy, present, than, as in certainregions of the sea, those spreading, undulating masses of squid, through which the whale swimming, with head half out, feeds?

Not but that doubtless our current so-called literature, (like anendless supply of small coin, ) performs a certain service, and may-be, too, the service needed for the time, (the preparation-service, aschildren learn to spell. ) Everybody reads, and truly nearly everybodywrites, either books, or for the magazines or journals. The matter hasmagnitude, too, after a sort. But is it really advancing? or, has itadvanced for a long while? There is something impressive about thehuge editions of the dailies and weeklies, the mountain-stacks ofwhite paper piled in the press-vaults, and the proud, crashing, ten-cylinder presses, which I can stand and watch any time by the halfhour. Then, (though the States in the field of imagination present nota single first-class work, not a single great literatus, ) the mainobjects, to amuse, to titillate, to pass away time, to circulate thenews, and rumors of news, to rhyme and read rhyme, are yet attain'd, and on a scale of infinity. To-day, in books, in the rivalry ofwriters, especially novelists, success, (so-call'd, ) is for him orher who strikes the mean flat average, the sensational appetite forstimulus, incident, persiflage, &c. , and depicts, to the commoncalibre, sensual, exterior life. To such, or the luckiest of them, aswe see, the audiences are limitless and profitable; but they ceasepresently. While this day, or any day, to workmen portraying interioror spiritual life, the audiences were limited, and often laggard--butthey last forever. 

Compared with the past, our modern science soars, and our journalsserve--but ideal and even ordinary romantic literature, does not, I think, substantially advance. Behold the prolific brood of thecontemporary novel, magazine-tale, theatre-play, &c. The same endlessthread of tangled and superlative love-story, inherited, apparentlyfrom the Amadises and Palmerins of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuriesover there in Europe. The costumes and associations brought down todate, the seasoning hotter and more varied, the dragons and ogresleft out--but the _thing_, I should say, has not advanced--is just assensational, just as strain'd--remains about the same, nor more, norless. 

What is the reason our time, our lands, that we see no fresh localcourage, sanity, of our own--the Mississippi, stalwart Western men, real mental and physical facts, Southerners, &c. , in the body of ourliterature? especially the poetic part of it. But always, instead, aparcel of dandies and ennuyees, dapper little gentlemen from abroad, who flood us with their thin sentiment of parlors, parasols, piano-songs, tinkling rhymes, the five-hundredth importation--orwhimpering and crying about something, chasing one aborted conceitafter another, and forever occupied in dyspeptic amours with dyspepticwomen. While, current and novel, the grandest events and revolutionsand stormiest passions of history, are crossing to-day withunparallel'd rapidity and magnificence over the stages of our own andall the continents, offering new materials, opening new vistas, withlargest needs, inviting the daring launching forth of conceptions inliterature, inspired by them, soaring in highest regions, serving artin its highest (which is only the other name for serving God, andserving humanity, ) where is the man of letters, where is the book, with any nobler aim than to follow in the old track, repeat whathas been said before--and, as its utmost triumph, sell well, and beerudite or elegant?

Mark the roads, the processes, through which these States havearrived, standing easy, henceforth ever-equal, ever-compact in theirrange to-day. European adventures? the most antique? Asiatic orAfrican? old history--miracles--romances? Rather our own unquestion'dfacts. They hasten, incredible, blazing bright as fire. From thedeeds and days of Columbus down to the present, and including thepresent--and especially the late secession war--when I con them, Ifeel, every leaf, like stopping to see if I have not made a mistake, and fall'n on the splendid figments of some dream. But it is no dream. We stand, live, move, in the huge flow of our age s materialism--inits spirituality. We have had founded for us the most positive oflands. The founders have pass'd to other spheres--but what are theseterrible duties they have left us?

Their politics the United States have, in my opinion, with all theirfaults, already substantially establish'd, for good, on their ownnative, sound, long-vista'd principles, never to be overturn'd, offering a sure basis for all the rest. With that, their futurereligious forms sociology, literature, teachers, schools, costumes, &c. , are of course to make a compact whole, uniform, on tallyingprinciples. For how can we remain, divided, contradicting ourselves, this way?[28] I say we can only attain harmony and stability byconsulting ensemble and the ethic purports, and faithfully buildingupon them. For the New World, indeed, after two grand stages ofpreparation-strata, I perceive that now a third stage, being readyfor, (and without which the other two were useless, ) with unmistakablesigns appears. The First stage was the planning and putting on recordthe political foundation rights of immense masses of people--indeedall people--in the organization of republican National, State, andmunicipal governments, all constructed with reference to each, andeach to all. This is the American programme, not for classes, but foruniversal man, and is embodied in the compacts of the Declaration ofIndependence, and, as it began and has now grown, with its amendments, the Federal Constitution--and in the State governments, with all theirinteriors, and with general suffrage; those having the sense notonly of what is in themselves, but that their certain several thingsstarted, planted, hundreds of others in the same direction duly ariseand follow. The Second stage relates to material prosperity, wealth, produce, labor-saving machines, iron, cotton, local, State andcontinental railways, intercommunication and trade with all lands, steamships, mining, general employment, organization of great cities, cheap appliances for comfort, numberless technical schools, books, newspapers, a currency for money circulation, &c. The Third stage, rising out of the previous ones, to make them and all illustrious, I, now, for one, promulge, announcing a native expression-spirit, getting into form, adult, and through mentality, for these States, self-contain'd, different from others, more expansive, more richand free, to be evidenced by original authors and poets to come, byAmerican personalities, plenty of them, male and female, traversingthe States, none excepted--and by native superber tableaux and growthsof language, songs, operas, orations, lectures, architecture--and bya sublime and serious Religious Democracy sternly taking command, dissolving the old, sloughing off surfaces, and from its own interiorand vital principles, reconstructing, democratizing society. 

For America, type of progress, and of essential faith in man, aboveall his errors and wickedness--few suspect how deep, how deep itreally strikes. The world evidently supposes, and we have evidentlysupposed so too, that the States are merely to achieve the equalfranchise, an elective government--to inaugurate the respectabilityof labor, and become a nation of practical operatives, law-abiding, orderly and well off. Yes, those are indeed parts of the task ofAmerica; but they not only do not exhaust the progressive conception, but rather arise, teeming with it, as the mediums of deeper, higherprogress. Daughter of a physical revolution--mother of the truerevolutions, which are of the interior life, and of the arts. For solong as the spirit is not changed, any change of appearance is of noavail. 

The old men, I remember as a boy, were always talking of Americanindependence. What is independence? Freedom from all laws or bondsexcept those of one's own being, control'd by the universal ones. To lands, to man, to woman, what is there at last to each, but theinherent soul, nativity, idiocrasy, free, highest-poised, soaring itsown flight, following out itself?

At present, these States, in their theology and social standards, (ofgreater importance than their political institutions, ) are entirelyheld possession of by foreign lands. We see the sons and daughtersof the New World, ignorant of its genius, not yet inaugurating thenative, the universal, and the near, still importing the distant, thepartial, and the dead. We see London, Paris, Italy--not original, superb, as where they belong--but second-hand here, where they do notbelong. We see the shreds of Hebrews, Romans, Greeks; but where, onher own soil, do we see, in any faithful, highest, proud expression, America herself? I sometimes question whether she has a corner in herown house. 

Not but that in one sense, and a very grand one, good theology, goodart, or good literature, has certain features shared in common. Thecombination fraternizes, ties the races--is, in many particulars, under laws applicable indifferently to all, irrespective of climateor date, and, from whatever source, appeals to emotions, pride, love, spirituality, common to human kind. Nevertheless, they touch a manclosest, (perhaps only actually touch him, ) even in these, intheir expression through autochthonic lights and shades, flavors, fondnesses, aversions, specific incidents, illustrations, out of hisown nationality, geography, surroundings, antecedents, &c. The spiritand the form are one, and depend far more on association, identity andplace, than is supposed. Subtly interwoven with the materialityand personality of a land, a race--Teuton, Turk, Californian, orwhat-not--there is always something--I can hardly tell what itis--history but describes the results of it--it is the same as theuntellable look of some human faces. Nature, too, in her stolid forms, is full of it--but to most it is there a secret. This something isrooted in the invisible roots, the profoundest meanings of that place, race, or nationality; and to absorb and again effuse it, utteringwords and products as from its midst, and carrying it into highestregions, is the work, or a main part of the work, of any country'strue author, poet, historian, lecturer, and perhaps even priest andphilosoph. Here, and here only, are the foundations for our reallyvaluable and permanent verse, drama, &c. 

But at present, (judged by any higher scale than that which finds thechief ends of existence to be to feverishly make money during one-halfof it, and by some "amusement, " or perhaps foreign travel, flippantlykill time, the other half, ) and consider'd with reference to purposesof patriotism, health, a noble personality, religion, and thedemocratic adjustments, all these swarms of poems, literary magazines, dramatic plays, resultant so far from American intellect, andthe formation of our best ideas, are useless and a mockery. Theystrengthen and nourish no one, express nothing characteristic, givedecision and purpose to no one, and suffice only the lowest level ofvacant minds. 

Of what is called the drama, or dramatic presentation in the UnitedStates, as now put forth at the theatres, I should say it deserves tobe treated with the same gravity, and on a par with the questions ofornamental confectionery at public dinners, or the arrangement ofcurtains and hangings in a ball-room--nor more, nor less. Of theother, I will not insult the reader's intelligence, (once reallyentering into the atmosphere of these Vistas, ) by supposing itnecessary to show, in detail, why the copious dribble, either of ourlittle or well-known rhymesters, does not fulfil, in any respect, theneeds and august occasions of this land. America demands a poetry thatis bold, modern, and all-surrounding and kosmical, as she is herself. It must in no respect ignore science or the modern, but inspire itselfwith science and the modern. It must bend its vision toward thefuture, more than the past. Like America, it must extricate itselffrom even the greatest models of the past, and, while courteous tothem, must have entire faith in itself, and the products of its owndemocratic spirit only. Like her, it must place in the van, and holdup at all hazards, the banner of the divine pride of man in himself, (the radical foundation of the new religion. ) Long enough have thePeople been listening to poems in which common humanity, deferential, bends low, humiliated, acknowledging superiors. But America listens tono such poems. Erect, inflated, and fully self-esteeming be the chant;and then America will listen with pleased ears. 

Nor may the genuine gold, the gems, when brought to light at last, beprobably usher'd forth from any of the quarters currently counted on. To-day, doubtless, the infant genius of American poetic expression, (eluding those highly-refined imported and gilt-edged themes, and sentimental and butterfly flights, pleasant to orthodoxpublishers--causing tender spasms in the coteries, and warranted notto chafe the sensitive cuticle of the most exquisitely artificialgossamer delicacy, ) lies sleeping far away, happily unrecognized anduninjur'd by the coteries, the art-writers, the talkers and critics ofthe saloons, or the lecturers in the colleges--lies sleeping, aside, unrecking itself, in some western idiom, or native Michigan orTennessee repartee, or stumpspeech--or in Kentucky or Georgia, orthe Carolinas--or in some slang or local song or allusion of theManhattan, Boston, Philadelphia or Baltimore mechanic--or up in theMaine woods--or off in the hut of the California miner, or crossingthe Rocky mountains, or along the Pacific railroad--or on the breastsof the young farmers of the northwest, or Canada, or boatmen ofthe lakes. Rude and coarse nursing-beds, these; but only from suchbeginnings and stocks, indigenous here, may haply arrive, be grafted, and sprout, in time, flowers of genuine American aroma, and fruitstruly and fully our own. 

I say it were a standing disgrace to these States--I say it were adisgrace to any nation, distinguish'd above others by the variety andvastness of its territories, its materials, its inventive activity, and the splendid practicality of its people, not to rise and soarabove others also in its original styles in literature and art, andits own supply of intellectual and esthetic masterpieces, archetypal, and consistent with itself. I know not a land except ours that hasnot, to some extent, however small, made its title clear. The Scotchhave their born ballads, subtly expressing their past and present, andexpressing character. The Irish have theirs. England, Italy, France, Spain, theirs. What has America? With exhaustless mines of the richestore of epic, lyric, tale, tune, picture, etc. , in the Four Years' War;with, indeed, I sometimes think, the richest masses of material everafforded a nation, more variegated, and on a larger scale--the firstsign of proportionate, native, imaginative Soul, and first-class worksto match, is, (I cannot too often repeat, ) so far wanting. 

Long ere the second centennial arrives, there will be some forty tofifty great States, among them Canada and Cuba. When the presentcentury closes, our population will be sixty or seventy millions. ThePacific will be ours, and the Atlantic mainly ours. There will bedaily electric communication with every part of the globe. What anage! What a land! Where, elsewhere, one so great? The individualityof one nation must then, as always, lead the world. Can there be anydoubt who the leader ought to be? Bear in mind, though, that nothingless than the mightiest original non-subordinated SOUL has everreally, gloriously led, or ever can lead. (This Soul--its other name, in these Vistas, is LITERATURE. )

In fond fancy leaping those hundred years ahead, let us surveyAmerica's works, poems, philosophies, fulfilling prophecies, andgiving form and decision to best ideals. Much that is now undream'dof, we might then perhaps see establish'd, luxuriantly cropping forth, richness, vigor of letters and of artistic expression, in whoseproducts character will be a main requirement, and not merelyerudition or elegance. 

Intense and loving comradeship, the personal and passionate attachmentof man to man--which, hard to define, underlies the lessons and idealsof the profound saviours of every land and age, and which seems topromise, when thoroughly develop'd, cultivated and recognized inmanners and literature, the most substantial hope and safety of thefuture of these States, will then be fully express'd. [29]

A strong fibred joyousness and faith, and the sense of health _alfresco_, may well enter into the preparation of future noble Americanauthorship. Part of the test of a great literatus shall be the absencein him of the idea of the covert, the lurid, the maleficent, thedevil, the grim estimates inherited from the Puritans, hell, naturaldepravity, and the like. The great literatus will be known, among therest, by his cheerful simplicity, his adherence to natural standards, his limitless faith in God, his reverence, and by the absence in himof doubt, ennui, burlesque, persiflage, or any strain'd and temporaryfashion. 

Nor must I fail, again and yet again, to clinch, reiterate moreplainly still, (O that indeed such survey as we fancy, may show intime this part completed also!) the lofty aim, surely the proudest andthe purest, in whose service the future literatus, of whatever field, may gladly labor. As we have intimated, offsetting the materialcivilization of our race, our nationality, its wealth, territories, factories, population, products, trade, and military and navalstrength, and breathing breath of life into all these, and more, mustbe its moral civilization--the formulation, expression, and aidancywhereof, is the very highest height of literature. The climax of thisloftiest range of civilization, rising above all the gorgeous showsand results of wealth, intellect, power, and art, as such--above eventheology and religious fervor--is to be its development, from theeternal bases, and the fit expression, of absolute Conscience, moralsoundness, Justice. Even in religious fervor there is a touch ofanimal heat. But moral conscientiousness, crystalline, without flaw, not Godlike only, entirely human, awes and enchants forever. Great isemotional love, even in the order of the rational universe. But, if wemust make gradations, I am clear there is something greater. Power, love, veneration, products, genius, esthetics, tried by subtlestcomparisons, analyses, and in serenest moods, somewhere fail, somehowbecome vain. Then noiseless, withflowing steps, the lord, the sun, thelast ideal comes. By the names right, justice, truth, we suggest, butdo not describe it. To the world of men it remains a dream, an idea asthey call it. But no dream is it to the wise--but the proudest, almostonly solid, lasting thing of all. Its analogy in the material universeis what holds together this world, and every object upon it, andcarries its dynamics on forever sure and safe. Its lack, and thepersistent shirking of it, as in life, sociology, literature, politics, business, and even sermonizing, these times, or any times, still leavesthe abysm, the mortal flaw and smutch, mocking civilization to-day, with all its unquestion'd triumphs, and all the civilization so farknown. [30]

Present literature, while magnificently fulfilling certain populardemands, with plenteous knowledge and verbal smartness, is profoundlysophisticated, insane, and its very joy is morbid. It needs tally andexpress Nature, and the spirit of Nature, and to know and obey thestandards. I say the question of Nature, largely consider'd, involvesthe questions of the esthetic, the emotional, and the religious--andinvolves happiness. A fitly born and bred race, growing up in rightconditions of out-door as much as in-door harmony, activity anddevelopment, would probably, from and in those conditions, find itenough merely _to live_--and would, in their relations to the sky, air, water, trees, &c. , and to the countless common shows, and inthe fact of life itself, discover and achieve happiness--with Beingsuffused night and day by wholesome extasy, surpassing all thepleasures that wealth, amusement, and even gratified intellect, erudition, or the sense of art, can give. 

In the prophetic literature of these States, (the reader of myspeculations will miss their principal stress unless he allows wellfor the point that a new Literature, perhaps a new Metaphysics, certainly a new Poetry, are to be, in my opinion, the only sure andworthy supports and expressions of the American Democracy, ) Nature, true Nature, and the true idea of Nature, long absent, must, above all, become fully restored, enlarged, and must furnish the pervadingatmosphere to poems, and the test of all high literary and estheticcompositions. I do not mean the smooth walks, trimm'd hedges, poseysand nightingales of the English poets, but the whole orb, with itsgeologic history, the kosmos, carrying fire and snow, that rollsthrough the illimitable areas, light as a feather, though weighingbillions of tons. Furthermore, as by what we now partially call Natureis intended, at most, only what is entertainable by the physicalconscience, the sense of matter, and of good animal health--on these itmust be distinctly accumulated, incorporated, that man, comprehendingthese, has, in towering superaddition, the moral and spiritualconsciences, indicating his destination beyond the ostensible, themortal. 

To the heights of such estimate of Nature indeed ascending, we proceedto make observations for our Vistas, breathing rarest air. What isI believe called Idealism seems to me to suggest, (guarding againstextravagance, and ever modified even by its opposite, ) the course ofinquiry and desert of favor for our New World metaphysics, theirfoundation of and in literature, giving hue to all. [31]

The elevating and etherealizing ideas of the unknown and of unrealitymust be brought forward with authority, as they are the legitimateheirs of the known, and of reality, and at least as great as theirparents. Fearless of scoffing, and of the ostent, let us take ourstand, our ground, and never desert it, to confront the growing excessand arrogance of realism. To the cry, now victorious--the cry ofsense, science, flesh, incomes, farms, merchandise, logic, intellect, demonstrations, solid perpetuities, buildings of brick and iron, oreven the facts of the shows of trees, earth, rocks, &c. , fear not, mybrethren, my sisters, to sound out with equally determin'd voice, that conviction brooding within the recesses of every envision'dsoul--illusions! apparitions! figments all! True, we must not condemnthe show, neither absolutely deny it, for the indispensability of itsmeanings; but how clearly we see that, migrate in soul to what wecan already conceive of superior and spiritual points of view, and, palpable as it seems under present relations, it all and severalmight, nay certainly would, fall apart and vanish. 

I hail with joy the oceanic, variegated, intense practical energy, thedemand for facts, even the business materialism of the currentage, our States. But we to the age or land in which these things, movements, stopping at themselves, do not tend to ideas. As fuelto flame, and flame to the heavens, so must wealth, science, materialism--even this democracy of which we make so much--unerringlyfeed the highest mind, the soul. Infinitude the flight: fathomless themystery. Man, so diminutive, dilates beyond the sensible universe, competes with, outcopes space and time, meditating even one greatidea. Thus, and thus only, does a human being, his spirit, ascendabove, and justify, objective Nature, which, probably nothing initself, is incredibly and divinely serviceable, indispensable, real, here. And as the purport of objective Nature is doubtless folded, hidden, somewhere here--as somewhere here is what this globe and itsmanifold forms, and the light of day, and night's darkness, and lifeitself, with all its experiences, are for--it is here the greatliterature, especially verse, must get its inspiration and throbbingblood. Then may we attain to a poetry worthy the immortal soul of man, and widen, while absorbing materials, and, in their own sense, theshows of Nature, will, above all, have, both directly and indirectly, a freeing, fluidizing, expanding, religious character, exulting withscience, fructifying the moral elements, and stimulating aspirations, and meditations on the unknown. 

The process, so far, is indirect and peculiar, and though it may besuggested, cannot be defined. Observing, rapport, and with intuition, the shows and forms presented by Nature, the sensuous luxuriance, thebeautiful in living men and women, the actual play of passions, inhistory and life--and, above all, from those developments either inNature or human personality in which power, (dearest of all to thesense of the artist, ) transacts itself-out of these, and seizing whatis in them, the poet, the esthetic worker in any field, by the divinemagic of his genius, projects them, their analogies, by curiousremoves, indirections, in literature and art. (No useless attempt torepeat the material creation, by daguerreotyping the exact likeness bymortal mental means. ) This is the image-making faculty, coping withmaterial creation, and rivaling, almost triumphing over it. Thisalone, when all the other parts of a specimen of literature or art areready and waiting, can breathe into it the breath of life, and endowit with identity. 

"The true question to ask, " says the librarian of Congress in a paperread before the Social Science Convention at New York, October, 1869, "The true question to ask respecting a book, is, _has it help'd anyhuman soul?_" This is the hint, statement, not only of the greatliteratus, his book, but of every great artist. It may be that allworks of art are to be first tried by their art qualities, their image-forming talent, and their dramatic, pictorial, plot-constructing, euphonious and other talents. Then, wheneverclaiming to be first-class works, they are to be strictly and sternlytried by their foundation in, and radiation, in the highest sense, andalways indirectly, of the ethic principles, and eligibility to free, arouse, dilate. 

As, within the purposes of the Kosmos, and vivifying all meteorology, and all the congeries of the mineral, vegetable and animal worlds--allthe physical growth and development of man, and all the history of therace in politics, religions, wars, &c. , there is a moral purpose, avisible or invisible intention, certainly underlying all--its resultsand proof needing to be patiently waited for--needing intuition, faith, idiosyncrasy, to its realization, which many, and especiallythe intellectual, do not have--so in the product, or congeries of theproduct, of the greatest literatus. This is the last, profoundestmeasure and test of a first-class literary or esthetic achievement, and when understood and put in force must fain, I say, lead to works, books, nobler than any hitherto known. Lo! Nature, (the only complete, actual poem, ) existing calmly in the divine scheme, containing all, content, careless of the criticisms of a day, or these endless andwordy chatterers. And lo! to the consciousness of the soul, thepermanent identity, the thought, the something, before which themagnitude even of democracy, art, literature, &c. , dwindles, becomespartial, measurable--something that fully satisfies, (which thosedo not. ) That something is the All, and the idea of All, with theaccompanying idea of eternity, and of itself, the soul, buoyant, indestructible, sailing space forever, visiting every region, as aship the sea. And again lo! the pulsations in all matter, all spirit, throbbing forever--the eternal beats, eternal systole and diastoleof life in things--wherefrom I feel and know that death is not theending, as was thought, but rather the real beginning--and thatnothing ever is or can be lost, nor ever die, nor soul, nor matter. 

In the future of these States must arise poets immenser far, and makegreat poems of death. The poems of life are great, but there must bethe poems of the purports of life, not only in itself, but beyonditself. I have eulogized Homer, the sacred bards of Jewry, Eschylus, Juvenal, Shakspere, &c. , and acknowledged their inestimable value. But, (with perhaps the exception, in some, not all respects, ofthe second-mention'd, ) I say there must, for future and democraticpurposes, appear poets, (dare I to say so?) of higher class even thanany of those--poets not only possess'd of the religious fire andabandon of Isaiah, luxuriant in the epic talent of Homer, or for proudcharacters as in Shakspere, but consistent with the Hegelian formulas, and consistent with modern science. America needs, and the worldneeds, a class of bards who will, now and ever, so link and tally therational physical being of man, with the ensembles of time and space, and with this vast and multiform show, Nature, surrounding him, evertantalizing him, equally a part, and yet not a part of him, as toessentially harmonize, satisfy, and put at rest. Faith, very old, nowscared away by science, must be restored, brought back by the samepower that caused her departure--restored with new sway, deeper, wider, higher than ever. Surely, this universal ennui, this cowardfear, this shuddering at death, these low, degrading views, are notalways to rule the spirit pervading future society, as it has thepast, and does the present. What the Roman Lucretius sought mostnobly, yet all too blindly, negatively to do for his age and itssuccessors, must be done positively by some great coming literatus, especially poet, who, while remaining fully poet, will absorb whateverscience indicates, with spiritualism, and out of them, and out of hisown genius, will compose the great poem of death. Then will man indeedconfront Nature, and confront time and space, both with science, and_con amore_, and take his right place, prepared for life, master offortune and misfortune. And then that which was long wanted will besupplied, and the ship that had it not before in all her voyages, willhave an anchor. 

There are still other standards, suggestions, for products of highliteratuses. That which really balances and conserves the social andpolitical world is not so much legislation, police, treaties, anddread of punishment, as the latent eternal intuitional sense, inhumanity, of fairness, manliness, decorum, &c. Indeed, this perennialregulation, control, and oversight, by self-suppliance, is _sine quanon_ to democracy; and a highest widest aim of democratic literaturemay well be to bring forth, cultivate, brace, and strengthen thissense, in individuals and society. A strong mastership of thegeneral inferior self by the superior self, is to be aided, secured, indirectly, but surely, by the literatus, in his works, shaping, forindividual or aggregate democracy, a great passionate body, in andalong with which goes a great masterful spirit. 

And still, providing for contingencies, I fain confront the fact, the need of powerful native philosophs and orators and bards, theseStates, as rallying points to come, in times of danger, and to fendoff ruin and defection. For history is long, long, long. Shift andturn the combinations of the statement as we may, the problem of thefuture of America is in certain respects as dark as it is vast. Pride, competition, segregation, vicious wilfulness, and license beyondexample, brood already upon us. Unwieldy and immense, who shall holdin behemoth? who bridle leviathan? Flaunt it as we choose, athwart andover the roads of our progress loom huge uncertainty, and dreadful, threatening gloom. It is useless to deny it: Democracy grows ranklyup the thickest, noxious, deadliest plants and fruits of all--bringsworse and worse invaders--needs newer, larger, stronger, keenercompensations and compellers. 

Our lands, embracing so much, (embracing indeed the whole, rejectingnone, ) hold in their breast that flame also, capable of consumingthemselves, consuming us all. Short as the span of our national lifehas been, already have death and downfall crowded close upon us--andwill again crowd close, no doubt, even if warded off. Ages to comemay never know, but I know, how narrowly during the late secessionwar--and more than once, and more than twice or thrice--ourNationality, (wherein bound up, as in a ship in a storm, depended, andyet depend, all our best life, all hope, all value, ) just grazed, justby a hair escaped destruction. Alas! to think of them! the agony andbloody sweat of certain of those hours! those cruel, sharp, suspendedcrises!

Even to-day, amid these whirls, incredible flippancy, and blind furyof parties, infidelity, entire lack of first-class captains andleaders, added to the plentiful meanness and vulgarity of theostensible masses--that problem, the labor question, beginning to openlike a yawning gulf, rapidly widening every year--what prospecthave we? We sail a dangerous sea of seething currents, cross andunder-currents, vortices--all so dark, untried--and whither shall weturn? It seems as if the Almighty had spread before this nation chartsof imperial destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with many adeep intestine difficulty, and human aggregate of cankerousimperfection-saying, lo! the roads, the only plans of development, long and varied with all terrible balks and ebullitions. You said inyour soul, I will be empire of empires, overshadowing all else, pastand present, putting the history of Old-World dynasties, conquestsbehind me, as of no account--making a new history, a history ofdemocracy, making old history a dwarf--I alone inaugurating largeness, culminating time. If these, O lands of America, are indeed the prizes, the determinations of your soul, be it so. But behold the cost, andalready specimens of the cost. Thought you greatness was to ripenfor you like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that youmust conquer it through ages, centuries--must pay for it with aproportionate price. For you too, as for all lands, the struggle, thetraitor, the wily person in office, scrofulous wealth, the surfeit ofprosperity, the demonism of greed, the hell of passion, the decay offaith, the long postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaselessneed of revolutions, prophets, thunder-storms, deaths, births, newprojections and invigorations of ideas and men. 

Yet I have dream'd, merged in that hidden-tangled problem of our fate, whose long unraveling stretches mysteriously through time--dream'dout, portray'd, hinted already--a little or a larger band--a bandof brave and true, unprecedented yet--arm'd and equipt at everypoint--the members separated, it may be, by different dates andStates, or south, or north, or east, or west--Pacific, Atlantic, Southern, Canadian--a year, a century here, and other centuriesthere--but always one, compact in soul, conscience-conserving, God-inculcating, inspirid achievers, not only in literature, thegreatest art, but achievers in all art--a new, undying order, dynasty, from age to age transmitted--a band, a class, at least asfit to cope with current years, our dangers, needs, as those who, fortheir times, so long, so well, in armor or in cowl, upheld and madeillustrious, that far-back feudal, priestly world. To offset chivalry, indeed, those vanish'd countless knights, old altars, abbeys, priests, ages and strings of ages, a knightlier and more sacred cause to-daydemands, and shall supply, in a New World, to larger, grander work, more than the counterpart and tally of them. 

Arrived now, definitely, at an apex for these Vistas, I confess thatthe promulgation and belief in such a class or institution--a new andgreater literatus order--its possibility, (nay certainty, ) underliesthese entire speculations--and that the rest, the other parts, assuperstructures, are all founded upon it. It really seems to me thecondition, not only of our future national and democratic development, but of our perpetuation. In the highly artificial and materialisticbases of modern civilization, with the corresponding arrangementsand methods of living, the force-infusion of intellect alone, thedepraving influences of riches just as much as poverty, the absenceof all high ideals in character--with the long series of tendencies, shapings, which few are strong enough to resist, and which now seem, with steam-engine speed, to be everywhere turning out the generationsof humanity like uniform iron castings--all of which, as compared withthe feudal ages, we can yet do nothing better than accept, make thebest of, and even welcome, upon the whole, for their oceanic practicalgrandeur, and their restless wholesale kneading of the masses--I sayof all this tremendous and dominant play of solely materialisticbearings upon current life in the United States, with the results asalready seen, accumulating, and reaching far into the future, thatthey must either be confronted and met by at least an equally subtleand tremendous force-infusion for purposes of spiritualization, forthe pure conscience, for genuine esthetics, and for absolute andprimal manliness and womanliness--or else our modern civilization, with all its improvements, is in vain, and we are on the road to adestiny, a status, equivalent, in its real world, to that of thefabled damned. 

Prospecting thus the coming unsped days, and that new order inthem--marking the endless train of exercise, development, unwind, innation as in man, which life is for--we see, fore-indicated, amidthese prospects and hopes, new law-forces of spoken and writtenlanguage--not merely the pedagogue-forms, correct, regular, familiarwith precedents, made for matters of outside propriety, fine words, thoughts definitely told out--but a language fann'd by the breath ofNature, which leaps overhead, cares mostly for impetus and effects, and for what it plants and invigorates to grow--tallies life andcharacter, and seldomer tells a thing than suggests or necessitatesit. In fact, a new theory of literary composition for imaginativeworks of the very first class, and especially for highest poems, isthe sole course open to these States. Books are to be call'd for, and supplied, on the assumption that the process of reading is not ahalf-sleep, but, in highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle;that the reader is to do something for himself, must be on the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the startor frame-work. Not the book needs so much to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does. That were to make a nation of suppleand athletic minds, well-train'd, intuitive, used to depend onthemselves, and not on a few coteries of writers. 

Investigating here, we see, not that it is a little thing we have, in having the bequeath'd libraries, countless shelves of volumes, records, etc. ; yet how serious the danger, depending entirely on them, of the bloodless vein, the nerveless arm, the false application, atsecond or third hand. We see that the real interest of this people ofours in the theology, history, poetry, politics, and personal modelsof the past, (the British islands, for instance, and indeed all thepast, ) is not necessarily to mould ourselves or our literature uponthem, but to attain fuller, more definite comparisons, warnings, andthe insight to ourselves, our own present, and our own far grander, different, future history, religion, social customs, &c. We see thatalmost everything that has been written, sung, or stated, of old, with reference to humanity under the feudal and oriental institutes, religions, and for other lands, needs to be re-written, re-sung, re-stated, in terms consistent with the institution of these States, and to come in range and obedient uniformity with them. 

We see, as in the universes of the material kosmos, aftermeteorological, vegetable, and animal cycles, man at last arises, bornthrough them, to prove them, concentrate them, to turn upon them withwonder and love--to command them, adorn them, and carry them upwardinto superior realms--so, out of the series of the preceding socialand political universes, now arise these States. We see that whilemany were supposing things establish'd and completed, really thegrandest things always remain; and discover that the work of the NewWorld is not ended, but only fairly begun. 

We see our land, America, her literature, esthetics, &c. , as, substantially, the getting in form, or effusement and statement, ofdeepest basic elements and loftiest final meanings, of history andman--and the portrayal, (under the eternal laws and conditions ofbeauty, ) of our own physiognomy, the subjective tie and expression ofthe objective, as from our own combination, continuation, and pointsof view--and the deposit and record of the national mentality, character, appeals, heroism, wars, and even liberties--where these, and all, culminate in native literary and artistic formulation, to beperpetuated; and not having which native, first-class formulation, she will flounder about, and her other, however imposing, eminentgreatness, prove merely a passing gleam; but truly having which, shewill understand herself, live nobly, nobly contribute, emanate, and, swinging, poised safely on herself, illumin'd and illuming, becomea full-form'd world, and divine Mother not only of material butspiritual worlds, in ceaseless succession through time--the main thingbeing the average, the bodily, the concrete, the democratic, thepopular, on which all the superstructures of the future are topermanently rest. 

Notes:

[20] "From a territorial area of less than nine hundred thousandsquare miles, the Union has expanded into over four millions and ahalf--fifteen times larger than that of Great Britain and Francecombined--with a shore-line, including Alaska, equal to the entirecircumference of the earth, and with a domain within these lines farwider than that of the Romans in their proudest days of conquest andrenown. With a river, lake, and coastwise commerce estimated at overtwo thousand millions of dollars per year; with a railway trafficof four to six thousand millions per year, and the annual domesticexchanges of the country running up to nearly ten thousand millionsper year; with over two thousand millions of dollars invested inmanufacturing, mechanical, and mining industry; with over five hundredmillions of acres of land in actual occupancy, valued, with theirappurtenances, at over seven thousand millions of dollars, andproducing annually crops valued at over three thousand millions ofdollars; with a realm which, if the density of Belgium's populationwere possible, would be vast enough to include all the presentinhabitants of the world; and with equal rights guaranteed to even thepoorest and humblest of our forty millions of people--we can, witha manly pride akin to that which distinguish'd the palmiest days ofRome, claim, " &c. , &c. , &c. --_Vice-President Colfax's Speech, July 4, 1870_. 

LATER--_London "Times, " (Weekly, ) June 23, '82_. 

"The wonderful wealth-producing power of the United States defies andsets at naught the grave drawbacks of a mischievous protective tariff, and has already obliterated, almost wholly, the traces of the greatestof modern civil wars. What is especially remarkable in the presentdevelopment of American energy and success is its wide and equabledistribution. North and south, east and west, on the shores of theAtlantic and the Pacific, along the chain of the great lakes, in thevalley of the Mississippi, and on the coasts of the gulf of Mexico, the creation of wealth and the increase of population are signallyexhibited. It is quite true, as has been shown by the recentapportionment of population in the House of Representatives, that somesections of the Union have advanced, relatively to the rest, in anextraordinary and unexpected degree. But this does not imply thatthe States which have gain'd no additional representatives or haveactually lost some have been stationary or have receded. The fact isthat the present tide of prosperity has risen so high that it hasoverflow' d all barriers, and has fill'd up the back-waters, andestablish'd something like an approach to uniform success. "

[21] See, for hereditaments, specimens, Walter Scott's BorderMinstrelsy, Percy's collection, Ellis's early English MetricalRomances, the European continental poems of Walter of Aquitania, andthe Nibelungen, of pagan stock, but monkish-feudal redaction; thehistory of the Troubadours, by Fauriel; even the far-back cumbrousold Hindu epics, as indicating the Asian eggs out of which Europeanchivalry was hatch'd; Ticknor's chapters on the Cid, and on theSpanish poems and poets of Calderon's time. Then always, and, ofcourse, as the superbest poetic culmination-expression of feudalism, the Shaksperean dramas, in the attitudes, dialogue, characters, &c. , of the princes, lords and gentlemen, the pervading atmosphere, theimplied and express'd standard of manners, the high port and proudstomach, the regal embroidery of style, &c. 

[22] Of these rapidly-sketch'd hiatuses, the two which seem to me mostserious are, for one, the condition, absence, or perhaps the singularabeyance, of moral conscientious fibre all through American society;and, for another, the appaling depletion of women in their powers ofsane athletic maternity, their crowning attribute, and ever making thewoman, in loftiest spheres, superior to the man. 

I have sometimes thought, indeed, that the sole avenue and means ofa reconstructed sociology depended, primarily, on a new birth, elevation, expansion, invigoration of woman, affording, for races tocome, (as the conditions that antedate birth are indispensable, ) aperfect motherhood. Great, great, indeed, far greater than theyknow, is the sphere of women. But doubtless the question of suchnew sociology all goes together, includes many varied and complexinfluences and premises, and the man as well as the woman, and thewoman as well as the man. 

[23] The question hinted here is one which time only can answer. Must not the virtue of modern Individualism, continually enlarging, usurping all, seriously affect, perhaps keep down entirely, inAmerica, the like of the ancient virtue of Patriotism, the fervid andabsorbing love of general country? I have no doubt myself that the twowill merge, and will mutually profit and brace each other, and thatfrom them a greater product, a third, will arise. But I feel that atpresent they and their oppositions form a serious problem and paradoxin the United States. 

[24] "SHOOTING NIAGARA. "--I was at first roused to much anger andabuse by this essay from Mr. Carlyle, so insulting to the theory ofAmerica--but happening to think afterwards how I had more than oncebeen in the like mood, during which his essay was evidently cast, andseen persons and things in the same light, (indeed some might saythere are signs of the same feeling in these Vistas)--I have sinceread it again, not only as a study, expressing as it does certainjudgments from the highest feudal point of view, but have read it withrespect as coming from an earnest soul, and as contributing certainsharp-cutting metallic grains, which, if not gold or silver, may begood, hard, honest iron. 

[25] For fear of mistake, I may as well distinctly specify, ascheerfully included in the model and standard of these Vistas, apractical, stirring, worldly, money-making, even materialisticcharacter. It is undeniable that our farms, stores, offices, dry-goods, coal and groceries, enginery, cash-accounts, trades, earnings, markets, &c. , should be attended to in earnest, and activelypursued, just as if they had a real and permanent existence. Iperceive clearly that the extreme business energy, and this almostmaniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States, are partsof amelioration and progress, indispensably needed to prepare thevery results I demand. My theory includes riches, and the gettingof riches, and the amplest products, power, activity, inventions, movements, &c. Upon them, as upon substrata, I raise the edificedesign'd in these Vistas. 

[26] The whole present system of the officering and personnel of thearmy and navy of these States, and the spirit and letter of theirtrebly-aristocratic rules and regulations, is a monstrous exotic, a nuisance and revolt, and belong here just as much as orders ofnobility, or the Pope's council of cardinals. I say if the presenttheory of our army and navy is sensible and true, then the rest ofAmerica is an unmitigated fraud. 

[27] A: After the rest is satiated, all interest culminates in thefield of persons, and never flags there. Accordingly in this fieldhave the great poets and literatuses signally toil'd. They too, in allages, all lands, have been creators, fashioning, making types of menand women, as Adam and Eve are made in the divine fable. Behold, shaped, bred by orientalism, feudalism, through their long growth andculmination, and breeding back in return--(when shall we have anequal series, typical of democracy?)--behold, commencing in primalAsia, (apparently formulated, in what beginning we know, in the godsof the mythologies, and coming down thence, ) a few samples out of thecountless product, bequeath'd to the moderns, bequeath'd to America asstudies. For the men, Yudishtura, Rama, Arjuna, Solomon, most ofthe Old and New Testament characters; Achilles, Ulysses, Theseus, Prometheus, Hercules, Aeneas, Plutarch's heroes; the Merlin of Celticbards; the Cid, Arthur and his knights, Siegfried and Hagen in theNibelungen; Roland and Oliver; Roustam in the Shah-Nemah; and so on toMilton's Satan, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Shakspere's Hamlet, RichardII. , Lear, Marc Antony, &c. , and the modern Faust. These, I say, aremodels, combined, adjusted to other standards than America's, but ofpriceless value to her and hers. 

Among women, the goddesses of the Egyptian, Indian and Greekmythologies, certain Bible characters, especially the Holy Mother;Cleopatra, Penelope; the portraits of Brunhelde and Chriemhilde inthe Nibelungen; Oriana, Una, &c. ; the modern Consuelo, Walter Scott'sJeanie and Effie Deans, &c. , &c. (Yet woman portray'd or outlin'd ather best, or as perfect human mother, does not hitherto, it seems tome, fully appear in literature. )

[28] Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin in its fields, of Democracy in its)--Science, testingabsolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon theworld--a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious--surely neveragain to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but byimaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry, ) the fossil theologyof the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity. 

[29] It is to the development, identification, and general prevalenceof that fervid comradeship, (the adhesive love, at least rivaling theamative love hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not goingbeyond it, ) that I look for the counterbalance and offset ofour materialistic and vulgar American democracy, and for thespiritualization thereof. Many will say it is a dream, and will notfollow my inferences: but I confidently expect a time when there willbe seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the myriad audibleand visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly friendship, fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and life-long, carriedto degrees hitherto unknown--not only giving tone to individualcharacter, and making it unprecedently emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but having the deepest relations to general politics. Isay democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitabletwin or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, andincapable of perpetuating itself. 

[30] I am reminded as I write that out of this very conscience, oridea of conscience, of intense moral right, and in its name andstrain'd construction, the worst fanaticisms, wars, persecutions, murders, &c. , have yet, in all lands, in the past, been broach'd, andhave come to their devilish fruition. Much is to be said--but I maysay here, and in response, that side by side with the unflaggingstimulation of the elements of religion and conscience must henceforthmove with equal sway, science, absolute reason, and the generalproportionate development of the whole man. These scientificfacts, deductions, are divine too--precious counted parts of moralcivilization, and, with physical health, indispensable to it, toprevent fanaticism. For abstract religion, I perceive, is easily ledastray, ever credulous, and is capable of devouring, remorseless, likefire and flame. Conscience, too, isolated from all else, and from theemotional nature, may but attain the beauty and purity of glacial, snowy ice. We want, for these States, for the general character, a cheerful, religious fervor, endued with the ever-presentmodifications of the human emotions, friendship, benevolence, with afair field for scientific inquiry, the right of individual judgment, and always the cooling influences of material Nature. 

[31] The culmination and fruit of literary artistic expression, andits final fields of pleasure for the human soul, are in metaphysics, including the mysteries of the spiritual world, the soul itself, andthe question of the immortal continuation of our identity. In allages, the mind of man has brought up here--and always will. Here, atleast, of whatever race or era, we stand on common ground. Applause, too, is unanimous, antique or modern. Those authors who work well inthis field--though their reward, instead of a handsome percentage, or royalty, may be but simply the laurel-crown of the victors in thegreat Olympic games--will be dearest to humanity, and their works, however esthetically defective, will be treasur'd forever. Thealtitude of literature and poetry has always been religion--andalways will be. The Indian Vedas, the Nackas of Zoroaster, the Talmud of the Jews, the Old Testament, the Gospel of Christ and hisdisciples, Plato's works, the Koran of Mohammed, the Edda of Snorro, and so on toward our own day, to Swedenborg, and to the invaluablecontributions of Leibnitz, Kant and Hegel--these, with such poems onlyin which, (while singing well of persons and events, of the passionsof man, and the shows of the material universe, ) the religious tone, the consciousness of mystery, the recognition of the future, of theunknown, of Deity over and under all, and of the divine purpose, arenever absent, but indirectly give tone to all--exhibit literature'sreal heights and elevations, towering up like the great mountains ofthe earth. 

Standing on this ground--the last, the highest, only permanentground--and sternly criticising, from it, all works, either of theliterary, or any art, we have peremptorily to dismiss every pretensiveproduction, however fine its esthetic or intellectual points, whichviolates or ignores, or even does not celebrate, the central divineidea of All, suffusing universe, of eternal trains of purpose, in thedevelopment, by however slow degrees, of the physical, moral, andspiritual kosmos. I say he has studied, meditated to no profit, whatever may be his mere erudition, who has not absorbed this simpleconsciousness and faith. It is not entirely new--but it is forDemocracy to elaborate it, and look to build upon and expand fromit, with uncompromising reliance. Above the doors of teaching theinscription is to appear, Though little or nothing can be absolutelyknown, perceiv'd, except from a point of view which is evanescent, yetwe know at least one permanency, that Time and Space, in the will ofGod, furnish successive chains, completions of material births andbeginnings, solve all discrepancies, fears and doubts, and eventuallyfulfil happiness--and that the prophecy of those births, namelyspiritual results, throws the true arch over all teaching, allscience. The local considerations of sin, disease, deformity, ignorance, death, &c. , and their measurement by the superficial mind, and ordinary legislation and theology, are to be met by science, boldly accepting, promulging this faith, and planting the seeds ofsuperber laws--of the explication of the physical universe through thespiritual--and clearing the way for a religion, sweet and unimpugnablealike to little child or great savan. 

ORIGINS OF ATTEMPTED SECESSION

_Not the whole matter, but some side facts worth conning to-day andany day_. 

I consider the war of attempted secession, 1860-'65, not as a struggleof two distinct and separate peoples, but a conflict (often happening, and very fierce) between the passions and paradoxes of one and thesame identity--perhaps the only terms on which that identity couldreally become fused, homogeneous and lasting. The origin andconditions out of which it arose, are full of lessons, full ofwarnings yet to the Republic--and always will be. The underlying andprincipal of those origins are yet singularly ignored. The NorthernStates were really just as responsible for that war, (in itsprecedents, foundations, instigations, ) as the South. Let me try togive my view. From the age of 21 to 40, (1840-'60, ) I was interestedin the political movements of the land, not so much as a participant, but as an observer, and a regular voter at the elections. I think Iwas conversant with the springs of action, and their workings, notonly in New York city and Brooklyn, but understood them in the wholecountry, as I had made leisurely tours through all the middle States, and partially through the western and southern, and down to NewOrleans, in which city I resided for some time. (I was there at theclose of the Mexican war--saw and talk'd with General Taylor, and theother generals and officers, who were feted and detain'd several dayson their return victorious from that expedition. )

Of course many and very contradictory things, specialties, developments, constitutional views, &c. , went to make up the origin ofthe war--but the most significant general fact can be best indicatedand stated as follows: For twenty-five years previous to theoutbreak, the controling "Democratic" nominating conventions of ourRepublic--starting from their primaries in wards or districts, andso expanding to counties, powerful cities, States, and to the greatPresidential nominating conventions--were getting to represent and becomposed of more and more putrid and dangerous materials. Let me givea schedule, or list, of one of these representative conventions fora long time before, and inclusive of, that which nominated Buchanan. (Remember they had come to be the fountains and tissues of theAmerican body politic, forming, as it were, the whole blood, legislation, office-holding, &c. ) One of these conventions, from 1840to '60, exhibited a spectacle such as could never be seen except inour own age and in these States. The members who composed it were, seven-eighths of them, the meanest kind of bawling and blowingoffice-holders, office-seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks, contractors, kept-editors, spaniels well-train'd to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers ofslavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyers, sponges, ruin'd sports, expell'd gamblers, policy-backers, monte-dealers, duellists, carriersof conceal'd weapons, deaf men, pimpled men, scarr'd inside with viledisease, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people's moneyand harlots' money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, thelousy combings and born freedom-sellers of the earth. And whence camethey? From back-yards and bar-rooms; from out of the custom-houses, marshals' offices, post-offices, and gambling-hells; from thePresident's house, the jail, the station-house; from unnamedby-places, where devilish disunion was hatch'd at midnight; frompolitical hearses, and from the coffins inside, and from the shroudsinside of the coffins; from the tumors and abscesses of the land; fromthe skeletons and skulls in the vaults of the federal almshouses; andfrom the running sores of the great cities. Such, I say, form'd, or absolutely controll'd the forming of, the entire personnel, theatmosphere, nutriment and chyle, of our municipal, State, and Nationalpolitics--substantially permeating, handling, deciding, and wieldingeverything--legislation, nominations, elections, "public sentiment, "&c. --while the great masses of the people, farmers, mechanics, andtraders, were helpless in their gripe. These conditions were mostlyprevalent in the north and west, and especially in New York andPhiladelphia cities; and the southern leaders, (bad enough, but of afar higher order, ) struck hands and affiliated with, and used them. Is it strange that a thunder-storm follow'd such morbid and stiflingcloud-strata?

I say then, that what, as just outlined, heralded, and made the groundready for secession revolt, ought to be held up, through all thefuture, as the most instructive lesson in American politicalhistory--the most significant warning and beacon-light to cominggenerations. I say that the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenthterms of the American Presidency have shown that the villainy andshallowness of rulers (back'd by the machinery of great parties) arejust as eligible to these States as to any foreign despotism, kingdom, or empire--there is not a bit of difference. History is to recordthose three Presidentiads, and especially the administrations ofFillmore and Buchanan, as so far our topmost warning and shame. Never were publicly display'd more deform'd, mediocre, snivelling, unreliable, false-hearted men. Never were these States so insulted, and attempted to be betray'd. All the main purposes for which thegovernment was establish'd were openly denied. The perfect equality ofslavery with freedom was flauntingly preach'd in the north--nay, thesuperiority of slavery. The slave trade was proposed to be renew'd. Everywhere frowns and misunderstandings--everywhere exasperations andhumiliations. (The slavery contest is settled--and the war is longover--yet do not those putrid conditions, too many of them, stillexist? still result in diseases, fevers, wounds--not of war and armyhospitals--but the wounds and diseases of peace?)

Out of those generic influences, mainly in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, &c. , arose the attempt at disunion. To philosophicalexamination, the malignant fever of that war shows its embryonicsources, and the original nourishment of its life and growth, in thenorth. I say secession, below the surface, originated and was broughtto maturity in the free States. I allude to the score of yearspreceding 1860. My deliberate opinion is now, that if at the openingof the contest the abstract duality-question of _slavery and quiet_could have been submitted to a direct popular vote, as against theiropposite, they would have triumphantly carried the day in a majorityof the northern States--in the large cities, leading off with New Yorkand Philadelphia, by tremendous majorities. The events of '61 amazedeverybody north and south, and burst all prophecies and calculationslike bubbles. But even then, and during the whole war, the stern factremains that (not only did the north put it down, but) _the secessioncause had numerically just as many sympathizers in the free as in therebel States_. 

As to slavery, abstractly and practically, (its idea, and thedetermination to establish and expand it, especially in the newterritories, the future America, ) it is too common, I repeat, toidentify it exclusively with the south. In fact down to the opening ofthe war, the whole country had about an equal hand in it. The northhad at least been just as guilty, if not more guilty; and the east andwest had. The former Presidents and Congresses had been guilty--thegovernors and legislatures of every northern State had been guilty, and the mayors of New York and other northern cities had all beenguilty--their hands were all stain'd. And as the conflict took decidedshape, it is hard to tell which class, the leading southern ornorthern disunionists, was more stunn'd and disappointed at thenon-action of the free-State secession element, so largely existingand counted on by those leaders, both sections. 

So much for that point, and for the north. As to the inception anddirect instigation of the war, in the south itself, I shall notattempt interiors or complications. Behind all, the idea that it wasfrom a resolute and arrogant determination on the part of the extremeslaveholders, the Calhounites, to carry the States-rights' portionof the constitutional compact to its farthest verge, and nationalizeslavery, or else disrupt the Union, and found a new empire, withslavery for its corner-stone, was and is undoubtedly the true theory. (If successful, this attempt might--I am not sure, but it might--havedestroy'd not only our American republic, in anything like first-classproportions, in itself and its prestige, but for ages at least, thecause of Liberty and Equality everywhere--and would have been thegreatest triumph of reaction, and the severest blow to political andevery other freedom, possible to conceive. Its worst result wouldhave inured to the southern States themselves. ) That our nationaldemocratic experiment, principle, and machinery, could triumphantlysustain such a shock, and that the Constitution could weather it, likea ship a storm, and come out of it as sound and whole as before, isby far the most signal proof yet of the stability of that experiment, Democracy, and of those principles, and that Constitution. 

Of the war itself, we know in the ostent what has been done. Thenumbers of the dead and wounded can be told or approximated, the debtposted and put on record, the material events narrated, &c. Meantime, elections go on, laws are pass'd, political parties struggle, issuetheir platforms, &c. , just the same as before. But immensest results, not only in politics, but in literature, poems, and sociology, aredoubtless waiting yet unform'd in the future. How long they will waitI cannot tell. The pageant of history's retrospect shows us, agessince, all Europe marching on the crusades, those arm'd uprisings ofthe people, stirr'd by a mere idea, to grandest attempt--and, whenonce baffled in it, returning, at intervals, twice, thrice, and again. An unsurpass'd series of revolutionary events, influences. Yet it tookover two hundred years for the seeds of the crusades to germinate, before beginning even to sprout. Two hundred years they lay, sleeping, not dead, but dormant in the ground. Then, out of them, unerringly, arts, travel, navigation, politics, literature, freedom, the spirit ofadventure, inquiry, all arose, grew, and steadily sped on to what wesee at present. Far back there, that huge agitation-struggle of thecrusades stands, as undoubtedly the embryo, the start, of the highpreeminence of experiment, civilization and enterprise which theEuropean nations have since sustain'd, and of which these States arethe heirs. 

Another illustration--(history is full of them, although the waritself, the victory of the Union, and the relations of our equalStates, present features of which there are no precedents inthe past. ) The conquest of England eight centuries ago, by theFranco-Normans--the obliteration of the old, (in many respects soneeding obliteration)--the Domesday Book, and the repartition ofthe land--the old impedimenta removed, even by blood and ruthlessviolence, and a new, progressive genesis establish'd, new seedssown--time has proved plain enough that, bitter as they were, allthese were the most salutary series of revolutions that could possiblyhave happen'd. Out of them, and by them mainly, have come, out ofAlbic, Roman and Saxon England--and without them could not havecome--not only the England of the 500 years down to the present, and of the present--but these States. Nor, except for that terribledislocation and overturn, would these States, as they are, existto-day. 

It is certain to me that the United States, by virtue of that war andits results, and through that and them only, are now ready to enter, and must certainly enter, upon their genuine career in history, asno more torn and divided in their spinal requisites, but a greathomogeneous Nation--free States all--a moral and political unity invariety, such as Nature shows in her grandest physical works, and asmuch greater than any mere work of Nature, as the moral and political, the work of man, his mind, his soul, are, in their loftiest sense, greater than the merely physical. Out of that war not only has thenationality of the States escaped from being strangled, but more thanany of the rest, and, in my opinion, more than the north itself, thevital heart and breath of the south have escaped as from the pressureof a general nightmare, and are henceforth to enter on a life, development, and active freedom, whose realities are certain in thefuture, notwithstanding all the southern vexations of the hour--adevelopment which could not possibly have been achiev'd on any lessterms, or by any other means than that grim lesson, or somethingequivalent to it. And I predict that the south is yet to outstrip thenorth. 

PREFACES TO "LEAVES OF GRASS"

PREFACE, 1855 _To first issue of Leaves of Grass. _Brooklyn, N. Y. _

America does not repel the past, or what the past has produced underits forms, or amid other politics, or the idea of castes, or the oldreligions--accepts the lesson with calmness--is not impatient becausethe slough still sticks to opinions and manners in literature, whilethe life which served its requirements has passed into the new lifeof the new forms--perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from theeating and sleeping rooms of the house--perceives that it waits alittle while in the door--that it was fittest for its days--thatits action has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir whoapproaches--and that he shall be fittest for his days. 

The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probablythe fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves areessentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto, the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their amplerlargeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of manthat corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Hereis action untied from strings, necessarily blind to particulars anddetails, magnificently moving in masses. Here is the hospitalitywhich for ever indicates heroes. Here the performance, disdaining thetrivial, unapproach'd in the tremendous audacity of its crowds andgroupings, and the push of its perspective, spreads with crampless andflowing breadth, and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground, or theorchards drop apples, or the bays contain fish, or men beget childrenupon women. 

Other states indicate themselves in their deputies--but the geniusof the United States is not best or most in its executives orlegislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors, or colleges orchurches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors--butalways most in the common people, south, north, west, east, in all itsStates, through all its mighty amplitude. The largeness of thenation, however, were monstrous without a corresponding largeness andgenerosity of the spirit of the citizen. Not swarming states, norstreets and steamships, nor prosperous business, nor farms, norcapital, nor learning, may suffice for the ideal of man--nor sufficethe poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A live nationcan always cut a deep mark, and can have the best authority thecheapest--namely, from its own soul. This is the sum of the profitableuses of individuals or states, and of present action and grandeur, and of the subjects of poets. (As if it were necessary to trot backgeneration after generation to the eastern records! As if the beautyand sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of themythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if theopening of the western continent by discovery, and what has transpiredin North and South America, were less than the small theatre of theantique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle ages!) The prideof the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, andall returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the magnitude ofgeography or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the sight andrealization of full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable andsimple. The American poets are to enclose old and new, for Americais the race of races. The expression of the American poet is tobe transcendent and new. It is to be indirect, and not direct ordescriptive or epic. Its quality goes through these to much more. Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted, and their eras andcharacters be illustrated, and that finish the verse. Not so the greatpsalm of the republic. Here the theme is creative, and has vista. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, the great poet never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, hemasters it. High up out of reach he stands, turning a concentratedlight--he turns the pivot with his finger--he baffles the swiftestrunners as he stands, and easily overtakes and envelopes them. Thetime straying toward infidelity and confections and persiflage hewithholds by steady faith. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul--itpervades the common people and preserves them--they never give upbelieving and expecting and trusting. There is that indescribablefreshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person, that humblesand mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet seesfor a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred andperfect as the greatest artist. 

The power to destroy or remould is freely used by the greatest poet, but seldom the power of attack. What is past is past. If he does notexpose superior models, and prove himself by every step he takes, heis not what is wanted. The presence of the great poet conquers--notparleying, or struggling, or any prepared attempts. Now he has passedthat way, see after him! There is not left any vestige of despair, or misanthropy, or cunning, or exclusiveness, or the ignominy of anativity or color, or delusion of hell or the necessity of hell--andno man thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness orsin. The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If hebreathes into anything that was before thought small, it dilateswith the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer--he isindividual--he is complete in himself--the others are as good as he, only he sees it, and they do not. He is not one of the chorus--he doesnot stop for any regulation--he is the president of regulation. Whatthe eyesight does to the rest, he does to the rest. Who knows thecurious mystery of the eyesight? The other senses corroboratethemselves, but this is removed from any proof but its own, andforeruns the identities of the spiritual world. A single glance of itmocks all the investigations of man, and all the instruments and booksof the earth, and all reasoning. What is marvellous? what is unlikely?what is impossible or baseless or vague--after you have once justopen'd the space of a peach-pit, and given audience to far and near, and to the sunset, and had all things enter with electric swiftness, softly and duly, without confusion or jostling or jam?

The land and sea, the animals, fishes and birds, the sky of heavenand the orbs, the forests, mountains and rivers, are not small themes--but folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty anddignity which always attach to dumb real objects--they expect himto indicate the path between reality and their souls. Men andwomen perceive the beauty well enough--probably as well as he. Thepassionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators ofgardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for themanly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion forlight and the open air, all is an old varied sign of the unfailingperception of beauty, and of a residence of the poetic in out-doorpeople. They can never be assisted by poets to perceive--some may, but they never can. The poetic quality is not marshal'd in rhymeor uniformity, or abstract addresses to things, nor in melancholycomplaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and much else, and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds of asweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity that it conveysitself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme anduniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws, andbud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges, andmelons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluencyand ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations, are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes from beautifulblood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunctionin a man or woman, it is enough--the fact will prevail through theuniverse; but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will notprevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for thestupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hatetyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towardthe people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to anyman or number of men--go freely with powerful uneducated persons, andwith the young, and with the mothers of families--re-examine allyou have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismisswhatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a greatpoem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in thesilent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of youreyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. The poet shall notspend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground isalready plough'd and manured; others may not know it, but he shall. Heshall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust ofeverything he touches--and shall master all attachment. 

The known universe has one complete lover, and that is the greatestpoet. He consumes an eternal passion, and is indifferent which chancehappens, and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune, andpersuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaksothers is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing tohis proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest, he israpport with in the sight of the daybreak, or the scenes of the winterwoods, or the presence of children playing, or with his arm roundthe neck of a man or woman. His love above all love has leisure andexpanse--he leaves room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute orsuspicious lover--he is sure--he scorns intervals. His experienceand the showers and thrills are not for nothing. Nothing can jarhim--suffering and darkness cannot--death and fear cannot. To himcomplaint and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and rotten in theearth--he saw them buried. The sea is not surer of the shore, or theshore of the sea, than he is the fruition of his love, and of allperfection and beauty. 

The fruition of beauty is no chance of miss or hit--it is asinevitable as life--it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From theeyesight proceeds another eyesight, and from the hearing proceedsanother hearing, and from the voice proceeds another voice, eternallycurious of the harmony of things with man. These understand the lawof perfection in masses and floods--that it is profuse andimpartial--that there is not a minute of the light or dark, nor anacre of the earth and sea, without it--nor any direction of the sky, nor any trade or employment, nor any turn of events. This is thereason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precisionand balance. One part does not need to be thrust above another. Thebest singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful organ. The pleasure of poems is not in them that take the handsomest measureand sound. 

Without effort, and without exposing in the least how it is done, thegreatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and passionsand scenes and persons, some more and some less, to bear on yourindividual character as you hear or read. To do this well is tocompete with the laws that pursue and follow Time. What is the purposemust surely be there, and the clue of it must be there--and thefaintest indication is the indication of the best, and then becomesthe clearest indication. Past and present and future are not disjoin'dbut join'd. The greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be, from what has been and is. He drags the dead out of their coffins andstands them again on their feet. He says to the past, Rise and walkbefore me that I may realize you. He learns the lesson--he placeshimself where the future becomes present. The greatest poet doesnot only dazzle his rays over character and scenes and passions--hefinally ascends, and finishes all--he exhibits the pinnacles that noman can tell what they are for, or what is beyond--he glows a momenton the extremest verge. He is most wonderful in his last half-hiddensmile or frown; by that flash of the moment of parting the one thatsees it shall be encouraged or terrified afterward for many years. Thegreatest poet does not moralize or make applications of morals--heknows the soul. The soul has that measureless pride which consists innever acknowledging any lessons or deductions but its own. But it hassympathy as measureless as its pride, and the one balances the other, and neither can stretch too far while it stretches in company with theother. The inmost secrets of art sleep with the twain. The greatestpoet has lain close betwixt both, and they are vital in his style andthoughts. 

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the lightof letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity--nothingcan make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness. To carryon the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give allsubjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor veryuncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude andinsouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness ofthe sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is theflawless triumph of art. If you have look'd on him who has achiev'd ityou have look'd on one of the masters of the artists of all nationsand times. You shall not contemplate the flight of the gray gull overthe bay, or the mettlesome action of the blood horse, or the tallleaning of sunflowers on their stalk, or the appearance of the sunjourneying through heaven, or the appearance of the moon afterward, with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The greatpoet has less a mark'd style, and is more the channel of thoughts andthings without increase or diminution, and is the free channel ofhimself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will nothave in my writing any elegance, or effect, or originality, to hangin the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothinghang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell forprecisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate orsoothe, I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has, and be asregardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go frommy composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand bymy side and look in the mirror with me. 

The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will beproved by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his easethrough and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suitshim not. Of the traits of the brotherhood of first-class writers, savans, musicians, inventors and artists, nothing is finer thansilent defiance advancing from new free forms. In the need of poems, philosophy, politics, mechanism, science, behavior, the craft of art, an appropriate native grand opera, shipcraft, or any craft, he isgreatest for ever and ever who contributes the greatest originalpractical example. The cleanest expression is that which finds nosphere worthy of itself, and makes one. 

The messages of great poems to each man and woman are, Come to us onequal terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better thanyou, what we inclose you inclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy. Didyou suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm there can beunnumber'd Supremes, and that one does not countervail another anymore than one eyesight countervails another--and that men can be goodor grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them. What do you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments, and the deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of theelements, and the power of the sea, and the motion of Nature, and thethroes of human desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is thatsomething in the soul which says, Rage on, whirl on, I tread masterhere and everywhere--Master of the spasms of the sky and of theshatter of the sea, Master of nature and passion and death, and of allterror and all pain. 

The American bards shall be mark'd for generosity and affection, andfor encouraging competitors. They shall be Kosmos, without monopoly orsecrecy, glad to pass anything to any one--hungry for equals night andday. They shall not be careful of riches and privilege--they shall beriches and privilege--they shall perceive who the most affluent manis. The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he seesby equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. The Americanbard shall delineate no class of persons, nor one or two out of thestrata of interests, nor love most nor truth most, nor the soul most, nor the body most--and not be for the Eastern States more than theWestern, or the Northern States more than the Southern. 

Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on thegreatest poet, but always his encouragement and support. The outsetand remembrance are there--there the arms that lifted him first, andbraced him best--there he returns after all his goings and comings. The sailor and traveler--the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist, phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian, andlexicographer, are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets, andtheir construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. Nomatter what rises or is utter'd, they sent the seed of the conceptionof it--of them and by them stand the visible proofs of souls. Ifthere shall be love and content between the father and the son, andif the greatness of the son is the exuding of the greatness ofthe father, there shall be love between the poet and the man ofdemonstrable science. In the beauty of poems are henceforth the tuftand final applause of science. 

Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge, and of the investigationof the depths of qualities and things. Cleaving and circling hereswells the soul of the poet, yet is president of itself always. Thedepths are fathomless, and therefore calm. The innocence and nakednessare resumed--they are neither modest nor immodest. The whole theory ofthe supernatural, and all that was twined with it or educed out ofit, departs as a dream. What has ever happen'd--what happens, andwhatever may or shall happen, the vital laws inclose all. They aresufficient for any case and for all cases--none to be hurried orretarded--any special miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible inthe vast clear scheme where every motion and every spear of grass, andthe frames and spirits of men and women and all that concerns them, are unspeakably perfect miracles, all referring to all, and eachdistinct and in its place. It is also not consistent with the realityof the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe moredivine than men and women. 

Men and women, and the earth and all upon it, are to be taken as theyare, and the investigation of their past and present and future shallbe unintermitted, and shall be done with perfect candor. Upon thisbasis philosophy speculates, ever looking towards the poet, everregarding the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness, neverinconsistent with what is clear to the senses and to the soul. For theeternal tendencies of all toward happiness make the only point of sanephilosophy. Whatever comprehends less than that--whatever is less thanthe laws of light and of astronomical motion--or less than the lawsthat follow the thief, the liar, the glutton and the drunkard, throughthis life and doubtless afterward--or less than vast stretches oftime, or the slow formation of density, or the patient upheaving ofstrata--is of no account. Whatever would put God in a poem or systemof philosophy as contending against some being or influence, is alsoof no account. Sanity and ensemble characterize the great master--spoilt in one principle, all is spoilt. The great master has nothingto do with miracles. He sees health for himself in being one of themass--he sees the hiatus in singular eminence. To the perfect shapecomes common ground. To be under the general law is great, for thatis to correspond with it. The master knows that he is unspeakablygreat, and that all are unspeakably great--that nothing, for instance, is greater than to conceive children, and bring them up well--that to_be_ is just as great as to perceive or tell. 

In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty isindispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever man andwoman exist--but never takes any adherence or welcome from the restmore than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out of ages are worthy the grand idea--to them it is confided, and they must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothingcan warp or degrade it. 

As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concentre in the realbody, and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority ofgenuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit themselves, facts are shower'd over with light--the daylight is lit with morevolatile light--the deep between the setting and rising sun goesdeeper many fold. Each precise object or condition or combination orprocess exhibits a beauty--the multiplication table its--old age its--the carpenter's trade its--the grand opera its--the huge-hull'dclean-shap'd New York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleamswith unmatch'd beauty--the American circles and large harmonies ofgovernment gleam with theirs--and the commonest definite intentionsand actions with theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through allinterpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to firstprinciples. They are of use--they dissolve poverty from its need, andriches from its conceit. You large proprietor, they say, shall notrealize or perceive more than any one else. The owner of the libraryis not he who holds a legal title to it, having bought and paid forit. Any one and every one is owner of the library, (indeed he or shealone is owner, ) who can read the same through all the varieties oftongues and subjects and styles, and in whom they enter with ease, andmake supple and powerful and rich and large. 

These American States, strong and healthy and accomplish'd, shallreceive no pleasure from violations of natural models, and must notpermit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood, or in the illustrations of books or newspapers, or in the patterns ofwoven stuffs, or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or to put upon cornices or monuments, or on the prows or sterns ofships, or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, thatwhich distorts honest shapes, or which creates unearthly beings orplaces or contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human formespecially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Ofornaments to a work nothing outre can be allow'd--but those ornamentscan be allow'd that conform to the perfect facts of the open air, andthat flow out of the nature of the work, and come irrepressibly fromit, and are necessary to the completion of the work. Most works aremost beautiful without ornament. Exaggerations will be revenged inhuman physiology. Clean and vigorous children are jetted and conceiv'donly in those communities where the models of natural forms are publicevery day. Great genius and the people of these States must never bedemean'd to romances. As soon as histories are properly told, no moreneed of romances. 

The great poets are to be known by the absence in them of tricks, andby the justification of perfect personal candor. All faults may beforgiven of him who has perfect candor. Henceforth let no man of uslie, for we have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world, and that there is no single exception, and that never since our earthgather'd itself in a mass have deceit or subterfuge or prevaricationattracted its smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade--andthat through the enveloping wealth and rank of a state, or the wholerepublic of states, a sneak or sly person shall be discover'd anddespised--and that the soul has never once been fool'd and never canbe fool'd--and thrift without the loving nod of the soul is only afoetid puff--and there never grew up in any of the continents of theglobe, nor upon any planet or satellite, nor in that condition whichprecedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes oflife, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action of vitality, nor in anyprocess of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instincthated the truth. 

Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, largehope and comparison and fondness for women and children, largealimentiveness and destuctiveness and causality, with a perfect senseof the oneness of nature, and the propriety of the same spirit appliedto human affairs, are called up of the float of the brain of the worldto be parts of the greatest poet from his birth out of his mother'swomb, and from her birth out of her mother's. Caution seldom goes farenough. It has been thought that the prudent citizen was the citizenwho applied himself to solid gains, and did well for himself and forhis family, and completed a lawful life without debt or crime. Thegreatest poet sees and admits these economies as he sees the economiesof food and sleep, but has higher notions of prudence than to think hegives much when he gives a few slight attentions at the latch of thegate. The premises of the prudence of life are not the hospitality ofit, or the ripeness and harvest of it. Beyond the independence ofa little sum laid aside for burial-money, and of a few clap-boardsaround and shingles overhead on a lot of American soil own'd, and theeasy dollars that supply the year's plain clothing and meals, themelancholy prudence of the abandonment of such a great being as a manis, to the toss and pallor of years of money-making, with all theirscorching days and icy nights, and all their stifling deceits andunderhand dodgings, or infinitesimals of parlors, or shamelessstuffing while others starve, and all the loss of the bloom and odorof the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, and of the sea, andof the true taste of the women and men you pass or have to do with inyouth or middle age, and the issuing sickness and desperate revolt atthe close of a life without elevation or naivety, (even if you haveachiev'd a secure 10, 000 a year, or election to Congress or theGovernorship, ) and the ghastly chatter of a death without serenity ormajesty, is the great fraud upon modern civilization and forethought, blotching the surface and system which civilization undeniably drafts, and moistening with tears the immense features it spreads and spreadswith such velocity before the reach'd kisses of the soul. 

Ever the right explanation remains to be made about prudence. Theprudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteem'dlife appears too faint for the eye to observe at all, when little andlarge alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitablefor immortality. What is the wisdom that fills the thinness of a year, or seventy or eighty years--to the wisdom spaced out by ages, andcoming back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and richpresents, and the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you canlook, in every direction, running gaily toward you? Only the soul isof itself--all else has reference to what ensues. All that a persondoes or thinks is of consequence. Nor can the push of charity orpersonal force ever be anything else' than the profoundest reason, whether it brings argument to hand or no. No specification isnecessary--to add or subtract or divide is in vain. Little or big, learn'd or unlearn'd, white or black, legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the windpipe to the last expirationout of it, all that a male or female does that is vigorous andbenevolent and clean is so much sure profit to him or her in theunshakable order of the universe, and through the whole scope of itforever. The prudence of the greatest poet answers at last the cravingand glut of the soul, puts off nothing, permits no let-up for its owncase or any case, has no particular sabbath or judgment day, dividesnot the living from the dead, or the righteous from the unrighteous, is satisfied with the present, matches every thought or act by itscorrelative, and knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement. 

The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is to-day. Ifhe does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanictides--if he be not himself the age transfigur'd, and if to him isnot open'd the eternity which gives similitude to all periods andlocations and processes, and animate and inanimate forms, and which isthe bond of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness andinfiniteness in the swimming shapes of to-day, and is held by theductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot the passage fromwhat was to what shall be, and commits itself to the representation ofthis wave of an hour, and this one of the sixty beautiful children ofthe wave--let him merge in the general run, and wait his development. 

Still the final test of poems, or any character or work, remains. Theprescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performeror performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them?Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the directionof genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Have the marches oftens and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to theright hand and the left hand for his sake? Is he beloved long and longafter he is buried? Does the young man think often of him? and theyoung woman think often of him? and do the middleaged and the oldthink of him?

A great poem is for ages and ages in common, and for all degrees andcomplexions, and all departments and sects, and for a woman as much asa man, and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish to aman or woman, but rather a beginning. Has any one fancied he couldsit at last under some due authority, and rest satisfied withexplanations, and realize, and be content and full? To no suchterminus does the greatest poet bring--he brings neither cessation norshelter'd fatness and ease. The touch of him, like Nature, tells inaction. Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regionspreviously unattain'd--thenceforward is no rest--they see the spaceand ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into deadvacuums. Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos--the elder encourages the younger and shows him how--they two shalllaunch off fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit foritself, and looks unabash'd on the lesser orbits of the stars, andsweeps through the ceaseless rings, and shall never be quiet again. 

There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. A new ordershall arise, and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shallbe his own priest. They shall find their inspiration in real objectsto-day, symptoms of the past and future. They shall not deign todefend immortality or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty, or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise inAmerica, and be responded to from the remainder of the earth. 

The English language befriends the grand American expression--it isbrawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of arace who through all change of circumstance was never without theidea of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it hasattracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more eleganttongues. It is the powerful language of resistance--it is the dialectof common sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races, and of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth, faith, self-esteem, freedom, justice, equality, friendliness, amplitude, prudence, decision, and courage. It is the medium thatshall wellnigh express the inexpressible. 

No great literature, nor any like style of behavior or oratory, orsocial intercourse or household arrangements, or public institutions, or the treatment by bosses of employ'd people, nor executive detail, or detail of the army and navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts, or police or tuition or architecture, or songs or amusements, canlong elude the jealous and passionate instinct of American standards. Whether or no the sign appears from the mouths of the people, itthrobs a live interrogation in every freeman's and freewoman's heart, after that which passes by, or this built to remain. Is it uniformwith my country? Are its disposals without ignominious distinctions?Is it for the ever-growing communes of brothers and lovers, large, well united, proud, beyond the old models, generous beyond all models?Is it something grown fresh out of the fields, or drawn from thesea for use to me to-day here? I know that what answers for me, anAmerican, in Texas, Ohio, Canada, must answer for any individual ornation that serves for a part of my materials. Does this answer? Is itfor the nursing of the young of the republic? Does it solve readilywith the sweet milk of the nipples of the breasts of the Mother ofMany Children?

America prepares with Composure and good-will for the visitors thathave sent word. It is not intellect that is to be their warrant andwelcome. The talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, thestatesman, the erudite, are not unappreciated--they fall in theirplace and do their work. The soul of the nation also does its work. Itrejects none, it permits all. Only toward the like of itself will itadvance half-way. An individual is as superb as a nation when he hasthe qualities which make a superb nation. The soul of the largest andwealthiest and proudest nation may well go half-way to meet that ofits poets. 

PREFACE, 1872 To As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free Now Thou Mother withthy Equal Brood, _in permanent edition_. 

The impetus and ideas urging me, for some years past, to an utterance, or attempt at utterance, of New World songs, and an epic of Democracy, having already had their publish'd expression, as well as I can expectto give it, in "Leaves of Grass, " the present and any future piecesfrom me are really but the surplusage forming after that volume, or the wake eddying behind it. I fulfill'd in that an imperiousconviction, and the commands of my nature as total and irresistibleas those which make the sea flow, or the globe revolve. But of thissupplementary volume, I confess I am not so certain. Having from earlymanhood abandon'd the business pursuits and applications usual in mytime and country, and obediently yielded myself up ever since to theimpetus mention'd, and to the work of expressing those ideas, it maybe that mere habit has got dominion of me, when there is no real needof saying anything further. But what is life but an experiment? andmortality but an exercise? with reference to results beyond. And soshall my poems be. If incomplete here, and superfluous there, _n'importe_--the earnest trial and persistent exploration shall at leastbe mine, and other success failing shall be success enough. I havebeen more anxious, anyhow, to suggest the songs of vital endeavor andmanly evolution, and furnish something for races of outdoor athletes, than to make perfect rhymes, or reign in the parlors. I ventur'dfrom the beginning my own way, taking chances--and would keep onventuring. 

I will therefore not conceal from any persons, known or unknown tome, who take an interest in the matter, that I have the ambition ofdevoting yet a few years to poetic composition. The mighty presentage! To absorb and express in poetry, anything of it--of its world--America--cities and States--the years, the events of our Nineteethcentury--the rapidity of movement--the violent contrasts, fluctuationsof light and shade, of hope and fear--the entire revolution made byscience in the poetic method--these great new underlying facts and newideas rushing and spreading everywhere;--truly a mighty age! As if insome colossal drama, acted again like those of old under the open sun, the Nations of our time, and all the characteristics of Civilization, seem hurrying, stalking across, flitting from wing to wing, gathering, closing up, toward some long-prepared, most tremendous denouement. Not to conclude the infinite scenas of the race's life and toil andhappiness and sorrow, but haply that the boards be clear'd fromoldest, worst incumbrances, accumulations, and Man resume the eternalplay anew, and under happier, freer auspices. To me, the United Statesare important because in this colossal drama they are unquestionablydesignated for the leading parts, for many a century to come. In themhistory and humanity seem to seek to culminate. Our broad areas areeven now the busy theatre of plots, passions, interests, and suspendedproblems, compared to which the intrigues of the past of Europe, thewars of dynasties, the scope of kings and kingdoms, and even thedevelopment of peoples, as hitherto, exhibit scales of measurementcomparatively narrow and trivial. And on these areas of ours, as on astage, sooner or later, something like an _eclairissement_ of all thepast civilization of Europe and Asia is probably to be evolved. 

The leading parts. Not to be acted, emulated here, by us again, thatrole till now foremost in history--not to become a conqueror nation, or to achieve the glory of mere military, or diplomatic, or commercialsuperiority--but to become the grand producing land of nobler men andwomen--of copious races, cheerful, healthy, tolerant, free--to becomethe most friendly nation, (the United States indeed)--the moderncomposite nation, form'd from all, with room for all, welcoming allimmigrants--accepting the work of our own interior development, asthe work fitly filling ages and ages to come;--the leading nation ofpeace, but neither ignorant nor incapable of being the leading nationof war;--not the man's nation only, but the woman's nation--a land ofsplendid mothers, daughters, sisters, wives. 

Our America to-day I consider in many respects as but indeed a vastseething mass of _materials_, ampler, better, (worse also, ) thanpreviously known--eligible to be used to carry towards its crowningstage, and build for good, the great ideal nationality of the future, the nation of the body and the soul, [32]--no limit here to land, help, opportunities, mines, products, demands, supplies, etc. ;--with(I think) our political organization, National, State, and Municipal, permanently establish'd, as far ahead as we can calculate--but, sofar, no social, literary, religious, or esthetic organizations, consistent with our politics, or becoming to us--which organizationscan only come, in time, through great democratic ideas, religion--through science, which now, like a new sunrise, ascending, begins to illuminate all--and through our own begotten poets andliteratuses. (The moral of a late well-written book on civilizationseems to be that the only real foundation-walls and bases--and also_sine qua non_ afterward--of true and full civilization, is theeligibility and certainty of boundless products for feeding, clothing, sheltering everybody--perennial fountains of physical and domesticcomfort, with intercommunication, and with civil and ecclesiasticalfreedom--and that then the esthetic and mental business will take careof itself. Well, the United States have establish'd this basis, andupon scales of extent, variety, vitality, and continuity, rivalingthose of Nature; and have now to proceed to build an edifice uponit. I say this edifice is only to be fitly built by new literatures, especially the poetic. I say a modern image-making creation isindispensable to fuse and express the modern political and scientificcreations--and then the trinity will be complete. )

When I commenced, years ago, elaborating the plan of my poems, andcontinued turning over that plan, and shifting it in my mindthrough many years, (from the age of twenty-eight to thirty-five, )experimenting much, and writing and abandoning much, one deep purposeunderlay the others, and has underlain it and its execution eversince--and that has been the religious purpose. Amid many changes, and a formulation taking far different shape from what I at firstsupposed, this basic purpose has never been departed from in thecomposition of my verses. Not of course to exhibit itself in the oldways, as in writing hymns or psalms with an eye to the church-pew, orto express conventional pietism, or the sickly yearnings of devotees, but in new ways, and aiming at the widest sub-bases and inclusionsof humanity, and tallying the fresh air of sea and land. I will see, (said I to myself, ) whether there is not, for my purposes as poet, areligion, and a sound religious germenancy in the average human race, at least in their modern development in the United States, and inthe hardy common fiber and native yearnings and elements, deeper andlarger, and affording more profitable returns, than all mere sectsor churches--as boundless, joyous, and vital as Nature itself--agermenancy that has too long been unencouraged, unsung, almostunknown. With science, the old theology of the East, long in itsdotage, begins evidently to die and disappear. But (to my mind)science--and may-be such will prove its principal service--asevidently prepares the way for One indescribably grander--Time's youngbut perfect offspring--the new theology--heir of the West--lusty andloving, and wondrous beautiful. For America, and for today, just thesame as any day, the supreme and final science is the science ofGod--what we call science being only its minister--as Democracy is, orshall be also. And a poet of America (I said) must fill himself withsuch thoughts, and chant his best out of them. And as those were theconvictions and aims, for good or bad, of "Leaves of Grass, " they areno less the intention of this volume. As there can be, in my opinion, no sane and complete personality, nor any grand and electricnationality, without the stock element of religion imbuing all theother elements, (like heat in chemistry, invisible itself, but thelife of all visible life, ) so there can be no poetry worthy the namewithout that element behind all. The time has certainly come to beginto discharge the idea of religion, in the United States, from mereecclesiasticism, and from Sundays and churches and church-going, andassign it to that general position, chiefest, most indispensable, mostexhilarating, to which the others are to be adjusted, inside of allhuman character, and education, and affairs. The people, especiallythe young men and women of America, must begin to learn that religion, (like poetry, ) is something far, far different from what theysupposed. It is, indeed, too important to the power and perpetuity ofthe New World to be consign'd any longer to the churches, old ornew, Catholic or Protestant--Saint this, or Saint that. It must beconsign'd henceforth to democracy _en masse_, and to literature. Itmust enter into the poems of the nation. It must make the nation. 

The Four Years' War is over--and in the peaceful, strong, exciting, fresh occasions of to-day, and of the future, that strange, sad war ishurrying even now to be forgotten. The camp, the drill, the lines ofsentries, the prisons, the hospitals--(ah! the hospitals!)--all havepassed away--all seem now like a dream. A new race, a young and lustygeneration, already sweeps in with oceanic currents, obliterating thewar, and all its scars, its mounded graves, and all its reminiscencesof hatred, conflict, death. So let It be obliterated. I say the lifeof the present and the future makes undeniable demands upon us eachand all, south, north, east, west. To help put the United States (evenif only in imagination) hand in hand, in one unbroken circle in achant--to rouse them to the unprecedented grandeur of the part theyare to play, and are even now playing--to the thought of their greatfuture, and the attitude conform'd to it--especially their greatesthetic, moral, scientific future, (of which their vulgar materialand political present is but as the preparatory tuning of instrumentsby an orchestra, ) these, as hitherto, are still, for me, among myhopes, ambitions. 

"Leaves of Grass, " already publish'd, is, in its intentions, the songof a great composite _democratic individual_, male or female. Andfollowing on and amplifying the same purpose, I suppose I have in mymind to run through the chants of this volume, (if ever completed, )the thread-voice, more or less audible, of an aggregated, inseparable, unprecedented, vast, composite, electric _democratic nationality_. 

Purposing, then, to still fill out, from time to time through yearsto come, the following volume, (unless prevented, ) I conclude thispreface to the first instalment of it, pencil'd in the open air, onmy fifty-third birth-day, by wafting to you, dear reader, whoever youare, (from amid the fresh scent of the grass, the pleasant coolnessof the forenoon breeze, the lights and shades of tree-boughs silentlydappling and playing around me, and the notes of the cat-bird forundertone and accompaniment, ) my true good-will and love. W. W. _Washington, D. C. , May_ 31, 1872. 

Note:

[32] The problems of the achievements of this crowning stage throughfuture first-class National Singers, Orators, Artists, and others--ofcreating in literature an _imaginative_ New World, the correspondentand counterpart of the current Scientific and Political NewWorlds, --and the perhaps distant, but still delightful prospect, (forour children, if not in our own day, ) of delivering America, and, indeed, all Christian lands everywhere, from the thin moribund andwatery, but appallingly extensive nuisance of conventional poetry--byputting something really alive and substantial in its place--I haveundertaken to grapple with, and argue, in the preceding "DemocraticVistas. "

PREFACE, 1876 _To the two-volume Centennial Edition of_ Leaves ofGrass _and_ Two Rivulets. 

At the eleventh hour, under grave illness, I gather up the pieces ofprose and poetry left over since publishing, a while since, my firstand main volume, "Leaves or Grass"--pieces, here, some new, some old--nearly all of them (sombre as many are, making this almost death'sbook) composed in by-gone atmospheres of perfect health--and precededby the freshest collection, the little "Two Rivulets, " now send themout, embodied in the present melange, partly as my contribution andoutpouring to celebrate, in some sort, the feature of the time, thefirst centennial of our New World nationality--and then as chyle andnutriment to that moral, indissoluble union, equally representing all, and the mother of many coming centennials. 

And e'en for flush and proof of our America--for reminder, just asmuch, or more, in moods of towering pride and joy, I keep my specialchants of death and immortality[33] to stamp the coloring-finish ofall, present and past. For terminus and temperer to all, they wereoriginally written; and that shall be their office at the last. 

For some reason--not explainable or definite to my own mind, yetsecretly pleasing and satisfactory to it--I have not hesitated toembody in, and run through the volume, two altogether distinct veins, or strata--politics for one, and for the other, the pensive thought ofimmortality. Thus, too, the prose and poetic, the dual forms ofthe present book. The volume, therefore, after its minor episodes, probably divides into these two, at first sight far diverse, veins oftopic and treatment. Three points, in especial, have become very dearto me, and all through I seek to make them again and again, inmany forms and repetitions, as will be seen: 1. That the truegrowth-characteristics of the democracy of the New World arehenceforth to radiate in superior literary, artistic and religiousexpressions, far more than in its republican forms, universalsuffrage, and frequent elections, (though these are unspeakablyimportant. ) 2. That the vital political mission of the United Statesis, to practically solve and settle the problem of two sets ofrights--the fusion, thorough compatibility and junction of individualState prerogatives, with the indispensable necessity of centrality andOneness--the national identity power--the sovereign Union, relentless, permanently comprising all, and over all, and in that never yieldingan inch: then 3d. Do we not, amid a general malaria of fogs andvapors, our day, unmistakably see two pillars of promise, withgrandest, indestructible indications--one, that the morbid facts ofAmerican politics and society everywhere are but passing incidents andflanges of our unbounded impetus of growth? weeds, annuals, of therank, rich soil--not central, enduring, perennial things? The other, that all the hitherto experience of the States, their first century, has been but preparation, adolescence--and that this Union is only nowand henceforth, (_i. E. _, since the secession war, ) to enter on itsfull democratic career?

Of the whole, poems and prose, (not attending at all to chronologicalorder, and with original dates and passing allusions in the heat andimpression of the hour, left shuffled in, and undisturb'd, ) the chantsof "Leaves of Grass, " my former volume, yet serve as the indispensabledeep soil, or basis, out of which, and out of which only, could comethe roots and stems more definitely indicated by these later pages. (While that volume radiates physiology alone, the present one, thoughof the like origin in the main, more palpably doubtless shows thepathology which was pretty sure to come in time from the other. )

In that former and main volume, composed in the flush of my health andstrength, from the age of 30 to 50 years, I dwelt on birth and life, clothing my ideas in pictures, days, transactions of my time, to givethem positive place, identity--saturating them with that vehemenceof pride and audacity of freedom necessary to loosen the mindof still-to-be-form'd America from the accumulated folds, the superstitions, and all the long, tenacious and stiflinganti-democratic authorities of the Asiatic and European past--myenclosing purport being to express, above all artificial regulationand aid, the eternal bodily composite, cumulative, natural characterof one's self. [34]

Estimating the American Union as so far, and for some time to come, inits yet formative condition, I bequeath poems and essays as nutrimentand influences to help truly assimilate and harden, and especially tofurnish something toward what the States most need of all, and whichseems to me yet quite unsupplied in literature, namely, to show them, or begin to show them, themselves distinctively, and what they arefor. For though perhaps the main points of all ages and nationsare points of resemblance, and, even while granting evolution, aresubstantially the same, there are some vital things in which thisRepublic, as to its individualities, and as a compacted Nation, is tospecially stand forth, and culminate modern humanity. And theseare the very things it least morally and mentally knows--(though, curiously enough, it is at the same time faithfully acting upon them. )

I count with such absolute certainty on the great future of the UnitedStates--different from, though founded on, the past--that I havealways invoked that future, and surrounded myself with it, before orwhile singing my songs. (As ever, all tends to followings--America, too, is a prophecy. What, even of the best and most successful, wouldbe justified by itself alone? by the present, or the material ostentalone? Of men or States, few realize how much they live in the future. That, rising like pinnacles, gives its main significance to all Youand I are doing to-day. Without it, there were little meaning in landsor poems--little purport in human lives. All ages, all Nations andStates, have been such prophecies. But where any former ones withprophecy so broad, so clear, as our times, our lands--as those of theWest?)

Without being a scientist, I have thoroughly adopted the conclusionsof the great savants and experimentalists of our time, and of the lasthundred years, and they have interiorly tinged the chyle of all myverse, for purposes beyond. Following the modern spirit, the realpoems of the present, ever solidifying and expanding into the future, must vocalize the vastness and splendor and reality with whichscientism has invested man and the universe, (all that is calledcreation) and must henceforth launch humanity into new orbits, consonant, with that vastness, splendor, and reality, (unknown tothe old poems, ) like new systems of orbs, balanced upon themselves, revolving in limitless space, more subtle than the stars. Poetry, solargely hitherto and even at present wedded to children's tales, andto mere amorousness, upholstery and superficial rhyme, will have toaccept, and, while not denying the past, nor the themes of the past, will be revivified by this tremendous innovation, the kosmic spirit, which must henceforth, in my opinion, be the background and underlyingimpetus, more or less visible, of all first-class songs. 

Only, (for me, at any rate, in all my prose and poetry, ) joyfullyaccepting modern science, and loyally following it without theslightest hesitation, there remains ever recognized still a higherflight, a higher fact, the eternal soul of man, (of all else too, ) thespiritual, the religious--which it is to be the greatest office ofscientism, in my opinion, and of future poetry also, to free fromfables, crudities and superstitions, and launch forth in renew'd faithand scope a hundred fold. To me, the worlds of religiousness, of theconception of the divine, and of the ideal, though mainly latent, are just as absolute in humanity and the universe as the world ofchemistry, or anything in the objective worlds. To me

 The prophet and the bard, Shall yet maintain themselves--in higher circles yet, Shall mediate to the modern, to democracy--interpret yet to them, God and eidolons. 

To me, the crown of savantism is to be, that it surely opens the wayfor a more splendid theology, and for ampler and diviner songs. Noyear, nor even century, will settle this. There is a phase of thereal, lurking behind the real, which it is all for. There is alsoin the intellect of man, in time, far in prospective recesses, ajudgment, a last appellate court, which will settle it. 

In certain parts in these flights, or attempting to depict or suggestthem, I have not been afraid of the charge of obscurity, in either ofmy two volumes-because human thought, poetry or melody, must leave dimescapes and outlets-must possess a certain fluid, aerialcharacter, akin to space itself, obscure to those of little or noimagination, --but indispensable to the highest purposes. Poetic style, when address'd to the soul, is less definite form, outline, sculpture, and becomes vista, music, half-tints, and even less than half-tints. True, it may be architecture; but again it may be the forestwild-wood, or the best effect thereof, at twilight, the waving oaksand cedars in the wind, and the impalpable odor. 

Finally, as I have lived in fresh lands, inchoate, and in arevolutionary age, future-founding, I have felt to identify the pointsof that age, these lands, in my recitatives, altogether in my own way. Thus my form has strictly grown from my purports and facts, and is theanalogy of them. Within my time the United States have emerged fromnebulous vagueness and suspense, to full orbic, (though varied, )decision--have done the deeds and achiev'd the triumphs of half ascore of centuries--and are henceforth to enter upon their realhistory the way being now, (_i. E. _ since the result of the secessionwar, ) clear'd of death-threatening impedimenta, and the free areasaround and ahead of us assured and certain, which were not sobefore--(the past century being but preparations, trial voyages andexperiments of the ship, before her starting out upon deep water. )

In estimating my volumes, the world's current times and deeds, andtheir spirit, must be first profoundly estimated. Out of the hundredyears just ending, (1776-1876, ) with their genesis of inevitablewilful events, and new experiments and introductions, and manyunprecedented things of war and peace, (to be realized better, perhapsonly realized, at the remove of a century hence;) out of that stretchof time, and especially out of the immediately preceding twenty-fiveyears, (1850-'75, ) with all their rapid changes, innovations, and audacious movements-and bearing their own inevitable wilfulbirth-marks--the experiments of my poems too have found genesis. 

W. W. 

Notes:

[33] PASSAGE TO INDIA. --As in some ancient legend-play, to close theplot and the hero's career, there is a farewell gathering on ship'sdeck and on shore, a loosing of hawsers and ties, a spreading of sailsto the wind--a starting out on unknown seas, to fetch up no one knowswhither--to return no more--and the curtain falls, and there is theend of it--so I have reserv'd that poem, with its cluster, to finishand explain much that, without them, would not be explain'd, and totake leave, and escape for good, from all that has preceded them. (Then probably "Passage to India, " and its cluster, are but freer ventand fuller expression to what, from the first, and so on throughout, more or less lurks in my writings, underneath every page, every line, everywhere. )

I am not sure but the last inclosing sublimation of race or poem is, what it thinks of death. After the rest has been comprehended andsaid, even the grandest--after those contributions to mightiestnationality, or to sweetest song, or to the best personalism, male orfemale, have been glean'd from the rich and varied themes of tangiblelife, and have been fully accepted and sung, and the pervading factof visible existence, with the duty it devolves, is rounded andapparently completed, it still remains to be really completed bysuffusing through the whole and several, that other pervadinginvisible fact, so large a part, (is it not the largest part?) of lifehere, combining the rest, and furnishing, for person or State, theonly permanent and unitary meaning to all, even the meanest life, consistently with the dignity of the universe, in Time. As from theeligibility to this thought, and the cheerful conquest of this fact, flash forth the first distinctive proofs of the soul, so to me, (extending it only a little further, ) the ultimate Democraticpurports, the ethereal and spiritual ones, are to concentrate here, and as fixed stars, radiate hence. For, in my opinion, it is no lessthan this idea of immortality, above all other ideas, that is to enterinto, and vivify, and give crowning religious stamp, to democracy inthe New World. 

It was originally my intention, after chanting in "Leaves of Grass"the songs of the body and existence, to then compose a further, equally needed volume, based on those convictions of perpetuity andconservation which, enveloping all precedents, make the unseen soulgovern absolutely at last. I meant, while in a sort continuing thetheme of my first chants, to shift the slides, and exhibit the problemand paradox of the same ardent and fully appointed personalityentering the sphere of the resistless gravitation of spiritual law, and with cheerful face estimating death, not at all as the cessation, but as somehow what I feel it must be, the entrance upon by far thegreatest part of existence, and something that life is at least asmuch for, as it is for itself. But the full construction of such awork is beyond my powers, and must remain for some bard in the future. The physical and the sensuous, in themselves or in their immediatecontinuations, retain holds upon me which I think are never entirelyreleas'd; and those holds I have not only not denied, but hardlywish'd to weaken. 

Meanwhile, not entirely to give the go-by to my original plan, and farmore to avoid a mark'd hiatus in it, than to entirely fulfil it, Iend my books with thoughts, or radiations from thoughts, on death, immortality, and a free entrance into the spiritual world. In thosethoughts, in a sort, I make the first steps or studies toward themighty theme, from the point of view necessitated by my foregoingpoems, and by modern science. In them I also seek to set the key-stoneto my democracy's enduring arch. I recollate them now, for the press, in order to partially occupy and offset days of strange sickness, and the heaviest affliction and bereavement of my life; and I fondlyplease myself with the notion of leaving that cluster to you, Ounknown reader of the future, as "something to remember me by, " moreespecially than all else. Written in former days of perfect health, little did I think the pieces had the purport that now, under presentcircumstances, opens to me. 

[As I write these lines, May 31, 1875, it is again early summer, --again my birth-day--now my fifty-sixth. Amid the outside beauty andfreshness, the sunlight and verdure of the delightful season, O howdifferent the moral atmosphere amid which I now revise this Volume, from the jocund influence surrounding the growth and advent of "Leavesof Grass. " I occupy myself, arranging these pages for publication, still envelopt in thoughts of the death two years since of mydear Mother, the most perfect and magnetic character, the rarestcombination of practical, moral and spiritual, and the least selfish, of all and any I have ever known--and by me O so much the most deeplyloved--and also under the physical affliction of a tedious attack ofparalysis, obstinately lingering and keeping its hold upon me, andquite suspending all bodily activity and comfort. ]

Under these influences, therefore, I still feel to keep "Passage toIndia" for last words even to this centennial dithyramb. Not as, inantiquity, at highest festival of Egypt, the noisome skeleton of deathwas sent on exhibition to the revelers, for zest and shadow to theoccasion's joy and light--but as the marble statue of the normalGreeks at Elis, suggesting death in the form of a beautiful andperfect young man, with closed eyes, leaning on an invertedtorch--emblem of rest and aspiration after action--of crown and pointwhich all lives and poems should steadily have reference to, namely, the justified and noble termination of our identity, this grade of it, and outlet-preparation to another grade. 

[34] Namely, a character, making most of common and normal elements, to the superstructure of which not only the precious accumulations ofthe learning and experiences of the Old World, and the settledsocial and municipal necessities and current requirements, so longa-building, shall still faithfully contribute, but which at itsfoundations and carried up thence, and receiving its impetus from thedemocratic spirit, and accepting its gauge in all departments fromthe democratic formulas, shall again directly be vitalized by theperennial influences of Nature at first hand, and the old heroicstamina of Nature, the strong air of prairie and mountain, the dash ofthe briny sea, the primary antiseptics--of the passions, in all theirfullest heat and potency, of courage, rankness, amativeness, andof immense pride. Not to lose at all, therefore, the benefits ofartificial progress and civilization, but to re-occupy for Westerntenancy the oldest though ever-fresh fields, and reap from them thesavage and sane nourishment indispensable to a hardy nation, and theabsence of which, threatening to become worse and worse, is the mostserious lack and defect to-day of our New World literature. 

Not but what the brawn of "Leaves of Grass" is, I hope, thoroughlyspiritualized everywhere, for final estimate, but, from the verysubjects, the direct effect is a sense of the life, as it should be, of flesh and blood, and physical urge, and animalism. While thereare other themes, and plenty of abstract thoughts and poems in thevolume--while I have put in it passing and rapid but actual glimpsesof the great struggle between the nation and the slave-power, (1861-'65, ) as the fierce and bloody panorama of that contest unroll'ditself: while the whole book, indeed, revolves around that four years'war, which, as I was in the midst of it, becomes, in "Drum-Taps, "pivotal to the rest entire--and here and there, before and afterward, not a few episodes and speculations--_that_--namely, to make atype-portrait for living, active, worldly, healthy personality, objective as well as subjective, joyful and potent, and modern andfree, distinctively for the use of the United States, male andfemale, through the long future--has been, I say, my general object. (Probably, indeed, the whole of these varied songs, and all mywritings, both volumes, only ring changes in some sort, on theejaculation, How vast, how eligible, how joyful, how real, is a humanbeing, himself or herself. )

Though from no definite plan at the time, I see now that I haveunconsciously sought, by indirections at least as much as directions, to express the whirls and rapid growth and intensity of the UnitedStates, the prevailing tendency and events of the Nineteenth century, and largely the spirit of the whole current world, my time; for I feelthat I have partaken of that spirit, as I have been deeply interestedin all those events, the closing of long-stretch'd eras and ages, and, illustrated in the history of the United States, the opening oflarger ones. (The death of President Lincoln, for instance, fitly, historically closes, in the civilization of feudalism, many oldinfluences--drops on them, suddenly, a vast, gloomy, as it were, separating curtain. )

Since I have been ill, (1873-'74-'75, ) mostly without serious pain, and with plenty of time and frequent inclination to judge my poems, (never composed with eye on the book-market, nor for fame, nor for anypecuniary profit, ) I have felt temporary depression more than once, for fear that in "Leaves of Grass" the _moral_ parts were notsufficiently pronounced. But in my clearest and calmest moods I haverealized that as those "Leaves, " all and several, surely prepare theway for, and necessitate morals, and are adjusted to them, just thesame as Nature does and is, they are what, consistently with my plan, they must and probably should be. (In a certain sense, while theMoral is the purport and last intelligence of all Nature, there isabsolutely nothing of the moral in the works, or laws, or shows ofNature. Those only lead inevitably to it--begin and necessitate it. )

Then I meant "Leaves of Grass, " as publish'd, to be the Poem ofaverage Identity, (of _yours_, whoever you are, now reading theselines. ) A man is not greatest as victor in war, nor inventor orexplorer, nor even in science, or in his intellectual or artisticcapacity, or exemplar in some vast benevolence. To the highestdemocratic view, man is most acceptable in living well the practicallife and lot which happens to him as ordinary farmer, sea-farer, mechanic, clerk, laborer, or driver--upon and from which position as acentral basis or pedestal, while performing its labors, and his dutiesas citizen, son, husband, father and employ'd person, he preserves hisphysique, ascends, developing, radiating himself in other regions--andespecially where and when, (greatest of all, and nobler than theproudest mere genius or magnate in any field, ) he fully realizesthe conscience, the spiritual, the divine faculty, cultivated well, exemplified in all his deeds and words, through life, uncompromisingto the end--a flight loftier than any of Homer's or Shakspere's--broaderthan all poems and bibles--namely, Nature's own, and in the midst of it, Yourself, your own Identity, body and soul. (All serves, helps--but inthe centre of all, absorbing all, giving, for your purpose, the onlymeaning and vitality to all, master or mistress of all, under the law, stands Yourself. ) To sing the Song of that law of average Identity, andof Yourself, consistently with the divine law of the universal, is amain intention of those "Leaves. "

Something more may be added--for, while I am about it, I would make afull confession. I also sent out "Leaves of Grass" to arouse and setflowing in men's and women's hearts, young and old, endless streams ofliving, pulsating love and friendship, directly from them to myself, now and ever. To this terrible, irrepressible yearning, (surely moreor less down underneath in most human souls)--this never-satisfiedappetite for sympathy, and this boundless offering of sympathy--thisuniversal democratic comradeship-this old, eternal, yet ever-newinterchange of adhesiveness, so fitly emblematic of America--I havegiven in that book, undisguisedly, declaredly, the openest expression. Besides, important as they are in my purpose as emotional expressionsfor humanity, the special meaning of the "Calamus" cluster of "Leavesof Grass, " (and more or less running through the book, and croppingout in "Drum-Taps, ") mainly resides in its political significance. Inmy opinion, it is by a fervent, accepted development of comradeship, the beautiful and sane affection of man for man, latent in all theyoung fellows, north and south, east and west--it is by this, I say, and by what goes directly and indirectly along with it, that theUnited States of the future, (I cannot too often repeat, ) are to bemost effectually welded together, intercalated, anneal'd into a livingunion. 

Then, for enclosing clue of all, it is imperatively and ever to beborne in mind that "Leaves of Grass" entire is not to be construed asan intellectual or scholastic effort or poem mainly, but more as aradical utterance out of the Emotions and the Physique--an utteranceadjusted to, perhaps born of, Democracy and the Modern--in its verynature regardless of the old conventions, and, under the great laws, following only its own impulses. 

POETRY TO-DAY IN AMERICA

SHAKSPERE--THE FUTURE

Strange as it may seem, the topmost proof of a race is its own bornpoetry. The presence of that, or the absence, each tells its story. Asthe flowering rose or lily, as the ripened fruit to a tree, the appleor the peach, no matter how fine the trunk, or copious or rich thebranches and foliage, here waits _sine qua non_ at last. The stamp ofentire and finished greatness to any nation, to the American Republicamong the rest, must be sternly withheld till it has put whatit stands for in the blossom of original, first-class poems. Noimitations will do. 

And though no _esthetik_ worthy the present condition or futurecertainties of the New World seems to have been outlined in men'sminds, or has been generally called for, or thought needed, I amclear that until the United States have just such definite and nativeexpressers in the highest artistic fields, their mere political, geographical, wealth-forming, and even intellectual eminence, howeverastonishing and predominant, will constitute but a more and moreexpanded and well-appointed body, and perhaps brain, with little or nosoul. Sugar-coat the grim truth as we may, and ward off with outwardplausible words, denials, explanations, to the mental inwardperception of the land this blank is plain; a barren void exists. For the meanings and maturer purposes of these States are not theconstructing of a new world of politics merely, and physical comfortsfor the million, but even more determinedly, in range with science andthe modern, of a new world of democratic sociology and imaginativeliterature. If the latter were not establish'd for the States, to formtheir only permanent tie and hold, the first-named would be of littleavail. 

With the poems of a first-class land are twined, as weft with warp, its types of personal character, of individuality, peculiar, native, its own physiognomy, man's and woman's, its own shapes, forms, andmanners, fully justified under the eternal laws of all forms, allmanners, all times. The hour has come for democracy in America toinaugurate itself in the two directions specified--autochthonic poemsand personalities--born expressers of itself, its spirit alone, to radiate in subtle ways, not only in art, but the practical andfamiliar, in the transactions between employers and employed persons, in business and wages, and sternly in the army and navy, andrevolutionizing them. I find nowhere a scope profound enough, andradical and objective enough, either for aggregates or individuals. The thought and identity of a poetry in America to fill, and worthilyfill, the great void, and enhance these aims, electrifying all andseveral, involves the essence and integral facts, real and spiritual, of the whole land, the whole body. What the great sympathetic is tothe congeries of bones, joints, heart, fluids, nervous system andvitality, constituting, launching forth in time and space a humanbeing--aye, an immortal soul--such relation, and no less, holds truepoetry to the single personality, or to the nation. 

Here our thirty-eight States stand to-day, the children of pastprecedents, and, young as they are, heirs of a very old estate. One ortwo points we will consider, out of the myriads presenting themselves. The feudalism, of the British Islands, illustrated by Shakspere--andby his legitimate followers, Walter Scott and Alfred Tennyson--withall its tyrannies, superstitions, evils, had most superb and heroicpermeating veins, poems, manners; even its errors fascinating. Italmost seems as if only that feudalism in Europe, like slavery in ourown South, could outcrop types of tallest, noblest personal characteryet--strength and devotion and love better than elsewhere--invinciblecourage, generosity, aspiration, the spines of all. Here is whereShakspere and the others I have named perform a service incalculablyprecious to our America. Politics, literature, and everything else, centers at last in perfect _personnel_, (as democracy is to find thesame as the rest;) and here feudalism is unrival'd--here the rich andhighest-rising lessons it bequeaths us--a mass of foreign nutriment, which we are to work over, and popularize and enlarge, and presentagain in our own growths. 

Still there are pretty grave and anxious drawbacks, jeopardies, fears. Let us give some reflections on the subject, a little fluctuating, butstarting from one central thought, and returning there again. Two orthree curious results may plow up. As in the astronomical laws, thevery power that would seem most deadly and destructive turns out to belatently conservative of longest, vastest future births and lives. Wewill for once briefly examine the just-named authors solely from aWestern point of view. It may be, indeed, that we shall use the sunof English literature, and the brightest current stars of his system, mainly as pegs to hang some cogitations on, for home inspection. 

As depicter and dramatist of the passions at their stormiestoutstretch, though ranking high, Shakspere (spanning the arch wideenough) is equaled by several, and excelled by the best old Greeks, (as Eschylus. ) But in portraying mediaeval European lords and barons, the arrogant port, so dear to the inmost human heart, (pride! pride!dearest, perhaps, of all--touching us, too, of the States closest ofall--closer than love, ) he stands alone, and I do not wonder he sowitches the world. 

From first to last, also, Walter Scott and Tennyson, like Shakspere, exhale that principle of caste which we Americans have come on earthto destroy. Jefferson's verdict on the Waverley novels was that theyturned and condensed brilliant but entirely false lights and glamoursover the lords, ladies, and aristocratic institutes of Europe, with all their measureless infamies, and then left the bulk of thesuffering, down-trodden people contemptuously in the shade. Withoutstopping to answer this hornet-stinging criticism, or to repay anypart of the debt of thanks I owe, in common with every American, tothe noblest, healthiest, cheeriest romancer that ever lived, I pass onto Tennyson, his works. 

Poetry here of a very high (perhaps the highest) order of verbalmelody, exquisitely clean and pure, and almost always perfumed, likethe tuberose, to an extreme of sweetness--sometimes not, however, buteven then a camellia of the hot-house, never a common flower--theverse of inside elegance and high-life; and yet preserving amid allits super-delicatesse a smack of outdoors and outdoor folk. The oldNorman lordhood quality here, too, crossed with that Saxon fiber fromwhich twain the best current stock of England springs--poetry thatrevels above all things in traditions of knights and chivalry, anddeeds of derring-do. The odor of English social life in itshighest range--a melancholy, affectionate, very manly, but daintybreed--pervading the pages like an invisible scent; the idleness, thetraditions, the mannerisms, the stately _ennui_; the yearning of love, like a spinal marrow, inside of all; the costumes brocade and satin;the old houses and furniture--solid oak, no mere veneering--the moldysecrets everywhere; the verdure, the ivy on the walls, the moat, theEnglish landscape outside, the buzzing fly in the sun inside thewindow pane. Never one democratic page; nay, not a line, not aword; never free and _naive_ poetry, but involved, labored, quitesophisticated--even when the theme is ever so simple or rustic, (ashell, a bit of sedge, the commonest love-passage between a ladand lass, ) the handling of the rhyme all showing the scholar andconventional gentleman; showing the laureate too, the _attache_ of thethrone, and most excellent, too; nothing better through the volumesthan the dedication "to the Queen" at the beginning, and the otherfine dedication, "these to his memory" (Prince Albert's, ) preceding"Idylls of the King. "

Such for an off-hand summary of the mighty three that now, by thewomen, men, and young folk of the fifty millions given these Statesby their late census, have been and are more read than all others puttogether. 

We hear it said, both of Tennyson and another current leadingliterary illustrator of Great Britain, Carlyle--as of Victor Hugo inFrance--that not one of them is personally friendly or admirant towardAmerica; indeed, quite the reverse. _N'importe_. That they (and moregood minds than theirs) cannot span the vast revolutionary archthrown by the United States over the centuries, fixed in the present, launched to the endless future; that they cannot stomach thehigh-life-below-stairs coloring all our poetic and genteel socialstatus so far--the measureless viciousness of the great radicalRepublic, with its ruffianly nominations and elections; its loud, ill-pitched voice, utterly regardless whether the verb agrees with thenominative; its fights, errors, eructations, repulsions, dishonesties, audacities; those fearful and varied and long-continued storm andstress stages (so offensive to the well-regulated college-bred mind)wherewith Nature, history, and time block out nationalities morepowerful than the past, and to upturn it and press on to thefuture;--that they cannot understand and fathom all this, I say, isit to be wondered at? Fortunately, the gestation of our thirty-eightempires (and plenty more to come) proceeds on its course, on scalesof area and velocity immense and absolute as the globe, and, like theglobe itself, quite oblivious even of great poets and thinkers. But wecan by no means afford to be oblivious of them. 

The same of feudalism, its castles, courts, etiquettes, personalities. However they, or the spirits of them hovering in the air, might scowland glower at such removes as current Kansas or Kentucky life andforms, the latter may by no means repudiate or leave out the former. Allowing all the evil that it did, we get, here and today, a balanceof good out of its reminiscence almost beyond price. 

Am I content, then, that the general interior chyle of our republicshould be supplied and nourish'd by wholesale from foreign andantagonistic sources such as these? Let me answer that questionbriefly:

Years ago I thought Americans ought to strike out separate, and haveexpressions of their own in highest literature. I think so still, and more decidedly than ever. But those convictions are now stronglytemper'd by some additional points, (perhaps the results of advancingage, or the reflection of invalidism. ) I see that this world of theWest, as part of all, fuses inseparably with the East, and with all, as time does--the ever new yet old, old human race--"the samesubject continued, " as the novels of our grandfathers had it forchapter-heads. If we are not to hospitably receive and complete theinaugurations of the old civilizations, and change their small scaleto the largest, broadest scale, what on earth are we for?

The currents of practical business in America, the rude, coarse, tussling facts of our lives, and all their daily experiences, needjust the precipitation and tincture of this entirely different fancyworld of lulling, contrasting, even feudalistic, anti-republicanpoetry and romance. On the enormous outgrowth of our unloos'dindividualities, and the rank, self-assertion of humanity here, maywell fall these grace-persuading, _recherche_ influences. We firstrequire that individuals and communities shall be free; then surelycomes a time when it is requisite that they shall not be too free. Although to such results in the future I look mainly for a greatpoetry native to us, these importations till then will have to beaccepted, such as they are, and thankful they are no worse. The inmostspiritual currents of the present time curiously revenge and checktheir own compell'd tendency to democracy, and absorption in it, bymark'd leanings to the past--by reminiscences in poems, plots, operas, novels, to a far-off, contrary, deceased world, as if they dreaded thegreat vulgar gulf-tides of to-day. Then what has been fifty centuriesgrowing, working in, and accepted as crowns and apices for our kind, is not going to be pulled down and discarded in a hurry. 

It is, perhaps, time we paid our respects directly to the honorableparty, the real object of these preambles. But we must make_reconnaissance_ a little further still. Not the least part of ourlesson were to realize the curiosity and interest of friendly foreignexperts, [35] and how our situation looks to them. "American poetry, "says the London "Times, "[36] is the poetry of apt pupils, but it isafflicted from first to last with a fatal want of raciness. Bryant hasbeen long passed as a poet by Professor Longfellow; but in Longfellow, with all his scholarly grace and tender feeling, the defect is moreapparent than it was in Bryant. Mr. Lowell can overflow with Americanhumor when politics inspire his muse; but in the realm of pure poetryhe is no more American than a Newdigate prize-man. Joaquin Miller'sverse has fluency and movement and harmony, but as for the thought, his songs of the sierras might as well have been written in Holland. "

Unless in a certain very slight contingency, the "Times" says:"American verse, from its earliest to its latest stages, seems anexotic, with an exuberance of gorgeous blossom, but no principle ofreproduction. That is the very note and test of its inherent want. Great poets are tortured and massacred by having their flowers offancy gathered and gummed down in the _hortus siccus_ of an anthology. American poets show better in an anthology than in the collectedvolumes of their works. Like their audience they have been unable toresist the attraction of the vast orbit of English literature. Theymay talk of the primeval forest, but it would generally be very hardfrom internal evidence to detect that they were writing on the banksof the Hudson rather than on those of the Thames. .... In fact, theyhave caught the English tone and air and mood only too faithfully, andare accepted by the superficially cultivated English intelligence asreadily as if they were English born. Americans themselves confess toa certain disappointment that a literary curiosity and intelligenceso diffused [as in the United States] have not taken up Englishliterature at the point at which America has received it, and carriedit forward and developed it with an independent energy. But likereader like poet. Both show the effects of having come into an estatethey have not earned. A nation of readers has required of its poets adiction and symmetry of form equal to that of an old literature likethat of Great Britain, which is also theirs. No ruggedness, howeverracy, would be tolerated by circles which, however superficial theirculture, read Byron and Tennyson. "

The English critic, though a gentleman and a scholar, and friendlywithal, is evidently not altogether satisfied, (perhaps he isjealous, ) and winds up by saying: "For the English language to havebeen enriched with a national poetry which was not English butAmerican, would have been a treasure beyond price. " With which, aswhet and foil, we shall proceed to ventilate more definitely certainno doubt willful opinions. 

Leaving unnoticed at present the great masterpieces of the antique, oranything from the middle ages, the prevailing flow of poetry for thelast fifty or eighty years, and now at its height, has been and is(like the music) an expression of mere surface melody, within narrowlimits, and yet, to give it its due, perfectly satisfying to thedemands of the ear, of wondrous charm, of smooth and easy delivery, and the triumph of technical art. Above all things it is fractionaland select. It shrinks with aversion from the sturdy, the universal, and the democratic. 

The poetry of the future, (a phrase open to sharp criticism, and notsatisfactory to me, but significant, and I will use it)--the poetry ofthe future aims at the free expression of emotion, (which means far, far more than appears at first, ) and to arouse and initiate, more thanto define or finish. Like all modern tendencies, it has direct orindirect reference continually to the reader, to you or me, to thecentral identity of everything, the mighty Ego. (Byron's was avehement dash, with plenty of impatient democracy, but lurid andintroverted amid all its magnetism; not at all the fitting, lastingsong of a grand, secure, free, sunny race. ) It is more akin, likewise, to outside life and landscape, (returning mainly to the antiquefeeling, ) real sun and gale, and woods and shores--to the elementsthemselves--not sitting at ease in parlor or library listening to agood tale of them, told in good rhyme. Character, a feature far abovestyle or polish--a feature not absent at any time, but now firstbrought to the fore--gives predominant stamp to advancing poetry. Itsborn sister, music, already responds to the same influences. "Themusic of the present, Wagner's, Gounod's, even the later Verdi's, alltends toward this free expression of poetic emotion, and demands avocalism totally unlike that required for Rossini's splendid roulades, or Bellini's suave melodies. "

Is there not even now, indeed, an evolution, a departure from themasters? Venerable and unsurpassable after their kind as are the oldworks, and always unspeakably precious as studies, (for Americans morethan any other people, ) is it too much to say that by the shiftedcombinations of the modern mind the whole underlying theory offirst-class verse has changed? "Formerly, during the period term'dclassic, " says Sainte-Beuve, "when literature was govern'd byrecognized rules, he was considered the best poet who had composed themost perfect work, the most beautiful poem, the most intelligible, the most agreeable to read, the most complete in every respect, --theAeneid, the Gerusalemme, a fine tragedy. To-day, something elseis wanted. For us the greatest poet is he who in his works moststimulates the reader's imagination and reflection, who excites himthe most himself to poetize. The greatest poet is not he who has donethe best; it is he who suggests the most; he, not all of whose meaningis at first obvious, and who leaves you much to desire, to explain, tostudy, much to complete in your turn. "

The fatal defects our American singers labor under are subordinationof spirit, an absence of the concrete and of real patriotism, and inexcess that modern esthetic contagion a queer friend of mine callsthe _beauty disease_. "The immoderate taste for beauty and art, " saysCharles Baudelaire, "leads men into monstrous excesses. In mindsimbued with a frantic greed for the beautiful, all the balances oftruth and justice disappear. There is a lust, a disease of the artfaculties, which eats up the moral like a cancer. "

Of course, by our plentiful verse-writers there is plenty of serviceperform'd, of a kind. Nor need we go far for a tally. We see, inevery polite circle, a class of accomplished, good-natured persons, ("society, " in fact, could not get on without them, ) fully eligiblefor certain problems, times, and duties--to mix egg-nog, to mend thebroken spectacles, to decide whether the stewed eels shall precedethe sherry or the sherry the stewed eels, to eke out Mrs. A. B. 'sparlor-tableaux with monk, Jew, lover, Puck, Prospero, Caliban, orwhat not, and to generally contribute and gracefully adapt theirflexibilities and talents, in those ranges, to the world's service. But for real crises, great needs and pulls, moral or physical, theymight as well have never been born. 

Or the accepted notion of a poet would appear to be a sort ofmale odalisque, singing or piano-playing a kind of spiced ideas, second-hand reminiscences, or toying late hours at entertainments, in rooms stifling with fashionable scent. I think I haven't seen anew-published, healthy, bracing, simple lyric in ten years. Not longago, there were verses in each of three fresh monthlies, from leadingauthors, and in every one the whole central _motif_ (perfectlyserious) was the melancholiness of a marriageable young woman whodidn't get a rich husband, but a poor one!

Besides its tonic and _al fresco_ physiology, relieving such as this, the poetry of the future will take on character in a more importantrespect. Science, having extirpated the old stock-fables andsuperstitions, is clearing a field for verse, for all the arts, andeven for romance, a hundred-fold ampler and more wonderful, with thenew principles behind. Republicanism advances over the whole world. Liberty, with Law by her side, will one day be paramount--will at anyrate be the central idea. Then only--for all the splendor and beautyof what has been, or the polish of what is--then only will the truepoets appear, and the true poems. Not the satin and patchouly oftoday, not the glorification of the butcheries and wars of the past, nor any fight between Deity on one side and somebody else on theother--not Milton, not even Shakspere's plays, grand as they are. Entirely different and hitherto unknown Classes of men, beingauthoritatively called for in imaginative literature, will certainlyappear. What is hitherto most lacking, perhaps most absolutelyindicates the future. Democracy has been hurried on through time bymeasureless tides and winds, resistless as the revolution of theglobe, and as far-reaching and rapid. But in the highest walks of artit has not yet had a single representative worthy of it anywhere uponthe earth. 

Never had real bard a task more fit for sublime ardor and genius thanto sing worthily the songs these States have already indicated. Theirorigin, Washington, '76, the picturesqueness of old times, the warof 1812 and the sea-fights; the incredible rapidity of movement andbreadth of area--to fuse and compact the South and North, the East andWest, to express the native forms, situations, scenes, from Montauk toCalifornia, and from the Saguenay to the Rio Grande--the working outon such gigantic scales, and with such a swift and mighty playof changing light and shade, of the great problems of man andfreedom, --how far ahead of the stereotyped plots, or gem-cutting, ortales of love, or wars of mere ambition! Our history is so full ofspinal, modern, germinal subjects--one above all. What the ancientsiege of Illium, and the puissance of Hector's and Agamemnon'swarriors proved to Hellenic art and literature, and all art andliterature since, may prove the war of attempted secession of 1861-'65to the future esthetics, drama, romance, poems of the United States. 

Nor could utility itself provide anything more practically serviceableto the hundred millions who, a couple of generations hence, willinhabit within the limits just named, than the permeation of a sane, sweet, autochthonous national poetry--must I say of a kind that doesnot now exist? but which, I fully believe, will in time be supplied onscales as free as Nature's elements. (It is acknowledged that we ofthe States are the most materialistic and money-making people everknown. My own theory, while fully accepting this, is that we are themost emotional, spiritualistic, and poetry-loving people also. )

Infinite are the new and orbic traits waiting to be launch'd forth inthe firmament that is, and is to be, America. Lately, I have wonder'dwhether the last meaning of this cluster of thirty-eight States is notonly practical fraternity among themselves--the only real union, (muchnearer its accomplishment, too, than appears on the surface)--but forfraternity over the whole globe--that dazzling, pensive dream of ages!Indeed, the peculiar glory of our lands, I have come to see, or expectto see, not in their geographical or republican greatness, nor wealthor products, nor military or naval power, nor special, eminent namesin any department, to shine with, or outshine, foreign special namesin similar departments, --but more and more in a vaster, saner, moresurrounding Comradeship, uniting closer and closer not only theAmerican States, but all nations, and all humanity. That, O poets! isnot that a theme worth chanting, striving for? Why not fix your verseshenceforth to the gauge of the round globe? the whole race? Perhapsthe most illustrious culmination of the modern may thus prove to bea signal growth of joyous, more exalted bards of adhesiveness, identically one in soul, but contributed by every nation, each afterits distinctive kind. Let us, audacious, start it. Let the diplomats, as ever, still deeply plan, seeking advantages, proposing treatiesbetween governments, and to bind them, on paper: what I seek isdifferent, simpler. I would inaugurate from America, for this purpose, new formulas--international poems. I have thought that the invisibleroot out of which the poetry deepest in, and dearest to, humanitygrows, is Friendship. I have thought that both in patriotism and song(even amid their grandest shows past) we have adhered too long topetty limits, and that the time has come to enfold the world. 

Not only is the human and artificial world we have establish'd in theWest a radical departure from anything hitherto known--not only menand politics, and all that goes with them--but Nature itself, in themain sense, its construction, is different. The same old font of type, of course, but set up to a text never composed or issued before. ForNature consists not only in itself, objectively, but at least justas much in its subjective reflection from the person, spirit, age, looking at it, in the midst of it, and absorbing it--faithfully sendsback the characteristic beliefs of the time or individual--takes, and readily gives again, the physiognomy of any nation orliterature--falls like a great elastic veil on a face, or like themolding plaster on a statue. 

What is Nature? What were the elements, the invisible backgrounds andeidolons of it, to Homer's heroes, voyagers, gods? What allthrough the wanderings of Virgil's Aeneas? Then to Shakspere'scharacters--Hamlet, Lear, the English-Norman kings, the Romans? Whatwas Nature to Rousseau, to Voltaire, to the German Goethe in hislittle classical court gardens? In those presentments in Tennyson (seethe "Idylls of the King"--what sumptuous, perfumed, arras-and-goldNature, inimitably described, better than any, fit for princesand knights and peerless ladies--wrathful or peaceful, just thesame--Vivien and Merlin in their strange dalliance, or the death-floatof Elaine, or Geraint and the long journey of his disgraced Enid andhimself through the wood, and the wife all day driving the horses, ) asin all the great imported art-works, treatises systems, from Lucretiusdown, there is a constantly lurking often pervading something, thatwill have to be eliminated, as not only unsuited to modern democracyand science in America, but insulting to them, and disproved bythem. [37]

Still, the rule and demesne of poetry will always be not the exterior, but interior; not the macrocosm, but microcosm; not Nature, but Man. I haven't said anything about the imperative need of a race of giantbards in the future, to hold up high to eyes of land and race theeternal antiseptic models, and to dauntlessly confront greed, injustice, and all forms of that wiliness and tyranny whose rootsnever die--(my opinion is, that after all the rest is advanced, _that_is what first-class poets are for; as, to their days and occasions, the Hebrew lyrists, Roman Juvenal, and doubtless the old singers ofIndia, and the British Druids)--to counteract dangers, immensest ones, already looming in America--measureless corruption in politics--whatwe call religion, a mere mask of wax or lace;--for _ensemble_, thatmost cankerous, offensive of all earth's shows--a vast and variedcommunity, prosperous and fat with wealth of money and products andbusiness ventures--plenty of mere intellectuality too--andthen utterly without the sound, prevailing, moral and esthetichealth-action beyond all the money and mere intellect of the world. 

Is it a dream of mine that, in times to come, west, south, east, north, will silently, surely arise a race of such poets, varied, yet one in soul--nor only poets, and of the best, but newer, largerprophets--larger than Judea's, and more passionate--to meet andpenetrate those woes, as shafts of light the darkness?

As I write, the last fifth of the nineteenth century is enter'd upon, and will soon be waning. Now, and for a long time to come, what theUnited States most need, to give purport, definiteness, reason why, totheir unprecedented material wealth, industrial products, educationby rote merely, great populousness and intellectual activity, isthe central, spinal reality, (or even the idea of it, ) of sucha democratic band of-native-born-and-bred teachers, artists, _litterateurs_, tolerant and receptive of importations, but entirelyadjusted to the West, to ourselves, to our own days, combinations, differences, superiorities. Indeed, I am fond of thinking that thewhole series of concrete and political triumphs of the Republic aremainly as bases and preparations for half a dozen future poets, idealpersonalities, referring not to a special class, but to the entirepeople, four or five millions of square miles. 

Long, long are the processes of the development of a nationalityOnly to the rapt vision does the seen become the prophecy of theunseen. [38] Democracy, so far attending only to the real, is not forthe real only, but the grandest ideal--to justify the modern by that, and not only to equal, but to become by that superior to the past. 

On a comprehensive summing up of the processes and present andhitherto condition of the United States, with reference to theirfuture, and the indispensable precedents to it, my point, below allsurfaces, and subsoiling them, is, that the bases and prerequisitesof a leading nationality are, first, at all hazards, freedom, worldlywealth and products on the largest and most varied scale, commoneducation and intercommunication, and, in general, the passing throughof just the stages and crudities we have passed or are passing throughin the United States. 

Then, perhaps, as weightiest factor of the whole business, and of themain outgrowths of the future, it remains to be definitely avow'dthat the native-born middle-class population of quite all the UnitedStates--the average of farmers and mechanics everywhere--the real, though latent and silent bulk of America, city or country, presentsa magnificent mass of material, never before equal'd on earth. It isthis material, quite unexpress'd by literature or art, that in everyrespect insures the future of the republic. During the secession war Iwas with the armies, and saw the rank and file, north and south, andstudied them for four years. I have never had the least doubt aboutthe country in its essential future since. 

Meantime, we can (perhaps) do no better than to saturate ourselveswith, and continue to give imitations, yet awhile, of the estheticmodels, supplies, of that past and of those lands we spring from. Those wondrous stores, reminiscences, floods, currents! Let them flowon, flow hither freely. And let the sources be enlarged, to includenot only the works of British origin, as now, but stately and devoutSpain, courteous France, profound Germany, the manly Scandinavianlands, Italy's art race, and always the mystic Orient. Rememberingthat at present, and doubtless long ahead, a certain humility wouldwell become us. The course through time of highest civilization, doesit not wait the first glimpse of our contribution to its kosmic trainof poems, bibles, first-class structures, perpetuities--Egypt andPalestine and India--Greece and Rome and mediaeval Europe--and soonward? The shadowy procession is not a meagre one, and the standardnot a low one. All that is mighty in our kind seems to have alreadytrod the road. Ah, never may America forget her thanks and reverencefor samples, treasures such as these--that other life-blood, inspiration, sunshine, hourly in use to-day, all days, forever, through her broad demesne!

All serves our New World progress, even the bafflers, head-winds, cross-tides. Through many perturbations and squalls, and much backingand filling, the ship, upon the whole, makes unmistakably for herdestination. Shakspere has served, and serves, may-be, the best ofany. 

For conclusion, a passing thought, a contrast, of him who, in myopinion, continues and stands for the Shaksperean cultus at thepresent day among all English-writing peoples--of Tennyson, hispoetry. I find it impossible, as I taste the sweetness of those lines, to escape the flavor, the conviction, the lush-ripening culmination, and last honey of decay (I dare not call it rottenness) of thatfeudalism which the mighty English dramatist painted in all thesplendors of its noon and afternoon. And how they are chanted--bothpoets! Happy those kings and nobles to be so sung, so told! To runtheir course--to get their deeds and shapes in lasting pigments--thevery pomp and dazzle of the sunset!

Meanwhile, democracy waits the coming of its bards in silence and intwilight--but 'tis the twilight of the dawn. 

Notes:

[35] A few years ago I saw the question, "Has America produced anygreat poem?" announced as prize-subject for the competition of someuniversity in Northern Europe. I saw the item in a foreign paper andmade a note of it; but being taken down with paralysis, and prostratedfor a long season, the matter slipp'd away, and I have never been ablesince to get hold of any essay presented for the prize, or report ofthe discussion, nor to learn for certain whether there was any essayor discussion, nor can I now remember the place. It may have beenUpsala, or possibly Heidelberg. Perhaps some German or Scandinaviancan give particulars. I think it was in 1872. 

[36] In a long and prominent editorial, at the time, on the death ofWilliam Cullen Bryant. 

[37] Whatever may be said of the few principal poems--or their bestpassages--it is certain that the overwhelming mass of poetic works, as now absorb'd into human character, exerts a certain constipating, repressing, indoor, and artificial influence, impossible toelude--seldom or never that freeing, dilating, joyous one, with whichuncramp'd Nature works on every individual without exception. 

[38] Is there not such a thing as the philosophy of American historyand politics? And if so, what is it?... Wise men say there are twosets of wills to nations and to persons--one set that acts and worksfrom explainable motives--from teaching, intelligence, judgment, circumstance, caprice, emulation, greed, etc. --and then another set, perhaps deep, hidden, unsuspected, yet often more potent than thefirst, refusing to be argued with, rising as it were out of abysses, resistlessly urging on speakers, doers, communities, unwitting tothemselves--the poet to his fieriest words--the race to pursue itsloftiest ideal. Indeed, the paradox of a nation's life and career, with all its wondrous contradictions, can probably only be explain'dfrom these two wills, sometimes conflicting, each operating in itssphere, combining in races or in persons, and producing strangestresults. 

Let us hope there is (indeed, can there be any doubt there is?) thisgreat unconscious and abysmic second will also running through theaverage nationality and career of America. Let us hope that, amidall the dangers and defections of the present, and through all theprocesses of the conscious will, it alone is the permanent andsovereign force, destined to carry on the New World to fulfil itsdestinies in the future--to resolutely pursue those destinies, ageupon age; to build, far, far beyond its past vision, present thought;to form and fashion, and for the general type, men and women morenoble, more athletic than the world has yet seen; to gradually, firmlyblend, from all the States, with all varieties, a friendly, happy, free, religious nationality--a nationality not only the richest, mostinventive, most productive and materialistic the world has yet known, but compacted indissolubly, and out of whose ample and solid bulk, and giving purpose and finish to it, conscience, morals, and all thespiritual attributes, shall surely rise, like spires above some groupof edifices, firm-footed on the earth, yet scaling space and heaven. 

Great as they are, and greater far to be, the United States, too, arebut a series of steps in the eternal process of creative thought. And here is, to my mind, their final justification, and certainperpetuity. There is in that sublime process, in the laws of theuniverse--and, above all, in the moral law--something that would makeunsatisfactory, and even vain and contemptible, all the triumphs ofwar, the gains of peace, and the proudest worldly grandeur of all thenations that have ever existed, or that (ours included) now exist, except that we constantly see, through all their worldly career, however struggling and blind and lame, attempts, by all ages, allpeoples, according to their development, to reach, to press, toprogress on, and ever farther on, to more and more advanced ideals. 

The glory of the republic of the United States, in my opinion, isto be that, emerging in the light of the modern and the splendor ofscience, and solidly based on the past, it is to cheerfully rangeitself, and its politics are henceforth to come, under those universallaws, and embody them, and carry them out, to serve them. And as onlythat individual becomes truly great who understands well that, whilecomplete in himself in a certain sense, he is but a part of thedivine, eternal scheme, and whose special life and laws are adjustedto move in harmonious relations with the general laws of Nature, andespecially with the moral law, the deepest and highest of all, and thelast vitality of man or state--so the United States may only becomethe greatest and the most continuous, by understanding well theirharmonious relations with entire humanity and history, and all theirlaws and progress, sublimed with the creative thought of Deity, through all time, past, present, and future. Thus will they expandto the amplitude of their destiny, and become illustrations andculminating parts of the kosmos, and of civilization. 

No more considering the States as an incident, or series of incidents, however vast, coming accidentally along the path of time, and shapedby casual emergencies as they happen to arise, and the mere resultof modern improvements, vulgar and lucky, ahead of other nations andtimes, I would finally plant, as seeds, these thoughts or speculationsin the growth of our republic--that it is the deliberate culminationand result of all the past--that here, too, as in all departments ofthe universe, regular laws (slow and sure in planting, slow and surein ripening) have controll'd and govern'd, and will yet control andgovern; and that those laws can no more be baffled or steer'd clearof, or vitiated, by chance, or any fortune or opposition, than thelaws of winter and summer, or darkness and light. 

The summing up of the tremendous moral and military perturbations of1861-'65, and their results--and indeed of the entire hundred years ofthe past of our national experiment, from its inchoate movement downto the present day (1780-1881)--is, that they all now launch theUnited States fairly forth, consistently with the entirety ofcivilization and humanity, and in main sort the representative ofthem, leading the van, leading the fleet of the modern and democratic, on the seas and voyages of the future. 

And the real history of the United States--starting from that greatconvulsive struggle for unity, the secession war, triumphantlyconcluded, and _the South_ victorious after all--is only to be writtenat the remove of hundreds, perhaps a thousand, years hence. 

A MEMORANDUM AT A VENTURE

"All is proper to be express'd, provided our aim is only high enough. "--_J. F. Millet. _

"The candor of science is the glory of the modern. It does not hideand repress; it confronts, turns on the light. It alone has perfectfaith--faith not in a part only, but all. Does it not undermine theold religious standards? Yes, in God's truth, by excluding the devilfrom the theory of the universe--by showing that evil is not a law initself, but a sickness, a perversion of the good, and the other sideof the good--that in fact all of humanity, and of everything, isdivine in its bases, its eligibilities. "

Shall the mention of such topics as I have briefly but plainly andresolutely broach'd in the "Children of Adam" section of "Leaves ofGrass" be admitted in poetry and literature? Ought not the innovationto be put down by opinion and criticism? and, if those fail, by theDistrict Attorney? True, I could not construct a poem which declaredlytook, as never before, the complete human identity, physical, moral, emotional, and intellectual, (giving precedence and compass in acertain sense to the first, ) nor fulfil that _bona fide_ candorand entirety of treatment which was a part of my purpose, withoutcomprehending this section also. But I would entrench myself moredeeply and widely than that. And while I do not ask any man to indorsemy theory, I confess myself anxious that what I sought to write andexpress, and the ground I built on, shall be at least partiallyunderstood, from its own platform. The best way seems to me toconfront the question with entire frankness. 

There are, generally speaking, two points of view, two conditions ofthe world's attitude toward these matters; the first, the conventionalone of good folks and good print everywhere, repressing any directstatement of them, and making allusions only at second or thirdhand--(as the Greeks did of death, which, in Hellenic social culture, was not mention'd point-blank, but by euphemisms. ) In the civilizationof to-day, this condition--without stopping to elaborate the argumentsand facts, which are many and varied and perplexing--has led to statesof ignorance, repressal, and cover'd over disease and depletion, forming certainly a main factor in the world's woe. A nonscientific, non-esthetic, and eminently non-religious condition, bequeath'd to usfrom the past, (its origins diverse, one of them the far-back lessonsof benevolent and wise men to restrain the prevalent coarsenessand animality of the tribal ages--with Puritanism, or perhapsProtestantism itself for another, and still another specified in thelatter part of this memorandum)--to it is probably due most of the illbirths, inefficient maturity, snickering pruriency, and of that humanpathologic evil and morbidity which is, in my opinion, the keel andreason-why of every evil and morbidity. Its scent, as of somethingsneaking, furtive, mephitic, seems to lingeringly pervade all modernliterature, conversation, and manners. 

The second point of view, and by far the largest--as the world inworking-day dress vastly exceeds the world in parlor toilette--is theone of common life, from the oldest times down, and especially inEngland, (see the earlier chapters of "Taine's English Literature, "and see Shakspere almost anywhere, ) and which our age to-day inheritsfrom riant stock, in the wit, or what passes for wit, of masculinecircles, and in erotic stories and talk, to excite, express, and dwellon, that merely sensual voluptuousness which, according to VictorHugo, is the most universal trait of all ages, all lands. This secondcondition, however bad, is at any rate like a disease which comes tothe surface, and therefore less dangerous than a conceal'd one. 

The time seems to me to have arrived, and America to be the place, fora new departure--a third point of view. The same freedom and faith andearnestness which, after centuries of denial, struggle, repression, and martyrdom, the present day brings to the treatment of politics andreligion, must work out a plan and standard on this subject, not somuch for what is call'd society, as for thoughtfulest men andwomen, and thoughtfulest literature. The same spirit that marks thephysiological author and demonstrator on these topics in his importantfield, I have thought necessary to be exemplified, for once, inanother certainly not less important field. 

In the present memorandum I only venture to indicate that plan andview--decided upon more than twenty years ago, for my own literaryaction, and formulated tangibly in my printed poems--(as Bacon says anabstract thought or theory is of no moment unless it leads to a deedor work done, exemplifying it in the concrete)--that the sexualpassion in itself, while normal and unperverted, is inherentlylegitimate, creditable, not necessarily an improper theme for poet, as confessedly not for scientist--that, with reference to the wholeconstruction, organism, and intentions of "Leaves of Grass, " anythingshort of confronting that theme, and making myself clear upon it asthe enclosing basis of everything, (as the sanity of everything was tobe the atmosphere of the poems, ) I should beg the question in its mostmomentous aspect, and the superstructure that follow'd, pretensiveas it might assume to be, would all rest on a poor foundation, or nofoundation at all. In short, as the assumption of the sanity of birth, Nature and humanity, is the key to any true theory of life and theuniverse--at any rate, the only theory out of which I wrote--it is, and must inevitably be, the only key to "Leaves of Grass, " and everypart of it. _That_, (and not a vain consistency or weak pride, as alate "Springfield Republican" charges, ) is the reason that I havestood out for these particular verses uncompromisingly for over twentyyears, and maintain them to this day. _That_ is what I felt in myinmost brain and heart, when I only answer'd Emerson's vehementarguments with silence, under the old elms of Boston Common. 

Indeed, might not every physiologist and every good physician prayfor the redeeming of this subject from its hitherto relegation to thetongues and pens of blackguards, and boldly putting it for once atleast, if no more, in the demesne of poetry and sanity--as somethingnot in itself gross or impure, but entirely consistent with highestmanhood and womanhood, and indispensable to both? Might not only everywife and every mother--not only every babe that comes into the world, if that were possible--not only all marriage, the foundation and _sinequa non_ of the civilized state--bless and thank the showing, ortaking for granted, that motherhood, fatherhood, sexuality, and allthat belongs to them, can be asserted, where it comes to question, openly, joyously, proudly, "without shame or the need of shame, " fromthe highest artistic and human considerations--but, with reverence beit written, on such attempt to justify the base and start of the wholedivine scheme in humanity, might not the Creative Power itself deign asmile of approval?

To the movement for the eligibility and entrance of women amid newspheres of business, politics, and the suffrage, the current prurient, conventional treatment of sex is the main formidable obstacle. Therising tide of "woman's rights, " swelling and every year advancingfarther and farther, recoils from it with dismay. There will in myopinion be no general progress in such eligibility till a sensible, philosophic, democratic method is substituted. 

The whole question--which strikes far, very far deeper than mostpeople have supposed, (and doubtless, too, something is to be said onall sides, ) is peculiarly an important one in art--is first an ethic, and then still more an esthetic one. I condense from a paper readnot long since at Cheltenham, England, before the "Social ScienceCongress, " to the Art Department, by P. H. Rathbone of Liverpool, onthe "Undraped Figure in Art, " and the discussion that follow'd:

"When coward Europe suffer'd the unclean Turk to soil the sacredshores of Greece by his polluting presence, civilization and moralityreceiv'd a blow from which they have never entirely recover' d, andthe trail of the serpent has been over European art and Europeansociety ever since. The Turk regarded and regards women as animalswithout soul, toys to be play'd with or broken at pleasure, and to behidden, partly from shame, but chiefly for the purpose of stimulatingexhausted passion. Such is the unholy origin of the objection to thenude as a fit subject for art; it is purely Asiatic, and though notintroduced for the first time in the fifteenth century, is yet to betraced to the source of all impurity--the East. Although the source ofthe prejudice is thoroughly unhealthy and impure, yet it is now sharedby many pure-minded and honest, if somewhat uneducated, people. But Iam prepared to maintain that it is necessary for the future of Englishart and of English morality that the right of the nude to a place inour galleries should be boldly asserted; it must, however, be the nudeas represented by thoroughly trained artists, and with a pure andnoble ethic purpose. The human form, male and female, is the type andstandard of all beauty of form and proportion, and it is necessary tobe thoroughly familiar with it in order safely to judge of all beautywhich consists of form and proportion. To women it is most necessarythat they should become thoroughly imbued with the knowledge of theideal female form, in order that they should recognize the perfectionof it at once, and without effort, and so far as possible avoiddeviations from the ideal. Had this been the case in times past, we should not have had to deplore the distortions effected bytight-lacing, which destroy'd the figure and ruin'd the health of somany of the last generation. Nor should we have had the scandalousdresses alike of society and the stage. The extreme development of thelow dresses which obtain'd some years ago, when the stays crush'dup the breasts into suggestive prominence, would surely have beencheck'd, had the eye of the public been properly educated byfamiliarity with the exquisite beauty of line of a well-shaped bust. I might show how thorough acquaintance with the ideal nude foot wouldprobably have much modified the foot-torturing boots and high heels, which wring the foot out of all beauty of line, and throw the bodyforward into an awkward and ungainly attitude. 

It is argued that the effect of nude representation of women uponyoung men is unwholesome, but it would not be so if such works wereadmitted without question into our galleries, and became thoroughlyfamiliar to them. On the contrary, it would do much to clear awayfrom healthy-hearted lads one of their sorest trials--that prurientcuriosity which is bred of prudish concealment. Where there is mysterythere is the suggestion of evil, and to go to a theatre, where youhave only to look at the stalls to see one-half of the female form, and to the stage to see the other half undraped, is far more pregnantwith evil imaginings than the most objectionable of totally undrapedfigures. In French art there have been questionable nude figuresexhibited; but the fault was not that they were nude, but that theywere the portraits of ugly immodest women. Some discussion follow'd. There was a general concurrence in the principle contended for by thereader of the paper. Sir Walter Stirling maintain'd that the perfectmale figure, rather than the female, was the model of beauty. After afew remarks from Rev. Mr. Roberts and Colonel Oldfield, the Chairmanregretted that no opponent of nude figures had taken part in thediscussion. He agreed with Sir Walter Stirling as to the male figurebeing the most perfect model of proportion. He join'd in defendingthe exhibition of nude figures, but thought considerable supervisionshould be exercis'd over such exhibitions. 

No, it is not the picture or nude statue or text, with clear aim, thatis indecent; it is the beholder's own thought, inference, distortedconstruction. True modesty is one of the most precious of attributes, even virtues, but in nothing is there more pretense, more falsity, than the needless assumption of it. Through precept and consciousness, man has long enough realized how bad he is. I would not so muchdisturb or demolish that conviction, only to resume and keepunerringly with it the spinal meaning of the Scriptural text, _God overlook'd all that He had made_, (including the apex of thewhole--humanity--with its elements, passions, appetites, ) _and behold, it was very good_. "

Does not anything short of that third point of view, when you come tothink of it profoundly and with amplitude, impugn Creation from theoutset? In fact, however overlaid, or unaware of itself, does notthe conviction involv'd in it perennially exist at the centre ofall society, and of the sexes, and of marriage? Is it not really anintuition of the human race? For, old as the world is, and beyondstatement as are the countless and splendid results of its culture andevolution, perhaps the best and earliest and purest intuitions of thehuman race have yet to be develop'd. 

DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN LECTURE

_deliver'd in New York, April 14, 1879--in Philadelphia, '80--inBoston, '81_

How often since that dark and dripping Saturday--that chilly Aprilday, now fifteen years bygone--my heart has entertain'd the dream, thewish, to give of Abraham Lincoln's death, its own special thought andmemorial. Yet now the sought-for opportunity offers, I find my notesincompetent, (why, for truly profound themes, is statement so idle?why does the right phrase never offer?) and the fit tribute I dream'dof, waits unprepared as ever. My talk here indeed is less becauseof itself or anything in it, and nearly altogether because I feel adesire, apart from any talk, to specify the day, the martyrdom. It isfor this, my friends, I have call'd you together. Oft as the rollingyears bring back this hour, let it again, however briefly, be dweltupon. For my own part, I hope and desire, till my own dying day, whenever the 14th or 15th of April comes, to annually gather a fewfriends, and hold its tragic reminiscence. No narrow or sectionalreminiscence. It belongs to these States in their entirety--not theNorth only, but the South--perhaps belongs most tenderly and devoutlyto the South, of all; for there, really, this man's birth-stock. Thereand thence his antecedent stamp. Why should I not say that thence hismanliest traits--his universality--his canny, easy ways and words uponthe surface--his inflexible determination and courage at heart? Haveyou never realized it, my friends, that Lincoln, though grafted onthe West, is essentially, in personnel and character, a Southerncontribution?

And though by no means proposing to resume the secession war to-night, I would briefly remind you of the public conditions preceding thatcontest. For twenty years, and especially during the four or fivebefore the war actually began, the aspect of affairs in the UnitedStates, though without the flash of military excitement, presents morethan the survey of a battle, or any extended campaign, or series, evenof Nature's convulsions. The hot passions of the South--the strangemixture at the North of inertia, incredulity, and conscious power--theincendiarism of the abolitionists--the rascality and grip of thepoliticians, unparallel'd in any land, any age. To these I mustnot omit adding the honesty of the essential bulk of the peopleeverywhere--yet with all the seething fury and contradiction of theirnatures more arous'd than the Atlantic's waves in wildest equinox. Inpolitics, what can be more ominous, (though generally unappreciatedthen)--what more significant than the Presidentiads of Fillmore andBuchanan? proving conclusively that the weakness and wickedness ofelected rulers are just as likely to afflict us here, as in thecountries of the Old World, under their monarchies, emperors, andaristocracies. In that Old World were everywhere heard undergroundrumblings, that died out, only to again surely return. While inAmerica the volcano, though civic yet, continued to grow more and moreconvulsive--more and more stormy and threatening. 

In the height of all this excitement and chaos, hovering on the edgeat first, and then merged in its very midst, and destined to play aleading part, appears a strange and awkward figure. I shall not easilyforget the first time I ever saw Abraham Lincoln. It must have beenabout the 18th or 19th of February, 1861. It was rather a pleasantafternoon, in New York city, as he arrived there from the West, toremain a few hours, and then pass on to Washington, to prepare forhis inauguration. I saw him in Broadway, near the site of the presentPost-office. He came down, I think from Canal street, to stop atthe Astor House. The broad spaces, sidewalks, and street in theneighborhood, and for some distance, were crowded with solid masses ofpeople, many thousands. The omnibuses and other vehicles had all beenturn'd off, leaving an unusual hush in that busy part of the city. Presently two or three shabby hack barouches made their way with somedifficulty through the crowd, and drew up at the Astor House entrance. A tall figure stepp'd out of the centre of these barouches, paus'dleisurely on the sidewalk, look'd up at the granite walls and loomingarchitecture of the grand old hotel--then, after a relieving stretchof arms and legs, turn'd round for over a minute to slowly andgood-humoredly scan the appearance of the vast and silent crowds. There were no speeches--no compliments--no welcome--as far as I couldhear, not a word said. Still much anxiety was conceal'd in that quiet. Cautious persons had fear'd some mark'd insult or indignity to thePresident-elect--for he possess'd no personal popularity at all in NewYork city, and very little political. But it was evidently tacitlyagreed that if the few political supporters of Mr. Lincoln presentwould entirely abstain from any demonstration on their side, theimmense majority, who were anything but supporters, would abstain ontheir side also. The result was a sulky, unbroken silence, such ascertainly never before characterized so great a New York crowd. 

Almost in the same neighborhood I distinctly remember'd seeingLafayette on his visit to America in 1825. I had also personally seenand heard, various years afterward, how Andrew Jackson, Clay, Webster, Hungarian Kossuth, Filibuster Walker, the Prince of Wales on hisvisit, and other celebres, native and foreign, had been welcom'dthere--all that indescribable human roar and magnetism, unlike anyother sound in the universe--the glad exulting thunder-shouts ofcountless unloos'd throats of men! But on this occasion, not avoice--not a sound. From the top of an omnibus, (driven up one side, close by, and block'd by the curbstone and the crowds, ) I had, I say, a capital view of it all, and especially of Mr. Lincoln, his look andgait--his perfect composure and coolness--his unusual and uncouthheight, his dress of complete black, stovepipe hat push'd back on thehead, dark-brown complexion, seam'd and wrinkled yet canny-lookingface, black, bushy head of hair, disproportionately long neck, and hishands held behind as he stood observing the people. He look'd withcuriosity upon that immense sea of faces, and the sea of facesreturn'd the look with similar curiosity. In both there was a dashof comedy, almost farce, such as Shakspere puts in his blackesttragedies. The crowd that hemm'd around consisted I should thinkof thirty to forty thousand men, not a single one his personalfriend--while I have no doubt, (so frenzied were the ferments ofthe time, ) many an assassin's knife and pistol lurk'd in hip orbreast-pocket there, ready, soon as break and riot came. 

But no break or riot came. The tall figure gave another relievingstretch or two of arms and legs; then with moderate pace, andaccompanied by a few unknown-looking persons, ascended theportico-steps of the Astor House, disappear'd through its broadentrance--and the dumb-show ended. 

I saw Abraham Lincoln often the four years following that date. Hechanged rapidly and much during his Presidency--but this scene, andhim in it, are indelibly stamp'd upon my recollection. As I sat on thetop of my omnibus, and had a good view of him, the thought, dim andinchoate then, has since come out clear enough, that four sorts ofgenius, four mighty and primal hands, will be needed to the completelimning of this man's future portrait--the eyes and brains andfinger-touch of Plutarch and Eschylus and Michel Angelo, assisted byRabelais. 

And now--(Mr. Lincoln passing on from this scene to Washington, wherehe was inaugurated, amid armed cavalry, and sharpshooters at everypoint--the first instance of the kind in our history--and I hope itwill be the last)--now the rapid succession of well-known events, (too well known--I believe, these days, we almost hate to hear themmention'd)--the national flag fired on at Sumter--the uprising of theNorth, in paroxysms of astonishment and rage--the chaos of dividedcouncils--the call for troops--the first Bull Run--the stunningcast-down, shock, and dismay of the North--and so in full flood thesecession war. Four years of lurid, bleeding, murky, murderous war. Who paint those years, with all their scenes?--the hard-foughtengagements--the defeats, plans, failures--the gloomy hours, days, when our Nationality seem'd hung in pall of doubt, perhaps death--theMephistophelean sneers of foreign lands and attaches--the dreadedScylla of European interference, and the Charybdis of the tremendouslydangerous latent strata of secession sympathizers throughout the freeStates, (far more numerous than is supposed)--the long marches insummer--the hot sweat, and many a sunstroke, as on the rush toGettysburg in '63--the night battles in the woods, as under Hookerat Chancellorsville--the camps in winter--the military prisons--thehospitals--(alas! alas! the hospitals. )

The secession war? Nay, let me call it the Union war. Though whatevercall'd, it is even yet too near us--too vast and too closelyovershadowing--its branches unform'd yet, (but certain, ) shooting toofar into the future--and the most indicative and mightiest of them yetungrown. A great literature will yet arise out of the era of thosefour years, those scenes--era compressing centuries of native passion, first-class pictures, tempests of life and death--an inexhaustiblemine for the histories, drama, romance, and even philosophy, ofpeoples to come--indeed the verteber of poetry and art, (of personalcharacter too, ) for all future America--far more grand, in my opinion, to the hands capable of it, than Homer's siege of Troy, or the Frenchwars to Shakspere. 

But I must leave these speculations, and come to the theme I haveassign'd and limited myself to. Of the actual murder of PresidentLincoln, though so much has been written, probably the facts are yetvery indefinite in most persons' minds. I read from my memoranda, written at the time, and revised frequently and finally since. 

The day, April 14, 1865, seems to have been a pleasant one throughoutthe whole land--the moral atmosphere pleasant too--the long storm, so dark, so fratricidal, full of blood and doubt and gloom, over andended at last by the sun-rise of such an absolute National victory, and utter break-down of Secessionism--we almost doubted our ownsenses! Lee had capitulated beneath the apple-tree of Appomattox. Theother armies, the flanges of the revolt, swiftly follow'd. And couldit really be, then? Out of all the affairs of this world of woe andfailure and disorder, was there really come the confirm'd, unerringsign of plan, like a shaft of pure light--of rightful rule--of God? Sothe day, as I say, was propitious. Early herbage, early flowers, wereout. (I remember where I was stopping at the time, the season beingadvanced, there were many lilacs in full bloom. By one of thosecaprices that enter and give tinge to events without being at all apart of them, I find myself always reminded of the great tragedy ofthat day by the sight and odor of these blossoms. It never fails. )

But I must not dwell on accessories. The deed hastens. The popularafternoon paper of Washington, the little "Evening Star, " hadspatter'd all over its third page, divided among the advertisements ina sensational manner, in a hundred different places, _The Presidentand his Lady will be at the Theatre this evening_.... (Lincoln wasfond of the theatre. I have myself seen him there several times. Iremember thinking how funny it was that he, in some respects theleading actor in the stormiest drama known to real history's stagethrough centuries, should sit there and be so completely interestedand absorb'd in those human jack-straws, moving about with their sillylittle gestures, foreign spirit, and flatulent text. )

On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gaycostumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, youngfolks, the usual clusters of gas-lights, the usual magnetism ofso many people, cheerful, with perfumes, music of violins andflutes--(and over all, and saturating all, that vast, vague wonder, _Victory_, the nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling theair, the thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all music andperfumes. )

The President came betimes, and, with his wife, witness'd the playfrom the large stage-boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one, and profusely drap'd with the national flag. The acts and scenes ofthe piece--one of those singularly written compositions which haveat least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged inmental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as itmakes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic, or spiritual nature--a piece, ("Our American Cousin, ") in which, amongother characters, so call'd, a Yankee, certainly such a one as wasnever seen, or the least like it ever seen, in North America, isintroduced in England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern populardrama--had progress'd through perhaps a couple of its acts, when inthe midst of this comedy, or non-such, or whatever it is to be call'd, and to offset it, or finish it out, as if in Nature's and the greatMuse's mockery of those poor mimes, came interpolated that scene, notreally or exactly to be described at all, (for on the many hundredswho were there it seems to this hour to have left a passing blur, adream, a blotch)--and yet partially to be described as I now proceedto give it. There is a scene in the play representing a modernparlor in which two unprecedented English ladies are inform'd by theimpossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and thereforeundesirable for marriage-catching purposes; after which, the commentsbeing finish'd, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clearfor a moment. At this period came the murder of Abraham Lincoln. 

Great as all its manifold train, circling round it, and stretchinginto the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art, &c. , of the New World, in point of fact the main thing, the actualmurder, transpired with the quiet and simplicity of any commonestoccurrence--the bursting of a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation, for instance. Through the general hum following the stage pause, withthe change of positions, came the muffled sound of a pistol-shot, which not one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time--andyet a moment's hush--somehow, surely, a vague startled thrill--andthen, through the ornamented, draperied, starr'd and striped space-wayof the President's box, a sudden figure, a man, raises himself withhands and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to thestage, (a distance of perhaps fourteen or fifteen feet, ) falls out ofposition, catching his boot-heel in the copious drapery, (the Americanflag, ) falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as ifnothing had happen'd, (he really sprains his ankle, but unfeltthen)--and so the figure, Booth, the murderer, dress'd in plain blackbroadcloth, bare-headed, with full, glossy, raven hair, and his eyeslike some mad animal's flashing with light and resolution, yet with acertain strange calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife--walksalong not much back from the footlights--turns fully toward theaudience his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity--launches out in a firmand steady voice the words _Sic semper tyrannis_--and then walks withneither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of thestage, and disappears. (Had not all this terrible scene--making themimic ones preposterous--had it not all been rehears'd, in blank, byBooth, beforehand?)

A moment's hush--a scream--the cry of _murder_--Mrs. Lincoln leaningout of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with involuntary cry, pointing to the retreating figure, _He has kill'd the President. _And still a moment's strange, incredulous suspense--and then thedeluge!--then that mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty--(the sound, somewhere back, of a horse's hoofs clattering with speed)--the peopleburst through chairs and railings, and break them up--there isinextricable confusion and terror--women faint--quite feeble personsfall, and are trampl'd on--many cries of agony are heard--the broadstage suddenly fills to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible carnival--the audience rush generally upon it, atleast the strong men do--the actors and actresses are all there intheir play-costumes and painted faces, with mortal fright showingthrough the rouge--the screams and calls, confused talk--redoubled, trebled--two or three manage to pass up water from the stage to thePresident's box--others try to clamber up--&c. , &c. 

In the midst of all this, the soldiers of the President's guard, withothers, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in--(some two hundredaltogether)--they storm the house, through all the tiers, especiallythe upper ones, inflam'd with fury, literally charging the audiencewith fix'd bayonets, muskets and pistols, snouting _Clear out! clearout! you sons of_----.... Such the wild scene, or a suggestion of itrather, inside the play-house that night. 

Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people, fill'd with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, come nearcommitting murder several times on innocent individuals. One such casewas especially exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got started against one man, either for words he utter'd, or perhapswithout any cause at all, and were proceeding at once to actually hanghim on a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroicpolicemen, who placed him in their midst, and fought their way slowlyand amid great peril toward the station house. It was a fittingepisode of the whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to andfro--the night, the yells, the pale faces, many frighten'd peopletrying in vain to extricate themselves--the attack'd man, not yetfreed from the jaws of death, looking like a corpse--the silent, resolute, half-dozen policemen, with no weapons but their littleclubs, yet stern and steady through all those eddying swarms--made afitting side-scene to the grand tragedy of the murder. They gain'd thestation house with the protected man, whom they placed in security forthe night, and discharged him in the morning. 

And in the midst of that pandemonium, infuriated soldiers, theaudience and the crowd, the stage, and all its actors and actresses, its paint-pots, spangles, and gas-lights--the life blood from thoseveins, the best and sweetest of the land, drips slowly down, anddeath's ooze already begins its little bubbles on the lips. 

Thus the visible incidents and surroundings of Abraham Lincoln'smurder, as they really occur'd. Thus ended the attempted secessionof these States; thus the four years' war. But the main things comesubtly and invisibly afterward, perhaps long afterward--neithermilitary, political, nor (great as those are, ) historical. I say, certain secondary and indirect results, out of the tragedy of thisdeath, are, in my opinion, greatest. Not the event of the murderitself. Not that Mr. Lincoln strings the principal points andpersonages of the period, like beads, upon the single string of hiscareer. Not that his idiosyncrasy, in its sudden appearance anddisappearance, stamps this Republic with a stamp more mark'd andenduring than any yet given by any one man--(more even thanWashington's;)--but, join'd with these, the immeasurable value andmeaning of that whole tragedy lies, to me, in senses finally dearestto a nation, (and here all our own)--the imaginative and artisticsenses--the literary and dramatic ones. Not in any common or lowmeaning of those terms, but a meaning precious to the race, and toevery age. A long and varied series of contradictory events arrives atlast at its highest poetic, single, central, pictorial denouement. The whole involved, baffling, multiform whirl of the secessionperiod comes to a head, and is gather'd in one brief flash oflightning-illumination--one simple, fierce deed. Its sharpculmination, and as it were solution, of so many bloody and angryproblems, illustrates those climax-moments on the stage of universalTime, where the historic Muse at one entrance, and the tragic Muse atthe other, suddenly ringing down the curtain, close an immense act inthe long drama of creative thought, and give it radiation, tableau, stranger than fiction. Fit radiation--fit close! How theimagination--how the student loves these things! America, too, is tohave them. For not in all great deaths, nor far or near--not Caesarin the Roman senate-house, or Napoleon passing away in the wildnight-storm at St. Helena--not Paleologus, falling, desperatelyfighting, piled over dozens deep with Grecian corpses--not calm oldSocrates, drinking the hemlock--outvies that terminus of the secessionwar, in one man's life, here in our midst, in our own time--that sealof the emancipation of three million slaves--that parturition anddelivery of our at last really free Republic, born again, henceforthto commence its career of genuine homogeneous Union, compact, consistent with itself. 

Nor will ever future American Patriots and Unionists, indifferentlyover the whole land, or North or South, find a better moral to theirlesson. The final use of the greatest men of a Nation is, after all, not with reference to their deeds in themselves, or their directbearing on their times or lands. The final use of a heroic-eminentlife--especially of a heroic-eminent death--is its indirect filteringinto the nation and the race, and to give, often at many removes, butunerringly, age after age, color and fibre to the personalism of theyouth and maturity of that age, and of mankind. Then there is a cementto the whole people, subtler, more underlying, than any thing inwritten constitution, or courts or armies--namely, the cement of adeath identified thoroughly with that people, at its head, and for itssake. Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, agonies, blood, even assassination, should so condense--perhaps only really, lastinglycondense--a Nationality. 

I repeat it--the grand deaths of the race--the dramatic deaths ofevery nationality--are its most important inheritance-value--in somerespects beyond its literature and art--(as the hero is beyond hisfinest portrait, and the battle itself beyond its choicest song orepic. ) Is not here indeed the point underlying all tragedy? the famouspieces of the Grecian masters--and all masters? Why, if the old Greekshad had this man, what trilogies of plays--what epics--would have beenmade out of him! How the rhapsodes would have recited him! How quicklythat quaint tall form would have enter'd into the region where menvitalize gods, and gods divinify men! But Lincoln, his times, hisdeath--great as any, any age--belong altogether to our own, and ourautochthonic. (Sometimes indeed I think our American days, our ownstage--the actors we know and have shaken hands, or talk'd with--morefateful than anything in Eschylus--more heroic than the fightersaround Troy--afford kings of men for our Democracy prouder thanAgamemnon--models of character cute and hardy as Ulysses--deaths morepitiful than Priam's. )

When, centuries hence, (as it must, in my opinion, be centuries hencebefore the life of these States, or of Democracy, can be reallywritten and illustrated, ) the leading historians and dramatists seekfor some personage, some special event, incisive enough to mark withdeepest cut, and mnemonize, this turbulent Nineteenth century ofours, (not only these States, but all over the political and socialworld)--something, perhaps, to close that gorgeous procession ofEuropean feudalism, with all its pomp and caste-prejudices, (of whoselong train we in America are yet so inextricably the heirs)--somethingto identify with terrible identification, by far the greatestrevolutionary step in the history of the United States, (perhaps thegreatest of the world, our century)--the absolute extirpation anderasure of slavery from the States--those historians will seek in vainfor any point to serve more thoroughly their purpose, than AbrahamLincoln's death. 

Dear to the Muse--thrice dear to Nationality--to the whole humanrace--precious to this Union--precious to Democracy--unspeakably andforever precious--their first great Martyr Chief. 

TWO LETTERS

I

TO -- -- -- LONDON, ENGLAND

_Camden, N. J. , U. S. America, March 17th, 1876. _ DEAR FRIEND:--Yours ofthe 28th Feb. Receiv'd, and indeed welcom'd. I am jogging along stillabout the same in physical condition--still certainly no worse, and Isometimes lately suspect rather better, or at any rate more adjustedto the situation. Even begin to think of making some move, some changeof base, &c. : the doctors have been advising it for over two years, but I haven't felt to do it yet. My paralysis does not lift--I cannotwalk any distance--I still have this baffling, obstinate, apparentlychronic affection of the stomachic apparatus and liver: yet I get outof doors a little every day--write and read in moderation--appetitesufficiently good--(eat only very plain food, but always didthat)--digestion tolerable--spirits unflagging. I have told you mostof this before, but suppose you might like to know it all again, up todate. Of course, and pretty darkly coloring the whole, are bad spells, prostrations, some pretty grave ones, intervals--and I have resign'dmyself to the certainty of permanent incapacitation from solid work:but things may continue at least in this half-and-half way for months, even years. 

My books are out, the new edition; a set of which, immediately onreceiving your letter of 28th, I have sent you, (by mail, March 15, )and I suppose you have before this receiv'd them. My dear friend, youroffers of help, and those of my other British friends, I think I fullyappreciate, in the right spirit, welcome and acceptive--leaving thematter altogether in your and their hands, and to your and theirconvenience, discretion, leisure, and nicety. Though poor now, even topenury, I have not so far been deprived of any physical thing I needor wish whatever, and I feel confident I shall not in the future. During my employment of seven years or more in Washington after thewar (1865-'72) I regularly saved part of my wages: and, though the sumhas now become about exhausted by my expenses of the last three years, there are already beginning at present welcome dribbles hitherwardfrom the sales of my new edition, which I just job and sell, myself, (all through this illness, my book-agents for three years in New Yorksuccessively, badly cheated me, ) and shall continue to dispose of thebooks myself. And that is the way I should prefer to glean my support. In that way I cheerfully accept all the aid my friends find itconvenient to proffer. 

To repeat a little, and without undertaking details, understand, dearfriend, for yourself and all, that I heartily and most affectionatelythank my British friends, and that I accept their sympatheticgenerosity in the same spirit in which I believe (nay, know) it isoffer'd--that though poor I am not in want--that I maintain good heartand cheer; and that by far the most satisfaction to me (and I thinkit can be done, and believe it will be) will be to live, as long aspossible, on the sales, by myself, of my own works, and perhaps, ifpracticable, by further writings for the press. 

W. W. 

I am prohibited from writing too much, and I must make this candidstatement of the situation serve for all my dear friends over there. 

II

TO -- -- -- DRESDEN, SAXONY

_Camden, New Jersey, U. S. A. , Dec. 20, '81. _ DEAR SIR:--Your letterasking definite endorsement to your translation of my "Leaves ofGrass" into Russian is just received, and I hasten to answer it. Most warmly and willingly I consent to the translation, and waft aprayerful God speed to the enterprise. 

You Russians and we Americans! Our countries so distant, so unlike atfirst glance--such a difference in social and political conditions, and our respective methods of moral and practical development the lasthundred years;--and yet in certain features, and vastest ones, soresembling each other. The variety of stock-elements and tongues, tobe resolutely fused in a common identity and union at all hazards--theidea, perennial through the ages, that they both have their historicand divine mission--the fervent element of manly friendship throughoutthe whole people, surpass'd by no other races--the grand expanse ofterritorial limits and boundaries--the unform'd and nebulous state ofmany things, not yet permanently settled, but agreed on all hands tobe the preparations of an infinitely greater future--the fact thatboth Peoples have their independent and leading positions to hold, keep, and if necessary, fight for, against the rest of the world--thedeathless aspirations at the inmost centre of each great community, so vehement, so mysterious, so abysmic--are certainly features youRussians and we Americans possess in common. As my dearest dream isfor an internationality of poems and poets binding the lands of theearth closer than all treaties and diplomacy--as the purpose beneaththe rest in my book is such hearty comradeship, for individuals tobegin with, and for all the nations of the earth as a result--howhappy I should be to get the hearing and emotional contact of thegreat Russian peoples. 

To whom, now and here, (addressing you for Russia and Russians andempowering you, should you see fit, to print the present letter, inyour book, as a preface, ) I waft affectionate salutation from theseshores, in America's name. 

W. W. 

NOTES LEFT OVER

NATIONALITY--(AND YET) It is more and more clear to me that the mainsustenance for highest separate personality, these States, is to comefrom that general sustenance of the aggregate, (as air, earth, rains, give sustenance to a tree)--and that such personality, by democraticstandards, will only be fully coherent, grand and free, through thecohesion, grandeur and freedom of the common aggregate, the Union. Thus the existence of the true American continental solidarity of thefuture, depending on myriads of superb, large-sized, emotional andphysically perfect individualities, of one sex just as much as theother, the supply of such individualities, in my opinion, whollydepends on a compacted imperial ensemble. The theory and practice ofboth sovereignties, contradictory as they are, are necessary. As thecentripetal law were fatal alone, or the centrifugal law deadly anddestructive alone, but together forming the law of eternal kosmicalaction, evolution, preservation, and life--so, by itself alone, thefullness of individuality, even the sanest, would surely destroyitself. This is what makes the importance to the identities of theseStates of the thoroughly fused, relentless, dominating Union--a moraland spiritual idea, subjecting all the parts with remorseless power, more needed by American democracy than by any of history's hithertoempires or feudalities, and the _sine qua non_ of carrying out therepublican principle to develop itself in the New World throughhundreds, thousands of years to come. 

Indeed, what most needs fostering through the hundred years to come, in all parts of the United States, north, south, Mississippi valley, and Atlantic and Pacific coasts, is this fused and fervent identity ofthe individual, whoever he or she may be, and wherever the place, withthe idea and fact of AMERICAN TOTALITY, and with what is meant by theFlag, the stars and stripes. We need this conviction of nationalityas a faith, to be absorb'd in the blood and belief of the Peopleeverywhere, south, north, west, east, to emanate in their life, andin native literature and art. We want the germinal idea that America, inheritor of the past, is the custodian of the future of humanity. Judging from history, it is some such moral and spiritual ideasappropriate to them, (and such ideas only, ) that have made theprofoundest glory and endurance of nations in the past. The races ofJudea, the classic clusters of Greece and Rome, and the feudaland ecclesiastical clusters of the Middle Ages, were each and allvitalized by their separate distinctive ideas, ingrain'd in them, redeeming many sins, and indeed, in a sense, the principal reason-whyfor their whole career. 

Then, in the thought of nationality especially for the United States, and making them original, and different from all other countries, another point ever remains to be considered. There are two distinctprinciples--aye, paradoxes--at the life-fountain and life-continuationof the States; one, the sacred principle of the Union, the right ofensemble, at whatever sacrifice--and yet another, an equally sacredprinciple, the right of each State, consider'd as a separate sovereignindividual, in its own sphere. Some go zealously for one set of theserights, and some as zealously for the other set. We must have both; orrather, bred out of them, as out of mother and father, a third set, the perennial result and combination of both, and neither jeopardized. I say the loss or abdication of one set, in the future, will be ruinto democracy just as much as the loss of the other set. The problemis, to harmoniously adjust the two, and the play of the two. [Observethe lesson of the divinity of Nature, ever checking the excess of onelaw, by an opposite, or seemingly opposite law--generally the otherside of the same law. ] For the theory of this Republic is, notthat the General government is the fountain of all life and power, dispensing it forth, around, and to the remotest portions of ourterritory, but that THE PEOPLE are, represented in both, underlyingboth the General and State governments, and consider'd just as well intheir individualities and in their separate aggregates, or States, asconsider'd in one vast aggregate, the Union. This was the originaldual theory and foundation of the United States, as distinguish'd fromthe feudal and ecclesiastical single idea of monarchies and papacies, and the divine right of kings. (Kings have been of use, hitherto, asrepresenting the idea of the identity of nations. But, to Americandemocracy, _both_ ideas must be fulfill'd, and in my opinion the lossof vitality of either one will indeed be the loss of vitality of theother. )

EMERSON'S BOOKS, (THE SHADOWS OF THEM)

In the regions we call Nature, towering beyond all measurement, with infinite spread, infinite depth and height--in those regions, including Man, socially and historically, with his moral-emotionalinfluences--how small a part, (it came in my mind to-day, ) hasliterature really depicted--even summing up all of it, all ages. Seems at its best some little fleet of boats, hugging the shores ofa boundless sea, and never venturing, exploring the unmapp'd--never, Columbus-like, sailing out for New Worlds, and to complete the orb'srondure. Emerson writes frequently in the atmosphere of this thought, and his books report one or two things from that very ocean and air, and more legibly address'd to our age and American polity than by anyman yet. But I will begin by scarifying him--thus proving that I amnot insensible to his deepest lessons. I will consider his books froma democratic and western point of view. I will specify the shadowson these sunny expanses. Somebody has said of heroic character that"wherever the tallest peaks are present, must inevitably be deepchasms and valleys. " Mine be the ungracious task (for reasons) ofleaving unmention'd both sunny expanses and sky-reaching heights, todwell on the bare spots and darknesses. I have a theory that no artistor work of the very first class may be or can be without them. 

First, then, these pages are perhaps too perfect, too concentrated. (How good, for instance, is good butter, good sugar. But to be eatingnothing but sugar and butter all the time! even if ever so good. )And though the author has much to say of freedom and wildness andsimplicity and spontaneity, no performance was ever more based onartificial scholarships and decorums at third or fourth removes, (hecalls it culture, ) and built up from them. It is always a _make_, never an unconscious _growth_. It is the porcelain figure or statuetteof lion, or stag, or Indian hunter--and a very choice statuettetoo--appropriate for the rosewood or marble bracket of parlor orlibrary; never the animal itself, or the hunter himself. Indeed, whowants the real animal or hunter? What would that do amid astral andbric-a-brac and tapestry, and ladies and gentlemen talking in subduedtones of Browning and Longfellow and art? The least suspicion of suchactual bull, or Indian, or of Nature carrying out itself, would putall those good people to instant terror and flight. 

Emerson, in my opinion, is not most eminent as poet or artist orteacher, though valuable in all those. He is best as critic, ordiagnoser. Not passion or imagination or warp or weakness, or anypronounced cause or specialty, dominates him. Cold and bloodlessintellectuality dominates him. (I know the fires, emotions, love, egotisms, glow deep, perennial, as in all New Englanders--but thefacade, hides them well--they give no sign. ) He does not see or takeone side, one presentation only or mainly, (as all the poets, or mostof the fine writers anyhow)--he sees all sides. His final influenceis to make his students cease to worship anything--almost cease tobelieve in anything, outside of themselves. These books will fill, andwell fill, certain stretches of life, certain stages of development--are, (like the tenets or theology the author of them preach'd when ayoung man, ) unspeakably serviceable and precious as a stage. Butin old or nervous or solemnest or dying hours, when one needs theimpalpably soothing and vitalizing influences of abysmic Nature, orits affinities in literature or human society, and the soul resentsthe keenest mere intellection, they will not be sought for. 

For a philosopher, Emerson possesses a singularly dandified theory ofmanners. He seems to have no notion at all that manners are simply thesigns by which the chemist or metallurgist knows his metals. To theprofound scientist, all metals are profound, as they really are. Thelittle one, like the conventional world, will make much of gold andsilver only. Then to the real artist in humanity, what are called badmanners are often the most picturesque and significant of all. Supposethese books becoming absorb'd, the permanent chyle of American generaland particular character--what a well-wash'd and grammatical, butbloodless and helpless, race we should turn out! No, no, dear friend;though the States want scholars, undoubtedly, and perhaps want ladiesand gentlemen who use the bath frequently, and never laugh loud, ortalk wrong, they don't want scholars, or ladies and gentlemen, at theexpense of all the rest. They want good farmers, sailors, mechanics, clerks, citizens--perfect business and social relations--perfectfathers and mothers. If we could only have these, or theirapproximations, plenty of them, fine and large and sane and generousand patriotic, they might make their verbs disagree from theirnominatives, and laugh like volleys of musketeers, if they shouldplease. Of course these are not all America wants, but they are firstof all to be provided on a large scale. And, with tremendous errorsand escapades, this, substantially, is what the States seem to have anintuition of, and to be mainly aiming at. The plan of a select class, superfined, (demarcated from the rest, ) the plan of Old World landsand literatures, is not so objectionable in itself, but because itchokes the true plan for us, and indeed is death to it. As to suchspecial class, the United States can never produce any equal to thesplendid show, (far, far beyond comparison or competition here, ) ofthe principal European nations, both in the past and at the presentday. But an immense and distinctive commonalty over our vast andvaried area, west and east, south and north--in fact, for the firsttime in history, a great, aggregated, real PEOPLE, worthy the name, and made of develop'd heroic individuals, both sexes--is America'sprincipal, perhaps only, reason for being. If ever accomplish'd, itwill be at least as much, (I lately think, doubly as much, ) the resultof fitting and democratic sociologies, literatures and arts--if weever get them--as of our democratic politics. 

At times it has been doubtful to me if Emerson really knows or feelswhat Poetry is at its highest, as in the Bible, for instance, or Homeror Shakspere. I see he covertly or plainly likes best superb verbalpolish, or something old or odd--Waller's "Go, lovely rose, " orLovelace's lines "to Lucusta"--the quaint conceits of the old Frenchbards, and the like. Of _power_ he seems to have a gentleman'sadmiration--but in his inmost heart the grandest attribute of God andPoets is always subordinate to the octaves, conceits, polite kinks, and verbs. 

The reminiscence that years ago I began like most youngsters to havea touch (though it came late, and was only on the surface) ofEmerson-on-the-brain--that I read his writings reverently, andaddress'd him in print as "Master, " and for a month or so thoughtof him as such--I retain not only with composure, but positivesatisfaction. I have noticed that most young people of eager mindspass through this stage of exercise. 

The best part of Emersonianism is, it breeds the giant that destroysitself. Who wants to be any man's mere follower? lurks behind everypage. No teacher ever taught, that has so provided for his pupil'ssetting up independently--no truer evolutionist. 

VENTURES, ON AN OLD THEME

A DIALOGUE--

_One party says_--We arrange our lives--even the best and boldest menand women that exist, just as much as the most limited--with referenceto what society conventionally rules and makes right. We retire to ourrooms for freedom; to undress, bathe, unloose everything in freedom. These, and much else, would not be proper in society. 

_Other party answers_--Such is the rule of society. Not always so, andconsiderable exceptions still exist. However, it must be called thegeneral rule, sanction'd by immemorial usage, and will probably alwaysremain so. 

_First party_--Why not, then, respect it in your poems?

_Answer_--One reason, and to me a profound one, is that the soul of aman or woman demands, enjoys compensation in the highest directionsfor this very restraint of himself or herself, level'd to the average, or rather mean, low, however eternally practical, requirements ofsociety's intercourse. To balance this indispensable abnegation, thefree minds of poets relieve themselves, and strengthen and enrichmankind with free flights in all the directions not tolerated byordinary society. 

_First party_--But must not outrage or give offence to it. 

_Answer_--No, not in the deepest sense--and do not, and cannot. Thevast averages of time and the race _en masse_ settle these things. Only understand that the conventional standards and laws proper enoughfor ordinary society apply neither to the action of the soul, nor itspoets. In fact the latter know no laws but the laws of themselves, planted in them by God, and are themselves the last standards of thelaw, and its final exponents--responsible to Him directly, and not atall to mere etiquette. Often the best service that can be done to therace, is to lift the veil, at least for a time, from these rules andfossil-etiquettes. 

NEW POETRY--_California, Canada, Texas_. --In my opinion the time hasarrived to essentially break down the barriers of form between proseand poetry. I say the latter is henceforth to win and maintain itscharacter regardless of rhyme, and the measurement-rules of iambic, spondee, dactyl, &c. , and that even if rhyme and those measurementscontinue to furnish the medium for inferior writers and themes, (especially for persiflage and the comic, as there seems henceforward, to the perfect taste, something inevitably comic in rhyme, merely initself, and anyhow, ) the truest and greatest _Poetry_, (while subtlyand necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough, )can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitraryand rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truestpower and passion. While admitting that the venerable and heavenlyforms of chiming versification have in their time play'd great andfitting parts--that the pensive complaint, the ballads, wars, amours, legends of Europe, &c. , have, many of them, been inimitably render'din rhyming verse--that there have been very illustrious poets whoseshapes the mantle of such verse has beautifully and appropriatelyenvelopt--and though the mantle has fallen, with perhaps added beauty, on some of our own age--it is, not-withstanding, certain to me, thatthe day of such conventional rhyme is ended. In America, at any rate, and as a medium of highest esthetic practical or spiritual expression, present or future, it palpably fails, and must fail, to serve. TheMuse of the Prairies, of California, Canada, Texas, and of the peaksof Colorado, dismissing the literary, as well as social etiquette ofover-sea feudalism and caste, joyfully enlarging, adapting itself tocomprehend the size of the whole people, with the free play, emotions, pride, passions, experiences, that belong to them, body and soul--tothe general globe, and all its relations in astronomy, as the savansportray them to us--to the modern, the busy Nineteenth century, (asgrandly poetic as any, only different, ) with steamships, railroads, factories, electric telegraphs, cylinder presses--to the thought ofthe solidarity of nations, the brotherhood and sisterhood of theentire earth--to the dignity and heroism of the practical labor offarms, factories, foundries, workshops, mines, or on shipboard, oron lakes and rivers--resumes that other medium of expression, moreflexible, more eligible--soars to the freer, vast, diviner heaven ofprose. 

Of poems of the third or fourth class, (perhaps even some of thesecond, ) it makes little or no difference who writes them--they aregood enough for what they are; nor is it necessary that they should beactual emanations from the personality and life of the writers. Thevery reverse sometimes gives piquancy. But poems of the first class, (poems of the depth, as distinguished from those of the surface, ) areto be sternly tallied with the poets themselves, and tried by them andtheir lives. Who wants a glorification of courage and manly defiancefrom a coward or a sneak?--a ballad of benevolence or chastity fromsome rhyming hunks, or lascivious, glib _roue_?

In these States, beyond all precedent, poetry will have to do withactual facts, with the concrete States, and--for we have not muchmore than begun--with the definitive getting into shape of the Union. Indeed I sometimes think _it_ alone is to define the Union, (namely, to give it artistic character, spirituality, dignity. ) What Americanhumanity is most in danger of is an overwhelming prosperity, "business" worldliness, materialism: what is most lacking, east, west, north, south, is a fervid and glowing Nationality and patriotism, cohering all the parts into one. Who may fend that danger, and fillthat lack in the future, but a class of loftiest poets?

If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain they import, print, and read more poetry than any equalnumber of people elsewhere--probably more than all the rest of theworld combined. 

Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of manygenerations--many rare combinations. 

To have great poets, there must be great audiences, too. 

BRITISH LITERATURE

To avoid mistake, I would say that I not only commend the study ofthis literature, but wish our sources of supply and comparisonvastly enlarged. American students may well derive from all formerlands--from forenoon Greece and Rome, down to the perturb'd mediaevaltimes, the Crusades, and so to Italy, the German intellect--all theolder literatures, and all the newer ones--from witty and warlikeFrance, and markedly, and in many ways, and at many different periods, from the enterprise and soul of the great Spanish race--bearingourselves always courteous, always deferential, indebted beyondmeasure to the mother-world, to all its nations dead, as all itsnations living--the offspring, this America of ours, the daughter, notby any means of the British isles exclusively, but of the continent, and all continents. Indeed, it is time we should realize and fullyfructify those germs we also hold from Italy, France, Spain, especially in the best imaginative productions of those lands, whichare, in many ways, loftier and subtler than the English, or British, and indispensable to complete our service, proportions, education, reminiscences, &c.... The British element these States hold, and havealways held, enormously beyond its fit proportions. I have alreadyspoken of Shakspere. He seems to me of astral genius, first class, entirely fit for feudalism. His contributions, especially to theliterature of the passions, are immense, forever dear to humanity--andhis name is always to be reverenced in America. But there is muchin him ever offensive to democracy. He is not only the tally offeudalism, but I should say Shakspere is incarnated, uncompromisingfeudalism, in literature. Then one seems to detect something in him--Ihardly know how to describe it--even amid the dazzle of his genius;and, in inferior manifestations, it is found in nearly all leadingBritish authors. (Perhaps we will have to import the words Snob, Snobbish, &c. , after all. ) While of the great poems of Asianantiquity, the Indian epics, the book of Job, the Ionian Iliad, theunsurpassedly simple, loving, perfect idyls of the life and deathof Christ, in the New Testament, (indeed Homer and the Biblicalutterances intertwine familiarly with us, in the main, ) and alongdown, of most of the characteristic, imaginative or romantic relics ofthe continent, as the Cid, Cervantes' Don Quixote, &c. , I should saythey substantially adjust themselves to us, and, far off as they are, accord curiously with our bed and board to-day, in New York, Washington, Canada, Ohio, Texas, California--and with our notions, both of seriousness and of fun, and our standards of heroism, manliness, and even the democratic requirements--those requirementsare not only not fulfill'd in the Shaksperean productions, but areinsulted on every page. 

I add that--while England is among the greatest of lands in politicalfreedom, or the idea of it, and in stalwart personal character, &c. --the spirit of English literature is not great, at least is notgreatest--and its products are no models for us. With the exception ofShakspere, there is no first-class genius in that literature--which, with a truly vast amount of value, and of artificial beauty, (largely from the classics, ) is almost always material, sensual, not spiritual--almost always congests, makes plethoric, not frees, expands, dilates--is cold, anti-democratic, loves to be sluggish andstately, and shows much of that characteristic of vulgar persons, thedread of saying or doing something not at all improper in itself, butunconventional, and that may be laugh'd at. In its best, the sombrepervades it; it is moody, melancholy, and, to give it its due, expresses, in characters and plots, those qualities, in an unrival'dmanner. Yet not as the black thunder-storms, and in great normal, crashing passions, of the Greek dramatists--clearing the air, refreshing afterward, bracing with power; but as in Hamlet, moping, sick, uncertain, and leaving ever after a secret taste for the blues, the morbid fascination, the luxury of wo.... 

I strongly recommend all the young men and young women of the UnitedStates to whom it may be eligible, to overhaul the well-freightedfleets, the literatures of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, so full ofthose elements of freedom, self-possession, gay-heartedness, subtlety, dilation, needed in preparations for the future of the States. I onlywish we could have really good translations. I rejoice at the feelingfor Oriental researches and poetry, and hope it will go on. 

DARWINISM--(THEN FURTHERMORE)

Running through prehistoric ages--coming down from them into thedaybreak of our records, founding theology, suffusing literature, andso brought onward--(a sort of verteber and marrow to all the antiqueraces and lands, Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, the Chinese, the Jews, &c. , and giving cast and complexion to their art, poems, and theirpolitics as well as ecclesiasticism, all of which we more or lessinherit, ) appear those venerable claims to origin from God himself, orfrom gods and goddesses--ancestry from divine beings of vaster beauty, size, and power than ours. But in current and latest times, the theoryof human origin that seems to have most made its mark, (curiouslyreversing the antique, ) is that we have come on, originated, developt, from monkeys, baboons--a theory more significant perhaps in itsindirections, or what it necessitates, than it is even in itself. (Ofthe twain, far apart as they seem, and angrily as their conflictingadvocates to-day oppose each other, are not both theories to bepossibly reconcil'd, and even blended? Can we, indeed, spare either ofthem? Better still, out of them is not a third theory, the real one, or suggesting the real one, to arise?)

Of this old theory, evolution, as broach'd anew, trebled, with indeedall-devouring claims, by Darwin, it has so much in it, and is soneeded as a counterpoise to yet widely prevailing and unspeakablytenacious, enfeebling superstitions--is fused, by the new man, intosuch grand, modest, truly scientific accompaniments--that the world oferudition, both moral and physical, cannot but be eventually better'dand broaden'd in its speculations, from the advent of Darwinism. Nevertheless, the problem of origins, human and other, is not theleast whit nearer its solution. In due time the Evolution theory willhave to abate its vehemence, cannot be allow'd to dominate every thingelse, and will have to take its place as a segment of the circle, thecluster--as but one of many theories, many thoughts, of profoundestvalue--and re-adjusting and differentiating much, yet leaving thedivine secrets just as inexplicable and unreachable as before--maybemore so. 

_Then furthermore_--What is finally to be done by priest or poet--andby priest or poet only--amid all the stupendous and dazzling noveltiesof our century, with the advent of America, and of science anddemocracy--remains just as indispensable, after all the work of thegrand astronomers, chemists, linguists, historians, and explorersof the last hundred years--and the wondrous German and othermetaphysicians of that time--and will continue to remain, needed, America and here, just the same as in the world of Europe, or Asia, of a hundred, or a thousand, or several thousand years ago. I thinkindeed _more_ needed, to furnish statements from the present points, the added arriere, and the unspeakably immenser vistas of to-day. Only, the priests and poets of the modern, at least as exalted as anyin the past, fully absorbing and appreciating the results of thepast, in the commonalty of all humanity, all time, (the main resultsalready, for there is perhaps nothing more, or at any rate not much, strictly new, only more important modern combinations, and newrelative adjustments, ) must indeed recast the old metal, the alreadyachiev'd material, into and through new moulds, current forms. 

Meantime, the highest and subtlest and broadest truths of modernscience wait for their true assignment and last vivid flashes oflight--as Democracy waits for it's--through first-class metaphysiciansand speculative philosophs--laying the basements and foundations forthose new, more expanded, more harmonious, more melodious, freerAmerican poems. 

"SOCIETY"

I have myself little or no hope from what is technically called"Society" in our American cities. New York, of which place I havespoken so sharply, still promises something, in time, out of itstremendous and varied materials, with a certain superiority ofintuitions, and the advantage of constant agitation, and ever new andrapid dealings of the cards. Of Boston, with its circles of socialmummies, swathed in cerements harder than brass--its bloodlessreligion, (Unitarianism, ) its complacent vanity of scientism andliterature, lots of grammatical correctness, mere knowledge, (alwayswearisome, in itself)--its zealous abstractions, ghosts of reforms--Ishould say, (ever admitting its business powers, its sharp, almostdemoniac, intellect, and no lack, in its own way, of courage andgenerosity)--there is, at present, little of cheering, satisfyingsign. In the West, California, &c. , "society" is yet unform'd, puerile, seemingly unconscious of anything above a driving business, or to liberally spend the money made by it, in the usual rounds andshows. 

Then there is, to the humorous observer of American attempts atfashion, according to the models of foreign courts and saloons, quitea comic side--particularly visible at Washington city--a sort ofhigh-life-below-stairs business. As if any farce could be funnier, for instance, than the scenes of the crowds, winter nights, meanderingaround our Presidents and their wives, cabinet officers, western orother Senators, Representatives, &c. ; born of good laboring mechanicor farmer stock and antecedents, attempting those full-dressreceptions, finesse of parlors, foreign ceremonies, etiquettes, &c. 

Indeed, consider'd with any sense of propriety, or any sense at all, the whole of this illy-play'd fashionable play and display, with theirabsorption of the best part of our wealthier citizens' time, money, energies, &c. , is ridiculously out of place in the United States. As if our proper man and woman, (far, far greater words than"gentleman" and "lady, ") could still fail to see, and presentlyachieve, not this spectral business, but something truly noble, active, sane, American--by modes, perfections of character, manners, costumes, social relations, &c. , adjusted to standards, far, fardifferent from those. 

Eminent and liberal foreigners, British or continental, must at timeshave their faith fearfully tried by what they see of our New Worldpersonalities. The shallowest and least American persons seem surestto push abroad, and call without fail on well-known foreigners, whoare doubtless affected with indescribable qualms by these queer ones. Then, more than half of our authors and writers evidently think it agreat thing to be "aristocratic, " and sneer at progress, democracy, revolution, etc. If some international literary snobs' gallery wereestablish'd, it is certain that America could contribute at least herfull share of the portraits, and some very distinguish'd ones. Observethat the most impudent slanders, low insults, &c. , on the greatrevolutionary authors, leaders, poets, &c. , of Europe, have theirorigin and main circulation in certain circles here. The treatment ofVictor Hugo living, and Byron dead, are samples. Both deserving sowell of America, and both persistently attempted to be soil'd here byunclean birds, male and female. 

Meanwhile I must still offset the like of the foregoing, and all itinfers, by the recognition of the fact, that while the surfaces ofcurrent society here show so much that is dismal, noisome, and vapory, there are, beyond question, inexhaustible supplies, as of true goldore, in the mines of America's general humanity. Let us, not ignoringthe dross, give fit stress to these precious immortal values also. Let it be distinctly admitted, that--whatever may be said of ourfashionable society, and of any foul fractions and episodes--only herein America, out of the long history and manifold presentations ofthe ages, has at last arisen, and now stands, what never before tookpositive form and sway, _the People_--and that view'd en masse, andwhile fully acknowledging deficiencies, dangers, faults, this people, inchoate, latent, not yet come to majority, nor to its own religious, literary, or esthetic expression, yet affords, to-day, an exultantjustification of all the faith, all the hopes and prayers andprophecies of good men through the past--the stablest, solidest-basedgovernment of the world--the most assured in a future--the beamingPharos to whose perennial light all earnest eyes, the world over, aretending--and that already, in and from it, the democratic principle, having been mortally tried by severest tests, fatalities of war andpeace, now issues from the trial, unharm'd, trebly-invigorated, perhaps to commence forthwith its finally triumphant march around theglobe. 

THE TRAMP AND STRIKE QUESTIONS: _Part of a Lecture proposed, (neverdeliver'd)_

Two grim and spectral dangers--dangerous to peace, to health, to social security, to progress--long known in concrete to thegovernments of the Old World, and there eventuating, more than once ortwice, in dynastic overturns, bloodshed, days, months, of terror--seemof late years to be nearing the New World, nay, to be graduallyestablishing themselves among us. What mean these phantoms here? (Ipersonify them in fictitious shapes, but they are very real. ) Is thefresh and broad demesne of America destined also to give them footholdand lodgment, permanent domicile?

Beneath the whole political world, what most presses and perplexesto-day, sending vastest results affecting the future, is notthe abstract question of democracy, but of social and economicorganization, the treatment of working-people by employers, and allthat goes along with it--not only the wages-payment part, but acertain spirit and principle, to vivify anew these relations; allthe questions of progress, strength, tariffs, finance, &c. , reallyevolving themselves more or less directly out of the Poverty Question, ("the Science of Wealth, " and a dozen other names are given it, but Iprefer the severe one just used. ) I will begin by calling the reader'sattention to a thought upon the matter which may not have struck youbefore--the wealth of the civilized world, as contrasted with itspoverty--what does it derivatively stand for, and represent? A richperson ought to have a strong stomach. As in Europe the wealth ofto-day mainly results from, and represents, the rapine, murder, outrages, treachery, hoggishness, of hundreds of years ago, andonward, later, so in America, after the same token--(not yet so bad, perhaps, or at any rate not so palpable--we have not existed longenough--but we seem to be doing our best to make it up. )

Curious as it may seem, it is in what are call'd the poorest, lowestcharacters you will sometimes, nay generally, find glints of the mostsublime virtues, eligibilities, heroisms. Then it is doubtful whetherthe State is to be saved, either in the monotonous long run, or intremendous special crises, by its good people only. When the stormis deadliest, and the disease most imminent, help often comes fromstrange quarters--(the homoeopathic motto, you remember, _cure thebite with a hair of the same dog. )_

The American Revolution of 1776 was simply a great strike, successfulfor its immediate object--but whether a real success judged by thescale of the centuries, and the long-striking balance of Time, yetremains to be settled. The French Revolution was absolutely a strike, and a very terrible and relentless one, against ages of bad pay, unjust division of wealth-products, and the hoggish monopoly of a few, rolling in superfluity, against the vast bulk of the work-people, living in squalor. 

If the United States, like the countries of the Old World, are alsoto grow vast crops of poor, desperate, dissatisfied, nomadic, miserably-waged populations, such as we see looming upon us of lateyears--steadily, even if slowly, eating into them like a cancer oflungs or stomach--then our republican experiment, notwithstanding allits surface-successes, is at heart an unhealthy failure. 

_Feb. '79. _--I saw to-day a sight I had never seen before--and itamazed, and made me serious; three quite good-looking American men, of respectable personal presence, two of them young, carryingchiffonier-bags on their shoulders, and the usual long iron hooks intheir hands, plodding along, their eyes cast down, spying for scraps, rags, bones, &c. 

DEMOCRACY IN THE NEW WORLD

estimated and summ'd-up to-day, having thoroughly justified itselfthe past hundred years, (as far as growth, vitality and power areconcern'd, ) by severest and most varied trials of peace and war, andhaving establish'd itself for good, with all its necessities andbenefits, for time to come, is now to be seriously consider'd alsoin its pronounc'd and already developt dangers. While the battle wasraging, and the result suspended, all defections and criticisms wereto be hush'd, and everything bent with vehemence unmitigated towardthe urge of victory. But that victory settled, new responsibilitiesadvance. I can conceive of no better service in the United States, henceforth, by democrats of thorough and heart-felt faith, thanboldly exposing the weakness, liabilities and infinite corruptions ofdemocracy. By the unprecedented opening-up of humanity en-masse in theUnited States, the last hundred years, under our institutions, notonly the good qualities of the race, but just as much the bad ones, are prominently brought forward. Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or whether with freedom. 

"The ideal form of human society, " Canon Kingsley declares, "isdemocracy. A nation--and were it even possible, a whole world--of freemen, lifting free foreheads to God and Nature; calling no man master, for One is their master, even God; knowing and doing their dutiestoward the Maker of the universe, and therefore to each other; notfrom fear, nor calculation of profit or loss, but because they haveseen the beauty of righteousness, and trust, and peace; because thelaw of God is in their hearts. Such a nation--such a society--whatnobler conception of moral existence can we form? Would not that, indeed, be the kingdom of God come on earth?"

To this faith, founded in the ideal, let us hold--and never abandonor lose it. Then what a spectacle is _practically_ exhibited by ourAmerican democracy to-day!

FOUNDATION STAGES--THEN OTHERS

Though I think I fully comprehend the absence of moral tone in ourcurrent politics and business, and the almost entire futility ofabsolute and simple honor as a counterpoise against the enormous greedfor worldly wealth, with the trickeries of gaining it, all throughsociety our day, I still do not share the depression and despair onthe subject which I find possessing many good people. The advent ofAmerica, the history of the past century, has been the first generalaperture and opening-up to the average human commonalty, on thebroadest scale, of the eligibilities to wealth and worldly success andeminence, and has been fully taken advantage of; and the example hasspread hence, in ripples, to all nations. To these eligibilities--tothis limitless aperture, the race has tended, en-masse, roaring andrushing and crude, and fiercely, turbidly hastening--and we have seenthe first stages, and are now in the midst of the result of it all, so far. But there will certainly ensue other stages, and entirelydifferent ones. In nothing is there more evolution than the Americanmind. Soon, it will be fully realized that ostensible wealth andmoney-making, show, luxury, &c. , imperatively necessitate somethingbeyond--namely, the sane, eternal moral and spiritual-estheticattributes, elements. (We cannot have even that realization on anyless terms than the price we are now paying for it. ) Soon, it willbe understood clearly, that the State cannot flourish, (nay, cannotexist, ) without those elements. They will gradually enter into thechyle of sociology and literature. They will finally make the bloodand brawn of the best American individualities of both sexes--andthus, with them, to a certainty, (through these very processes ofto-day, ) dominate the New World. 

GENERAL SUFFRAGE, ELECTIONS, ETC. 

It still remains doubtful to me whether these will ever secure, officially, the best wit and capacity--whether, through them, thefirst-class genius of America will ever personally appear in thehigh political stations, the Presidency, Congress, the leading Stateoffices, &c. Those offices, or the candidacy for them, arranged, won, by caucusing, money, the favoritism or pecuniary interest of rings, the superior manipulation of the ins over the outs, or the outs overthe ins, are, indeed, at best, the mere business agencies of thepeople, are useful as formulating, neither the best and highest, butthe average of the public judgment, sense, justice, (or sometimes wantof judgment, sense, justice. ) We elect Presidents, Congressmen, &c. , not so much to have them consider and decide for us, but as surestpractical means of expressing the will of majorities on mootedquestions, measures, &c. 

As to general suffrage, after all, since we have gone so far, the moregeneral it is, the better. I favor the widest opening of the doors. Let the ventilation and area be wide enough, and all is safe. Wecan never have a born penitentiary-bird, or panel-thief, or lowestgambling-hell or groggery keeper, for President--though such may notonly emulate, but get, high offices from localities--even from theproud and wealthy city of New York. 

WHO GETS THE PLUNDER?

The protectionists are fond of flashing to the public eye theglittering delusion of great money-results from manufactures, mines, artificial exports--so many millions from this source, and so manyfrom that--such a seductive, unanswerable show--an immense revenue ofannual cash from iron, cotton, woollen, leather goods, and a hundredother things, all bolstered up by "protection. " But the reallyimportant point of all is, _into whose pockets does this plunderreally go?_ It would be some excuse and satisfaction if even a fairproportion of it went to the masses of laboring-men--resulting inhomesteads to such, men, women, children--myriads of actual homes infee simple, in every State, (not the false glamour of the stunningwealth reported in the census, in the statistics, or tables in thenewspapers, ) but a fair division and generous average to those workmenand workwomen--_that_ would be something. But the fact itself isnothing of the kind. The profits of "protection" go altogether toa few score select persons--who, by favors of Congress, Statelegislatures, the banks, and other special advantages, are forming avulgar aristocracy, full as bad as anything in the British or Europeancastes, of blood, or the dynasties there of the past. As Sismondipointed out, the true prosperity of a nation is not in the greatwealth of a special class, but is only to be really attain'd in havingthe bulk of the people provided with homes or land in fee simple. Thismay not be the best show, but it is the best reality. 

FRIENDSHIP, (THE REAL ARTICLE)

Though Nature maintains, and must prevail, there will always be plentyof people, and good people, who cannot, or think they cannot, seeanything in that last, wisest, most envelop'd of proverbs, "Friendshiprules the World. " Modern society, in its largest vein, is essentiallyintellectual, infidelistic--secretly admires, and depends most on, pure compulsion or science, its rule and sovereignty--is, in short, in"cultivated" quarters, deeply Napoleonic. 

"Friendship, " said Bonaparte, in one of his lightning-flashes ofcandid garrulity, "Friendship is but a name. I love no one--not evenmy brothers; Joseph perhaps a little. Still, if I do love him, it isfrom habit, because he is the eldest of us. Duroc? Ay, him, ifany one, I love in a sort--but why? He suits me; he is cool, undemonstrative, unfeeling--has no weak affections--never embraces anyone--never weeps. "

I am not sure but the same analogy is to be applied, in cases, often seen, where, with an extra development and acuteness of theintellectual faculties, there is a mark'd absence of the spiritual, affectional, and sometimes, though more rarely, the highest estheticand moral elements of cognition. 

LACKS AND WANTS YET

Of most foreign countries, small or large, from the remotest timesknown, down to our own, each has contributed after its kind, directlyor indirectly, at least one great undying song, to help vitalize andincrease the valor, wisdom, and elegance of humanity, from the pointsof view attain'd by it up to date. The stupendous epics of India, theholy Bible itself, the Homeric canticles, the Nibelungen, the CidCampeador, the Inferno, Shakspere's dramas of the passions and of thefeudal lords, Burns's songs, Goethe's in Germany, Tennyson's poemsin England, Victor Hugo's in France, and many more, are the widelyvarious yet integral signs or land-marks, (in certain respects thehighest set up by the human mind and soul, beyond science, invention, political amelioration, &c. , ) narrating in subtlest, best ways, thelong, long routes of history, and giving identity to the stagesarrived at by aggregate humanity, and the conclusions assumed inits progressive and varied civilizations.... Where is America'sart-rendering, in any thing like the spirit worthy of herself andthe modern, to these characteristic immortal monuments? So far, ourDemocratic society, (estimating its various strata, in the mass, asone, ) possesses nothing--nor have we contributed any characteristicmusic, the finest tie of nationality--to make up for that glowing, blood-throbbing, religious, social, emotional, artistic, indefinable, indescribably beautiful charm and hold which fused the separateparts of the old feudal societies together, in their wonderfulinterpenetration, in Europe and Asia, of love, belief, and loyalty, running one way like a living weft--and picturesque responsibility, duty, and blessedness, running like a warp the other way. (In theSouthern States, under slavery, much of the same. )... In coincidence, and as things now exist in the States, what is more terrible, morealarming, than the total want of any such fusion and mutuality oflove, belief, and rapport of interest, between the comparatively fewsuccessful rich, and the great masses of the unsuccessful, the poor?As a mixed political and social question, is not this full of darksignificance? Is it not worth considering as a problem and puzzle inour democracy--an indispensable want to be supplied?

RULERS STRICTLY OUT OF THE MASSES

In the talk (which I welcome) about the need of men of training, thoroughly school'd and experienced men, for statesmen, I wouldpresent the following as an offset. It was written by me twenty yearsago--and has been curiously verified since:

I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, Judges, and Generals, unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and thatsupplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for athousand years. I expect to see the day when the like of the presentpersonnel of the governments, Federal, State, municipal, military, andnaval, will be look'd upon with derision, and when qualified mechanicsand young men will reach Congress and other official stations, sentin their working costumes, fresh from their benches and tools, andreturning to them again with dignity. The young fellows must prepareto do credit to this destiny, for the stuff is in them. Nothing givesplace, recollect, and never ought to give place, except to its cleansuperiors. There is more rude and undevelopt bravery, friendship, conscientiousness, clear-sightedness, and practical genius for anyscope of action, even the broadest and highest, now among the Americanmechanics and young men, than in all the official persons in theseStates, legislative, executive, judicial, military, and naval, andmore than among all the literary persons. I would be much pleas'd tosee some heroic, shrewd, fully-inform'd, healthy-bodied, middle-aged, beard-faced American blacksmith or boatman come down from the Westacross the Alleghanies, and walk into the Presidency, dress'd in aclean suit of working attire, and with the tan all over his face, breast, and arms; I would certainly vote for that sort of man, possessing the due requirements, before any other candidate. 

(The facts of rank-and-file workingmen, mechanics, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Garfield, brought forward from the masses and placed in thePresidency, and swaying its mighty powers with firm hand--really withmore sway than any king in history, and with better capacity in usingthat sway--can we not see that these facts have bearings far, farbeyond their political or party ones?)

MONUMENTS--THE PAST AND PRESENT

If you go to Europe, (to say nothing of Asia, more ancient andmassive still, ) you cannot stir without meeting venerablemementos--cathedrals, ruins of temples, castles, monuments of thegreat, statues and paintings, (far, far beyond anything America canever expect to produce, ) haunts of heroes long dead, saints, poets, divinities, with deepest associations of ages. But here in the NewWorld, while _those_ we can never emulate, we have _more_ than thoseto build, and far more greatly to build. (I am not sure but the dayfor conventional monuments, statues, memorials, &c. , has pass'daway--and that they are henceforth superfluous and vulgar. ) Anenlarg'd general superior humanity, (partly indeed resulting fromthose, ) we are to build. European, Asiatic greatness are in the past. Vaster and subtler, America, combining, justifying the past, yetworks for a grander future, in living democratic forms. (Here too areindicated the paths for our national bards. ) Other times, other lands, have had their missions--Art, War, Ecclesiasticism, Literature, Discovery, Trade, Architecture, &c. , &c. --but that grand future is theenclosing purport of the United States. 

LITTLE OR NOTHING NEW, AFTER ALL

How small were the best thoughts, poems, conclusions, except for acertain invariable resemblance and uniform standard in the finalthoughts, theology, poems, &c. , of all nations, all civilizations, allcenturies and times. Those precious legacies--accumulations! They cometo us from the far-off--from all eras, and all lands--from Egypt, andIndia, and Greece, and Rome--and along through the middle and laterages, in the grand monarchies of Europe--born under far differentinstitutes and conditions from ours--but out of the insight andinspiration of the same old humanity--the same old heart andbrain--the same old countenance yearningly, pensively, looking forth. What we have to do to-day is to receive them cheerfully, and to givethem ensemble, and a modern American and democratic physiognomy. 

A LINCOLN REMINISCENCE

As is well known, story-telling was often with President Lincoln aweapon which he employ'd with great skill. Very often he couldnot give a point-blank reply or comment--and these indirections, (sometimes funny, but not always so, ) were probably the best responsespossible. In the gloomiest period of the war, he had a call from alarge delegation of bank presidents. In the talk after business wassettled, one of the big Dons asked Mr. Lincoln if his confidence inthe permanency of the Union was not beginning to be shaken--whereuponthe homely President told a little story: "When I was a young manin Illinois, " said he, "I boarded for a time with a deacon of thePresbyterian church. One night I was roused from my sleep by a rap atthe door, and I heard the deacon's voice exclaiming, 'Arise, Abraham!the day of judgment has come!' I sprang from my bed and rushed to thewindow, and saw the stars falling in great showers; but looking backof them in the heavens I saw the grand old constellations, with whichI was so well acquainted, fixed and true in their places. Gentlemen, the world did not come to an end then, nor will the Union now. "

FREEDOM

It is not only true that most people entirely misunderstand Freedom, but I sometimes think I have not yet met one person who rightlyunderstands it. The whole Universe is absolute Law. Freedom onlyopens entire activity and license _under the law_. To the degraded orundevelopt--and even to too many others--the thought of freedom is athought of escaping from law--which, of course, is impossible. Moreprecious than all worldly riches is Freedom--freedom from the painfulconstipation and poor narrowness of ecclesiasticism--freedom inmanners, habiliments, furniture, from the silliness and tyranny oflocal fashions--entire freedom from party rings and mere conventionsin Politics--and better than all, a general freedom of One's-Selffrom the tyrannic domination of vices, habits, appetites, under whichnearly every man of us, (often the greatest brawler for freedom, ) isenslav'd. Can we attain such enfranchisement--the true Democracy, andthe height of it? While we are from birth to death the subjects ofirresistible law, enclosing every movement and minute, we yet escape, by a paradox, into true free will. Strange as it may seem, we onlyattain to freedom by a knowledge of, and implicit obedience to, Law. Great--unspeakably great--is the Will! the free Soul of man! At itsgreatest, understanding and obeying the laws, it can then, and thenonly, maintain true liberty. For there is to the highest, that lawas absolute as any--more absolute than any--the Law of Liberty. Theshallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, fromevery constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Lawof Laws, namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious will, orpartial individual law, with those universal, eternal, unconsciousones, which run through all Time, pervade history, prove immortality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and the last dignityto human life. 

BOOK-CLASSES--AMERICA'S LITERATURE

For certain purposes, literary productions through all the recordedages may be roughly divided into two classes. The first consisting ofonly a score or two, perhaps less, of typical, primal, representativeworks, different from any before, and embodying in themselves theirown main laws and reasons for being. Then the second class, books andwritings innumerable, incessant--to be briefly described as radiationsor offshoots, or more or less imitations of the first. The works ofthe first class, as said, have their own laws, and may indeed bedescribed as making those laws, and amenable only to them. The sharpwarning of Margaret Fuller, unquell'd for thirty years, yet sounds inthe air: "It does not follow that because the United States print andread more books, magazines, and newspapers than all the rest of theworld, that they really have, therefore, a literature. "

OUR REAL CULMINATION

The final culmination of this vast and varied Republic will be theproduction and perennial establishment of millions of comfortable cityhomesteads and moderate-sized farms, healthy and independent, singleseparate ownership, fee simple, life in them complete but cheap, within reach of all. Exceptional wealth, splendor, countlessmanufactures, excess of exports, immense capital and capitalists, thefive-dollar-a-day hotels well fill'd, artificial improvements, even books, colleges, and the suffrage--all, in many respects, inthemselves, (hard as it is to say so, and sharp as a surgeon's lance, )form, more or less, a sort of anti-democratic disease and monstrosity, except as they contribute by curious indirections to thatculmination--seem to me mainly of value, or worth consideration, onlywith reference to it. 

There is a subtle something in the common earth, crops, cattle, air, trees, &c. , and in having to do at first hand with them, that formsthe only purifying and perennial element for individuals and forsociety. I must confess I want to see the agricultural occupation ofAmerica at first hand permanently broaden'd. Its gains are the onlyones on which God seems to smile. What others--what business, profit, wealth, without a taint? What fortune else--what dollar--doesnot stand for, and come from, more or less imposition, lying, unnaturalness?

AN AMERICAN PROBLEM

One of the problems presented in America these times is, how tocombine one's duty and policy as a member of associations, societies, brotherhoods or what not, and one's obligations to the State andNation, with essential freedom as an individual personality, withoutwhich freedom a man cannot grow or expand, or be full, modern, heroic, democratic, American. With all the necessities and benefits ofassociation, (and the world cannot get along without it, ) the truenobility and satisfaction of a man consist in his thinking and actingfor himself. The problem, I say, is to combine the two, so as not toignore either. 

THE LAST COLLECTIVE COMPACTION

I like well our polyglot construction-stamp, and the retentionthereof, in the broad, the tolerating, the many-sided, the collective. All nations here--a home for every race on earth. British, German, Scandinavian, Spanish, French, Italian--papers published, plays acted, speeches made, in all languages--on our shores the crowning resultantof those distillations, decantations, compactions of humanity, thathave been going on, on trial, over the earth so long. 

APPENDIX

PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH

1834-'42

DOUGH-FACE SONG

--Like dough; soft; yielding to pressure; pale----_Webster'sDictionary_. 

 We are all docile dough-faces, They knead us with the fist, They, the dashing southern lords, We labor as they list; For them we speak--or hold our tongues, For them we turn and twist. 

 We join them in their howl against Free soil and "abolition, " That firebrand--that assassin knife-- Which risk our land's condition, And leave no peace of life to any Dough-faced politician. 

 To put down "agitation, " now, We think the most judicious; To damn all "northern fanatics, " Those "traitors" black and vicious; The "reg'lar party usages" For us, and no "new issues. "

 Things have come to a pretty pass, When a trifle small as this, Moving and bartering nigger slaves, Can open an abyss, With jaws a-gape for "the two great parties;" A pretty thought, I wis!

 Principle--freedom!--fiddlesticks! We know not where they're found. Rights of the masses--progress!--bah! Words that tickle and sound; But claiming to rule o'er "practical men" Is very different ground. 

 Beyond all such we know a term Charming to ears and eyes, With it we'll stab young Freedom, And do it in disguise;

 Speak soft, ye wily dough-faces-- That term is "compromise. "

 And what if children, growing up, In future seasons read The thing we do? and heart and tongue Accurse us for the deed? The future cannot touch us; The present gain we heed. 

 Then, all together, dough-faces! Let's stop the exciting clatter, And pacify slave-breeding wrath By yielding all the matter; For otherwise, as sure as guns, The Union it will shatter. 

 Besides, to tell the honest truth (For us an innovation, ) Keeping in with the slave power Is our personal salvation; We've very little to expect From t' other part of the nation. 

 Besides it's plain at Washington Who likeliest wins the race, What earthly chance has "free soil" For any good fat place? While many a daw has feather'd his nest, By his creamy and meek dough-face. 

 Take heart, then, sweet companions, Be steady, Scripture Dick! Webster, Cooper, Walker, To your allegiance stick! With Brooks, and Briggs and Phoenix, Stand up through thin and thick!

 We do not ask a bold brave front; We never try that game; 'Twould bring the storm upon our heads, A huge mad storm of shame; Evade it, brothers--"compromise" Will answer just the same. 

PAUMANOK. 

DEATH IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM (_A Fact_)

Ting-a-ling-ling-ling! went the little bell on the teacher's desk ofa village-school one morning, when the studies of the earlier part ofthe day were about half completed. It was well understood that thiswas a command for silence and attention; and when these had beenobtained, the master spoke. He was a low thick-set man, and his namewas Lugare. 

"Boys, " said he, "I have had a complaint enter'd, that last night someof you were stealing fruit from Mr. Nichols's garden. I rather think Iknow the thief. Tim Barker, step up here, sir. "

The one to whom he spoke came forward. He was a slight, fair-lookingboy of about thirteen; and his face had a laughing, good-humor'dexpression, which even the charge now preferr'd against him, and thestern tone and threatening look of the teacher, had not entirelydissipated. The countenance of the boy, however, was too unearthlyfair for health; it had, notwithstanding its fleshy, cheerful look, asingular cast as if some inward disease, and that a fearful one, were seated within. As the stripling stood before that place ofjudgment--that place so often made the scene of heartless and coarsebrutality, of timid innocence confused, helpless child-hood outraged, and gentle feelings crush' d--Lugare looked on him with a frownwhich plainly told that he felt in no very pleasant mood. (Happily aworthier and more philosophical system is proving to men that schoolscan be better govern'd than by lashes and tears and sighs. We arewaxing toward that consummation when one of the old-fashion'dschool-masters, with his cowhide, his heavy birch-rod, and his manyingenious methods of child-torture, will be gazed upon as a scorn'dmemento of an ignorant, cruel, and exploded doctrine. May propitiousgales speed that day!)

"Were you by Mr. Nichols's garden-fence last night?" said Lugare. 

"Yes, sir, " answer'd the boy, "I was. "

"Well, sir, I'm glad to find you so ready with your confession. Andso you thought you could do a little robbing, and enjoy yourself ina manner you ought to be ashamed to own, without being punish'd, didyou?"

"I have not been robbing, " replied the boy quickly. His face wassuffused, whether with resentment or fright, it was difficult to tell. "And I didn't do anything last night, that I am ashamed to own. "

"No impudence!" exclaim'd the teacher, passionately, as he grasp'd along and heavy ratan: "give me none of your sharp speeches, or I'llthrash you till you beg like a dog. "

The youngster's face paled a little; his lip quiver'd, but he did notspeak. 

"And pray, sir, " continued Lugare, as the outward signs of wrathdisappear'd from his features; "what were you about the garden for?Perhaps you only receiv'd the plunder, and had an accomplice to do themore dangerous part of the job?"

"I went that way because it is on my road home. I was there againafterwards to meet an acquaintance; and--and--But I did not go intothe garden, nor take anything away from it. I would not steal, --hardlyto save myself from starving. "

"You had better have stuck to that last evening. You were seen, TimBarker, to come from under Mr. Nichols's garden-fence, a littleafter nine o'clock, with a bag full of something or other over yourshoulders. The bag had every appearance of being filled with fruit, and this morning the melon-beds are found to have been completelyclear'd. Now, sir, what was there in that bag?"

Like fire itself glow'd the face of the detected lad. He spoke not aword. All the school had their eyes directed at him. The perspirationran down his white forehead like rain-drops. 

"Speak, sir!" exclaimed Lugare, with a loud strike of his ratan on thedesk. 

The boy look'd as though he would faint. But the unmerciful teacher, confident of having brought to light a criminal, and exulting inthe idea of the severe chastisement he should now be justified ininflicting, kept working himself up to a still greater and greaterdegree of passion. In the meantime, the child seem'd hardly to knowwhat to do with himself. His tongue cleav'd to the roof of his mouth. Either he was very much frighten'd, or he was actually unwell. 

"Speak, I say!" again thunder'd Lugare; and his hand, grasping hisratan, tower'd above his head in a very significant manner. 

"I hardly can, sir, " said the poor fellow faintly. His voice was huskyand thick. "I will tell you some--some other time. Please let me go tomy seat--I a'n't well. "

"Oh yes; that's very likely;" and Mr. Lugare bulged out his nose andcheeks with contempt. "Do you think to make me believe your lies? I'vefound you out, sir, plainly enough; and I am satisfied that you areas precious a little villain as there is in the State. But I willpostpone settling with you for an hour yet. I shall then call you upagain; and if you don't tell the whole truth then, I will give yousomething that'll make you remember Mr. Nichols's melons for many amonth to come:--go to your seat. "

Glad enough of the ungracious permission, and answering not a sound, the child crept tremblingly to his bench. He felt very strangely, dizzily--more as if he was in a dream than in real life; and layinghis arms on his desk, bow'd down his face between them. The pupilsturn'd to their accustom'd studies, for during the reign of Lugare inthe village-school, they had been so used to scenes of violence andsevere chastisement, that such things made but little interruption inthe tenor of their way. 

Now, while the intervening hour is passing, we will clear up themystery of the bag, and of young Barker being under the garden fenceon the preceding night. The boy's mother was a widow, and they bothhad to live in the very narrowest limits. His father had died when hewas six years old, and little Tim was left a sickly emaciated infantwhom no one expected to live many months. To the surprise of all, however, the poor child kept alive, and seem'd to recover his health, as he certainly did his size and good looks. This was owing to thekind offices of an eminent physician who had a country-seat in theneighborhood, and who had been interested in the widow's littlefamily. Tim, the physician said, might possibly outgrow his disease;but everything was uncertain. It was a mysterious and baffling malady;and it would not be wonderful if he should in some moment of apparenthealth be suddenly taken away. The poor widow was at first in acontinual state of uneasiness; but several years had now pass'd, andnone of the impending evils had fallen upon the boy's head. His motherseem'd to feel confident that he would live, and be a help and anhonor to her old age; and the two struggled on together, mutuallyhappy in each other, and enduring much of poverty and discomfortwithout repining, each for the other's sake. 

Tim's pleasant disposition had made him many friends in the village, and among the rest a young fanner named Jones, who, with his elderbrother, work'd a large farm in the neighborhood on shares. Jones veryfrequently made Tim a present of a bag of potatoes or corn, or somegarden vegetables, which he took from his own stock; but as hispartner was a parsimonious, high-tempered man, and had often said thatTim was an idle fellow, and ought not to be help'd because he did notwork, Jones generally made his gifts in such a manner that no one knewanything about them, except himself and the grateful objects ofhis kindness. It might be, too, that the widow was both to have itunderstood by the neighbors that she received food from anyone; forthere is often an excusable pride in people of her condition whichmakes them shrink from being consider'd as objects of "charity" asthey would from the severest pains. On the night in question, Tim hadbeen told that Jones would send them a bag of potatoes, and the placeat which they were to be waiting for him was fixed at Mr. Nichols'sgarden-fence. It was this bag that Tim had been seen staggering under, and which caused the unlucky boy to be accused and convicted byhis teacher as a thief. That teacher was one little fitted for hisimportant and responsible office. Hasty to decide, and inflexiblysevere, he was the terror of the little world he ruled sodespotically. Punishment he seemed to delight in. Knowing little ofthose sweet fountains which in children's breasts ever open quickly atthe call of gentleness and kind words, he was fear'd by all forhis sternness, and loved by none. I would that he were an isolatedinstance in his profession. 

The hour of grace had drawn to its close, and the time approach'd atwhich it was usual for Lugare to give his school a joyfully-receiv'ddismission. Now and then one of the scholars would direct a furtiveglance at Tim, sometimes in pity, sometimes in indifference orinquiry. They knew that he would have no mercy shown him, and thoughmost of them loved him, whipping was too common there to exact muchsympathy. Every inquiring glance, however, remain'd unsatisfied, forat the end of the hour, Tim remain'd with his face completely hidden, and his head bow'd in his arms, precisely as he had lean'd himselfwhen he first went to his seat. Lugare look'd at the boy occasionallywith a scowl which seem'd to bode vengeance for his sullenness. Atlength the last class had been heard, and the last lesson recited, and Lugare seated himself behind his desk on the platform, with hislongest and stoutest ratan before him. 

"Now, Barker, " he said, "we'll settle that little business of yours. Just step up here. "

Tim did not move. The school-room was as still as the grave. Not asound was to be heard, except occasionally a long-drawn breath. 

"Mind me, sir, or it will be the worse for you. Step up here, and takeoff your jacket!"

The boy did not stir any more than if he had been of wood. Lugareshook with passion. He sat still a minute, as if considering the bestway to wreak his vengeance. That minute, passed in death-like silence, was a fearful one to some of the children, for their faces whiten'dwith fright. It seem'd, as it slowly dropp'd away, like the minutewhich precedes the climax of an exquisitely-performed tragedy, whensome mighty master of the histrionic art is treading the stage, andyou and the multitude around you are waiting, with stretch'd nervesand suspended breath, in expectation of the terrible catastrophe. 

"Tim is asleep, sir, " at length said one of the boys who sat near him. Lugare, at this intelligence, allow'd his features to relax from theirexpression of savage anger into a smile, but that smile look'd moremalignant if possible, than his former scowls. It might be that hefelt amused at the horror depicted on the faces of those about him; orit might be that he was gloating in pleasure on the way in which heintended to wake the slumberer. 

"Asleep! are you, my young gentleman!" said he; "let us see if wecan't find something to tickle your eyes open. There's nothing likemaking the best of a bad case, boys. Tim, here, is determin'd not tobe worried in his mind about a little flogging, for the thought of itcan't even keep the little scoundrel awake. "

Lugare smiled again as he made the last observation. He grasp'd hisratan firmly, and descended from his seat. With light and stealthysteps he cross'd the room and stood by the unlucky sleeper. The boywas still as unconscious of his impending punishment as ever. He mightbe dreaming some golden dream of youth and pleasure; perhaps he wasfar away in the world of fancy, seeing scenes, and feeling delights, which cold reality never can bestow. Lugare lifted his ratan high overhis head, and with the true and expert aim which he had acquired bylong practice, brought it down on Tim's back with a force and whackingsound which seem'd sufficient to wake a freezing man in his lastlethargy. Quick and fast, blow foliow'd blow. Without waiting to seethe effect of the first cut, the brutal wretch plied his instrument oftorture first on one side of the boy's back, and then on the other, and only stopped at the end of two or three minutes from veryweariness. But still Tim show'd no signs of motion; and as Lugare, provoked at his torpidity, jerk'd away one of the child's arms, onwhich he had been leaning over the desk, his head dropp'd down on theboard with a dull sound, and his face lay turn'd up and exposed toview. When Lugare saw it, he stood like one transfix'd by a basilisk. His countenance turn'd to a leaden whiteness; the ratan dropp'd fromhis grasp; and his eyes, stretch'd wide open, glared as at somemonstrous spectacle of horror and death. The sweat started in greatglobules seemingly from every pore in his face; his skinny lipscontracted, and show'd his teeth; and when he at length stretch'dforth his arm, and with the end of one of his fingers touch'd thechild's cheek, each limb quiver'd like the tongue of a snake; and hisstrength seemed as though it would momentarily fail him. The boy wasdead. He had probably been so for some time, for his eyes were turn'dup, and his body was quite cold. Death was in the school-room, andLugare had been flogging A CORPSE. 

-_Democratic Review, August, 1841. _

ONE WICKED IMPULSE

That section of Nassau street which runs into the great mart of NewYork brokers and stock-jobbers, has for a long time been much occupiedby practitioners of the law. Tolerably well-known amid this class someyears since, was Adam Covert, a middle-aged man of rather limitedmeans, who, to tell the truth, gained more by trickery than he didin the legitimate and honorable exercise of his profession. He wasa tall, bilious-faced widower; the father of two children; and hadlately been seeking to better his fortunes by a rich marriage. Butsomehow or other his wooing did not seem to thrive well, and, withperhaps one exception, the lawyer's prospects in the matrimonial waywere hopelessly gloomy. 

Among the early clients of Mr. Covert had been a distant relativenamed Marsh, who, dying somewhat suddenly, left his son and daughter, and some little property, to the care of Covert, under a will drawnout by that gentleman himself. At no time caught without his eyesopen, the cunning lawyer, aided by much sad confusion in the emergencywhich had caused his services to be called for, and disguising hisobject under a cloud of technicalities, inserted provisions in thewill, giving himself an almost arbitrary control over the property andover those for whom it was designed. This control was even made toextend beyond the time when the children would arrive at mature age. The son, Philip, a spirited and high-temper'd fellow, had some timesince pass'd that age. Esther, the girl, a plain, and somewhatdevotional young woman, was in her nineteenth year. 

Having such power over his wards, Covert did not scruple openly to usehis advantage, in pressing his claims as a suitor for Esther's hand. Since the death of Marsh, the property he left, which had been in realestate, and was to be divided equally between the brother and sister, had risen to very considerable value; and Esther's share was to a manin Covert's situation a prize very well worth seeking. All this time, while really owning a respectable income, the young orphans oftenfelt the want of the smallest sum of money--and Esther, on Philip'saccount, was more than once driven to various contrivances--thepawn-shop, sales of her own little luxuries, and the like, to furnishhim with means. 

Though she had frequently shown her guardian unequivocal evidence ofher aversion, Esther continued to suffer from his persecutions, untilone day he proceeded farther and was more pressing than usual. Shepossess'd some of her brother's mettlesome temper, and gave himan abrupt and most decided refusal. With dignity, she exposed thebaseness of his conduct, and forbade him ever again mentioningmarriage to her. He retorted bitterly, vaunted his hold on her andPhilip, and swore an oath that unless she became his wife, they shouldboth thenceforward become penniless. Losing his habitual self-controlin his exasperation, he even added insults such as woman neverreceives from any one deserving the name of man, and at his ownconvenience left the house. That day, Philip return'd to New York, after an absence of several weeks on the business of a mercantilehouse in whose employment he had lately engaged. 

Toward the latter part of the same afternoon, Mr. Covert was sittingin his office, in Nassau street, busily at work, when a knock at thedoor announc'd a visitor, and directly afterward young Marsh enter'dthe room. His face exhibited a peculiar pallid appearance that didnot strike Covert at all agreeably, and he call'd his clerk from anadjoining room, and gave him something to do at a desk near by. 

"I wish to see you alone, Mr. Covert, if convenient, " said thenewcomer. 

"We can talk quite well enough where we are, " answer'd the lawyer;"indeed, I don't know that I have any leisure to talk at all, for justnow I am very much press'd with business. "

"But I _must_ speak to you, " rejoined Philip sternly, "at least I mustsay one thing, and that is, Mr. Covert, that you are a villain!"

"Insolent!" exclaimed the lawyer, rising behind the table, andpointing to the door. "Do you see that, sir? Let one minute longerfind you the other side, or your feet may reach the landing by quickermethod. Begone, sir!"

Such a threat was the more harsh to Philip, for he had ratherhigh-strung feelings of honor. He grew almost livid with suppress'dagitation. 

"I will see you again very soon, " said he, in a low but distinctmanner, his lips trembling as he spoke; and left the office. 

The incidents of the rest of that pleasant summer day left littleimpression on the young man's mind. He roam'd to and fro without anyobject or destination. Along South street and by Whitehall, he watch'dwith curious eyes the movements of the shipping, and the loadingand unloading of cargoes; and listen'd to the merry heave-yo ofthe sailors and stevedores. There are some minds upon which greatexcitement produces the singular effect of uniting two utterlyinconsistent faculties--a sort of cold apathy, and a sharpsensitiveness to all that is going on at the same time. Philip's wasone of this sort; he noticed the various differences in the apparelof a gang of wharf-laborers--turn'd over in his brain whether theyreceiv'd wages enough to keep them comfortable, and their familiesalso--and if they had families or not, which he tried to tell by theirlooks. In such petty reflections the daylight passed away. And all thewhile the master wish of Philip's thoughts was a desire to see thelawyer Covert. For what purpose he himself was by no means clear. 

Nightfall came at last. Still, however, the young man did not directhis steps homeward. He felt more calm, however, and entering an eatinghouse, order'd something for his supper, which, when it was brought tohim, he merely tasted, and stroll'd forth again. There was a kind ofgnawing sensation of thirst within him yet, and as he pass'd a hotel, he bethought him that one little glass of spirits would perhaps bejust the thing. He drank, and hour after hour wore away unconsciously;he drank not one glass, but three or four, and strong glasses theywere to him, for he was habitually abstemious. 

It had been a hot day and evening, and when Philip, at an advancedperiod of the night, emerged from the bar-room into the street, hefound that a thunderstorm had just commenced. He resolutely walk'd on, however, although at every step it grew more and more blustering. 

The rain now pour'd down a cataract; the shops were all shut; fewof the street lamps were lighted; and there was little except thefrequent flashes of lightning to show him his way. When about half thelength of Chatham street, which lay in the direction he had to take, the momentary fury of the tempest forced him to turn aside into asort of shelter form'd by the corners of the deep entrance to a Jewpawnbroker's shop there. He had hardly drawn himself in as closely aspossible, when the lightning revealed to him that the opposite cornerof the nook was tenanted also. 

"A sharp rain, this, " said the other occupant, who simultaneouslybeheld Philip. 

The voice sounded to the young man's ears a note which almost made himsober again. It was certainly the voice of Adam Covert. He made somecommonplace reply, and waited for another flash of lightning to showhim the stranger's face. It came, and he saw that his companion wasindeed his guardian. 

Philip Marsh had drank deeply--(let us plead all that may be possibleto you, stern moralist. ) Upon his mind came swarming, and he could notdrive them away, thoughts of all those insults his sister had told himof, and the bitter words Covert had spoken to her; he reflected, too, on the injuries Esther as well as himself had receiv'd, and were stilllikely to receive, at the hands of that bold, bad man; how mean, selfish, and unprincipled was his character--what base and crueladvantages he had taken of many poor people, entangled in his power, and of how much wrong and suffering he had been the author, and mightbe again through future years. The very turmoil of the elements, theharsh roll of the thunder, the vindictive beating of the rain, and thefierce glare of the wild fluid that seem'd to riot in the ferocity ofthe storm around him, kindled a strange sympathetic fury in the youngman's mind. Heaven itself (so deranged were his imaginations) appear'dto have provided a fitting scene and time for a deed of retribution, which to his disorder'd passion half wore the semblance of a divinejustice. He remember'd not the ready solution to be found in Covert'spressure of business, which had no doubt kept him later than usual;but fancied some mysterious intent in the ordaining that he should bethere, and that they two should meet at that untimely hour. All thiswhirl of influence came over Philip with startling quickness at thathorrid moment. He stepp'd to the side of his guardian. 

"Ho!" said he, "have we met so soon, Mr. Covert? You traitor to mydead father--robber of his children! I fear to think on what I thinknow!"

The lawyer's natural effrontery did not desert him. 

"Unless you'd like to spend a night in the watch-house, younggentleman, " said he, after a short pause, "move on. Your father wasa weak man, I remember; as for his son, his own wicked heart is hisworst foe. I have never done wrong to either--that I can say, andswear it!"

"Insolent liar!" exclaimed Philip, his eye flashing out sparks of firein the darkness. 

Covert made no reply except a cool, contemptuous laugh, which stungthe excited young man to double fury. He sprang upon the lawyer, andclutch'd him by the neckcloth. 

"Take it, then!" he cried hoarsely, for his throat was impeded by thefiendish rage which in that black hour possess'd him. "You are not fitto live!"

He dragg'd his guardian to the earth and fell crushingly upon him, choking the shriek the poor victim but just began to utter. Then, withmonstrous imprecations, he twisted a tight knot around the gaspingcreature's neck, drew a clasp knife from his pocket, and touching thespring, the long sharp blade, too eager for its bloody work, flewopen. 

During the lull of the storm, the last strength of the prostrate manburst forth into one short loud cry of agony. At the same instant, thearm of the murderer thrust the blade, once, twice, thrice, deep in hisenemy's bosom! Not a minute had passed since that fatal exasperatinglaugh--but the deed was done, and the instinctive thought which cameat once to the guilty one, was a thought of fear and escape. 

In the unearthly pause which follow'd, Philip's eyes gave one longsearching sweep in every direction, above and around him. _Above_! Godof the all-seeing eye! What, and who was that figure there?

"Forbear! In Jehovah's name forbear;" cried a shrill, but clear andmelodious voice. 

It was as if some accusing spirit had come down to bear witnessagainst the deed of blood. Leaning far out of an open window, appear'd a white draperied shape, its face possess'd of a wonderful youthfulbeauty. Long vivid glows of lightning gave Philip a full opportunityto see as clearly as though the sun had been shining at noonday. Onehand of the figure was raised upward in a deprecating attitude, andhis large bright black eyes bent down upon the scene below with anexpression of horror and shrinking pain. Such heavenly looks, and thepeculiar circumstance of the time, fill'd Philip's heart with awe. 

"Oh, if it is not yet too late, " spoke the youth again, "spare him. InGod's voice, I command, 'Thou shalt do no murder!'"

The words rang like a knell in the ear of the terror-stricken andalready remorseful Philip. Springing from the body, he gave a secondglance up and down the walk, which was totally lonesome and deserted;then crossing into Reade street, he made his fearful way in a halfstate of stupor, half-bewilderment, by the nearest avenues to hishome. 

When the corpse of the murder'd lawyer was found in the morning, andthe officers of justice commenced their inquiry, suspicion immediatelyfell upon Philip, and he was arrested. The most rigorous search, however, brought to light nothing at all implicating the young man, except his visit to Covert's office the evening before, and his angrylanguage there. That was by no means enough to fix so heavy a chargeupon him. 

The second day afterward, the whole business came before the ordinaryjudicial tribunal, in order that Philip might be either committed forthe crime, or discharged. The testimony of Mr. Covert's clerk stoodalone. One of his employers, who, believing in his innocence, haddeserted him not in this crisis, had provided him with the ablestcriminal counsel in New York. The proof was declared entirelyinsufficient, and Philip was discharged. 

The crowded court-room made way for him as he came out; hundreds ofcurious looks fixed upon his features, and many a jibe pass'd uponhim. But of all that arena of human faces, he saw only _one_--a sad, pale, black-eyed one, cowering in the centre of the rest. He had seenthat face twice before--the first time as a warning spectre--thesecond time in prison, immediately after his arrest--now for the_last_ time. This young stranger--the son of a scorn'd race--comingto the court-room to perform an unhappy duty, with the intentionof testifying to what he had seen, melted at the sight of Philip'sbloodless cheek, and of his sister's convulsive sobs, and forborewitnessing against the murderer. Shall we applaud or condemn him? Letevery reader answer the question for himself. 

That afternoon Philip left New York. His friendly employer own'd asmall farm some miles up the Hudson, and until the excitement ofthe affair was over, he advised the young man to go thither. Philipthankfully accepted the proposal, made a few preparations, took ahurried leave of Esther, and by nightfall was settled in his newabode. 

And how, think you, rested Philip Marsh that night? _Rested_ indeed!O, if those who clamor so much for the halter and the scaffold topunish crime, could have seen that sight, they might have learn'd alesson then! Four days had elapsed since he that lay tossing upon thebed there had slumber'd. Not the slightest intermission had come tohis awaken'd and tensely strung sense, during those frightful days. Disturb'd waking dreams came to him, as he thought what he might do togain his lost peace. Far, far away would he go! The cold roll of themurder'd man's eye, as it turn'd up its last glance into his face--theshrill exclamation of pain--all the unearthly vividness of theposture, motions, and looks of the dead--the warning voice fromabove--pursued him like tormenting furies, and were never absent fromhis mind, asleep or awake, that long weary night. Anything, any place, to escape such horrid companionship! He would travel inland--hirehimself to do hard drudgery upon some farm--work incessantly throughthe wide summer days, and thus force nature to bestow oblivion uponhis senses, at least a little while now and then. He would fly on, on, on, until amid different scenes and a new life, the old memories wererubb'd entirely out. He would fight bravely in himself for peace ofmind. For peace he would labor and struggle--for peace he would pray!

At length after a feverish slumber of some thirty or forty minutes, the unhappy youth, waking with a nervous start, rais'd himself in bed, and saw the blessed daylight beginning to dawn. He felt the sweattrickling down his naked breast; the sheet where he had lain was quitewet with it. Dragging himself wearily, he open'd the window. Ah! thatgood morning air--how it refresh'd him--how he lean'd out, and drankin the fragrance of the blossoms below, and almost for the first timein his life felt how beautifully indeed God had made the earth, andthat there was wonderful sweetness in mere existence. And amidst thethousand mute mouths and eloquent eyes, which appear'd as it were tolook up and speak in every direction, he fancied so many invitationsto come among them. 

Not without effort, for he was very weak, he dress'd himself, andissued forth into the open air. 

Clouds of pale gold and transparent crimson draperied the eastern sky, but the sun, whose face gladden'd them into all that glory, was notyet above the horizon. It was a time and place of such rare, suchEden-like beauty! Philip paused at the summit of an upward slope, and gazed around him. Some few miles off he could see a gleam of theHudson river, and above it a spur of those rugged cliffs scatter'dalong its western shores. Nearer by were cultivated fields. The clovergrew richly there, the young grain bent to the early breeze, and theair was filled with an intoxicating perfume. At his side was the largewell-kept garden of his host, in which were many pretty flowers, grassplots, and a wide avenue of noble trees. As Philip gazed, the holycalming power of Nature--the invisible spirit of so much beauty and somuch innocence, melted into his soul. The disturb'd passions and thefeverish conflict subsided. He even felt something like envied peaceof mind--a sort of joy even in the presence of all the unmarr'dgoodness. It was as fair to him, guilty though he had been, as tothe purest of the pure. No accusing frowns show'd in the face of theflowers, or in the green shrubs, or the branches of the trees. They, more forgiving than mankind, and distinguishing not between thechildren of darkness and the children of light--they at least treatedhim with gentleness. Was he, then, a being so accurs'd? Involuntarily, he bent over a branch of red roses, and took them softly betweenhis hands--those murderous, bloody hands! But the red roses neitherwither'd nor smell'd less fragiant. And as the young man kiss'd them, and dropp'd a tear upon them, it seem'd to him that he had found pityand sympathy from Heaven itself. 

Though against all the rules of story-writing, we continue ournarrative of these mainly true incidents (for such they are, ) nofurther. Only to say that _the murderer_ soon departed for a newfield of action--that he is still living--and that this is but one ofthousands of cases of unravel'd, unpunish'd crime--left, not to thetribunals of man, but to a wider power and judgment. 

THE LAST LOYALIST

"_She came to me last night, The floor gave back no tread_. "] Thestory I am going to tell is a traditional reminiscence of a countryplace, in my rambles about which I have often passed the house, now unoccupied, and mostly in ruins, that was the scene of thetransaction. I cannot, of course, convey to others that particularkind of influence which is derived from my being so familiar with thelocality, and with the very people whose grandfathers or fathers werecontemporaries of the actors in the drama I shall transcribe. I musthardly expect, therefore, that to those who hear it thro' the mediumof my pen, the narration will possess as life-like and interesting acharacter as it does to myself. 

On a large and fertile neck of land that juts out in the Sound, stretching to the east of New York city, there stood, in the latterpart of the last century, an old-fashion'd country-residence. It hadbeen built by one of the first settlers of this section of the NewWorld; and its occupant was originally owner of the extensive tractlying adjacent to his house, and pushing into the bosom of the saltwaters. It was during the troubled times which mark'd our AmericanRevolution that the incidents occurr'd which are the foundation of mystory. Some time before the commencement of the war, the owner, whom Ishall call Vanhome, was taken sick and died. For some time before hisdeath he had lived a widower; and his only child, a lad of ten yearsold, was thus left an orphan. By his father's will this child wasplaced implicitly under the guardianship of an uncle, a middle-agedman, who had been of late a resident in the family. His care andinterest, however, were needed but a little while--not two yearsclaps'd after the parents were laid away to their last repose beforeanother grave had to be prepared for the son--the child who had beenso haplessly deprived of their fostering care. 

The period now arrived when the great national convulsion burst forth. Sounds of strife and the clash of arms, and the angry voices ofdisputants, were borne along by the air, and week after week grew tostill louder clamor. Families were divided; adherents to the crown, and ardent upholders of the rebellion, were often found in the bosomof the same domestic circle. Vanhome, the uncle spoken of as guardianto the young heir, was a man who lean'd to the stern, the high-handedand the severe. He soon became known among the most energetic of theloyalists. So decided were his sentiments that, leaving the estatewhich he had inherited from his brother and nephew, he join'd theforces of the British king. Thenceforward, whenever his old neighborsheard of him, it was as being engaged in the cruelest outrages, theboldest inroads, or the most determin'd attacks upon the army of hiscountrymen or their peaceful settlements. Eight years brought therebel States and their leaders to that glorious epoch when the lastremnant of a monarch's rule was to leave their shores--when the lastwaving of the royal standard was to flutter as it should be haul'ddown from the staff, and its place fill'd by the proud testimonial ofour warriors' success. 

Pleasantly over the autumn fields shone the November sun, when ahorseman, of somewhat military look, plodded slowly along the roadthat led to the old Vanhome farmhouse. There was nothing peculiar inhis attire, unless it might be a red scarf which he wore tied roundhis waist. He was a dark-featured, sullen-eyed man; and as his glancewas thrown restlessly to the right and left, his whole manner appear'dto be that of a person moving amid familiar and accustom'd scenes. Occasionally he stopp'd, and looking long and steadily at some objectthat attracted his attention, mutter'd to himself, like one in whosebreast busy thoughts were moving. His course was evidently to thehomestead itself, at which in due time he arrived. He dismounted, ledhis horse to the stables, and then, without knocking, though therewere evident signs of occupancy around the building, the traveler madehis entrance as composedly and boldly as though he were master of thewhole establishment. 

Now the house being in a measure deserted for many years, and thesuccessful termination of the strife rendering it probable that theVanhome estate would be confiscated to the new government, an aged, poverty-stricken couple had been encouraged by the neighbors to takepossession as tenants of the place. Their name was Gills; and thesepeople the traveler found upon his entrance were likely to be his hostand hostess. Holding their right as they did by so slight a tenure, they ventur'd to offer no opposition when the stranger signified hisintention of passing several hours there. 

The day wore on, and the sun went down in the west; still theinterloper, gloomy and taciturn, made no signs of departing. But asthe evening advanced (whether the darkness was congenial to his sombrethoughts, or whether it merely chanced so) he seem'd to grow moreaffable and communicative, and informed Gills that he should pass thenight there, tendering him at the same time ample remuneration, whichthe latter accepted with many thanks. 

"Tell me, " said he to his aged host, when they were all sitting aroundthe ample hearth, at the conclusion of their evening meal, "tell mesomething to while away the hours. "

"Ah! sir, " answered Gills, "this is no place for new or interestingevents. We live here from year to year, and at the end of one we findourselves at about the same place which we filled in the beginning. "

"Can you relate nothing, then?" rejoin'd the guest, and a singularsmile pass'd over his features; "can you say nothing about your ownplace?--this house or its former inhabitants, or former history?"

The old man glanced across to his wife, and a look expressive ofsympathetic feeling started in the face of each. 

"It is an unfortunate story, sir, " said Gills, "and may cast a chillupon you, instead of the pleasant feeling which it would be best tofoster when in strange walls. "

"Strange walls!" echoed he of the red scarf, and for the first timesince his arrival he half laughed, but it was not the laugh whichcomes from a man's heart. 

"You must know, sir, " continued Gills, "I am myself a sort of intruderhere. The Vanhomes--that was the name of the former residents andowners--I have never seen; for when I came to these parts the lastoccupant had left to join the red-coat soldiery. I am told that he isto sail with them for foreign lands, now that the war is ended, andhis property almost certain to pass into other hands. "

As the old man went on, the stranger cast down his eyes, and listen'dwith an appearance of great interest, though a transient smile or abrightening of the eye would occasionally disturb the serenity of hisdeportment. 

"The old owners of this place, " continued the white-haired narrator, "were well off in the world, and bore a good name among theirneighbors. The brother of Sergeant Vanhome, now the only one of thename, died ten or twelve years since, leaving a son--a child so smallthat the father's willmade provision for his being brought up by hisuncle, whom I mention'd but now as of the British army. He was astrange man, this uncle; disliked by all who knew him; passionate, vindictive, and, it was said, very avaricious, even from hischildhood. 

"Well, not long after the death of the parents, dark stories beganto be circulated about cruelty and punishment and whippings andstarvation inflicted by the new master upon his nephew. People whohad business at the homestead would frequently, when they came away, relate the most fearful things of its manager, and how he misusedhis brother's child. It was half hinted that he strove to get theyoungster out of the way in order that the whole estate might fallinto his own hands. As I told you before, however, nobody liked theman; and perhaps they judged him too uncharitably. 

"After things had gone on in this way for some time, a countryman, alaborer, who was hired to do farm-work upon the place, one eveningobserved that the little orphan Vanhome was more faint and pale eventhan usual, for he was always delicate, and that is one reason why Ithink it possible that his death, of which I am now going to tell you, was but the result of his own weak constitution, and nothing else. Thelaborer slept that night at the farmhouse. Just before the time atwhich they usually retired to bed, this person, feeling sleepy withhis day's toil, left the kitchen hearth and wended his way to rest. In going to his place of repose he had to pass a chamber--the verychamber where you, sir, are to sleep to-night--and there he heard thevoice of the orphan child uttering half-suppress'd exclamations as ifin pitiful entreaty. Upon stopping, he heard also the tones of theelder Vanhome, but they were harsh and bitter. The sound of blowsfollowed. As each one fell it was accompanied by a groan or shriek, and so they continued for some time. Shock'd and indignant, thecountryman would have burst open the door and interfered to preventthis brutal proceeding, but he bethought him that he might get himselfinto trouble, and perhaps find that he could do no good after all, andso he passed on to his room. 

"Well, sir, the following day the child did not come out among thework-people as usual. He was taken very ill. No physician was sent foruntil the next afternoon; and though one arrived in the course of thenight, it was too late--the poor boy died before morning. 

"People talk'd threateningly upon the subject, but nothing could beproved against Vanhome. At one period there were efforts made to havethe whole affair investigated. Perhaps that would have taken place, had not every one's attention been swallow'd up by the rumors ofdifficulty and war, which were then beginning to disturb the country. 

"Vanhome joined the army of the king. His enemies said that he fearedto be on the side of the rebels, because if they were routed hisproperty would be taken from him. But events have shown that, if thiswas indeed what he dreaded, it has happen'd to him from the very meanswhich he took to prevent it. "

The old man paused. He had quite wearied himself with so long talking. For some minutes there was unbroken silence. Presently the strangersignified his intention of retiring for the night. He rose, and hishost took a light for the purpose of ushering him to his apartment. 

When Gills return'd to his accustom'd situation in the large arm-chairby the chimney-hearth, his ancient helpmate had retired to rest. Withthe simplicity of their times, the bed stood in the same room wherethe three had been seated during the last few hours; and now theremaining two talk'd together about the singular events of theevening. As the time wore on, Gills show'd no disposition to leave hiscosy chair; but sat toasting his feet, and bending over the coals. Gradually the insidious heat and the lateness of the hour began toexercise their influence over the old man. The drowsy indolent feelingwhich every one has experienced in getting thoroughly heated throughby close contact with a glowing fire, spread in each vein and sinew, and relax'd its tone. He lean'd back in his chair and slept. 

For a long time his repose went on quietly and soundly. He could nottell how many hours elapsed; but, a while after midnight, the torpidsenses of the slumberer were awaken'd by a startling shock. It was acry as of a strong man in his agony--a shrill, not very loud cry, butfearful, and creeping into the blood like cold, polish'd steel. Theold man raised himself in his seat and listen'd, at once fully awake. For a minute, all was the solemn stillness of midnight. Then rose thathorrid tone again, wailing and wild, and making the hearer's hair tostand on end. One moment more, and the trampling of hasty feet soundedin the passage outside. The door was thrown open, and the form of thestranger, more like a corpse than living man, rushed into the room. 

"All white!" yell'd the conscience-stricken creature--"all white, andwith the grave-clothes around him. One shoulder was bare, and I saw, "he whisper'd, "I saw blue streaks upon it. It was horrible, and Icried aloud. He stepp'd toward me! He came to my very bedside; hissmall hand almost touch'd my face. I could not bear it, and fled. "

The miserable man bent his head down upon his bosom; convulsiverattlings shook his throat; and his whole frame waver'd to and frolike a tree in a storm. Bewilder'd and shock'd, Gills look'd at hisapparently deranged guest, and knew not what answer to make, or whatcourse of conduct to pursue. 

Thrusting out his arms and his extended fingers, and bending downhis eyes, as men do when shading them from a glare of lightning, thestranger stagger'd from the door, and, in a moment further, dash'dmadly through the passage which led through the kitchen into the outerroad. The old man heard the noise of his falling footsteps, soundingfainter and fainter in the distance, and then, retreating, dropp'd hisown exhausted limbs into the chair from which he had been arous'd soterribly. It was many minutes before his energies recover'd theiraccustomed tone again. Strangely enough, his wife, unawaken'd by thestranger's ravings, still slumber'd on as profoundly as ever. 

Pass we on to a far different scene--the embarkation of the Britishtroops for the distant land whose monarch was never more to wieldthe sceptre over a kingdom lost by his imprudence and tyranny. Withfrowning brow and sullen pace the martial ranks moved on. Boat afterboat was filled, and, as each discharged its complement in the shipsthat lay heaving their anchors in the stream, it return'd, and wassoon filled with another load. And at length it became time for thelast soldier to lift his eye and take a last glance at the broadbanner of England's pride, which flapp'd its folds from the top of thehighest staff on the Battery. 

As the warning sound of a trumpet called together all who werelaggards--those taking leave of friends, and those who were arrangingtheir own private affairs, left until the last moment--a singlehorseman was seen furiously dashing down the street. A red scarftightly encircled his waist. He made directly for the shore, and thecrowd there gather'd started back in wonderment as they beheld hisdishevel'd appearance and ghastly face. Throwing himself violentlyfrom his saddle, he flung the bridle over the animal's neck, and gavehim a sharp cut with a small riding whip. He made for the boat; oneminute later, and he had been left. They were pushing the keel fromthe landing--the stranger sprang--a space of two or three feet alreadyintervened--he struck on the gunwale--and the Last Soldier of KingGeorge had left the American shores. 

WILD FRANK'S RETURN

As the sun, one August day some fifty years ago, had just pass'd themeridian of a country town in the eastern section of Long Island, a single traveler came up to the quaint low-roof'd village tavern, open'd its half-door, and enter'd the common room. Dust cover'd theclothes of the wayfarer, and his brow was moist with sweat. He trod ina lagging, weary way; though his form and features told of an age notmore than nineteen or twenty years. Over one shoulder was slung asailor's jacket, and in his hand he carried a little bundle. Sittingdown on a rude bench, he told a female who made her appearance behindthe bar, that he would have a glass of brandy and sugar. He took offthe liquor at a draught: after which he lit and began to smoke acigar, with which he supplied himself from his pocket--stretching outone leg, and leaning his elbow down on the bench, in the attitude of aman who takes an indolent lounge. 

"Do you know one Richard Hall that lives somewhere here among you?"said he. 

"Mr. Hall's is down the lane that turns off by that big locust tree, "answer'd the woman, pointing to the direction through the open door;"it's about half a mile from here to his house. "

The youth, for a minute or two, puff'd the smoke from his mouthvery leisurely in silence. His manner had an air of vacantself-sufficiency, rather strange in one of so few years. 

"I wish to see Mr. Hall, " he said at length--"Here's a silversix-pence, for any one who will carry a message to him. "

"The folks are all away. It's but a short walk, and your limbs areyoung, " replied the female, who was not altogether pleased with theeasy way of making himself at home which mark'd her shabby-lookingcustomer. That individual, however, seem'd to give small attentionto the hint, but lean'd and puff'd his cigar-smoke as leisurely asbefore. 

"Unless, " continued the woman, catching a second glance at thesixpence; "unless old Joe is at the stable, as he's very likely to be. I'll go and find out for you. " And she push'd open a door at her back, stepp'd through an adjoining room into a yard, whence her voice wasthe next moment heard calling the person she had mention'd, in accentsby no means remarkable for their melody or softness. 

Her search was successful. She soon return'd with him who was to actas messenger--a little, wither'd, ragged old man--a hanger-on there, whose unshaven face told plainly enough the story of his intemperatehabits--those deeply seated habits, now too late to be uprooted, thatwould ere long lay him in a drunkard's grave. The youth inform'd himwhat the required service was, and promised him the reward as soon ashe should return, "Tell Richard Hall that I am going to his father's house thisafternoon. If he asks who it is that wishes him here, say the personsent no name, " continued the stranger, sitting up from his indolentposture, as the feet of old Joe were about leaving the door-stone, andhis blear'd eyes turned to eaten the last sentence of the mandate. 

"And yet, perhaps you may as well, " added he, communing a moment withhimself: "you may tell him his brother Frank, Wild Frank, it is, whowishes him to come. "

The old man departed on his errand, and he who call'd himself WildFrank, toss'd his nearly smoked cigar out of the window, and foldedhis arms in thought. 

No better place than this, probably, will occur to give a briefaccount of some former events in the life of the young stranger, resting and waiting at the village inn. Fifteen miles east of thatinn lived a farmer named Hall, a man of good repute, well-off in theworld, and head of a large family. He was fond of gain--required allhis boys to labor in proportion to their age; and his right hand man, if he might not be called favorite, was his eldest son Richard. Thiseldest son, an industrious, sober-faced young fellow, was invested byhis father with the powers of second in command; and as strict andswift obedience was a prime tenet in the farmer's domestic government, the children all tacitly submitted to their brother's sway--all butone, and that was Frank. The farmer's wife was a quiet woman, inrather tender health; and though for all her offspring she had amother's love, Frank's kiss ever seem'd sweetest to her lips. Shefavor'd him more than the rest--perhaps, as in a hundred similarinstances, for his being so often at fault, and so often blamed. Intruth, however, he seldom receiv'd more blame than he deserv'd, for hewas a capricious, high-temper'd lad, and up to all kinds of mischief. From these traits he was known in the neighborhood by the name of WildFrank. 

Among the farmer's stock there was a fine young blood mare--abeautiful creature, large and graceful, with eyes like dark-huedjewels, and her color that of the deep night. It being the custom ofthe farmer to let his boys have something about the farm that theycould call their own, and take care of as such, Black Nell, as themare was called, had somehow or other fallen to Frank's share. He wasvery proud of her, and thought as much of her comfort as his own. Theelder brother, however, saw fit to claim for himself, and severaltimes to exercise, a privilege of managing and using Black Nell, notwithstanding what Frank consider'd his prerogative. On one of theseoccasions a hot dispute arose, and, after much angry blood, it wasreferr'd to the farmer for settlement. He decided in favor of Richard, and added a harsh lecture to his other son. The farmer was reallyunjust; and Wild Frank's face paled with rage and mortification. Thatfurious temper which he had never been taught to curb, now swell'dlike an overflowing torrent. With difficulty restraining theexhibition of his passions, as soon as he got by himself he swore thatnot another sun should roll by and find him under that roof. Late atnight he silently arose, and turning his back on what he thought aninhospitable home, in mood in which the child should never leave theparental roof, bent his steps toward the city. 

It may well be imagined that alarm and grief pervaded the whole ofthe family, on discovering Frank's departure. And as week after weekmelted away and brought no tidings of him, his poor mother's heartgrew wearier and wearier. She spoke not much, but was evidently sickin spirit. Nearly two years had claps'd when about a week before theincidents at the commencement of this story, the farmer's family werejoyfully surprised by receiving a letter from the long absent son. Hehad been to sea, and was then in New York, at which port his vesselhad just arrived. He wrote in a gay strain; appear'd to have lost theangry feeling which caused his flight from home; and said he heard inthe city that Richard had married, and settled several miles distant, where he wished him all good luck and happiness. Wild Frank woundup his letter by promising, as soon as he could get through theimperative business of his ship, to pay a visit to his parents andnative place. On Tuesday of the succeeding week, he said he would bewith them. 

Within half an hour after the departure of old Joe, the form of thatancient personage was seen slowly wheeling round the locust-tree atthe end of the lane, accompanied by a stout young man in primitivehomespun apparel. The meeting between Wild Frank and his brotherRichard, though hardly of that kind which generally takes placebetween persons so closely related, could not exactly be call'ddistant or cool either. Richard press'd his brother to go with him tothe farmhouse, and refresh and repose himself for some hours at least, but Frank declined. 

"They will all expect me home this afternoon, " he said, "I wrote tothem I would be there to-day. "

"But you must be very tired, Frank, " rejoin'd the other; "won't youlet some of us harness up and carry you? Or if you like--" he stopp'da moment, and a trifling suffusion spread over his face; "if you like, I'll put the saddle on Black Nell--she's here at my place now, and youcan ride home like a lord. "

Frank's face color'd a little, too. He paused for a moment in thought--he was really foot-sore, and exhausted with his journey that hotday--so he accepted his brother's offer. 

"You know the speed of Nell, as well as I, " said Richard; "I'llwarrant when I bring her here you'll say she's in good order as ever. "So telling him to amuse himself for a few minutes as well as he could, Richard left the tavern. 

Could it be that Black Nell knew her early master? She neigh'd andrubb'd her nose on his shoulder; and as he put his foot in the stirrupand rose on her back, it was evident that they were both highlypleased with their meeting. Bidding his brother farewell, and notforgetting old Joe, the young man set forth on his journey to hisfather's house. As he left the village behind, and came upon the longmonotonous road before him, he thought on the circumstances of hisleaving home--and he thought, too, on his course of life, how it wasbeing frittered away and lost. Very gentle influences, doubtless, cameover Wild Frank's mind then, and he yearn'd to show his parents thathe was sorry for the trouble he had cost them. He blamed himself forhis former follies, and even felt remorse that he had not acted morekindly to Richard, and gone to his house. Oh, it had been a sadmistake of the farmer that he did not teach his children to love oneanother. It was a foolish thing that he prided himself on governinghis little flock well, when sweet affection, gentle forbearance, andbrotherly faith, were almost unknown among them. 

The day was now advanced, though the heat pour'd down with a strengthlittle less oppressive than at noon. Frank had accomplish'd thegreater part of his journey; he was within two miles of his home. Theroad here led over a high, tiresome hill, and he determined to stop onthe top of it and rest himself, as well as give the animal he rode afew minutes' breath. How well he knew the place! And that mighty oak, standing just outside the fence on the very summit of the hill, oftenhad he reposed under its shade. It would be pleasant for a few minutesto stretch his limbs there again as of old, he thought to himself;and he dismounted from the saddle and led Black Nell under the tree. Mindful of the comfort of his favorite, he took from his littlebundle, which he had strapped behind him on the mare's back, a pieceof strong cord, four or five yards in length, which he tied to thebridle, and wound and tied the other end, for security, over his ownwrist; then throwing himself at full length upon the ground, BlackNell was at liberty to graze around him, without danger of strayingaway. 

It was a calm scene, and a pleasant. There was no rude sound--hardlyeven a chirping insect--to break the sleepy silence of the place. Theatmosphere had a dim, hazy cast, and was impregnated with overpoweringheat. The young man lay there minute after minute, as time glided awayunnoticed; for he was very tired, and his repose was sweet to him. Occasionally he raised himself and cast a listless look at the distantlandscape, veil'd as it was by the slight mist. At length his reposewas without such interruptions. His eyes closed, and though at firstthey open'd languidly again at intervals, after a while they shutaltogether. Could it be that he slept? It was so indeed. Yielding tothe drowsy influences about him, and to his prolong'd weariness oftravel, he had fallen into a deep, sound slumber. Thus he lay; andBlack Nell, the original cause of his departure from his home--by asingular chance, the companion of his return--quietly cropp'd thegrass at his side. 

An hour nearly pass'd away, and yet the young man slept on. The lightand heat were not glaring now; a change had come over earth andheaven. There were signs of one of those thunderstorms that in ourclimate spring up and pass over so quickly and so terribly. Massesof vapor loom' d up in the horizon, and a dark shadow settled on thewoods and fields. The leaves of the great oak rustled together overthe youth's head. Clouds flitted swiftly in the sky, like bodies ofarmed men coming up to battle at the call of their leader's trumpet. A thick rain-drop fell now and then, while occasionally hoarsemutterings of thunder sounded in the distance; yet the slumberer wasnot arous'd. It was strange that Wild Frank did not awake. Perhapshis ocean life had taught him to rest undisturbed amid the jarring ofelements. Though the storm was now coming on in its fury, he sleptlike a babe in its cradle. 

Black Nell had ceased grazing, and stood by her sleeping master withears erect, and her long mane and tail waving in the wind. It seem'dquite dark, so heavy were the clouds. The blast blew sweepingly, thelightning flash'd, and the rain fell in torrents. Crash after crashof thunder seem'd to shake the solid earth. And Black Nell, she stoodnow, an image of beautiful terror, with her fore feet thrust out, herneck arch'd, and her eyes glaring balls of fear. At length, after adazzling and lurid glare, there came a peal--a deafening crash--as ifthe great axle was rent. God of Spirits! the startled mare sprang offlike a ship in an ocean-storm! Her eyes were blinded with light;she dashed madly down the hill, and plunge after plunge--far, faraway--swift as an arrow--dragging the hapless body of the youthbehind her!

In the low, old-fashion'd dwelling of the farmer there was a largefamily group. The men and boys had gather'd under shelter at theapproach of the storm; and the subject of their talk was the returnof the long absent son. The mother spoke of him, too, and her eyesbrighten'd with pleasure as she spoke. She made all the littledomestic preparations--cook'd his favorite dishes--and arranged forhim his own bed, in its own old place. As the tempest mounted to itsfury they discuss'd the probability of his getting soak'd by it;and the provident dame had already selected some dry garments for achange. But the rain was soon over, and nature smiled again in herinvigorated beauty. The sun shone out as it was dipping in the west. Drops sparkled on the leaf-tips--coolness and clearness were in theair. 

The clattering of a horse's hoofs came to the ears of those who weregather'd there. It was on the other side of the house that the wagonroad lead; and they open'd the door and rush'd in a tumult of gladanticipations, through the adjoining room to the porch. What a sightit was that met them there! Black Nell stood a few feet from the door, with her neck crouch'd down; she drew her breath long and deep, andvapor rose from every part of her reeking body. And with eyes startingfrom their sockets, and mouths agape with stupefying terror, theybeheld on the ground near her a mangled, hideous mass--the roughsemblance of a human form--all batter'd, and cut, and bloody. Attach'dto it was the fatal cord, dabbled over with gore. And as the mothergazed--for she could not withdraw her eyes--and the appalling truthcame upon her mind, she sank down without shriek or utterance, into adeep, deathly swoon. 

THE BOY LOVER

Listen, and the old will speak a chronicle for the young. Ah, youth!thou art one day coming to be old, too. And let me tell thee how thoumayest get a useful lesson. For an hour, _dream thyself old_. Realize, in thy thoughts and consciousness, that vigor and strength are subduedin thy sinews--that the color of the shroud is liken'd in thy veryhairs--that all those leaping desires, luxurious hopes, beautifulaspirations, and proud confidences, of thy younger life, have longbeen buried (a funeral for the better part of thee) in that gravewhich must soon close over thy tottering limbs. Look back, then, through the long track of the past years. How has it been with thee?Are there bright beacons of happiness enjoy'd, and of good done by theway? Glimmer gentle rays of what was scatter'd from a holy heart? Havebenevolence, and love, and undeviating honesty left tokens on whichthy eyes can rest sweetly? Is it well with thee, thus? Answerest thou, it is? Or answerest thou, I see nothing but gloom and shatter'd hours, and the wreck of good resolves, and a broken heart, filled withsickness, and troubled among its ruined chambers with the phantoms ofmany follies?

O, youth! youth! this dream will one day be a _reality_--a reality, either of heavenly peace or agonizing sorrow. 

And yet not for all is it decreed to attain the neighborhood of thethree-score and ten years--the span of life. I am to speak of onewho died young. Very awkward was his childhood--but most fragile andsensitive! So delicate a nature may exist in a rough, unnoticed plant!Let the boy rest;--he was not beautiful, and dropp'd away betimes. Butfor the cause--it is a singular story, to which let crusted worldlingspay the tribute of a light laugh--light and empty as their own hollowhearts. 

Love! which with its cankerseed of decay within, has sent young menand maidens to a long'd-for, but too premature burial. Love! thechild-monarch that Death itself cannot conquer; that has its tokens onslabs at the head of grass-cover'd tombs--tokens more visible to theeye of the stranger, yet not so deeply graven as the face and theremembrances cut upon the heart of the living. Love! the sweet, thepure, the innocent; yet the causer of fierce hate, of wishes fordeadly revenge, of bloody deeds, and madness, and the horrors of hell. Love! that wanders over battlefields, turning up mangled human trunks, and parting back the hair from gory faces, and daring the points ofswords and the thunder of artillery, without a fear or a thought ofdanger. 

Words! words! I begin to see I am, indeed, an old man, and garrulous!Let me go back--yes, I see it must be many years!

It was at the close of the last century. I was at that time studyinglaw, the profession my father follow'd. One of his clients was anelderly widow, a foreigner, who kept a little ale-house, on the banksof the North River, at about two miles from what is now the centre ofthe city. Then the spot was quite out of town and surrounded by fieldsand green trees. The widow often invited me to come and pay hera visit, when I had a leisure afternoon--including also in theinvitation my brother and two other students who were in my father'soffice. Matthew, the brother I mention, was a boy of sixteen; he wastroubled with an inward illness--though it had no power over histemper, which ever retain' d the most admirable placidity andgentleness. 

He was cheerful, but never boisterous, and everybody loved him; hismind seem'd more develop'd than is usual for his age, though hispersonal appearance was exceedingly plain. Wheaton and Brown, thenames of the other students, were spirited, clever young fellows, withmost of the traits that those in their position of life generallypossess. The first was as generous and brave as any man I ever knew. He was very passionate, too, but the whirlwind soon blew over, andleft everything quiet again. Frank Brown was slim, graceful, andhandsome. He profess'd to be fond of sentiment, and used to fallregularly in love once a month. 

The half of every Wednesday we four youths had to ourselves, and werein the habit of taking a sail, a ride, or a walk together. One ofthese afternoons, of a pleasant day in April, the sun shining, and theair clear, I bethought myself of the widow and her beer--about whichlatter article I had made inquiries, and heard it spoken of in termsof high commendation. I mention'd the matter to Matthew and to myfellow-students, and we agreed to fill up our holiday by a jaunt tothe ale-house. Accordingly, we set forth, and, after a fine walk, arrived in glorious spirits at our destination. 

Ah! how shall I describe the quiet beauties of the spot, with itslong, low piazza looking out upon the river, and its clean homelytables, and the tankards of real silver in which the ale was given us, and the flavor of that excellent liquor itself. There was the widow;and there was a sober, stately old woman, half companion, halfservant, Margery by name; and there was (good God! my fingers quiveryet as I write the word!) young Ninon, the daughter of the widow. 

O, through the years that live no more, my memory strays back, andthat whole scene comes up before me once again-and the brightest partof the picture is the strange ethereal beauty of that young girl!She was apparently about the age of my brother Matthew, and the mostfascinating, artless creature I had ever beheld. She had blue eyesand light hair, and an expression of childish simplicity which wascharming indeed. I have no doubt that ere half an hour had elapsedfrom the time we enter'd the tavern and saw Ninon, every one of thefour of us loved the girl to the very depth of passion. 

We neither spent so much money, nor drank as much beer, as we hadintended before starting from home. The widow was very civil, beingpleased to see us, and Margery served our wants with a deal ofpoliteness--but it was to Ninon that the afternoon's pleasure wasattributable; for though we were strangers, we became acquainted atonce--the manners of the girl, merry as she was, putting entirely outof view the most distant imputation of indecorum--and the presence ofthe widow and Margery, (for we were all in the common room together, there being no other company, ) serving to make us all disembarrass'd, and at ease. 

It was not until quite a while after sunset that we started on ourreturn to the city. We made several attempts to revive the mirth andlively talk that usually signalized our rambles, but they seem'dforced and discordant, like laughter in a sick-room. My brother wasthe only one who preserved his usual tenor of temper and conduct. 

I need hardly say that thenceforward every Wednesday afternoon wasspent at the widow's tavern. Strangely, neither Matthew or my twofriends, or myself, spoke to each other of the sentiment that filledus in reference to Ninon. Yet we all knew the thoughts and feelings ofthe others; and each, perhaps, felt confident that his love alone wasunsuspected by his companions. 

The story of the widow was a touching yet simple one. She was by birtha Swiss. In one of the cantons of her native land, she had grown up, and married, and lived for a time in happy comfort. A son was born toher, and a daughter, the beautiful Ninon. By some reverse of fortune, the father and head of the family had the greater portion of hispossessions swept from him. He struggled for a time against the evilinfluence, but it press'd upon him harder and harder. He had heardof a people in the western world--a new and swarming land--where thestranger was welcom'd, and peace and the protection of the strong armthrown around him. He had not heart to stay and struggle amid thescenes of his former prosperity, and he determin'd to go and makehis home in that distant republic of the west. So with his wife andchildren, and the proceeds of what little property was left, he tookpassage for New York. He was never to reach his journey's end. Eitherthe cares that weigh' d upon his mind, or some other cause, consign'dhim to a sick hammock, from which he only found relief through theGreat Dismisser. He was buried in the sea, and in due time hisfamily arrived at the American emporium. But there, the son toosicken'd--died, ere long, and was buried likewise. They would not buryhim in the city, but away--by the solitary banks of the Hudson; onwhich the widow soon afterwards took up her abode. 

Ninon was too young to feel much grief at these sad occurrences; andthe mother, whatever she might have suffer'd inwardly, had a good dealof phlegm and patience, and set about making herself and her remainingchild as comfortable as might be. They had still a respectable sum incash, and after due deliberation, the widow purchas'd the little quiettavern, not far from the grave of her boy; and of Sundays and holidaysshe took in considerable money--enough to make a decent support forthem in their humble way of living. French and Germans visited thehouse frequently, and quite a number of young Americans too. Probablythe greatest attraction to the latter was the sweet face of Ninon. 

Spring passed, and summer crept in and wasted away, and autumn hadarrived. Every New Yorker knows what delicious weather we have, in these regions, of the early October days; how calm, clear, anddivested of sultriness, is the air, and how decently nature seemspreparing for her winter sleep. 

Thus it was the last Wednesday we started on our accustomed excursion. Six months had elapsed since our first visit, and, as then, we werefull of the exuberance of young and joyful hearts. Frequent and heartywere our jokes, by no means particular about the theme or the method, and long and loud the peals of laughter that rang over the fields oralong the shore. 

We took our seats round the same clean, white table, and received ourfavorite beverage in the same bright tankards. They were set beforeus by the sober Margery, no one else being visible. As frequentlyhappen'd, we were the only company. Walking and breathing the keen, fine air had made us dry, and we soon drain'd the foaming vessels, andcall'd for more. I remember well an animated chat we had about somepoems that had just made their appearance from a great British author, and were creating quite a public stir. There was one, a tale ofpassion and despair, which Wheaton had read, and of which he gave usa transcript. Wild, startling, and dreamy, perhaps it threw over ourminds its peculiar cast. An hour moved off, and we began to think itstrange that neither Ninon or the widow came into the room. One of usgave a hint to that effect to Margery; but she made no answer, andwent on in her usual way as before. 

"The grim old thing, " said Wheaton, "if she were in Spain, they'd makeher a premier duenna!"

I ask'd the woman about Ninon and the widow. She seemed disturb'd, Ithought; but, making no reply to the first part of my question, saidthat her mistress was in another part of the house, and did not wishto be with company. 

"Then be kind enough, Mrs. Vinegar, " resumed Wheaton, good-naturedly, "be kind enough to go and ask the widow if we can see Ninon. "

Our attendant's face turn'd as pale as ashes, and she precipitatelyleft the apartment. We laugh'd at her agitation, which Frank Brownassigned to our merry ridicule. 

Quite a quarter of an hour elaps'd before Margery's return. When sheappear'd she told us briefly that the widow had bidden her obey ourbehest, and now, if we desired, she would conduct us to the daughter'spresence. There was a singular expression in the woman's eyes, and thewhole affair began to strike us as somewhat odd; but we arose, andtaking our caps, follow'd her as she stepp'd through the door. Back ofthe house were some fields, and a path leading into clumps of trees. At some thirty rods distant from the tavern, nigh one of those clumps, the larger tree whereof was a willow, Margery stopp'd, and pausing aminute, while we came up, spoke in tones calm and low:

"Ninon is there!"

She pointed downward with her finger. Great God! There was a _grave_, new made, and with the sods loosely join'd, and a rough brown stone ateach extremity! Some earth yet lay upon the grass near by. If we hadlook'd, we might have seen the resting-place of the widow's son, Ninon's brother--for it was close at hand. But amid the whole sceneour eyes took in nothing except that horrible covering of death--theoven-shaped mound. My sight seemed to waver, my head felt dizzy, anda feeling of deadly sickness came over me. I heard a stifledexclamation, and looking round, saw Frank Brown leaning against thenearest tree, great sweat upon his forehead, and his cheeks bloodlessas chalk. Wheaton gave way to his agony more fully than ever I hadknown a man before; he had fallen--sobbing like a child, and wringinghis hands. It is impossible to describe the suddenness and fearfulnessof the sickening truth that came upon us like a stroke of thunder. 

Of all of us, my brother Matthew neither shed tears, or turned pale, or fainted, or exposed any other evidence of inward depth of pain. Hisquiet, pleasant voice was indeed a tone lower, but it was that whichrecall'd us, after the lapse of many long minutes, to ourselves. 

So the girl had died and been buried. We were told of an illness thathad seized her the very day after our last preceding visit; but weinquired not into the particulars. 

And now come I to the conclusion of my story, and to the most singularpart of it. The evening of the third day afterward, Wheaton, who hadwept scalding tears, and Brown, whose cheeks had recovered theircolor, and myself, that for an hour thought my heart would neverrebound again from the fearful shock--that evening, I say, we threewere seated around a table in another tavern, drinking other beer, and laughing but a little less cheerfully, and as though we had neverknown the widow or her daughter--neither of whom, I venture to affirm, came into our minds once the whole night, or but to be dismiss'dagain, carelessly, like the remembrance of faces seen in a crowd. 

Strange are the contradictions of the things of life! The seventh dayafter that dreadful visit saw my brother Matthew--the delicate one, who, while bold men writhed in torture, had kept the same placid face, and the same untrembling fingers--him that seventh day saw a clay-coldcorpse, carried to the repose of the churchyard. The shaft, ranklingfar down and within, wrought a poison too great for show, and theyouth died. 

THE CHILD AND THE PROFLIGATE

Just after sunset, one evening in summer--that pleasant hour when theair is balmy, the light loses its glare, and all around is imbued withsoothing quiet--on the door-step of a house there sat an elderly womanwaiting the arrival of her son. The house was in a straggling villagesome fifty miles from New York city. She who sat on the door-step wasa widow; her white cap cover'd locks of gray, and her dress, thoughclean, was exceedingly homely. Her house--for the tenement sheoccupied was her own--was very little and very old. Trees clusteredaround it so thickly as almost to hide its color--that blackish graycolor which belongs to old wooden houses that have never been painted;and to get in it you had to enter a little rickety gate and walkthrough a short path, border'd by carrot beds and beets and othervegetables. The son whom she was expecting was her only child. Abouta year before he had been bound apprentice to a rich farmer in theplace, and after finishing his daily task he was in the habit ofspending half an hour at his mother's. On the present occasion theshadows of night had settled heavily before the youth made hisappearance. When he did, his walk was slow and dragging, and all hismotions were languid, as if from great weariness. He open'd the gate, came through the path, and sat down by his mother in silence. 

"You are sullen to-night, Charley, " said the widow, after a moment'spause, when she found that he return' d no answer to her greeting. 

As she spoke she put her hand fondly on his head; it seem'd moist asif it had been dipp'd in the water. His shirt, too, was soak'd; and asshe pass'd her fingers down his shoulder she left a sharp twinge inher heart, for she knew that moisture to be the hard wrung sweat ofsevere toil, exacted from her young child (he was but thirteen yearsold) by an unyielding taskmaster. 

"You have work'd hard to-day, my son. "

"I've been mowing. "

The widow's heart felt another pang. 

"Not _all day_, Charley?" she said, in a low voice; and there was aslight quiver in it. 

"Yes, mother, all day, " replied the boy; "Mr. Ellis said he couldn'tafford to hire men, for wages are so high. I've swung the scythe eversince an hour before sunrise. Feel of my hands. "

There were blisters on them like great lumps. Tears started in thewidow's eyes. She dared not trust herself with a reply, though herheart was bursting with the thought that she could not better hiscondition. There was no earthly means of support on which she haddependence enough to encourage her child in the wish she knew he wasforming--the wish not utter'd for the first time--to be freed from hisbondage. "Mother, " at length said the boy, "I can stand it no longer. I cannot and will not stay at Mr. Ellis's. Ever since the day I firstwent into his house I've been a slave; and if I have to work so muchlonger I know I shall run off and go to sea or somewhere else. I'd asleave be in my grave as there. " And the child burst into a passionatefit of weeping. 

His mother was silent, for she was in deep grief herself. After someminutes had flown, however, she gather'd sufficient self-possession tospeak to her son in a soothing tone, endeavoring to win him from hissorrows and cheer up his heart. She told him that time was swift--thatin the course of a few years he would be his own master. --that allpeople have their troubles--with many other ready arguments which, though they had little effect in calming her own distress, she hopedwould act as a solace to the disturb'd temper of the boy. And as thehalf hour to which he was limited had now elaps'd, she took him by thehand and led him to the gate, to set forth on his return. The youthseemed pacified, though occasionally one of those convulsive sighsthat remain after a fit of weeping, would break from his throat. Atthe gate he threw his arms about his mother's neck; each press'd along kiss on the lips of the other, and the youngster bent his stepstowards his master's house. 

As her child pass'd out of sight the widow return'd, shut the gate andenter'd her lonely room. There was no light in the old cottage thatnight--the heart of its occupant was dark and cheerless. Love, agony, and grief, and tears and convulsive wrestlings were there. The thoughtof a beloved son condemned to labor--labor that would break down aman--struggling from day to day under the hard rule of a soullessgold-worshipper; the knowledge that years must pass thus; thesickening idea of her own poverty, and of living mainly on the grudgedcharity of neighbors--thoughts, too, of former happy days--theserack'd the widow's heart, and made her bed a sleepless one withoutrepose. 

The boy bent his steps to his employer's, as has been said. In his waydown the village street he had to pass a public house, the only onethe place contain'd; and when he came off against it he heard thesound of a fiddle--drown'd, however, at intervals, by much laughterand talking. The windows were up, and, the house standing close to theroad, Charles thought it no harm to take a look and see what was goingon within. Half a dozen footsteps brought him to the low casement, onwhich he lean'd his elbow, and where he had a full view of the roomand its occupants. In one corner was an old man, known in the villageas Black Dave--he it was whose musical performances had a momentbefore drawn Charles's attention to the tavern; and he it was who nowexerted himself in a violent manner to give, with divers flourishesand extra twangs, a tune very popular among that thick-lipp'd racewhose fondness for melody is so well known. In the middle of the roomwere five or six sailors, some of them quite drunk, and others in theearlier stages of that process, while on benches around were moresailors, and here and there a person dress'd in landsman's attire. Themen in the middle of the room were dancing; that is, they were goingthrough certain contortions and shufflings, varied occasionally byexceeding hearty stamps upon the sanded floor. In short the wholeparty were engaged in a drunken frolic, which was in no respectdifferent from a thousand other drunken frolics, except, perhaps, that there was less than the ordinary amount of anger and quarreling. Indeed everyone seem' d in remarkably good humor. 

But what excited the boy's attention more than any other object wasan individual, seated on one of the benches opposite, who, thoughevidently enjoying the spree as much as if he were an old hand atsuch business, seem' d in every other particular to be far out of hiselement. His appearance was youthful. He might have been twenty-oneor two years old. His countenance was intelligent, and had the airof city life and society. He was dress'd not gaudily, but in everyrespect fashionably; his coat being of the finest broadcloth, hislinen delicate and spotless as snow, and his whole aspect that of onewhose counterpart may now and then be seen upon the pave in Broadwayof a fine afternoon. He laugh'd and talk'd with the rest, and it mustbe confess'd his jokes--like the most of those that pass'd currentthere--were by no means distinguish'd for their refinement or purity. Near the door was a small table, cover'd with decanters and glasses, some of which had been used, but were used again indiscriminately, anda box of very thick and very long cigars. 

One of the sailors--and it was he who made the largest share of thehubbub--had but one eye. His chin and cheeks were cover'd with huge, bushy whiskers, and altogether he had quite a brutal appearance. "Come, boys, " said this gentleman, "come, let us take a drink. I knowyou're all a getting dry;" and he clench'd his invitation with anappalling oath. This politeness was responded to by a general movingof the company toward the table holding the before-mention'd decantersand glasses. Clustering there around, each one help'd himself to avery handsome portion of that particular liquor which suited hisfancy; and steadiness and accuracy being at that moment by no meansdistinguishing traits of the arms and legs of the party, a goodlyamount of the fluid was spill'd upon the floor. This piece ofextravagance excited the ire of the personage who gave the "treat;"and that ire was still further increas'd when he discover'd two orthree loiterers who seem'd disposed to slight his request to drink. Charles, as we have before mention'd, was looking in at the window. 

"Walk up, boys! walk up! If there be any skulker among us, blast myeyes if he shan't go down on his marrow bones and taste the liquor wehave spilt! Hallo!" he exclaim'd as he spied Charles; "hallo, you chapin the window, come here and take a sup. "

As he spoke he stepp'd to the open casement, put his brawny handsunder the boy's arms, and lifted him into the room bodily. 

"There, my lads, " said he, turning to his companions, "there's a newrecruit for you. Not so coarse a one, either, " he added as he took afair view of the boy, who, though not what is called pretty, was freshand manly looking, and large for his age. 

"Come, youngster, take a glass, " he continued. And he pour'd onenearly full of strong brandy. 

Now Charles was not exactly frighten'd, for he was a lively fellow, and had often been at the country merry-makings, and at the partiesof the place; but he was certainly rather abash'd at his abruptintroduction to the midst of strangers. So, putting the glass aside, he look'd up with a pleasant smile in his new acquaintance's face. 

"I've no need for anything now, " he said, "but I'm just as muchobliged to you as if I was. "

"Poh! man, drink it down, " rejoin'd the sailor, "drink it down--itwon't hurt you. "

And, by way of showing its excellence, the one-eyed worthy drain'dit himself to the last drop. Then filling it again, he renew'd hisefforts to make the lad go through the same operation. 

"I've no occasion. Besides, _my mother has often pray'd me not todrink, _ and I promised to obey her. "

A little irritated by his continued refusal, the sailor, with a loudoath, declared that Charles should swallow the brandy, whether hewould or no. Placing one of his tremendous paws on the back of theboy's head, with the other he thrust the edge of the glass to hislips, swearing at the same time, that if he shook it so as to spillits contents the consequences would be of a nature by no meansagreeable to his back and shoulders. Disliking the liquor, and angryat the attempt to overbear him, the undaunted child lifted his handand struck the arm of the sailor with a blow so sudden thatthe glass fell and was smash'd to pieces on the floor; while thebrandy was about equally divided between the face of Charles, theclothes of the sailor, and the sand. By this time the whole of thecompany had their attention drawn to the scene. Some of them laugh'dwhen they saw Charles's undisguised antipathy to the drink; but theylaugh'd still more heartily when he discomfited the sailor. All ofthem, however, were content to let the matter go as chance would haveit--all but the young man of the black coat, who has been spoken of. 

What was there in the words which Charles had spoken that carried themind of the young man back to former times--to a period when he wasmore pure and innocent than now? "_My mother has often pray'd me notto drink!_" Ah, how the mist of months roll'd aside, and presented tohis soul's eye the picture of _his_ mother, and a prayer of exactlysimilar purport! Why was it, too, that the young man's heart movedwith a feeling of kindness toward the harshly treated child?

Charles stood, his cheek flush'd and his heart throbbing, wipingthe trickling drops from his face with a handkerchief. At first thesailor, between his drunkenness and his surprise, was much in thecondition of one suddenly awaken'd out of a deep sleep, who cannotcall his consciousness about him. When he saw the state of things, however, and heard the jeering laugh of his companions, his dull eyelighting up with anger, fell upon the boy who had withstood him. Heseized Charles with a grip of iron, and with the side of his heavyboot gave him a sharp and solid kick. He was about repeating theperformance--for the child hung like a rag in his grasp--but all of asudden his ears rang, as if pistols were snapp'd close to them; lightsof various hues flicker'd in his eye, (he had but one, it will beremember'd, ) and a strong propelling power caused him to move from hisposition, and keep moving until he was brought up by the wall. A blow, a cuff given in such a scientific manner that the hand from which itproceeded was evidently no stranger to the pugilistic art, had beensuddenly planted in the ear of the sailor. It was planted by the youngman of the black coat. He had watch'd with interest the proceedingof the sailor and the boy--two or three times he was on the point ofinterfering; but when the kick was given, his rage was uncontrollable. He sprang from his seat in the attitude of a boxer--struck the sailorin a manner to cause those unpleasant sensations which have beendescribed--and would probably have follow'd up the attack, had notCharles, now thoroughly terrified, clung around his legs and preventedhis advancing. 

The scene was a strange one, and for the time quite a silent one. Thecompany had started from their seats, and for a moment held breathlessbut strain'd positions. In the middle of the room stood the young man, in his not at all ungraceful attitude--every nerve out, and his eyesflashing brilliantly. 

He seem'd rooted like a rock; and clasping him, with an appearance ofconfidence in his protection, clung the boy. 

"You scoundrel!" cried the young man, his voice thick with passion, "dare to touch the boy again, and I'll thrash you till no sense isleft in your body. "

The sailor, now partially recover'd, made some gestures of abelligerent nature. 

"Come on, drunken brute!" continued the angry youth; "I wish youwould! You've not had half what you deserve!"

Upon sobriety and sense more fully taking their power in the brains ofthe one-eyed mariner, however, that worthy determined in his own mindthat it would be most prudent to let the matter drop. Expressingtherefore his conviction to that effect, adding certain remarks to thepurport that he "meant no harm to the lad, " that he was surprisedat such a gentleman being angry at "a little piece of fun, " and soforth--he proposed that the company should go on with their jollityjust as if nothing had happen'd. In truth, he of the single eye wasnot a bad fellow at heart, after all; the fiery enemy whose advanceshe had so often courted that night, had stolen away his good feelings, and set busy devils at work within him, that might have made his handsdo some dreadful deed, had not the stranger interposed. 

In a few minutes the frolic of the party was upon its former footing. The young man sat down upon one of the benches, with the boy by hisside, and while the rest were loudly laughing and talking, theytwo convers'd together. The stranger learn'd from Charles all theparticulars of his simple story--how his father had died yearssince--how his mother work' d hard for a bare living--and howhe himself, for many dreary months, had been the servant of ahard-hearted, avaricious master. More and more interested, drawing thechild close to his side, the young man listen'd to his plainly toldhistory--and thus an hour pass'd away. 

It was now past midnight. The young man told Charles that on themorrow he would take steps to relieve him from his servitude--that forthe present night the landlord would probably give him a lodging atthe inn--and little persuading did the host need for that. 

As he retired to sleep, very pleasant thoughts filled the mind of theyoung man--thoughts of a worthy action perform'd--thoughts, too, newlyawakened ones, of walking in a steadier and wiser path than formerly. 

That roof, then, sheltered two beings that night--one of them innocentand sinless of all wrong--the other--oh, to that other what evil hadnot been present, either in action or to his desires!

Who was the stranger? To those that, from ties of relationship orotherwise, felt an interest in him, the answer to that question wasnot pleasant to dwell upon. His name was Langton--parentless--adissipated young man--a brawler--one whose too frequent companionswere rowdies, blacklegs, and swindlers. The New York police officeswere not strangers to his countenance. He had been bred to theprofession of medicine; besides, he had a very respectable income, and his house was in a pleasant street on the west side of the city. Little of his time, however, did Mr. John Langton spend at hisdomestic hearth; and the elderly lady who officiated as hishousekeeper was by no means surprised to have him gone for a week or amonth at a time, and she knowing nothing of his whereabouts. 

Living as he did, the young man was an unhappy being. It was not somuch that his associates were below his own capacity--for Langton, though sensible and well bred, was not highly talented or refined--butthat he lived without any steady purpose, that he had no one toattract him to his home, that he too easily allow'd himself to betempted--which caused his life to be, of late, one continued scene ofdissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction he sought to drive away by thebrandy bottle, and mixing in all kinds of parties where the objectwas pleasure. On the present occasion he had left the city a few daysbefore, and passing his time at a place near the village where Charlesand his mother lived. He fell in, during the day, with those who werehis companions of the tavern spree; and thus it happen'd that theywere all together. Langton hesitated not to make himself at home withany associate that suited his fancy. 

The next morning the poor widow rose from her sleepless cot; and fromthat lucky trait in our nature which makes one extreme follow another, she set about her toil with a lighten'd heart. Ellis, the farmer, rose, too, short as the nights were, an hour before day; for his godwas gain, and a prime article of his creed was to get as much work aspossible from every one around him. In the course of the day Ellis wascalled upon by young Langton, and never perhaps in his life was thefarmer puzzled more than at the young man's proposal--his desireto provide for the widow's family, a family that could do him nopecuniary good, and his willingness to disburse money for thatpurpose. The widow, too, was called upon, not only on that day, butthe next and the next. 

It needs not that I should particularize the subsequent events ofLangton's and the boy's history--how the reformation of the profligatemight be dated to begin from that time--how he gradually sever'd theguilty ties that had so long gall'd him--how he enjoy'd his own homeagain--how the friendship of Charles and himself grew not slack withtime--and how, when in the course of seasons he became head of afamily of his own, he would shudder at the remembrance of his earlydangers and his escapes. 

LINGAVE'S TEMPTATION

"Another day, " utter'd the poet Lingave, as he awoke in the morning, and turn'd him drowsily on his hard pallet, "another day comes out, burthen'd with its weight of woes. Of what use is existence to me?Crush'd down beneath the merciless heel of poverty, and no promise ofhope to cheer me on, what have I in prospect but a life neglected anda death of misery?"

The youth paused; but receiving no answer to his questions, thoughtproper to continue the peevish soliloquy. "I am a genius, they say, "and the speaker smiled bitterly, "but genius is not apparel and food. Why should I exist in the world, unknown, unloved, press'd with cares, while so many around me have all their souls can desire? I behold thesplendid equipages roll by--I see the respectful bow at the presenceof pride--and I curse the contrast between my own lot, and the fortuneof the rich. The lofty air--the show of dress--the aristocraticdemeanor--the glitter of jewels--dazzle my eyes; and sharp-tooth'd envy works within me. I hate these haughty and favor'd ones. Whyshould my path be so much rougher than theirs? Pitiable, unfortunateman that I am! to be placed beneath those whom in my heart Idespise--and to be constantly tantalized with the presence of thatwealth I cannot enjoy!" And the poet cover'd his eyes with his hands, and wept from very passion and fretfulness. 

O, Lingave! be more of a man! Have you not the treasures of health anduntainted propensities, which many of those you envy never enjoy? Areyou not their superior in mental power, in liberal views of mankind, and in comprehensive intellect? And even allowing you the choice, how would you shudder at changing, in total, conditions with them!Besides, were you willing to devote all your time and energies, youcould gain property too: squeeze, and toil, and worry, and twisteverything into a matter of profit, and you can become a great man, asfar as money goes to make greatness. 

Retreat, then, man of the polish'd soul, from those irritablecomplaints against your lot-those longings for wealth and pueriledistinction, not worthy your class. Do justice, philosopher, to yourown powers. While the world runs after its shadows and its bubbles, (thus commune in your own mind, ) we will fold ourselves in our circleof understanding, and look with an eye of apathy on those things itconsiders so mighty and so enviable. Let the proud man pass with hispompous glance--let the gay flutter in finery--let the foolish enjoyhis folly, and the beautiful move on in his perishing glory; we willgaze without desire on all their possessions, and all their pleasures. Our destiny is different from theirs. Not for such as we, the lowlyflights of their crippled wings. We acknowledge no fellow-ship withthem in ambition. We composedly look down on the paths where theywalk, and pursue our own, without uttering a wish to descend, and beas they. What is it to us that the mass pay us not that deferencewhich wealth commands? We desire no applause, save the applause of thegood and discriminating--the choice spirits among men. Our intellectwould be sullied, were the vulgar to approximate to it, by professingto readily enter in, and praising it. Our pride is a towering, andthrice refined pride. 

When Lingave had given way to his temper some half hour, orthereabout, he grew more calm, and bethought himself that he wasacting a very silly part. He listen'd a moment to the clatter of thecarts, and the tramp of early passengers on the pave below, as theywended along to commence their daily toil. It was just sunrise, andthe season was summer. A little canary bird, the only pet poor Lingavecould afford to keep, chirp'd merrily in its cage on the wall. Howslight a circumstance will sometimes change the whole current of ourthoughts! The music of that bird abstracting the mind of the poet buta moment from his sorrows, gave a chance for his natural buoyancy toact again. 

Lingave sprang lightly from his bed, and perform'd his ablutions andhis simple toilet--then hanging the cage on a nail outside the window, and speaking an endearment to the songster, which brought a perfectflood of melody in return--he slowly passed through his door, descended the long narrow turnings of the stairs, and stood in theopen street. Undetermin'd as to any particular destination, he foldedhis hands behind him, cast his glance upon the ground, and movedlistlessly onward. 

Hour after hour the poet walk'd along--up this street and downthat--he reck'd not how or where. And as crowded thoroughfares arehardly the most fit places for a man to let his fancy soar in theclouds--many a push and shove and curse did the dreamer get bestow'dupon him. 

The booming of the city clock sounded forth the hour twelve--highnoon. 

"Ho! Lingave!" cried a voice from an open basement window as the poetpass'd. 

He stopp'd, and then unwittingly would have walked on still, not fullyawaken'd from his reverie. 

"Lingave, I say!" cried the voice again, and the person to whom thevoice belong'd stretch'd his head quite out into the area in front, "Stop man. Have you forgotten your appointment?"

"Oh! ah!" said the poet, and he smiled unmeaningly, and descendingthe steps, went into the office of Ridman, whose call it was that hadstartled him in his walk. 

Who was Ridman? While the poet is waiting the convenience of thatpersonage, it may be as well to describe him. 

Ridman was a _money-maker_. He had much penetration, considerableknowledge of the world, and a disposition to be constantly in themidst of enterprise, excitement, and stir. His schemes for gainingwealth were various; he had dipp'd into almost every branch andchannel of business. A slight acquaintance of several years' standingsubsisted between him and the poet. The day previous a boy had call'dwith a note from Ridman to Lingave, desiring the presence of thelatter at the money-maker's room. The poet return'd for answer that hewould be there. This was the engagement which he came near breaking. 

Ridman had a smooth tongue. All his ingenuity was needed in theexplanation to his companion of why and wherefore the latter had beensent for. 

It is not requisite to state specifically the offer made by the manof wealth to the poet. Ridman, in one of his enterprises, found itnecessary to procure the aid of such a person as Lingave--a writer ofpower, a master of elegant diction, of fine taste, in style passionateyet pure, and of the delicate imagery that belongs to the childrenof song. The youth was absolutely startled at the magnificent andpermanent remuneration which was held out to him for a moderateexercise of his talents. 

But the _nature_ of the service required! All the sophistry and art ofRidman could not veil its repulsiveness. The poet was to labor for theadvancement of what he felt to be unholy--he was to inculcate whatwould lower the perfection of man. He promised to give an answer tothe proposal the succeeding day, and left the place. 

Now during the many hours there was a war going on in the heart of thepoor poet. He was indeed poor; often he had no certainty whether heshould be able to procure the next day's meals. And the poet knewthe beauty of truth, and adored, not in the abstract merely, but inpractice, the excellence of upright principles. 

Night came. Lingave, wearied, lay upon his pallet again and slept. Themisty veil thrown over him, the spirit of poesy came to his visions, and stood beside him, and look'd down pleasantly with her large eyes, which were bright and liquid like the reflection of stars in a lake. 

Virtue, (such imagining, then, seem'd conscious to the soul of thedreamer, ) is ever the sinew of true genius. Together, the two in one, they are endow'd with immortal strength, and approach loftily to Himfrom whom both spring. Yet there are those that having great powers, bend them to the slavery of wrong. God forgive them! for they surelydo it ignorantly or heedlessly. Oh, could he who lightly tosses aroundhim the seeds of evil in his writings, or his enduring thoughts, orhis chance words--could he see how, haply, they are to spring upin distant time and poison the air, and putrefy, and cause tosicken--would he not shrink back in horror? A bad principle, jestinglyspoken--a falsehood, but of a word--may taint a whole nation! Let theman to whom the great Master has given the might of mind, beware howhe uses that might. If for the furtherance of bad ends, what canbe expected but that, as the hour of the closing scene draws nigh, thoughts of harm done, and capacities distorted from their proper aim, and strength so laid out that men must be worse instead of better, through the exertion of that strength--will come and swarm likespectres around him?

"Be and continue poor, young man, " so taught one whose counsels shouldbe graven on the heart of every youth, "while others around you growrich by fraud and disloyalty. Be without place and power, while othersbeg their way upward. Bear the pain of disappointed hopes, whileothers gain the accomplishment of their flattery. Forego the graciouspressure of a hand, for which others cringe and crawl. Wrapyourself in your own virtue, and seek a friend and your daily bread. If you have, in such a course, grown gray with unblench'd honor, blessGod and die. "

When Lingave awoke the next morning, he despatch'd his answer to hiswealthy friend, and then plodded on as in the days before. 

LITTLE JANE

"Lift up!" was ejaculated as a signal! and click! went the glasses inthe hands of a party of tipsy men, drinking one night at the barof one of the middling order of taverns. And many a wild gibe wasutter'd, and many a terrible blasphemy, and many an impure phrasesounded out the pollution of the hearts of these half-crazedcreatures, as they toss'd down their liquor, and made the walls echowith their uproar. The first and foremost in recklessness was agirlish-faced, fair-hair'd fellow of twenty-two or three years. Theycalled him Mike. He seem'd to be look'd upon by the others as a sortof prompter, from whom they were to take cue. And if the brazenwickedness evinced by him in a hundred freaks and remarks to hiscompanions, during their stay in that place, were any test of hiscapacity--there might hardly be one more fit to go forward as a guideon the road of destruction. From the conversation of the party, itappear'd that they had been spending the early part of the evening ina gambling house. 

A second, third and fourth time were the glasses fill'd; and theeffect thereof began to be perceiv'd in a still higher degree of noiseand loquacity among the revellers. One of the serving-men came inat this moment, and whisper'd the barkeeper, who went out, and in amoment return'd again. "A person, " he said, "wish'd to speak with Mr. Michael. He waited on the walk in front. "

The individual whose name was mention'd, made his excuses to theothers, telling them he would be back in a moment, and left the room. As he shut the door behind him, and stepp'd into the open air, he sawone of his brothers--his elder by eight or ten years--pacing to andfro with rapid and uneven steps. As the man turn'd in his walk, and the glare of the street lamp fell upon his face, the youth, half-benumb'd as his senses were, was somewhat startled at itspaleness and evident perturbation. "Come with me!" said the elderbrother, hurriedly, "the illness of our little Jane is worse, and Ihave been sent for you. "

"Poh!" answered the young drunkard, very composedly, "is that all? Ishall be home by-and-by, " and he turn'd back again. 

"But, brother, she is worse than ever before. Perhaps when you arriveshe may be dead. "

The tipsy one paus'd in his retreat, perhaps alarm'd at the utteranceof that dread word, which seldom fails to shoot a chill to the heartsof mortals. But he soon calm'd himself, and waving his hand to theother: "Why, see, " said he, "a score of times at least, have I beencall'd away to the last sickness of our good little sister; and eachtime it proves to be nothing worse than some whim of the nurse orphysician. Three years has the girl been able to live very heartilyunder her disease; and I'll be bound she'll stay on earth three yearslonger. "

And as he concluded this wicked and most brutal reply, the speakeropen'd the door and went into the bar-room. But in his intoxication, during the hour that follow'd, Mike was far from being at ease. Atthe end of that hour, the words, "perhaps when you arrive she may be_dead_?" were not effaced from his hearing yet, and he started forhome. The elder brother had wended his way back in sorrow. 

Let me go before the younger one, awhile, to a room in that home. Alittle girl lay there dying. She had been ill a long time; so it wasno sudden thing for her parents, and her brethren and sisters, to becalled for the witness of the death agony. The girl was not what mightbe called beautiful. And yet, there is a solemn kind of lovelinessthat always surrounds a sick child. The sympathy for the weak andhelpless sufferer, perhaps, increases it in our own ideas. Theashiness and the moisture on the brow, and the film over theeyeballs--what man can look upon the sight, and not feel his heartawed within him? Children, I have sometimes fancied too, increase inbeauty as their illness deepens. 

Besides the nearest relatives of little Jane, standing round herbedside, was the family doctor. He had just laid her wrist down uponthe coverlet, and the look he gave the mother, was a look in whichthere was no hope. "My child!" she cried, in uncontrollable agony, "O!my child!" And the father, and the sons and daughters, were bowed downin grief, and thick tears rippled between the fingers held beforetheir eyes. 

Then there was silence awhile. During the hour just by-gone, Jane had, in her childish way, bestow'd a little gift upon each of her kindred, as a remembrancer when she should be dead and buried in the grave. And there was one of these simple tokens which had not reach'dits destination. She held it in her hand now. It was a very smallmuch-thumbed book--a religious story for infants, given her by hermother when she had first learn'd to read. 

While they were all keeping this solemn stillness-broken only by thesuppress'd sobs of those who stood and watch'd for the passing away ofthe girl's soul--a confusion of some one entering rudely, and speakingin a turbulent voice, was heard in an adjoining apartment. Again thevoice roughly sounded out; it was the voice of the drunkard Mike, andthe father bade one of his sons go and quiet the intruder "If noughtelse will do, " said he sternly, "put him forth by strength. We want notipsy brawlers here, to disturb such a scene as this. " For whatmoved the sick girl uneasily on her pillow, and raised her neck, andmotion'd to her mother? She would that Mike should be brought to herside. And it was enjoin'd on him whom the father had bade to eject thenoisy one, that he should tell Mike his sister's request, and beg himto come to her. 

He came. The inebriate--his mind sober'd by the deep solemnity of thescene--stood there, and leaned over to catch the last accounts of onewho soon was to be with the spirits of heaven. All was the silence ofthe deepest night. The dying child held the young man's hand in one ofhers; with the other she slowly lifted the trifling memorial she hadassigned especially for him, aloft in the air. Her arm shook--hereyes, now becoming glassy with the death-damps, were cast toward herbrother's face. She smiled pleasantly, and as an indistinct gurglecame from her throat, the uplifted hand fell suddenly into the openpalm of her brother's, depositing the tiny volume there. Little Janewas dead. 

From that night, the young man stepped no more in his wild courses, but was reform'd. 

DUMB KATE

Not many years since--and yet long enough to have been before theabundance of railroads, and similar speedy modes of conveyance--thetravelers from Amboy village to the metropolis of our republic werepermitted to refresh themselves, and the horses of the stage had abreathing spell, at a certain old-fashion'd tavern, about half waybetween the two places. It was a quaint, comfortable, ancient house, that tavern. Huge buttonwood trees embower'd it round about, and therewas a long porch in front, the trellis'd work whereof, though old andmoulder'd, had been, and promised still to be for years, held togetherby the tangled folds of a grape vine wreath'd about it like atremendous serpent. 

How clean and fragrant everything was there! How bright the pewtertankards wherefrom cider or ale went into the parch'd throat of thethirsty man! How pleasing to look into the expressive eyes of Kate, the land-lord's lovely daughter, who kept everything so clean andbright!

Now the reason why Kate's eyes had become so expressive was, that, besides their proper and natural office, they stood to the poor girlin the place of tongue and ears also. Kate had been dumb from herbirth. Everybody loved the helpless creature when she was a child. Gentle, timid, and affectionate was she, and beautiful as the liliesof which she loved to cultivate so many every summer in her garden. Her light hair, and the like-color'd lashes, so long and silky, thatdroop'd over her blue eyes of such uncommon size and softness--herrounded shape, well set off by a little modest art of dress--hersmile--the graceful ease of her motions, always attracted theadmiration of the strangers who stopped there, and were quite a prideto her parents and friends. 

How could it happen that so beautiful and inoffensive a being shouldtaste, even to its dregs, the bitterest unhappiness? Oh, there mustindeed be a mysterious, unfathomable meaning in the decrees ofProvidence which is beyond the comprehension of man; for no one onearth less deserved or needed "the uses of adversity" than Dumb Kate. Love, the mighty and lawless passion, came into the sanctuary of themaid's pure breast, and the dove of peace fled away forever. 

One of the persons who had occasion to stop most frequently at thetavern kept by Dumb Kate's parents was a young man, the son of awealthy farmer, who own'd an estate in the neighborhood. He saw Kate, and was struck with her natural elegance. Though not of thoroughlywicked propensities, the fascination of so fine a prize made thisyouth determine to gain her love, and, if possible, to win her tohimself. At first he hardly dared, even amid the depths of his ownsoul, to entertain thoughts of vileness against one so confiding andchildlike. But in a short time such feelings wore away, and he made uphis mind to become the betrayer of poor Kate. He was a good-lookingfellow, and made but too sure of his victim. Kate was lost!

The villain came to New York soon after, and engaged in a businesswhich prosper'd well, and which has no doubt by this time made himwhat is call'd a man of fortune. 

Not long did sickness of the heart wear into the life and happiness ofDumb Kate. One pleasant spring day, the neighbors having been calledby a notice the previous morning, the old churchyard was thrown open, and a coffin was borne over the early grass that seem'd so delicatewith its light green hue. There was a new made grave, and by its sidethe bier was rested--while they paused a moment until holy words hadbeen said. An idle boy, call'd there by curiosity, saw something lyingon the fresh earth thrown out from the grave, which attracted hisattention. A little blossom, the only one to be seen around, had grownexactly on the spot where the sexton chose to dig poor Kate's lastresting-place. It was a weak but lovely flower, and now lay where ithad been carelessly toss'd amid the coarse gravel. The boy twirl'd ita moment in his fingers--the bruis'd fragments gave out a momentaryperfume, and then fell to the edge of the pit, over which the child atthat moment lean'd and gazed in his inquisitiveness. As they dropp'd, they were wafted to the bottom of the grave. The last look wasbestow'd on the dead girl's face by those who loved her so well inlife, and then she was softly laid away to her sleep beneath thatgreen grass covering. 

Yet in the churchyard on the hill is Kate's grave. There stands alittle white stone at the head, and verdure grows richly there;and gossips, some-times of a Sabbath afternoon, rambling over thatgathering-place of the gone from earth, stop a while, and con over thedumb girl's hapless story. 

TALK TO AN ART-UNION

_A Brooklyn fragment_

It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artistin them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live anddie, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess. Who would not mourn that an ample palace, of surpassingly gracefularchitecture, fill'd with luxuries, and embellish'd with fine picturesand sculpture, should stand cold and still and vacant, and never beknown or enjoy'd by its owner? Would such a fact as this cause yoursadness? Then be sad. For there is a palace, to which the courts ofthe most sumptuous kings are but a frivolous patch, and, though it isalways waiting for them, not one of its owners ever enters there withany genuine sense of its grandeur and glory. 

I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to theartistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innatesensitiveness to moral beauty. Such men are not merely artists, theyare also artistic material. Washington in some great crisis, Lawrenceon the bloody deck of the Chesapeake, Mary Stuart at the block, Kossuth in captivity, and Mazzini in exile--all great rebels andinnovators, exhibit the highest phases of the artist spirit. Thepainter, the sculptor, the poet, express heroic beauty better indescription; but the others _are_ heroic beauty, the best belov'd ofart. 

Talk not so much, then, young artist, of the great old masters, whobut painted and chisell'd. Study not only their productions. There isa still higher school for him who would kindle his fire with coal fromthe altar of the loftiest and purest art. It is the school of allgrand actions and grand virtues, of heroism, of the death of patriotsand martyrs--of all the mighty deeds written in the pages ofhistory--deeds of daring, and enthusiasm, devotion, and fortitude. 

BLOOD-MONEY

"_Guilty of the body and the blood of Christ_. "

I. 

 Of olden time, when it came to pass That the beautiful god, Jesus, should finish his work on earth, Then went Judas, and sold the divine youth, And took pay for his body. 

 Curs'd was the deed, even before the sweat of the clutching hand grew dry; And darkness frown'd upon the seller of the like of God, Where, as though earth lifted her breast to throw him from her, and heaven refused him, He hung in the air, self-slaughter'd. 

 The cycles, with their long shadows, have stalk'd silently forward, Since those ancient days--many a pouch enwrapping meanwhile Its fee, like that paid for the son of Mary. 

 And still goes one, saying, "What will ye give me, and I will deliver this man unto you?" And they make the covenant, and pay the pieces of silver. 

II

 Look forth, deliverer, Look forth, first-born of the dead, Over the tree-tops of Paradise; See thyself in yet continued bonds, Toilsome and poor, thou bear'st man's form again, Thou art reviled, scourged, put into prison, Hunted from the arrogant equality of the rest; With staves and swords throng the willing servants of authority, Again they surround thee, mad with devilish spite; Toward thee stretch the hands of a multitude, like vultures' talons, The meanest spit in thy face, they smite thee with their palms; Bruised, bloody, and pinion'd is thy body, More sorrowful than death is thy soul. 

 Witness of anguish, brother of slaves, Not with thy price closed the price of thine image: And still Iscariot plies his trade. 

 _April, 1843_. 

 PAUMANOK. 

WOUNDED IN THE HOUSE OF FRIENDS

_"And one shall say unto him. What are these wounds in thy hands? Thenhe shall answer Those with which I was wounded in the house of myfriends. "--Zechariah, xiii. 6. _

 If thou art balk'd, O Freedom, The victory is not to thy manlier foes; From the house of friends comes the death stab. 

 Virginia, mother of greatness, Blush not for being also mother of slaves; You might have borne deeper slaves-- Doughfaces, crawlers, lice of humanity-- Terrific screamers of freedom, Who roar and bawl, and get hot i' the face, But were they not incapable of august crime, Would quench the hopes of ages for a drink-- Muck-worms, creeping flat to the ground, A dollar dearer to them than Christ's blessing; All loves, all hopes, less than the thought of gain, In life walking in that as in a shroud; Men whom the throes of heroes, Great deeds at which the gods might stand appal'd, The shriek of the drown'd, the appeal of women, The exulting laugh of untied empires, Would touch them never in the heart, But only in the pocket. 

 Hot-headed Carolina, Well may you curl your lip; With all your bondsmen, bless the destiny Which brings you no such breed as this. 

 Arise, young North! Our elder blood flows in the veins of cowards: The gray-hair'd sneak, the blanch'd poltroon, The feign'd or real shiverer at tongues, That nursing babes need hardly cry the less for-- Are they to be our tokens always?

SAILING THE MISSISSIPPI AT MIDNIGHT

 Vast and starless, the pall of heaven Laps on the trailing pall below; And forward, forward, in solemn darkness, As if to the sea of the lost we go. 

 Now drawn nigh the edge of the river, Weird-like creatures suddenly rise; Shapes that fade, dissolving outlines Baffle the gazer's straining eyes. 

 Towering upward and bending forward, Wild and wide their arms are thrown, Ready to pierce with forked fingers Him who touches their realm upon. 

 Tide of youth, thus thickly planted, While in the eddies onward you swim, Thus on the shore stands a phantom army, Lining forever the channel's rim. 

 Steady, helmsman! you guide the immortal; Many a wreck is beneath you piled, Many a brave yet unwary sailor Over these waters has been beguiled. 

 Nor is it the storm or the scowling midnight, Cold, or sickness, or fire's dismay-- Nor is it the reef, or treacherous quicksand, Will peril you most on your twisted way. 

 But when there comes a voluptuous languor, Soft the sunshine, silent the air, Bewitching your craft with safety and sweetness, Then, young pilot of life, beware. 

NOVEMBER BOUGHS

OUR EMINENT VISITORS

_Past, Present and Future_

Welcome to them each and all! They do good--the deepest, widest, mostneeded good--though quite certainly not in the ways attempted--whichhave, at times, something irresistibly comic. What can be morefarcical, for instance, than the sight of a worthy gentlemancoming three or four thousand miles through wet and wind to speakcomplacently and at great length on matters of which he both entirelymistakes or knows nothing--before crowds of auditors equallycomplacent, and equally at fault?

Yet welcome and thanks, we say, to those visitors we have, and havehad, from abroad among us--and may the procession continue! We havehad Dickens and Thackeray, Froude, Herbert Spencer, Oscar Wilde, LordColeridge--soldiers, savants, poets--and now Matthew Arnold and Irvingthe actor. Some have come to make money--some for a "good time"--someto help us along and give us advice--and some undoubtedly toinvestigate, _bona fide_, this great problem, democratic America, looming upon the world with such cumulative power through a hundredyears, now with the evident intention (since the secession war)to stay, and take a leading hand, for many a century to come, incivilization's and humanity's eternal game. But alas! that veryinvestigation--the method of that investigation--is where the deficitmost surely and helplessly comes in. Let not Lord Coleridge and Mr. Arnold (to say nothing of the illustrious actor) imagine that whenthey have met and survey'd the etiquettical gatherings of our wealthy, distinguish'd and sure-to-be-put-forward-on-such-occasions citizens(New York, Boston, Philadelphia, &c. , have certain stereotyped stringsof them, continually lined and paraded like the lists of dishes athotel tables--you are sure to get the same over and over again--it isvery amusing)--and the bowing and introducing, the receptions atthe swell clubs, the eating and drinking and praising and praisingback--and the next "day riding about Central Park, or doing the"Public Institutions "--and so passing through, one after another, the full-dress coteries of the Atlantic cities, all grammatical andcultured and correct, with the toned-down manners of the gentlemen, and the kid-gloves, and luncheons and finger-glasses--Let not oureminent visitors, we say, suppose that, by means of these experiences, they have "seen America, " or captur'd any distinctive clew or purportthereof. Not a bit of it. Of the pulse-beats that lie within andvitalize this Commonweal to-day--of the hard-pan purports andidiosyncrasies pursued faithfully and triumphantly by its bulk ofmen North and South, generation after generation, superficiallyunconscious of their own aims, yet none the less pressing onwardwith deathless intuition--those coteries do not furnish the faintestscintilla. In the Old World the best flavor and significance of arace may possibly need to be look'd for in its "upper classes, " itsgentries, its court, its _etat major_. In the United States the ruleis revers'd. Besides (and a point, this, perhaps deepest of all, )the special marks of our grouping and design are not going to beunderstood in a hurry. The lesson and scanning right on the ground aredifficult; I was going to say they are impossible to foreigners--but Ihave occasionally found the clearest appreciation of all, coming fromfar-off quarters. Surely nothing could be more apt, not only for oureminent visitors present and to come, but for home study, than thefollowing editorial criticism of the London _Times_ on Mr. Froude'svisits and lectures here a few years ago, and the culminating dinnergiven at Delmonico's, with its brilliant array of guests:

"We read the list, " says the _Times_, "of those who assembled to dohonor to Mr. Froude: there were Mr. Emerson, Mr. Beecher, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Bryant; we add the names of those who sent letters of regret thatthey could not attend in person--Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Whittier. Theyare names which are well known--almost as well known and as muchhonor'd in England as in America; and yet what must we say in the end?The American people outside this assemblage of writers is somethingvaster and greater than they, singly or together, can comprehend. Itcannot be said of any or all of them that they can speak for theirnation. We who look on at this distance are able perhaps on thataccount to see the more clearly that there are qualities of theAmerican people which find no representation, no voice, among thesetheir spokesmen. And what is true of them is true of the English classof whom Mr. Froude may be said to be the ambassador. Mr. Froude ismaster of a charming style. He has the gift of grace and the gift ofsympathy. Taking any single character as the subject of his study, hemay succeed after a very short time in so comprehending its workingsas to be able to present a living figure to the intelligence andmemory of his readers. But the movements of a nation, the, _voicelesspurpose of a people which cannot put its own thoughts into words, yetacts upon them in each successive generation_--these things do not liewithin his grasp.... The functions of literature such as he representsare limited in their action; the influence he can wield is artificialand restricted, and, while he and his hearers please and are pleas'dwith pleasant periods, his great mass of national life will flowaround them unmov'd in its tides by action as powerless as that of thedwellers by the shore to direct the currents of the ocean. "

A thought, here, that needs to be echoed, expanded, permanentlytreasur'd by our literary classes and educators. (The gestation, theyouth, the knitting preparations, are now over, and it is full timefor definite purpose, result. ) How few think of it, though it is theimpetus and background of our whole Nationality and popular life. Inthe present brief memorandum I very likely for the first time awake"the intelligent reader" to the idea and inquiry whether there isn'tsuch a thing as the distinctive genius of our democratic New World, universal, immanent, bringing to a head the best experience of thepast--not specially literary or intellectual--not merely "good, " (inthe Sunday School and Temperance Society sense, )-some invisible spineand great sympathetic to these States, resident only in the averagepeople, in their practical life, in their physiology, in theiremotions, in their nebulous yet fiery patriotism, in the armies (bothsides) through the whole secession war--an identity and characterwhich indeed so far "finds no voice among their spokesmen. "

To my mind America, vast and fruitful as it appears to-day, is evenyet, for its most important results, entirely in the tentative state;its very formation-stir and whirling trials and essays more splendidand picturesque, to my thinking, than the accomplish'd growths andshows of other lands, through European history, or Greece, or all thepast. Surely a New World literature, worthy the name, is not to be, if it ever comes, some fiction, or fancy, or bit of sentimentalism orpolish'd work merely by itself, or in abstraction. So long as suchliterature is no born branch and offshoot of the Nationality, rootedand grown from its roots, and fibred with its fibre, it can neveranswer any deep call or perennial need. Perhaps the untaught Republicis wiser than its teachers. The best literature is always a result ofsomething far greater than itself--not the hero, but the portrait ofthe hero. Before there can be recorded history or poem there mustbe the transaction. Beyond the old masterpieces, the Iliad, theinterminable Hindu epics, the Greek tragedies, even the Bible itself, range the immense facts of what must have preceded them, their _sinequa non_--the veritable poems and masterpieces, of which, grand asthey are, the word-statements are but shreds and cartoons. 

For to-day and the States, I think the vividest, rapidest, moststupendous processes ever known, ever perform'd by man or nation, on the largest scales and in countless varieties, are now and herepresented. Not as our poets and preachers are always conventionallyputting it--but quite different. Some colossal foundry, the flamingof the fire, the melted metal, the pounding trip-hammers, the surgingcrowds of workmen shifting from point to point, the murky shadows, the rolling haze, the discord, the crudeness, the deafening din, thedisorder, the dross and clouds of dust, the waste and extravaganceof material, the shafts of darted sunshine through the vast openroof-scuttles aloft-the mighty castings, many of them not yet fitted, perhaps delay'd long, yet each in its due time, with definite placeand use and meaning--Such, more like, is a symbol of America. 

After all of which, returning to our starting-point, we reiterate, andin the whole Land's name, a welcome to our eminent guests. Visits liketheirs, and hospitalities, and hand-shaking, and face meeting face, and the distant brought near--what divine solvents they are! Travel, reciprocity, "interviewing, " intercommunion of lands--what are theybut Democracy's and the highest Law's best aids? O that our owncountry--that every land in the world--could annually, continually, receive the poets, thinkers, scientists, even the official magnates, of other lands, as honor'd guests. O that the United States, especially the West, could have had a good long visit and explorativejaunt, from the noble and melancholy Tourgueneff, before he died--orfrom Victor Hugo--or Thomas Carlyle. Castelar, Tennyson, any of thetwo or three great Parisian essayists--were they and we to come faceto face, how is it possible but that the right understanding wouldensue?

THE BIBLE AS POETRY

I suppose one cannot at this day say anything new, from a literarypoint of view, about those autochthonic bequests of Asia--the HebrewBible, the mighty Hindu epics, and a hundred lesser but typicalworks; (not now definitely including the Iliad--though that work wascertainly of Asiatic genesis, as Homer himself was--considerationswhich seem curiously ignored. ) But will there ever be a time orplace--ever a student, however modern, of the grand art, to whom thosecompositions will not afford profounder lessons than all else of theirkind in the garnerage of the past? Could there be any more opportunesuggestion, to the current popular writer and reader of verse, whatthe office of poet was in primeval times--and is yet capable of being, anew, adjusted entirely to the modern?

All the poems of Orientalism, with the Old and New Testaments at thecentre, tend to deep and wide, (I don't know but the deepest andwidest, ) psychological development--with little, or nothing at all, ofthe mere esthetic, the principal verse-requirement of our day. Verylate, but unerringly, comes to every capable student the perceptionthat it is not in beauty, it is not in art, it is not even in science, that the profoundest laws of the case have their eternal sway andoutcropping. 

In his discourse on "Hebrew Poets" De Sola Mendes said: "Thefundamental feature of Judaism, of the Hebrew nationality, wasreligion; its poetry was naturally religious. Its subjects, God andProvidence, the covenants with Israel, God in Nature, and as reveal'd, God the Creator and Governor, Nature in her majesty and beauty, inspired hymns and odes to Nature's God. And then the checker'dhistory of the nation furnish'd allusions, illustrations, and subjectsfor epic display--the glory of the sanctuary, the offerings, thesplendid ritual, the Holy City, and lov'd Palestine with its pleasantvalleys and wild tracts. " Dr. Mendes said "that rhyming was not acharacteristic of Hebrew poetry at all. Metre was not a necessary markof poetry. Great poets discarded it; the early Jewish poets knew itnot. " Compared with the famed epics of Greece, and lesser ones since, the spinal supports of the Bible are simple and meagre. All itshistory, biography, narratives, &c. , are as beads, strung on andindicating the eternal thread of the Deific purpose and power. Yetwith only deepest faith for impetus, and such Deific purpose forpalpable or impalpable theme, it often transcends the masterpieces ofHellas, and all masterpieces. 

The metaphors daring beyond account, the lawless soul, extravagantby our standards, the glow of love and friendship, the ferventkiss--nothing in argument or logic, but unsurpass'd in proverbs, inreligious ecstasy, in suggestions of common mortality and death, man'sgreat equalizers--the spirit everything, the ceremonies and formsof the churches nothing, faith limitless, its immense sensuousnessimmensely spiritual--an incredible, all-inclusive non-worldlinessand dew-scented illiteracy (the antipodes of our Nineteenth Centurybusiness absorption and morbid refinement)--no hair-splitting doubts, no sickly sulking and sniffling, no "Hamlet, " no "Adonais, " no"Thanatopsis, " no "In Memoriam. "

The culminated proof of the poetry of a country is the quality of itspersonnel, which, in any race, can never be really superior withoutsuperior poems. The finest blending of individuality with universality(in my opinion nothing out of the galaxies of the "Iliad, " orShakspere's heroes, or from the Tennysonian "Idylls, " so lofty, devoted and starlike, ) typified in the songs of those old Asiaticlands. Men and women as great columnar trees. Nowhere else theabnegation of self towering in such quaint sublimity; nowhere elsethe simplest human emotions conquering the gods of heaven, andfate itself. (The episode, for instance, toward the close of the"Mahabharata"--the journey of the wife Savitri with the god of death, Yama, "One terrible to see--blood-red his garb, His body huge and dark, bloodshot his eyes, Which flamed like suns beneath his turban cloth, Arm'd was he with a noose, "

who carries off the soul of the dead husband, the wife tenaciouslyfollowing, and--by the resistless charm of perfect poeticrecitation!-- eventually redeeming her captive mate. )

I remember how enthusiastically William H. Seward, in his last days, once expatiated on these themes, from his travels in Turkey, Egypt, and Asia Minor, finding the oldest Biblical narratives exactlyillustrated there to-day with apparently no break or change alongthree thousand years--the veil'd women, the costumes, the gravity andsimplicity, all the manners just the same. The veteran Trelawney saidhe found the only real _nobleman_ of the world in a good averagespecimen of the mid-aged or elderly Oriental. In the East the grandfigure, always leading, is the _old man_, majestic, with flowingbeard, paternal, &c. In Europe and America, it is, as we know, theyoung fellow--in novels, a handsome and interesting hero, more or lessjuvenile--in operas, a tenor with blooming cheeks, black mustache, superficial animation, and perhaps good lungs, but no more depth thanskim-milk. But reading folks probably get their information of thoseBible areas and current peoples, as depicted in print by English andFrench cads, the most shallow, impudent, supercilious brood on earth. 

I have said nothing yet of the cumulus of associations (perfectlylegitimate parts of its influence, and finally in many respects thedominant parts, ) of the Bible as a poetic entity, and of every portionof it. Not the old edifice only--the congeries also of events andstruggles and surroundings, of which it has been the scene andmotive--even the horrors, dreads, deaths. How many ages andgenerations have brooded and wept and agonized over this book!What untellable joys and ecstasies--what support to martyrs at thestake--from it. (No really great song can ever attain full purporttill long after the death of its singer--till it has accrued andincorporated the many passions, many joys and sorrows, it hasitself arous'd. ) To what myriads has it been the shore and rock ofsafety--the refuge from driving tempest and wreck! Translated in alllanguages, how it has united this diverse world! Of civilized landsto-day, whose of our retrospects has it not interwoven and link'dand permeated? Not only does it bring us what is clasp'd within itscovers; nay, that is the least of what it brings. Of its thousands, there is not a verse, not a word, but is thick-studded with humanemotions, successions of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, ofour own antecedents, inseparable from that background of us, on which, phantasmal as it is, all that we are to-day inevitably depends--ourancestry, our past. 

Strange, but true, that the principal factor in cohering the nations, eras and paradoxes of the globe, by giving them a common platformof two or three great ideas, a commonalty of origin, and projectingkosmic brotherhood, the dream of all hope, all time--that the longtrains gestations, attempts and failures, resulting in the New World, and in modern solidarity and politics--are to be identified andresolv'd back into a collection of old poetic lore, which, more thanany one thing else, has been the axis of civilization and historythrough thousands of years--and except for which this America of ours, with its polity and essentials, could not now be existing. 

No true bard will ever contravene the Bible. If the time ever comeswhen iconoclasm does its extremest in one direction against the Booksof the Bible in its present form, the collection must still survive inanother, and dominate just as much as hitherto, or more than hitherto, through its divine and primal poetic structure. To me, that is theliving and definite element-principle of the work, evolving everythingelse. Then the continuity; the oldest and newest Asiatic utterance andcharacter, and all between, holding together, like the apparition ofthe sky, and coming to us the same. Even to our Nineteenth Centuryhere are the fountain heads of song. 

FATHER TAYLOR (AND ORATORY)

I have never heard but one essentially perfect orator--one whosatisfied those depths of the emotional nature that in most cases gothrough life quite untouch'd, unfed--who held every hearer by spellswhich no conventionalist, high or low--nor any pride or composure, norresistance of intellect--could stand against for ten minutes. 

And by the way, is it not strange, of this first-class genius inthe rarest and most profound of humanity's arts, that it will benecessary, (so nearly forgotten and rubb'd out is his name by therushing whirl of the last twenty-five years, ) to first inform currentreaders that he was an orthodox minister, of no particular celebrity, who during a long life preach'd especially to Yankee sailors in an oldfourth-class church down by the wharves in Boston--had practicallybeen a seafaring man through his earlier years--and died April 6, 1871, "just as the tide turn'd, going out with the ebb as an old saltshould"? His name is now comparatively unknown, outside of Boston--andeven there, (though Dickens, Mr. Jameson, Dr. Bartol and Bishop Havenhave commemorated him, ) is mostly but a reminiscence. 

During my visits to "the Hub, " in 1859 and '60 I several times saw andheard Father Taylor. In the spring or autumn, quiet Sunday forenoons, I liked to go down early to the quaint ship-cabin-looking church wherethe old man minister'd--to enter and leisurely scan the building, the low ceiling, everything strongly timber'd (polish'd and rubb'dapparently, ) the dark rich colors, the gallery, all in half-light--andsmell the aroma of old wood--to watch the auditors, sailors, mates, "matlows, " officers, singly or in groups, as they came in--theirphysiognomies, forms, dress, gait, as they walk'd along theaisles--their postures, seating themselves in the rude, roomy, undoor'd, uncushion'd pews--and the evident effect upon them of theplace, occasion, and atmosphere. 

The pulpit, rising ten or twelve feet high, against the rear wall, wasback' d by a significant mural painting, in oil--showing out its boldlines and strong hues through the subdued light of the building--of astormy sea, the waves high-rolling, and amid them an old-style ship, all bent over, driving through the gale, and in great peril--a vividand effectual piece of limning, not meant for the criticism of artists(though I think it had merit even from that standpoint, ) but for itseffect upon the congregation, and what it would convey to them. 

Father Taylor was a moderate-sized man, indeed almost small, (remindedme of old Booth, the great actor, and my favorite of those andpreceding days, ) well advanced in years, but alert, with mild blue orgray eyes, and good presence and voice. Soon as he open'd his mouthI ceas'd to pay any attention to church or audience, or pictures orlights and shades; a far more potent charm entirely sway'd me. In thecourse of the sermon, (there was no sign of any MS. , or reading fromnotes, ) some of the parts would be in the highest degree majestic andpicturesque. Colloquial in a severe sense, it often lean'd to Biblicaland Oriental forms. Especially were all allusions to ships and theocean and sailors' lives, of unrival'd power and life-likeness. 

Sometimes there were passages of fine language and composition, evenfrom the purist's point of view. A few arguments, and of the best, butalways brief and simple. One realized what grip there might have beenin such words-of-mouth talk as that of Socrates and Epictetus. Inthe main, I should say, of any of these discourses, that the oldDemosthenean rule and requirement of "action, action, action, " firstin its inward and then (very moderate and restrain'd) its outwardsense, was the quality that had leading fulfilment. 

I remember I felt the deepest impression from the old man's prayers, which invariably affected me to tears. Never, on similar or anyother occasions, have I heard such impassion'd pleading--suchhuman-harassing reproach (like Hamlet to his mother, in thecloset)--such probing to the very depths of that latent conscience andremorse which probably lie somewhere in the background of every life, every soul. For when Father Taylor preach'd or pray'd, the rhetoricand art, the mere words, (which usually play such a big part) seem'daltogether to disappear, and the _live feeling_ advanced upon you andseiz'd you with a power before unknown. Everybody felt this marvellousand awful influence. One young sailor, a Rhode Islander, (who cameevery Sunday, and I got acquainted with, and talk'd to once or twiceas we went away, ) told me, "that must be the Holy Ghost we read of inthe Testament. "

I should be at a loss to make any comparison with other preachers orpublic speakers. When a child I had heard Elias Hicks--and FatherTaylor (though so different in personal appearance, for Elias was oftall and most shapely form, with black eyes that blazed at timeslike meteors, ) always reminded me of him. Both had the same inner, apparently inexhaustible, fund of latent volcanic passion--the sametenderness, blended with a curious remorseless firmness, as of somesurgeon operating on a belov'd patient. Hearing such men sends to thewinds all the books, and formulas, and polish'd speaking, and rules oforatory. 

Talking of oratory, why is it that the unsophisticated practices oftenstrike deeper than the train'd ones? Why do our experiences perhapsof some local country exhorter--or often in the West or South atpolitical meetings--bring the most definite results? In my time I haveheard Webster, Clay, Edward Everett, Phillips, and such _celebres_yet I recall the minor but life-eloquence of men like John P. Hale, Cassius Clay, and one or two of the old abolition "fanatics" ahead ofall those stereotyped fames. Is not--I sometimes question--the first, last, and most important quality of all, in training for a "finish'dspeaker, " generally unsought, unreck'd of, both by teacher and pupil?Though may-be it cannot be taught, anyhow. At any rate, we need toclearly understand the distinction between oratory and elocution. Under the latter art, including some of high order, there is indeed noscarcity in the United States, preachers, lawyers, actors, lecturers, &c. With all, there seem to be few real orators--almost none. 

I repeat, and would dwell upon it (more as suggestion than merefact)--among all the brilliant lights of bar or stage I have heard inmy time (for years in New York and other cities I haunted the courtsto witness notable trials, and have heard all the famous actors andactresses that have been in America the past fifty years) though Irecall marvellous effects from one or other of them, I never hadanything in the way of vocal utterance to shake me through andthrough, and become fix'd, with its accompaniments, in my memory, likethose prayers and sermons--like Father Taylor's personal electricityand the whole scene there--the prone ship in the gale, and dashingwave and foam for background--in the little old sea-church in Boston, those summer Sundays just before the secession war broke out. 

THE SPANISH ELEMENT IN OUR NATIONALITY

[Our friends at Santa Fe, New Mexico, have just finish'd theirlong-drawn-out anniversary of the 333d year of the settlement of theircity by the Spanish. The good, gray Walt Whitman was asked to writethem a poem in commemoration. Instead he wrote them a letter asfollows:--_Philadelphia Press_, August 5, 1883. ]

CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, _July 20, 1883_. 

_To Messrs. Griffin, Martinez, Prince, and other Gentlemen at SantaFe_:

DEAR SIRS:--Your kind invitation to visit you and deliver a poem forthe 333d Anniversary of founding Santa Fe has reach'd me so late thatI have to decline, with sincere regret. But I will say a few wordsoffhand. 

We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sortthem, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New Englandwriters and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notionthat our United States have been fashion'd from the British Islandsonly, and essentially form a second England only--which is avery great mistake. Many leading traits for our future nationalpersonality, and some of the best ones, will certainly prove to haveoriginated from other than British stock. As it is, the British andGerman, valuable as they are in the concrete, already threaten excess. Or rather, I should say, they have certainly reach'd that excess. To-day, something outside of them, and to counterbalance them, isseriously needed. 

The seething materialistic and business vortices of the United States, in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittlingeverything else, are, in my opinion, but a vast and indispensablestage in the new world's development, and are certainly to be follow'dby something entirely different--at least by immense modifications. Character, literature, a society worthy the name, are yet to beestablish'd, through a nationality of noblest spiritual, heroicand democratic attributes--not one of which at present definitelyexists--entirely different from the past, though unerringly founded onit, and to justify it. 

To that composite American identity of the future, Spanish characterwill supply some of the most needed parts. No stock shows a granderhistoric retrospect--grander in religiousness and loyalty, or forpatriotism, courage, decorum, gravity and honor. (It is time todismiss utterly the illusion-compound, half raw-head-and-bloody-bonesand half Mysteries-of-Udolpho, inherited from the English writersof the past 200 years. It is time to realize--for it is certainlytrue--that there will not be found any more cruelty, tyranny, superstition, &c. , in the _resume_ of past Spanish history than in thecorresponding _resume_ of Anglo-Norman history. Nay, I think therewill not be found so much. )

Then another point, relating to American ethnology, past and to come, I will here touch upon at a venture. As to our aboriginal or Indianpopulation--the Aztec in the South, and many a tribe in the North andWest--I know it seems to be agreed that they must gradually dwindleas time rolls on, and in a few generations more leave only areminiscence, a blank. But I am not at all clear about that. AsAmerica, from its many far-back sources and current supplies, develops, adapts, entwines, faithfully identifies its own--are we tosee it cheerfully accepting and using all the contributions of foreignlands from the whole outside globe--and then rejecting the only onesdistinctively its own--the autochthonic ones?

As to the Spanish stock of our Southwest, it is certain to me that wedo not begin to appreciate the splendor and sterling value of itsrace element. Who knows but that element, like the course of somesubterranean river, dipping invisibly for a hundred or two years, isnow to emerge in broadest flow and permanent action?

If I might assume to do so, I would like to send you the most cordial, heartfelt congratulations of your American fellow-countrymen here. You have more friends in the Northern and Atlantic regions than yousuppose, and they are deeply interested in the development of thegreat Southwestern interior, and in what your festival would arouse topublic attention. 

Very respectfully, &c. , WALT WHITMAN. 

WHAT LURKS BEHIND SHAKSPERE'S HISTORICAL PLAYS

We all know how much _mythus_ there is in the Shakspere question as itstands to-day. Beneath a few foundations of proved facts are certainlyengulf d far more dim and elusive ones, of deepest importance--tantalizing and half suspected--suggesting explanations that one darenot put in plain statement. But coming at once to the point, theEnglish historical plays are to me not only the most eminent asdramatic performances (my maturest judgment confirming the impressionsof my early years, that the distinctiveness and glory of the Poetreside not in his vaunted dramas of the passions, but those founded onthe contests of English dynasties, and the French wars, ) but form, aswe get it all, the chief in a complexity of puzzles. Conceiv'd outof the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism--personifying inunparallel'd ways the mediaeval aristocracy, its towering spirit ofruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance(no mere imitation)--only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous inthe plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seemto be the true author of those amazing works--works in some respectsgreater than anything else in recorded literature. 

The start and germ-stock of the pieces on which the presentspeculation is founded are undoubtedly (with, at the outset, no smallamount of bungling work) in "Henry VI. " It is plain to me thatas profound and forecasting a brain and pen as ever appear'd inliterature, after floundering somewhat in the first part of thattrilogy--or perhaps draughting it more or less experimentally or byaccident--afterward developed and defined his plan in the Second andThird Parts, and from time to time, thenceforward, systematicallyenlarged it to majestic and mature proportions in "Richard II, ""Richard III, " "King John, " "Henry IV, " "Henry V, " and even in"Macbeth, " "Coriolanus" and "Lear. " For it is impossible to grasp thewhole cluster of those plays, however wide the intervals and differentcircumstances of their composition, without thinking of them as, in afree sense, the result of an _essentially controling plan_. 'What wasthat plan? Or, rather, what was veil'd behind it?--for to me there wascertainly something so veil'd. Even the episodes of Cade, Joan of Arc, and the like (which sometimes seem to me like interpolations allow'd, )may be meant to foil the possible sleuth, and throw any too 'cutepursuer off the scent. In the whole matter I should specially dwellon, and make much of, that inexplicable element of every highestpoetic nature which causes it to cover up and involve its real purposeand meanings in folded removes and far recesses. Of this trait--hidingthe nest where common seekers may never find it--the Shaksperean worksafford the most numerous and mark'd illustrations known to me. I wouldeven call that trait the leading one through the whole of those works. 

All the foregoing to premise a brief statement of how and where I getmy new light on Shakspere. Speaking of the special English plays, myfriend William O'Connor says:

 They seem simply and rudely historical in their motive, as aiming to give in the rough a tableau of warring dynasties, --and carry to me a lurking sense of being in aid of some ulterior design, probably well enough understood in that age, which perhaps time and criticism will reveal.... Their atmosphere is one of barbarous and tumultuous gloom, --they do not make us love the times they limn, ... And it is impossible to believe that the greatest of the Elizabethan men could have sought to indoctrinate the age with the love of feudalism which his own drama in its entirety, if the view taken of it herein be true, certainly and subtly saps and mines. 

Reading the just-specified play in the light of Mr. O'Connor'ssuggestion, I defy any one to escape such new and deep utterance-meanings, like magic ink, warm' d by the fire, and previously invisible. Will it not indeed be strange if the author of "Othello" and "Hamlet"is destin'd to live in America, in a generation or two, less as thecunning draughtsman of the passions, and more as putting on record thefirst full expose--and by far the most vivid one, immeasurably ahead ofdoctrinaires and economists--of the political theory and results, or thereason-why and necessity for them which America has come on earth toabnegate and replace?

The summary of my suggestion would be, therefore, that while the morethe rich and tangled jungle of the Shaksperean area is travers'd andstudied, and the more baffled and mix'd, as so far appears, becomesthe exploring student (who at last surmises everything, and remainscertain of nothing, ) it is possible a future age of criticism, divingdeeper, mapping the land and lines freer, completer than hitherto, maydiscover in the plays named the scientific (Baconian?) inaugurationof modern democracy--furnishing realistic and first-class artisticportraitures of the mediaeval world, the feudal personalities, institutes, in their morbid accumulations, deposits, upon politics andsociology, --may penetrate to that hard-pan, far down and back of theostent of to-day, on which (and on which only) the progressism of thelast two centuries has built this Democracy which now hold's securelodgment over the whole civilized world. 

Whether such was the unconscious, or (as I think likely) the moreor less conscious, purpose of him who fashion'd those marvellousarchitectonics, is a secondary question. 

A THOUGHT ON SHAKSPERE

The most distinctive poems--the most permanently rooted and withheartiest reason for being--the copious cycle of Arthurian legends, orthe almost equally copious Charlemagne cycle, or the poems of the Cid, or Scandinavian Eddas, or Nibelungen, or Chaucer, or Spenser, or_bona fide_ Ossian, or Inferno--probably had their rise in the greathistoric perturbations, which they came in to sum up and confirm, indirectly embodying results to date. Then however precious to"culture, " the grandest of those poems, it may be said, preserve andtypify results offensive to the modern spirit, and long past away. Tostate it briefly, and taking the strongest examples, in Homerlives the ruthless military prowess of Greece, and of its specialgod-descended dynastic houses; in Shakspere the dragon-rancors andstormy feudal Splendor of mediaeval caste. 

Poetry, largely consider'd, is an evolution, sending out improvedand-ever-expanded types--in one sense, the past, even the best of it, necessarily giving place, and dying out. For our existing world, the bases on which all the grand old poems were built have becomevacuums--and even those of many comparatively modern ones are brokenand half-gone. For us to-day, not their own intrinsic value, vast asthat is, backs and maintains those poems--but a mountain-high growthof associations, the layers of successive ages. Everywhere--their ownlands included--(is there not something terrible in the tenacity withwhich the one book out of millions holds its grip?)--the Homeric andVirgilian works, the interminable ballad-romances of the middle ages, the utterances of Dante, Spenser, and others, are upheld by theircumulus-entrenchment in scholarship, and as precious, always welcome, unspeakably valuable reminiscences. 

Even the one who at present reigns unquestion'd--of Shakspere--for allhe stands for so much in modern literature, he stands entirely forthe mighty esthetic sceptres of the past, not for the spiritualand democratic, the sceptres of the future. The inward and outwardcharacteristics of Shakspere are his vast and rich variety of personsand themes, with his wondrous delineation of each and all, --not onlylimitless funds of verbal and pictorial resource, but great excess, superfoetation--mannerism, like a fine, aristocratic perfume, holdinga touch of musk (Euphues, his mark)--with boundless sumptuousness andadornment, real velvet and gems, not shoddy nor paste--but a gooddeal of bombast and fustian--(certainly some terrific mouthing inShakspere!)

Superb and inimitable as all is, it is mostly an objective andphysiological kind of power and beauty the soul finds in Shakspere--astyle supremely grand of the sort, but in my opinion stopping short ofthe grandest sort, at any rate for fulfilling and satisfying modernand scientific and democratic American purposes. Think, not of growthsas forests primeval, or Yellowstone geysers, or Colorado ravines, butof costly marble palaces, and palace rooms, and the noblest fixingsand furniture, and noble owners and occupants to correspond--think ofcarefully built gardens from the beautiful but sophisticated gardeningart at its best, with walks and bowers and artificial lakes, andappropriate statue-groups and the finest cultivated roses and liliesand japonicas in plenty--and you have the tally of Shakspere. The lowcharacters, mechanics, even the loyal henchmen--all in themselvesnothing--serve as capital foils to the aristocracy. The comedies(exquisite as they certainly are) bringing in admirably portray'dcommon characters, have the unmistakable hue of plays, portraits, madefor the divertisement only of the elite of the castle, and from itspoint of view. The comedies are altogether non-acceptable to Americaand Democracy. 

But to the deepest soul, it seems a shame to pick and choose fromthe riches Shakspere has left us--to criticise his infinitely royal, multiform quality--to gauge, with optic glasses, the dazzle of hissun-like beams. 

The best poetic utterance, after all, can merely hint, or remind, often very indirectly, or at distant removes. Aught of realperfection, or the solution of any deep problem, or any completedstatement of the moral, the true, the beautiful, eludes the greatest, deftest poet--flies away like an always uncaught bird. 

ROBERT BURNS AS POET AND PERSON

What the future will decide about Robert Burns and his works--whatplace will be assign'd them on that great roster of geniuses andgenius which can only be finish'd by the slow but sure balancing ofthe centuries with their ample average--I of course cannot tell. Butas we know him, from his recorded utterances, and after nearly onecentury, and its diligence of collections, songs, letters, anecdotes, presenting the figure of the canny Scotchman in a fullness and detailwonderfully complete, and the lines mainly by his own hand, he formsto-day, in some respects, the most interesting personality amongsingers. Then there are many things in Burns's poems and characterthat specially endear him to America. He was essentially aRepublican--would have been at home in the Western United States, and probably become eminent there. He was an average sample of thegood-natured, warm-blooded, proud-spirited, amative, alimentive, convivial, young and early-middle-aged man of the decent-born middleclasses everywhere and any how. Without the race of which he is adistinct specimen, (and perhaps his poems) America and her powerfulDemocracy could not exist to-day--could not project with unparallel'dhistoric sway into the future. 

Perhaps the peculiar coloring of the era of Burns needs always firstto be consider'd. It included the times of the '76-'83 Revolutionin America, of the French Revolution, and an unparallel'd chaosdevelopment in Europe and elsewhere. In every department, shiningand strange names, like stars, some rising, some in meridian, somedeclining--Voltaire, Franklin, Washington, Kant, Goethe, Fulton, Napoleon, mark the era. And while so much, and of grandest moment, fitfor the trumpet of the world's fame, was being transacted--that littletragi-comedy of R. B, 's life and death was going on in a countryby-place in Scotland!

Burns's correspondence, generally collected and publish'd since hisdeath, gives wonderful glints into both the amiable and weak (andworse than weak) parts of his portraiture, habits, good and bad luck, ambition and associations. His letters to Mrs. Dunlop, Mrs. McLehose, (Clarinda, ) Mr. Thompson, Dr. Moore, Robert Muir, Mr. Cunningham, MissMargaret Chalmers, Peter Hill, Richard Brown, Mrs. Riddel, RobertAinslie, and Robert Graham, afford valuable lights and shades to theoutline, and with numerous others, help to a touch here, and fill-inthere, of poet and poems. There are suspicions, it is true, of "theGenteel Letter-Writer, " with scraps and words from "the Manual ofFrench Quotations, " and, in the love-letters, some hollow mouthings. Yet we wouldn't on any account lack the letters. A full and trueportrait is always what is wanted; veracity at every hazard. Besides, do we not all see by this time that the story of Burns, even for itsown sake, requires the record of the whole and several, with nothingleft out? Completely and every point minutely told out its fullest, explains and justifies itself--(as perhaps almost any life does. ) Heis very close to the earth. He pick'd up his best words and tunesdirectly from the Scotch home-singers, but tells Thompson they wouldnot please his, T. 's, "learn'd lugs, " adding, "I call them simple--youwould pronounce them silly. " Yes, indeed; the idiom was undoubtedlyhis happiest hit. Yet Dr. Moore, in 1789, writes to Burns, "If I wereto offer an opinion, it would be that in your future productions youshould abandon the Scotch stanza and dialect, and adopt the measureand language of modern English poetry"!

As the 128th birth-anniversary of the poet draws on, (January, 1887, )with its increasing club-suppers, vehement celebrations, letters, speeches, and so on--(mostly, as William O'Connor says, from peoplewho would not have noticed R. B. At all during his actual life, norkept his company, or read his verses, on any account)--it may beopportune to print some leisurely-jotted notes I find in my budget. I take my observation of the Scottish bard by considering him as anindividual amid the crowded clusters, galaxies, of the old world--andfairly inquiring and suggesting what out of these myriads he too maybe to the Western Republic. In the first place no poet on record sofully bequeaths his own personal magnetism, [39] nor illustrates morepointedly how one's verses, by time and reading, can so curiously fusewith the versifier's own life and death, and give final light andshade to all. 

I would say a large part of the fascination of Burns's homely, simpledialect-melodies is due, for all current and future readers, to thepoet's personal "errors, " the general bleakness of his lot, hisingrain'd pensiveness, his brief dash into dazzling, tantalizing, evanescent sunshine--finally culminating in those last years of hislife, his being taboo'd and in debt, sick and sore, yaw'd as bycontending gales, deeply dissatisfied with everything, most of allwith himself--high-spirited too--(no man ever really higher-spiritedthan Robert Burns. ) I think it a perfectly legitimate part too. At anyrate it has come to be an impalpable aroma through which only both thesongs and their singer must henceforth be read and absorb'd. Throughthat view-medium of misfortune--of a noble spirit in low environments, and of a squalid and premature death--we view the undoubted facts, (giving, as we read them now, a sad kind of pungency, ) that Burns'swere, before all else, the lyrics of illicit loves and carousingintoxication. Perhaps even it is this strange, impalpable_post-mortem_ comment and influence referr'd to, that gives them theircontrast, attraction, making the zest of their author's after fame. Ifhe had lived steady, fat, moral, comfortable, well-to-do years, on hisown grade, (let alone, what of course was out of the question, theease and velvet and rosewood and copious royalties of Tennyson orVictor Hugo or Longfellow, ) and died well-ripen'd and respectable, where could have come in that burst of passionate sobbing and remorsewhich well'd forth instantly and generally in Scotland, and soonfollow'd everywhere among English-speaking races, on the announcementof his death? and which, with no sign of stopping, only regulated andvein'd with fitting appreciation, flows deeply, widely yet?

Dear Rob! manly, witty, fond, friendly, full of weak spots as well asstrong ones-essential type of so many thousands--perhaps the average, as just said, of the decent-born young men and the early mid-aged, notonly of the British Isles, but America, too, North and South, just thesame. I think, indeed, one best part of Burns is the unquestionableproof he presents of the perennial existence among the laboringclasses, especially farmers, of the finest latent poetic elements intheir blood. (How clear it is to me that the common soil has alwaysbeen, and is now, thickly strewn with just such gems. ) He iswell-called the _Ploughman_. "Holding the plough, " said his brotherGilbert, "was the favorite situation with Robert for poeticcompositions; and some of his best verses were produced while he wasat that exercise. " "I must return to my humble station, and woo myrustic muse in my wonted way, at the plough-tail. " 1787, to the Earlof Buchan. He has no high ideal of the poet or the poet's office;indeed quite a low and contracted notion of both:

 "Fortune! if thou'll but gie me still Hale breeks, a scone, and whiskey gill, An' rowth o' rhyme to rave at will, Tak' a' the rest. "

See also his rhym'd letters to Robert Graham invoking patronage; "onestronghold, " Lord Glencairn, being dead, now these appeals to "Fintra, my other stay, " (with in one letter a copious shower of vituperationgenerally. ) In his collected poems there is no particular unity, nothing that can be called a leading theory, no unmistakable spine orskeleton. Perhaps, indeed, their very desultoriness is the charmof his songs: "I take up one or another, " he says in a letter toThompson, "just as the bee of the moment buzzes in my bonnet-lug. "

Consonantly with the customs of the time--yet markedly inconsistent inspirit with Burns's own case, (and not a little painful as it remainson record, as depicting some features of the bard himself, ) therelation called _patronage_ existed between the nobility and gentryon one side, and literary people on the other, and gives one of thestrongest side-lights to the general coloring of poems and poets. Itcrops out a good deal in Burns's Letters, and even necessitated acertain flunkeyism on occasions, through life. It probably, with itsrequirements, (while it help'd in money and countenance) did as muchas any one cause in making that life a chafed and unhappy one, endedby a premature and miserable death. 

Yes, there is something about Burns peculiarly acceptable to theconcrete, human points of view. He poetizes work-a-day agriculturallabor and life, (whose spirit and sympathies, as well aspracticalities, are much the same everywhere, ) and treats fresh, oftencoarse, natural occurrences, loves, persons, not like many new andsome old poets in a genteel style of gilt and china, or at second orthird removes, but in their own born atmosphere, laughter, sweat, unction. Perhaps no one ever sang "lads and lasses"--that universalrace, mainly the same, too, all ages, all lands--down on their ownplane, as he has. He exhibits no philosophy worth mentioning; hismorality is hardly more than parrot-talk--not bad or deficient, butcheap, shopworn, the platitudes of old aunts and uncles to theyoungsters (be good boys and keep your noses clean. ) Only when hegets at Poosie Nansie's, celebrating the "barley bree, " or amongtramps, or democratic bouts and drinking generally, ("Freedom and whiskey gang the gither. ")

we have, in his own unmistakable color and warmth, those interiorsof rake-helly life and tavern fun--the cantabile of jolly beggarsin highest jinks--lights and groupings of rank glee and brawnyamorousness, outvying the best painted pictures of the Dutch school, or any school. 

By America and her democracy such a poet, I cannot too oftenrepeat, must be kept in loving remembrance; but it is best thatdiscriminations be made. His admirers (as at those anniversarysuppers, over the "hot Scotch") will not accept for their favoriteanything less than the highest rank, alongside of Homer, Shakspere, etc. Such, in candor, are not the true friends of the Ayrshire bard, who really needs a different place quite by himself. The Iliad and theOdyssey express courage, craft, full-grown heroism in situations ofdanger, the sense of command and leadership, emulation, the last andfullest evolution of self-poise as in kings, and god-like even whileanimal appetites. The Shaksperean compositions, on vertebers andframe-work of the primary passions, portray (essentially the same asHomer's, ) the spirit and letter of the feudal world, the Norman lord, ambitious and arrogant, taller and nobler than common men--with muchunderplay and gusts of heat and cold, volcanoes and stormy seas. Burns(and some will say to his credit) attempts none of these themes. Hepoetizes the humor, riotous blood, sulks, amorous torments, fondnessfor the tavern and for cheap objective nature, with disgust at thegrim and narrow ecclesiasticism of his time and land, of a youngfarmer on a bleak and hired farm in Scotland, through the years andunder the circumstances of the British politics of that time, andof his short personal career as author, from 1783 to 1796. He isintuitive and affectionate, and just emerged or emerging from theshackles of the kirk, from poverty, ignorance, and from his ownrank appetites--(out of which latter, however, he never extricatedhimself. ) It is to be said that amid not a little smoke and gas in hispoems, there is in almost every piece a spark of fire, and now andthen the real afflatus. He has been applauded as democratic, and withsome warrant; while Shakspere, and with the greatest warrant, has beencalled monarchical or aristocratic (which he certainly is. ) But thesplendid personalizations of Shakspere, formulated on the largest, freest, most heroic, most artistic mould, are to me far dearer aslessons, and more precious even as models for Democracy, than thehumdrum samples Burns presents. The motives of some of his effusionsare certainly discreditable personally--one or two of them markedlyso. He has, moreover, little or no spirituality. This last is hismortal flaw and defect, tried by highest standards. The ideal he neverreach'd (and yet I think he leads the way to it. ) He gives melodies, and now and then the simplest and sweetest ones; but harmonies, complications, oratorios in words, never. (I do not speak this in anydeprecatory sense. Blessed be the memory of the warm-hearted Scotchmanfor what he has left us, just as it is!) He likewise did not knowhimself, in more ways than one. Though so really fret and independent, he prided himself in his songs on being a reactionist and aJacobite--on persistent sentimental adherency to the cause of theStuarts--the weakest, thinnest, most faithless, brainless dynasty thatever held a throne. 

Thus, while Burns is not at all great for New World study, in thesense that Isaiah and Eschylus and the book of Job are unquestionablygreat--is not to be mention'd with Shakspere--hardly even with currentTennyson or our Emerson--he has a nestling niche of his own, allfragrant, fond, and quaint and homely--a lodge built near but outsidethe mighty temple of the gods of song and art--those universalstrivers, through their works of harmony and melody and power, to evershow or intimate man's crowning, last, victorious fusion in himself ofReal and Ideal. Precious, too--fit and precious beyond all singers, high or low--will Burns ever be to the native Scotch, especially tothe working-classes of North Britain; so intensely one of them, and soracy of the soil, sights, and local customs. He often apostrophizesScotland, and is, or would be, enthusiastically patriotic. His countryhas lately commemorated him in a statue. [40] His aim is declaredlyto be 'a Rustic Bard. ' His poems were all written in youth or youngmanhood, (he was little more than a young man when he died. ) Hiscollected works in giving everything, are nearly one half first drafts. His brightest hit is his use of the Scotch patois, so full of termsflavor'd like wild fruits or berries. Then I should make an allowanceto Burns which cannot be made for any other poet. Curiously even thefrequent crudeness, haste, deficiencies, (flatness and puerilities byno means absent) prove upon the whole not out of keeping in anycomprehensive collection of his works, heroically printed, "followingcopy, " every piece, every line according to originals. Other poets mighttremble for such boldness, such rawness. In "this odd-kind chiel" suchpoints hardly mar the rest. Not only are they in consonance with theunderlying spirit of the pieces, but complete the full abandon andveracity of the farm-fields and the home-brew'd flavor of the Scotchvernacular. (Is there not often something in the very neglect, unfinish, careless nudity, slovenly hiatus, coming from intrinsic genius, and not"put on, " that secretly pleases the soul more than the wrought andre-wrought polish of the most perfect verse?) Mark the native spice anduntranslatable twang in the very names of his songs-"O for ane andtwenty, Tam, " "John Barleycorn, " "Last May a braw Wooer, " "Rattlinroarin Willie, " "O wert thou in the cauld, cauld blast, " "Gude e'en toyou, Kimmer, " "Merry hae I been teething a Heckle, " "O lay thy loof inmine, lass, " and others. 

The longer and more elaborated poems of Burns are just such as wouldplease a natural but homely taste, and cute but average intellect, andare inimitable in their way. The "Twa Dogs, " (one of the best) withthe conversation between Cesar and Luath, the "Brigs of Ayr, " "theCotter's Saturday Night, " "Tam O'Shanter"--all will be long read andre-read and admired, and ever deserve to be. With nothing profound inany of them, what there is of moral and plot has an inimitably freshand racy flavor. If it came to question, Literature could well affordto send adrift many a pretensive poem, and even book of poems, beforeit could spare these compositions. 

Never indeed was there truer utterance in a certain range ofidiosyncrasy than by this poet. Hardly a piece of his, large orsmall, but has "snap" and raciness. He puts in cantering rhyme(often doggerel) much cutting irony and idiomatic ear-cuffing ofthe kirk-deacons--drilygood-natured addresses to his cronies, (hecertainly would not stop us if he were here this moment, from classingthat "to the De'il" among them)--"to Mailie and her Lambs, " "to auldMare Maggie, " "to a Mouse, "

 "Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie:"

"to a Mountain Daisy, " "to a Haggis, " "to a Louse, " "to theToothache, " &c. --and occasionally to his brother bards and lady orgentleman patrons, often with strokes of tenderest sensibility, idiopathic humor, and genuine poetic imagination--still oftener withshrewd, original, sheeny, steel-flashes of wit, home-spun sense, or lance-blade puncturing. Then, strangely, the basis of Burns'scharacter, with all its fun and manliness, was hypochondria, theblues, palpable enough in "Despondency, " "Man was made to Mourn, ""Address to Ruin, " a "Bard's Epitaph, " &c. From such deep-downelements sprout up, in very contrast and paradox, those riantutterances of which a superficial reading will not detect the hiddenfoundation. Yet nothing is clearer to me than the black and desperatebackground behind those pieces--as I shall now specify them. I findhis most characteristic, Nature's masterly touch and luxuriantlife-blood, color and heat, not in "Tam O'Shanter, " "the Cotter'sSaturday Night, " "Scots wha hae, " "Highland Mary, " "the Twa Dogs, "and the like, but in "the Jolly Beggars, " "Rigs of Barley, " "ScotchDrink, " "the Epistle to John Rankine, " "Holy Willie's Prayer, " and in"Halloween, " (to say nothing of a certain cluster, known still to asmall inner circle in Scotland, but, for good reasons, not publishedanywhere. ) In these compositions, especially the first, there is muchindelicacy (some editions flatly leave it out, ) but the composerreigns alone, with handling free and broad and true, and is an artist. You may see and feel the man indirectly in his other verses, all ofthem, with more or less life-likeness--but these I have named lastcall out pronouncedly in his own voice, "I, Rob, am here. "

Finally, in any summing-up of Burns, though so much is to be said inthe way of fault-finding, drawing black marks, and doubtless severeliterary criticism--(in the present outpouring I have "kept myselfin, " rather than allow'd any free flow)--after full retrospect of hisworks and life, the aforesaid "odd-kind chiel" remains to my heart andbrain as almost the tenderest, manliest, and (even if contradictory)dearest flesh-and-blood figure in all the streams and clusters ofby-gone poets. 

Notes:

[39] Probably no man that ever lived--a friend has made thestatement--was so fondly loved, both by men and women, as RobertBurns. The reason is not hard to find: he had a real heart of fleshand blood beating in his bosom; you could almost hear it throb. "Someone said, that if you had shaken hands with him his hand would haveburnt yours. The gods, indeed, made him poetical, but Nature had ahand in him first. His heart was in the right place; he did not pileup cantos of poetic diction; he pluck'd the mountain daisy under hisfeet; he wrote of field-mouse hurrying from its ruin'd dwelling. Heheld the plough or the pen with the same firm, manly grasp. And he wasloved. The simple roll of the women who gave him their affection andtheir sympathy would make a long manuscript; and most of these were ofsuch noble worth that, as Robert Chambers says, 'their character maystand as a testimony in favor of that of Burns. '" [As I understand, the foregoing is from an extremely rare book publish'd by M'Kie, inKilmarnock. I find the whole beautiful paragraph in a capital paper onBurns, by Amelia Barr. ]

[40] The Dumfries statue of Robert Burns was successfully unveil'dApril 1881 by Lord Rosebery, the occasion having been made nationalin its character. Before the ceremony, a large procession paraded thestreets of the town, all the trades and societies of that part ofScotland being represented, at the head of which went dairymen andploughmen, the former driving their carts and being accompanied bytheir maids. The statue is of Sicilian marble. It rests on a pedestalof gray stone five feet high. The poet is represented as sittingeasily on an old tree root, holding in his left hand a cluster ofdaisies. His face is turn'd toward the right shoulder, and the eyesgaze into the distance. Near by lie a collie dog, a broad bonnet halfcovering a well-thumb'd song-book, and a rustic flageolet. The costumeis taken from the Nasmyth portrait, which has been follow'd for thefeatures of the face. 

A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON

Beautiful as the song was, the original "Locksley Hall" of half acentury ago was essentially morbid, heart-broken, finding fault witheverything, especially the fact of money's being made (as it ever mustbe, and perhaps should be) the paramount matter in worldly affairs;

 Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys. 

First, a father, having fallen in battle, his child (the singer)

 Was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward. 

Of course love ensues. The woman in the chant or monologue proves afalse one; and as far as appears the ideal of woman, in the poet'sreflections, is a false one--at any rate for America. Woman is _not_"the lesser man. " (The heart is not the brain. ) The best of the pieceof fifty years since is its concluding line:

 For the mighty wind arises roaring seaward and I go. 

Then for this current 1886-7, a just-out sequel, which (as anapparently authentic summary says) "reviews the life of mankind duringthe past sixty years, and comes to the conclusion that its boastedprogress is of doubtful credit to the world in general and to Englandin particular. A cynical vein of denunciation of democratic opinionsand aspirations runs throughout the poem in mark'd contrast with thespirit of the poet's youth. " Among the most striking lines of thissequel are the following:

 Envy wears the mask of love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn, Cries to weakest as to strongest, 'Ye are equals, equal born, ' Equal-born! Oh yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat. Charm us, orator, till the lion look no larger than the cat: Till the cat, through that mirage of overheated language, loom Larger than the lion Demo--end in working its own doom. Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street, Set the feet above the brain, and swear the brain is in the feet, Bring the old dark ages back, without the faith, without the hope. Beneath the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down the slope. 

I should say that all this is a legitimate consequence of the tone andconvictions of the earlier standards and points of view. Then somereflections, down to the hard-pan of this sort of thing. 

The course of progressive politics (democracy) is so certain andresistless, not only in America but in Europe, that we can well affordthe warning calls, threats, checks, neutralizings, in imaginativeliterature, or any department, of such deep-sounding, and high-soaringvoices as Carlyle's and Tennyson's. Nay, the blindness, excesses, of the prevalent tendency--the dangers of the urgent trends of ourtimes--in my opinion, need such voices almost more than any. I should, too, call it a signal instance of democratic humanity's luck that ithas such enemies to contend with--so candid, so fervid, so heroic. But why do I say enemies? Upon the whole is not Tennyson--and was notCarlyle (like an honest and stern physician)--the true friend of ourage?

Let me assume to pass verdict, or perhaps momentary judgment, for theUnited States on this poet--a remov'd and distant position giving someadvantages over a nigh one. What is Tennyson's service to his race, times, and especially to America? First, I should say--or at least notforget--his personal character. He is not to be mention'das a rugged, evolutionary, aboriginal force--but (and a great lesson is in it) hehas been consistent throughout with the native, healthy, patrioticspinal element and promptings of himself. His moral line is local andconventional, but it is vital and genuine. He reflects the uppercrustof his time, its pale cast of thought--even its _ennui_. Then thesimile of my friend John Burroughs is entirely true, "his glove is aglove of silk, but the hand is a hand of iron. " He shows how one canbe a royal laureate, quite elegant and "aristocratic, " and a littlequeer and affected, and at the same time perfectly manly and natural. As to his non-democracy, it fits him well, and I like him the betterfor it. I guess we all like to have (I am sure I do) some one whopresents those sides of a thought, or possibility, different from ourown--different and yet with a sort of home-likeness--a tartness andcontradiction offsetting the theory as we view it, and construed fromtastes and proclivities not at all his own. 

To me, Tennyson shows more than any poet I know (perhaps has been awarning to me) how much there is in finest verbalism. There is sucha latent charm in mere words, cunning collocutions, and in thevoice ringing them, which he has caught and brought out, beyond allothers--as in the line, And hollow, hollow, hollow, all delight, in "The Passing of Arthur, " and evidenced in "The Lady of Shalott, ""The Deserted House, " and many other pieces. Among the best (I oftenlinger over them again and again) are "Lucretius, " "The Lotos Eaters, "and "The Northern Farmer. " His mannerism is great, but it is a nobleand welcome mannerism. His very best work, to me, is contain'd in thebooks of "The Idylls of the King, " and all that has grown out of them. Though indeed we could spare nothing of Tennyson, however small orhowever peculiar--not "Break, Break, " nor "Flower in the CranniedWall, " nor the old, eternally-told passion of "Edward Gray:"

 Love may come and love may go, And fly like a bird from tree to tree. But I will love no more, no more Till Ellen Adair come back to me. 

Yes, Alfred Tennyson's is a superb character, and will help giveillustriousness, through the long roll of time, to our NineteenthCentury. In its bunch of orbic names, shining like a constellationof stars, his will be one of the brightest. His very faults, doubts, swervings, doublings upon himself, have been typical of our age. Weare like the voyagers of a ship, casting off for new seas, distantshores. We would still dwell in the old suffocating and dead haunts, remembering and magnifying their pleasant experiences only, and morethan once impell'd to jump ashore before it is too late, and staywhere our fathers stay'd, and live as they lived. 

May-be I am non-literary and non-decorous (let me at least be human, and pay part of my debt) in this word about Tennyson. I want him torealize that here is a great and ardent Nation that absorbs his songs, and has a respect and affection for him personally, as almost for noother foreigner. I want this word to go to the old man at Farringfordas conveying no more than the simple truth; and that truth (a littleChristmas gift) no slight one either. I have written impromptu, andshall let it all go at that. The readers of more than fifty millionsof people in the New World not only owe to him some of their mostagreeable and harmless and healthy hours, but he has enter'd intothe formative influences of character here, not only in the Atlanticcities, but inland and far West, out in Missouri, in Kansas, and awayin Oregon, in farmer's house and miner's cabin. 

Best thanks, anyhow, to Alfred Tennyson--thanks and appreciation inAmerica's name. 

SLANG IN AMERICA

View'd freely, the English language is the accretion and growth ofevery dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free andcompacted composition of all. From this point of view, it stands forLanguage in the largest sense, and is really the greatest of studies. It involves so much; is indeed a sort of universal absorber, combiner, and conqueror. The scope of its etymologies is the scope not only ofman and civilization, but the history of Nature in all departments, and of the organic Universe, brought up to date; for all arecomprehended in words, and their backgrounds. This is when wordsbecome vitaliz'd, and stand for things, as they unerringly and sooncome to do, in the mind that enters on their study with fittingspirit, grasp, and appreciation. 

Slang, profoundly consider'd, is the lawless germinal element, belowall words and sentences, and behind all poetry, and proves a certainperennial rankness and protestantism in speech. As the United Statesinherit by far their most precious possession--the language they talkand write--from the Old World, under and out of its feudal institutes, I will allow myself to borrow a simile even of those forms farthestremoved from American Democracy. Considering Language then as somemighty potentate, into the majestic audience-hall of the monarch everenters a personage like one of Shakspere's clowns, and takes positionthere, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies. Such isSlang, or indirection, an attempt of common humanity to escape frombald literalism, and express itself illimitably, which in highestwalks produces poets and poems, and doubtless in pre-historic timesgave the start to, and perfected, the whole immense tangle of the oldmythologies. For, curious as it may appear, it is strictly thesame impulse-source, the same thing. Slang, too, is the wholesomefermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active inlanguage, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to passaway; though occasionally to settle and permanently crystallize. 

To make it plainer, it is certain that many of the oldest and solidestwords we use, were originally generated from the daring and license ofslang. In the processes of word-formation, myriads die, but here andthere the attempt attracts superior meanings, becomes valuableand indispensable, and lives forever. Thus the term _right_ meansliterally only straight. _Wrong_ primarily meant twisted, distorted. _Integrity_ meant oneness. _Spirit_ meant breath, or flame. A_supercilious_ person was one who rais'd his eyebrows. To _insult_ wasto leap against. If you _influenced_ a man, you but flow'd into him. The Hebrew word which is translated _prophesy_ meant to bubble up andpour forth as a fountain. The enthusiast bubbles up with the Spirit ofGod within him, and it pours forth from him like a fountain. The wordprophecy is misunderstood. Many suppose that it is limited to mereprediction; that is but the lesser portion of prophecy. The greaterwork is to reveal God. Every true religious enthusiast is a prophet. 

Language, be it remember'd, is not an abstract construction of thelearn'd, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of thework, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations ofhumanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Itsfinal decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea. It impermeates all, thePast as well as the Present, and is the grandest triumph of the humanintellect. "Those mighty works of art, " says Addington Symonds, "whichwe call languages, in the construction of which whole peoplesunconsciously co-operated, the forms of which were determin'd not byindividual genius, but by the instincts of successive generations, acting to one end, inherent in the nature of the race--Those poems ofpure thought and fancy, cadenced not in words, but in living imagery, fountain-heads of inspiration, mirrors of the mind of nascent nations, which we call Mythologies--these surely are more marvellous in theirinfantine spontaneity than any more mature production of the raceswhich evolv'd them. Yet we are utterly ignorant of their embryology;the true science of Origins is yet in its cradle. "

Daring as it is to say so, in the growth of Language it is certainthat the retrospect of slang from the start would be the recallingfrom their nebulous conditions of all that is poetical in the storesof human utterance. Moreover, the honest delving, as of late years, bythe German and British workers in comparative philology, has pierc'dand dispers'd many of the falsest bubbles of centuries; and willdisperse many more. It was long recorded that in Scandinavianmythology the heroes in the Norse Paradise drank out of the skulls oftheir slain enemies. Later investigation proves the word taken forskulls to mean _horns_ of beasts slain in the hunt. And what readerhad not been exercis'd over the traces of that feudal custom, by which_seigneurs_ warm'd their feet in the bowels of serfs, the abdomenbeing open'd for the purpose? It now is made to appear that the serfwas only required to submit his unharm'd abdomen as a foot cushionwhile his lord supp' d, and was required to chafe the legs of theseigneur with his hands. 

It is curiously in embryons and childhood, and among the illiterate, we always find the groundwork and start, of this great science, andits noblest products. What a relief most people have in speaking ofa man not by his true and formal name, with a "Mister" to it, but bysome odd or homely appellative. The propensity to approach a meaningnot directly and squarely, but by circuitous styles of expression, seems indeed a born quality of the common people everywhere, evidencedby nick-names, and the inveterate determination of the masses tobestow sub-titles, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes very apt. Alwaysamong the soldiers during the secession war, one heard of "Little Mac"(Gen. McClellan), or of "Uncle Billy" (Gen. Sherman. ) "The old man"was, of course, very common. Among the rank and file, both armies, itwas very general to speak of the different States they came from bytheir slang names. Those from Maine were call'd Foxes; New Hampshire, Granite Boys; Massachusetts, Bay Staters; Vermont, Green MountainBoys; Rhode Island, Gun Flints; Connecticut, Wooden Nutmegs; New York, Knickerbockers; New Jersey, Clam Catchers; Pennsylvania, Logher Heads;Delaware, Muskrats; Maryland, Claw Thumpers; Virginia, Beagles; NorthCarolina, Tar Boilers; South Carolina, Weasels; Georgia, Buzzards;Louisiana, Creoles; Alabama, Lizards; Kentucky, Corn Crackers; Ohio, Buckeyes; Michigan, Wolverines; Indiana, Hoosiers; Illinois, Suckers;Missouri, Pukes; Mississippi, Tadpoles; Florida, Fly up the Creeks;Wisconsin, Badgers; Iowa, Hawkeyes; Oregon, Hard Cases. Indeed I amnot sure but slang names have more than once made Presidents. "OldHickory, " (Gen. Jackson) is one case in point. "Tippecanoe, and Tylertoo, " another. 

I find the same rule in the people's conversations everywhere. I heardthis among the men of the city horse-cars, where the conductor isoften call'd a "snatcher" (i. E. Because his characteristic duty is toconstantly pull or snatch the bell-strap, to stop or go on. ) Two youngfellows are having a friendly talk, amid which, says 1st conductor, "What did you do before you was a snatcher?" Answer of 2d conductor, "Nail'd. " (Translation of answer: "I work'd as carpenter. ") What is a"boom"? says one editor to another. "Esteem'd contemporary, " says theother, "a boom is a bulge. " "Barefoot whiskey" is the Tennessee namefor the undiluted stimulant. In the slang of the New York commonrestaurant waiters a plate of ham and beans is known as "stars andstripes, " codfish balls as "sleeve-buttons, " and hash as "mystery. "

The Western States of the Union are, however, as may be supposed, thespecial areas of slang, not only in conversation, but in names oflocalities, towns, rivers, etc. A late Oregon traveller says:

"On your way to Olympia by rail, you cross a river called theShookum-Chuck; your train stops at places named Newaukum, Tumwater, and Toutle; and if you seek further you will hear of whole countieslabell' d Wahkiakum, or Snohomish, or Kitsar, or Klikatat; andCowlitz, Hookium, and Nenolelops greet and offend you. They complainin Olympia that Washington Territory gets but little immigration; butwhat wonder? What man, having the whole American continent to choosefrom, would willingly date his letters from the county of Snohomishor bring up his children in the city of Nenolelops? The village ofTumwater is, as I am ready to bear witness, very pretty indeed; butsurely an emigrant would think twice before he establish' d himselfeither there or at Toutle. Seattle is sufficiently barbarous;Stelicoom is no better; and I suspect that the Northern PacificRailroad terminus has been fixed at Tacoma because it is one of thefew places on Puget Sound whose name does not inspire horror. "

Then a Nevada paper chronicles the departure of a mining party fromReno: "The toughest set of roosters that ever shook the dust off anytown left Reno yesterday for the new mining district of Cornucopia. They came here from Virginia. Among the crowd were four New Yorkcock-fighters, two Chicago murderers, three Baltimore bruisers, one Philadelphia prize-fighter, four San Francisco hoodlums, threeVirginia beats, two Union Pacific roughs, and two check guerrillas. "Among the far-west newspapers, have been, or are, _The Fairplay_(Colorado) _Flume, The Solid Muldoon_, of Ouray, _The TombstoneEpitaph_, of Nevada, _The Jimplecute_, of Texas, and _The Bazoo_, ofMissouri. Shirttail Bend, Whiskey Flat, Puppytown, Wild Yankee Ranch, Squaw Flat, Rawhide Ranch, Loafer's Ravine, Squitch Gulch, ToenailLake, are a few of the names of places in Butte county, Cal. 

Perhaps indeed no place or term gives more luxuriant illustrationsof the fermentation processes I have mention'd, and their froth andspecks, than those Mississippi and Pacific coast regions, at thepresent day. Hasty and grotesque as are some of the names, others areof an appropriateness and originality unsurpassable. This applies tothe Indian words, which are often perfect. Oklahoma is proposedin Congress for the name of one of our new Territories. Hog-eye, Lick-skillet, Rake-pocket and Steal-easy are the names of some Texantowns. Miss Bremer found among the aborigines the followingnames: _Men's_, Horn-point; Round-Wind; Stand-and-look-out;The-Cloud-that-goes-aside; Iron-toe; Seek-the-sun; Iron-flash;Red-bottle; White-spindle; Black-dog; Two-feathers-of-honor;Gray-grass; Bushy-tail; Thunder-face; Go-on-the-burning-sod;Spirits-of-the-dead. _Women's_, Keep-the-fire; Spiritual-woman;Second-daughter-of-the-house; Blue-bird. 

Certainly philologists have not given enough attention to this elementand its results, which, I repeat, can probably be found working everywhere to-day, amid modern conditions, with as much life and activityas in far-back Greece or India, under prehistoric ones. Then thewit--the rich flashes of humor and genius and poetry--darting outoften from a gang of laborers, railroad-men, miners, drivers orboatmen! How often have I hover'd at the edge of a crowd of them, tohear their repartees and impromptus! You get more real fun from halfan hour with them than from the books of all "the American humorists. "

The science of language has large and close analogies in geologicalscience, with its ceaseless evolution, its fossils, and its numberlesssubmerged layers and hidden strata, the infinite go-before of thepresent. Or, perhaps Language is more like some vast living body, orperennial body of bodies. And slang not only brings the first feedersof it, but is afterward the start of fancy, imagination and humor, breathing into its nostrils the breath of life. 

AN INDIAN BUREAU REMINISCENCE

After the close of the secession war in 1865, I work'd several months(until Mr. Harlan turn'd me out for having written "Leaves of Grass")in the Interior Department at Washington, in the Indian Bureau. Alongthis time there came to see their Great Father an unusual number ofaboriginal visitors, delegations for treaties, settlement of lands, &c. --some young or middle-aged, but mainly old men, from the West, North, and occasionally from the South--parties of from five to twentyeach--the most wonderful proofs of what Nature can produce, (thesurvival of the fittest, no doubt--all the frailer samples dropt, sorted out by death)--as if to show how the earth and woods, theattrition of storms and elements, and the exigencies of life atfirst hand, can train and fashion men, indeed _chiefs_, in heroicmassiveness, imperturbability, muscle, and that last and highestbeauty consisting of strength--the full exploitation and fruitage ofa human identity, not from the culmination-points of "culture" andartificial civilization, but tallying our race, as it were, withgiant, vital, gnarl'd, enduring trees, or monoliths of separatehardiest rocks, and humanity holding its own with the best of the saidtrees or rocks, and outdoing them. 

There were Omahas, Poncas, Winnebagoes, Cheyennes, Navahos, Apaches, and many others. Let me give a running account of what I see and hearthrough one of these conference collections at the Indian Bureau, going back to the present tense. Every head and face is impressive, even artistic; Nature redeems herself out of her crudest recesses. Most have red paint on their cheeks, however, or some other paint. ("Little Hill" makes the opening speech, which the interpretertranslates by scraps. ) Many wear head tires of gaudy-color'd braid, wound around thickly--some with circlets of eagles' feathers. Necklaces of bears' claws are plenty around their necks. Most of thechiefs are wrapt in large blankets of the brightest scarlet. 

Two or three have blue, and I see one black. (A wise man call'd "theFlesh" now makes a short speech, apparently asking something. IndianCommissioner Dole answers him, and the interpreter translates inscraps again. ) All the principal chiefs have tomahawks or hatchets, some of them very richly ornamented and costly. Plaid shirts are tobe observ'd--none too clean. Now a tall fellow, "Hole-in-the-Day, " isspeaking. He has a copious head-dress composed of feathers and narrowribbon, under which appears a countenance painted all over abilious yellow. Let us note this young chief. For all his paint, "Hole-in-the-Day" is a handsome Indian, mild and calm, dress'd indrab buckskin leggings, dark gray surtout, and a soft black hat. Hiscostume will bear full observation, and even fashion would accepthim. His apparel is worn loose and scant enough to show his superbphysique, especially in neck, chest, and legs. ("The ApolloBelvidere!" was the involuntary exclamation of a famous Europeanartist when he first saw a full-grown young Choctaw. )

One of the red visitors--a wild, lean-looking Indian, the one in theblack woolen wrapper--has an empty buffalo head, with the horns on, for his personal surmounting. I see a markedly Bourbonish countenanceamong the chiefs--(it is not very uncommon among them, I am told. )Most of them avoided resting on chairs during the hour of their "talk"in the Commissioner's office; they would sit around on the floor, leaning against something, or stand up by the walls, partially wraptin their blankets. Though some of the young fellows were, as I havesaid, magnificent and beautiful animals, I think the palm of uniquepicturesqueness, in body, limb, physiognomy, &c. , was borne by the oldor elderly chiefs, and the wise men. 

My here-alluded-to experience in the Indian Bureau produced one verydefinite conviction, as follows: There is something about theseaboriginal Americans, in their highest characteristic representations, essential traits, and the ensemble of their physique andphysiognomy--something very remote, very lofty, arousing comparisonswith our own civilized ideals--something that our literature, portraitpainting, &c. , have never caught, and that will almost certainly neverbe transmitted to the future, even as a reminiscence. No biographer, no historian, no artist, has grasp'd it--perhaps could not grasp it. It is so different, so far outside our standards of eminent humanity. Their feathers, paint--even the empty buffalo skull--did not, to saythe least, seem any more ludicrous to me than many of the fashions Ihave seen in civilized society. I should not apply the word savage (atany rate, in the usual sense) as a leading word in the description ofthose great aboriginal specimens, of whom I certainly saw many of thebest. There were moments, as I look'd at them or studied them, whenour own exemplification of personality, dignity, heroic presentationanyhow (as in the conventions of society, or even in the acceptedpoems and plays, ) seem'd sickly, puny, inferior. 

The interpreters, agents of the Indian Department, or other whitesaccompanying the bands, in positions of responsibility, were alwaysinteresting to me; I had many talks with them. Occasionally I would goto the hotels where the bands were quarter'd, and spend an hour ortwo informally. Of course we could not have much conversation--though(through the interpreters) more of this than might be supposed--sometimes quite animated and significant. I had the good luck to beinvariably receiv'd and treated by all of them in their most cordialmanner. 

[Letter to W. W. From an artist, B. H. , who has been much among theAmerican Indians:]

"I have just receiv'd your little paper on the Indian delegations. In the fourth paragraph you say that there is something about theessential traits of our aborigines which 'will almost certainly neverbe transmitted to the future. ' If I am so fortunate as to regain myhealth I hope to weaken the force of that statement, at least in sofar as my talent and training will permit. I intend to spend someyears among them, and shall endeavor to perpetuate on canvas some ofthe finer types, both men and women, and some of the characteristicfeatures of their life. It will certainly be well worth the while. My artistic enthusiasm was never so thoroughly stirr'd up as by theIndians. They certainly have more of beauty, dignity and nobilitymingled with their own wild individuality, than any of the otherindigenous types of man. Neither black nor Afghan, Arab nor Malay (andI know them all pretty well) can hold a candle to the Indian. All ofthe other aboriginal types seem to be more or less distorted from themodel of perfect human form--as we know it--the blacks, thin-hipped, with bulbous limbs, not well mark'd; the Arabs large-jointed, &c. ButI have seen many a young Indian as perfect in form and feature as aGreek statue--very different from a Greek statue, of course, but assatisfying to the artistic perceptions and demand. 

"And the worst, or perhaps the best of it all is that it will requirean artist--and a good one--to record the real facts and impressions. Ten thousand photographs would not have the value of one really finelyfelt painting. Color is all-important. No one but an artist knows howmuch. An Indian is only half an Indian without the blue-black hair andthe brilliant eyes shining out of the wonderful dusky ochre and rosecomplexion. "

SOME DIARY NOTES AT RANDOM

NEGRO SLAVES IN NEW YORK

I can myself almost remember negro slaves in New York State, as mygrandfather and great-grandfather (at West Hills, Suffolk county, NewYork) own'd a number. The hard labor of the farm was mostly done bythem, and on the floor of the big kitchen, toward sundown, would besquatting a circle of twelve or fourteen "pickaninnies, " eatingtheir supper of pudding (Indian corn mush) and milk. A friend of mygrandfather, named Wortman, of Oyster Bay, died in 1810, leavingten slaves. Jeanette Treadwell, the last of them, died suddenly inFlushing last summer (1884, ) at the age of ninety-four years. Iremember "old Mose, " one of the liberated West Hills slaves, well. Hewas very genial, correct, manly, and cute, and a great friend of mychildhood. 

CANADA NIGHTS--_Late in August_--

Three wondrous nights. Effects of moon, clouds, stars, andnight-sheen, never surpass'd. I am out every night, enjoying all. Thesunset begins it. (I have said already how long evening lingers here. )The moon, an hour high just after eight, is past her half, and lookssomehow more like a human face up there than ever before. As it growslater, we have such gorgeous and broad cloud-effects, with Luna'stawny halos, silver edgings--great fleeces, depths of blue-black inpatches, and occasionally long, low bars hanging silently a while, and then gray bulging masses rolling along stately, sometimes in longprocession. The moon travels in Scorpion to-night, and dims all thestars of that constellation except fiery Antares, who keeps on shiningjust to the big one's side. 

COUNTRY DAYS AND NIGHTS--

_Sept. 30, '82, 4. 30 A. M. _--I am down in Camden county, New Jersey, atthe farmhouse of the Staffords--have been looking a long while atthe comet--have in my time seen longer-tail'd ones, but never one sopronounc'd in cometary character, and so spectral-fierce--so like somegreat, pale, living monster of the air or sea. The atmosphere and sky, an hour or so before sunrise, so cool, still, translucent, give thewhole apparition to great advantage. It is low in the east. The headshows about as big as an ordinary good-sized saucer--is a perfectlyround and defined disk--the tail some sixty or seventy feet--not astripe, but quite broad, and gradually expanding. Impress'd with thesilent, inexplicably emotional sight, I linger and look till allbegins to weaken in the break of day. 

_October 2_. --The third day of mellow, delicious, sunshiny weather. I am writing this in the recesses of the old woods, my seat on abig pine log, my back against a tree. Am down here a few days for achange, to bask in the Autumn sun, to idle lusciously and simply, andto eat hearty meals, especially my breakfast. Warm mid-days--the otherhours of the twenty-four delightfully fresh and mild--cool evenings, and early mornings perfect. The scent of the woods, and the peculiararoma of a great yet unreap'd maize-field near by--the whitebutterflies in every direction by day--the golden-rod, the wildasters, and sunflowers--the song of the katydid all night. 

Every day in Cooper's Woods, enjoying simple existence and thepassing hours--taking short walks--exercising arms and chest with thesaplings, or my voice with army songs or recitations. A perfect weekfor weather; seven continuous days bright and dry and cool andsunny. The nights splendid, with full moon--about 10 the grandestof star-shows up in the east and south, Jupiter, Saturn, Capella, Aldebaran, and great Orion. Am feeling pretty well--am outdoors mostof the time, absorbing the days and nights all I can. 

CENTRAL PARK NOTES

_American Society from a Park Policeman's Point of View_

Am in New York city, upper part--visit Central Park almost every day(and have for the last three weeks) off and on, taking observations orshort rambles, and sometimes riding around. I talk quite a good dealwith one of the Park policemen, C. C. , up toward the Ninetieth streetentrance. One day in particular I got him a-going, and it proveddeeply interesting to me. Our talk floated into sociology andpolitics. I was curious to find how these things appear'd on theirsurfaces to my friend, for he plainly possess'd sharp wits and goodnature, and had been seeing, for years, broad streaks of humanitysomewhat out of my latitude. I found that as he took such appearancesthe inward caste-spirit of European "aristocracy" pervaded richAmerica, with cynicism and artificiality at the fore. Of the bulk ofofficial persons, Executives, Congressmen, Legislators, Aldermen, Department heads, &c. , &c. , or the candidates for those positions, nineteen in twenty, in the policeman's judgment, were just playersin a game. Liberty, Equality, Union, and all the grand words ofthe Republic, were, in their mouths, but lures, decoys, chisel'dlikenesses of dead wood, to catch the masses. Of fine afternoons, along the broad tracks of the Park, for many years, had swept bymy friend, as he stood on guard, the carriages, &c. , of AmericanGentility, not by dozens and scores, but by hundreds and thousands. Lucky brokers, capitalists, contractors, grocery-men, successfulpolitical strikers, rich butchers, dry goods' folk, &c. And on a largeproportion of these vehicles, on panels or horse-trappings, wereconspicuously borne _heraldic family crests_. (Can this really betrue?) In wish and willingness (and if that were so, what matter aboutthe reality?) titles of nobility, with a court and spheres fit for thecapitalists, the highly educated, and the carriage-riding classes--tofence them off from "the common people"--were the heart's desire ofthe "good society" of our great cities--aye, of North and South. 

So much for my police friend's speculations--which rather took meaback--and which I have thought I would just print as he gave them (asa doctor records symptoms. )

PLATE GLASS NOTES

_St. Louis, Missouri, November, '79_. --What do you think I findmanufactur'd out here--and of a kind the clearest and largest, best, and the most finish'd and luxurious in the world--and with ampledemand for it too? _Plate glass_! One would suppose that was the lastdainty outcome of an old, almost effete-growing civilization; and yethere it is, a few miles from St. Louis, on a charming little river, in the wilds of the West, near the Mississippi. I went down thatway to-day by the Iron Mountain Railroad--was switch'd off on aside-track four miles through woods and ravines, to Swash Creek, so-call'd, and there found Crystal city, and immense Glass Works, built (and evidently built to stay) right in the pleasant rollingforest. Spent most of the day, and examin'd the inexhaustible andpeculiar sand the glass is made of--the original whity-gray stuff inthe banks--saw the melting in the pots (a wondrous process, a realpoem)--saw the delicate preparation the clay material undergoes forthese great pots (it has to be kneaded finally by human feet, nomachinery answering, and I watch'd the picturesque bare-leggedAfricans treading it)--saw the molten stuff (a great mass of a glowingpale yellow color) taken out of the furnaces (I shall never forgetthat Pot, shape, color, concomitants, more beautiful than any antiquestatue, ) pass'd into the adjoining casting-room, lifted by powerfulmachinery, pour'd out on its bed (all glowing, a newer, vaster studyfor colorists, indescribable, a pale red-tinged yellow, of tarryconsistence, all lambent, ) roll'd by a heavy roller into rough plateglass, I should say ten feet by fourteen, then rapidly shov'd into theannealing oven, which stood ready for it. The polishing and grindingrooms afterward--the great glass slabs, hundreds of them, on theirflat beds, and the see-saw music of the steam machinery constantly atwork polishing them--the myriads of human figures (the works employ'd400 men) moving about, with swart arms and necks, and no superfluousclothing--the vast, rude halls, with immense play of shifting shade, and slow-moving currents of smoke and steam, and shafts of light, sometimes sun, striking in from above with effects that would havefill'd Michel Angelo with rapture. 

Coming back to St. Louis this evening, at sundown, and for over anhour afterward, we follow'd the Mississippi, close by its westernbank, giving me an ampler view of the river, and with effects a littledifferent from any yet. In the eastern sky hung the planet Mars, just up, and of a very clear and vivid yellow. It was a soothing andpensive hour--the spread of the river off there in the half-light--the glints of the down-bound steamboats plodding along--and thatyellow orb (apparently twice as large and significant as usual) abovethe Illinois shore. (All along, these nights, nothing can exceed thecalm, fierce, golden, glistening domination of Mars over all the starsin the sky. )

As we came nearer St. Louis, the night having well set in, I saw some(to me) novel effects in the zinc smelting establishments, the tallchimneys belching flames at the top, while inside through the openingsat the facades of the great tanks burst forth (in regular position)hundreds of fierce tufts of a peculiar blue (or green) flame, of apurity and intensity, like electric lights--illuminating not only thegreat buildings themselves, but far and near outside, like hues of theaurora borealis, only more vivid. (So that--remembering the Pot fromthe crystal furnace--my jaunt seem'd to give me new revelations in thecolor line. )

SOME WAR MEMORANDA

_Jotted Down at the Time_

I find this incident in my notes (I suppose from "chinning" inhospital with some sick or wounded soldier who knew of it):

When Kilpatrick and his forces were cut off at Brandy station (lastof September, '63, or thereabouts, ) and the bands struck up "YankeeDoodle, " there were not cannon enough in the Southern Confederacy tokeep him and them "in. " It was when Meade fell back. K. Had his largecavalry division (perhaps 5, 000 men, ) but the rebs, in superior force, had surrounded them. Things look'd exceedingly desperate. K. Had twofine bands, and order'd them up immediately; they join'd andplay'd "Yankee Doodle" with a will! It went through the men likelightning--but to inspire, not to unnerve. Every man seem'd a giant. They charged like a cyclone, and cut their way out. Their loss was but20. It was about two in the afternoon. 

WASHINGTON STREET SCENES

_Walking Down Pennsylvania Avenue_

_April 7, 1864_. --Warmish forenoon, after the storm of the past fewdays. I see, passing up, in the broad space between the curbs, a bigsquad of a couple of hundred conscripts, surrounded by a strong cordonof arm'd guards, and others interspers'd between the ranks. Thegovernment has learn'd caution from its experiences; there are manyhundreds of "bounty jumpers, " and already, as I am told, eightythousand deserters! Next (also passing up the Avenue, ) a cavalrycompany, young, but evidently well drill'd and service-harden'd men. Mark the upright posture in their saddles, the bronz'd and beardedyoung faces, the easy swaying to the motions of the horses, and thecarbines by their right knees; handsome and reckless, some eighty ofthem, riding with rapid gait, clattering along. Then the tinklingbells of passing cars, the many shops (some with large show-windows, some with swords, straps for the shoulders of different ranks, hat-cords with acorns, or other insignia, ) the military patrolmarching along, with the orderly or second-lieutenant stoppingdifferent ones to examine passes--the forms, the faces, all sortscrowded together, the worn and pale, the pleas'd, some on their wayto the railroad depot going home, the cripples, the darkeys, thelong trains of government wagons, or the sad strings of ambulancesconveying wounded--the many officers' horses tied in front ofthe drinking or oyster saloons, or held by black men or boys, ororderlies. 

THE 195TH PENNSYLVANIA

_Tuesday, Aug. 1, 1865_. --About 3 o'clock this afternoon (sun broilinghot) in Fifteenth street, by the Treasury building, a large andhandsome regiment, 195th Pennsylvania, were marching by--as ithappen'd, receiv'd orders just here to halt and break ranks, so thatthey might rest themselves awhile. I thought I never saw a finer setof men--so hardy, candid, bright American looks, all weather-beaten, and with warm clothes. Every man was home-born. My heart was muchdrawn toward them. They seem'd very tired, red, and streaming withsweat. It is a one-year regiment, mostly from Lancaster county, Pa. ;have been in Shenandoah valley. On halting, the men unhitch'd theirknapsacks, and sat down to rest themselves. Some lay flat on thepavement or under trees. The fine physical appearance of the wholebody was remarkable. Great, very great, must be the State where suchyoung farmers and mechanics are the practical average. I went aroundfor half an hour and talk'd with several of them, sometimes squattingdown with the groups. 

LEFT-HAND WRITING BY SOLDIERS

_April 30, 1866_. --Here is a single significant fact, from which onemay judge of the character of the American soldiers in this justconcluded war: A gentleman in New York city, a while since, took itinto his head to collect specimens of writing from soldiers who hadlost their right hands in battle, and afterwards learn'd to use theleft. He gave public notice of his desire, and offer'd prizes for thebest of these specimens. Pretty soon they began to come in, and by thetime specified for awarding the prizes three hundred samples of suchleft-hand writing by maim'd soldiers had arrived. 

I have just been looking over some of this writing. A great many ofthe specimens are written in a beautiful manner. All are good. Thewriting in nearly all cases slants backward instead of forward. Onepiece of writing, from a soldier who had lost both arms, was made byholding the pen in his mouth. 

CENTRAL VIRGINIA IN '64

Culpepper, where I am stopping, looks like a place of two or threethousand inhabitants. Must be one of the pleasantest towns inVirginia. Even now, dilapidated fences, all broken down, windowsout, it has the remains of much beauty. I am standing on an eminenceoverlooking the town, though within its limits. To the west the longBlue Mountain range is very plain, looks quite near, though from 30to 50 miles distant, with some gray splashes of snow yet visible. Theshow is varied and fascinating. I see a great eagle up there inthe air sailing with pois'd wings, quite low. Squads of red-leggedsoldiers are drilling; I suppose some of the new men of the Brooklyn14th; they march off presently with muskets on their shoulders. Inanother place, just below me, are some soldiers squaring off logs tobuild a shanty--chopping away, and the noise of the axes soundingsharp. I hear the bellowing, unmusical screech of the mule. I mark thethin blue smoke rising from camp fires. Just below me is a collectionof hospital tents, with a yellow flag elevated on a stick, and movinglanguidly in the breeze. Two discharged men (I know them both)are just leaving. One is so weak he can hardly walk; the other isstronger, and carries his comrade's musket. They move slowly alongthe muddy road toward the depot. The scenery is full of breadth, andspread on the most generous scale (everywhere in Virginia this thoughtfill'd me. ) The sights, the scenes, the groups, have been varied andpicturesque here beyond description, and remain so. 

I heard the men return in force the other night--heard the shouting, and got up and went out to hear what was the matter. That night sceneof so many hundred tramping steadily by, through the mud (some bigflaring torches of pine knots, ) I shall never forget. I like to go tothe paymaster's tent, and watch the men getting paid off. Some havefurloughs, and start at once for home, sometimes amid great chaffingand blarneying. There is every day the sound of the wood-choppingaxe, and the plentiful sight of negroes, crows, and mud. I note largedroves and pens of cattle. The teamsters have camps of their own, andI go often among them. The officers occasionally invite me to dinneror supper at headquarters. The fare is plain, but you get somethinggood to drink, and plenty of it. Gen. Meade is absent; Sedgwick is incommand. 

PAYING THE 1ST U. S. C. T. 

One of my war time reminiscences comprises the quiet side scene ofa visit I made to the First Regiment U. S. Color'd Troops, at theirencampment, and on the occasion of their first paying off, July 11, 1863. Though there is now no difference of opinion worth mentioning, there was a powerful opposition to enlisting blacks during the earlieryears of the secession war. Even then, however, they had theirchampions. "That the color'd race, " said a good authority, "is capableof military training and efficiency, is demonstrated by the testimonyof numberless witnesses, and by the eagerness display'd in theraising, organizing, and drilling of African troops. Few whiteregiments make a better appearance on parade than the First and SecondLouisiana Native Guards. The same remark is true of other color'dregiments. At Milliken's Bend, at Vicksburg, at Port Hudson, on MorrisIsland, and wherever tested, they have exhibited determin'd bravery, and compell'd the plaudits alike of the thoughtful and thoughtlesssoldiery. During the siege of Port Hudson the question was often ask'dthose who beheld their resolute charges, how the 'niggers' behav'dunder fire; and without exception the answer was complimentary tothem. 'O, tip-top!' 'first-rate!' 'bully!' were the usual replies. ButI did not start out to argue the case--only to give my reminiscenceliterally, as jotted on the spot at the time. "

I write this on Mason's (otherwise Analostan) island, under the fineshade trees of an old white stucco house, with big rooms; the whitestucco house, originally a fine country seat (tradition says thefamous Virginia Mason, author of the Fugitive Slave Law, was bornhere. ) I reach'd the spot from my Washington quarters by ambulance upPennsylvania avenue, through Georgetown, across the Aqueduct bridge, and around through a cut and winding road, with rocks and many badgullies not lacking. After reaching the island, we get presently inthe midst of the camp of the 1st Regiment U. S. C. T. The tents lookclean and good; indeed, altogether, in locality especially, thepleasantest camp I have yet seen. The spot is umbrageous, high anddry, with distant sounds of the city, and the puffing steamers of thePotomac, up to Georgetown and back again. Birds are singing in thetrees, the warmth is endurable here in this moist shade, with thefragrance and freshness. A hundred rods across is Georgetown. Theriver between is swell'd and muddy from the late rains up country. So quiet here, yet full of vitality, all around in the far distanceglimpses, as I sweep my eye, of hills, verdure-clad, and withplenteous trees; right where I sit, locust, sassafras, spice, and manyother trees, a few with huge parasitic vines; just at hand the bankssloping to the river, wild with beautiful, free vegetation, superbweeds, better, in their natural growth and forms, than the bestgarden. Lots of luxuriant grape vines and trumpet flowers; the riverflowing far down in the distance. 

Now the paying is to begin. The Major (paymaster) with his clerk seatthemselves at a table--the rolls are before them--the money box isopen'd--there are packages of five, ten, twenty-five cent pieces. Here comes the first Company (B), some 82 men, all blacks. Certes, wecannot find fault with the appearance of this crowd--negroes thoughthey be. They are manly enough, bright enough, look as if they had thesoldier-stuff in them, look hardy, patient, many of them real handsomeyoung fellows. The paying, I say, has begun. The men are march'd up inclose proximity. The clerk calls off name after name, and each walksup, receives his money, and passes along out of the way. It is a realstudy, both to see them come close, and to see them pass away, standcounting their cash--(nearly all of this company get ten dollarsand three cents each. ) The clerk calls George Washington. Thatdistinguish'd personage steps from the ranks, in the shape of a veryblack man, good sized and shaped, and aged about 30, with a militarymustache; he takes his "ten three, " and goes off evidently wellpleas'd. (There are about a dozen Washingtons in the company. Let ushope they will do honor to the name. ) At the table, how quickly theMajor handles the bills, counts without trouble, everything going onsmoothly and quickly. The regiment numbers to-day about 1, 000 men(including 20 officers, the only whites. )

Now another company. These get $5. 36 each. The men look well. They, too, have great names; besides the Washingtons aforesaid, John QuincyAdams, Daniel Webster, Calhoun, James Madison, Alfred Tennyson, JohnBrown, Benj. G. Tucker, Horace Greeley, &c. The men step off aside, count their money with a pleas'd, half-puzzled look. Occasionally, butnot often, there are some thoroughly African physiognomies, very blackin color, large, protruding lips, low forehead, &c. But I have to saythat I do not see one utterly revolting face. 

Then another company, each man of this getting $10. 03 also. The payproceeds very rapidly (the calculation, roll-signing, &c. , having beenarranged beforehand. ) Then some trouble. One company, by the rigidrules of official computation, gets only 23 cents each man. Thecompany (K) is indignant, and after two or three are paid, the refusalto take the paltry sum is universal, and the company marches off toquarters unpaid. 

Another company (I) gets only 70 cents. The sullen, lowering, disappointed look is general. Half refuse it in this case. Company G, in full dress, with brass scales on shoulders, look'd, perhaps, aswell as any of the companies--the men had an unusually alert look. These, then, are the black troops, --or the beginning of them. Well, no one can see them, even under these circumstances--their militarycareer in its novitiate--without feeling well pleas'd with them. 

As we enter'd the island, we saw scores at a little distance, bathing, washing their clothes, &c. The officers, as far as looks go, have afine appearance, have good faces, and the air military. Altogether itis a significant show, and brings up some "abolition" thoughts. Thescene, the porch of an Old Virginia slave-owner's house, the Potomacrippling near, the Capitol just down three or four miles there, seenthrough the pleasant blue haze of this July day. 

After a couple of hours I get tired, and go off for a ramble. I writethese concluding lines on a rock, under the shade of a tree on thebanks of the island. It is solitary here, the birds singing, thesluggish muddy-yellow waters pouring down from the late rains of theupper Potomac; the green heights on the south side of the river beforeme. The single cannon from a neighboring fort has just been fired, tosignal high noon. I have walk'd all around Analostan, enjoying itsluxuriant wildness, and stopt in this solitary spot. A water snakewriggles down the bank, disturb'd, into the water. The bank near by isfringed with a dense growth of shrubbery, vines, &c. 

FIVE THOUSAND POEMS

There have been collected in a cluster nearly five thousand big andlittle American poems--all that diligent and long-continued researchcould lay hands on! The author of 'Old Grimes is Dead' commencedit, more than fifty years ago; then the cluster was pass'd on andaccumulated by C. F. Harris; then further pass'd on and added to bythe late Senator Anthony, from whom the whole collection has beenbequeath'd to Brown University. A catalogue (such as it is) has beenmade and publish'd of these five thousand poems--and is probably themost curious and suggestive part of the whole affair. At any rate ithas led me to some abstract reflection like the following. 

I should like, for myself, to put on record my devout acknowledgmentnot only of the great masterpieces of the past, but of the benefit of_all_ poets, past and present, and of _all_ poetic utterance--in itsentirety the dominant moral factor of humanity's progress. In view ofthat progress, and of evolution, the religious and esthetic elements, the distinctive and most important of any, seem to me more indebtedto poetry than to all other means and influences combined. In a veryprofound sense _religion is the poetry of humanity_. Then the pointsof union and rapport among all the poems and poets of the world, however wide their separations of time and place and theme, aremuch more numerous and weighty than the points of contrast. Withoutrelation as they may seem at first sight, the whole earth's poets andpoetry--_en masse_--the Oriental, the Greek, and what there is ofRoman--the oldest myths--the interminable ballad-romances of theMiddle Ages--the hymns and psalms of worship--the epics, plays, swarmsof lyrics of the British Islands, or the Teutonic old or new--ormodern French--or what there is in America, Bryant's, for instance, or Whittier's or Longfellow's--the verse of all tongues and ages, all forms, all subjects, from primitive times to our own dayinclusive--really combine in one aggregate and electric globe oruniverse, with all its numberless parts and radiations held togetherby a common centre or verteber. To repeat it, all poetry thus has (tothe point of view comprehensive enough) more features of resemblancethan difference, and becomes essentially, like the planetary globeitself, compact and orbic and whole. Nature seems to sow countlessseeds--makes incessant crude attempts--thankful to get now and then, even at rare and long intervals, something approximately good. 

THE OLD BOWERY

_A Reminiscence of New York Plays and Acting Fifty Years Ago_

In an article not long since, "Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, " in "TheNineteenth Century, " after describing the bitter regretfulness tomankind from the loss of those first-class poems, temples, pictures, gone and vanish'd from any record of men, the writer (Fleeming Jenkin)continues:

 If this be our feeling as to the more durable works of art, what shall we say of those triumphs which, by their very nature, la no longer than the action which creates them--the triumphs of the orator, the singer, or the actor? There is an anodyne in the words, "must be so, " "inevitable, " and there is even some absurdity in longing for the impossible. This anodyne and our sense of humor temper the unhappiness we feel when, after hearing some great performance, we leave the theatre and think, "Well, this great thing has been, and all that is now left of it is the feeble print up my brain, the little thrill which memory will send along my nerves, mine and my neighbors; as we live longer the print and thrill must be feebler, and when we pass away the impress of the great artist will vanish from the world. " The regret that a great art should in its nature be transitory, explains the lively interest which many feel in reading anecdotes or descriptions of a great actor. 

All this is emphatically my own feeling and reminiscence about thebest dramatic and lyric artists I have seen in bygone days--forinstance, Marietta Alboni, the elder Booth, Forrest, the tenorBettini, the baritone Badiali, "old man Clarke"--(I could writea whole paper on the latter's peerless rendering of the Ghost in"Hamlet" at the Park, when I was a young fellow)--an actor namedRanger, who appear'd in America forty years ago in _genre_ characters;Henry Placide, and many others. But I will make a few memoranda atleast of the best one I knew. 

For the elderly New Yorker of to-day, perhaps, nothing were morelikely to start up memories of his early manhood than the mention ofthe Bowery and the elder Booth, At the date given, the more stylishand select theatre (prices, 50 cents pit, $1 boxes) was "The Park, "a large and well-appointed house on Park Row, opposite the presentPost-office. English opera and the old comedies were often given incapital style; the principal foreign stars appear'd here, with Italianopera at wide intervals. The Park held a large part in my boyhood'sand young manhood's life. Here I heard the English actor, Anderson, in"Charles de Moor, " and in the fine part of "Gisippus. " Here I heardFanny Kemble, Charlotte Cushman, the Seguins, Daddy Rice, Hackettas Falstaff, Nimrod Wildfire, Rip Van Winkle, and in his Yankeecharacters. (See pages 19, 20, "Specimen Days. ") It was here (someyears later than the date in the headline) I also heard Mario manytimes, and at his best. In such parts as Gennaro, in "LucreziaBorgia, " he was inimitable--the sweetest of voices, a pure tenor, ofconsiderable compass and respectable power. His wife, Grisi, was withhim, no longer first-class or young--a fine Norma, though, to thelast. 

Perhaps my dearest amusement reminiscences are those musical ones. Idoubt if ever the senses and emotions of the future will be thrill'das were the auditors of a generation ago by the deep passion ofAlboni's contralto (at the Broadway Theatre, south side, near Pearlstreet)--or by the trumpet notes of Badiali's baritone, or Bettini'spensive and incomparable tenor in Fernando in "Favorita, " or Marini'sbass in "Faliero, " among the Havana troupe, Castle Garden. 

But getting back more specifically to the date and theme I startedfrom--the heavy tragedy business prevail'd more decidedly at theBowery Theatre, where Booth and Forrest were frequently to be heard. Though Booth _pere, _ then in his prime, ranging in age from 40 to 44years (he was born in 1796, ) was the loyal child and continuer of thetraditions of orthodox English play-acting, he stood out "himselfalone" in many respects beyond any of his kind on record, and witheffects and ways that broke through all rules and all traditions. Hehas been well describ'd as an actor "whose instant and tremendousconcentration of passion in his delineations overwhelm'd his audience, and wrought into it such enthusiasm that it partook of the fever ofinspiration surging through his own veins. " He seems to have beenof beautiful private character, very honorable, affectionate, good-natured, no arrogance, glad to give the other actors the bestchances. He knew all stage points thoroughly, and curiously ignoredthe mere dignities. I once talk'd with a man who had seen him do theSecond Actor in the mock play to Charles Kean's Hamlet in Baltimore. He was a marvellous linguist. He play'd Shylock once in London, giving the dialogue in Hebrew, and in New Orleans Oreste (Racine's"Andromaque") in French. One trait of his habits, I have heard, wasstrict vegetarianism. He was exceptionally kind to the brute creation. Every once in a while he would make a break for solitude or wildfreedom, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for days. (Heillustrated Plato's rule that to the forming an artist of the veryhighest rank a dash of insanity or what the world calls insanity isindispensable. ) He was a small-sized man--yet sharp observers noticedthat however crowded the stage might be in certain scenes, Boothnever seem'd overtopt or hidden. He was singularly spontaneous andfluctuating; in the same part each rendering differ'd from any andall others. He had no stereotyped positions and made no arbitraryrequirements on his fellow-performers. 

As is well known to old play-goers, Booth's most effective part wasRichard III. Either that, or lago, or Shylock, or Pescara in "TheApostate, " was sure to draw a crowded house. (Remember heavypieces were much more in demand those days than now. ) He was alsounapproachably grand in Sir Giles Overreach, in "A New Way to Pay OldDebts, " and the principal character in "The Iron Chest. "

In any portraiture of Booth, those years, the Bowery Theatre, with itsleading lights, and the lessee and manager, Thomas Hamblin, cannot beleft out. It was at the Bowery I first saw Edwin Forrest (the play wasJohn Howard Payne's "Brutus, or the Fall of Tarquin, " and it affectedme for weeks; or rather I might say permanently filter'd into mywhole nature, ) then in the zenith of his fame and ability. Sometimes(perhaps a veteran's benefit night, ) the Bowery would group togetherfive or six of the first-class actors of those days--Booth, Forrest, Cooper, Hamblin, and John R. Scott, for instance. At that time andhere George Jones ("Count Joannes") was a young, handsome actor, andquite a favorite. I remember seeing him in the title role in "JuliusCaesar, " and a capital performance it was. 

To return specially to the manager. Thomas Hamblin made a first-ratefoil to Booth, and was frequently cast with him. He had a large, shapely, imposing presence, and dark and flashing eyes. I rememberwell his rendering of the main role in Maturin's "Bertram, or theCastle of St. Aldobrand. " But I thought Tom Hamblin's best acting wasin the comparatively minor part of Faulconbridge in "King John"--hehimself evidently revell'd in the part, and took away the house'sapplause from young Kean (the King) and Ellen Tree (Constance, ) andeverybody else on the stage--some time afterward at the Park. Some ofthe Bowery actresses were remarkably good. I remember Mrs. Pritchardin "Tour de Nesle, " and Mrs. McClure in "Fatal Curiosity, " and asMillwood in "George Barnwell. " (I wonder what old fellow reading theselines will recall the fine comedietta of "The Youth That Never Saw aWoman, " and the jolly acting in it of Mrs. Herring and old Gates. )

The Bowery, now and then, was the place, too, for spectacular pieces, such as "The Last Days of Pompeii, " "The Lion-Doom'd" and the yetundying "Mazeppa. " At one time "Jonathan Bradford, or the Murder atthe Roadside Inn, "had a long and crowded run; John Sefton and hisbrother William acted in it. I remember well the Frenchwoman Celeste, a splendid pantomimist, and her emotional "Wept of the Wishton-Wish. "But certainly the main "reason for being" of the Bowery Theatrethose years was to furnish the public with Forrest's and Booth'sperformances--the latter having a popularity and circles ofenthusiastic admirers and critics fully equal to the former--thoughpeople were divided as always. For some reason or other, neitherForrest nor Booth would accept engagements at the more fashionabletheatre, the Park. And it is a curious reminiscence, but a true one, that both these great actors and their performances were taboo'd by"polite society" in New York and Boston at the time--probably as beingtoo robustuous. But no such scruples affected the Bowery. 

Recalling from that period the occasion of either Forrest or Booth, any good night at the old Bowery, pack'd from ceiling to pit withits audience mainly of alert, well-dress'd, full-blooded young andmiddle-aged men, the best average of American-born mechanics--theemotional nature of the whole mass arous'd by the power and magnetismof as mighty mimes as ever trod the stage--the whole crowdedauditorium, and what seeth'd in it, and flush'd from its faces andeyes, to me as much a part of the show as any--bursting forth inone of those long-kept-up tempests of hand-clapping peculiar to theBowery--no dainty kid-glove business, but electric force and musclefrom perhaps 2, 000 full-sinew'd men--(the inimitable and chromatictempest of one of those ovations to Edwin Forrest, welcoming him backafter an absence, comes up to me this moment)--Such sounds and scenesas here resumed will surely afford to many old New Yorkers somefruitful recollections. 

I can yet remember (for I always scann'd an audience as rigidly asa play) the faces of the leading authors, poets, editors, of thosetimes--Fenimore Cooper, Bryant, Paulding, Irving, Charles King, Watson Webb, N. P. Willis, Hoffman, Halleck, Mumford, Morris, Leggett, L. G. Clarke, R. A. Locke and others, occasionally peering from thefirst tier boxes; and even the great National Eminences, PresidentsAdams, Jackson, Van Buren and Tyler, all made short visits there ontheir Eastern tours. 

Awhile after 1840 the character of the Bowery as hitherto describedcompletely changed. Cheap prices and vulgar programmes came in. Peoplewho of after years saw the pandemonium of the pit and the doingson the boards must not gauge by them the times and characters I amdescribing. Not but what there was more or less rankness in the crowdeven then. For types of sectional New York those days--the streetsEast of the Bowery, that intersect Division, Grand, and up to Thirdavenue--types that never found their Dickens, or Hogarth, or Balzac, and have pass'd away unportraitured--the young ship-builders, cartmen, butchers, firemen (the old-time "soap-lock" or exaggerated "Mose" or"Sikesey, " of Chanfrau's plays, ) they, too, were always to be seen inthese audiences, racy of the East river and the Dry Dock. Slang, wit, occasional shirt sleeves, and a picturesque freedom of looks andmanners, with a rude good-nature and restless movement, were generallynoticeable. Yet there never were audiences that paid a good actor oran interesting play the compliment of more sustain'd attention orquicker rapport. Then at times came the exceptionally decorous andintellectual congregations I have hinted it; for the Bowery reallyfurnish'd plays and players you could get nowhere else. Notably, Boothalways drew the best hearers; and to a specimen of his acting I willnow attend in some detail. 

I happen'd to see what has been reckon'd by experts one of the mostmarvellous pieces of histrionism ever known. It must have been about1834 or '35. A favorite comedian and actress at the Bowery, ThomasFlynn and his wife, were to have a joint benefit, and, securing Boothfor Richard, advertised the fact many days beforehand. The housefill'd early from top to bottom. There was some uneasiness behind thescenes, for the afternoon arrived, and Booth had not come from downin Maryland, where he lived. However, a few minutes before ringing-uptime he made his appearance in lively condition. 

After a one-act farce over, as contrast and prelude, the curtainrising for the tragedy, I can, from my good seat in the pit, prettywell front, see again Booth's quiet entrance from the side, as, withhead bent, he slowly and in silence, (amid the tempest of boisteroushand-clapping, ) walks down the stage to the footlights with thatpeculiar and abstracted gesture, musingly kicking his sword, which heholds off from him by its sash. Though fifty years have pass'd sincethen, I can hear the clank, and feel the perfect following hush ofperhaps three thousand people waiting. (I never saw an actor whocould make more of the said hush or wait, and hold the audience inan indescribable, half-delicious, half-irritating suspense. ) And sothroughout the entire play, all parts, voice, atmosphere, magnetism, from

 "Now is the winter of our discontent, "

to the closing death fight with Richmond, were of the finest andgrandest. The latter character was play'd by a stalwart young fellownamed Ingersoll. Indeed, all the renderings were wonderfully good. But the great spell cast upon the mass of hearers came from Booth. Especially was the dream scene very impressive. A shudder went throughevery nervous system in the audience; it certainly did through mine. 

Without question Booth was royal heir and legitimate representative ofthe Garrick-Kemble-Siddons dramatic traditions; but he vitalized andgave an unnamable _race_ to those traditions with his own electricpersonal idiosyncrasy. (As in all art-utterance it was the subtle andpowerful something _special to the individual_ that really conquer'd. )

To me, too, Booth stands for much else besides theatricals. I considerthat my seeing the man those years glimps'd for me, beyond all else, that inner spirit and form--the unquestionable charm and vivacity, butintrinsic sophistication and artificiality--crystallizing rapidly uponthe English stage and literature at and after Shakspere's time, andcoming on accumulatively through the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies to the beginning, fifty or forty years ago, of thosedisintegrating, decomposing processes now authoritatively going on. Yes; although Booth must be class'd in that antique, almost extinctschool, inflated, stagy, rendering Shakspere (perhaps inevitably, appropriately) from the growth of arbitrary and often cockneyconventions, his genius was to me one of the grandest revelations ofmy life, a lesson of artistic expression. The words fire, energy, _abandon_, found in him unprecedented meanings. I never heard aspeaker or actor who could give such a sting to hauteur or the taunt. I never heard from any other the charm of unswervingly perfectvocalization without trenching at all on mere melody, the province ofmusic. 

So much for a Thespian temple of New York fifty years since, where"sceptred tragedy went trailing by" under the gaze of the Dry Dockyouth, and both players and auditors were of a character and like weshall never see again. And so much for the grandest histrion of moderntimes, as near as I can deliberately judge (and the phrenologists putmy "caution" at 7)--grander, I believe, than Kean in the expressionof electric passion, the prime eligibility of the tragic artist. For though those brilliant years had many fine and even magnificentactors, undoubtedly at Booth's death (in 1852) went the last and byfar the noblest Roman of them all. 

NOTES TO LATE ENGLISH BOOKS

PREFACE TO THE READER IN THE BRITISH ISLANDS--"_Specimen Days inAmerica"

London Edition, June 1887_ If you will only take the following pages, as you do some long and gossippy letter written for you by a relativeor friend travelling through distant scenes and incidents and jottingthem down lazily and informally, but ever veraciously (with occasionaldiversion of critical thought about sombody or something, ) it mightremove all formal or literary impediments at once, and bring you andme closer together in the spirt in which the jottings were collated tobe read. You have had, and have, plenty of public events and facts andgeneral statistics of America;--in the following book is a commonindividual New World _private life_, its birth and growth, itsstruggles for a living, its goings and comings and observations (orrepresentative portions of them) amid the United States of America thelast thirty or forty years, with their varied war and peace, theirlocal coloring, the unavoidable egotism, and the lights and shades andsights and joys and pains and sympathies common to humanity. Furtherintroductory light may be found in the paragraph, "A Happy Hour'sCommand, " and the bottom note belonging to it at the beginning of thebook. I have said in the text that if I were required to give goodreason-for-being of "Specimen Days, " I should be unable to do so. Letme fondly hope that it has at least the reason and excuse of suchoff-hand gossippy letter as just alluded to, portraying Americanlife-sights and incidents as they actually occurred--theirpresentation, making additions as far as it goes, to the simpleexperience and association of your soul, from a comrade soul;--andthat also, in the volume, as below any page of mine, anywhere, everremains, for seen or unseen basis-phrase, GOOD-WILL BETWEEN THE COMMONPEOPLE OF ALL NATIONS. 

ADDITIONAL NOTE, 1887

_To English Edition "Specimen Days"_

As I write these lines I still continue living in Camden, New Jersey, America. Coming this way from Washington city, on my road to thesea-shore (and a temporary rest, as I supposed) in the early summerof 1873, I broke down disabled, and have dwelt here, as my centralresidence, all the time since--almost 14 years. In the preceding pagesI have described how, during those years, I partially recuperated (in1876) from my worst paralysis by going down to Timber creek, livingclose to Nature, and domiciling with my dear friends George and SusanStafford. From 1877 or '8 to '83 or '4 I was well enough to travelaround, considerably--journey'd westward to Kansas, leisurelyexploring the Prairies, and on to Denver and the Rocky Mountains;another time north to Canada, where I spent most of the summer withmy friend Dr. Bucke, and jaunted along the great lakes, and the St. Lawrence and Saguenay rivers; another time to Boston, to properlyprint the final edition of my poems (I was there over two months, andhad a "good time. ") I have so brought out the completed "Leavesof Grass" during this period; also "Specimen Days, " of which theforegoing is a transcript; collected and re-edited the "DemocraticVistas" cluster (see companion volume to the present)--commemoratedAbraham Lincoln's death, on the successive anniversaries of itsoccurrence, by delivering my lecture on it ten or twelve times; and"put in, " through many a month and season, the aimless and resultlessways of most human lives. 

Thus the last 14 years have pass'd. At present (end-days of March, 1887--I am nigh entering my 69th year) I find myself continuing onhere, quite dilapidated and even wreck'd bodily from the paralysis, &c. --but in _good heart_ (to use a Long Island country phrase, ) andwith about the same mentality as ever. The worst of it is, I havebeen growing feebler quite rapidly for a year, and now can't walkaround--hardly from one room to the next. I am forced to stay in-doorsand in my big chair nearly all the time. We have had a sharp, drearywinter too, and it has pinch'd me. I am alone most of the time; everyweek, indeed almost every day, write some--reminiscences, essays, sketches, for the magazines; and read, or rather I should say dawdleover books and papers a good deal--spend half the day at that. 

Nor can I finish this note without putting on record--wafting over seafrom hence--my deepest thanks to certain friends and helpers (I wouldspecify them all and each by name, but imperative reasons, outside ofmy own wishes, forbid, ) in the British Islands, as well as in America. Dear, even in the abstract, is such flattering unction always no doubtto the soul! Nigher still, if possible, I myself have been, andam to-day indebted to such help for my very sustenance, clothing, shelter, and continuity. And I would not go to the grave withoutbriefly, but plainly, as I here do, acknowledging--may I not say evenglorying in it?

PREFACE TO "DEMOCRATIC VISTAS" WITH OTHER PAPERS--_English Edition_

Mainly I think I should base the request to weigh the following pageson the assumption that they present, however indirectly, some views ofthe West and Modern, or of a distinctly western and modern (American)tendency, about certain matters. Then, too, the pages include (byattempting to illustrate it, ) a theory herein immediately mentioned. For another and different point of the issue, the Enlightenment, Democracy and Fair-show of the bulk, the common people of America(from sources representing not only the British Islands, but all theworld, ) means, at least, eligibility to Enlightenment, Democracy andFair-show for the bulk, the common people of all civilized nations. 

That positively "the dry land has appeared, " at any rate, is animportant fact. 

America is really the great test or trial case for all the problemsand promises and speculations of humanity, and of the past andpresent. 

I say, too, we[41] are not to look so much to changes, ameliorations, and adaptations in Politics as to those of Literature and (thence)domestic Sociology. I have accordingly in the following melangeintroduced many themes besides political ones. 

Several of the pieces are ostensibly in explanation of my ownwritings; but in that very process they best include and set forththeir side of principles and generalities pressing vehemently forconsideration our age. 

Upon the whole, it is on the atmosphere they are born in, and, (Ihope) give out, more than any specific piece or trait, I would care torest. 

I think Literature--a new, superb, democratic literature--is to bethe medicine and lever, and (with Art) the chief influence in moderncivilization. I have myself not so much made a dead set at thistheory, or attempted to present it directly, as admitted it to colorand sometimes dominate what I had to say. In both Europe and Americawe have serried phalanxes who promulge and defend the political claims:I go for an equal force to uphold the other. 

WALT WHITMAN, CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, _April, 1888_. 

Note:

[41] We who, in many departments, ways, make _the building up of themasses, _ by _building up grand individuals_, our shibboleth: and inbrief that is the marrow of this book. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Glad am I to give--were anything better lacking--even the most briefand shorn testimony of Abraham Lincoln. Everything I heard about himauthentically, and every time I saw him (and it was my fortune through1862 to '65 to see, or pass a word with, or watch him, personally, perhaps twenty or thirty times, ) added to and anneal'd my respect andlove at the moment. And as I dwell on what I myself heard or saw ofthe mighty Westerner, and blend it with the history and literature ofmy age, and of what I can get of all ages, and conclude it withhis death, it seems like some tragic play, superior to all else Iknow--vaster and fierier and more convulsionary, for this America ofours, than Eschylus or Shakspere ever drew for Athens or for England. And then the Moral permeating, underlying all! the Lesson that noneso remote--none so illiterate--no age, no class--but may directly orindirectly read!

Abraham Lincoln's was really one of those characters, the best ofwhich is the result of long trains of cause and effect--needing acertain spaciousness of time, and perhaps even remoteness, to properlyenclose them--having unequal'd influence on the shaping of thisRepublic (and therefore the world) as to-day, and then far moreimportant in the future. Thus the time has by no means yet come for athorough measurement of him. Nevertheless, we who live in his era--whohave seen him, and heard him, face to face, and are in the midst of, or just parting from, the strong and strange events which he and wehave had to do with--can in some respects bear valuable, perhapsindispensable testimony concerning him. 

I should first like to give a very fair and characteristic likeness ofLincoln, as I saw him and watch'd him one afternoon in Washington, fornearly half an hour, not long before his death. It was as he stood onthe balcony of the National Hotel, Pennsylvania avenue, making a shortspeech to the crowd in front, on the occasion either of a set of newcolors presented to a famous Illinois regiment, or of the daringcapture, by the Western men, of some flags from "the enemy, " (whichlatter phrase, by the by, was not used by him at all in his remarks. )How the picture happen'd to be made I do not know, but I bought it afew days afterward in Washington, and it was endors'd by every oneto whom I show'd it. Though hundreds of portraits have been made, bypainters and photographers, (many to pass on, by copies, to futuretimes, ) I have never seen one yet that in my opinion deserv'd to becalled a perfectly _good likeness_; nor do I believe there is reallysuch a one in existence. May I not say too, that, as there is noentirely competent and emblematic likeness of Abraham Lincoln inpicture or statue, there is not--perhaps cannot be--any fullyappropriate literary statement or summing-up of him yet in existence?

The best way to estimate the value of Lincoln is to think what thecondition of America would be to-day, if he had never lived--neverbeen President. His nomination and first election were mainlyaccidents, experiments. Severely view'd, one cannot think very muchof American Political Parties, from the beginning, after theRevolutionary War, down to the present time. Doubtless, while theyhave had their uses--have been and are "the grass on which the cowfeeds"--and indispensable economies of growth--it is undeniable thatunder flippant names they have merely identified temporary passions, or freaks, or sometimes prejudice, ignorance, or hatred. The onlything like a great and worthy idea vitalizing a party, and making itheroic, was the enthusiasm in '64 for re-electing Abraham Lincoln, andthe reason behind that enthusiasm. 

How does this man compare with the acknowledg'd "Father of hiscountry"? Washington was model'd on the best Saxon, and Franklin--ofthe age of the Stuarts (rooted in the Elizabethan period)--wasessentially a noble Englishman, and just the kind needed for theoccasions and the times of 1776-'83. Lincoln, underneath hispracticality, was far less European, was quite thoroughly Western, original, essentially non-conventional, and had a certain sort ofout-door or prairie stamp. One of the best of the late commentators onShakspere, (Professor Dowden, ) makes the height and aggregate of hisquality as a poet to be, that he thoroughly blended the ideal withthe practical or realistic. If this be so, I should say that whatShakspere did in poetic expression, Abraham Lincoln essentially did inhis personal and official life. I should say the invisible foundationsand vertebra of his character, more than any man's in history, weremystical, abstract, moral and spiritual--while upon all of them wasbuilt, and out of all of them radiated, under the control of theaverage of circumstances, what the vulgar call _horse-sense_, anda life often bent by temporary but most urgent materialistic andpolitical reasons. 

He seems to have been a man of indomitable firmness (even obstinacy)on rare occasions, involving great points; but he was generally veryeasy, flexible, tolerant, almost slouchy, respecting minor matters. Inote that even those reports and anecdotes intended to level himdown, all leave the tinge of a favorable impression of him. As tohis religious nature, it seems to me to have certainly been of theamplest, deepest-rooted, loftiest kind. 

Already a new generation begins to tread the stage, since the personsand events of the secession war. I have more than once fancied tomyself the time when the present century has closed, and a new oneopen'd, and the men and deeds of that contest have become somewhatvague and mythical-fancied perhaps in some great Western city, orgroup collected together, or public festival, where the days of old, of 1863, and '4 and '5 are discuss'd--some ancient soldier sittingin the background as the talk goes on, and betraying himself by hisemotion and moist eyes--like the journeying Ithacan at the banquet ofKing Alcinoiis, when the bard sings the contending warriors and theirbattles on the plains of Troy:

 "So from the sluices of Ulysses' eyes Fast fell the tears, and sighs succeeded sighs. "

I have fancied, I say, some such venerable relic of this time of ours, preserv'd to the next or still the next generation of America. I havefancied, on such occasion, the young men gathering around; the awe, the eager questions: "What! have you seen Abraham Lincoln--and heardhim speak--and touch'd his hand? Have you, with your own eyes, look'don Grant, and Lee, and Sherman?"

Dear to Democracy, to the very last! And among the paradoxes generatedby America, not the least curious was that spectacle of all the kingsand queens and emperors of the earth, many from remote distances, sending tributes of condolence and sorrow in memory of one rais'dthrough the commonest average of life--a rail-splitter andflat-boatman!

Consider'd from contemporary points of view--who knows what the futuremay decide?--and from the points of view of current Democracy and TheUnion, (the only thing like passion or infatuation in the man was thepassion for the Union of These States, ) Abraham Lincoln seems to methe grandest figure yet, on all the crowded canvas of the NineteenthCentury. 

NEW ORLEANS IN 1848

_Walt Whitman gossips of his sojourn here years ago as a newspaperwriter. Notes of his trip up the Mississippi and to New York. _

Among the letters brought this morning (Camden, New Jersey, Jan. 15, 1887, ) by my faithful post-office carrier, J. G. , is one as follows:

"NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 11, '87. --We have been informed that when you wereyounger and less famous than now, you were in New Orleans and perhapshave helped on the _Picayune_. If you have any remembrance of the_Picayune's_ young days, or of journalism in New Orleans of that era, and would put it in writing (verse or prose) for the _Picayune's_fiftieth year edition, Jan. 25, we shall be pleased, " etc. 

In response to which: I went down to New Orleans early in 1848 to workon a daily newspaper, but it was not the _Picayune_, though I sawquite a good deal of the editors of that paper, and knew its personneland ways. But let me indulge my pen in some gossipy recollections ofthat time and place, with extracts from my journal up the Mississippiand across the great lakes to the Hudson. 

Probably the influence most deeply pervading everything at that timethrough the United States, both in physical facts and in sentiment, was the Mexican War, then just ended. Following a brilliant campaign(in which our troops had march'd to the capital city, Mexico, andtaken full possession, ) we were returning after our victory. From thesituation of the country, the city of New Orleans had been our channeland _entrepot_ for everything, going and returning. It had the bestnews and war correspondents; it had the most to say, through itsleading papers, the _Picayune_ and _Delta_ especially, and its voicewas readiest listen'd to; from it "Chapparal" had gone out, and hisarmy and battle letters were copied everywhere, not only in the UnitedStates, but in Europe. Then the social cast and results; no one whohas never seen the society of a city under similar circumstances canunderstand what a strange vivacity and _rattle_ were given throughoutby such a situation. I remember the crowds of soldiers, the gay youngofficers, going or coming, the receipt of important news, the manydiscussions, the returning wounded, and so on. 

I remember very well seeing Gen. Taylor with his staff and otherofficers at the St. Charles Theatre one evening (after talking withthem during the day. ) There was a short play on the stage, but theprincipal performance was of Dr. Colyer's troupe of "Model Artists, "then in the full tide of their popularity. They gave many fine groupsand solo shows. The house was crowded with uniforms and shoulder-straps. Gen. T. Himself, if I remember right, was almost the only officer incivilian clothes; he was a jovial, old, rather stout, plain man, witha wrinkled and dark-yellow face, and, in ways and manners, show'd theleast of conventional ceremony or etiquette I ever saw; he laugh'dunrestrainedly at everything comical. (He had a great personalresemblance to Fenimore Cooper, the novelist, of New York. ) I rememberGen. Pillow and quite a cluster of other militaires also present. 

One of my choice amusements during my stay in New Orleans was goingdown to the old French Market, especially of a Sunday morning. Theshow was a varied and curious one; among the rest, the Indian andnegro hucksters with their wares. For there were always fine specimensof Indians, both men and women, young and old. I remember I nearlyalways on these occasions got a large cup of delicious coffee with abiscuit, for my breakfast, from the immense shining copper kettle of agreat Creole mulatto woman (I believe she weigh'd 230 pounds. ) I neverhave had such coffee since. About nice drinks, anyhow, my recollectionof the "cobblers" (with strawberries and snow on top of the largetumblers, ) and also the exquisite wines, and the perfect and mildFrench brandy, help the regretful reminiscence of my New Orleansexperiences of those days. And what splendid and roomy and leisurelybar-rooms! particularly the grand ones of the St. Charles and St. Louis. Bargains, auctions, appointments, business conferences, &c. , were generally held in the spaces or recesses of these bar-rooms. 

I used to wander a midday hour or two now and then for amusementon the crowded and bustling levees, on the banks of the river. Thediagonally wedg'd-in boats, the stevedores, the piles of cottonand other merchandise, the carts, mules, negroes, etc. , affordednever-ending studies and sights to me. I made acquaintances among thecaptains, boatmen, or other characters, and often had long talkswith them--sometimes finding a real rough diamond among my chanceencounters. Sundays I sometimes went forenoons to the old CatholicCathedral in the French quarter. I used to walk a good deal in thisarrondissement; and I have deeply regretted since that I did notcultivate, while I had such a good opportunity, the chance of betterknowledge of French and Spanish Creole New Orleans people. (I havean idea that there is much and of importance about the Latin racecontributions to American nationality in the South and Southwest thatwill never be put with sympathetic understanding and tact on record. )

Let me say, for better detail, that through several months (1848) Iwork'd on a new daily paper, _The Crescent_; my situation rather apleasant one. My young brother, Jeff, was with me; and he not onlygrew very homesick, but the climate of the place, and especially thewater, seriously disagreed with him. From this and other reasons(although I was quite happily fix'd) I made no very long stay in theSouth. In due time we took passage northward for St. Louis in the"Pride of the West" steamer, which left her wharf just at dusk. Mybrother was unwell, and lay in his berth from the moment we lefttill the next morning; he seem'd to me to be in a fever, and I feltalarm'd. However, the next morning he was all right again, much to myrelief. 

Our voyage up the Mississippi was after the same sort as the voyage, some months before, down it. The shores of this great river are verymonotonous and dull--one continuous and rank flat, with the exceptionof a meagre stretch of bluff, about the neighborhood of Natchez, Memphis, &c. Fortunately we had good weather, and not a great crowd ofpassengers, though the berths were all full. The "Pride" jogg'd alongpretty well, and put us into St. Louis about noon Saturday. Afterlooking around a little I secured passage on the steamer "PrairieBird, " (to leave late in the afternoon, ) bound up the Illinois riverto La Salle, where we were to take canal for Chicago. During the dayI rambled with my brother over a large portion of the town, search'dafter a refectory, and, after much trouble, succeeded in getting somedinner. 

Our "Prairie Bird" started out at dark, and a couple of hours afterthere was quite a rain and blow, which made them haul in along shoreand tie fast. We made but thirty miles the whole night. The boat wasexcessively crowded with passengers, and had withal so much freightthat we could hardly turn around. I slept on the floor, and the nightwas uncomfortable enough. The Illinois river is spotted with littlevillages with big names, Marseilles, Naples, etc. ; its banks are low, and the vegetation excessively rank. Peoria, some distance up, is apleasant town; I went over the place; the country back is all richland, for sale cheap. Three or four miles from P. , land of the firstquality can be bought for $3 or $4 an acre. (I am transcribing from mynotes written at the time. )

Arriving at La Salle Tuesday morning, we went on board a canal-boat, had a detention by sticking on a mud bar, and then jogg'd along ata slow trot, some seventy of us, on a moderate-sized boat. (If theweather hadn't been rather cool, particularly at night, it would havebeen insufferable. ) Illinois is the most splendid agriculturalcountry I ever saw; the land is of surpassing richness; the place parexcellence for farmers. We stopt at various points along the canal, some of them pretty villages. 

It was 10 o'clock A. M. When we got in Chicago, too late for thesteamer; so we went to an excellent public house, the "AmericanTemperance, " and I spent the time that day and till next morning, looking around Chicago. 

At 9 the next forenoon we started on the "Griffith" (on board ofwhich I am now inditing these memoranda, ) up the blue waters of LakeMichigan. I was delighted with the appearance of the towns alongWisconsin. At Milwaukee I went on shore, and walk'd around the place. They say the country back is beautiful and rich. (It seems to me thatif we should ever remove from Long Island, Wisconsin would be theproper place to come to. ) The towns have a remarkable appearanceof good living, without any penury or want. The country is so goodnaturally, and labor is in such demand. 

About 5 o'clock one afternoon I heard the cry of "a woman over-board. "It proved to be a crazy lady, who had become so from the loss of herson a couple of weeks before. The small boat put off, and succeeded inpicking her up, though she had been in the water 15 minutes. She wasdead. Her husband was on board. They went off at the next stoppingplace. While she lay in the water she probably recover'd her reason, as she toss'd up her arms and lifted her face toward the boat. 

_Sunday Morning, June 11_. --We pass'd down Lake Huron yesterday andlast night, and between 4 and 5 o'clock this morning we ran on the"flats, " and have been vainly trying, with the aid of a steam tug anda lumbering lighter, to get clear again. The day is beautiful and thewater clear and calm. Night before last we stopt at Mackinaw, (theisland and town, ) and I went up on the old fort, one of the oldeststations in the Northwest. We expect to get to Buffalo by to-morrow. The tug has fasten'd lines to us, but some have been snapt and theothers have no effect. We seem to be firmly imbedded in the sand. (With the exception of a larger boat and better accommodations, itamounts to about the same thing as a becalmment I underwent on theMontauk voyage, East Long Island, last summer. ) _Later_. --We are offagain--expect to reach Detroit before dinner. 

We did not stop at Detroit. We are now on Lake Erie, jogging along ata good round pace. A couple of hours since we were on the river above. Detroit seem'd to me a pretty place and thrifty. I especially likedthe looks of the Canadian shore opposite and of the little villageof Windsor, and, indeed, all along the banks of the river. From theshrubbery and the neat appearance of some of the cottages, I think itmust have been settled by the French. While I now write we can see alittle distance ahead the scene of the battle between Perry's fleetand the British during the last war with England. The lake looks to mea fine sheet of water. We are having a beautiful day. 

_June 12_. --We stopt last evening at Cleveland, and though it wasdark, I took the opportunity of rambling about the place; went up inthe heart of the city and back to what appear'd to be the courthouse. The streets are unusually wide, and the buildings appear to besubstantial and comfortable. We went down through Main street andfound, some distance along, several squares of ground very prettilyplanted with trees and looking attractive enough. Return'd to the boatby way of the lighthouse on the hill. 

This morning we are making for Buffalo, being, I imagine, a littlemore than half across Lake Erie. The water is rougher than on Michiganor Huron. (On St. Clair it was smooth as glass. ) The day is bright anddry, with a stiff head wind. 

We arriv'd in Buffalo on Monday evening; spent that night and aportion of next day going round the city exploring. Then got in thecars and went to Niagara; went under the falls--saw the whirlpool andall the other sights. 

Tuesday night started for Albany; travel'd all night. From the timedaylight afforded us a view of the country all seem'd very rich andwell cultivated. Every few miles were large towns or villages. 

Wednesday late we arriv'd at Albany. Spent the evening in exploring. There was a political meeting (Hunker) at the capitol, but I pass'dit by. Next morning I started down the Hudson in the "Alida;" arriv'dsafely in New York that evening. 

_From the New Orleans Picayune, Jan. 25, 1887. _

SMALL MEMORANDA

_Thousands lost--here one or two preserv'd_

ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE, _Washington, Aug. 22, 1865_. --As I writethis, about noon, the suite of rooms here is fill'd with Southerners, standing in squads, or streaming in and out, some talking with thePardon Clerk, some waiting to see the Attorney General, othersdiscussing in low tones among themselves. All are mainly anxious abouttheir pardons. The famous 13th exception of the President's AmnestyProclamation of ----, makes it necessary that every secessionist, whose property is worth $20, 000 or over, shall get a special pardon, before he can transact any legal purchase, sale, &c. So hundreds andthousands of such property owners have either sent up here, for thelast two months, or have been, or are now coming personally here, to get their pardons. They are from Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, and every Southern State. Someof their written petitions are very abject. Secession officers of therank of Brigadier General, or higher, also need these special pardons. They also come here. I see streams of the $20, 000 men, (and somewomen, ) every day. I talk now and then with them, and learn much thatis interesting and significant. All the southern women that come (somesplendid specimens, mothers, &c. ) are dress'd in deep black. 

Immense numbers (several thousands) of these pardons have been pass'dupon favorably; the Pardon Warrants (like great deeds) have beenissued from the State Department, on the requisition of this office. But for some reason or other, they nearly all yet lie awaiting thePresident's signature. He seems to be in no hurry about it, but letsthem wait. 

The crowds that come here make a curious study for me. I get along, very sociably, with any of them--as I let them do all the talking;only now and then I have a long confab, or ask a suggestive questionor two. 

If the thing continues as at present, the property and wealth of theSouthern States is going to legally rest, for the future, on thesepardons. Every single one is made out with the condition that thegrantee shall respect the abolition of slavery, and never make anattempt to restore it. 

_Washington, Sept. 8, 9, &c. , 1865_. --The arrivals, swarms, &c. , ofthe $20, 000 men seeking pardons, still continue with increas'd numbersand pertinacity. I yesterday (I am a clerk in the U. S. AttorneyGeneral's office here) made out a long list from Alabama, nearly 200, recommended for pardon by the Provisional Governor. This list, in theshape of a requisition from the Attorney General, goes to the StateDepartment. There the Pardon Warrants are made out, brought back here, and then sent to the President, where they await his signature. He issigning them very freely of late. 

The President, indeed, as at present appears, has fix'd his mind on avery generous and forgiving course toward the return'd secessionists. He will not countenance at all the demand of the extreme Philo-Africanelement of the North, to make the right of negro voting at elections acondition and sine qua non of the reconstruction of the United Statessouth, and of their resumption of co-equality in the Union. 

A GLINT INSIDE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S CABINET APPOINTMENTS. ONE ITEM OFMANY

While it was hanging in suspense who should be appointed Secretary ofthe Interior, (to take the place of Caleb Smith, ) the choice was veryclose between Mr. Harlan and Col. Jesse K. Dubois, of Illinois. Thelatter had many friends. He was competent, he was honest, and he was aman. Mr. Harlan, in the race, finally gain'd the Methodist interest, and got himself to be consider'd as identified with it; and hisappointment was apparently ask'd for by that powerful body. BishopSimpson, of Philadephia, came on and spoke for the selection. ThePresident was much perplex'd. The reasons for appointing Col. Duboiswere very strong, almost insuperable--yet the argument for Mr. Harlan, under the adroit position he had plac'd himself, was heavy. Those whopress'd him adduc'd the magnitude of the Methodists as a body, theirloyalty, more general and genuine than any other sect--that theyrepresented the West, and had a right to be heard--that all or nearlyall the other great denominations had their representatives in theheads of the government--that they as a body and the great sectarianpower of the West, formally ask'd Mr. Harlan's appointment--that hewas of them, having been a Methodist minister--that it would not doto offend them, but was highly necessary to propitiate them. 

Mr. Lincoln thought deeply over the whole matter. He was in more thanusual tribulation on the subject. Let it be enough to say that thoughMr. Harlan finally receiv'd the Secretaryship, Col. Dubois came asnear being appointed as a man could, and not be. The decision wasfinally made one night about 10 o'clock. Bishop Simpson and otherclergymen and leading persons in Mr. Harlan's behalf, had been talkinglong and vehemently with the President. A member of Congress who waspressing Col. Dubois's claims, was in waiting. The President had toldthe Bishop that he would make a decision that evening, and that hethought it unnecessary to be press'd any more on the subject. Thatnight he call'd in the M. C. Above alluded to, and said to him: "TellUncle Jesse that I want to give him this appointment, and yet Icannot. I will do almost anything else in the world for him I am able. I have thought the matter all over, and under the circumstances thinkthe Methodists too good and too great a body to be slighted. They havestood by the government, and help'd us their very best. I have had nobetter friends; and as the case stands, I have decided to appoint Mr. Harlan. "

NOTE TO A FRIEND

_Written on the fly-leaf of a copy of_ Specimen Days, _sent to PeterDoyle, at Washington, June, 1883]

Pete, do you remember--(of course you do--I do well)--those great longjovial walks we had at times for years, (1866-'72) out of Washingtoncity--often moonlight nights--'way to "Good Hope";--or, Sundays, upand down the Potomac shores, one side or the other, sometimes tenmiles at a stretch? Or when you work'd on the horse-cars, and I waitedfor you, coming home late together--or resting and chatting at theMarket, corner 7th street and the Avenue, and eating those nice muskor watermelons? Or during my tedious sickness and first paralysis('73) how you used to come to my solitary garret-room and make up mybed, and enliven me, and chat for an hour or so--or perhaps go out andget the medicines Dr. Drinkard had order'd for me--before you went onduty?... Give my love to dear Mrs. And Mr. Nash, and tell them I havenot forgotten them, and never will. 

W. W. 

WRITTEN IMPROMPTU IN AN ALBUM

_Germantown, Phila. , Dec. 26, '83_. In memory of these merry Christmasdays and nights--to my friends Mr. And Mrs. Williams, Churchie, May, Gurney, and little Aubrey.... A heavy snow-storm blocking upeverything, and keeping us in. But souls, hearts, thoughts, unloos'd. And so--one and all, little and big--hav'n't we had a good time?

W. W. 

THE PLACE GRATITUDE FILLS IN A FINE CHARACTER

_From the Philadelphia Press, Nov. 27, 1884, (Thanksgiving number)_

_Scene_. --A large family supper party, a night or two ago, with voicesand laughter of the young, mellow faces of the old, and a by-and-bypause in the general joviality. "Now, Mr. Whitman, " spoke up one ofthe girls, "what have you to say about Thanksgiving? Won't you giveus a sermon in advance, to sober us down?" The sage nodded smilingly, look'd a moment at the blaze of the great wood fire, ran hisforefinger right and left through the heavy white mustache that mighthave otherwise impeded his voice, and began: "Thanksgiving goesprobably far deeper than you folks suppose. I am not sure but it isthe source of the highest poetry--as in parts of the Bible. Ruskin, indeed, makes the central source of all great art to be praise(gratitude) to the Almighty for life, and the universe with itsobjects and play of action. 

"We Americans devote an official day to it every year; yet I sometimesfear the real article is almost dead or dying in our self-sufficient, independent Republic. Gratitude, anyhow, has never been made halfenough of by the moralists; it is indispensable to a completecharacter, man's or woman's--the disposition to be appreciative, thankful. That is the main matter, the element, inclination--whatgeologists call the _trend_. Of my own life and writings I estimatethe giving thanks part, with what it infers, as essentially the bestitem. I should say the quality of gratitude rounds the whole emotionalnature; I should say love and faith would quite lack vitality withoutit. There are people--shall I call them even religious people, asthings go?--who have no such trend to their disposition. "

LAST OF THE WAR CASES

_Memorandized at the time, Washington, 1865-'66_

[Of reminiscences of the secession war, after the rest is said, I havethought it remains to give a few special words--in some respects atthe time the typical words of all, and most definite-of the samplesof the kill'd and wounded in action, and of soldiers who linger'dafterward, from these wounds, or were laid up by obstinate disease orprostration. The general statistics have been printed already, but canbear to be briefly stated again. There were over 3, 000, 000 men (forall periods of enlistment, large and small) furnish'd to the Unionarmy during the war, New York State furnishing over 500, 000, which wasthe greatest number of any one State. The losses by disease, wounds, kill'd in action, accidents, &c. , were altogether about 600, 000, orapproximating to that number. Over 4, 000, 000 cases were treated in themain and adjudicatory army hospitals. The number sounds strange, butit is true. More than two-thirds of the deaths were from prostrationor disease. To-day there lie buried over 300, 000 soldiers in thevarious National army Cemeteries, more than half of them (and that isreally the most significant and eloquent bequest of the war) mark'd"unknown. " In full mortuary statistics of the war, the greatestdeficiency arises from our not having the rolls, even as far as theywere kept, of most of the Southern military prisons--a gap whichprobably both adds to, and helps conceal, the indescribable horrorsof those places; it is, however, (restricting one vivid point only)certain that over 30, 000 Union soldiers died, largely of actualstarvation, in them. And now, leaving all figures and their "sumtotals, " I feel sure a few genuine memoranda of such things--somecases jotted down '64, '65, and '66--made at the time and on the spot, with all the associations of those scenes and places brought back, will not only go directest to the right spot, but give a clearer andmore actual sight of that period, than anything else. Before I givethe last cases I begin with verbatim extracts from letters home to mymother in Brooklyn, the second year of the war. --W. W. ]

_Washington, Oct. 13, 1863_. --There has been a new lot of wounded andsick arriving for the last three days. The first and second days, longstrings of ambulances with the sick. Yesterday the worst, many withbad and bloody wounds, inevitably long neglected. I thought I wascooler and more used to it, but the sight of some cases brought tearsinto my eyes. I had the luck yesterday, however, to do lots of good. Had provided many nourishing articles for the men for another quarter, but, fortunately, had my stores where I could use them at once forthese new-comers, as they arrived, faint, hungry, fagg'd out fromtheir journey, with soil'd clothes, and all bloody. I distributedthese articles, gave partly to the nurses I knew, or to those incharge. As many as possible I fed myself. Then I found a lot of oystersoup handy, and bought it all at once. 

It is the most pitiful sight, this, when the men are first brought in, from some camp hospital broke up, or a part of the army moving. Thesewho arrived yesterday are cavalry men. Our troops had fought likedevils, but got the worst of it. They were Kilpatrick's cavalry; werein the rear, part of Meade's retreat, and the reb cavalry, knowing theground and taking a favorable opportunity, dash'd in between, cut themoff, and shell'd them terribly. But Kilpatrick turn'd and brought themout mostly. It was last Sunday. (One of the most terrible sights andtasks is of such receptions. )

_Oct. 27, 1863_. --If any of the soldiers I know (or their parents orfolks) should call upon you--as they are often anxious to have myaddress in Brooklyn--you just use them as you know how, and if youhappen to have pot-luck, and feel to ask them to take a bite, don'tbe afraid to do so. I have a friend, Thomas Neat, 2d N. Y. Cavalry, wounded in leg, now home in Jamaica, on furlough; he will probablycall. Then possibly a Mr. Haskell, or some of his folks, from westernNew York: he had a son died here, and I was with the boy a good deal. The old man and his wife have written me and ask'd me my Brooklynaddress; he said he had children in New York, and was occasionallydown there. (When I come home I will show you some of the letters Iget from mothers, sisters, fathers, &c. They will make you cry. )

How the time passes away! To think it is over a year since I lefthome suddenly--and have mostly been down in front since. The year hasvanish'd swiftly, and oh, what scenes I have witness'd during thattime! And the war is not settled yet; and one does not see anythingcertain, or even promising, of a settlement. But I do not lose thesolid feeling, in myself, that the Union triumph is assured, whetherit be sooner or whether it be later, or whatever roundabout way wemay be led there; and I find I don't change that conviction from anyreverses we meet, nor delays, nor blunders. One realizes here inWashington the great labors, even the negative ones, of Lincoln; thatit is a big thing to have just kept the United States from beingthrown down and having its throat cut. I have not waver'd or had anydoubt of the issue, since Gettysburg. 

_8th September, '63_. --Here, now, is a specimen army hospital case:Lorenzo Strong, Co. A, 9th United States Cavalry, shot by a shell lastSunday; right leg amputated on the field. Sent up here Monday night, 14th. Seem'd to be doing pretty well till Wednesday noon, 16th, when he took a turn for the worse, and a strangely rapid and fataltermination ensued. Though I had much to do, I staid and saw all. Itwas a death-picture characteristic of these soldiers' hospitals--the perfect specimen of physique, one of the most magnificent I eversaw--the convulsive spasms and working of muscles, mouth, and throat. There are two good women nurses, one on each side. The doctor comes inand gives him a little chloroform. One of the nurses constantly fanshim, for it is fearfully hot. He asks to be rais'd up, and they puthim in a half-sitting posture. He call'd for "Mark" repeatedly, half-deliriously, all day. Life ebbs, runs now with the speed ofa mill race; his splendid neck, as it lays all open, works still, slightly; his eyes turn back. A religious person coming in offers aprayer, in subdued tones, bent at the foot of the bed; and in thespace of the aisle, a crowd, including two or three doctors, severalstudents, and many soldiers, has silently gather'd. It is very stilland warm, as the struggle goes on, and dwindles, a little more, and alittle more--and then welcome oblivion, painlessness, death. A pause, the crowd drops away, a white bandage is bound around and under thejaw, the propping pillows are removed, the limpsy head falls down, thearms are softly placed by the side, all composed, all still, --and thebroad white sheet is thrown over everything. 

_April 10, 1864_. --Unusual agitation all around concentrated here. Exciting times in Congress. The Copperheads are getting furious, andwant to recognize the Southern Confederacy. "This is a pretty time totalk of recognizing such--, " said a Pennsylvania officer in hospitalto me to-day, "after what has transpired the last three years. " Afterfirst Fredericksburg I felt discouraged myself, and doubted whetherour rulers could carry on the war. But that has pass'd away. The war_must_ be carried on. I would willingly go in the ranks myself if Ithought it would profit more than as at present, and I don't knowsometimes but I shall, as it is. Then there is certainly a strange, deep, fervid feeling form'd or arous'd in the land, hard to describeor name; it is not a majority feeling, but it will make itself felt. M. , you don't know what a nature a fellow gets, not only after being asoldier a while, but after living in the sights and influences of thecamps, the wounded, &c. --a nature he never experienced before. Thestars and stripes, the tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce such an effect on a fellow as never before. I have seen thembring tears on some men's cheeks, and others turn pale with emotion. I have a little flag (it belong'd to one of our cavalry regiments, )presented to me by one of the wounded; it was taken by the secesh in afight, and rescued by our men in a bloody skirmish following. It costthree men's lives to get back that four-by-three flag--to tear it fromthe breast of a dead rebel--for _the name_ of getting their little"rag" back again. The man that secured it was very badly wounded, andthey let him keep it. I was with him a good deal; he wanted to give mesome keepsake, he said, --he didn't expect to live, --so he gave me thatflag. The best of it all is, dear M. , there isn't a regiment, cavalryor infantry, that wouldn't do the like, on the like occasion. 

_April 12_. --I will finish my letter this morning; it is a beautifulday. I was up in Congress very late last night. The House had avery excited night session about expelling the men that proposedrecognizing the Southern Confederacy. You ought to hear (as I do) thesoldiers talk; they are excited to madness. We shall probably have hottimes here, not in the military fields alone. The body of the army istrue and firm as the North Star. 

_May 6, '64_. --M. , the poor soldier with diarrhoea, is still living, but, oh, what a looking object! Death would be a relief to him--hecannot last many hours. Cunningham, the Ohio soldier, with legamputated at thigh, has pick'd up beyond expectation; now looks indeedlike getting well. (He died a few weeks afterwards. ) The hospitals arevery full. I am very well indeed. Hot here to-day. 

_May 23, '64_. --Sometimes I think that should it come when it _must_, to fall in battle, one's anguish over a son or brother kill'd mightbe temper'd with much to take the edge off. Lingering and extremesuffering from wounds or sickness seem to me far worse than death inbattle. I can honestly say the latter has no terrors for me, as faras I myself am concern'd. Then I should say, too, about death in war, that our feelings and imaginations make a thousand times too much ofthe whole matter. Of the many I have seen die, or known of, the pastyear, I have not seen or known one who met death with terror. In mostcases I should say it was a welcome relief and release. Yesterday Ispent a good part of the afternoon with a young soldier of seventeen, Charles Cutter, of Lawrence city, Massachusetts, 1st MassachusettsHeavy Artillery, Battery M. He was brought to one of the hospitalsmortally wounded in abdomen. Well, I thought to myself, as I satlooking at him, it ought to be a relief to his folks if they could seehow little he really suffer'd. He lay very placid, in a half lethargy, with his eyes closed. As it was extremely hot, and I sat a good whilesilently fanning him, and wiping the sweat, at length he open'd hiseyes quite wide and clear, and look'd inquiringly around. I said, "What is it, my boy? Do you want anything?" He answer'd quietly, witha good-natured smile, "Oh, nothing; I was only looking around to seewho was with me. " His mind was somewhat wandering, yet he lay in anevident peacefulness that sanity and health might have envied. I hadto leave for other engagements. He died, I heard afterward, withoutany special agitation, in the course of the night. 

_Washington, May 26, '63_. --M. , I think something of commencing aseries of lectures, readings, talks, &c. , through the cities of theNorth, to supply myself with funds for hospital ministrations. I donot like to be so beholden to others; I need a pretty free supply ofmoney, and the work grows upon me, and fascinates me. It is the mostmagnetic as well as terrible sight: the lots of poor wounded andhelpless men depending so much, in one ward or another, upon mysoothing or talking to them, or rousing them up a little, or perhapspetting, or feeding them their dinner or supper (here is a patient, for instance, wounded in both arms, ) or giving some trifle for anovelty or change--anything, however trivial, to break the monotony ofthose hospital hours. 

It is curious: when I am present at the most appalling scenes, deaths, operations, sickening wounds (perhaps full of maggots, ) I keep cooland do not give out or budge, although my sympathies are very muchexcited; but often, hours afterward, perhaps when I am home, or outwalking alone, I feel sick, and actually tremble, when I recall thecase again before me. 

_Sunday afternoon, opening of 1865_. --Pass'd this afternoon amonga collection of unusually bad cases, wounded and sick secessionsoldiers, left upon our hands. I spent the previous Sunday afternoonthere also. At that time two were dying. Two others have died duringthe week. Several of them are partly deranged. I went around amongthem elaborately. Poor boys, they all needed to be cheer'd up. AsI sat down by any particular one, the eyes of all the rest in theneighboring cots would fix upon me, and remain steadily riveted aslong as I sat within their sight. Nobody seem'd to wish anythingspecial to eat or drink. The main thing ask'd for was postage stamps, and paper for writing. I distributed all the stamps I had. Tobacco waswanted by some. 

One call'd me over to him and ask'd me in a low tone what denominationI belong'd to. He said he was a Catholic--wish'd to find some one ofthe same faith--wanted some good reading. I gave him something toread, and sat down by him a few minutes. Moved around with a word foreach. They were hardly any of them personally attractive cases, and novisitors come here. Of course they were all destitute of money. I gavesmall sums to two or three, apparently the most needy. The men arefrom quite all the Southern States, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, &c. 

Wrote several letters. One for a young fellow named Thomas J. Byrd, with a bad wound and diarrhoea. Was from Russell county, Alabama; beenout four years. Wrote to his mother; had neither heard from her norwritten to her in nine months. Was taken prisoner last Christmas, inTennessee; sent to Nashville, then to Camp Chase, Ohio, and kept therea long time; all the while not money enough to get paper and postagestamps. Was paroled, but on his way home the wound took gangrene;had diarrhoea also; had evidently been very low. Demeanor cool, andpatient. A dark-skinn'd, quaint young fellow, with strong Southernidiom; no education. 

Another letter for John W. Morgan, aged 18, from Shellot, Brunswickcounty, North Carolina; been out nine months; gunshot wound in rightleg, above knee; also diarrhoea; wound getting along well; quite agentle, affectionate boy; wish'd me to put in the letter for hismother to kiss his little brother and sister for him. [I put strongenvelopes on these, and two or three other letters, directed themplainly and fully, and dropt them in the Washington post-office thenext morning myself. ]

The large ward I am in is used for secession soldiers exclusively. One man, about forty years of age, emaciated with diarrhoea, I wasattracted to, as he lay with his eyes turn'd up, looking like death. His weakness was so extreme that it took a minute or so, every time, for him to talk with anything like consecutive meaning; yet hewas evidently a man of good intelligence and education. As I saidanything, he would lie a moment perfectly still, then, with closedeyes, answer in a low, very slow voice, quite correct and sensible, but in a way and tone that wrung my heart. He had a mother, wife, andchild living (or probably living) in his home in Mississippi. It waslong, long since he had seen them. Had he caus'd a letter to be sentthem since he got here in Washington? No answer. I repeated thequestion, very slowly and soothingly. He could not tell whether he hador not--things of late seem'd to him like a dream. After waiting amoment, I said: "Well, I am going to walk down the ward a moment, andwhen I come back you can tell me. If you have not written, I will sitdown and write. " A few minutes after I return'd; he said he remember'dnow that some one had written for him two or three days before. Thepresence of this man impress'd me profoundly. The flesh was all sunkenon face and arms; the eyes low in their sockets and glassy, and withpurple rings around them. Two or three great tears silently flow'd outfrom the eyes, and roll'd down his temples (he was doubtless unusedto be spoken to as I was speaking to him. )Sickness, imprisonment, exhaustion, &c. , had conquer'd the body, yet the mind held masterystill, and call'd even wandering remembrance back. 

There are some fifty Southern soldiers here; all sad, sad cases. Thereis a good deal of scurvy. I distributed some paper, envelopes, andpostage stamps, and wrote addresses full and plain on many of theenvelopes. 

I return'd again Tuesday, August 1, and moved around in the samemanner a couple of hours. 

_September 22, '65_. --Afternoon and evening at Douglas hospital to seea friend belonging to 2d New York Artillery (Hiram W. Frazee, Serg't, )down with an obstinate compound fracture of left leg receiv'd in oneof the last battles near Petersburg. After sitting a while with him, went through several neighboring wards. In one of them found an oldacquaintance transferr'd here lately, a rebel prisoner, in a dyingcondition. Poor fellow, the look was already on his face. He gazedlong at me. I ask'd him if he knew me. After a moment he utter'dsomething, but inarticulately. I have seen him off and on for thelast five months. He has suffer'd very much; a bad wound in left leg, severely fractured, several operations, cuttings, extractions of bone, splinters, &c. I remember he seem'd to me, as I used to talk with him, a fair specimen of the main strata of the Southerners, those withoutproperty or education, but still with the stamp which comes fromfreedom and equality. I liked him; Jonathan Wallace, of Hurd co. , Georgia, age 30 (wife, Susan F. Wallace, Houston, Hurd co. , Georgia. )[If any good soul of that county should see this, I hope he will sendher this word. ] Had a family; had not heard from them since takenprisoner, now six months. I had written for him, and done trifles forhim, before he came here. He made no outward show, was mild in histalk and behavior, but I knew he worried much inwardly. But now allwould be over very soon. I half sat upon the little stand near thehead of the bed. Wallace was somewhat restless. I placed my handlightly on his forehead and face, just sliding it over the surface. In a moment or so he fell into a calm, regular-breathing lethargy orsleep, and remain'd so while I sat there. It was dark, and the lightswere lit. I hardly know why (death seem'd hovering near, ) but I stay'dnearly an hour. A Sister of Charity, dress'd in black, with a broadwhite linen bandage around her head and under her chin, and a blackcrape over all and flowing down from her head in long wide pieces, came to him, and moved around the bed. She bow'd low and solemn tome. For some time she moved around there noiseless as a ghost, doinglittle things for the dying man. 

_December, '65_. --The only remaining hospital is now "Harewood, "out in the woods, northwest of the city. I have been visiting thereregularly every Sunday during these two months. 

_January 24, '66_. --Went out to Harewood early to-day, and remain'dall day. 

_Sunday, February 4, 1866_. --Harewood Hospital again. Walk'd out thisafternoon (bright, dry, ground frozen hard) through the woods. Ward 6is fill'd with blacks, some with wounds, some ill, two or three withlimbs frozen. The boys made quite a picture sitting round the stove. Hardly any can read or write. I write for three or four, directenvelopes, give some tobacco, &c. 

Joseph Winder, a likely boy, aged twenty-three, belongs to 10thColor'd Infantry (now in Texas;) is from Eastville, Virginia. Was aslave; belong'd to Lafayette Homeston. The master was quite willing heshould leave. Join'd the army two years ago; has been in one or twobattles. Was sent to hospital with rheumatism. Has since been employ'das cook. His parents at Eastville; he gets letters from them, and hasletters written to them by a friend. Many black boys left that partof Virginia and join'd the army; the 10th, in fact, was made up ofVirginia blacks from thereabouts. As soon as discharged is going backto Eastville to his parents and home, and intends to stay there. 

Thomas King, formerly 2d District Color'd Regiment, dischargedsoldier, Company E, lay in a dying condition; his disease wasconsumption. A Catholic priest was administering extreme unction tohim. (I have seen this kind of sight several times in the hospitals;it is very impressive. )

_Harewood, April 29, 1866. Sunday afternoon_. --Poor Joseph Swiers, Company H, 155th Pennsylvania, a mere lad (only eighteen years ofage;) his folks living in Reedsburgh, Pennsylvania. I have known himfor nearly a year, transferr'd from hospital to hospital. He was badlywounded in the thigh at Hatcher's Run, February 6, '65. 

James E. Ragan, Atlanta, Georgia; 2d United States Infantry. Unionfolks. Brother impress'd, deserted, died; now no folks, left alone inthe world, is in a singularly nervous state; came in hospital withintermittent fever. 

Walk slowly around the ward, observing, and to see if I can doanything. Two or three are lying very low with consumption, cannotrecover; some with old wounds; one with both feet frozen off, so thaton one only the heel remains. The supper is being given out: theliquid call'd tea, a thick slice of bread, and some stew'd apples. 

That was about the last I saw of the regular army hospitals. 

[ILLUSTRATION Here is a portrait of E. H. From life, by Henry Inman, inNew York, about 1827 or '28. The painting was finely copper-platedin 1830, and the present is a fac simile. Looks as I saw him in thefollowing narrative. ]

The time was signalized by the _separation_ of the society of Friends, so greatly talked of--and continuing yet--but so little reallyexplain'd. (All I give of this separation is in a Note following. )

Notes (_such as they are) founded on_

ELIAS HICKS

_Prefatory Note_--As myself a little boy hearing so much of E. H. , atthat time, long ago, in Suffolk and Queens and Kings counties--andmore than once personally seeing the old man--and my dear, dear fatherand mother faithful listeners to him at the meetings--I remember howI dream'd to write perhaps a piece about E. H. And his look anddiscourses, however long afterward--for my parents' sake--and the dearFriends too! And the following is what has at last but all come out ofit--the feeling and intention never forgotten yet!

There is a sort of nature of persons I have compared to little rillsof water, fresh, from perennial springs--(and the comparison isindeed an appropriate one)--persons not so very plenty, yet some fewcertainly of them running over the surface and area of humanity, alltimes, all lands. It is a specimen of this class I would now present. I would sum up in E. H. , and make his case stand for the class, thesort, in all ages, all lands, sparse, not numerous, yet enough toirrigate the soil--enough to prove the inherent moral stock andirrepressible devotional aspirations growing indigenously ofthemselves, always advancing, and never utterly gone under or lost. 

Always E. H. Gives the service of pointing to the fountain of all nakedtheology, all religion, all worship, all the truth to which you arepossibly eligible--namely in _yourself_ and your inherent relations. Others talk of Bibles, saints, churches, exhortations, vicariousatonements--the canons outside of yourself and apart from man--E. H. To the religion inside of man's very own nature. This he incessantlylabors to kindle, nourish, educate, bring forward and strengthen. Heis the most _democratic_ of the religionists--the prophets. 

I have no doubt that both the curious fate and death of his four sons, and the facts (and dwelling on them) of George Fox's strange earlylife, and permanent "conversion, " had much to do with the peculiar andsombre ministry and style of E. H. From the first, and confirmed himall through. One must not be dominated by the man's almost absurdsaturation in cut and dried biblical phraseology, and in ways, talk, and standard, regardful mainly of the one need he dwelt on, above allthe rest. This main need he drove home to the soul; the canting andsermonizing soon exhale away to any auditor that realizes what E. H. Is for and after. The present paper, (a broken memorandum of hisformation, his earlier life, ) is the cross-notch that rude wanderersmake in the woods, to remind them afterward of some matter offirst-rate importance and full investigation. (Remember too, that E. H. Was _a thorough believer in the Hebrew Scriptures_, in his way. )

The following are really but disjointed fragments recall'd toserve and eke out here the lank printed pages of what I commenc'dunwittingly two months ago. Now, as I am well in for it, comes an oldattack, the sixth or seventh recurrence, of my war-paralysis, dullingme from putting the notes in shape, and threatening any furtheraction, head or body. _W. W. , Camden, N. J. , July, 1888_. 

To begin with, my theme is comparatively featureless. The greathistorian has pass'd by the life of Elias Hicks quite without glanceor touch. Yet a man might commence and overhaul it as furnishingone of the amplest historic and biography's backgrounds. While theforemost actors and events from 1750 to 1830 both in Europe andAmerica were crowding each other on the world's stage--While somany kings, queens, soldiers, philosophs, musicians, voyagers, litterateurs, enter one side, cross the boards, and disappear--amidloudest reverberating names--Frederick the Great, Swedenborg, Junius, Voltaire, Rousseau, Linnaeus, Herschel--curiously contemporary withthe long life of Goethe--through the occupancy of the British throneby George the Third--amid stupendous visible political and socialrevolutions, and far more stupendous invisible moral ones--while themany quarto volumes of the Encyclopaedia Francaise are being publishedat fits and intervals, by Diderot, in Paris--while Haydn andBeethoven and Mozart and Weber are working out their harmoniccompositions--while Mrs. Siddons and Talma and Kean are acting--whileMungo Park explores Africa, and Capt. Cook circumnavigates theglobe--through all the fortunes of the American Revolution, thebeginning, continuation and end, the battle of Brooklyn, the surrenderat Saratoga, the final peace of '83--through the lurid tempest of theFrench Revolution, the execution of the king and queen, and the Reignof Terror--through the whole of the meteor-career of Napoleon--throughall Washington's, Adams's, Jefferson's, Madison's, and Monroe'sPresidentiads--amid so many flashing lists of names, (indeed thereseems hardly, in any department, any end to them, Old World or New, )Franklin, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mirabeau, Fox, Nelson, Paul Jones, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, Fulton, Walter Scott, Byron, Mesmer, Champollion--Amid pictures that dart upon me even as I speak, and glowand mix and coruscate and fade like aurora boreales--Louis the 16ththreaten'd by the mob, the trial of Warren Hastings, the death-bedof Robert Burns, Wellington at Waterloo, Decatur capturing theMacedonian, or the sea-fight between the Chesapeake and theShannon--During all these whiles, I say, and though on a far different grade, running parallel andcontemporary with all--a curious, quiet yet busy life centred in alittle country village on Long Island, and within sound on stillnights of the mystic surf-beat of the sea. About this life, thisPersonality--neither soldier, nor scientist, nor litterateur--Ipropose to occupy a few minutes in fragmentary talk, to give some fewmelanges, disconnected impressions, statistics, resultant groups, pictures, thoughts' of him, or radiating from him. 

Elias Hicks was born March 19, 1748, in Hempstead township, Queenscounty, Long Island, New York State, near a village bearing the oldScripture name of Jericho, (a mile or so north and east of the presentHicksville, on the L. I. Railroad. ) His father and mother were Friends, of that class working with their own hands, and mark'd by neitherriches nor actual poverty. Elias as a child and youth had smalleducation from letters, but largely learn'd from Nature's schooling. He grew up even in his ladhood a thorough gunner and fisherman. Thefarm of his parents lay on the south or sea-shore side of Long Island, (they had early removed from Jericho, ) one of the best regions in theworld for wild fowl and for fishing. Elias became a good horseman, too, and knew the animal well, riding races; also a singer fond of"vain songs, " as he afterwards calls them; a dancer, too, at thecountry balls. When a boy of 13 he had gone to live with an elderbrother; and when about 17 he changed again and went as apprenticeto the carpenter's trade. The time of all this was before theRevolutionary War, and the locality 30 to 40 miles from New York city. My great-grandfather, Whitman, was often with Elias at these periods, and at merry-makings and sleigh-rides in winter over "the plains. "

How well I remember the region--the flat plains of the middle of LongIsland, as then, with their prairie-like vistas and grassy patches inevery direction, and the 'kill-calf' and herds of cattle and sheep. Then the South Bay and shores and the salt meadows, and the sedgysmell, and numberless little bayous and hummock-islands in the waters, the habitat of every sort of fish and aquatic fowl of North America. And the bay men--a strong, wild, peculiar race--now extinct, or ratherentirely changed. And the beach outside the sandy bars, sometimes manymiles at a stretch, with their old history of wrecks and storms--theweird, white-gray beach--not without its tales of pathos--tales, too, of grandest heroes and heroisms. In such scenes and elements andinfluences--in the midst of Nature and along the shores of thesea--Elias Hicks was fashion'd through boyhood and early manhood, tomaturity. But a moral and mental and emotional change was imminent. Along at this time he says:

 My apprenticeship being now expir'd, I gradually withdrew from the company of my former associates, became more acquainted with Friends, and was more frequent in my attendance of meetings; and although this was in some degree profitable to me, yet I made but slow progress in my religious improvement. The occupation of part of my time in fishing and fowling had frequently tended to preser me from falling into hurtful associations; but through the rising intimations and reproofs of divine grace in my heart, I now began to feel that the manner in which I sometimes amus'd myself with my gun was not without sin; for although I mostly preferr'd going alone, and while waiting in stillness for the coming of the fowl, mind was at times so taken up in divine meditations, that the opportunities were seasons of instruction and comfort to me; yet, on other occasions, when accompanied by some of my acquaintances, and when no fowls appear'd which would be useful to us after being obtain'd, we sometimes, from wantonness or for mere diversion, would destroy the small birds which could be of no service to us. This cruel procedure affects my heart while penning these lines. 

In his 23d year Elias was married, by the Friends' ceremony, to JemimaSeaman. His wife was an only child; the parents were well off forcommon people, and at their request the son-in-law mov'd home withthem and carried on the farm--which at their decease became his own, and he liv'd there all his remaining life. Of this matrimonial part ofhis career, (it continued, and with unusual happiness, for 58 years, )he says, giving the account of his marriage:

 On this important occasion, we felt the clear and consoling evidence of divine truth, and it remain'd with us as a seal upon our spirits, strengthening us mutually to bear, with becoming fortitude, the vicissitudes and trials which fell to our lot, and of which we h a large share in passing through this probationary state. My wife, although not of a very strong constitution, liv'd to be the mother of eleven children, four sons and seven daughters. Our second daughter, a very lovely, promising child, died when young, with the small-pox, and the youngest was not living at its birth. The rest all arriv'd to years of discretion, and afforded us considerable comfort, as they prov'd to be in a good degree dutiful children. All our sons, however, were of weak constitutions, and were not able to take care of themselves, being so enfeebl'd as not to be able to walk after the ninth or tenth year of their age. The two eldest died in the fifteenth year of their age, the third in his seventeenth year, and the youngest was nearly nineteen when he died. But, although thus helpless, the innocency of their lives, and the resign'd cheerfulness of their dispositions to their allotments, made the labor and toil of taking care of them agreeable and pleasant; and I trust we were preserv'd from murmuring or repining, believing the dispensation to be in wisdom, and according to the will and gracious disposing of an all-wise providence, for purposes best known to himself. And when I have observ'd the great anxiety and affliction which many parents have with undutiful children who are favor'd with health, especially their sons, I could perceive very few whose troubles and exercises, on that account, did not far exceed ours. The weakness and bodily infirmity of our sons tended to keep them much out of the way of the troubles and temptations the world; and we believ'd that in their death they were happy, and admitted into the realms of peace and joy: a reflection, the most comfortable and joyous that parents can have in regard to their tender offspring. 

Of a serious and reflective turn, by nature, and from his reading andsurroundings, Elias had more than once markedly devotional inwardintimations. These feelings increas'd in frequency and strength, untilsoon the following:

 About the twenty-sixth year of my age I was again brought, by the operative influence of divine grace, under deep concern of mind; and was led, through adorable mercy, to see, that although I had ceas'd from many sins and vanities of my youth, yet there were many remaining that I was still guilty of, which were not yet aton'd for, and for which I now felt the judgments of God to rest upon m This caus'd me to cry earnestly to the Most High for pardon and redemption, and he graciously condescended to hear my cry, and to open a way before me, wherein I must walk, in order to experience reconciliation with him; and as I abode in watchfulness and deep humiliation before him, light broke forth out of obscurity, and my darkness became as the noon-day. I began to have openings leading to the ministry, which brought me under close exercise and deep travail of spirit; for although I had for some time spoken on subjects of business in monthly and preparative meetings, yet the prospe of opening my mouth in public meetings was a close trial; but I endeavor'd to keep my mind quiet and resign' d to the heavenly call, if it should be made clear to me to be my duty. Nevertheless, I was, soon after, sitting in a meeting, in much weightiness of spirit, a secret, though clear, intimation accompanied me to spe a few words, which were then given to me to utter, yet fear so prevail'd, that I did not yield to the intimation. For this omission, I felt close rebuke, and judgment seem'd, for some time, to cover my mind; but as I humbl'd myself under the Lord's mighty hand, he again lifted up the light of his countenance upon me, and enabl'd me to renew covenant with him, that if he would pass by this my offence, I would, in future, be faithful, if he should again require such a service of me. 

The Revolutionary War following, tried the sect of Friends morethan any. The difficulty was to steer between their convictions aspatriots, and their pledges of non-warring peace. Here is the way theysolv'd the problem:

 A war, with all its cruel and destructive effects, having raged for several years between the British Colonies in North America and the mother country, Friends, as well as others, were expos' d to many severe trials and sufferings; yet, in the colony of New York, Friends, who stood faithful to their principles, and did not meddle in the controversy, had, after a short period at first, considerable favor allow'd them. The yearly meeting was held steadily, duri the war, on Long Island, where the king's party had the rule; yet Friends from the Main, where the American army ruled, had free passage through both armies to attend it, and any other meetings they were desirous of attending, except in a few instances. This was a favor which the parties would not grant to their best friends, who were of a war-like disposition; which shows what great advantages would redound to mankind, were they all of this pacific spirit. I pass'd myself through the lines of both armies six times during the war, without molestation, both parties generally receiving me with openness and civility; and although I had to pass over a tract of country, between the two armies, sometimes more than thirty miles in extent, and which was much frequented by robbers, a set, in general, of cruel, unprincipled banditti, issuing out from both partie yet, excepting once, I met with no interruption even from the But although Friends in general experienc'd many favors and deliverances, yet those scenes of war and confusion occasion many trials and provings in various ways to the faithful. One circumstance I am willing to mention, as it caus'd me considerable exercise and concern. There was a large cellar under the new meeting-house belonging to Friends in New York, which was generally let as a store. When the king's troops enter'd the city, they took possession of it for the purpose of depositing their warlike stores; and ascertaining what Friends had the care of letting it, their commissary came forward and offer'd to pay the rent; and those Friends, for want of due consideration, accepted it. This caus'd great uneasiness to the concern'd part of the Society, who apprehended it not consistent with our peaceable principles to receive payment for the depositing of military stores in our houses. The subject was brought before the yearly meeting in 1779, and engag'd its careful attention; but those Friends, who had been active in the reception of the money, and some few others, were not willing to acknowledge their proceedings to be inconsistent, nor to return the money to those from whom it was receiv'd; and in order to justify themselves therein, they referr'd to the conduct of Friends in Philadelphia in similar cases. Matters thus appearing very difficult and embarrassing, it was unitedly concluded to refer the final determination thereof to the yearly meeting of Pennsylvania; and several Friends were appointed to attend that meeting in relation thereto, among whom I was one of the number. We accordingly set out on the 9th day of the 9th month, 1779, and I was accompanied from home by my beloved friend John Willis, who was likewise on the appointment. We took a solemn leave of our families, they feeling much anxiety at parting with us, on account of the dangers we were expos'd to, having to pass not only the lines of the two armies, but the deserted and almost uninhabited country that lay between them, in many places the grass being grown up in the streets, and many houses desolate and empty. Believing it, however, my duty to proceed in the service, my mind was so settled and trust-fix'd in the divine arm of power, that faith seem'd to banish all fear, and cheerfulness and quiet resignation were, I believe, my constant companions during the journey. We got permission, with but little difficulty, to pass the outguards of the king's army at Kingsbridge, and proceeded to Westchester. We afterwards attended meetings at Harrison's Purchase, and Oblong, having the concurrence of our monthly meeting to take some meetings in our way, a concern leading thereto having for some time previously attended my mind. We pass'd from thence to Nine Partners, and attended their monthly meeting, and then turn'd our faces towards Philadelphia, being join'd by several others of the Committee. We attended New Marlborough, Hardwick, and Kingswood meetings on our journey, and arriv'd at Philadelphia on the 7th day of the week, and 25th of 9th month, on which day we attended the yearly meeting of Ministers and Elders, which began at the eleventh hour. I also attended all the sittings of the yearly meeting until the 4th day of the next week, and was then so indispos'd with a fever, which had been increasing on me for several days, that I was not able to attend after that time. I was therefore not present when the subject was discuss' d, which came from our yearly meeting but I was inform'd by my companion, that it was a very solemn opportunity, and the matter was resulted in advising that the money should be return'd into the office from whence it was receiv'd, accompanied with our reasons for so doing: and this was accordingly done by the direction of our yearly meeting the next year. 

Then, season after season, when peace and Independence reign'd, yearfollowing year, this remains to be (1791) a specimen of his personallabors:

 I was from home on this journey four months and eleven days; rode about one thousand five hundred miles, and attended forty-nine particular meetings among Friends, three quarterly meetings, six monthly meetings, and forty meetings among other people. 

And again another experience:

 In the forepart of this meeting, my mind was reduc'd into such a state of great weakness and depression, that my faith was almost ready to fail, which produc'd great searchings of heart, so that I was led to call in question all that I had ever before experienc'd. In this state of doubting, I was ready to wish myself at home, from an apprehension that I should only expose myself to reproach, and wound the cause I was embark'd in; for the heavens seem'd like brass, and the earth as iron; such coldness and hardness, I thought, could scarcely have ever been experienc'd before by any creature, so great was the depth of my baptism at this time; nevertheless, as I endeavor'd to quiet my mind, in this conflicting dispensation, and be resign'd to my allotment, however distressing, towards the latter part of the meeting a ray of light broke through the surrounding darkness, in which the Shepherd of Israel was pleas'd to arise, and by the light of his glorious countenance, to scatter those clouds of opposition. Then ability was receiv'd, and utterance given, to speak of his marvellous works in the redemption of souls, and to op the way of life and salvation, and the mysteries of his glorious kingdom, which are hid from the wise and prudent of this world, and reveal'd only unto those who are reduc'd into the state of little children and babes in Christ. 

And concluding another jaunt in 1794:

 I was from home in this journey about five months, and travell by land and water about two thousand two hundred and eighty-three miles; having visited all the meetings of Friends in the New England states, and many meetings amongst those of other professions; and also visited many meetings, among Friends and others, in the upper part of our own yearly meeting; and found real peace in my labors. 

Another 'tramp' in 1798:

 I was absent from home in this journey about five months and two weeks, and rode about sixteen hundred miles, and attended about one hundred and forty-three meetings. 

Here are some memoranda of 1813, near home:

 First day. Our meeting this day pass'd in silent labor. The cloud rested on the tabernacle; and, although it was a day of much rain outwardly, yet very little of the dew of Hermon appear'd to distil among us. Nevertheless, a comfortable calm was witness'd towards the close, which we must render to the account of unmerited mercy and love. 

 Second day. Most of this day was occupied in a visit to a sick friend, who appeared comforted therewith. Spent part of the evening in reading part of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. 

 Third day. I was busied most of this day in my common vocations. Spent the evening principally in reading Paul. Found considerable satisfaction in his first epistle to the Corinthians; in which he shows the danger of some in setting too high a value on those who were instrumental in bringing them to the knowledge of the truth, without looking through and beyond the instrument, to the great first cause and Author of every blessing, to whom all the praise and honor are due. 

 Fifth day, 1st of 4th month. At our meeting to-day found it, as usual, a very close steady exercise to keep the mind center' where it ought to be. What a multitude of intruding thoughts imperceptibly, as it were, steal into the mind, and turn it from its proper object, whenever it relaxes its vigilance in watching against them. Felt a little strength, just at the close, to remind Friends of the necessity of a steady perseverance, by a recapitulation of the parable of the unjust judge, showing how men ought always to pray, and not to faint. 

 Sixth day. Nothing material occurr'd, but a fear lest the cares of the world should engross too much of my time. 

 Seventh day. Had an agreeable visit from two ancient friends, which I have long lov'd. The rest of the day I employ'd in manual labor, mostly in gardening. 

But we find if we attend to records and details, we shall lay out anendless task. We can briefly say, summarily, that his whole life wasa long religious missionary life of method, practicality, sincerity, earnestness, and pure piety--as near to his time here, as one inJudea, far back--or in any life, any age. The reader who feelsinterested must get--with all its dryness and mere dates, absence ofemotionality or literary quality, and whatever abstract attraction(with even a suspicion of cant, sniffling, ) the "Journal of the Lifeand Religious Labours of Elias Hicks, written by himself, " at someQuaker book-store. (It is from this headquarters I have extracted thepreceding quotations. ) During E. H. 's matured life, continued fromfifty to sixty years--while working steadily, earning his livingand paying his way without intermission--he makes, as previouslymemorandized, several hundred preaching visits, not only through LongIsland, but some of them away into the Middle or Southern States, ornorth into Canada, or the then far West--extending to thousands ofmiles, or filling several weeks and sometimes months. These religiousjourneys--scrupulously accepting in payment only his transportationfrom place to place, with his own food and shelter, and neverreceiving a dollar of money for "salary" or preaching--Elias, throughgood bodily health and strength, continues till quite the age ofeighty. It was thus at one of his latest jaunts in Brooklyn city I sawand heard him. This sight and hearing shall now be described. 

Elias Hicks was at this period in the latter part (November orDecember) of 1829. It was the last tour of the many missions of theold man's life. He was in the 8lst year of his age, and a few monthsbefore he had lost by death a beloved wife with whom he had lived inunalloyed affection and esteem for 58 years. (But a few months afterthis meeting Elias was paralyzed and died. ) Though it is sixty yearsago since--and I a little boy at the time in Brooklyn, New York--I canremember my father coming home toward sunset from his day's workas carpenter, and saying briefly, as he throws down his armful ofkindling-blocks with a bounce on the kitchen floor, "Come, mother, Elias preaches to-night. " Then my mother, hastening the supper and thetable-cleaning afterward, gets a neighboring young woman, a friend ofthe family, to step in and keep house for an hour or so--puts the twolittle ones to bed--and as I had been behaving well that day, as aspecial reward I was allow'd to go also. 

We start for the meeting. Though, as I said, the stretch of more thanhalf a century has pass'd over me since then, with its war and peace, and all its joys and sins and deaths (and what a half century! how itcomes up sometimes for an instant, like the lightning flash in a stormat night!) I can recall that meeting yet. It is a strange placefor religious devotions. Elias preaches anywhere--no respect tobuildings--private or public houses, school-rooms, barns, eventheatres--anything that will accommodate. This time it is in ahandsome ball-room, on Brooklyn Heights, overlooking New York, and infull sight of that great city, and its North and East rivers fill'dwith ships--is (to specify more particularly) the second story of"Morrison's Hotel, " used for the most genteel concerts, balls, and assemblies--a large, cheerful, gay-color'd room, with glasschandeliers bearing myriads of sparkling pendants, plenty of setteesand chairs, and a sort of velvet divan running all round theside-walls. Before long the divan and all the settees and chairsare fill'd; many fashionables out of curiosity; all the principaldignitaries of the town, Gen. Jeremiah Johnson, Judge Furman, GeorgeHall, Mr. Willoughby, Mr. Pierrepont, N. B. Morse, Cyrus P. Smith, and F. C. Tucker. Many young folks too; some richly dress'd women;I remember I noticed with one party of ladies a group of uniform'dofficers, either from the U. S. Navy Yard, or some ship in the stream, or some adjacent fort. On a slightly elevated platform at the head ofthe room, facing the audience, sit a dozen or more Friends, most ofthem elderly, grim, and with their broad-brimm'd hats on their heads. Three or four women, too, in their characteristic Quaker costumes andbonnets. All still as the grave. 

At length after a pause and stillness becoming almost painful, Eliasrises and stands for a moment or two without a word. A tall, straight figure, neither stout nor very thin, dress'd in drab cloth, clean-shaved face, forehead of great expanse, and large and clearblack eyes, [42] long or middling-long white hair; he was at this timebetween 80 and 81 years of age, his head still wearing the broad-brim. A moment looking around the audience with those piercing eyes, amidthe perfect stillness. (I can almost see him and the whole scenenow. ) Then the words come from his lips, very emphatically and slowlypronounc'd, in a resonant, grave, melodious voice, _What is the chiefend of man? I was told in my early youth, it was to glorify God, andseek and enjoy him forever. _

I cannot follow the discourse. It presently becomes very fervid, andin the midst of its fervor he takes the broad-brim hat from his head, and almost dashing it down with violence on the seat behind, continueswith uninterrupted earnestness. But, I say, I cannot repeat, hardlysuggest his sermon. Though the differences and disputes of the formaldivision of the Society of Friends were even then under way, he didnot allude to them at all. A pleading, tender, nearly agonizingconviction, and magnetic stream of natural eloquence, before whichall minds and natures, all emotions, high or low, gentle or simple, yielded entirely without exception, was its cause, method, and effect. Many, very many were in tears. Years afterward in Boston, I heardFather Taylor, the sailor's preacher, and found in his passionateunstudied oratory the resemblance to Elias Hicks's--not argumentativeor intellectual, but so penetrating--so different from anything inthe books--(different as the fresh air of a May morning or sea-shorebreeze from the atmosphere of a perfumer's shop. )

While he goes on he falls into the nasality and sing-song tonesometimes heard in such meetings; but in a moment or two more as ifrecollecting himself, he breaks off, stops, and resumes in a naturaltone. This occurs three or four times during the talk of the evening, till all concludes. 

Now and then, at the many scores and hundreds--even thousands--of hisdiscourses--as at this one--he was very mystical and radical, [43] andhad much to say of "the light within. " Very likely this same innerlight, (so dwelt upon by newer men, as by Fox and Barclay at thebeginning, and all Friends and deep thinkers since and now, ) isperhaps only another name for the religious conscience. In my opinionthey have all diagnos'd, like superior doctors, the real in-mostdisease of our times, probably any times. Amid the huge inflammationcall'd society, and that other inflammation call'd politics, what isthere to-day of moral power and ethic sanity as antiseptic to them andall? Though I think the essential elements of the moral nature existlatent in the good average people of the United States of to-day, and sometimes break out strongly, it is certain that any mark'd ordominating National Morality (if I may use the phrase) has not onlynot yet been develop'd, but that--at any rate when the point of viewis turn'd on business, politics, competition, practical life, and incharacter and manners in our New World--there seems to be a hideousdepletion, almost absence, of such moral nature. Elias taughtthroughout, as George Fox began it, or rather reiterated and verifiedit, the Platonic doctrine that the ideals of character, of justice, of religious action, whenever the highest is at stake, are to beconform'd to no outside doctrine of creeds, Bibles, legislativeenactments, conventionalities, or even decorums, but are to follow theinward Deity-planted law of the emotional soul. In this only thetrue Quaker, or Friend, has faith; and it is from rigidly, perhapsstrainingly carrying it out, that both the Old and New England recordsof Quakerdom show some unseemly and insane acts. 

In one of the lives of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a list of lessons orinstructions, ("seal'd orders" the biographer calls them, ) prepar'd bythe sage himself for his own guidance. Here is one:

 Go forth with thy message among thy fellow-creatures; teach them that they must trust themselves as guided by that inner light which dwells with the pure in heart, to whom it was promis'd of old that they shall see God. 

How thoroughly it fits the life and theory of Elias Hicks. Then inOmar Khayyam:

 I sent my soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that after-life to spell, And by-and-by my soul return'd to me, And answer'd, "I myself am Heaven and Hell. "

Indeed, of this important element of the theory and practice ofQuakerism, the difficult-to-describe "Light within" or "Inward Law, bywhich all must be either justified or condemn'd, " I will not undertakewhere so many have fail'd--the task of making the statement of it forthe average comprehension. We will give, partly for the matter andpartly as specimen of his speaking and writing style, what Elias Hickshimself says in allusion to it--one or two of very many passages. Most of his discourses, like those of Epictetus and the ancientperipatetics, have left no record remaining--they were extempore, andthose were not the times of reporters. Of one, however, deliver'd inChester, Pa. , toward the latter part of his career, there is a carefultranscript; and from it (even if presenting you a sheaf of hiddenwheat that may need to be pick'd and thrash'd out several times beforeyou get the grain, ) we give the following extract:

 I don't want to express a great many words; but I want you to be call'd home to the substance. For the Scriptures, and all the books in the world, can do no more; Jesus could do no more than to recommend to this Comforter, which was the light in him. "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all; and if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. " Because the light is one in all, and therefore it binds us together in the bonds of love; for it is not only light, but love--that love which casts out all fear. So that they who dwell in God dwell in love, and they are constrain'd to walk in it; and if they "walk in it, they have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. "

 But what blood, my friends? Did Jesus Christ, the Saviour, ever have any material blood? Not a drop of it, my friends--not a drop of it. That blood which cleanseth from the life of all sin, was the life of the soul of Jesus. The soul of man has no material blood; but as the outward material blood, created from the dust of the earth, is the life of these bodies of flesh, so with respect to the soul, the immortal and invisible spirit, its blood is that life which God breath'd into it. 

 As we read, in the beginning, that "God form'd man of the dust of the ground, and breath'd into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul. " He breath'd into that soul, and it became alive to God. 

Then, from one of his many letters, for he seems to have delighted incorrespondence:

 Some may query, What is the cross of Christ? To these I answer, It is the perfect law of God, written on the tablet of the hear and in the heart of every rational creature, in such indelible characters that all the power of mortals cannot erase nor obliterate it. Neither is there any power or means given or dispens'd to the children of men, but this inward law and light, by which the true and saving knowledge of God can be obtain' d. And by this inward law and light, all will be either justified or condemn'd, and all made to know God for themselves, and be left without excuse, agreeably to the prophecy of Jeremiah, and the corroborating testimony of Jesus in his last counsel and command to his disciples, not to depart from Jerusalem till they should receive power from on high; assuring them that they should receive power, when they had receiv'd the pouring forth of the spirit upon them, which would qualify them to bear witness of him in Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth; which was verified in a marvellous manner on the day of Pentecost, when thousands were converted to the Christian faith in one day. 

 By which it is evident that nothing but this inward light and law, as it is heeded and obey'd, ever did, or ever can, make a true and real Christian and child of God. And until the professors of Christianity agree to lay aside all their non-essentials in religion, and rally to this unchangeable foundation and standard of truth, wars and fightings, confusion and error, will prevail, and the angelic song cannot be heard in our land--that of "glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men. "

 But when all nations are made willing to make this inward law and light the rule and standard of all their faith and works, then we shall be brought to know and believe alike, that there is but one Lord, one faith, and but one baptism; one God and Father, that is above all, through all, and in all. 

 And then will all those glorious and consoling prophecies recorded in the scriptures of truth be fulfill'd--"He, " the Lord, "shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb; and the cow and the bear shall feed; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and the sucking child shall play the hole of the asp, and the wean'd child put his hand on the cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth, " that is our earthly tabernacle, "shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. "

The exposition in the last sentence, that the terms of the texts arenot to be taken in their literal meaning, but in their spiritual one, and allude to a certain wondrous exaltation of the body, throughreligious influences, is significant, and is but one of a great numberof instances of much that is obscure, to "the world's people, " in thepreachings of this remarkable man. 

Then a word about his physical oratory, connected with the preceding. If there is, as doubtless there is, an unnameable something behindoratory, a fund within or atmosphere without, deeper than art, deepereven than proof, that unnameable constitutional something Elias Hicksemanated from his very heart to the hearts of his audience, or carriedwith him, or probed into, and shook and arous'd in them--a sympatheticgerm, probably rapport, lurking in every human eligibility, which nobook, no rule, no statement has given or can give inherent knowledge, intuition--not even the best speech, or best put forth, but launch'dout only by powerful human magnetism:

 Unheard by sharpest ear--unformed in clearest eye, or cunningest mind, Nor lore, nor fame, nor happiness, nor wealth, And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world, incessantly, Which you and I, and all, pursuing ever, ever miss; Open, but still a secret--the real of the real--an illusion; Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner; Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme----historians in prose; Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted; Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter' d. 

That remorse, too, for a mere worldly life--that aspiration towardsthe ideal, which, however overlaid, lies folded latent, hidden, inperhaps every character. More definitely, as near as I remember (aidedby my dear mother long afterward, ) Elias Hicks's discourse there inthe Brooklyn ball-room, was one of his old never-remitted appeals tothat moral mystical portion of human nature, the inner light. But itis mainly for the scene itself, and Elias's personnel, that I recallthe incident. 

Soon afterward the old man died:

 On first day morning, the 14th of 2d month (February, 1830, ) he was engaged in his room, writing to a friend, until a little after ten o'clock, when he return'd to that occupied by the family, apparently just attack'd by a paralytic affection, which nearly deprived h of the use of his right side, and of the power of speech. Being assisted to a chair near the fire, he manifested by signs, that the letter which he had just finish'd, and which had been dropp'd the way, should be taken care of; and on its being brought to him, appear'd satisfied, and manifested a desire that all should sit down and be still, seemingly sensible that his labours were brought to a close, and only desirous of quietly waiting the final change. The solemn composure at this time manifest in his countenance, w very impressive, indicating that he was sensible the time of his departure was at hand, and that the prospect of death brought no terrors with it. During his last illness, his mental faculti were occasionally obscured, yet he was at times enabled to give satisfactory evidence to those around him, that all was well, and that he felt nothing in his way. 

 His funeral took place on fourth day, the 3rd of 3rd month. It was attended by a large concourse of Friends and others, and a solid meeting was held on the occasion; after which, his remains were interr'd in Friends' burial-ground at this place (Jericho, Queens county, New York. )

I have thought (even presented so incompletely, with such fearfulhiatuses, and in my own feebleness and waning life) one might wellmemorize this life of Elias Hicks. Though not eminent in literature orpolitics or inventions or business, it is a token of not a few, and issignificant. Such men do not cope with statesmen or soldiers--but Ihave thought they deserve to be recorded and kept up as a sample--thatthis one specially does. I have already compared it to a littleflowing liquid rill of Nature's life, maintaining freshness. As if, indeed, under the smoke of battles, the blare of trumpets, and themadness of contending hosts--the screams of passion, the groans of thesuffering, the parching of struggles of money and politics, and allhell's heat and noise and competition above and around--should comemelting down from the mountains from sources of unpolluted snows, farup there in God's hidden, untrodden recesses, and so rippling alongamong us low in the ground, at men's very feet, a curious little brookof clear and cool, and ever-healthy, ever-living water. 

_Note. --The Separation_. --The division vulgarly call'd betweenOrthodox and Hicksites in the Society of Friends took place in 1827, '8 and '9. Probably it had been preparing some time. One who waspresent has since described to me the climax, at a meeting of Friendsin Philadelphia crowded by a great attendance of both sexes, withElias as principal speaker. In the course of his utterance or argumenthe made use of these words: "The blood of Christ--the blood ofChrist--why, my friends, the actual blood of Christ in itself was nomore effectual than the blood of bulls and goats--not a bit more--nota bit. " At these words, after a momentary hush, commenced a greattumult. Hundreds rose to their feet.... Canes were thump'd upon thefloor. From all parts of the house angry mutterings. Some left theplace, but more remain'd, with exclamations, flush'd faces and eyes. This was the definite utterance, the overt act, which led to theseparation. Families diverg'd--even husbands and wives, parents andchildren, were separated. 

Of course what Elias promulg'd spread a great commotion among theFriends. Sometimes when he presented himself to speak in the meeting, there would be opposition--this led to angry words, gestures, unseemlynoises, recriminations. Elias, at such times, was deeply affected--thetears roll'd in streams down his cheeks--he silently waited the closeof the dispute. "Let the Friend speak; let the Friend speak!" he wouldsay when his supporters in the meeting tried to bluff off some violentorthodox person objecting to the new doctrinaire. But he neverrecanted. 

A reviewer of the old dispute and separation made the followingcomments on them in a paper ten years ago: "It was in America, wherethere had been no persecution worth mentioning since Mary Dyer washang'd on Boston Common, that about fifty years ago differences arose, singularly enough upon doctrinal points of the divinity of Christ andthe nature of the atonement. Whoever would know how bitter was thecontroversy, and how much of human infirmity was found to be stilllurking under broad-brim hats and drab coats, must seek for theinformation in the Lives of Elias Hicks and of Thomas Shillitoe, thelatter an English Friend, who visited us at this unfortunate time, andwho exercised his gifts as a peace-maker with but little success. Themeetings, according to his testimony, were sometimes turn'd into mobs. The disruption was wide, and seems to have been final. Six of theten yearly meetings were divided; and since that time varioussub-divisions have come, four or five in number. There has never, however, been anything like a repetition of the excitement of theHicksite controversy; and Friends of all kinds at present appear tohave settled down into a solid, steady, comfortable state, and to beworking in their own way without troubling other Friends whose waysare different. "

_Note_. --Old persons, who heard this man in his day, and who glean'dimpressions from what they saw of him, (judg'd from their own pointsof views, ) have, in their conversation with me, dwelt on anotherpoint. They think Elias Hicks had a large element of personalambition, the pride of leadership, of establishing perhaps a sect thatshould reflect his own name, and to which he should give especial formand character. Very likely. Such indeed seems the means, all throughprogress and civilization, by which strong men and strong convictionsachieve anything definite. But the basic foundation of Elias wasundoubtedly genuine religious fervor. He was like an old Hebrewprophet. He had the spirit of one, and in his later years look'd likeone. What Carlyle says of John Knox will apply to him:

 He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic; it is the grand gift he has. We find in him a good, honest, intellectual talent, no transcendent one;--a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther; but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in _sincerity_ as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. "He lies there, " said the Earl of Morton at Knox's grave, "who never fear'd the face of man. " He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God's truth. 

_A Note yet. The United States to-day_. --While under all previousconditions (even convictions) of society, Oriental, Feudal, Ecclesiastical, and in all past (or present) Despotisms, through theentire past, there existed, and exists yet, in ally and fusion withthem, and frequently forming the main part of them, certain churches, institutes, priesthoods, fervid beliefs, &c. , practically promotingreligious and moral action to the fullest degrees of which humanitythere under circumstances was capable, and often conserving all therewas of justice, art, literature, and good manners--it is clear I say, that, under the Democratic Institutes of the United States, now andhenceforth, there are no equally genuine fountains of fervid beliefs, adapted to produce similar moral and religious results, according toour circumstances. I consider that the churches, sects, pulpits, of the present day, in the United States, exist not by any solidconvictions, but by a sort of tacit, supercilious, scornful suffrance. Few speak openly--none officially--against them. But the ostentcontinuously imposing, who is not aware that any such living fountainsof belief in them are now utterly ceas'd and departed from the mindsof men?

_A Lingering Note_. --In the making of a full man, all the otherconsciences, (the emotional, courageous, intellectual, esthetic, &c. , )are to be crown'd and effused by the religious conscience. In thehigher structure of a human self, or of community, the Moral, theReligious, the Spiritual, is strictly analogous to the subtlevitalization and antiseptic play call'd Health in the physiologicstructure. To person or State, the main verteber (or rather _the_verteber) is Morality. 

That is indeed the only real vitalization of character, and of all thesupersensual, even heroic and artistic portions of man or nationality. It is to run through and knit the superior parts, and keep man orState vital and upright, as health keeps the body straight andblooming. Of course a really grand and strong and beautiful characteris probably to be slowly grown, and adjusted strictly with referenceto itself, its own personal and social sphere--with (paradox thoughit may be) the clear understanding that the conventional theories oflife, worldly ambition, wealth, office, fame, &c. , are essentially butglittering mayas, delusions. 

Doubtless the greatest scientists and theologians will sometimes findthemselves saying, It isn't only those who know most, who contributemost to God's glory. Doubtless these very scientists at times standwith bared heads before the humblest lives and personalities. Forthere is something greater (is there not?) than all the scienceand poems of the world--above all else, like the stars shiningeternal--above Shakspere's plays, or Concord philosophy, or art ofAngelo or Raphael--something that shines elusive, like beamsof Hesperus at evening--high above all the vaunted wealth andpride--prov'd by its practical outcropping in life, each case afterits own concomitants--the intuitive blending of divine love and faithin a human emotional character--blending for all, for the unlearn'd, the common, and the poor. 

I don't know in what book I once read, (possibly the remark has beenmade in books, all ages, ) that no life ever lived, even the mostuneventful, but, probed to its centre, would be found in itself assubtle a drama as any that poets have ever sung, or playwrightsfabled. Often, too, in size and weight, that life suppos'd obscure. For it isn't only the palpable stars; astronomers say there are dark, or almost dark, unnotic'd orbs and suns, (like the dusky companions ofSirius, seven times as large as our own sun, ) rolling through space, real and potent as any--perhaps the most real and potent. Yet nonerecks of them. In the bright lexicon we give the spreading heavens, they have not even names. Amid ceaseless sophistications alltimes, the soul would seem to glance yearningly around for suchcontrasts--such cool, still offsets. 

Notes:

[42]In Walter Scott's reminiscences he speaks of Burns as having themost eloquent, glowing, flashing, illuminated dark-orbed eyes he everbeheld in a human face; and I think Elias Hicks's must have been likethem. 

[43] The true Christian religion, (such was the teaching of EliasHicks, ) consists neither in rites or Bibles or sermons or Sundays--butin noiseless secret ecstasy and unremitted aspiration, in purity, in agood practical life, in charity to the poor and toleration to all. Hesaid, "A man may keep the Sabbath, may belong to a church and attendall the observances, have regular family prayer, keep a well-boundcopy of the Hebrew Scriptures in a conspicuous place in his house, andyet not be a truly religious person at all. " E. Believ'd little ina church as organiz'd-even his own--with houses, ministers, or withsalaries, creeds, Sundays, saints, Bibles, holy festivals, &c. Buthe believ' d always in the universal church, in the soul of man, invisibly rapt, ever-waiting, ever-responding to universal truths. --Hewas fond of pithy proverbs. He said, "It matters not where you live, but how you live. " He said once to my father, "They talk of thedevil--I tell thee, Walter, there is no worse devil than man. "

GEORGE FOX (AND SHAKSPERE)

While we are about it, we must almost Inevitably go back to the originof the Society of which Elias Hicks has so far prov'd to be the mostmark'd individual result. We must revert to the latter part of the16th, and all, or nearly all of that 17th century, crowded with somany important historical events, changes, and personages. ThroughoutEurope, and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men wereunusually arous'd--(some would say demented. ) It was a special age ofthe insanity of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 werehung for witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly anage of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism werewrestling like giants for the mastery, straining every nerve. Only tothink of it--that age! its events, persons--Shakspere just dead, (hisfolios publish'd, complete)--Charles 1st, the shadowy spirit and thesolid block! To sum up all, it was the age of Cromwell!

As indispensable foreground, indeed, for Elias Hicks, and perhaps sinequa non to an estimate of the kind of man, we must briefly transportourselves back to the England of that period. As I say, it is the timeof tremendous moral and political agitation; ideas of conflictingforms, governments, theologies, seethe and dash like ocean storms, andebb and flow like mighty tides. It was, or had been, the time of thelong feud between the Parliament and the Crown. In the midst ofthe sprouts, began George Fox--born eight years after the death ofShakspere. He was the son of a weaver, himself a shoemaker, and was"converted" before the age of 20. But O the sufferings, mental andphysical, through which those years of the strange youth pass'd! Heclaim'd to be sent by God to fulfill a mission. "I come, " he said, "todirect people to the spirit that gave forth the Scriptures. " The rangeof his thought, even then, cover'd almost every important subject ofafter times, anti-slavery, women's rights, &c. Though in a low sphere, and among the masses, he forms a mark'd feature in the age. 

And how, indeed, beyond all any, that stormy and perturb'd age! Thefoundations of the old, the superstitious, the conventionally poetic, the credulous, all breaking--the light of the new, and of science anddemocracy, definitely beginning--a mad, fierce, almost crazy age!The political struggles of the reigns of the Charleses, and of theProtectorate of Cromwell, heated to frenzy by theological struggles. Those were the years following the advent and practical working of theReformation--but Catholicism is yet strong, and yet seeks supremacy. We think our age full of the flush of men and doings, and culminationsof war and peace; and so it is. But there could hardly be a granderand more picturesque and varied age than that. 

Born out of and in this age, when Milton, Bunyan, Dryden and JohnLocke were still living--amid the memories of Queen Elizabeth andJames First, and the events of their reigns--when the radiance of thatgalaxy of poets, warriors, statesmen, captains, lords, explorers, witsand gentlemen, that crowded the courts and times of those sovereignsstill fill'd the atmosphere--when America commencing to be explor'dand settled commenc'd also to be suspected as destin'd to overthrowthe old standards and calculations--when Feudalism, like a sunset, seem'd to gather all its glories, reminiscences, personalisms, in onelast gorgeous effort, before the advance of a new day, a new incipientgenius--amid the social and domestic circles of that period--indifferentto reverberations that seem'd enough to wake the dead, and in a spherefar from the pageants of the court, the awe of any personal rank or charmof intellect, or literature, or the varying excitement of Parliamentarianor Royalist fortunes--this curious young rustic goes wandering up anddown England. 

George Fox, born 1624, was of decent stock, in ordinary lower life--ashe grew along toward manhood, work'd at shoemaking, also at farmlabors--loved to be much by himself, half-hidden in the woods, reading the Bible--went about from town to town, dress'd in leatherclothes--walk'd much at night, solitary, deeply troubled ("the inwarddivine teaching of the Lord")--sometimes goes among the ecclesiasticalgatherings of the great professors, and though a mere youth bearsbold testimony--goes to and fro disputing--(must have had greatpersonality)--heard the voice of the Lord speaking articulately tohim, as he walk'd in the fields--feels resistless commands not to beexplain'd, but follow'd, to abstain from taking off his hat, to say_Thee_ and _Thou_, and not bid others Good morning or Good evening-wasilliterate, could just read and write-testifies against shows, games, and frivolous pleasures--enters the courts and warns the judges thatthey see to doing justice--goes into public houses and market-places, with denunciations of drunkenness and money-making--rises in themidst of the church-services, and gives his own explanations of theministers' explanations, and of Bible passages and texts--sometimesfor such things put in prison, sometimes struck fiercely on the mouthon the spot, or knock'd down, and lying there beaten and bloody--wasof keen wit, ready to any question with the most apropos ofanswers--was sometimes press'd for a soldier, (_him_ for asoldier!)--was indeed terribly buffeted; but goes, goes, goes--oftensleeping out-doors, under hedges, or hay stacks--forever taken beforejustices--improving such, and all occasions, to _bear testimony_, andgive good advice--still enters the "steeple-houses, " (as he callschurches, ) and though often dragg'd out and whipt till he faintsaway, and lies like one dead, when he comes-to--stands up again, andoffering himself all bruis'd and bloody, cries out to his tormenters, "Strike--strike again, here where you have not yet touch'd! my arms, my head, my cheeks, "--Is at length arrested and sent up to London, confers with the Protector, Cromwell, --is set at liberty, and holdsgreat meetings in London. 

Thus going on, there is something in him that fascinates one or twohere, and three or four there, until gradually there were others whowent about in the same spirit, and by degrees the Society of Friendstook shape, and stood among the thousand religious sects of theworld. Women also catch the contagion, and go round, often shamefullymisused. By such contagion these ministerings, by scores, almosthundreds of poor travelling men and women, keep on year afteryear, through ridicule, whipping, imprisonment, &c. --some of theFriend-ministers emigrate to New England--where their treatmentmakes the blackest part of the early annals of the New World. Somewere executed, others maim'd, par-burnt, and scourg'd--two hundred diein prison--some on the gallows, or at the stake. 

George Fox himself visited America, and found a refuge and hearers, and preach'd many times on Long Island, New York State. In the villageof Oysterbay they will show you the rock on which he stood, (1672, )addressing the multitude, in the open air--thus rigidly following thefashion of apostolic times. --(I have heard myself many reminiscencesof him. ) Flushing also contains (or contain'd--I have seen them)memorials of Fox, and his son, in two aged white-oak trees, thatshaded him while he bore his testimony to people gather'd in thehighway. --Yes, the American Quakers were much persecuted--almost asmuch, by a sort of consent of all the other sects, as the Jews werein Europe in the middle ages. In New England, the cruelest lawswere pass'd, and put in execution against them. As said, some werewhipt--women the same as men. Some had their ears cut off--otherstheir tongues pierc'd with hot irons--others their faces branded. Worse still, a woman and three men had been hang'd, (1660. )--Publicopinion, and the statutes, join'd together, in an odious union, Quakers, Baptists, Roman Catholics and Witches. --Such a fragmentarysketch of George Fox and his time--and the advent of "the Society ofFriends" in America. 

Strange as it may sound, Shakspere and George Fox, (think of them!compare them!) were born and bred of similar stock, in much the samesurroundings and station in life--from the same England--and ata similar period. One to radiate all of art's, all literature'ssplendor--a splendor so dazzling that he himself is almost lost init, and his contemporaries the same--his fictitious Othello, Romeo, Hamlet, Lear, as real as any lords of England or Europe then andthere--more real to us, the mind sometimes thinks, than the manShakspere himself. Then the other--may we indeed name him the sameday? What is poor plain George Fox compared to William Shakspere--tofancy's lord, imagination's heir? Yet George Fox stands for somethingtoo--a thought--the thought that wakes in silent hours--perhaps thedeepest, most eternal thought latent in the human soul. This isthe thought of God, merged in the thoughts of moral right and theimmortality of identity. Great, great is this thought--aye, greaterthan all else. When the gorgeous pageant of Art, refulgent in thesunshine, color'd with roses and gold--with all the richest merepoetry, old or new, (even Shakespere's) with all that statue, play, painting, music, architecture, oratory, can effect, ceases to satisfyand please--When the eager chase after wealth flags, and beauty itselfbecomes a loathing--and when all worldly or carnal or esthetic, or even scientific values, having done their office to the humancharacter, and minister'd their part to its development--then, ifnot before, comes forward this over-arching thought, and brings itseligibilities, germinations. Most neglected in life of all humanity'sattributes, easily cover'd with crust, deluded and abused, rejected, yet the only certain source of what all are seeking, but few or nonefinding it I for myself clearly see the first, the last, the deepestdepths and highest heights of art, of literature, and of the purposesof life. I say whoever labors here, makes contributions here, or bestof all sets an incarnated example here, of life or death, is dearestto humanity--remains after the rest are gone. And here, for thesepurposes, and up to the light that was in him, the man Elias Hicks--asthe man George Fox had done years before him--lived long, and died, faithful in life, and faithful in death. 

GOOD-BYE MY FANCY

AN OLD MAN'S REJOINDER

In the domain of Literature loftily consider'd (an accomplish'd andveteran critic in his just out work[44] now says, ) 'the kingdom of theFather has pass'd; the kingdom of the Son is passing; the kingdom ofthe Spirit begins. ' Leaving the reader to chew on and extract thejuice and meaning of this, I will proceed to say in melanged form whatI have had brought out by the English author's essay (he discussesthe poetic art mostly) on my own, real, or by him supposed, views andpurports. If I give any answers to him, or explanations of what mybooks intend, they will be not direct but indirect and derivative. Ofcourse this brief jotting is personal. Something very like querulousegotism and growling may break through the narrative (for I have beenand am rejected by all the great magazines, carry now my 72d annualburden, and have been a paralytic for 18 years. )

No great poem or other literary or artistic work of any scope, old ornew, can be essentially consider'd without weighing first the age, politics (or want of politics) and aim, visible forms, unseensoul, and current times, out of the midst of which it rises and isformulated: as the Biblic canticles and their days and spirit--as theHomeric, or Dante's utterance, or Shakspere's, or the old Scotch orIrish ballads, or Ossian, or Omar Khayyam. So I have conceiv'd andlaunch'd, and work'd for years at, my 'Leaves of Grass'--personalemanations only at best, but with specialty of emergence andbackground--the ripening of the nineteenth century, the thought andfact and radiation of individuality, of America, the secession war, and showing the democratic conditions supplanting everything thatinsults them or impedes their aggregate way. Doubtless my poemsillustrate (one of novel thousands to come for a long period) thoseconditions; but "democratic art" will have to wait long before it issatisfactorily formulated and defined--if it ever is. 

I will now for one indicative moment lock horns with what many Thinkthe greatest thing, the question of _art_, so-call'd. I have not seenwithout learning something therefrom, how, with hardly an exception, the poets of this age devote themselves, always mainly, sometimesaltogether, to fine rhyme, spicy verbalism, the fabric and cut of thegarment, jewelry, _concetti_, style, art. To-day these adjuncts arecertainly the effort, beyond all else, yet the lesson of Natureundoubtedly is, to proceed with single purpose toward the resultnecessitated, and for which the time has arrived, utterly regardlessof the outputs of shape, appearance or criticism, which are alwaysleft to settle themselves. I have not only not bother'd much aboutstyle, form, art, etc. , but confess to more or less apathy (I believeI have sometimes caught myself in decided aversion) toward themthroughout, asking nothing of them but negative advantages--that theyshould never impede me, and never under any circumstances, or fortheir own purposes only, assume any mastery over me. 

From the beginning I have watch'd the sharp and sometimes heavy anddeep-penetrating objections and reviews against my work, and I hopeentertain'd and audited them; (for I have probably had an advantage inconstructing from a central and unitary principle since the first, butat long intervals and stages--sometimes lapses of five or six years, or peace or war. ) Ruskin, the Englishman, charges as a fearful andserious lack that my poems have no humor. A profound German criticcomplains that, compared with the luxuriant and well-accepted songsof the world, there is about my verse a certain coldness, severity, absence of spice, polish, or of consecutive meaning and plot. (Thebook is autobiographic at bottom, and may-be I do not exhibit and makeado about the stock passions: I am partly of Quaker stock. ) ThenE. C. Stedman finds (or found) mark'd fault with me because whilecelebrating the common people _en masse_, I do not allow enoughheroism and moral merit and good intentions to the choicer classes, the college-bred, the _etat-major_. It is quite probable that S. Isright in the matter. In the main I myself look, and have from thefirst look'd, to the bulky democratic _torso_ of the United Stateseven for esthetic and moral attributes of serious account--and refusedto aim at or accept anything less. If America is only for the ruleand fashion and small typicality of other lands (the rule of the_etat-major_) it is not the land I take it for, and should to-day feelthat my literary aim and theory had been blanks and misdirections. Strictly judged, most modern poems are but larger or smaller lumps ofsugar, or slices of toothsome sweet cake--even the banqueters dwellingon those glucose flavors as a main part of the dish. Which perhapsleads to something: to have great heroic poetry we need greatreaders--a heroic appetite and audience. Have we at present any such?

Then the thought at the centre, never too often repeated. Boundlessmaterial wealth, free political organization, immense geographicarea, and unprecedented "business" and products--even the most activeintellect and "culture"--will not place this Commonwealth of ourson the topmost range of history and humanity--or any eminence of"democratic art"--to say nothing of its pinnacle. Only the production(and on the most copious scale) of loftiest moral, spiritual andheroic personal illustrations--a great native Literature headed witha Poetry stronger and sweeter than any yet. If there can be any suchthing as a kosmic modern and original song, America needs it, and isworthy of it. 

In my opinion to-day (bitter as it is to say so) the outputs throughcivilized nations everywhere from the great words Literature, Art, Religion, &c. , with their conventional administerers, stand squarelyin the way of what the vitalities of those great words signify, morethan they really prepare the soil for them--or plant the seeds, orcultivate or garner the crop. My own opinion has long been, that forNew World service our ideas of beauty (inherited from the Greeks, and so on to Shakspere--_query_--perverted from them?) need to beradically changed, and made anew for to-day's purposes and finerstandards. But if so, it will all come in due time--the real changewill be an autochthonic, interior, constitutional, even local one, from which our notions of beauty (lines and colors are wondrouslovely, but character is lovelier) will branch or offshoot. 

So much have I now rattled off (old age's garrulity, ) that there isnot space for explaining the most important and pregnant principle ofall, viz. , that Art is one, is not partial, but includes all times andforms and sorts--is not exclusively aristocratic or democratic, ororiental or occidental. My favorite symbol would be a good font oftype, where the impeccable long-primer rejects nothing. Or the oldDutch flour-miller who said, "I never bother myself what road thefolks come--I only want good wheat and rye. "

The font is about the same forever. Democratic art results ofdemocratic development, from tinge, true nationality, belief, in theone setting up from it. 

Note:

[44] Two new volumes, "Essays Speculative and Suggestive, " by JohnAddington Symonds. One of the Essays is on "Democratic Art, " in whichI and my books are largely alluded to and cited and dissected. Itis this part of the vols. That has caused the off-hand linesabove--(first thanking Mr. S. For his invariable courtesy of personaltreatment). 

OLD POETS

Poetry (I am clear) is eligible of something far more ripen'd andample, our lands and pending days, than it has yet produced fromany utterance old or new. Modern or new poetry, too, (viewing orchallenging it with severe criticism, ) is largely a-void--while thevery cognizance, or even suspicion of that void, and the need offilling it, proves a certainty of the hidden and waiting supply. Leaving other lands and languages to speak for themselves, we canabruptly but deeply suggest it best from our own--going first tooversea illustrations, and standing on them. Think of Byron, Burns, Shelley, Keats, (even first-raters, "the brothers of the radiantsummit, " as William O'Connor calls them, ) as having done only theirprecursory and 'prentice work, and all their best and real poems beingleft yet unwrought, untouch'd. Is it difficult to imagine ahead ofus and them, evolv'd from them, poesy completer far than any theythemselves fulfill'd? One has in his eye and mind some very large, very old, entirely sound and vital tree or vine, like certain hardy, ever-fruitful specimens in California and Canada, or down inMexico, (and indeed in all lands) beyond the chronologicalrecords--illustrations of growth, continuity, power, amplitudeand _exploitation_, almost beyond statement, but proving fact andpossibility, outside of argument. 

Perhaps, indeed, the rarest and most blessed quality of transcendentnoble poetry--as of law, and of the profoundest wisdom andestheticism--is, (I would suggest, ) from sane, completed, vital, capable old age. 

The final proof of song or personality is a sort of matured, accreted, superb, evoluted, almost divine, impalpable diffuseness and atmosphereor invisible magnetism, dissolving and embracing all--and not anyspecial achievement of passion, pride, metrical form, epigram, plot, thought, or what is call'd beauty. The bud of the rose or thehalf-blown flower is beautiful, of course, but only the perfectedbloom or apple or finish'd wheat-head is beyond the rest. Completedfruitage like this comes (in my opinion) to a grand age, in manor woman, through an essentially sound continuated physiology andpsychology (both important) and is the culminating glorious aureole ofall and several preceding. Like the tree or vine just mention'd, itstands at last in a beauty, power and productiveness of its own, aboveall others, and of a sort and style uniting all criticisms, proofs andadherences. 

Let us diversify the matter a little by portraying some of theAmerican poets from our own point of view. 

Longfellow, reminiscent, polish'd, elegant, with the air of finestconventional library, picture-gallery or parlor, with ladies andgentlemen in them, and plush and rosewood, and ground-glass lamps, andmahogany and ebony furniture, and a silver inkstand and scented satinpaper to write on. 

Whittier stands for morality (not in any all-accepting philosophicor Hegelian sense, but) filter'd through a Puritanical or Quakerfilter--is incalculably valuable as a genuine utterance, (and thefinest, )--with many local and Yankee and _genre_ bits--all hued withanti-slavery coloring--(the _genre_ and anti-slavery contributions allprecious--all help. ) Whittier's is rather a grand figure, but prettylean and ascetic--no Greek-not universal and composite enough (don'ttry--don't wish to be) for ideal Americanism. Ideal Americanism wouldtake the Greek spirit and law, and democratize and scientize and(thence) truly Christianize them for the whole, the globe, allhistory, all ranks and lands, all facts, all good and bad. (Ah this_bad_--this nineteen-twentieths of us all! What a stumbling-block itremains for poets and metaphysicians--what a chance (the strange, clear-as-ever inscription on the old dug-up tablet) it offers yet forbeing translated--what can be its purpose in the God-scheme of thisuniverse, and all?)

Then William Cullen Bryant--meditative, serious, from first to lasttending to threnodies--his genius mainly lyrical--when reading hispieces who could expect or ask for more magnificent ones than suchas "The Battle-Field, " and "A Forest Hymn"? Bryant, unrolling, prairie-like, notwithstanding his mountains and lakes--moral enough(yet worldly and conventional)--a naturalist, pedestrian, gardener andfruiter--well aware of books, but mixing to the last in cities andsociety. I am not sure but his name ought to lead the list of Americanbards. Years ago I thought Emerson pre eminent (and as to the lastpolish and intellectual cuteness may-be I think so still)--but, forreasons, I have been gradually tending to give the file-leading placefor American native poesy to W. C. B. 

Of Emerson I have to confirm my already avow'd opinion regarding hishighest bardic and personal attitude. Of the galaxy of the past--ofPoe, Halleck, Mrs. Sigourney, Allston, Willis, Dana, John Pierpont, W. G. Simms, Robert Sands, Drake, Hillhouse, TheodoreFay, Margaret Fuller, Epes Sargent, Boker, Paul Hayne, Lanier, andothers, I fitly in essaying such a theme as this, and reverence fortheir memories, may at least give a heart-benison on the list of theirnames. 

Time and New World humanity having the venerable resemblances morethan anything else, and being "the same subject continued, " just herein 1890, one gets a curious nourishment and lift (I do) from all thosegrand old veterans, Bancroft, Kossuth, von Moltke--and such typicalspecimen-reminiscences as Sophocles and Goethe, genius, health, beautyof person, riches, rank, renown and length of days, all combining andcentering in one case. 

Above everything, what could humanity and literature do without themellow, last-justifying, averaging, bringing-up of many, many years--agreat old age amplified? Every really first-class production haslikely to pass through the crucial tests of a generation, perhapsseveral generations. Lord Bacon says the first sight of any workreally new and first-rate in beauty and originality always arousessomething disagreeable and repulsive. Voltaire term'd the Shakspereanworks "a huge dunghill"; Hamlet he described (to the Academy, whosemembers listen'd with approbation) as "the dream of a drunken savage, with a few flashes of beautiful thoughts. " And not the Ferney sagealone; the orthodox judges and law-givers of France, such as LaHarpe, J. L. Geoffrey, and Chateaubriand, either join'd in Voltaire'sverdict, or went further. Indeed the classicists and regulars therestill hold to it. The lesson is very significant in all departments. People resent anything new as a personal insult. When umbrellas werefirst used in England, those who carried them were hooted andpelted so furiously that their lives were endanger'd. The same rageencounter'd the attempt in theatricals to perform women's parts byreal women, which was publicly consider'd disgusting and outrageous. Byron thought Pope's verse incomparably ahead of Homer and Shakspere. One of the prevalent objections, in the days of Columbus was, thelearn'd men boldly asserted that if a ship should reach India shewould never get back again, because the rotundity of the globe wouldpresent a kind of mountain, up which it would be impossible to saileven with the most favorable wind. 

"Modern poets, " says a leading Boston journal, "enjoy longevity. Browning lived to be seventy-seven. Wordsworth, Bryant, Emerson, andLongfellow were old men. Whittier, Tennyson, and Walt Whitman stilllive. "

Started out by that item on Old Poets and Poetry for chyle to innerAmerican sustenance--I have thus gossipp'd about it all, and treatedit from my own point of view, taking the privilege of ramblingwherever the talk carried me. Browning is lately dead; Bryant, Emersonand Longfellow have not long pass'd away; and yes, Whittier andTennyson remain, over eighty years old--the latter having sent outnot long since a fresh volume, which the English-speaking Old and NewWorlds are yet reading. I have already put on record my notions of T. And his effusions: they are very attractive and flowery to me--butflowers, too, are at least as profound as anything; and by commonconsent T. Is settled as the poetic cream-skimmer of our age's melody, _ennui_ and polish--a verdict in which I agree, and should say thatnobody (not even Shakspere) goes deeper in those exquisitely touch'dand half-hidden hints and indirections left like faint perfumes in thecrevices of his lines. Of Browning I don't know enough to say much;he must be studied deeply out, too, and quite certainly repays thetrouble--but I am old and indolent, and cannot study (and never did. )

Grand as to-day's accumulative fund of poetry is, there is certainlysomething unborn, not yet come forth, different from anything nowformulated in any verse, or contributed by the past in any land--something waited for, craved, hitherto non-express'd. What it will be, and how, no one knows. It will probably have to prove itself by itselfand its readers. One thing, it must run through entire humanity (thisnew word and meaning Solidarity has arisen to us moderns) twining alllands like a divine thread, stringing all beads, pebbles or gold, fromGod and the soul, and like God's dynamics and sunshine illustratingall and having reference to all. From anything like a cosmical pointof view, the entirety of imaginative literature's themes and resultsas we get them to-day seems painfully narrow. All that has been putin statement, tremendous as it is, what is it compared with the vastfields and values and varieties left unreap'd? Of our own country, the splendid races North or South, and especially of the Western andPacific regions, it sometimes seems to me their myriad noblest Homericand Biblic elements are all untouch'd, left as if ashamed of, and onlycertain very minor occasional _delirium tremens_ glints studiouslysought and put in print, in short tales, "poetry" or books. 

I give these speculations, or notions, in all their audacity, for thecomfort of thousands--perhaps a majority of ardent minds, women's andyoung men's--who stand in awe and despair before the immensity of sunsand stars already in the firmament. Even in the Iliad and Shaksperethere is (is there not?) a certain humiliation produced to us by theabsorption of them, unless we sound in equality, or above them, thesongs due our own democratic era and surroundings, and the fullassertion of ourselves. And in vain (such is my opinion) will Americaseek successfully to tune any superb national song unless theheart-strings of the people start it from their own breasts--to bereturn'd and echoed there again. 

SHIP AHOY

 In dreams I was a ship, and sail'd the boundless seas, Sailing and ever sailing--all seas and into every port, or out upon the offing, Saluting, cheerily hailing each mate, met or pass'd, little or big, "Ship ahoy!" thro' trumpet or by voice--if nothing more, some friendly merry word at least, For companionship and good will for ever to all and each. 

FOR QUEEN VICTORIA'S BIRTHDAY

_An American arbutus bunch to be put in a little vase on the royalbreakfast table May 24th, 1890_. 

Lady, accept a birth-day thought--haply an idle gift and token, Rightfrom the scented soil's May-utterance here, (Smelling of countlessblessings, prayers, and old-time thanks, )[45] A bunch of white andpink arbutus, silent, spicy, shy, From Hudson's, Delaware's, orPotomac's woody banks. 

Note:

[45] NOTE. --Very little, as we Americans stand this day, with oursixty-five or seventy millions of population, an immense surplus inthe treasury, and all that actual power or reserve power (land andsea) so dear to nations--very little I say do we realize that curiouscrawling national shudder when the "Trent affair" promis'd to bringupon us a war with Great Britain--follow'd unquestionably, as that warwould have, by recognition of the Southern Confederacy from allthe leading European nations. It is now certain that all this theninevitable train of calamity hung on arrogant and peremptory phrasesin the prepared and written missive of the British Minister, toAmerica, which the Queen (and Prince Albert latent) positively andpromptly cancell'd; and which her firm attitude did alone actuallyerase and leave out, against all the other official prestige and Courtof St. James's. On such minor and personal incidents (so to callthem, ) often depend the great growths and turns of civilization. Thismoment of a woman and a queen surely swung the grandest oscillationof modern history's pendulum. Many sayings and doings of that period, from foreign potentates and powers, might well be dropt in oblivion byAmerica--but never _this_, if I could have my way. W. W. 

AMERICAN NATIONAL LITERATURE

_Is there any such thing--or can there ever be?_

So you want an essay about American National Literature, (tremendousand fearful subject!) do you?[46] Well, if you will let me put downsome melanged cogitations regarding the matter, hap-hazard, and frommy own points of view, I will try. Horace Greeley wrote a book named"Hints toward Reforms, " and the title-line was consider'd the bestpart of all. In the present case I will give a few thoughts andsuggestions, of good and ambitious intent enough anyhow--firstreiterating the question right out plainly: American NationalLiterature--is there distinctively any such thing, or can there everbe? First to me comes an almost indescribably august form, the People, with varied typical shapes and attitudes-then the divine mirror, Literature. 

As things are, probably no more puzzling question ever offer'd itselfthan (going back to old Nile for a trope, ) What bread-seeds of printedmentality shall we cast upon America's waters, to grow and returnafter many days? Is there for the future authorship of the UnitedStates any better way than submission to the teeming facts, events, activities, and importations already vital through and beneath themall? I have often ponder'd it, and felt myself disposed to let it goat that. Indeed, are not those facts and activities and importationspotent and certain to fulfil themselves all through our Commonwealth, irrespective of any attempt from individual guidance? But allowingall, and even at that, a good part of the matter being honestdiscussion, examination, and earnest personal presentation, we mayeven for sanitary exercise and contact plunge boldly into the spreadof the many waves and cross-tides, as follows. Or, to change thefigure, I will present my varied little collation (what is our Countryitself but an infinitely vast and varied collation?) in the hope thatthe show itself indicates a duty getting more and more incumbent everyday. 

In general, civilization's totality or real representative NationalLiterature formates itself (like language, or "the weather") not fromtwo or three influences, however important, nor from any learnedsyllabus, or criticism, or what ought to be, nor from any mindsor advice of toploftical quarters--and indeed not at all from theinfluences and ways ostensibly supposed (though they too are adopted, after a sort)--but slowly, slowly, curiously, from many more and more, deeper mixings and siftings (especially in America) and generationsand years and races, and what largely appears to be chance--but isnot chance at all. First of all, for future National Literature inAmerica, New England (the technically moral and schoolmaster region, as a cynical fellow I know calls it) and the three or four greatAtlantic-coast cities, highly as they to-day suppose they dominate thewhole, will have to haul in their horns. _Ensemble_ is the tap-rootof National Literature. America is become already a huge worldof peoples, rounded and orbic climates, idiocrasies, andgeographies--forty-four Nations curiously and irresistibly blent andaggregated in ONE NATION, with one imperial language, and one unitaryset of social and legal standards over all--and (I predict) a yet tobe National Literature. (In my mind this last, if it ever comes, isto prove grander and more important for the Commonwealth than itspolitics and material wealth and trade, vast and indispensable asthose are. )

Think a moment what must, beyond peradventure, be the real permanentsub-bases, or lack of them. Books profoundly considered show a greatnation more than anything else--more than laws or manners. (This is, of course, probably the deep-down meaning of that well-buried butever-vital platitude, Let me sing the people's songs, and I don't carewho makes their laws. ) Books too reflect humanity _en masse_, andsurely show them splendidly, or the reverse, and prove or celebratetheir prevalent traits (these last the main things. ) Homer grew out ofand has held the ages, and holds to-day, by the universal admirationfor personal prowess, courage, rankness, _amour propre_, leadership, inherent in the whole human race. Shakspere concentrates thebrilliancy of the centuries of feudalism on the proud personalitiesthey produced, and paints the amorous passion. The books of the Biblestand for the final superiority of devout emotions over the rest, andof religious adoration, and ultimate absolute justice, more powerfulthan haughtiest kings or millionaires or majorities. 

What the United States are working out and establishing needsimperatively the connivance of something subtler than ballots andlegislators. The Goethean theory and lesson (if I may briefly stateit so) of the exclusive sufficiency of artistic, scientific, literaryequipment to the character, irrespective of any strong claims of thepolitical ties of nation, state, or city, could have answer'd underthe conventionality and pettiness of Weimar, or the Germany, or evenEurope, of those times; but it will not do for America to-day at all. We have not only to exploit our own theory above any that has precededus, but we have entirely different, and deeper-rooted, and infinitelybroader themes. 

When I have had a chance to see and observe a sufficient crowd ofAmerican boys or maturer youths or well-grown men, all the States, asin my experiences in the secession war among the soldiers, or west, east, north, or south, or my wanderings and loiterings through cities(especially New York and in Washington, ) I have invariably foundcoming to the front three prevailing personal traits, to be namedhere for brevity's sake under the heads Good-Nature, Decorum, andIntelligence. (I make Good-Nature first, as it deserves to be--it isa splendid resultant of all the rest, like health or fine weather. )Essentially these lead the inherent list of the high average personalborn and bred qualities of the young fellows everywhere through theUnited States, as any sharp observer can find out for himself. Surelythese make the vertebral stock of superbest and noblest nations! Maythe destinies show it so forthcoming. I mainly confide the wholefuture of our Commonwealth to the fact of these three bases. NeedI say I demand the same in the elements and spirit and fruitage ofNational Literature?

Another, perhaps a born root or branch, comes under the words_Noblesse Oblige_, even for a national rule or motto. My opinion isthat this foregoing phrase, and its spirit, should influence andpermeate official America and its representatives in Congress, the Executive Departments, the Presidency, and the individualStates--should be one of their chiefest mottoes, and be carried outpractically. (I got the idea from my dear friend the democraticEnglishwoman, Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, now dead. "The beautiful words_Noblesse Oblige_, " said she to me once, "are not best for somedevelop'd gentleman or lord, but some rich and develop'd nation--andespecially for your America. ")

Then another and very grave point (for this discussion is deep, deep--not for trifles, or pretty seemings. ) I am not sure but theestablish'd and old (and superb and profound, and, one may say, neededas old) conception of Deity as mainly of moral constituency (goodness, purity, sinlessness, &c. ) has been undermined by nineteenth-centuryideas and science. What does this immense and almost abnormaldevelopment of Philanthropy mean among the moderns? One doubts ifthere ever will come a day when the moral laws and moral standardswill be supplanted as over all: while time proceeds (I find it somyself) they will probably be intrench'd deeper and expanded wider. Then the expanded scientific and democratic and truly philosophicand poetic quality of modernism demands a Deific identity and scopesuperior to all limitations, and essentially including just as wellthe so-call'd evil and crime and criminals--all the malformations, thedefective and abortions of the universe. 

Sometimes the bulk of the common people (who are far more 'cute thanthe critics suppose) relish a well-hidden allusion or hint carelesslydropt, faintly indicated, and left to be disinterr'd or not. Someof the very old ballads have delicious morsels of this kind. GreekAristophanes and Pindar abounded in them. (I sometimes fancy the oldHellenic audiences must have been as generally keen and knowing as anyof their poets. ) Shakspere is full of them. Tennyson has them. It isalways a capital compliment from author to reader, and worthy thepeering brains of America. The mere smartness of the common folks, however, does not need encouraging, but qualities more solid andopportune. 

What are now deepest wanted in the States as roots for theirliterature are Patriotism, Nationality, Ensemble, or the ideas ofthese, and the uncompromising genesis and saturation of these. Not themere bawling and braggadocio of them, but the radical emotion-facts, the fervor and perennial fructifying spirit at fountain-head. And atthe risk of being misunderstood I should dwell on and repeat that agreat imaginative _literatus_ for America can never be merely good andmoral in the conventional method. Puritanism and what radiates from itmust always be mention'd by me with respect; then I should say, forthis vast and varied Commonwealth, geographically and artistically, the puritanical standards are constipated, narrow, and non-philosophic. 

In the main I adhere to my positions in "Democratic Vistas, " andespecially to my summing-up of American literature as far as to-day isconcern'd. In Scientism, the Medical Profession, Practical Inventions, and Journalism, the United States have press'd forward to the gloriousfront rank of advanced civilized lands, as also in the populardissemination of printed matter (of a superficial nature perhaps, butthat is an indispensable preparatory stage, ) and have gone in commoneducation, so-call'd, far beyond any other land or age. Yet thehigh-pitch'd taunt of Margaret Fuller, forty years ago, still soundsin the air: "It does not follow, because the United States print andread more books, magazines, and newspapers than all the rest of theworld, that they really have therefore a literature. " For perhapsit is not alone the free schools and newspapers, nor railroads andfactories, nor all the iron, cotton, wheat, pork, and petroleum, northe gold and silver, nor the surplus of a hundred or several hundredmillions, nor the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, nor the lastnational census, that can put this Commonweal high or highest on thecosmical scale of history. Something else is indispensable. All thatrecord is lofty, but there is a loftier. 

The great current points are perhaps simple, after all: first, thatthe highest developments of the New World and Democracy, and probablythe best society of the civilized world all over, are to be onlyreach'd and spinally nourish'd (in my notion) by a new evolutionarysense and treatment; and, secondly, that the evolution-principle, which is the greatest law through nature, and of course in theseStates, has now reach'd us markedly for and in our literature. 

In other writings I have tried to show how vital to any aspiringNationality must ever be its autochthonic song, and how for a reallygreat people there can be no complete and glorious Name, short ofemerging out of and even rais'd on such born poetic expression, comingfrom its own soil and soul, its area, spread, idiosyncrasies, and(like showers of rain, originally rising impalpably, distill'd fromland and sea, ) duly returning there again. Nor do I forget what we allowe to our ancestry; though perhaps we are apt to forgive and bear toomuch for that alone. 

One part of the national American literatus's task is (and it isnot an easy one) to treat the old hereditaments, legends, poems, theologies, and even customs, with fitting respect and toleration, andat the same time clearly understand and justify, and be devoted to andexploit our own day, its diffused light, freedom, responsibilities, with all it necessitates, and that our New-World circumstances andstages of development demand and make proper. For American literaturewe want mighty authors, _not_ even Carlyle- and Heine-like, born andbrought up in (and more or less essentially partaking and giving out)that vast abnormal ward or hysterical sick-chamber which in manyrespects Europe, with all its glories, would seem to be. The greatestfeature in current poetry (perhaps in literature anyhow) is thealmost total lack of first-class power, and simple, natural health, flourishing and produced at first hand, typifying our own era. Modernverse generally lacks quite altogether the modern, and is oftenerpossess'd in spirit with the past and feudal, dressed may-be in latefashions. For novels and plays often the plots and surfaces arecontemporary--but the spirit, even the fun, is morbid and effete. 

There is an essential difference between the Old and New. The poems ofAsia and Europe are rooted in the long past. They celebrate man andhis intellections and relativenesses as they have been. But America, in as high a strain as ever, is to sing them all as they are and areto be. (I know, of course, that the past is probably a main factor inwhat we are and know and must be. ) At present the States are absorb'din business, money-making, politics, agriculture, the development ofmines, intercommunications, and other material attents--which allshove forward and appear at their height--as, consistently with moderncivilization, they must be and should be. Then even these are butthe inevitable precedents and providers for home-born, transcendent, democratic literature--to be shown in superior, more heroic, morespiritual, more emotional, personalities and songs. A nationalliterature is, of course, in one sense, a great mirror or reflector. There must however be something before--something to reflect. Ishould say now, since the secession war, there has been, and to-dayunquestionably exists, that something. 

Certainly, anyhow, the United States do not so far utter poetry, first-rate literature, or any of the so-call'd arts, to any loftyadmiration or advantage--are not dominated or penetrated from actualinherence or plain bent to the said poetry and arts. Other work, otherneeds, current inventions, productions, have occupied and to-daymainly occupy them. They are very 'cute and imitative and proud--can'tbear being left too glaringly away far behind the other high-classnations--and so we set up some home "poets, " "artists, " painters, musicians, _literati_, and so forth, all our own (thus claim'd. ) Thewhole matter has gone on, and exists to-day, probably as it shouldhave been, and should be; as, for the present, it must be. To allwhich we conclude, and repeat the terrible query: American NationalLiterature--is there distinctively any such thing, or can there everbe?

Note:

[46] The essay was for the _North American Review_, in answer to theformal request of the editor. It appear'd in March, 1891. 

GATHERING THE CORN

_Last of October_. --Now mellow, crisp, Autumn days, bright moonlightnights, and gathering the corn--"cutting up, " as the farmers call it. Now, or of late, all over the country, a certain green and brown-drabeloquence seeming to call out, "You that pretend to give the news, andall that's going, why not give us a notice?" Truly, O fields, as forthe notice, "Take, we give it willingly. "

Only we must do it our own way. Leaving the domestic, dietary, andcommercial parts of the question (which are enormous, in fact, hardlysecond to those of any other of our great soil-products), we will justsaunter down a lane we know, on an average West Jersey farm, and letthe fancy of the hour itemize America's most typical agricultural showand specialty. 

Gathering the Corn--the British call it Maize, the old Yankee farmerIndian Corn. The great plumes, the ears well-envelop'd in their husks, the long and pointed leaves, in summer, like green or purple ribands, with a yellow stem line in the middle, all now turn'd dingy; thesturdy stalks, and the rustling in the breeze--the breeze itself welltempering the sunny noon--The varied reminiscences recall'd--theploughing and planting in spring--(the whole family in the field, eventhe little girls and boys dropping seed in the hill)--the gorgeoussight through July and August--the walk and observation early in theday--the cheery call of the robin, and the low whirr of insects in thegrass--the Western husking party, when ripe--the November moonlightgathering, and the calls, songs, laughter of the young fellows. 

Not to forget, hereabouts, in the Middle States, the old worm fences, with the gray rails and their scabs of moss and lichen--those oldrails, weather beaten, but strong yet. Why not come down from literarydignity, and confess we are sitting on one now, under the shade of agreat walnut tree? Why not confide that these lines are pencill'don the edge of a woody bank, with a glistening pond and creek seenthrough the trees south, and the corn we are writing about close athand on the north? Why not put in the delicious scent of the "lifeeverlasting" that yet lingers so profusely in every direction--thechromatic song of the one persevering locust (the insect is scarcerthis fall and the past summer than for many years) beginning slowly, rising and swelling to much emphasis, and then abruptly falling--soappropriate to the scene, so quaint, so racy and suggestive in thewarm sunbeams, we could sit here and look and listen for an hour?Why not even the tiny, turtle-shaped, yellow-back'd, black-spottedlady-bug that has lit on the shirt-sleeve of the arm inditingthis? Ending our list with the fall-drying grass, the Autumn daysthemselves, Sweet days; so cool, so calm, so bright, (yet not so cool either, about noon)--the horse-mint, the wild carrot, the mullein, and the bumble-bee. 

How the half-mad vision of William Blake--how the far freer, farfirmer fantasy that wrote "Midsummer Night's Dream"--would haverevell'd night or day, and beyond stint, in one of our Americancorn fields! Truly, in color, outline, material and spiritualsuggestiveness, where any more inclosing theme for idealist, poet, literary artist?

What we have written has been at noon day--but perhaps better still(for this collation, ) to steal off by yourself these fine nights, and go slowly, musingly down the lane, when the dry and green-grayfrost-touch'd leaves seem whisper-gossipping all over the field inlow tones, as if every hill had something to say--and you sit or leanrecluse near by, and inhale that rare, rich, ripe and peculiar odorof the gather'd plant which comes out best only to the night air. Thecomplex impressions of the far-spread fields and woods in the night, are blended mystically, soothingly, indefinitely, and yet palpably toyou (appealing curiously, perhaps mostly, to the sense of smell. ) Allis comparative silence and clear-shadow below, and the stars are upthere with Jupiter lording it over westward; sulky Saturn in the east, and over head the moon. A rare well-shadow'd hour! By no means theleast of the eligibilities of the gather'd corn!

A DEATH-BOUQUET

_Pick'd Noontime, early January, 1890_

Death--too great a subject to be treated so--indeed the greatestsubject--and yet I am giving you but a few random lines about it--asone writes hurriedly the last part of a letter to catch the closingmail. Only I trust the lines, especially the poetic bits quoted, may leave a lingering odor of spiritual heroism afterward. For I amprobably fond of viewing all really great themes indirectly, and byside-ways and suggestions. Certain music from wondrous voices orskilful players--then poetic glints still more--put the soul inrapport with death, or toward it. Hear a strain from Tennyson's late"Crossing the Bar":

 Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark;

 For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The floods may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar. 

Am I starting the sail-craft of poets in line? Here then a quatrain ofPhrynichus long ago to one of old Athens' favorites:

 Thrice-happy Sophocles! in good old age, Bless'd as a man, and as a craftsman bless'd, He died; his many tragedies were fair, And fair his end, nor knew he any sorrow. 

Certain music, indeed, especially voluntaries by a good player, attwilight--or idle rambles alone by the shore, or over prairie oron mountain road, for that matter--favor the right mood. Words aredifficult--even impossible. No doubt any one will recall ballads orsongs or hymns (may-be instrumental performances) that have arous'dso curiously, yet definitely, the thought of death, the mystic, theafter-realm, as no statement or sermon could--and brought it hoveringnear. A happy (to call it so) and easy death is at least as much aphysiological result as a pyschological one. The foundation of itreally begins before birth, and is thence directly or indirectlyshaped and affected, even constituted, (the base stomachic) by everything from that minute till the time of its occurrence. And yet hereis something (Whittier's "Burning Driftwood") of an opposite coloring:

 I know the solemn monotone Of waters calling unto me; I know from whence the airs have blown, That whisper of the Eternal Sea; As low my fires of driftwood burn, I hear that sea's deep sounds increase, And, fair in sunset light, discern Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace. 

Like an invisible breeze after a long and sultry day, death sometimessets in at last, soothingly and refreshingly, almost vitally. In nota few cases the termination even appears to be a sort of ecstasy. Ofcourse there are painful deaths, but I do not believe such is at allthe general rule. Of the many hundreds I myself saw die in the fieldsand hospitals during the secession war the cases of mark' d sufferingor agony _in extremis_ were very rare. (It is a curious suggestionof immortality that the mental and emotional powers remain to theirclearest through all, while the senses of pain and flesh volition areblunted or even gone. )

Then to give the following, and cease before the thought getsthreadbare:

 Now, land and life, finale, and farewell! Now Voyager depart! (much, much for thee is yet in store;) Often enough hast thou adventur'd o'er the seas, Cautiously cruising, studying the charts, Duly again to port and hawser's tie returning. --But now obey thy cherish'd, secret wish, Embrace thy friends--leave all in order; To port and hawser's tie no more returning, Depart upon thy endless cruise, old Sailor!

SOME LAGGARDS YET

THE PERFECT HUMAN VOICE

Stating it briefly and pointedly I should suggest that the human voiceis a cultivation or form'd growth on a fair native foundation. Thisfoundation probably exists in nine cases out of ten. Sometimes natureaffords the vocal organ in perfection, or rather I would say nearenough to whet one's appreciation and appetite for a voice thatmight be truly call'd perfection. To me the grand voice is mainlyphysiological--(by which I by no means ignore the mental help, butwish to keep the emphasis where it belongs. ) Emerson says _manners_form the representative apex and final charm and captivation ofhumanity: but he might as well have changed the typicality to voice. 

Of course there is much taught and written about elocution, the bestreading, speaking, &c. , but it finally settles down to _best_ humanvocalization. Beyond all other power and beauty, there is something inthe quality and power of the right voice (_timbre_ the schools callit) that touches the soul, the abysms. It was not for nothing thatthe Greeks depended, at their highest, on poetry's and wisdom's vocalutterance by _tete-a-tete_ lectures--(indeed all the ancients did. )

Of celebrated people possessing this wonderful vocal power, patentto me, in former days, I should specify the contralto Alboni, EliasHicks, Father Taylor, the tenor Bettini, Fanny Kemble, and the oldactor Booth, and in private life many cases, often women. I sometimeswonder whether the best philosophy and poetry, or something like thebest, after all these centuries, perhaps waits to be rous'd out yet, or suggested, by the perfect physiological human voice. 

SHAKSPERE FOR AMERICA

Let me send you a supplementary word to that "view" of Shakspereattributed to me, publish'd in your July number, [47] and socourteously worded by the reviewer (thanks! dear friend. ) But you haveleft out what, perhaps, is the main point, as follows:

"Even the one who at present reigns unquestion'd--of Shakspere--forall he stands for so much in modern literature, he stands entirely forthe mighty esthetic sceptres of the past, not for the spiritual anddemocratic, the sceptres of the future. " (See pp. 55-58 in "NovemberBoughs, " and also some of my further notions on Shakspere. )

The Old World (Europe and Asia) is the region of the poetry ofconcrete and real things, --the past, the esthetic, palaces, etiquette, the literature of war and love, the mythological gods, and the mythsanyhow. But the New World (America) is the region of the future, andits poetry must be spiritual and democratic. Evolution is not the rulein Nature, in Politics, and Inventions only, but in Verse. I know ourage is greatly materialistic, but it is greatly spiritual, too, andthe future will be, too. Even what we moderns have come to mean by_spirituality_ (while including what the Hebraic utterers, and mainlyperhaps all the Greek and other old typical poets, and also thelater ones, meant) has so expanded and color'd and vivified thecomprehension of the term, that it is quite a different one from thepast. Then science, the final critic of all, has the casting vote forfuture poetry. 

Note:

[47] This bit was in "Poet-lore" monthly for September, 1890. 

"UNASSAIL'D RENOWN"

The N. Y. _Critic_, Nov. 24, 1889, propounded a circular to severalpersons, and giving the responses, says, "Walt Whitman's views[as follow] are, naturally, more radical than those of any othercontributor to the discussion":

Briefly to answer impromptu your request of Oct. 19--the questionwhether I think any American poet not now living deserves a placeamong the thirteen "English inheritors of unassail'd renown" (Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats, )--and which American poets wouldbe truly worthy, &c. Though to me the _deep_ of the matter goes down, down beneath. I remember the London _Times_ at the time, in opportune, profound and friendly articles on Bryant's and Longfellow's deaths, spoke of the embarrassment, warping effect, and confusion on America(her poets and poetic students) "coming in possession of a greatestate they had never lifted a hand to form or earn"; and the furthercontingency of "the English language ever having annex'd to it a lotof first-class Poetry that would be American, not European"--provingthen something precious over all, and beyond valuation. But perhapsthat is venturing outside the question. Of the thirteen Britishimmortals mention'd--after placing Shakspere on a sort of pre-eminenceof fame not to be invaded yet--the names of Bryant, Emerson, Whittierand Longfellow (with even added names, sometimes Southerners, sometimes Western or other writers of only one or two pieces, ) deservein my opinion an equally high niche of renown as belongs to any on thedozen of that glorious list. 

INSCRIPTION FOR A LITTLE BOOK ON GIORDANO BRUNO

As America's mental courage (the thought comes to me to-day) is soindebted, above all current lands and peoples, to the noble armyof Old-World martyrs past, how incumbent on us that we clear thosemartyrs' lives and names, and hold them up for reverent admiration, as well as beacons. And typical of this, and standing for it and allperhaps, Giordano Bruno may well be put, to-day and to come, in ourNew World's thankfulest heart and memory. 

W. W. CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, _February 24th, 1890_. 

SPLINTERS

While I stand in reverence before the fact of Humanity, the People, Iwill confess, in writing my L. Of G. , the least consideration out ofall that has had to do with it has been the consideration of "thepublic"--at any rate as it now exists. Strange as it may sound fora democrat to say so, I am clear that no free and original andlofty-soaring poem, or one ambitious of those achievements, canpossibly be fulfill'd by any writer who has largely in his thought_the public_--or the question, What will establish'd literature--Whatwill the current authorities say about it?

As far as I have sought any, not the best laid out garden or parterrehas been my model--but Nature has been. I know that in a sense thegarden is nature too, but I had to choose--I could not give both. Besides the gardens are well represented in poetry; while Nature (inletter and in spirit, in the divine essence, ) little if at all. 

Certainly, (while I have not hit it by a long shot, ) I have aim'd atthe most ambitious, the best--and sometimes feel to advance that aim(even with all its arrogance) as the most redeeming part of my books. I have never so much cared to feed the esthetic or intellectualpalates--but if I could arouse from its slumbers that eligibilityin every soul for its own true exercise! if I could only wield thatlever!

Out from the well-tended concrete and the physical--and in them andfrom them only--radiate the spiritual and heroic. 

Undoubtedly many points belonging to this essay--perhaps of thegreatest necessity, fitness and importance to it--have been left outor forgotten. But the amount of the whole matter--poems, preface andeverything--is merely to make one of those little punctures or eyeletsthe actors possess in the theatre-curtains to look out upon "thehouse"--one brief, honest, living glance. 

HEALTH, (OLD STYLE)

In that condition the whole body is elevated to a state by othersunknown--inwardly and outwardly illuminated, purified, made solid, strong, yet buoyant. A singular charm, more than beauty, flickers outof, and over, the face--a curious transparency beams in the eyes, bothin the iris and the white--the temper partakes also. Nothingthat happens--no event, rencontre, weather, &c--but it isconfronted--nothing but is subdued into sustenance--such is themarvellous transformation from the old timorousness and theold process of causes and effects. Sorrows and disappointmentscease--there is no more borrowing trouble in advance. A man realizesthe venerable myth--he is a god walking the earth, he sees neweligibilities, powers and beauties everywhere; he himself has anew eyesight and hearing. The play of the body in motion takes apreviously unknown grace. Merely _to move_ is then a happiness, a pleasure--to breathe, to see, is also. All the beforehandgratifications, drink, spirits, coffee, grease, stimulants, mixtures, late hours, luxuries, deeds of the night, seem as vexatious dreams, and now the awakening;--many fall into their natural places, whole-some, conveying diviner joys. 

What I append--Health, old style--I have long treasur'd--foundoriginally in some scrap-book fifty years ago--a favorite of mine (butquite a glaring contrast to my present bodily state:)

 On a high rock above the vast abyss, Whose solid base tumultuous waters lave; Whose airy high-top balmy breezes kiss, Fresh from the white foam of the circling wave--

 There ruddy HEALTH, in rude majestic state, His clust'ring forelock combatting the winds-- Bares to each season's change his breast elate, And still fresh vigor from th' encounter finds;

 With mighty mind to every fortune braced, To every climate each corporeal power, And high-proof heart, impenetrably cased, He mocks the quick transitions of the hour. 

 Now could he hug bleak Zembla's bolted snow, Now to Arabia's heated deserts turn, Yet bids the biting blast more fiercely blow, The scorching sun without abatement burn. 

 There this bold Outlaw, rising with the morn, His sinewy functions fitted for the toil, Pursues, with tireless steps, the rapturous horn, And bears in triumph back the shaggy spoil. 

 Or, on his rugged range of towering hills, Turns the stiff glebe behind his hardy team; His wide-spread heaths to blithest measures tills, And boasts the joys of life are not a dream!

 Then to his airy hut, at eve, retires, Clasps to his open breast his buxom spouse, Basks in his faggot's blaze, his passions fires, And strait supine to rest unbroken bows. 

 On his smooth forehead, Time's old annual score, Tho' left to furrow, yet disdains to lie; He bids weak sorrow tantalize no more, And puts the cup of care contemptuous by. 

 If, from some inland height, that, skirting, bears Its rude encroachments far into the vale, He views where poor dishonor'd nature wears On her soft cheek alone the lily pale;

 How will he scorn alliance with the race, Those aspen shoots that shiver at a breath; Children of sloth, that danger dare not face, And find in life but an extended death:

 Then from the silken reptiles will he fly, To the bold cliff in bounding transports run, And stretch'd o'er many a wave his ardent eye, Embrace the enduring Sea-Boy as his son!

 Yes! thine alone--from pain, from sorrow free, The lengthen'd life with peerless joys replete; Then let me, Lord of Mountains, share with thee The hard, the early toil--the relaxation sweet. 

GAY-HEARTEDNESS

Walking on the old Navy Yard bridge, Washington, D. C. , once with acompanion, Mr. Marshall, from England, a great traveler and observer, as a squad of laughing young black girls pass'd us--then two copper-color'd boys, one good-looking lad 15 or 16, barefoot, running after--"What _gay creatures_ they all appear to be, " said Mr. M. Then wefell to talking about the general lack of buoyant animal spirits. "Ithink, " said Mr. M. , "that in all my travels, and all my intercoursewith people of every and any class, especially the cultivated ones, (the literary and fashionable folks, ) I have never yet come acrosswhat I should call a really GAY-HEARTED MAN. "

It was a terrible criticism--cut into me like a surgeon's lance. Mademe silent the whole walk home. 

AS IN A SWOON. 

 As in a swoon, one instant, Another sun, ineffable, full-dazzles me, And all the orbs I knew--and brighter, unknown orbs; One instant of the future land, Heaven's land. 

L. OF G. 

 Thoughts, suggestions, aspirations, pictures, Cities and farms--by day and night--book of peace and war, Of platitudes and of the commonplace. 

 For out-door health, the land and sea--for good will, For America--for all the earth, all nations, the common people, (Not of one nation only--not America only. )

 In it each claim, ideal, line, by all lines, claims, ideals, temper'd; Each right and wish by other wishes, rights. 

AFTER THE ARGUMENT. 

 A group of little children with their ways and chatter flow in, Like welcome rippling water o'er my heated nerves and flesh. 

FOR US TWO, READER DEAR. 

 Simple, spontaneous, curious, two souls interchanging, With the original testimony for us continued to the last. 

MEMORANDA

[Let me indeed turn upon myself a little of the light I have been sofond of casting on others. 

Of course these few exceptional later mems are far, far short of one'sconcluding history or thoughts or life-giving--only a hap-hazard pinchof all. But the old Greek proverb put it, "Anybody who really hasa good quality" (or bad one either, I guess) "has _all_. " There'ssomething in the proverb; but you mustn't carry it too far. 

I will not reject any theme or subject because the treatment is toopersonal. 

As my stuff settles into shape, I am told (and sometimes myselfdiscover, uneasily, but feel all right about it in calmer moments)it is mainly autobiographic, and even egotistic after all--which Ifinally accept, and am contented so. 

If this little volume betrays, as it doubtless does, a weakening hand, and decrepitude, remember it is knit together out of accumulatedsickness, inertia, physical disablement, acute pain, and listlessness. My fear will be that at last my pieces show indooredness, and beingchain'd to a chair--as never before. Only the resolve to keep up, and on, and to add a remnant, and even perhaps obstinately see whatfailing powers and decay may contribute too, have produced it. 

And now as from some fisherman's net hauling all sorts, and disbursingthe same. ]

A WORLD'S SHOW

_New York, Great Exposition open'd in 1853. _--I went a long time(nearly a year)--days and nights--especially the latter--as it wasfinely lighted, and had a very large and copious exhibition gallery ofpaintings (shown at best at night, I tho't)--hundreds of pictures fromEurope, many masterpieces--all an exhaustless study--and, scatter'dthro' the building, sculptures, single figures or groups--among therest, Thorwaldsen's "Apostles, " colossal in size--and very many finebronzes, pieces of plate from English silversmiths, and curios fromeverywhere abroad--with woods from all lands of the earth--all sortsof fabrics and products and handiwork from the workers of all nations. 

NEW YORK--THE BAY--THE OLD NAME

_Commencement of a gossipy travelling letter in a New York city paper, May 10, 1879_. --My month's visit is about up; but before I get backto Camden let me print some jottings of the last four weeks. Have younot, reader dear, among your intimate friends, some one, temporarilyabsent, whose letters to you, avoiding all the big topics anddisquisitions, give only minor, gossipy sights and scenes--just asthey come--subjects disdain'd by solid writers, but interesting to youbecause they were such as happen to everybody, and were the movingentourage to your friend--to his or her steps, eyes, mentality? Well, with an idea something of that kind, I suppose, I set out on thefollowing hurrygraphs of a breezy early-summer visit to New York cityand up the North river--especially at present of some hours alongBroadway. 

_What I came to New York for_. --To try the experiment of a lecture--tosee whether I could stand it, and whether an audience could--was myspecific object. Some friends had invited me--it was by no means clearhow it would end--I stipulated that they should get only a third-ratehall, and not sound the advertising trumpets a bit--and so I started. I much wanted something to do for occupation, consistent with mylimping and paralyzed state. And now, since it came off, and sinceneither my hearers nor I myself really collaps'd at the aforesaidlecture, I intend to go up and down the land (in moderation, ) seekingwhom I may devour, with lectures, and reading of my own poems--shortpulls, however--never exceeding an hour. 

_Crossing from Jersey city, 5 to 6 P. M. _--The city part of the Northriver with its life, breadth, peculiarities--the amplitude of sea andwharf, cargo and commerce--one don't realize them till one has beenaway a long time and, as now returning, (crossing from Jersey city toDesbrosses-st. , ) gazes on the unrivall'd panorama, and far down thethin-vapor'd vistas of the bay, toward the Narrows--or northward upthe Hudson--or on the ample spread and infinite variety, freeand floating, of the more immediate views--a countless riverseries--everything moving, yet so easy, and such plenty of room!Little, I say, do folks here appreciate the most ample, eligible, picturesque bay and estuary surroundings in the world! This is thethird time such a conviction has come to me after absence, returningto New York, dwelling on its magnificent entrances--approaching thecity by them from any point. 

More and more, too, the _old name_ absorbs into me--MANNAHATTA, "theplace encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters. " How fit aname for America's great democratic island city! The word itself, howbeautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires, glistening in sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista andaction!

A SICK SPELL

_Christmas Day, 25th Dec. , 1888_. --Am somewhat easier and freer to-dayand the last three days--sit up most of the time--read and write, andreceive my visitors. Have now been in-doors sick for seven months--half of the time bad, bad, vertigo, indigestion, bladder, gastric, head trouble, inertia--Dr. Bucke, Dr. Osler, Drs. Wharton andWalsh--now Edward Wilkins my help and nurse. A fine, splendid, sunnyday. My "November Boughs" is printed and out; and my "Complete Works, Poems and Prose, " a big volume, 900 pages, also. It is ab't noon, andI sit here pretty comfortable. 

TO BE PRESENT ONLY

_At the Complimentary Dinner, Camden, New Jersey, May 31, 1889_. --WaltWhitman said: My friends, though announced to give an address, thereis no such intention. Following the impulse of the spirit, (for I amat least half of Quaker stock) I have obey'd the command to come andlook at you, for a minute, and show myself, face to face; which isprobably the best I can do. But I have felt no command to make aspeech; and shall not therefore attempt any. All I have felt theimperative conviction to say I have already printed in my books ofpoems or prose; to which I refer any who may be curious. And so, hailand farewell. Deeply acknowledging this deep compliment, with my bestrespects and love to you personally--to Camden--to New-Jersey, and toall represented here--you must excuse me from any word further. 

"INTESTINAL AGITATION"

_From Pall-Mall Gazette, London, England, Feb 8, 1890_ Mr. ErnestRhys has just receiv'd an interesting letter from Walt Whitman, dated"Camden, January 22, 1890. " The following is an extract from it:

I am still here--no very mark'd or significant change orhappening--fairly buoyant spirits, &c. --but surely, slowly ebbing. At this moment sitting here, in my den, Mickle street, by the oakwoodfire, in the same big strong old chair with wolf-skin spread overback--bright sun, cold, dry winter day. America continues--isgenerally busy enough all over her vast demesnes (intestinal agitationI call it, ) talking, plodding, making money, every one trying toget on--perhaps to get towards the top--but no special individualsignalism--(just as well, I guess. )

"WALT WHITMAN'S LAST 'PUBLIC'"

The gay and crowded audience at the Art Rooms, Philadelphia, Tuesday night, April 15, 1890, says a correspondent of the Boston_Transcript_, April 19, might not have thought that W. W. Crawl'd outof a sick bed a few hours before, crying, Dangers retreat when boldly they're confronted, and went over, hoarse and half blind, to deliver his memoranda andessay on the death of Abraham Lincoln, on the twenty-fifth anniversaryof that tragedy. He led off with the following new paragraph:

"Of Abraham Lincoln, bearing testimony twenty-five years after hisdeath--and of that death--I am now my friends before you. Few realizethe days, the great historic and esthetic personalities, with him inthe centre, we pass'd through. Abraham Lincoln, familiar, our own, anIllinoisian, modern, yet tallying ancient Moses, Joshua, Ulysses, orlater Cromwell, and grander in some respects than any of them; AbrahamLincoln, that makes the like of Homer, Plutarch, Shakspere, eligibleour day or any day. My subject this evening for forty or fiftyminutes' talk is the death of this man, and how that death will reallyfilter into America. I am not going to tell you anything new; and itis doubtless nearly altogether because I ardently wish to commemoratethe hour and martyrdom and name I am here. Oft as the rolling yearsbring back this hour, let it again, however briefly, be dwelt upon. For my own part I hope and intend till my own dying day, whenever the14th and 15th of April comes, to annually gather a few friends andhold its tragic reminiscence. No narrow or sectional reminiscence. Itbelongs to these States in their entirety--not the North only, but theSouth--perhaps belongs most tenderly and devoutly to the South, ofall; for there really this man's birthstock; there and then hisantecedent stamp. Why should I not say that thence his manliesttraits, his universality, his canny, easy ways and words upon thesurface--his inflexible determination at heart? Have you everrealized it, my friends, that Lincoln, though grafted on the West, isessentially in personnel and character a Southern contribution?"

The most of the poet's address was devoted to the actual occurrencesand details of the murder. We believe the delivery on Tuesday wasWhitman's thirteenth of it. The old poet is now physically wreck'd. But his voice and magnetism are the same. For the last month he hasbeen under a severe attack of the lately prevailing influenza, thegrip, in accumulation upon his previous ailments, and, above all, thatterrible paralysis, the bequest of secession war times. He was dress'dlast Tuesday night in an entire suit of French Canadian grey woolcloth, with broad shirt collar, with no necktie; long white hair, redface, full beard and moustache, and look'd as though he might weightwo hundred pounds. He had to be help'd and led every step. In fiveweeks more he will begin his seventy-second year. He is still writinga little. 

INGERSOLL'S SPEECH

_From the Camden Post, N. J. , June 2, 1890_ _He attends and makes aspeech at the celebration of Walt Whitman's birthday_. --Walt Whitmanis now in his seventy-second year. His younger friends, literary andpersonal, men and women, gave him a complimentary supper last Saturdaynight, to note the close of his seventy-first year, and the latecurious and unquestionable "boom" of the old man's wide-spreadingpopularity, and that of his "Leaves of Grass. " There were thirty-fivein the room, mostly young, but some old, or beginning to be. The greatfeature was Ingersoll's utterance. It was probably, in its way, themost admirable specimen of modern oratory hitherto delivered in theEnglish language, immense as such praise may sound. It was 40 to 50minutes long, altogether without notes, in a good voice, low enoughand not too low, style easy, rather colloquial (over and over againsaying "you" to Whitman who sat opposite, ) sometimes markedlyimpassion'd, once or twice humorous--amid his whole speech, frominterior fires and volition, pulsating and swaying like a first-classAndalusian dancer. 

And such a critical dissection, and flattering summary! TheWhitmanites for the first time in their lives were fully satisfied;and that is saying a good deal, for they have not put their claimslow, by a long shot. Indeed it was a tremendous talk! Physically andmentally Ingersoll (he had been working all day in New York, talkingin court and in his office, ) is now at his best, like mellow'd wine, or a just ripe apple; to the artist-sense, too, looks at his best--notmerely like a bequeath'd Roman bust or fine smooth marble Cicero-head, or even Greek Plato; for he is modern and vital and vein'd andAmerican, and (far more than the age knows, ) justifies us all. 

We cannot give a full report of this most remarkable talk and supper(which was curiously conversational and Greek-like) but must add thefollowing significant bit of it. 

After the speaking, and just before the close, Mr. Whitman reverted toColonel Ingersoll's tribute to his poems, pronouncing it the capsheafof all commendation that he had ever receiv'd. Then, his mind stilldwelling upon the Colonel's religious doubts, he went on to say thatwhat he himself had in his mind when he wrote "Leaves of Grass" wasnot only to depict American life, as it existed, and to show thetriumphs of science, and the poetry in common things, and the full ofan individual democratic humanity, for the aggregate, but also to showthat there was behind all something which rounded and completed it. "For what, " he ask'd, "would this life be without immortality? Itwould be as a locomotive, the greatest triumph of modern science, with no train to draw after it. If the spiritual is not behind thematerial, to what purpose is the material? What is this world withouta further Divine purpose in it all?"

Colonel Ingersoll repeated his former argument in reply. 

FEELING FAIRLY

_Friday, July 27, 1890_. --Feeling fairly these days, and evenjovial--sleep and appetite good enough to be thankful for--had a dishof Maryland blackberries, some good rye bread and a cup of tea, for mybreakfast--relish' d all--fine weather--bright sun to-day--pleasantnorthwest breeze blowing in the open window as I sit here in my bigrattan chair--two great fine roses (white and red, blooming, fragrant, sent by mail by W. S. K. And wife, Mass. ) are in a glass of water onthe table before me. 

Am now in my 72d year. 

OLD BROOKLYN DAYS

It must have been in 1822 or '3 that I first came to live in Brooklyn. Lived first in Front street, not far from what was then call'd "theNew Ferry, " wending the river from the foot of Catharine (or Main)street to New York city. 

I was a little child (was born in 1819, ) but tramp'd freely aboutthe neighborhood and town, even then; was often on the aforesaid NewFerry; remember how I was petted and deadheaded by the gatekeepers anddeckhands (all such fellows are kind to little children, ) and rememberthe horses that seem'd to me so queer as they trudg'd around in thecentral houses of the boats, making the water-power. (For it was juston the eve of the steam-engine, which was soon after introduced on theferries. ) Edward Copeland (afterward Mayor) had a grocery store thenat the corner of Front and Catharine streets. 

Presently we Whitmans all moved up to Tillary street, near Adams, where my father, who was a carpenter, built a house for himself and usall. It was from here I "assisted" the personal coming of Lafayettein 1824-'5 to Brooklyn. He came over the Old Ferry, as the now FultonFerry (partly navigated quite up to that day by "horse boats, " thoughthe first steamer had begun to be used hereabouts) was then call'd, and was receiv'd at the foot of Fulton street. It was on that occasionthat the corner-stone of the Apprentices' Library, at the cornerof Cranberry and Henry streets--since pull'd down--was laid byLafayette's own hands. Numerous children arrived on the grounds, ofwhom I was one, and were assisted by several gentlemen to safe spotsto view the ceremony. Among others, Lafayette, also helping thechildren, took me up--I was five years old, press'd me a moment to hisbreast--gave me a kiss and set me down in a safe spot. Lafayette wasat that time between sixty-five and seventy years of age, with a manlyfigure and a kind face. 

TWO QUESTIONS

An editor of (or in) a leading monthly magazine ("Harper's Monthly, "July, 1890, ) asks: "A hundred years from now will W. W. Be popularlyrated a great poet--or will he be forgotten?" ... A mighty ticklishquestion--which can only be left for a hundred years hence--perhapsmore than that. But whether W. W. Has been mainly rejected by his owntimes is an easier question to answer. 

All along from 1860 to '91, many of the pieces in L. Of G. , and itsannexes, were first sent to publishers or magazine editors beforebeing printed in the L. , and were peremptorily rejected by them, andsent back to their author. The "Eidolons" was sent back by Dr. H. , of"Scribner's Monthly" with a lengthy, very insulting and contemptuousletter. "To the Sun-Set Breeze, " was rejected by the editor of"Harper's Monthly" as being "an improvisation" only. "On, on ye jocundtwain" was rejected by the "Century" editor as being personal merely. Several of the pieces went the rounds of all the monthlies, to be thussummarily rejected. 

_June, '90_. --The----rejects and sends back my little poem, so I amnow set out in the cold by every big magazine and publisher, and mayas well understand and admit it--which is just as well, for I find Iam palpably losing my sight and ratiocination. 

PREFACE

_To a volume of essays and tales by Wm. D. O'Connor, pub'dposthumously in 1891_

A hasty memorandum, not particularly for Preface to the followingtales, but to put on record my respect and affection for assane, beautiful, cute, tolerant, loving, candid and free andfair-intention'd a nature as ever vivified our race. 

In Boston, 1860, I first met William Douglas O'Connor. [48] As I sawand knew him then, in his 29th year, and for twenty-five furtheryears along, he was a gallant, handsome, gay-hearted, fine-voiced, glowing-eyed man; lithe-moving on his feet, of healthy and magneticatmosphere and presence, and the most welcome company in the world. He was a thorough-going anti-slavery believer, speaker and writer, (doctrinaire, ) and though I took a fancy to him from the first, . I remember I fear'd his ardent abolitionism--was afraid it wouldprobably keep us apart. (I was a decided and out-spoken anti-slaverybeliever myself, then and always; but shy'd from the extremists, thered-hot fellows of those times. ) O'C. Was then correcting the proofsof _Harrington_, an eloquent and fiery novel he had written, and whichwas printed just before the commencement of the secession war. Hewas already married, the father of two fine little children, and waspersonally and intellectually the most attractive man I had ever met. 

Last of '62 I found myself led towards the war-field--went toWashington city--(to become absorb'd in the armies, and in the bighospitals, and to get work in one of the Departments, )--and there Imet and resumed friendship, and found warm hospitality from O'C. Andhis noble New England wife. They had just lost by death their littlechild-boy, Phillip; and O'C. Was yet feeling serious about it. Theyoungster had been vaccinated against the threatening of small-poxwhich alarm'd the city; but somehow it led to worse results than itwas intended to ward off--or at any rate O'C. Thought that proved thecause of the boy's death. He had one child left, a fine bright littledaughter, and a great comfort to her parents. (Dear Jeannie! She grewup a most accomplish'd and superior young woman--declined in health, and died about 1881. )

On through for months and years to '73 I saw and talk'd with O'C. Almost daily. I had soon got employment, first for a short time in theIndian Bureau (in the Interior Department, ) and then for a long whilein the Attorney General's Office. The secession war, with its tide ofvarying fortunes, excitements--President Lincoln and the daily sightof him--the doings in Congress and at the State Capitols--the newsfrom the fields and campaigns, and from foreign governments--my visitsto the Army Hospitals, daily and nightly, soon absorbing everythingelse, --with a hundred matters, occurrences, personalties, --(Greeley, Wendell Phillips, the parties, the Abolitionists, &c. )--were thesubjects of our talk and discussion. I am not sure from what I heardthen, but O'C. Was cut out for a first-class public speaker orforensic advocate. No audience or jury could have stood out againsthim. He had a strange charm of physiologic voice. He had a power andsharp-cut faculty of statement and persuasiveness beyond any man'selse. I know it well, for I have felt it many a time. If not asorator, his forte was as critic, newer, deeper than any: also, asliterary author. One of his traits was that while he knew all, andwelcom'd all sorts of great _genre_ literature, all lands and times, from all writers and artists, and not only tolerated each, and defended every attack'd literary person with a skill orheart-catholicism that I never saw equal'd--invariably advocated andexcused them--he kept an idiosyncrasy and identity of his own verymark'd, and without special tinge or undue color from any source. Healways applauded the freedom of the masters, whence and whoever. Iremember his special defences of Byron, Burns, Poe, Rabelais, VictorHugo, George Sand, and others. There was always a little touch ofpensive cadence in his superb voice; and I think there was somethingof the same sadness in his temperament and nature. Perhaps, too, in his literary structure. But he was a very buoyant, jovial, good-natured companion. 

So much for a hasty melanged reminiscence and note of WilliamO'Connor, my dear, dear friend, and staunch, (probably my staunchest)literary believer and champion from the first, and throughout withouthalt or demur, for twenty-five years. No better friend--none morereliable through this life of one's ups and downs. On the occurrenceof the latter he would be sure to make his appearance on the scene, eager, hopeful, full of fight like a perfect knight of chivalry. Forhe was a born sample here in the 19th century of the flower and symbolof olden time first-class knighthood. Thrice blessed be his memory! W. W. 

Note: [48] Born Jan. 2d, 1832. When grown, lived several years inBoston, and edited journals and magazines there--went about 1861 toWashington, D. C. , and became a U. S. Clerk, first in the Light-HouseBureau, and then in the U. S. Life-Saving Service, in which branch hewas Assistant Superintendent for many years--sicken'd in 1887--diedthere at Washington, May 9th, 1889. 

AN ENGINEER'S OBITUARY

_From the Engineering Record, New York, Dec. 13, 1890_

Thomas Jefferson Whitman was born July 18, 1833, in Brooklyn, N. Y. , from a father of English Stock, and mother (Louisa Van Velsor)descended from Dutch (Holland) immigration. His early years were spenton Long Island, either in the country or Brooklyn. As a lad he show'da tendency for surveying and civil engineering, and about at 19 wentwith Chief Kirkwood, who was then prospecting and outlining for thegreat city water-works. He remain'd at that construction throughout, was a favorite and confidant of the Chief, and was successivelypromoted. He continued also under Chief Moses Lane. He married in1859, and not long after was invited by the Board of Public Worksof St. Louis, Missouri, to come there and plan and build a new andfitting water-works for that great city. Whitman accepted the call, and moved and settled there, and had been a resident of St. Louis eversince. He plann'd and built the works, which were very successful, andremain'd as super-intendent and chief for nearly 20 years. 

Of the last six years he has been largely occupied as consultingengineer (divested of his cares and position in St. Louis, ) and hasengaged in public constructions, bridges, sewers, &c. , West andSouthwest, and especially the Memphis, Tenn. , city water-works. 

Thomas J. Whitman was a theoretical and practical mechanic of superiororder, founded in the soundest personal and professional integrity. Hewas a great favorite among the young engineers and students; not a fewof them yet remaining in Kings and Queens counties, and New York city, will remember "Jeff, " with old-time good-will and affection. He wasmostly self-taught, and was a hard student. 

He had been troubled of late years from a bad throat and from gastricaffection, tending on typhoid, and had been rather seriously illwith the last malady, but was getting over the worst of it, when hesuccumb'd under a sudden and severe attack of the heart. He died atSt. Louis, November 25, 1890, in his 58th year. Of his family, thewife died in 1873, and a daughter, Mannahatta, died two years ago. Another daughter, Jessie Louisa, the only child left, is now living inSt. Louis. 

[When Jeff was born I was in my 15th year, and had much care of himfor many years afterward, and he did not separate from me. He was avery handsome, healthy, affectionate, smart child, and would sit on mylap or hang on my neck half an hour at a time. As he grew a big boy heliked outdoor and water sports, especially boating. We would oftengo down summers to Peconic Bay, east end of Long Island, and overto Shelter Island. I loved long rambles, and he carried hisfowling-piece. O, what happy times, weeks! Then in Brooklyn and NewYork city he learn'd printing, and work'd awhile at it; but eventually(with my approval) he went to employment at land surveying, and mergedin the studies and work of topographical engineer; this satisfied him, and he continued at it. He was of noble nature from the first;very good-natured, very plain, very friendly. O, how we loved eachother--how many jovial good times we had! Once we made a long tripfrom New York city down over the Allegheny mountains (the NationalRoad) and via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, from Cairo to NewOrleans. ]

God's blessing on your name and memory, dear brother Jeff!

W. W. 

OLD ACTORS, SINGERS, SHOWS, &C. , IN NEW YORK

_Flitting mention--(with much left out)_

Seems to me I ought acknowledge my debt to actors, singers, publicspeakers, conventions, and the Stage in New York, my youthfuldays, from 1835 onward--say to '60 or '61--and to plays and operasgenerally. (Which nudges a pretty big disquisition: of course itshould be all elaborated and penetrated more deeply--but I will heregive only some flitting mentionings of my youth. ) Seems to me now whenI look back, the Italian contralto Marietta Alboni (she is living yet, in Paris, 1891, in good condition, good voice yet, considering) withthe then prominent histrions Booth, Edwin Forrest, and Fanny Kembleand the Italian singer Bettini, have had the deepest and most lastingeffect upon me. I should like well if Madame Alboni and the oldcomposer Verdi, (and Bettini the tenor, if he is living) could knowhow much noble pleasure and happiness they gave me, and how deeply Ialways remember them and thank them to this day. For theatricals inliterature and doubtless upon me personally, including opera, havebeen of course serious factors. (The experts and musicians of mypresent friends claim that the new Wagner and his pieces belong farmore truly to me, and I to them, likely. But I was fed and bred underthe Italian dispensation, and absorb'd it, and doubtless show it. )

As a young fellow, when possible I always studied a play or librettoquite carefully over, by myself, (sometimes twice through) beforeseeing it on the stage; read it the day or two days before. Triedboth ways--not reading some beforehand; but I found I gain'd most bygetting that sort of mastery first, if the piece had depth. (Surfaceeffects and glitter were much less thought of, I am sure, thosetimes. ) There were many fine old plays, neither tragedies norcomedies--the names of them quite unknown to to-day's currentaudiences. "All is not Gold that Glitters, " in which Charlotte Cushmanhad a superbly enacted part, was of that kind. C. C. , who revel'din them, was great in such pieces; I think better than in the heavypopular roles. 

We had some fine music those days. We had the English opera of"Cinderella" (with Henry Placide as the pompous old father, anunsurpassable bit of comedy and music. ) We had Bombastes Furioso. Musthave been in 1844 (or '5) I saw Charles Kean and Mrs. Kean (EllenTree)--saw them in the Park in Shakspere's "King John. " He, of course, was the chief character. She play'd _Queen Constance. _ Tom Hamblin was_Faulconbridge, _ and probably the best ever on the stage. It was animmense show-piece, too; lots of grand set scenes and fine armor-suitsand all kinds of appointments imported from London (where it had beenfirst render'd. ) The large brass bands--the three or four hundred"supes"--the interviews between the French and English armies--thetalk with _Hubert_ (and the hot irons) the delicious acting of _PrinceArthur_ (Mrs. Richardson, I think)--and all the fine blare and courtpomp--I remember to this hour. The death-scene of the King in theorchard of Swinstead Abbey, was very effective. Kean rush'd in, gray-pale and yellow, and threw himself on a lounge in the open. Hispangs were horribly realistic. (He must have taken lessons in somehospital. )

Fanny Kemble play'd to wonderful effect in such pieces as "Fazio, or the Italian wife. " The turning-point was jealousy. It was arapid-running, yet heavy-timber'd, tremendous wrenching, passionateplay. Such old pieces always seem'd to me built like an ancient shipof the line, solid and lock'd from keel up--oak and metal and knots. One of the finest characters was a great court lady, _Aldabella_, enacted by Mrs. Sharpe. O how it all entranced us, and knock'd usabout, as the scenes swept on like a cyclone!

Saw Hackett at the old Park many times, and remember him well. Hisrenderings were first-rate in everything. He inaugurated the true "RipVan Winkle, " and look'd and acted and dialogued it to perfection (hewas of Dutch breed, and brought up among old Holland descendants inKings and Queens counties, Long Island. ) The play and the acting of ithave been adjusted to please popular audiences since; but there was inthat original performance certainly something of a far higher order, more art, more reality, more resemblance, a bit of fine pathos, alofty _brogue_, beyond anything afterward. 

One of my big treats was the rendering at the old Park of Shakspere's"Tempest" in musical version. There was a very fine instrumental band, not numerous, but with a capital leader. Mrs. Austin was the _Ariel_, and Peter Richings the _Caliban_; both excellent. The drunken song ofthe latter has probably been never equal'd. The perfect actor Clarke(old Clarke) was _Prospero_. 

Yes; there were in New York and Brooklyn some fine non-technicalsinging performances, concerts, such as the Hutchinson band, threebrothers, and the sister, the red-cheek'd New England carnation, sweet Abby; sometimes plaintive and balladic--sometimes anti-slavery, anti-calomel, and comic. There were concerts by Templeton, Russell, Dempster, the old Alleghanian band, and many others. Then we had lotsof "negro minstrels, " with capital character songs and voices. I oftensaw Rice the original "Jim Crow" at the old Park Theatre fillingup the gap in some short bill--and the wild chants and dances wereadmirable--probably ahead of anything since. Every theatre had somesuperior voice, and it was common to give a favorite song betweenthe acts. "The Sea" at the bijou Olympic, (Broadway near Grand, ) wasalways welcome from a little Englishman named Edwin, a good balladist. At the Bowery the loves of "Sweet William, "

 "When on the Downs the fleet was moor'd, "

always bro't an encore, and sometimes a treble. 

I remember Jenny Lind and heard her (1850 I think) several times. She had the most brilliant, captivating, popular musical style andexpression of any one known; (the canary, and several other sweetbirds are wondrous fine--but there is something in song that goesdeeper--isn't there?)

The great "Egyptian Collection" was well up in Broadway, and I gotquite acquainted with Dr. Abbott, the proprietor--paid many visitsthere, and had long talks with him, in connection with my readings ofmany books and reports on Egypt--its antiquities, history, and howthings and the scenes really look, and what the old relics stand for, as near as we can now get. (Dr. A. Was an Englishman of say 54--hadbeen settled in Cairo as physician for 25 years, and all that timewas collecting these relics, and sparing no time or money seekingand getting them. By advice and for a change of base for himself, hebrought the collection to America. But the whole enterprise was afearful disappointment, in the pay and commercial part. ) As said, Iwent to the Egyptian Museum many many times; sometimes had it all tomyself--delved at the formidable catalogue--and on several occasionshad the invaluable personal talk, correction, illustration andguidance of Dr. A. Himself. He was very kind and helpful to me inthose studies and examinations; once, by appointment, he appear'd infull and exact Turkish (Cairo) costume, which long usage there hadmade habitual to him. 

One of the choice places of New York to me then was the "PhrenologicalCabinet" of Fowler & Wells, Nassau street near Beekman. Here were allthe busts, examples, curios and books of that study obtainable. I wentthere often, and once for myself had a very elaborate and leisurelyexamination and "chart of bumps" written out (I have it yet, ) byNelson Fowler (or was it Sizer?) there. 

And who remembers the renown'd New York "Tabernacle" of those days"before the war"? It was on the east side of Broadway, near Pearlstreet--was a great turtle-shaped hall, and you had to walk back fromthe street entrance thro' a long wide corridor to get to it--was verystrong--had an immense gallery--altogether held three or four thousandpeople. Here the huge annual conventions of the windy and cyclonic"reformatory societies" of those times were held--especially thetumultuous Anti-Slavery ones. I remember hearing Wendell Phillips, Emerson, Cassius Clay, John P. Hale, Beecher, Fred Douglas, theBurleighs, Garrison, and others. Sometimes the Hutchinsons wouldsing--very fine. Sometimes there were angry rows. A chap named IsaiahRhynders, a fierce politician of those days, with a band of robustsupporters, would attempt to contradict the speakers and break upthe meetings. But the Anti-Slavery, and Quaker, and Temperance, andMissionary and other conventicles and speakers were tough, tough, andalways maintained their ground, and carried out their programs fully. I went frequently to these meetings, May after May--learn'd muchfrom them--was sure to be on hand when J. P. Hale or Cash Clay madespeeches. 

There were also the smaller and handsome halls of the Historical andAthensum Societies up on Broadway. I very well remember W. C. Bryantlecturing on Homoeopathy in one of them, and attending two or threeaddresses by R. W. Emerson in the other. 

There was a series of plays and dramatic _genre_ characters by agentleman bill'd as Ranger--very fine, better than merely technical, full of exquisite shades, like the light touches of the violin in thehands of a master. There was the actor Anderson, who brought us GeraldGriffin's "Gysippus, " and play'd it to admiration. Among the actors ofthose times I recall: Cooper, Wallack, Tom Hamblin, Adams (several), Old Gates, Scott, Wm. Sefton, John Sefton, Geo. Jones, Mitchell, Seguin, Old Clarke, Richings, Fisher, H. Placide, T. Placide, Thorne, Ingersoll, Gale (Mazeppa) Edwin, Horncastle. Some of the women hastilyremember'd were: Mrs. Vernon, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. McClure, MaryTaylor, Clara Fisher, Mrs. Richardson, Mrs. Flynn. Then the singers, English, Italian and other: Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Seguin, Mrs. Austin, Grisi, La Grange, Steffanone, Bosio, Truffi, Parodi, Vestvali, Bertucca, Jenny Lind, Gazzaniga, Laborde. And the opera men: Bettini, Badiali, Marini, Mario, Brignoli, Amodio, Beneventano, and many, manyothers whose names I do not at this moment recall. 

In another paper I have described the elder Booth, and the BoweryTheatre of those times. Afterward there was the Chatham. The elderThorne, Mrs. Thorne, William and John Sefton, Kirby, Brougham, andsometimes Edwin Forrest himself play'd there. I remember them all, andmany more, and especially the fine theatre on Broadway near Pearl, in1855 and '6. 

There were very good circus performances, or horsemanship, in New Yorkand Brooklyn. Every winter in the first-named city, a regular placein the Bowery, nearly opposite the old theatre; fine animals and fineriding, which I often witness'd. (Remember seeing near here, a young, fierce, splendid lion, presented by an African Barbary Sultan toPresident Andrew Jackson. The gift comprised also a lot of jewels, afine steel sword, and an Arab stallion; and the lion was made over toa show-man. )

If it is worth while I might add that there was a small butwell-appointed amateur-theatre up Broadway, with the usual stage, orchestra, pit, boxes, &c. , and that I was myself a member for sometime, and acted parts in it several times--"second parts" as they werecall'd. Perhaps it too was a lesson, or help'd that way; at any rateit was full of fun and enjoyment. 

And so let us turn off the gas. Out in the brilliancy of thefoot-lights--filling the attention of perhaps a crowded audience, andmaking many a breath and pulse swell and rise--O so much passion andimparted life!--over and over again, the season through--walking, gesticulating, singing, reciting his or her part--But then sooner orlater inevitably wending to the flies or exit door--vanishing tosight and ear--and never materializing on this earth's stage again!

SOME PERSONAL AND OLD-AGE JOTTINGS

Anything like unmitigated acceptance of my "Leaves of Grass" book, andheart-felt response to it, in a popular however faint degree, bubbledforth as a fresh spring from the ground in England in 1876. The timewas a critical and turning point in my personal and literary life. Letme revert to my memorandum book, Camden, New Jersey, that year, fill'dwith addresses, receipts, purchases, &c. , of the two volumes pub'dthen by myself--the "Leaves, " and the "Two Rivulets"--some homecustomers, for them, but mostly from the British Islands. I wasseriously paralyzed from the Secession war, poor, in debt, wasexpecting death, (the doctors put four chances out of five againstme, )--and I had the books printed during the lingering interim tooccupy the tediousness of glum days and nights. Curiously, the saleabroad proved prompt, and what one might call copious: the names camein lists and the money with them, by foreign mail. The price was $10 aset. Both the cash and the emotional cheer were deep medicines; manypaid double or treble price, (Tennyson and Ruskin did, ) and manysent kind and eulogistic letters; ladies, clergymen, social leaders, persons of rank, and high officials. Those blessed gales from theBritish Islands probably (certainly) saved me. Here are some of thenames, for I w'd like to preserve them: Wm. M. And D. G. Rossetti, LordHoughton, Edwd. Dowden, Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, Keningale Cook, Edwd. Carpenter, Therese Simpson, Rob't Buchanan, Alfred Tennyson, JohnRuskin, C. G. Gates, E. T. Wilkinson, T. L. Warren, C. W. Reynell, W. B. Scott, A. G. Dew Smith, E. W. Gosse, T. W. Rolleston, Geo. Wallis, RafeLeicester, Thos. Dixon, N. MacColl, Mrs. Matthews, R. Hannah, Geo. Saintsbury, R. S. Watson, Godfrey and Vernon Lushington, G. H. Lewes, G. H. Boughton, Geo. Fraser, W. T. Arnold, A. Ireland, Mrs. M. Taylor, M. D. Conway, Benj. Eyre, E. Dannreather, Rev. T. E. Brown, C. W. Sheppard, E. J. A. Balfour, P. B. Marston, A. C. De Burgh, J. H. McCarthy, J. H. Ingram, Rev. R. P. Graves, Lady Mount-temple, F. S. Ellis, W. Brockie, Rev. A. B. Grosart, Lady Hardy, Hubert Herkomer, FrancisHueffer, H. G. Dakyns, R. L. Nettleship, W. J. Stillman, Miss Blind, Madox Brown, H. R. Ricardo, Messrs. O'Grady and Tyrrel; and many, manymore. 

Severely scann'd, it was perhaps no very great or vehement success;but the tide had palpably shifted at any rate, and the sluices wereturn'd into my own veins and pockets. That emotional, audacious, open-handed, friendly-mouth'd just-opportune English action, I say, pluck'd me like a brand from the burning, and gave me life again, tofinish my book, since ab't completed. I do not forget it, and shallnot; and if I ever have a biographer I charge him to put it in thenarrative. I have had the noblest friends and backers in America; Wm. O'Connor, Dr. R. M. Bucke, John Burroughs, Geo. W. Childs, good onesin Boston, and Carnegie and R. G. Ingersoll in New York; and yetperhaps the tenderest and gratefulest breath of my heart has gone, andever goes, over the sea-gales across the big pond. 

About myself at present. I will soon enter upon my 73d year, if Ilive--have pass'd an active life, as country school-teacher, gardener, printer, carpenter, author and journalist, domicil'd in nearly all theUnited States and principal cities, North and South--went to the front(moving about and occupied as army nurse and missionary) during thesecession war, 1861 to '65, and in the Virginia hospitals and afterthe battles of that time, tending the Northern and Southern woundedalike--work'd down South and in Washington city arduously threeyears--contracted the paralysis which I have suffer'd ever since--andnow live in a little cottage of my own, near the Delaware in NewJersey. My chief book, unrhym'd and unmetrical (it has taken thirtyyears, peace and war, "a borning") has its aim, as once said, "toutter the same old human _critter_--but now in Democratic Americanmodern and scientific conditions. " Then I have publish'd two proseworks, "Specimen Days, " and a late one, "November Boughs. " (A littlevolume, "Good-Bye my Fancy, " is soon to be out, wh' will finish thematter. ) I do not propose here to enter the much-fought field of theliterary criticism of any of those works. 

But for a few portraiture or descriptive bits. To-day in the upperstory of a little wooden house of two stories near the Delaware river, east shore, sixty miles up from the sea, is a rather large 20-by-20low ceiling'd room something like a big old ship's cabin. The floor, three quarters of it with an ingrain carpet, is half cover'd by a deeplitter of books, papers, magazines, thrown-down letters and circulars, rejected manuscripts, memoranda, bits of light or strong twine, abundle to be "express'd, " and two or three venerable scrap books. Inthe room stand two large tables (one of ancient St. Domingo mahoganywith immense leaves) cover'd by a jumble of more papers, a varied andcopious array of writing materials, several glass and china vesselsor jars, some with cologne-water, others with real honey, granulatedsugar, a large bunch of beautiful fresh yellow chrysanthemums, some letters and envelopt papers ready for the post office, manyphotographs, and a hundred indescribable things besides. There are allaround many books, some quite handsome editions, some half cover'd bydust, some within reach, evidently used, (good-sized print, no typeless than long primer, ) some maps, the Bible, (the strong cheapedition of the English crown, ) Homer, Shakspere, Walter Scott, Emerson, Ticknor's "Spanish Literature, " John Carlyle's Dante, Felton's "Greece, " George Sand's "Consuelo, " avery choice littleEpictetus, some novels, the latest foreign and American monthlies, quarterlies, and so on. There being quite a strew of printer's proofsand slips, and the daily papers, the place with its quaint oldfashion'd calmness has also a smack of something alert and of currentwork. There are several trunks and depositaries back' d up at thewalls; (one well-bound and big box came by express lately fromWashington city, after storage there for nearly twenty years. ) Indeedthe whole room is a sort of result and storage collection of my ownpast life. I have here various editions of my own writings, and sellthem upon request; one is a big volume of complete poems and prose, 1000 pages, autograph, essays, speeches, portraits from life, &c. Another is a little "Leaves of Grass, " latest date, six portraits, morocco bound, in pocket-book form. 

Fortunately the apartment is quite roomy. There are three windows infront. At one side is the stove, with a cheerful fire of oak wood, near by a good supply of fresh sticks, whose faint aroma is plain. On another side is the bed with white coverlid and woollen blankets. Toward the windows is a huge arm-chair, (a Christmas present fromThomas Donaldson's young daughter and son, Philadelphia) timber'd asby some stout ship's spars, yellow polish'd, ample, with rattan-wovenseat and back, and over the latter a great wide wolf-skin of hairyblack and silver, spread to guard against cold and draught. Atime-worn look and scent of old oak attach both to the chair and theperson occupying it. 

But probably (even at the charge of parrot talk) I can give no moreauthentic brief sketch than "from an old remembrance copy, " where Ihave lately put myself on record as follows: Was born May 31, 1819, in my father's farm-house, at West Hills, L. I. , New York State. Myparents' folks mostly farmers and sailors--on my father's side, ofEnglish--on my mother's (Van Velsor's), from Hollandic immigration. There was, first and last, a large family of children; (I was thesecond. ) We moved to Brooklyn while I was still a little one infrocks--and there in B. I grew up out of frocks--then as child and boywent to the public schools--then to work in a printing office. Whenonly sixteen or seventeen years old, and for three years afterward, Iwent to teaching country schools down in Queens and Suffolk counties, Long Island, and "boarded round. " Then, returning to New York, work'das printer and writer, (with an occasional shy at "poetry. ")

1848-'9. --About this time--after ten or twelve years of experiencesand work and lots of fun in New York and Brooklyn--went off on aleisurely journey and working expedition (my brother Jeff with me)through all the Middle States, and down the Ohio and Mississippirivers. Lived a while in New Orleans, and work'd there. (Have livedquite a good deal in the Southern States. ) After a time, plodded backnorthward, up the Mississippi, the Missouri, &c. , and around to, andby way of, the great lakes, Michigan, Huron and Erie, to Niagara Fallsand Lower Canada--finally returning through Central New York, and downthe Hudson. 1852-'54--Occupied in house-building in Brooklyn. (For alittle while of the first part of that time in printing a daily andweekly paper. )

1855. --Lost my dear father this year by death.... Commenced putting"Leaves of Grass" to press, for good--after many MSS. Doings andundoings--(I had great trouble in leaving out the stock "poetical"touches--but succeeded at last. ) The book has since had some eighthitches or stages of growth, with one annex, (and another to come outin 1891, which will complete it. )

1862. --In December of this year went down to the field of warin Virginia. My brother George reported badly wounded in theFredericksburg fight. (For 1863 and '64, see "Specimen Days. ") 1865 to'71--Had a place as clerk (till well on in '73) in the Attorney. 

General's Office, Washington. (New York and Brooklyn seem more like_home_, as I was born near, and brought up in them, and lived, manand boy, for 30 years. But I lived some years in Washington, and havevisited, and partially lived, in most of the Western and Easterncities. )

1873. --This year lost, by death, my dear dear mother--and, justbefore, my sister Martha--the two best and sweetest women I have everseen or known, or ever expect to see. Same year, February, a suddenclimax and prostration from paralysis. Had been simmering inside forseveral years; broke out during those times temporarily, and thenwent over. But now a serious attack, beyond cure. Dr. Drinkard, myWashington physician, (and a first-rate one, ) said it was the resultof too extreme bodily and emotional strain continued at Washington and"down in front, " in 1863, '4 and '5. I doubt if a heartier, stronger, healthier physique, more balanced upon itself, or more unconscious, more sound, ever lived, from 1835 to '72. My greatest call (Quaker) togo around and do what I could there in those war-scenes where I hadfallen, among the sick and wounded, was, that I seem'd to be _sostrong and well_. (I consider'd myself invulnerable. ) But this lastattack shatter'd me completely. Quit work at Washington, and moved toCamden, New Jersey--where I have lived since, receiving many buffetsand some precious caresses--and now write these lines. Since then, (1874-'91) a long stretch of illness, or half-illness, with occasionallulls. During these latter, have revised and printed over all mybooks--bro't out "November Boughs"--and at intervals leisurely andexploringly travel'd to the Prairie States, the Rocky Mountains, Canada, to New York, to my birthplace in Long Island, and to Boston. But physical disability and the war-paralysis above alluded to tohave settled upon me more and more the last year or so. Am now (1891)domicil'd, and have been for some years, in this little old cottageand lot in Mickle street, Camden, with a house-keeper and man nurse. Bodily I am completely disabled, but still write for publication. Ikeep generally buoyant spirits, write often as there comes any lull inphysical sufferings, get in the sun and down to the river whenever Ican, retain fair appetite, assimilation and digestion, sensibilitiesacute as ever, the strength and volition of my right arm good, eyesight dimming, but brain normal, and retain my heart's and soul'sunmitigated faith not only in their own original literary plans, butin the essential bulk of American humanity east and west, north andsouth, city and country, through thick and thin, to the last. Nor mustI forget, in conclusion, a special, prayerful, thankful God's blessingto my dear firm friends and personal helpers, men and women, home andforeign, old and young. 

OUT IN THE OPEN AGAIN

_From the Camden Post, April 16, '91_. 

Walt Whitman got out in the mid-April sun and warmth of yesterday, propelled in his wheel chair, the first time after four months ofimprisonment in his sick room. He has had the worst winter yet, mainlyfrom grippe and gastric troubles, and threaten'd blindness; but keepsgood spirits, and has a new little forthcoming book in the printer'shands. 

AMERICA'S BULK AVERAGE

If I were ask'd _persona_ to specify the one point of America's peopleon which I mainly rely, I should say the final average or bulk qualityof the whole. 

Happy indeed w'd I consider myself to give a fair reflection andrepresentation of even a portion of shows, questions, humanity, events, unfoldings, thoughts, &c. &c. , my age in these States. 

The great social, political, historic function of my time has been ofcourse the attempted secession war. 

And was there not something grand, and an inside proof of perennialgrandeur, in that war! We talk of our age's and the States'materialism--and it is too true. But how amid the wholesordidness--the entire devotion of America, at any price, to pecuniarysuccess, merchandise--disregarding all but business and profit--thiswar for a bare idea and abstraction--a mere, at bottom, heroic dreamand reminiscence--burst forth in its great devouring flame andconflagration quickly and fiercely spreading and raging, andenveloping all, defining in two conflicting ideas--first the Unioncause--second _the other_, a strange deadly interrogation point, hardto define--Can we not now safely confess it?--with magnificentrays, streaks of noblest heroism, fortitude, perseverance, and evenconscientiousness, through its pervadingly malignant darkness. What anarea and rounded field, upon the whole--the spirit, arrogance, grimtenacity of the South--the long stretches of murky gloom--the generalNational Will below and behind and comprehending all--not once reallywavering, not a day, not an hour--What could be, or even can be, grander?

As in that war, its four years--as through the whole history anddevelopment of the New World--these States through all trials, processes, eruptions, deepest dilemmas, (often straining, tugging atsociety's heart-strings, as if some divine curiosity would find outhow much this democracy could stand, ) have so far finally and for morethan a century best justified themselves by the average impalpablequality and personality of the bulk, the People _en masse_.... I amnot sure but my main and chief however indefinite claim for any pageof mine w'd be its derivation, or seeking to derive itself, f'm thataverage quality of the American bulk, the people, and getting back toit again. 

LAST SAVED ITEMS

_I'm a vast batch left to oblivion_. 

In its highest aspect, and striking its grandest average, essentialPoetry expresses and goes along with essential Religion--has been andis more the adjunct, and more serviceable to that true religion (forof course there is a false one and plenty of it) than all the priestsand creeds and churches that now exist or have ever existed--evenwhile the temporary prevalent theory and practice of poetry is merelyone-side and ornamental and dainty--a love-sigh, a bit of jewelry, afeudal conceit, an ingenious tale or intellectual _finesse_, adjustedto the low taste and calibre that will always sufficiently generallyprevail--(ranges of stairs necessary to ascend the higher. )

The sectarian, church and doctrinal, follies, crimes, fanaticisms, aggregate and individual, so rife all thro' history, are proofs ofthe radicalness and universality of the indestructible element ofhumanity's Religion, just as much as any, and are the other side ofit. Just as disease proves health, and is the other side of it.... The philosophy of Greece taught normality and the beauty of life. Christianity teaches how to endure illness and death. I have wonder'dwhether a third philosophy fusing both, and doing full justice toboth, might not be outlined. 

It will not be enough to say that no Nation ever achiev'dmaterialistic, political and money-making successes, with generalphysical comfort, as fully as the United States of America are to-dayachieving them. I know very well that those are the indispensablefoundations--the _sine qua non_ of moral and heroic (poetic) fruitionsto come. For if those pre-successes were all--if they ended atthat--if nothing more were yielded than so far appears--a grossmaterialistic prosperity only--America, tried by subtlest tests, werea failure--has not advanced the standard of humanity a bit furtherthan other nations. Or, in plain terms, has but inherited and enjoy'dthe results of ordinary claims and preceding ages. 

Nature seem'd to use me a long while--myself all well, able, strongand happy--to portray power, freedom, health. But after a while sheseems to fancy, may-be I can see and understand it all better by beingdeprived of most of those. 

How difficult it is to add anything more to literature--and howunsatisfactory for any earnest spirit to serve merely the amusement ofthe multitude! (It even seems to me, said H. Heine, more invigoratingto accomplish something bad than something empty. )

The Highest said: Don't let us begin so low--isn't our range toocoarse--too gross?... The Soul answer'd: No, not when we consider whatit is all for--the end involved in Time and Space, Essentially my own printed records, all my volumes, are doubtless butoff-hand utterances f'm Personality spontaneous, following implicitlythe inscrutable command, dominated by that Personality, vaguely evenif decidedly, and with little or nothing of plan, art, erudition, &c. If I have chosen to hold the reins, the mastery, it has mainly been togive the way, the power, the road, to the invisible steeds. (I wantedto see how a Person of America, the last half of the 19th century, w'dappear, but quite freely and fairly in honest type. )

Haven't I given specimen clues, if no more? At any rate I have writtenenough to weary myself--and I will dispatch it to the printers, and cease. But how much--how many topics, of the greatest pointandcogency, I am leaving untouch'd!

WALT WHITMAN'S LAST [49]

_Good-Bye my Fancy_. --concluding Annex to _Leaves of Grass_. 

"The Highest said: Don't let us begin so low--isn't our range toocoarse--too gross?... The Soul answer'd: No, not when we consider whatit is all for--the end involved in Time and Space. "--_An item fromlast page of "Good-Bye. "_

H. Heine's first principle of criticising a book was, What motive isthe author trying to carry out, or express or accomplish? and thesecond, Has he achiev'd it?

The theory of my _Leaves of Grass_ as a composition of verses has beenfrom first to last, (if I am to give impromptu a hint of the spinalmarrow of the business, and sign it with my name, ) to thoroughlypossess the mind, memory, cognizance of the author himself, witheverything beforehand--a full armory of concrete actualities, observations, humanity, past poems, ballads, facts, technique, war andpeace, politics, North and South, East and West, nothing too large ortoo small, the sciences as far as possible--and above all America andthe present--after and out of which the subject of the poem, longor short, has been invariably turned over to his Emotionality, evenPersonality, to be shaped thence; and emerges strictly therefrom, withall its merits and demerits on its head. Every page of my poetic orattempt at poetic utterance therefore smacks of the living physicalidentity, date, environment, individuality, probably beyond anythingknown, and in style often offensive to the conventions. 

This new last cluster, _Good-By my Fancy_ follows suit, and yet witha difference. The clef is here changed to its lowest, and the littlebook is a lot of tremolos about old age, death, and faith. Thephysical just lingers, but almost vanishes. The book is garrulous, irascible (like old Lear) and has various breaks and even tricks toavoid monotony. It will have to be ciphered and ciphered out long--andis probably in some respects the most curious part of its author'sbaffling works. 

_Walt Whitman_. 

Note:

[49] Published in _Lippincott's Magazine_, August, 1891, with thefollowing note added by the editor of the magazine: "With _Good-Bye myFancy_, Walt Whitman has rounded out his life-work. This book is hislast message, and of course a great deal will be said about it bycritics all over the world, both in praise and dispraise; but probablynothing that the critics will say will be as interesting as thischaracteristic utterance upon the book by the poet himself. It is thesubjective view as opposed to the objective views of the critics. Briefly, Whitman gives, as he puts it, 'a hint of the spinal marrowof the business, ' not only of _Good-Bye my Fancy_, but also of the_Leaves of Grass_

"It was only after considerable persuasion on the editor's part thatMr. Whitman consented to write the above. As a concise explanationof the poet's life-work it must have great value to his readers andadmirers. After the critics 'have ciphered and ciphered out long, 'they will probably have nothing better to say. "