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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863

Author: Various


        
Release date: June 9, 2005 [eBook #16033]
                Most recently updated: December 11, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 12, NO. 70, AUGUST, 1863 ***




Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Guido
Royackers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net







THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

       *       *       *       *       *

VOL. XII.--AUGUST, 1863.--NO. LXX.

       *       *       *       *       *

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

       *       *       *       *       *




AN AMERICAN IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.


Having in a former number of this magazine attempted to give some
account of the House of Commons, and to present some sketches of its
leading members,[1] I now design to introduce my readers to the House of
Lords.

[Footnote 1: _Atlantic Monthly_ for December, 1861.]

It is obviously unnecessary to repeat so much of the previous
description as applies to the general external and internal appearance
of the New Palace of Westminster. It only remains to speak of the hall
devoted to the sessions of the House of Lords. And certainly it is an
apartment deserving a more extended notice than our limits will allow.
As the finest specimen of Gothic civil architecture in the world,
perfect in its proportions, beautiful and appropriate in its
decorations, the frescoes perpetuating some of the most striking scenes
in English history, the stained glass windows representing the Kings and
Queens of the United Kingdom from the accession of William the Conqueror
down to the present reign, the niches filled with effigies of the Barons
who wrested Magna Charta from King John, the ceiling glowing with gold
and colors presenting different national symbols and devices in most
elaborate workmanship and admirable intricacy of design, it is
undeniably worthy of the high purpose to which it is dedicated.

The House of Lords also contains the throne occupied by the reigning
sovereign at the opening and prorogation of Parliament. Perhaps its more
appropriate designation would be a State-Chair. In general form and
outline it is substantially similar to the chairs in which the
sovereigns of England have for centuries been accustomed to sit at their
coronations. We need hardly add that no expense has been spared to give
to the throne such intrinsic value, and to adorn it with such emblems of
national significance, as to furnish renewed evidence of England's
unwavering loyalty to the reigning house.

In pointing out what is peculiar to the House of Lords, I am aware that
there is danger of falling into the error of stating what is already
familiar to some of my readers. And yet a traveller's narrative is not
always tiresome to the tourist who has himself visited the same
localities and witnessed the same scenes. If anxious for the "diffusion
of useful knowledge," he will cheerfully consent that the curiosity of
others, who have not shared his good fortune, should be gratified,
although it be at his expense. At the same time, he certainly has a
right to insist that the extraordinary and improbable stories told to
the too credulous _voyageur_ by some lying scoundrel of a courier or
some unprincipled _valet-de-place_ shall not be palmed upon the
unsuspecting public as genuine tales of travel and adventure.

The House of Lords is composed of lords spiritual and lords temporal. As
this body is now constituted, the lords spiritual are two archbishops,
twenty-four bishops, and four Irish representative prelates. The lords
temporal are three peers of the blood royal, twenty dukes, nineteen
marquises, one hundred and ten earls, twenty-two viscounts, two hundred
and ten barons, sixteen Scotch representative peers, and twenty-eight
Irish representative peers. There are twenty-three Scotch peers and
eighty-five Irish peers who have no seats in Parliament. The
representative peers for Scotland are elected for every Parliament,
while the representative peers for Ireland are elected for life. As has
been already intimated, this enumeration applies only to the present
House of Lords, which comprises four hundred and fifty-eight
members,--an increase of about thirty noblemen in as many years.

The persons selected from time to time for the honor of the peerage are
members of families already among the nobility, eminent barristers,
military and naval commanders who have distinguished themselves in the
service, and occasionally persons of controlling and acknowledged
importance in commercial life. Lord Macaulay is the first instance in
which this high compliment has been conferred for literary merit; and it
was well understood, when the great essayist and historian was ennobled,
that the exception in his favor was mainly due to the fact that he was
unmarried. With his untimely death the title became extinct. Lord
Overstone, formerly Mr. Loyd, and a prominent member of the banking firm
of Jones, Loyd, and Co. of London, elevated to the peerage in 1850, is
without heirs apparent or presumptive, and there is good reason to
believe that this circumstance had a material bearing upon his
well-deserved promotion. But these infrequent exceptions, these rare
concessions so ungraciously made, only prove the rigor of the rule.
Practically, to all but members of noble families, and men distinguished
for military, naval, or political services, or eminent lawyers or
clergymen, the House of Lords is unattainable. Brown may reach the
highest range of artistic excellence, he may achieve world-wide fame as
an architect, his canvas may glow with the marvellous coloring of Titian
or repeat the rare and delicate grace of Correggio, the triumphs of his
chisel may reflect honor upon England and his age; the inventive genius
of Jones, painfully elaborating, through long and suffering years of
obscure poverty, the crude conceptions of his boyhood, may confer
inestimable benefits upon his race; the scientific discoveries of
Robinson may add incalculable wealth to the resources of his nation: but
let them not dream of any other nobility than that conferred by Nature;
let them be content to live and die plain, untitled Brown, Jones, and
Robinson, or at best look forward only to the barren honors of
knighthood. Indeed, it is not too much to say that for plebeian merit
the only available avenues to the peerage are the Church and the Bar.

The proportion of law lords now in the House of Lords is unusually
large,--there being, besides Lord Westbury, the present
Lord-High-Chancellor, no fewer than six Ex-Lord-Chancellors, each
enjoying the very satisfactory pension of five thousand pounds per
annum. Lord Lyndhurst still survives at the ripe age of ninety-one; and
Lord Brougham, now in his eighty-sixth year, has made good his promise
that he would outlive Lord Campbell, and spare his friends the pain of
seeing his biography added to the lives of the Lord-Chancellors to
whom, in Lord Brougham's opinion, Lord Campbell had done such inadequate
justice.

The course of proceeding in the House of Lords differs considerably from
that pursued in the House of Commons. The Lord-High-Chancellor, seated
on the wool-sack,--a crimson cushion, innocent of any support to the
back, and by no means suggestive of comfort, or inviting deliberations
of the peers, but is never addressed by the speakers. "My lords" is the
phrase with which every peer commences his remarks.

Another peculiarity patent to the stranger is the small number usually
present at the debates. The average attendance is less than fifty, and
often one sees only fifteen or twenty peers in their seats. Two or three
leading members of the Ministry, as many prominent members of the
opposition, a bishop or two, a score of deluded, but well-meaning
gentlemen, who obstinately adhere to the unfashionable notion, that,
where great political powers are enjoyed, there are certain serious
duties to the public closely connected therewith, a few prosy and
pompous peers who believe that their constant presence is essential to
the welfare and prosperity of the kingdom,--such, I think, is a correct
classification of the ordinary attendance of noblemen at the House of
Lords.

This body possesses several obvious advantages over any other
deliberative assembly now existing. Not the least among these is the
fact that the oldest son of every peer is prepared by a careful course
of education for political and diplomatic life. Every peer, except some
of recent creation, has from childhood enjoyed all conceivable
facilities for acquiring a finished education. In giving direction to
his studies at school and at the university, special reference has been
had to his future Parliamentary career. Nothing that large wealth could
supply, or the most powerful family-influence could command, has been
spared to give to the future legislator every needed qualification for
the grave and responsible duties which he will one day be called to
assume. His ambition has been stimulated by the traditional achievements
of a long line of illustrious ancestors, and his pride has been awakened
and kept alive by the universal deference paid to his position as the
heir apparent or presumptive of a noble house.

This view is so well presented in "The Caxtons," that I need offer no
apology for making an extract from that most able and discriminating
picture of English society. "The fact is, that Lord Castleton had been
taught everything that relates to property (a knowledge that embraces
very wide circumference). It had been said to him, 'You will be an
immense proprietor: knowledge is essential to your self-preservation.
You will be puzzled, ridiculed, duped every day of your life, if you do
not make yourself acquainted with all by which property is assailed or
defended, impoverished or increased. You have a stake in the country:
you must learn all the interests of Europe, nay, of the civilized world;
for these interests react on the country, and the interests of the
country are of the greatest possible consequence to the interests of the
Marquis of Castleton.' Thus, the state of the Continent, the policy of
Metternich, the condition of the Papacy, the growth of Dissent, the
proper mode of dealing with the spirit of democracy which was the
epidemic of European monarchies, the relative proportions of the
agricultural and manufacturing population, corn-laws, currency, and the
laws that regulate wages, a criticism on the leading speakers in the
House of Commons, with some discursive observations on the importance of
fattening cattle, the introduction of flax into Ireland, emigration, the
condition of the poor: these and such-like stupendous subjects for
reflection--all branching more or less intricately from the single idea
of the Castleton property--the young lord discussed and disposed of in
half a dozen prim, poised sentences, evincing, I must say in justice, no
inconsiderable information, and a mighty solemn turn of mind. The
oddity was, that the subjects so selected and treated should not come
rather from some young barrister, or mature political economist, than
from so gorgeous a lily of the field."

But to all these preëminent advantages of early education and training
there must be added the invaluable opportunities of enlarged and
extended legislative experience in the House of Commons. If we examine
the antecedents of some of the most prominent men now in the House of
Lords, we shall discover abundant evidence of this fact. Earl Russell
was a member of the House of Commons for more than thirty years; Earl
Derby, more than twenty-five years; the Earl of Shaftesbury, for about
twenty-four years; the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and the
Duke of Rutland, for about the same period. And of the present House of
Commons more than fifty members are heirs apparent or presumptive to
existing peerages.

And then there is the further circumstance that seats in the House of
Lords are for life. Members of this body do not stand in fear of removal
by the votes of disappointed or indignant constituents. Entirely
independent of public opinion, they can defy the disapprobation of the
masses, and smile at the denunciation of the press. Undoubtedly, this
fact has a twofold bearing, and deprives the peers of that strong
incentive to active exertion and industrious legislation which the House
of Commons, looking directly to the people for support and continuance,
always possesses. Yet the advantages in point of prolonged experience
and ever increasing familiarity with the details of public business are
unquestionable.

As a matter of course, there are many noblemen upon whom these rare
facilities of education and this admirable training for public life
would seem to have been wasted. As Americans, we must be pardoned for
expressing our belief in the venerable doctrine that there is no royal
road to learning. If a peer of the realm is determined to be a dunce,
nothing in the English Constitution prevents him from being a dunce, and
"not all the blood of all the Howards" can make him a scholar or a
statesman. If, resting securely in the conviction that a nobleman does
not need to be instructed, he will not condescend to study, and does not
avail himself of his most enviable advantages, whatever may be his
social rank, his ignorance and incapacity cannot be disguised, but will
even become more odious and culpable in the view of impartial criticism
by reason of his conspicuous position and his neglect of these very
advantages.

But frequent as these instances are, it will not be for a moment
supposed that the whole peerage would justly fall under such censure.
Nor will it be thought surprising that the House of Lords contains a
considerable number of men of sterling ability, statesmen of broad and
comprehensive views, accustomed to deal with important questions of
public interest and national policy with calm, deliberate judgment, and
far-reaching sagacity. Hampered as they certainly are by a traditional
conservatism often as much at variance with sound political philosophy
as it is with the lessons of all history, and characterized as their
attitude towards foreign nations always has been by a singular want of
all generosity, still it must be confessed that their steady and
unwavering adherence to a line of conduct which has made England feared
and her power respected by every country in the world has a certain
element of dignity and manly self-reliance which compels our admiration.
And while they have been of late so frequently outwitted by the
flexible, if not tortuous, policy of Louis Napoleon, it yet remains to
be seen whether the firm and unyielding course of the English Ministry
will not in the end prove quite as successful as the more Machiavellian
management of the French Emperor.

I hardly know how to describe accurately the impression made upon the
mind of an American by his first visit to the House of Lords. What
memories haunt him of the Norman Conquest and the Crusades, of Magna
Charta and the King-Maker, of noblemen who suffered with Charles I. and
supped with Charles II., and of noblemen still later whose family-pride
looked down upon the House of Hanover, and whose banded political power
and freely lavished wealth checked the brilliant career of Napoleon, and
maintained, the supremacy of England on sea and land!

Enter, then, the House of Lords with these stirring memories, and
confess frankly to a feeling of disappointment. Here are seated a few
well-behaved gentlemen of all ages, often carelessly dressed, and almost
invariably in English morning-costume. They are sleepily discussing some
uninteresting question, and you are disposed to retire in view of the
more powerful attractions of Drury Lane or the Haymarket, or the chance
of something better worth hearing in the House of Commons. Take my
advice, and wait until the adjournment. It will not be long, and by
leaving now you may lose an important debate and the sight of some men
whose fame is bounded only by the limits of Christendom. Even now there
is a slight stir in the House. A nobleman has entered whose movements
you will do well to follow. He takes his place just at the left of the
Lord-Chancellor, but remains seated only for a moment. If you are
familiar with the pencil of Punch, you will recognize him at a glance. A
thin, wiry, yet muscular frame, a singularly marked and expressive face
and mobile features, a nose that defies description, a high cravat like
a poultice covered with a black silk bandage, clothes that seem to have
been made for a much larger man, and always a pair of old-fashioned
checked trousers,--of course, this can only be Lord Brougham. He is
eighty-five years old, and yet his physical activity would do no
injustice to a man in the prime of life. If you watch him a few moments,
you will have abundant evidence of his restless energy. While we look,
he has crossed to the opposite side of the House, and is enjoying a
hearty laugh with the Bishop of Oxford. The round, full face of
"Slippery Sam" (as he is disrespectfully called throughout England) is
beaming with appreciative delight; but before the Bishop has time to
reply, the titled humorist is on the wing again, and in an instant we
see him seated between Earl Granville and the Duke of Somerset,
conversing with all the vivacity and enthusiasm of a school-boy. In a
moment he is in motion again, and has shaken hands with half a dozen
peers. Undeterred by the supernaturally solemn countenance of the
Marquis of Normanby, he has actually addressed a joke to that dignified
fossil, and has passed on without waiting to observe its effect. A few
words with Earl Derby, a little animated talk with the Earl of
Ellenborough, and he has made the circuit of the House, everywhere
received with a welcoming smile and a kindly grasp of the hand, and
everywhere finding willing and gratified listeners. Possibly that is
pardoned to his age and eminence which would be resented as impertinence
in a younger man, but certainly he enjoys a license accorded to no one
else in this aristocratic assembly.

The dull debate of the past hour is now concluded, the House is thin,
and there are indications of immediate adjournment. Remain a little
longer, however, and your patience may possibly be richly rewarded.
There is no order in the discussion of topics, and at any moment while
the House continues in session there may spring up a debate calling out
all the ability of the leading peers in attendance. After a short pause
the quiet is broken by an aged nobleman on the opposition benches. He
rises slowly and feebly with the assistance of a cane, but his voice is
firm and his manner is forcible. That he is a man of mark is evident
from the significant silence and the deferential attention with which
his first words are received. You ask his name, and with ill-disguised
amazement at your ignorance a gentleman by your side informs you that
the speaker is Lord Lyndhurst.

Perhaps the life of no public man in England has so much of interest to
an American as that of this distinguished nobleman. Born in Boston while
we were still in a condition of colonial dependence, he has lived to see
his native land emerge from her state of vassalage, pass through a
long-protracted struggle for liberty with the most powerful nation on
earth, successfully maintain her right to be free and independent,
advance with giant strides in a career of unexampled prosperity, assume
an undisputed position as one of the great powers of Christendom, and
finally put forth the most gigantic efforts to crush a rebellion
compared with which the conspiracy of Catiline was but the impotent
uprising of an angry dwarf.

Lord Lyndhurst was called to the bar of England in 1804. It was before
the splendid forensic successes of Erskine had been rewarded by a seat
on the wool-sack, or Wellington had completed his brilliant and decisive
campaign in India, or the military glory of Napoleon had culminated at
Austerlitz, or Pitt, turning sadly from the map of Europe and saying,
"Henceforth we may close that map for half a century," had gone
broken-hearted to an early grave, or Nelson had defeated the combined
navies of France and Spain at Trafalgar. Lord Byron had not yet entered
Cambridge University, Sir Walter Scott had not published his first poem,
and Canova was still in the height of his well-earned fame. It was
before the first steamboat of Robert Fulton had vexed the quiet waters
of the Hudson, or Aaron Burr had failed in his attempted treason, or
Daniel Welter had entered upon his professional career, or Thomas
Jefferson had completed his first official term as President of the
United States.

Lord Lyndhurst's advancement to the highest honors of his profession and
to a commanding place in the councils of his adopted country was rapid
almost beyond precedent. He was appointed Solicitor-General in 1819,
Attorney-General in 1823, Master of the Rolls in 1826, and
Lord-Chancellor in 1827. He remained in this office until 1830, and
retired only to be created Lord-Chief-Baron of the Exchequer. In 1835 he
was again appointed Lord-Chancellor, and once more, for the third time,
in 1841.

The characteristic qualities of the oratory of Lord Lyndhurst, when in
his prime, were perfect coolness and self-possession, a most pleasing
and plausible manner, singular ingenuity in dealing with a difficult
question or in weakening the effect of an argument really unanswerable,
a clear and musical voice, great ease and felicity of expression, and a
wonderful command, always discreetly used, of all the weapons of irony
and invective. He is, perhaps, the only nobleman in the House of Lords
whom Lord Brougham has ever feared to encounter. All these elements of
successful oratory Lord Lyndhurst has retained to an extraordinary
degree until within a year or two.

I chanced to hear this remarkable man during an evening in the month of
July, 1859. The House of Lords was thinly attended. There had been a
short and uninteresting debate on "The Atlantic-Telegraph Bill," and an
early adjournment seemed certain. But at this juncture Lord Lyndhurst
rose, and, after adverting to the fact that he had previously given
notice of his design to draw their lordships' attention to the military
and naval defences of the country, proceeded to address the House upon
this question. It should be borne in mind that this was a period of
great and engrossing excitement in England, created by the supposed
danger of invasion by France. Volunteer rifle-companies were springing
up all over the kingdom, newspapers were filled with discussions
concerning the sufficiency of the national defences, and speculations on
the chances for and against such an armed invasion. There was,
meanwhile, a strong peace-party which earnestly deprecated all agitation
of the subject, maintained that the sentiments of the French Emperor and
the French nation were most friendly to England, and contended that to
incur largely increased expenses for additional war-preparations was
unnecessary, impolitic, and ruinously extravagant. At the head of this
party were Cobden and Bright.

It was to answer these arguments, to convince England that there was a
real and positive peril, and to urge upon Her Majesty's Government the
paramount importance of preparing to meet not only a possible, but a
probable danger, that Lord Lyndhurst addressed the House of Lords. He
began by impressing upon their lordships the fact that the policy which
he advocated was not aggressive, but strictly defensive. He reviewed the
history of previous attempts to invade England. He pointed out the
significant circumstance, that these attempts had hitherto failed mainly
by reason of the casualties to which sailing-vessels were always
exposed. He pressed upon their attention the change which
steam-navigation had recently wrought in naval warfare. He quoted the
pithy remark of Lord Palmerston, that "steam had converted the Channel
into a river, and thrown a bridge across it."

He demonstrated from recent history the facility with which France could
transport large forces by sea to distant points. Then, in tones
tremulous with emotion, he drew upon the resources of his own marvellous
memory. "I have experienced, my lords, something like a sentiment of
humiliation in going through these details. I recollect the day when
every part of the opposite coast was blockaded by an English fleet. I
remember the victory of Camperdown, and that of St. Vincent, won by Sir
J. Jervis. I do not forget the great victory of the Nile, nor, last of
all, that triumphant fight at Trafalgar, which almost annihilated the
navies of France and Spain, I contrast the position which we occupied at
that period with that which we now hold. I recollect the expulsion of
the French from Egypt, the achievement of victory after victory in
Spain, the British army established in the South of France, and then the
great battle by which that war was terminated. I cannot glance back over
that series of events without feeling some degree of humiliation when I
am called upon to state in this House the measures which I deem it to be
necessary to take in order to provide for the safety of the country."

Then pausing a moment and overcoming his evident emotion, he continued,
with a force of manner and dignity of bearing which no words can fitly
describe,--"But I may be asked, 'Why do you think such measures
requisite? Are we not in alliance with France? Are we not on terms of
friendship with Russia? What other power can molest us?' To these
questions, my lords, my answer shall be a short and simple one. I will
not consent to live in dependence on the friendship or forbearance of
any country. I rely solely on my own vigor, my own exertion, and my own
intelligence." It will be readily believed that cheer after cheer rang
through the House when this bold and manly announcement was made.

Then, after alluding to the immense armament by sea and land which
France had hurled with such incredible rapidity upon the Austrian Empire
during the recent war in Italy, he concluded by saying,--"Are we to sit
supine on our own shores, and not to prepare the means necessary in case
of war to resist that power? I do not wish to say that we should do this
for any aggressive purpose. What I insist upon is, that we are bound to
make every effort necessary for our own shelter and protection. Beside
this, the question of expense and of money sinks into insignificance. It
is the price we must pay for our insurance, and it is but a moderate
price for so important an insurance. I know there are persons who will
say, 'Let us run the risk.' Be it so. But, my lords, if the calamity
should come, if the conflagration should take place, what words can
describe the extent of the calamity, or what imagination can paint the
overwhelming ruin that would fall upon us? I shall be told, perhaps,
that these are the timid counsels of old age. My lords, for myself, I
should run no risk. Personally I have nothing to fear. But to point out
possible peril and how to guard effectively against it,--that is surely
to be considered not as timidity, but as the dictate of wisdom and
prudence. I have confined myself to facts that cannot be disputed. I
think I have confined myself to inferences that no man can successfully
contravene. I hope what I have said has been in accordance with your
feelings and opinions. I shall terminate what I have to say in two
emphatic words, '_Voe victis!_'--words of solemn and most significant
import."

So spoke the Nestor of the English nation. Has our country no lesson to
learn from the well-considered words of this aged and accomplished
statesman? Are we not paying a large insurance to secure permanent
national prosperity? And is it not a wise and profitable investment, at
any cost of blood and treasure, if it promises the supremacy of our
Constitution, the integrity of our Union, and the impartial enforcement
of our laws?

When it is remembered that Lord Lyndhurst was at this time in his
eighty-eighth year, this speech of nearly an hour in length, giving no
evidence from first to last of physical debility or mental decay,
delivered in a firm, clear, and unfaltering voice, admirable for its
logical arrangement, most forcible and telling in its treatment of the
subject, and irresistible in its conclusions, must be considered as
hardly finding a parallel in ancient or modern times. We might almost
call it his valedictory; for his lordship's subsequent speeches have
been infrequent, and, with, we believe, a single exception, short, and
he is now rarely, if ever, seen in the House of Lords.

I shall not dwell upon the speeches that followed this earnest and
eloquent appeal to the wisdom and patriotism of the listening peers.
They were mainly confined to grateful recognition of the service which
Lord Lyndhurst had rendered to the nation by his frank and fearless
avowal of those principles which alone could preserve the honor and
independence of England. The opposition urged the most vigorous
preparations for resisting invasion, while Her Majesty's ministers
disclaimed any intention of weakening or neglecting the national
defences. As the speeches, however exhibited little worthy of mention
beyond the presentation of these points, I have supposed that a more
general description of some of the leading members of the Upper House
would be more interesting to my readers than a detailed account of what
was said upon this particular occasion.

I have already alluded to the personal appearance and bearing of Lord
Brougham. By reason of his great age, his long Parliamentary experience,
(he has been in the House of Commons and House of Lords for nearly fifty
years,) his habit of frequent speaking, and the commanding ability of
many of his public efforts, his name as an orator is perhaps more widely
known, and his peculiar style of declamation more correctly appreciated,
than those of any other man now living. It would therefore seem
unnecessary to give any sketch of his oratory, or of his manner in
debate. Very few educated men in this country are unfamiliar with his
eloquent defence of Queen Caroline, or his most bitter attack upon Mr.
Canning, or his brilliant argument for Mr. Williams when prosecuted by
the Durham clergy. Lord Brougham retains to this day the same fearless
contempt of all opposition, the same extravagant and often inconsistent
animosity to every phase of conservative policy, and the same fiery zeal
in advocating every measure which he has espoused, that have ever
characterized his erratic career. The witty author of "The Bachelor of
the Albany" has tersely, and not without a certain spice of truth,
described him as "a man of brilliant incapacity, vast and various
misinformation, and immense moral requirements."

The Duke of Argyle deserves more than a passing mention. Although
comparatively a young man, he has already had a most creditable career,
and given new lustre to an old and honored name. In politics he is a
decided and consistent Liberal, and he merits the favorable
consideration of all loyal Americans from the fact that he has not
failed on every proper occasion to advocate our cause with such
arguments as show clearly that he fully understands our position and
appreciates the importance of the principles for which we are
contending. It is a curious coincidence, that his style of address bears
a close resemblance to what may be called the American manner. Rapid,
but distinct, in utterance, facile and fluent in speech, natural and
graceful in gesticulation, he might almost be transplanted to the halls
of Congress at Washington without betraying his foreign birth and
education.

Lord Derby is undoubtedly the most skillful Parliamentary tactician and
the most accomplished speaker in the House of Lords. In 1834, (when he
was a member of the House of Commons,) Macaulay said of him, that "his
knowledge of the science of parliamentary defence resembled an
instinct." He is the acknowledged leader of the Tories or Conservatives
in England, and dictates the policy of his party with absolute
despotism. Belonging to one of the oldest peerages in the kingdom,
having already filled some of the most important offices in Her
Majesty's Government, occupying the highly honorable position of
Chancellor of the University of Oxford, (as successor of the first Duke
of Wellington,) an exact and finished scholar, enjoying an immense
income, and the proprietor of vast landed estates, he may be justly
considered one of the best types of England's aristocracy. He has that
unmistakable air of authority without the least alloy of arrogance, that
"pride in his port," which quietly asserts the dignity of long descent.
As a speaker, his manner is impressive and forcible, with a rare command
of choice language, an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of all
subjects connected with the administration of public affairs, and that
entire self-control which comes from life-long contact on terms of
equality with the best society in Europe and a thorough confidence in
his own mental resources. Lord Derby is preëminently a Parliamentary
orator, and furnishes one of the unusual instances where a reputation
for eloquence earned in the House of Commons has been fully sustained by
a successful trial in the House of Lords.

Another debater of marked ability in this body is Dr. Samuel
Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He is the third son of William
Wilberforce, the celebrated philanthropist, but by no means inherits the
simplicity of character and singular absence of all personal ambition
which made his father so widely beloved and respected. He is known as
the leading exponent of High-Church views, and has been heard in the
House of Lords on every question directly or indirectly affecting the
interests of the Establishment. It was long ago said of him, that, had
he been in political life, he would surely and easily have risen to the
position of Premier. He has for years been charged with a marked
proclivity to the doctrines of the Puseyites; and his adroitness in
baffling all attempted investigation into the manner in which he has
conducted the discipline of his diocese has perhaps contributed more
than any other cause to fasten upon him the significant _sobriquet_ to
which I have already alluded.

Any sketch of the prominent members of the House of Lords would be
imperfect which should omit to give some account of Lord Westbury, the
present Lord-High-Chancellor. Having been Solicitor-General in two
successive Administrations, he was filling for the second time the
position of Attorney-General, when, upon the death of Lord Campbell, he
was raised to the wool-sack. As a Chancery practitioner he was for years
at the head of his profession, and is supposed to have received the
largest income ever enjoyed by an English barrister. During the four
years next preceding his elevation to the peerage his average annual
earnings at the bar were twenty thousand pounds. In the summer of 1860
it was my good fortune to hear the argument of Lord Westbury (then Sir
Richard Bethell) in a case of great interest and importance, before
Vice-Chancellor Wood. The point at issue involved the construction of a
marriage-settlement between the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Prince
Borghese of Rome, drawn up on the occasion of the marriage of the Prince
with Lady Talbot, second daughter of the Earl. The interpretation of the
terms of the contract was by express stipulation to be in accordance
with the Roman common law. A commission sent to Rome to ascertain the
meaning of certain provisions contained in the contract resulted in
several folio volumes, embodying "the conflicting opinions of the most
eminent Roman lawyers," supported by references to the Canonists, the
decisions of the "Sacred Rota," the great text-writers upon
jurisprudence, the Institutes and Pandects, and ascending still higher
to the laws of the Roman Republic and the Augustan era.

The leading counsel in the kingdom were retained in the case, and
unusual public interest was enlisted. The amount at stake was twenty
thousand pounds, and it was estimated that nearly, if not quite, that
amount had already been consumed in costs. Legal proceedings are not an
inexpensive luxury anywhere; but "the fat contention and the flowing
fee" have a significance to English ears which we can hardly appreciate
in this country.

It will be at once apparent even to the unprofessional reader that most
difficult and complicated questions were presented by this
case,--questions turning on the exact interpretation of contracts,
involving delicate verbal distinctions, and demanding a thorough
comprehension of an immense and unwieldy mass of Roman law embraced in
the dissenting _dicta_ of Roman lawyers. It required the exercise of the
very highest legal ability, trained and habituated by long and patient
discipline to grapple with great issues.

The argument of Sir Richard Bethell abundantly demonstrated his capacity
to satisfy the demands of the occasion, and displayed most triumphantly
his perfect mastery of the whole subject. As the time drew near when he
was expected to close for the defence, barristers and students-at-law
began to flock into the small and inconveniently arranged courtroom. A
stranger and a foreigner could not but see at once that the
Attorney-General was the cynosure of all eyes. And, indeed, no one in
the room more thoroughly appreciated the fact that he was the central
and controlling attraction than Sir Richard himself. I must be pardoned
for using an English slang-phrase, but I can convey the impression which
he inevitably makes upon a spectator in no other way than by saying that
he is "a most magnificent swell." And I do this with the more confidence
as I have heard him characterized in precisely these words by members of
the English bar. Every motion, every attitude, indicates an intense
self-consciousness. The Earl of Chatham had not a greater passion for
theatrical effect, nor has a more consummate and finished actor ever
graced the stage. If the performance had been less perfect, it would
have been ludicrous in the extreme; for it did not overlook the minutest
details. He could not examine his brief, or make a suggestion to one of
his associates, or note an important point in the argument of opposing
counsel, or listen to an intimation of opinion from the Bench, without
an obvious eye to dramatic propriety. During the trial, an attorney's
clerk handed him a letter, and the air with which it was opened, read,
and answered was of itself a study. Yet it was all in the highest style
of the art. No possible fault could be found with the execution. Not a
single spectator ventured to smile. The supremacy of undoubted genius
was never more apparent, and never exacted nor received more willing
worship. Through the kindness of a friendly barrister I was introduced
to one of the juniors of the Attorney-General,--a stripling of about
fifty years of age. While we were conversing about the case, Sir Richard
turned and made some comment upon the conduct of the trial; but my
friend would no more have thought of introducing me to the leader of the
bar than he would have ventured to stop the carriage of the Queen in
Hyde Park and present me then and there to Her Majesty.

I remember as well as if it were but yesterday how attorneys and junior
counsel listened with the utmost deference to every suggestion which he
condescended to address to them, how narrowly the law-students watched
him, as if some legal principle were to be read in his cold, hard
countenance, and, as he at last rose slowly and solemnly to make his
long-expected argument, how court, bar, and by-standers composed
themselves to hear. He spoke with great deliberation and distinctness,
with singular precision and propriety of language, without any parade of
rhetoric or attempt at eloquence. After a very short and appropriate
exordium, he proceeded directly to the merits of the case. His words
were well-weighed, and his manner was earnest and impressive. It was, in
short, the perfection of reason confidently addressed to a competent
tribunal.

And yet his manner was by no means that of a man seeking to persuade a
superior, but rather that of one comparing opinions with an equal, if
not an inferior mind, elevated by some accident to a position of
factitious importance. One could not but feel that here was a power
behind the throne greater than the throne itself.

It cannot be doubted that this consciousness of mental and professional
preëminence, sustained by the unanimous verdict of public opinion, has
given to Lord Westbury a defiant, if not an insolent bearing. The story
is current at the English bar, that, some years ago, when offered a seat
on the Bench, with a salary of five thousand pounds, he promptly
declined, saying, "I would rather earn ten thousand pounds a year by
talking sense than five thousand pounds a year by hearing other men talk
nonsense." Anecdotes are frequent in illustration of his supercilious
treatment of attorneys and clients while he was a barrister. And since
his elevation to the wool-sack there has been no abatement or
modification of his offensive manner. His demeanor toward counsel
appearing before him has been the subject of constant and indignant
complaint. It will be remembered by some of my readers, that, not long
since, during a session of the House of Lords, he gave the lie direct to
one of the peers,--an occurrence almost without precedent in that
decorous body. Far different from this was the tone in which Lord
Thurlow, while Lord-Chancellor, asserted his independence and vindicated
his title to respect in his memorable rebuke addressed to the Duke of
Grafton. If the testimony of English travellers in this country is to be
believed, the legislative assemblies of our own land have hitherto
enjoyed the unenviable monopoly of this species of retort.

The House of Lords contains other peers of marked ability and protracted
Parliamentary experience, among whom are Earl Granville, the Earl of
Ellenborough, the Duke of Somerset, and the Earl of Shaftesbury; but we
cannot dwell in detail upon their individual characteristics as
speakers, or upon the share they have severally taken in the public
councils, without extending this article beyond its legitimate limits.

As genius is not necessarily or usually transmitted from generation to
generation, while a seat in the House of Lords is an inheritable
privilege, it will be readily believed that there is a considerable
number of peers with no natural or acquired fitness for legislative
duties,--men whose dullness in debate, and whose utter incapacity to
comprehend any question of public interest or importance, cannot be
adequately described. They speak occasionally, from a certain
ill-defined sense of what may be due to their position, yet are
obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are
greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been
discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and
canes are always in their way, and who have no very clear notions about
what should be done with their hands. A visitor who chances to spend an
evening in the House of Lords for the first and last time, while
noblemen of this stamp are quieting their tender consciences by a
statement of their views upon the subject under discussion, will be sure
to retire with a very unfavorable and wholly incorrect estimate of the
speaking talent of English peers.

It would hardly seem necessary to devote time or space to those members
of the House of Lords who are rarely, if ever, present at the debates.
As has been already stated, the whole number of peers is about four
hundred and sixty, of whom less than twenty-five are minors, while the
average attendance is less than fifty. The right to vote by proxy is a
peculiar and exclusive privilege of the Upper House, and vicarious
voting to a great extent is common on all important issues. Macaulay,
many years ago, pronounced the House of Lords "a small and torpid
audience"; and certainly, since the expression of this opinion, there
has been no increase of average attendance. A considerable proportion of
the absentees will be found among the "fast noblemen" of the
kingdom,--the men who prostitute their exalted social position to the
basest purposes, squandering their substance and wasting their time in
degrading dissipation, the easy prey of accomplished sharpers, and a
burning disgrace to their order. Sometimes, indeed, they pause on the
brink of utter ruin, only to become in their turn apostles of iniquity,
and to lure others to a like destruction. The unblushing and successful
audacity of these titled _roués_ is beginning to attract the attention
and awaken the fears of the better part of the English people. Their
pernicious example is bearing most abundant and bitter fruit in the
depraved morals of what are called the "lower classes" of society, and
their misdeeds are repeated in less fashionable quarters, with less
brilliant surroundings. Against this swelling tide of corrupting
influence the press of England is now raising its warning voice, and the
statements which are publicly and unreservedly made, and the predictions
which are confidently given, are very far from being welcome to English
eyes or grateful to English ears.

Another class of the House of Lords, and it is a large one, is most
happily characterized by Sydney Smith in his review of "Granby." "Lord
Chesterton we have often met with, and suffered a good deal from his
lordship: a heavy, pompous, meddling peer, occupying a great share of
the conversation, saying things in ten words which required only two,
and evidently convinced that he is making a great impression; a large
man, with a large head, and a very landed manner; knowing enough to
torment his fellow-creatures, not to instruct them; the ridicule of
young ladies, and the natural butt and target of wit. It is easy to talk
of carnivorous animals and beasts of prey; but does such a man, who lays
waste a whole civilized party of beings by prosing, reflect upon the joy
he spoils and the misery he creates in the course of his life, and that
any one who listens to him through politeness would prefer toothache or
ear-ache to his conversation? Does he consider the great uneasiness
which ensues, when the company has discovered a man to be an extremely
absurd person, at the same time that it is absolutely impossible to
convey by words or manner the most distant suspicion of the discovery?"

Now, most unfortunately, the noble House of Chesterton is still extant,
and its numerous representatives cherish with jealous care every
inherited absurdity of the family. Their favorite field of operations is
the House of Lords, partly because the strict proprieties of the place
protect them from rude and inconvenient interruption, and partly because
they can be sure of a "fit audience found, though few,"--an audience
of equals, whom it is no condescension to address. In the House of
Commons they would be coughed down or groaned down before they had
wasted ten minutes of the public time, and that they escape as swift
suppression in the House of Lords is much more creditable to the
courtesy of that body than to its just appreciation of the shortness of
human life. There is rarely a debate of importance in the House of Lords
during which some one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his
morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and
exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation. That
such painful exhibitions of callow and contracted bigotry should so
frequently be made in a body claiming for itself the finest culture and
the highest civilization in Christendom is certainly a most mortifying
circumstance, and serves to show that narrow views and unstatesmanlike
opinions are not confined to democratic deliberative assemblies, and
that the choicest advantages of education, literary and political, are
not at all inconsistent with ignorance and arrogance.

But we will allow his lordship to tell his own story. Here is his set
speech, only slightly modified from evening to evening, as may be
demanded by the difference in the questions under debate.

"My lords, the noble lord who has just taken his seat, although, I am
bound to say, presenting his view of the case with that candor which my
noble friend (if the noble lord will allow me to call him so) always
displays, yet, my lords, I cannot but add, omitted one important feature
of the subject. Now, my lords, I am exceedingly reluctant to take up the
time of your lordships with my views upon the subject-matter of this
debate; yet, my lords, as the noble and learned lord who spoke last but
one, as well as the noble earl at the head of Her Majesty's Government,
and the noble marquis who addressed your lordships early in the evening,
have all fallen into the same mistake, (if these noble lords will permit
me to presume that they could be mistaken,) I must beg leave to call
your lordships' attention to the significant fact, that each and all of
these noble lords have failed to point out to your lordships, that,
important and even conclusive as the arguments and statistics of their
lordships may at first sight appear, yet they have not directed your
lordships to the very suspicious circumstance that our noble ancestors
have never discovered the necessity of resorting to this singular
expedient.

"For myself, my lords, I confess that I am filled with the most gloomy
forebodings for the future of this country, when I hear a question of
this transcendent importance gravely discussed by noble lords without
the slightest allusion to this vital consideration. I beg to ask noble
lords, Are we wiser than our forefathers? Are any avenues of information
open to us which were closed to them? Were they less patriotic, less
intelligent, less statesmanlike, than the present generation? Why, then,
I most earnestly put it to your lordships, should we disregard, or,
certainly, lose sight of their wisdom and their experience? I implore
noble lords to pause before it is too late. I solemnly call upon them to
consider that the proposed measure is, after all, only democracy under a
thin disguise. Has it never occurred to noble lords that this project
did not originate in this House? that its warmest friends and most
ardent and persevering advocates are found among those who come from the
people, and who, from the very nature of the case, are incompetent to
decide upon what will be for the, best interests of the kingdom? My
lords, I feel deeply upon this subject, and I must be pardoned for
expressing myself in strong terms. I say again, that I see here the
clearest evidence of democratic tendencies, a contempt for existing and
ancient institutions, and an alarming want of respect for time-honored
precedents, which, I am bound to say, demand our prompt and indignant
condemnation," etc., etc., etc.[2]

[Footnote 2: If any one of my readers is inclined to suspect that I have
drawn upon my imagination for this specimen speech, I will only say,
that, if he were my bitterest enemy, I could wish him no more severe
punishment than to undergo as I have done, (_horresco referens_,) an
hour of the Marquis of Normanby, the Earl of Malmesbury, and a few other
kindred spirits. If he have no opportunity of subjecting the truth of my
statement and the accuracy of my report to this most grievous test, I
beg to assure him that I have given no fancy sketch, but that I have
heard speeches from these noblemen in precisely this tone and to exactly
this effect.]

This is the regular speech, protracted in the same strain for perhaps
half an hour. Of the manner of the noble orator I will not venture a
description. Any attempt to convey an idea of the air of omniscience
with which these dreary platitudes are delivered would surely result in
failure. It is enough to say that the impression which the noble lord
leaves upon an unprejudiced and un-English mind is in all respects
painful. Indeed, one sees at a glance how absolutely hopeless would be
any finite effort to convince him of the absurdity of his positions or
the weakness of his understanding. There he stands, a solemn, shallow,
conceited, narrow-minded, imperturbable, impracticable, incorrigible
blockhead, on whom everything in the shape of argument is utterly
wasted, and from whom all the arrows of wit and sarcasm fall harmless to
the ground. In fact, he is perfectly proof against any intellectual
weapons forged by human skill or wielded by mortal arm, and he awaits
and receives every attack with a stolid and insulting indifference which
must be maddening to an opponent.

I hasten to confess my entire incapacity to describe the uniform
personal bearing of a Chesterton in or out of the House of Lords. It is
strictly _sui generis_. It has neither the quiet, unassuming dignity of
the Derbys, the Shaftesburys, or the Warwicks, nor the vulgar vanity of
the untravelled Cockney. It simply defies accurate delineation. Dickens
has attempted to paint the portrait of such a character in "Bleak
House"; but Sir Leicester Dedlock, even in the hands of this great
artist, is not a success,--merely because, in the case of the Baronet,
selfishness and self-importance are only a superficial crust, while with
your true Chesterton these attributes penetrate to the core and are as
much a part of the man as any limbs or any feature of his face. A
genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own
theaters in the person of "Lord Dundreary," as the John Bull of the
French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and
exclaiming, "G---- d----! I will sell my wife at Smithfield," is unlike
the Englishman of real life. Lord Chesterton does not wear a small glass
in his right eye, nor commence every other sentence with "Aw! weally
now." He does not stare you out of countenance in a _café_, nor wonder
"what the Devil that fellaw means by his insolence." So much by way of
negative description. To appreciate him positively, one must see him and
hear him. No matter when or where you encounter him, you will find him
ever the same; and you will at last conclude that his manners are not
unnatural to a very weak man inheriting the traditions of an ancient and
titled family, and educated from childhood to believe that he belongs to
a superior order of beings.

Of course the strong point of a Chesterton is what he calls his
"conservatism." He values everything in proportion to its antiquity, and
prefers a time-honored abuse to a modern blessing. With a former Duke of
Somerset, he would pity Adam, "because he had no ancestors." His
sympathies, so far as he has any sentiments which deserve to be
dignified by that name, are ever on the side of tyranny. He condescends
to give his valuable sanction to the liberal institutions of England,
not because they are liberal, but because they are English. Next after
the Established Church, the reigning sovereign and the royal family, his
own order and his precious self, his warmest admiration is bestowed on
some good old-fashioned, thorough-going, grinding despotism. He defends
the Emperor of Austria, and considers the King of Naples a much-abused
monarch.

If his lordship has ever been in diplomatic life,--an event highly
probable,--he becomes the most intolerable nuisance that ever belied the
noblest sentiments of civilized society or blocked the wheels of public
debate. Flattered by the interested attention of despotic courts, his
poor weak head has been completely turned. He has seen everything _en
couleur de rose_. He assures their lordships that he has never known a
single well-authenticated case of oppression of the lower classes, while
it is within his personal knowledge that many of the best families (in
Italy, for instance) have been compelled to leave all their property
behind them, and fly for their lives before an insolent and unreasoning
mob. How he deluges the House with distorted facts and garbled
statistics! How he warns noble lords against the wiles of Mazzini, the
unscrupulous ambition of Victor Emmanuel, and the headlong haste of
Garibaldi!

Of course, his lordship's bitterest hatred and intensest aversion are
reserved for democratic institutions. Against these he wages a constant
crusade. Armed _cap-à-pie_ in his common-sense-proof coat of mail, he
charges feebly upon them with his blunt lance, works away furiously with
his wooden sword, and then ambles off with a triumphant air very
ludicrous to behold. Democracy is the _bête noir_ of all the
Chestertons. They attack it not only because they consider it a recent
innovation, but also because it threatens the permanence of their order.
About the practical working of a republic they have no better
information than they have about the institutions of Iceland or the
politics of Patagonia. It is quite enough for them to know that the
theory of democracy is based on the equality of man, and that where
democracy prevails a privileged class is unknown.

It is hardly necessary to add, that the present condition of the United
Stales is a perfect godsend to the whole family of Chestertons. Have
they not long predicted our disgrace and downfall? Have they not,
indeed, ever since our unjustifiable Declaration of Independence,
anticipated precisely what has happened? Have they not always and
everywhere contended that a republic had no elements of national
cohesion? In a word, have they not feared our growing power and
population as only such base and ignoble spirits can fear the sure and
steady progress of a rival nation? Unhappily, their influence in the
councils of the kingdom is by no means inconsiderable. The prestige of
an ancient family, the obsequious deference paid in England to exalted
social position, and the power of patronage, all combine to confer on
the Chestertons a commanding and controlling authority absurdly out of
proportion to their intrinsic ability.

There has been a prevalent notion in this country that England was
slowly, but certainly, tending towards a more democratic form of
government, and a more equal and equitable distribution of power among
the different orders of society. This is very far from being the case.
It has been well said, that "it is always considered a piece of
impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a
year has any opinions at all upon important subjects." But if this
income is quadrupled, and the high honor of a seat in the House of Lords
is superadded, it is not difficult to understand that the titled
recipient of such a revenue will find that his opinions command the
greatest consideration. The organization of the present Cabinet of
England is a fresh and conclusive illustration of this principle. It is
not too much to say, that at this moment the home and foreign
administration of the government is substantially in the hands of the
House of Lords. Indeed, the aristocratic element of English society is
as powerful to-day as it has been at any time during the past century.
To fortify this statement by competent authority, we make an extract
from a leader in the London "Times," on the occasion of the elevation of
Lord John Russell to the peerage. "But however welcome to the House of
Lords may be the accession of Lord John Russell, the House of Commons,
we apprehend, will contemplate it with very little satisfaction. While
the House of Lords does but one-twentieth part of the business of the
House of Commons, it boasts a lion's share of the present
administration. Three out of our five Secretaries of State, the
Lord-Chancellor, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Lord-President of
the Council, the Postmaster-General, the Lord Privy Seal, all hold seats
in the Upper House, while the Home-Secretary, and the Secretary for
India, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
the President of the Board of Trade, the President of the Poor-Law
Board, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Secretary for
Ireland hold seats in the House of Commons. Lord John Russell goes to
give more to that which had already too much. At the present moment, the
two ministers whose united departments distribute between twenty and
thirty millions of the national revenue sit in the House which does not
represent the people. In voting the army and navy estimates, the House
of Commons received this year from the Under-Secretaries that
information which they ought to have from the best and most authentic,
sources. To these is now added the all-important department of Foreign
Affairs; so that, if things remain as they are, the representatives of
the people must be content to feed on second-hand information.... Most
of us can remember a time when it was a favorite topic with popular
agitators to expatiate on the number of lords which a government
contained, as if every peer of Parliament wielded an influence
necessarily hostile to the liberties of the country. We look down in the
present age with contempt on such vulgar prejudices; but we seem to be
running into the contrary extreme, when we allow almost all the
important offices of our government to be monopolized by a chamber where
there is small scope for rhetorical ability, and the short sittings and
unbusiness-like habits of which make it very unsuited for the
enforcement of ministerial responsibility. The statesmen who have charge
of large departments of expenditure, like the army and navy, and of the
highest interests of the nation, ought to be in the House of Commons, is
necessarily superior to a member of the House of the House of Lords, but
it is to the House of Commons that these high functionaries are
principally accountable, and because, if they forfeit the confidence of
the House of Commons, the House of Lords can avail them but little. The
matter is of much importance and much difficulty. We can only hope that
the opportunity of redressing this manifest imperfection in the
structure of the present government will not be lost, and that the House
of Commons may recover those political privileges which it has hitherto
been its pride to enjoy."

This distribution of power in the English Cabinet furnishes a sufficient
solution of the present attitude of the English Government towards this
country. The ruling classes of England can have no sincere sympathy with
the North, because its institutions and instincts are democratic. They
give countenance to the South, because at heart and in practice it is
essentially an aristocracy. To remove the dangerous example of a
successful and powerful republic, where every man has equal rights,
civil and religious, and where a privileged order in Church and State is
impossible, has become in the minds of England's governing classes an
imperious necessity. Compared with the importance of securing this
result, all other considerations weigh as nothing. Brothers by blood,
language, and religion, as they have been accustomed to call us while we
were united and formidable, we are now, since civil war has weakened us
and great national questions have distracted our councils, treated as
aliens, if not as enemies. On the other hand, the South, whose leaders
have ever been first to take hostile ground against England, and whose
"peculiar institution" has drawn upon us the eloquent and unsparing
denunciations of English philanthropists, is just now in high favor with
the "mother-country." Not only has the ill-disguised dislike of the
Tories ripened into open animosity, not only are we the target for the
shallow scorn of the Chestertons, (even a donkey may dare to kick a
dying lion,) but we have lost the once strongly pronounced friendship of
such ardent anti-slavery men as Lord Brougham and the Earl of
Shaftesbury. Why is this? Does not the explanation lie in a nutshell? We
were becoming too strong. We were disturbing the balance of power. We
were demonstrating too plainly the inherent activity and irresistible
energy of a purely democratic form of government. Therefore _Carthago
delenda est_. "But yet the pity of it, Iago!" Mark how a Christian
nation deals with a Christian ally. Our destruction is to be
accomplished, not by open warfare, but by the delusive and dastardly
pretence of neutrality. There is to be no diplomatic recognition of an
independent Southern Confederacy, but a formidable navy is to be
furnished to our enemies, and their armies are to be abundantly supplied
with the munitions of war. But how? By the English Government? Oh, no!
This would be in violation of solemn treaties. Earl Russell says, "We
have long maintained relations of peace and amity" with the United
States. England cannot officially recognize or aid the South without
placing herself in a hostile attitude towards this country. Yet
meanwhile English capitalists can publicly subscribe to the loan which
our enemies solicit, and from English ship-yards a fleet of iron-clad
war-vessels can be sent to lay waste our commerce and break our blockade
of Southern ports. What the end will be no one may venture to foretell;
but it needs no prophet to predict that many years will not obliterate
from the minds of the American people the present policy of the English
Cabinet, controlled as it is by the genius of English aristocracy.

       *       *       *       *       *




THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS.


"The first time I saw Theodore Winthrop," said one to me a few days ago,
"he came into my office with a common friend. They were talking as they
entered, and Winthrop said, 'Yes, the fellows who came over in the
Mayflower can't afford to do that!'

"'There,' thought I to myself, 'there's another of the Mayflower men! I
wish to my soul that ship had sunk on her voyage out!' But when I came
to know him, I quickly learned that with him origin was not a matter of
vain pride, but a fact inciting him to all nobleness of thought and
life, and spurring him on to emulate the qualities of his ancestor."

That is to say, he was not a prig, or a snob, but a gentleman. And if he
remembered that he "came over in the Mayflower," it was because he felt
that that circumstance bound him to higher enterprises, to better work,
than other men's. And he believed in his heart, as he wrote in the
opening chapter of "John Brent," that "deeds of the heroic and chivalric
times do not utterly disdain our day. There are men," he continues, "as
ready to gallop for love and strike for love now as in the age of
Amadis." Ay, and for a nobler love than the love of woman--for love of
country, and of liberty--he was ready to strike, and to die.

Ready to do, when the time came; but also--what required a greater
soul--ready to wait in cheerful content till the fitting time should
come. Think of these volumes lying in his desk at home, and he, their
author, going about his daily tasks and pleasures, as hearty and as
unrepining as though no whisper of ambition had ever come to his
soul,--as though he had no slightest desire for the pleasant fame which
a successful book gives to a young man. Think of it, O race of
scribblers, to whom a month in the printer's hands seems a monstrous
delay, and who bore publishers with half-finished manuscripts, as
impatient hens begin, untimely, to cackle before the egg is laid.

That a young man, not thirty-three when he died, should have written
these volumes, so full of life, so full of strange adventure, of wide
reading, telling of such large and thorough knowledge of books and men
and Nature, is a remarkable fact in itself. That he should have let the
manuscripts lie in his desk has probably surprised the world more. But,
much as he wrote, Winthrop, perhaps, always felt that his true life was
not that of the author, but of the actor. He has often told me that it
was a pleasure to write,--probably such a pleasure as it is to an old
tar to spin his yarns. His mind was active, stored with the accumulated
facts of a varied experience. How keen an observer of Nature he was,
those who have read "John Brent" or the "Canoe and Saddle" need not be
told; how appreciative an observer of every-day life, was shown in that
brilliant story which appeared in these pages some eighteen months ago,
under the title of "Love and Skates." Our American life lost by his
death one who, had he lived, would have represented it, reported it to
the world, soul and body together; for he comprehended its spirit, as
well as saw its outer husk; he was in sympathy with all its
manifestations.

That quick, intelligent eye saw everything; that kindly, sympathetic
spirit comprehended always the soul of things; and no life, however
common, rugged, or coarse, was to him empty. If he added always
something of his own nobility of heart, if he did not pry out with
prurient eyes the meannesses of life around him, the picture he drew was
none the less true,--was, indeed, it seems to me, all the more true.
Therefore I say that his early death was a loss to American literature,
or, to speak more accurately, to that too small part of our literature
which concerns itself with American life. To him the hard-featured
Yankee had something besides hard features and ungainly manners; he saw
the better part as well as the grosser of the creature, and knew that

    "Poor lone Hannah,
    Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"

had somewhat besides coarse hands and red eyes. He was not tainted with
the vicious habit of caricature, which is the excuse with which
superficial and heartless writers impose their false art upon the
public. Nor did he need that his heroes should wear kid gloves,--though
he was himself the neatest-gloved man I knew. "Armstrong of Oregon" was
a rough figure enough; but how well he knew how to bring out the kindly
traits in that rude lumberman's character! how true to Nature is that
sketch of a gentleman in homespun! And even Jake Shamberlain, the Mormon
mail-carrier, a rollicking, untidy rover, fond of whiskey, and doubtless
not too scrupulous in a "trade," has yet, in Winthrop's story, qualities
which draw us to him.

To sit down to "John Brent" after rending one of the popular novels of
these days, by one of the class of writers who imagine photography the
noblest of arts, is like getting out of a fashionable "party" into the
crisp air of a clear, starlight, December night. And yet Winthrop was a
"society" man; one might almost say he knew that life better than the
other, the freer, the nobler, which he loved to describe, as he loved to
live it.

A neat, active figure of a man, carefully dressed, as one who pays all
proper honor to the body in which he walks about; a gentleman, not only
in the broader and more generous sense, but also according to the
narrower, conventional meaning of the term; plainly a scholarly man,
fond of books, and knowing the best books; with that modest, diffident
air which bookish men have; with a curious shyness, indeed, as of one
who was not accustomed and did not like to come into too close contact
with the every-day world: such Theodore Winthrop appeared to me. I
recollect the surprise with which I heard--not from him--that he had
ridden across the Plains, had camped with Lieutenant Strain, had
"roughed it" in the roughest parts of our continent. But if you looked a
little closely into the face, you saw in the fine lines of the mouth the
determination of a man who can bear to carry his body into any peril or
difficulty; and in the eye--he had the eye of a born sailor, an eye
accustomed to measure the distance for a dangerous leap, quick to
comprehend all parts of a novel situation--you saw there presence of
mind, unfaltering readiness, and a spirit equal to anything the day
might bring forth.

In the Memoir prefixed to "Cecil Dreeme" Curtis has drawn a portrait,
tender and true, of his friend and neighbor. The few words which have
written themselves here tell of him only as he appeared to one who knew
him less intimately, who saw him not often.

I come now to speak of the writings which Winthrop left. These have the
singular merit, that they are all American. From first to last, they are
plainly the work of a man who had no need to go to Europe for characters
or scenery or plot,--who valued and understood the peculiar life and
the peculiar Nature of this continent, and, like a true artist and poet,
chose to represent that life and Nature of which he was a part. His
stories smack of the soil; his characters--especially in "John Brent,"
where his own ride across the continent is dramatized--are as fresh and
as true as only a true artist could make them. Take, for instance, the
"Pike," the border-ruffian transplanted to a California "ranch,"--not a
ruffian, as he says, but a barbarian.

"America is manufacturing several new types of men. The Pike is one of
the newest. He is a bastard pioneer. With one hand he clutches the
pioneer vices; with the other he beckons forward the vices of
civilization. It is hard to understand how a man can have so little
virtue in so long a body, unless the shakes are foes to virtue in the
soul, as they are to beauty in the face.

"He is a terrible shock, this unlucky Pike, to the hope that the new
race on the new continent is to be a handsome race. I lose that faith,
which the people about me now have nourished, when I recall the Pike. He
is hung together, not put together. He inserts his lank fathom of a man
into a suit of molasses-colored homespun. Frowzy and husky is the hair
Nature crowns him with; frowzy and stubby the beard. He shambles in his
walk. He drawls in his talk. He drinks whiskey by the tank. His oaths
are to his words as Falstaff's sack to his bread. I have seen Maltese
beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Dominican friars, New-York aldermen, Digger
Indians; the foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are
thorough-bred Pikes."

This is not complimentary, but any one who has seen the creature knows
that it is a portrait done by a first-rate artist.

Take, again, that other vulgarer ruffian, "Jim Robinson," "a little man,
stockish, oily, and red in the face, a jaunty fellow, too, with a
certain shabby air of coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire,"--and
how accurately does he describe the metamorphosis of this nauseous grub
into a still more disgusting butterfly!

"I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis, blossomed into a purple
coat with velvet lappels, a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or
a flamboyant scarf pinned with a pinchbeck dog, and red-legged,
patent-leather boots, picking his teeth on the steps of the Planters'
House."

Or, once more, that more saintly villain, the Mormon Elder Sizzum.

"Presently Sizzum appeared. He had taken time to tone down the pioneer
and develop the deacon in his style, and a very sleek personage he had
made of himself. He was clean shaved: clean shaving is a favorite
coxcombry of the deacon class. His long black hair, growing rank from a
muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his ears. A large white blossom of
cravat expanded under his nude, beefy chin, and he wore a black
dress-coat, creased with its recent packing. Except that his pantaloons
were thrust into boots with the maker's name (Abel Gushing, Lynn, Mass.)
stamped in gold on a scarlet morocco shield in front, he was in correct
go-to-meetin' costume,--a Chadband of the Plains."

When you see one of these men, you will know him again. Winthrop has
sketched these rascals with a few touches, as felicitous as any of
Dickens's, and they will bear his mark forever: _T.W. fecit._

As for Jake Shamberlain, with his odd mixture of many religious and
irreligious dialects, what there is of him is as good as Sam Weller or
Mrs. Poyser.

"'Hillo, Shamberlain!' hailed Brent, riding up to the train.

"'Howdydo? Howdydo? No swap!' responded Jake, after the Indian fashion.
'Bung my eyes, ef you're not the mate of all mates I'm glad to see! Pax
vobiscrum, my filly! You look as fresh as an Aperel shad. Praisèd be the
Lord,' continued he, relapsing into Mormon slang, 'who has sent thee
again, like a brand from the burning, to fall into paths of pleasantness
with the Saints, as they wander from the Promised Land to the mean
section where the low-lived Gentiles ripen their souls for hell!'"

Or Jake's droll commentary on the story of Old Bridger, ousted from his
fort, and robbed of his goods, by the Saints, in the name of the Prophet
Brigham.

"'It's olluz so,' says Jake; 'Paul plants, and Apollyon gets the
increase. Not that Bridger's like Paul, any more 'n we're like Apollyon;
but we're goan to have all the cider off his apple-trees.'"

Or, again, Jake's compliments to "Armstrong of Oregon," that galloping
Vigilant Committee of one.

"I'll help you, if I know how, Armstrong. I ha'n't seen no two in my
life, Old Country or New Country, Saints or Gentiles, as I'd do more for
'n you and your brother. I've olluz said, ef the world was chock full of
Armstrongs, Paradise wouldn't pay, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mout
just as well blow out their candle and go under a bushel-basket,--unless
a half-bushel would kiver 'em."

But the true hero of the book is the horse Don Fulano. It is easy to see
that Winthrop was a first-rate horseman, from the loving manner in which
he describes and dwells on the perfections of the matchless stallion.
None but one who knew every point of a horse, none but one of the
Centaur breed, could have drawn Don Fulano,--just as none but a born
skater could have written those inimitable skating-scenes in his story
of "Love and Skates."

"He was an American horse,--so they distinguish in California one
brought from the old States,--A SUPERB YOUNG STALLION, PERFECTLY BLACK,
WITHOUT MARK. It was magnificent to see him, as he circled about me,
fire in his eye, pride in his nostril, tail flying like a banner, power
and grace from tip to tip. No one would ever mount him, or ride him,
unless it was his royal pleasure. He was conscious of his representative
position, and showed his paces handsomely."

This is the creature who takes the lead in that stirring and matchless
"Gallop of Three" to the Luggernel Spring, to quote from which would be
to spoil it. It must be read entire.

In the "Canoe and Saddle" is recorded Winthrop's long ride across the
continent. Setting out in a canoe, from Port Townsend, in Vancouver's
Island, he journeyed, without company of other white men, to the Salt
Lake City and thence to "the States,"--a tedious and barbarous
experience, heightened, in this account of it, by the traveller's cheery
spirits, his ardent love of Nature, and capacity to describe the grand
natural scenery, of the effect of which upon himself he says, at the
end,--

"And in all that period, while I was so near to Nature, the great
lessons of the wilderness deepened into my heart day by day, the hedges
of conventionalism withered away from my horizon, and all the pedantries
of scholastic thought perished out of my mind forever."

He bore hardships with the courage and imperturbable good-nature of a
born gentleman. It is when men are starving, when the plating of romance
is worn off by the chafe of severe and continued suffering,--it is then
that "blood tells." Winthrop had evidently that keen relish for rough
life which the gently nurtured and highly cultivated man has oftener
than his rude neighbor, partly because, in his case, contrast lends a
zest to the experience. Thus, when he camps with a gang of
"road-makers," in the farthest Western wilderness,--a part of Captain
McClellan's Pacific Railroad Expedition,--how thoroughly he enjoys the
rough hospitality and rude wit of these pioneers!

"In such a Platonic republic as this a man found his place according to
his powers. The cooks were no base scullions; they were brethren, whom
conscious ability, sustained by universal suffrage, had endowed with the
frying-pan."

"My hosts were a stalwart gang.... Their talk was as muscular as their
arms. When these laughed, as only men fresh and hearty and in the open
air can laugh, the world became mainly grotesque: it seemed at once a
comic thing to live,--a subject for chuckling, that we were bipeds, with
noses,--a thing to roar at, that we had all met there from the wide
world, to hobnob by a frolicsome fire with tin pots of coffee, and
partake of crisped bacon and toasted dough-boys in ridiculous abundance.
Easy laughter infected the atmosphere. Echoes ceased to be pensive, and
became jocose. A rattling humor pervaded the forest, and Green River
rippled with noise of fantastic jollity. Civilization and its
_dilettante_ diners-out sneer when Clodpole at Dives's table doubles his
soup, knifes his fish, tilts his plate into his lap, puts muscle into
the crushing of his _méringue_, and tosses off the warm beaker in his
finger-bowl. Camps by Tacoma sneer not at all, but candidly roar, at
parallel accidents. Gawky makes a cushion of his flapjack. Butterfingers
drops his red-hot rasher into his bosom, or lets slip his mug of coffee
into his boot drying at the fire,--a boot henceforth saccharine. A mule,
slipping his halter, steps forward unnoticed, puts his nose into the
circle, and brays resonant. These are the jocular boons of life, and at
these the woodsmen guffaw with lusty good-nature. Coarse and rude the
jokes may be, but not nasty, like the innuendoes of pseudo-refined
cockneys. If the woodsmen are guilty of uncleanly wit, it differs from
the uncleanly wit of cities as the mud of a road differs from the sticky
slime of slums.

"It is a stout sensation to meet masculine, muscular men at the brave
point of a penetrating Boston hooihut,--men who are mates,--men to whom
technical culture means nought,--men to whom myself am nought, unless I
can saddle, lasso, cook, sing, and chop,--unless I am a man of nerve and
pluck, and a brother in generosity and heartiness. It is restoration to
play at cudgels of jocoseness with a circle of friendly roughs, not one
of whom ever heard the word bore,--with pioneers, who must think and
act, and wrench their living from the closed hand of Nature."

And here is a dinner "in the open."

"Upon the _carte du jour_ at Restaurant Sowee was written Grouse. 'How
shall we have them?' said I, cook and convive, to Loolowcan, marmiton
and convive. 'One of these cocks of the mountain shall be fried, since
gridiron is not,' responded I to myself, after meditation; 'two shall be
spitted and roasted; and, as Azrael may not want us before breakfast
to-morrow, the fourth shall go upon the _carte de déjeuner'_.

"'O Pork! what a creature thou art!' continued I, in monologue, cutting
neat slices of that viand with my bowie-knife, and laying them
fraternally, three in a bed, in the frying-pan. 'Blessed be Moses, who
forbade thee to the Jews, whereby we, of freer dispensations, heirs of
all the ages, inherit also pigs more numerous and bacon cheaper! O Pork!
what could campaigners do without thy fatness, thy leanness, thy
saltness, thy portableness?'

"Here Loolowcan presented me the three birds, plucked featherless as
Plato's man. The two roasters we planted carefully on spits before a
sultry spot of the fire. From a horizontal stick, supported on forked
stakes, we suspended by a twig over each roaster an automatic baster, an
inverted cone of pork, ordained to yield its spicy juices to the wooing
flame, and drip bedewing on each bosom beneath. The roasters ripened
deliberately, while keen and quick fire told upon the frier, the first
course of our feast. Meanwhile I brewed a pot of tea, blessing Confucius
for that restorative weed, as I had blessed Moses for his abstinence
from porkers.

"Need I say that the grouse were admirable, that everything was
delicious, and the Confucian weed first chop? Even a scouse of mouldy
biscuit met the approval of Loolowcan. Feasts cooked under the greenwood
tree, and eaten by their cooks after a triumphant day of progress, are
sweeter than the conventional banquets of languid Christendom."

"Life in the Open Air"--containing sketches of travel among the
mountains and lakes of Maine, as well as the story of "Love and Skates,"
which has been spoken of, "The March of the Seventh Regiment,"
"Washington as a Camp," an essay descriptive of Church's great picture,
"The Heart of the Andes," and two fragments, one of them the charming
commencement of a story which promised to be one of his best and most
enjoyable efforts in this direction--is the concluding volume of
Winthrop's collected writings. I speak of it in this place, because it
is in some part a companion-book to the volumes we have been discussing.
It is as full of buoyant life, of fresh and noble thought, of graceful
wit and humor, as those; in parts it contains the most finished of his
literary work. Few Americans who read it at the time will ever forget
that stirring description of the march of the New-York Seventh; it is a
piece of the history of our war which will live and be read as long as
Americans read their history. It moved my blood, in the reading,
tonight, as it did in those days--which seem already some centuries old,
so do events crowd the retrospect--when we were all reading it in the
pages of the "Atlantic." In the unfinished story of "Brightly's Orphan"
there is a Jew boy from Chatham Street, an original of the first water,
who, though scarce fairly introduced, will, I am sure, make a place for
himself and for his author in the memories of all who relish humor of
the best kind.

"Cecil Dreeme" and "Edwin Brothertoft" are quite other books than these
we have spoken of. Here Winthrop tried a different vein,--two different
veins, perhaps. Both are stories of suffering and crime, stories of the
world and society. In one it is a woman, in the other a man, who is
wronged. One deals with New York city-life of the very present day; the
other is a story of the Revolutionary War, and of Tories and Patriots.
The popular verdict has declared him successful, even here. "Cecil
Dreeme" has run through no less than fifteen editions.

In this story we are shown New York "society" as doubtless Winthrop knew
it to be. Yet the book has a curious air of the Old-World; it might be a
story of Venice, almost. It tells us of Old-World vices and crimes, and
the fittings and furnishings are of a piece. The localities, indeed, are
sketched so faithfully, that a stranger to the city, coming suddenly, in
his wanderings, upon Chrysalis College Buildings, could not fail to
recognize them at once,--as indeed happened to a country friend of mine
recently, to his great delight. But the men are Americans, bred and
formed--and for the most part spoiled--in Europe; Americans who have
gone to Paris before their time, if it be true, what a witty Bostonian
said, that good Americans go to Paris when they die. With all this, the
book has a strange charm, so that it takes possession of you in spite of
yourself. It is as though it drew away the curtain, for one slight
moment, from the mysteries which "society" decorously hides,--as though
he who drew the curtain stood beside it, pointing with solemn finger and
silent indignation to the baseness of which he gives you a glimpse. Yet
even here the good carries the day, and that in no maudlin way, but
because the true men are the better men.

These, then, are Winthrop's writings,--the literary works of a young man
who died at thirty-two, and who had spent a goodly part of his mature
life in the saddle and the canoe, exploring his own country, and in
foreign travel. As we look at the volumes, we wonder how he found time
for so much; but when we have read, we wonder yet more at the excellence
of all he wrote. In all and through all shines his own noble spirit; and
thus these books of his, whose printed pages he never saw, will keep his
memory green amongst us; for, through them, all who read may know that
there wrote a true gentleman.

Once he wrote,--

    "Let me not waste in skirmishes my power,
    In petty struggles. Rather in the hour
    Of deadly conflict may I nobly die,
    In my first battle perish gloriously."

Even so he fell; but in these written works, as in his gallant death, he
left with us lessons which will yet win battles for the good cause of
American liberty, which he held dearest in his heart.

       *       *       *       *       *




HILARY.


                 Hilary,
    Summer calls thee, o'er the sea!
      Like white flowers upon the tide,
      In and out the vessels glide;
      But no wind on all the main
      Sends thy blithe soul home again:
    Every salt breeze moans for thee,
                 Hilary!

                 Hilary,
    Welcome Summer's step will be,
      Save to those beside whose door
      Doleful birds sit evermore
      Singing, "Never comes he here
      Who made every season's cheer!"
    Dull the June that brings not thee,
                 Hilary!

                 Hilary,
    What strange world has sheltered thee?
      Here the soil beneath thy feet
      Rang with songs, and blossomed sweet;
      Blue skies ask thee yet of Earth,
      Blind and dumb without thy mirth:
    With thee went her heart of glee,
                 Hilary!

                 Hilary,
    All things shape a sigh for thee!
      O'er the waves, among the flowers,
      Through the lapse of odorous hours,
      Breathes a lonely, longing sound,
      As of something sought, unfound:
    Lorn are all things, lorn are we,
                 Hilary!

                 Hilary,
    Oh, to sail in quest of thee,
      To the trade-wind's steady tune,
      Past the hurrying monsoon,
      Into torrid seas, that lave
      Dry, hot sands,--a breathless grave,--
    Sad as vain the search would be,
                 Hilary!

                 Hilary,
    Chase the sorrow from the sea!
      Summer-heart, bring summer near,
      Warm, and fresh, and airy-clear!
      --Dead thou art not: dead is pain;
      Now Earth sees and sings again:
    Death, to hold thee, Life must be,
                 Hilary!

       *       *       *       *       *




DEBBY'S DÉBUT.


On a cheery June day Mrs. Penelope Carroll and her niece Debby Wilder
were whizzing along on their way to a certain gay watering-place, both
in the best of humors with each other and all the world beside. Aunt Pen
was concocting sundry mild romances, and laying harmless plots for the
pursuance of her favorite pastime, match-making; for she had invited her
pretty relative to join her summer jaunt, ostensibly that the girl might
see a little of fashionable life, but the good lady secretly proposed to
herself to take her to the beach and get her a rich husband, very much
as she would have proposed to take her to Broadway and get her a new
bonnet; for both articles she considered necessary, but somewhat
difficult for a poor girl to obtain.

Debby was slowly getting her poise, after the excitement of a first
visit to New York; for ten days of bustle had introduced the young
philosopher to a new existence, and the working-day world seemed to have
vanished when she made her last pat of butter in the dairy at home. For
an hour she sat thinking over the good-fortune which had befallen her,
and the comforts of this life which she had suddenly acquired. Debby was
a true girl,--with all a girl's love of ease and pleasure; and it must
not be set down against her that she surveyed her pretty travelling-suit
with much complacency, rejoicing inwardly that she could use her hands
without exposing fractured gloves, that her bonnet was of the newest
mode, needing no veil to hide a faded ribbon or a last year's shape,
that her dress swept the ground with fashionable untidiness, and her
boots were guiltless of a patch,--that she was the possessor of a mine
of wealth in two of the eight trunks belonging to her aunt, that she was
travelling like any lady of the land with man-and maid-servant at her
command, and that she was leaving work and care behind her for a month
or two of novelty and rest.

When these agreeable facts were fully realized, and Aunt Pen had fallen
asleep behind her veil, Debby took out a book, and indulged in her
favorite luxury, soon forgetting past, present, and future in the
inimitable history of Martin Chuzzlewit. The sun blazed, the cars
rattled, children cried, ladies nodded, gentlemen longed for the solace
of prohibited cigars, and newspapers were converted into sun-shades,
nightcaps, and fans; but Debby read on, unconscious of all about her,
even of the pair of eyes that watched her from the opposite corner of
the car. A gentleman with a frank, strong-featured face sat therein, and
amused himself by scanning with thoughtful gaze the countenances of his
fellow-travellers. Stout Aunt Pen, dignified even in her sleep, was a
"model of deportment" to the rising generation; but the student of human
nature found a more attractive subject in her companion, the girl with
an apple-blossom face and merry brown eyes, who sat smiling into her
book, never heeding that her bonnet was awry, and the wind taking
unwarrantable liberties with her ribbons and her hair.

Innocent Debby turned her pages, unaware that her fate sat opposite in
the likeness of a serious, black-bearded gentleman, who watched the
smiles rippling from her lips to her eyes with an interest that deepened
as the minutes passed. If his paper had been full of anything but
"Bronchial Troches" and "Spalding's Prepared Glue," he would have found
more profitable employment; but it wasn't, and with the usual readiness
of idle souls he fell into evil ways, and permitted curiosity, that
feminine sin, to enter in and take possession of his manly mind. A great
desire seized him to discover what book so interested his pretty
neighbor; but a cover hid the name, and he was too distant to catch it
on the fluttering leaves. Presently a stout Emerald-Islander, with her
wardrobe oozing out of sundry paper parcels, vacated the seat behind the
two ladies; and it was soon quietly occupied by the individual for whom
Satan was finding such indecorous employment. Peeping round the little
gray bonnet, past a brown braid and a fresh cheek, the young man's eye
fell upon the words the girl was reading, and forgot to look away again.
Books were the desire of his life; but an honorable purpose and an
indomitable will kept him steady at his ledgers till he could feel that
he had earned the right to read. Like wine to many another was an open
page to him; he read a line, and, longing for more, took a hasty sip
from his neighbor's cup, forgetting that it was a stranger's also.

Down the page went the two pairs of eyes, and the merriment from Debby's
seemed to light up the sombre ones behind her with a sudden shine that
softened the whole face and made it very winning. No wonder they
twinkled, for Elijah Pogram spoke, and "Mrs. Hominy, the mother of the
modern Gracchi, in the classical blue cap and the red cotton
pocket-handkerchief, came down the room in a procession of one." A low
laugh startled Debby, though it was smothered like the babes in the
Tower; and, turning, she beheld the trespasser scarlet with confusion,
and sobered with a tardy sense of his transgression. Debby was not a
starched young lady of the "prune and prism" school, but a frank,
free-hearted little body, quick to read the sincerity of others, and to
take looks and words at their real value. Dickens was her idol; and for
his sake she could have forgiven a greater offence than this. The
stranger's contrite countenance and respectful apology won her good-will
at once; and with a finer courtesy than any Aunt Pen would have taught,
she smilingly bowed her pardon, and, taking another book from her
basket, opened it, saying, pleasantly,--

"Here is the first volume, if you like it, Sir. I can recommend it as an
invaluable consolation for the discomforts of a summer day's journey,
and it is heartily at your service."

As much surprised as gratified, the gentleman accepted the book, and
retired behind it with the sudden discovery that wrong-doing has its
compensation in the pleasurable sensation of being forgiven. Stolen
delights are well known to be specially saccharine; and much as this
pardoned sinner loved books, it seemed to him that the interest of the
story flagged, and that the enjoyment of reading was much enhanced by
the proximity of a gray bonnet and a girlish profile. But Dickens soon
proved more powerful than Debby, and she was forgotten, till, pausing to
turn a leaf, the young man met her shy glance, as she asked, with the
pleased expression of a child who has shared an apple with a playmate,--

"Is it good?"

"Oh, very!"--and the man looked as honestly grateful for the book as the
boy would have done for the apple.

Only five words in the conversation, but Aunt Pen woke, as if the
watchful spirit of propriety had roused her to pluck her charge from the
precipice on which she stood.

"Dora, I'm astonished at you! Speaking to strangers in that free manner
is a most unladylike thing. How came you to forget what I have told you
over and over again about a proper reserve?"

The energetic whisper reached the gentleman's ear, and he expected to be
annihilated with a look when his offence was revealed; but he was spared
that ordeal, for the young voice answered, softly,--

"Don't faint, Aunt Pen; I only did as I'd be done by; for I had two
books, and the poor man looked so hungry for something to read that I
couldn't resist sharing my 'goodies.' He will see that I'm a countrified
little thing in spite of my fine feathers, and won't be shocked at my
want of rigidity and frigidity; so don't look dismal, and I'll be prim
and proper all the rest of the way,--if I don't forget it."

"I wonder who he is; may belong to some of our first families, and in
that case it might be worth while to exert ourselves, you know. Did you
learn his name, Dora?" whispered the elder lady.

Debby shook her head, and murmured, "Hush!"--but Aunt Pen had heard of
matches being made in cars as well as in heaven; and as an experienced
general, it became her to reconnoitre, when one of the enemy approached
her camp. Slightly altering her position, she darted an
all-comprehensive glance at the invader, who seemed entirely absorbed,
for not an eyelash stirred during the scrutiny. It lasted but an
instant, yet in that instant he was weighed and found wanting; for that
experienced eye detected that his cravat was two inches wider than
fashion ordained, that his coat was not of the latest style, that his
gloves were mended, and his handkerchief neither cambric nor silk. That
was enough, and sentence was passed forthwith,--"Some respectable clerk,
good-looking, but poor, and not at all the thing for Dora"; and Aunt Pen
turned to adjust a voluminous green veil over her niece's bonnet, "To
shield it from the dust, dear," which process also shielded the face
within from the eye of man.

A curious smile, half mirthful, half melancholy, passed over their
neighbor's lips; but his peace of mind seemed undisturbed, and he
remained buried in his book till they reached ----, at dusk. As he
returned it, he offered his services in procuring a carriage or
attending to luggage; but Mrs. Carroll, with much dignity of aspect,
informed him that her servants would attend to those matters, and,
bowing gravely, he vanished into the night.

As they rolled away to the hotel, Debby was wild to run down to the
beach whence came the solemn music of the sea, making the twilight
beautiful. But Aunt Pen was too tired to do anything but sup in her own
apartment and go early to bed; and Debby might as soon have proposed to
walk up the Great Pyramid as to make her first appearance without that
sage matron to mount guard over her; so she resigned herself to pie and
patience, and fell asleep, wishing it were to-morrow.

At five, A.M., a nightcapped head appeared at one of the myriad windows
of the ---- Hotel, and remained there as if fascinated by the miracle of
sunrise over the sea. Under her simplicity of character and girlish
merriment Debby possessed a devout spirit and a nature full of the real
poetry of life, two gifts that gave her dawning womanhood its sweetest
charm, and made her what she was. As she looked out that summer dawn
upon the royal marriage of the ocean and the sun, all petty hopes and
longings faded out of sight, and her young face grew luminous with
thoughts too deep for words. Her day was happier for that silent hour,
her life richer for the aspirations that uplifted her like beautiful
strong angels, and left a blessing when they went. The smile of the June
sky touched her lips, the morning red seemed to linger on her cheek, and
in her eye arose a light kindled by the shimmer of that broad sea of
gold; for Nature rewarded her young votary well, and gave her beauty,
when she offered love. How long she leaned there Debby did not know;
steps from below roused her from her reverie, and led her back into the
world again. Smiling at herself, she stole to bed, and lay wrapped in
waking dreams as changeful as the shadows dancing on her chamber-wall.

The advent of her aunt's maid, Victorine, some two hours later, was the
signal to be "up and doing"; and she meekly resigned herself into the
hands of that functionary, who appeared to regard her in the light of an
animated pin-cushion, as she performed the toilet-ceremonies with an
absorbed aspect, which impressed her subject with a sense of the
solemnity of the occasion.

"Now, Mademoiselle, regard yourself, and pronounce that you are
ravishing," Victorine said at length, folding her hands with a sigh of
satisfaction, as she fell back in an attitude of serene triumph.

Debby obeyed, and inspected herself with great interest and some
astonishment; for there was a sweeping amplitude of array about the
young lady whom she beheld in the much-befrilled gown and embroidered
skirts, which somewhat alarmed her as to the navigation of a vessel
"with such a spread of sail," while a curious sensation of being
somebody else pervaded her from the crown of her head, with its shining
coils of hair, to the soles of the French slippers, whose energies
seemed to have been devoted to the production of marvellous rosettes.

"Yes, I look very nice, thank you; and yet I feel like a doll, helpless
and fine, and fancy I was more of a woman in my fresh gingham, with a
knot of clovers in my hair, than I am now. Aunt Pen was very kind to get
me all these pretty things; but I'm afraid my mother would look
horrified to see me in such a high state of flounce externally and so
little room to breathe internally."

"Your mamma would not flatter me, Mademoiselle; but come now to Madame;
she is waiting to behold you, and I have yet her toilet to make"; and,
with a pitying shrug, Victorine followed Debby to her aunt's room.

"Charming! really elegant!" cried that lady, emerging from her towel
with a rubicund visage. "Drop that braid half an inch lower, and pull
the worked end of her handkerchief out of the right-hand pocket, Vic.
There! Now, Dora, don't run about and get rumpled, but sit quietly down
and practise repose till I am ready."

Debby obeyed, and sat mute, with the air of a child in its Sunday-best
on a week-day, pleased with the novelty, but somewhat oppressed with the
responsibility of such unaccustomed splendor, and utterly unable to
connect any ideas of repose with tight shoes and skirts in a rampant
state of starch.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Well, you see, I bet on Lady Gay against Cockadoodle, and if you'll
believe me--Hullo! there's Mrs. Carroll, and deuse take me if she hasn't
got a girl with her! Look, Seguin!"--and Joe Leavenworth, a "man of the
world," aged twenty, paused in his account of an exciting race to make
the announcement.

Mr. Seguin, his friend and Mentor, as much his senior in worldly
wickedness as in years, tore himself from his breakfast long enough to
survey the new-comers, and then returned to it, saying, briefly,--

"The old lady is worth cultivating,--gives good suppers, and thanks you
for eating them. The girl is well got up, but has no style, and blushes
like a milk-maid. Better fight shy of her, Joe."

"Do you think so? Well, now I rather fancy that kind of thing. She's
new, you see, and I get on with that sort of girl the best, for the old
ones are so deused knowing that a fellow has no chance of a--By the Lord
Harry, she's eating bread and milk!"

Young Leavenworth whisked his glass into his eye, and Mr. Seguin put
down his roll to behold the phenomenon. Poor Debby! her first step had
been a wrong one.

All great minds have their weak points. Aunt Pen's was her breakfast,
and the peace of her entire day depended upon the success of that meal.
Therefore, being down rather late, the worthy lady concentrated her
energies upon the achievement of a copious repast, and, trusting to
former lessons, left Debby to her own resources for a few fatal moments.
After the flutter occasioned by being scooped into her seat by a
severe-nosed waiter, Debby had only courage enough left to refuse tea
and coffee and accept milk. That being done, she took the first familiar
viand that appeared, and congratulated herself upon being able to get
her usual breakfast. With returning composure, she looked about her and
began to enjoy the buzz of voices, the clatter of knives and forks, and
the long lines of faces all intent upon the business of the hour; but
her peace was of short duration. Pausing for a fresh relay of toast,
Aunt Pen glanced toward her niece with the comfortable conviction that
her appearance was highly creditable; and her dismay can be imagined,
when she beheld that young lady placidly devouring a great cup of
brown-bread and milk before the eyes of the assembled multitude. The
poor lady choked in her coffee, and between her gasps whispered irefully
behind her napkin,--

"For Heaven's sake, Dora, put away that mess! The Ellenboroughs are
directly opposite, watching everything you do. Eat that omelet, or
anything respectable, unless you want me to die of mortificátion."

Debby dropped her spoon, and, hastily helping herself from the dish her
aunt pushed toward her, consumed the leathery compound with as much
grace as she could assume, though unable to repress a laugh at Aunt
Pen's disturbed countenance. There was a slight lull in the clatter, and
the blithe sound caused several heads to turn toward the quarter whence
it came, for it was as unexpected and pleasant a sound as a bobolink's
song in a cage of shrill-voiced canaries.

"She's a jolly little thing and powerful pretty, so deuse take me if I
don't make up to the old lady and find out who the girl is. I've been
introduced to Mrs. Carroll at our house; but I suppose she won't
remember me till I remind her."

The "deuse" declining to accept of his repeated offers, (probably
because there was still too much honor and honesty in the boy,) young
Leavenworth sought out Mrs. Carroll on the piazza, as she and Debby were
strolling there an hour later.

"Joe Leavenworth, my dear, from one of our first families,--very
wealthy,--fine match,--pray, be civil,--smooth your hair, hold back your
shoulders, and put down your parasol," murmured Aunt Pen, as the
gentleman approached with as much pleasure in his countenance as it was
consistent with manly dignity to express upon meeting two of the
inferior race.

"My niece, Miss Dora Wilder. This is her first season at the beach, and
we must endeavor to make it pleasant for her, or she will be getting
homesick and running away to mamma," said Aunt Pen, in her society-tone,
after she had returned his greeting, and perpetrated a polite fiction,
by declaring that she remembered him perfectly, for he was the image of
his father.

Mr. Leavenworth brought the heels of his varnished boots together with a
click, and executed the latest bow imported, then stuck his glass in his
eye and stared till it fell out, (the glass, not the eye,) upon which he
fell into step with them, remarking,--

"I shall be most happy to show the lions: they are deused tame ones, so
you needn't be alarmed, Miss Wilder."

Debby was good-natured enough to laugh; and, elated with that success,
he proceeded to pour forth his stores of wit and learning in true
collegian style, quite unconscious that the "jolly little thing" was
looking him through and through with the smiling eyes that were
producing such pleasurable sensations under the mosaic studs. They
strolled toward the beach, and, meeting an old acquaintance, Aunt Pen
fell behind, and beamed upon the young pair as if her prophetic eye even
at this early stage beheld them walking altarward in a proper state of
blond white vest and bridal awkwardness.

"Can you skip a stone, Mr. Leavenworth?" asked Debby, possessed with a
mischievous desire to shock the piece of elegance at her side.

"Eh? what's that?" he inquired, with his head on one side, like an
inquisitive robin.

Debby repeated her question, and illustrated it by sending a stone
skimming over the water in the most scientific manner. Mr. Joe was
painfully aware that this was not at all "the thing," that his sisters
never did so, and that Seguin would laugh confoundedly, if he caught him
at it; but Debby looked so irresistibly fresh and pretty under her
rose-lined parasol that he was moved to confess that he _had_ done such
a thing, and to sacrifice his gloves by poking in the sand, that he
might indulge in a like unfashionable pastime.

"You'll be at the hop tonight, I hope, Miss Wilder," he observed,
introducing a topic suited to a young lady's mental capacity.

"Yes, indeed; for dancing is one of the joys of my life, next to husking
and making hay"; and Debby polked a few steps along the beach, much to
the edification of a pair of old gentlemen, serenely taking their first
"constitutional."

"Making what?" cried Mr. Joe, polking after her.

"Hay; ah, that is the pleasantest fun in the world,--and better
exercise, my mother says, for soul and body, than dancing till dawn in
crowded rooms, with everything in a state of unnatural excitement. If
one wants real merriment, let him go into a new-mown field, where all
the air is full of summer odors, where wild-flowers nod along the walls,
where blackbirds make finer music than any band, and sun and wind and
cheery voices do their part, while windrows rise, and great loads go
rumbling through the lanes with merry brown faces atop. Yes, much as I
like dancing, it is not to be compared with that; for in the one case we
shut out the lovely world, and in the other we become a part of it, till
by its magic labor turns to poetry, and we harvest something better than
dried buttercups and grass."

As she spoke, Debby looked up, expecting to meet a glance of
disapproval; but something in the simple earnestness of her manner had
recalled certain boyish pleasures as innocent as they were hearty, which
now contrasted very favorably with the later pastimes in which fast
horses, and that lower class of animals, fast men, bore so large a part.
Mr. Joe thoughtfully punched five holes in the sand, and for a moment
Debby liked the expression of his face; then the old listlessness
returned, and, looking up, he said, with an air of _ennui_ that was half
sad, half ludicrous, in one so young and so generously endowed with
youth, health, and the good gifts of this life,--

"I used to fancy that sort of thing years ago, but I'm afraid I should
find it a little slow now, though you describe it in such an inviting
manner that I should be tempted to try it, if a hay-cock came in my way;
for, upon my life, it's deused heavy work loafing about at these
watering-places all summer. Between ourselves, there's a deal of humbug
about this kind of life, as you will find, when you've tried it as long
as I have."

"Yes, I begin to think so already; but perhaps you can give me a few
friendly words of warning from the stores of your experience, that I may
be spared the pain of saying what so many look,--'Grandma, the world is
hollow; my doll is stuffed with sawdust; and I should like to go into a
convent, if you please.'"

Debby's eyes were dancing with merriment; but they were demurely
downcast, and her voice was perfectly serious.

The milk of human kindness had been slightly curdled for Mr. Joe by
sundry college-tribulations; and having been "suspended," he very
naturally vibrated between the inborn jollity of his temperament and the
bitterness occasioned by his wrongs. He had lost at billiards the night
before, had been hurried at breakfast, had mislaid his cigar-case, and
splashed his boots; consequently the darker mood prevailed that morning,
and when his counsel was asked, he gave it like one who had known the
heaviest trials of this "Piljin Projiss of a wale."

"There's no justice in the world, no chance for us young people to enjoy
ourselves, without some penalty to pay, some drawback to worry us like
these confounded 'all-rounders.' Even here, where all seems free and
easy, there's no end of gossips and spies who tattle and watch till you
feel as if you lived in a lantern. 'Every one for himself, and the Devil
take the hindmost': that's the principle they go on, and you have to
keep your wits about you in the most exhausting manner, or you are done
for before you know it. I've seen a good deal of this sort of thing, and
hope you'll get on better than some do, when it's known that you are the
rich Mrs. Carroll's niece; though you don't need that fact to enhance
your charms,--upon my life, you don't."

Debby laughed behind her parasol at this burst of candor; but her
independent nature prompted her to make a fair beginning, in spite of
Aunt Pen's polite fictions and well-meant plans.

"Thank you for your warning, but I don't apprehend much annoyance of
that kind," she said, demurely. "Do you know, I think, if young ladies
were truthfully labelled when they went into society, it would be a
charming fashion, and save a world of trouble? Something in this
style:--'Arabella Marabout, aged nineteen, fortune $100,000, temper
warranted'; 'Laura Eau-de-Cologne, aged twenty-eight, fortune $30,000,
temper slightly damaged'; 'Deborah Wilder, aged eighteen, fortune, one
pair of hands, one head, indifferently well filled, one heart, (not in
the market,) temper decided, and _no expectations_.' There, you see,
that would do away with much of the humbug you lament, and we poor
souls would know at once whether we were sought for our fortunes or
ourselves, and that would be so comfortable!"

Mr. Leavenworth turned away, with a convicted sort of expression, as she
spoke, and, making a spyglass of his hand, seemed to be watching
something out at sea with absorbing interest. He had been guilty of a
strong desire to discover whether Debby was an heiress, but had not
expected to be so entirely satisfied on that important subject, and was
dimly conscious that a keen eye had seen his anxiety, and a quick wit
devised a means of setting it at rest forever. Somewhat disconcerted, he
suddenly changed the conversation, and, like many another distressed
creature, took to the water, saying briskly,--

"By-the-by, Miss Wilder, as I've engaged to do the honors, shall I have
the pleasure of bathing with you when the fun begins? As you are fond of
haymaking, I suppose you intend to pay your respects to the old
gentleman with the three-pronged pitchfork?"

"Yes, Aunt Pen means to put me through a course of salt water, and any
instructions in the art of navigation will be gratefully received; for I
never saw the ocean before, and labor under a firm conviction, that,
once in, I never shall come out again till I am brought, like Mr.
Mantilini, a 'damp, moist, unpleasant body.'"

As Debby spoke, Mrs. Carroll hove in sight, coming down before the wind
with all sails set, and signals of distress visible long before she
dropped anchor and came along-side. The devoted woman had been strolling
slowly for the girl's sake, though oppressed with a mournful certainty
that her most prominent feature was fast becoming a fine copper-color;
yet she had sustained herself like a Spartan matron, till it suddenly
occurred to her that her charge might be suffering a like

                        "sea-change
    Into something rich and strange."

Her fears, however, were groundless, for Debby met her without a
freckle, looking all the better for her walk; and though her feet were
wet with chasing the waves, and her pretty gown the worse for salt
water, Aunt Pen never chid her for the destruction of her raiment, nor
uttered a warning word against an unladylike exuberance of spirits, but
replied to her inquiry most graciously,--

"Certainly, my love, we shall bathe at eleven, and there will be just
time to get Victorine and our dresses; so run on to the house, and I
will join you as soon as I have finished what I am saying to Mrs.
Earle,"--then added, in a stage-aside, as she put a fallen lock off the
girl's forehead, "You are doing beautifully! He is evidently struck;
make yourself interesting, and don't burn your nose, I beg of you."

Debby's bright face clouded over, and she walked on with so much
stateliness that her escort wondered "what the deuse the old lady had
done to her," and exerted himself to the utmost to recall her merry
mood, but with indifferent success.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Now I begin to feel more like myself, for this is getting back to first
principles, though I fancy I look like the little old woman who fell
asleep on the king's highway and woke up with abbreviated drapery; and
you look funnier still, Aunt Pen," said Debby, as she tied on her
pagoda-hat, and followed Mrs. Carroll, who walked out of her
dressing-room an animated bale of blue cloth surmounted by a gigantic
sun-bonnet.

Mr. Leavenworth was in waiting, and so like a blond-headed lobster in
his scarlet suit that Debby could hardly keep her countenance as they
joined the groups of bathers gathering along the breezy shore.

For an hour each day the actors and actresses who played their different
_rôles_ at the ---- Hotel with such precision and success put off their
masks and dared to be themselves. The ocean wrought the change, for it
took old and young into its arms, and for a little while they played
like children in their mother's lap. No falsehood could withstand its
rough sincerity; for the waves washed paint and powder from worn faces,
and left a fresh bloom there. No ailment could entirely resist its
vigorous cure; for every wind brought healing on its wings, endowing
many a meagre life with another year of health. No gloomy spirit could
refuse to listen to its lullaby, and the spray baptized it with the
subtile benediction of a cheerier mood. No rank held place there; for
the democratic sea toppled down the greatest statesman in the land, and
dashed over the bald pate of a millionnaire with the same white-crested
wave that stranded a poor parson on the beach and filled a fierce
reformer's mouth with brine. No fashion ruled, but that which is as old
as Eden,--the beautiful fashion of simplicity. Belles dropped their
affectations with their hoops, and ran about the shore blithe-hearted
girls again. Young men forgot their vices and their follies, and were
not ashamed of the real courage, strength, and skill they had tried to
leave behind them with their boyish plays. Old men gathered shells with
the little Cupids dancing on the sand, and were better for that innocent
companionship; and young mothers never looked so beautiful as when they
rocked their babies on the bosom of the sea.

Debby vaguely felt this charm, and, yielding to it, splashed and sang
like any beach-bird, while Aunt Pen bobbed placidly up and down in a
retired corner, and Mr. Leavenworth swam to and fro, expressing his firm
belief in mermaids, sirens, and the rest of the aquatic sisterhood,
whose warbling no manly ear can resist.

"Miss Wilder, you must learn to swim. I've taught quantities of young
ladies, and shall be delighted to launch the 'Dora,' if you'll accept me
as a pilot. Stop a bit; I'll get a life-preserver"; and leaving Debby to
flirt with the waves, the scarlet youth departed like a flame of fire.

A dismal shriek interrupted his pupil's play, and looking up, she saw
her aunt beckoning wildly with one hand, while she was groping in the
water with the other. Debby ran to her, alarmed at her tragic
expression, and Mrs. Carroll, drawing the girl's face into the privacy
of her big bonnet, whispered one awful word, adding, distractedly,--

"Dive for them! oh, dive for them! I shall be perfectly helpless, if
they are lost!"

"I can't dive, Aunt Pen; but there is a man, let us ask him," said
Debby, as a black head appeared to windward.

But Mrs. Carroll's "nerves" had received a shock, and, gathering up her
dripping garments, she fled precipitately along the shore and vanished
into her dressing-room.

Debby's keen sense of the ludicrous got the better of her respect, and
peal after peal of laughter broke from her lips, till a splash behind
her put an end to her merriment, and, turning, she found that this
friend in need was her acquaintance of the day before. The gentleman
seemed pausing for permission to approach, with much the appearance of a
sagacious Newfoundland, wistful and wet.

"Oh, I'm very glad it's you, Sir!" was Debby's cordial greeting, as she
shook a drop off the end of her nose, and nodded, smiling.

The new comer immediately beamed upon her like an amiable Triton,
saying, as they turned shoreward,--

"Our first interview opened with a laugh on my side, and our second with
one on yours. I accept the fact as a good omen. Your friend seemed in
trouble; allow me to atone for my past misdemeanors by offering my
services now. But first let me introduce myself; and as I believe in the
fitness of things, let me present you with an appropriate card"; and,
stooping, the young man wrote "Frank Evan" on the hard sand at Debby's
feet.

The girl liked his manner, and, entering into the spirit of the thing,
swept as grand a curtsy as her limited drapery would allow, saying,
merrily,--

"I am Debby Wilder, or Dora, as aunt prefers to call me; and instead of
laughing, I ought to be four feet under water, looking for something we
have lost; but I can't dive, and my distress is dreadful, as you see."

"What have you lost? I will look for it, and bring it back in spite of
the kelpies, if it is a human possibility," replied Mr. Evan, pushing
his wet locks out of his eyes, and regarding the ocean with a determined
aspect.

Debby leaned toward him, whispering with solemn countenance,--

"It is a set of teeth, Sir."

Mr. Evan was more a man of deeds than words, therefore he disappeared at
once with a mighty splash, and after repeated divings and much laughter
appeared bearing the chief ornament of Mrs. Penelope Carroll's comely
countenance. Debby looked very pretty and grateful as she returned her
thanks, and Mr. Evan was guilty of a secret wish that all the worthy
lady's features were at the bottom of the sea, that he might have the
satisfaction of restoring them to her attractive niece; but curbing this
unnatural desire, he bowed, saying, gravely,--

"Tell your aunt, if you please, that this little accident will remain a
dead secret, so far as I am concerned, and I am very glad to have been
of service at such a critical moment."

Whereupon Mr. Evan marched again into the briny deep, and Debby trotted
away to her aunt, whom she found a clammy heap of blue flannel and
despair. Mrs. Carroll's temper was ruffled, and though she joyfully
rattled in her teeth, she said, somewhat testily, when Debby's story was
done,--

"Now that man will have a sort of claim on us, and we must be civil,
whoever he is. Dear! dear! I wish it had been Joe Leavenworth instead.
Evan,--I don't remember any of our first families with connections of
that name, and I dislike to be under obligations to a person of that
sort, for there's no knowing how far he may presume; so, pray, be
careful, Dora."

"I think you are very ungrateful, Aunt Pen; and if Mr. Evan should
happen to be poor, it does not become me to turn up my nose at him, for
I'm nothing but a make-believe myself just now. I don't wish to go down
upon my knees to him, but I do intend to be as kind to him as I should
to that conceited Leavenworth boy; yes, kinder even; for poor people
value such things more, as I know very well."

Mrs. Carroll instantly recovered her temper, changed the subject, and
privately resolved to confine her prejudices to her own bosom, as they
seemed to have an aggravating effect upon the youthful person whom she
had set her heart on disposing of to the best advantage.

Debby took her swimming-lesson with much success, and would have
achieved her dinner with composure, if white-aproned gentlemen had not
effectually taken away her appetite by whisking bills-of-fare into her
hands, and awaiting her orders with a fatherly interest, which induced
them to congregate mysterious dishes before her, and blandly rectify
her frequent mistakes. She survived the ordeal, however, and at four
P.M. went to drive with "that Leavenworth boy" in the finest turnout
---- could produce. Aunt Pen then came off guard, and with a sigh of
satisfaction subsided into a peaceful doze, still murmuring, even in
her sleep,--

"Propinquity, my love, propinquity works wonders."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Aunt Pen, are you a modest woman?" asked the young crusader against
established absurdities, as she came into the presence-chamber that
evening ready for the hop.

"Bless the child, what does she mean?" cried Mrs. Carroll, with a start
that twitched her back-hair out of Victorine's hands.

"Would you like to have a daughter of yours go to a party looking as I
look?" continued her niece, spreading her airy dress, and standing very
erect before her astonished relative.

"Why, of course I should, and be proud to own such a charming
creature," regarding the slender white shape with much
approbation,--adding, with a smile, as she met the girl's eye,--

"Ah, I see the difficulty, now; you are disturbed because there is not a
bit of lace over these pretty shoulders of yours. Now don't be absurd,
Dora; the dress is perfectly proper, or Madame Tiphany never would have
sent it home. It is the fashion, child; and many a girl with such a
figure would go twice as _décolletée_, and think nothing of it, I assure
you."

Debby shook her head with an energy that set the pink heather-bells
a-tremble in her hair, and her color deepened beautifully as she said,
with reproachful eyes,--

"Aunt Pen, I think there is a better fashion in every young girl's heart
than any Madame Tiphany can teach. I am very grateful for all you have
done for me, but I cannot go into public in such an undress as this; my
mother would never allow it, and father never forgive it. Please don't
ask me to, for indeed I cannot do it even for you."

Debby looked so pathetic that both mistress and maid broke into a laugh
which, somewhat reassured the young lady, who allowed her determined
features to relax into a smile, as she said,--

"Now, Aunt Pen, you want me to look pretty and be a credit to you; but
how would you like to see my face the color of those geraniums all the
evening?"

"Why, Dora, you are out of your mind to ask such a thing, when you know
it's the desire of my life to keep your color down and make you look
more delicate," said her aunt, alarmed at the fearful prospect of a
peony-faced _protégée_.

"Well, I should be anything but that, if I wore this gown in its present
waistless condition; so here is a remedy which will prevent such a
calamity and ease my mind."

As she spoke, Debby tied on her little _blonde fichu_ with a gesture
which left nothing more to be said.

Victorine scolded, and clasped her hands; but Mrs. Carroll, fearing to
push her authority too far, made a virtue of necessity, saying,
resignedly,--

"Have your own way, Dora, but in return oblige me by being agreeable to
such persons as I may introduce to you; and some day, when I ask a
favor, remember how much I hope to do for you, and grant it cheerfully."

"Indeed I will, Aunt Pen, if it is anything I can do without disobeying
mother's 'notions', as you call them. Ask me to wear an orange-colored
gown, or dance with the plainest, poorest man in the room, and I'll do
it; for there never was a kinder aunt than mine in all the world," cried
Debby, eager to atone for her seeming wilfulness, and really grateful
for her escape from what seemed to her benighted mind a very imminent
peril.

Like a clover-blossom in a vase of camellias little Debby looked that
night among the dashing or languid women who surrounded her; for she
possessed the charm they had lost,--the freshness of her youth. Innocent
gayety sat smiling in her eyes, healthful roses bloomed upon her cheek,
and maiden modesty crowned her like a garland. She _was_ the creature
that she seemed, and, yielding to the influence of the hour, danced to
the music of her own blithe heart. Many felt the spell whose secret they
had lost the power to divine, and watched the girlish figure as if it
were a symbol of their early aspirations dawning freshly from the
dimness of their past. More than one old man thought again of some
little maid whose love made his boyish days a pleasant memory to him
now. More than one smiling fop felt the emptiness of his smooth speech,
when the truthful eyes looked up into his own; and more than one pale
woman sighed regretfully within herself, "I, too, was a happy-hearted
creature once!"

"That Mr. Evan does not seem very anxious to claim our acquaintance,
after all, and I think better of him on that account. Has he spoken to
you tonight, Dora?" asked Mrs. Carroll, as Debby dropped down beside her
after a "splendid polka."

"No, Ma'am, he only bowed. You see some people are not so presuming as
other people thought they were; for we are not the most attractive
beings on the planet; therefore a gentleman can be polite and then
forget us without breaking any of the Ten Commandments. Don't be
offended with him yet, for he may prove to be some great creature with a
finer pedigree than any of 'our first families.' Mr. Leavenworth, as you
know everybody, perhaps you can relieve Aunt Pen's mind, by telling her
something about the tall, brown man standing behind the lady with
salmon-colored hair."

Mr. Joe, who was fanning the top of Debby's head with the best
intentions in life, took a survey, and answered readily,--

"Why, that's Frank Evan. I know him, and a deused good fellow he
is,--though he don't belong to our set, you know."

"Indeed! pray, tell us something about him, Mr. Leavenworth. We met in
the cars, and he did us a favor or two. Who and what is the man?" asked
Mrs. Carroll, relenting at once toward a person who was favorably spoken
of by one who did belong to her "set."

"Well, let me see," began Mr. Joe, whose narrative powers were not
great. "He is a book-keeper in my Uncle Josh Loring's importing concern,
and a powerful smart man, they say. There's some kind of clever story
about his father's leaving a load of debts, and Frank's working a deused
number of years till they were paid. Good of him, wasn't it? Then, just
as he was going to take things easier and enjoy life a bit, his mother
died, and that rather knocked him up, you see. He fell sick, and came to
grief generally, Uncle Josh said; so he was ordered off to get righted,
and here he is, looking like a tombstone. I've a regard for Frank, for
he took care of me through the smallpox a year ago, and I don't forget
things of that sort; so, if you wish to be introduced, Mrs. Carroll,
I'll trot him out with pleasure, and make a proud man of him."

Mrs. Carroll glanced at Debby, and as that young lady was regarding Mr.
Joe with a friendly aspect, owing to the warmth of his words, she
graciously assented, and the youth departed on his errand. Mr. Evan went
through the ceremony with a calmness wonderful to behold, considering
the position of one lady and the charms of the other, and soon glided
into the conversation with the ease of a more accomplished courtier.

"Now I must tear myself away, for I'm engaged to that stout Miss
Bandoline for this dance. She 's a friend of my sister's, and I must do
the civil, you know; powerful slow work it is, too, but I pity the poor
soul,--upon my life, I do"; and Mr. Joe assumed the air of a martyr.

Debby looked up with a wicked smile in her eyes, as she said,--

"Ah, that sounds very amiable here; but in five minutes you'll be
murmuring in Miss Bandoline's ear,--'I've been pining to come to you
this half hour, but I was obliged to take out that Miss Wilder, you
see,--countrified little thing enough, but not bad-looking, and has a
rich aunt; so I've done my duty to her, but deuse take me if I can stand
it any longer.'"

Mr. Evan joined in Debby's merriment; but Mr. Joe was so appalled at the
sudden attack that he could only stammer a remonstrance and beat a hasty
retreat, wondering how on earth she came to know that his favorite style
of making himself agreeable to one young lady was by decrying another.

"Dora, my love, that is very rude, and 'Deuse' is not a proper
expression for a woman's lips. Pray, restrain your lively tongue, for
strangers may not understand that it is nothing but the sprightliness of
your disposition which sometimes runs away with you."

"It was only a quotation, and I thought you would admire anything Mr.
Leavenworth said, Aunt Pen," replied Debby, demurely.

Mrs. Carroll trod on her foot, and abruptly changed the conversation, by
saying, with an appearance of deep interest,--

"Mr. Evan, you are doubtless connected with the Malcoms of Georgia; for
they, I believe, are descended from the ancient Evans of Scotland. They
are a very wealthy and aristocratic family, and I remember seeing their
coat-of-arms once: three bannocks and a thistle."

Mr. Evan had been standing before them with a composure which impressed
Mrs. Carroll with a belief in his gentle blood, for she remembered her
own fussy, plebeian husband, whose fortune had never been able to
purchase him the manners of a gentleman. Mr. Evan only grew a little
more erect, as he replied, with an untroubled mien,--

"I cannot claim relationship with the Malcoms of Georgia or the Evans of
Scotland, I believe, Madam. My father was a farmer, my grandfather a
blacksmith, and beyond that my ancestors may have been street-sweepers,
for anything I know; but whatever they were, I fancy they were honest
men, for that has always been our boast, though, like President
Jackson's, our coat-of-arms is nothing but 'a pair of shirt-sleeves.'"

From Debby's eyes there shot a bright glance of admiration for the young
man who could look two comely women in the face and serenely own that he
was poor. Mrs. Carroll tried to appear at ease, and, gliding out of
personalities, expatiated on the comfort of "living in a land where fame
and fortune were attainable by all who chose to earn them," and the
contempt she felt for those "who had no sympathy with the humbler
classes, no interest in the welfare of the race," and many more moral
reflections as new and original as the Multiplication-Table or the
Westminster Catechism. To all of which Mr. Evan listened with polite
deference, though there was something in the keen intelligence of his
eye that made Debby blush for shallow Aunt Pen, and rejoice when the
good lady got out of her depth and seized upon a new subject as a
drowning mariner would a hen-coop.

"Dora, Mr. Ellenborough is coming this way; you have danced with him but
once, and he is a very desirable partner; so, pray, accept, if he asks
you," said Mrs. Carroll, watching a far-off individual who seemed
steering his zigzag course toward them.

"I never intend to dance with Mr. Ellenborough again, so please don't
urge me, Aunt Pen"; and Debby knit her brows with a somewhat irate
expression.

"My love, you astonish me! He is a most agreeable and accomplished young
man,--spent three years in Paris, moves in the first circles, and is
considered an ornament to fashionable society. What _can_ be your
objection, Dora?" cried Mrs. Carroll, looking as alarmed as if her niece
had suddenly announced her belief in the Koran.

"One of his accomplishments consists in drinking Champagne till he is
not a 'desirable partner' for any young lady with a prejudice in favor
of decency. His moving in 'circles' is just what I complain of; and if
he is an ornament, I prefer my society undecorated. Aunt Pen, I cannot
make the nice distinctions you would have me, and a sot in broadcloth is
as odious as one in rags. Forgive me, but I cannot dance with that
silver-labelled decanter again."

Debby was a genuine little piece of womanhood; and though she tried to
speak lightly, her color deepened, as she remembered looks that had
wounded her like insults, and her indignant eyes silenced the excuses
rising to her aunt's lips. Mrs. Carroll began to rue the hour she ever
undertook the guidance of Sister Deborah's headstrong child, and for an
instant heartily wished she had left her to bloom unseen in the shadow
of the parsonage; but she concealed her annoyance, still hoping to
overcome the girl's absurd resolve, by saying, mildly,--

"As you please, dear; but if you refuse Mr. Ellenborough, you will be
obliged to sit through the dance, which is your favorite, you know."

Debby's countenance fell, for she had forgotten that, and the Lancers
was to her the crowning rapture of the night. She paused a moment, and
Aunt Pen brightened; but Debby made her little sacrifice to principle
as heroically as many a greater one had been made, and, with a wistful
look down the long room, answered steadily, though her foot kept time to
the first strains as she spoke,--

"Then I will sit, Aunt Pen; for that is preferable to staggering about
the room with a partner who has no idea of the laws of gravitation."

"Shall I have the honor of averting either calamity?" said Mr. Evan,
coming to the rescue with a devotion beautiful to see; for dancing was
nearly a lost art with him, and the Lancers to a novice is equal to a
second Labyrinth of Crete.

"Oh, thank you!" cried Debby, tumbling fan, bouquet, and handkerchief
into Mrs. Carroll's lap, with a look of relief that repaid him fourfold
for the trials he was about to undergo. They went merrily away together,
leaving Aunt Pen to wish that it was according to the laws of etiquette
to rap officious gentlemen over the knuckles, when they introduce their
fingers into private pies without permission from the chief cook. How
the dance went Debby hardly knew, for the conversation fell upon books,
and in the interest of her favorite theme she found even the "grand
square" an impertinent interruption, while her own deficiencies became
almost as great as her partner's; yet, when the music ended with a
flourish, and her last curtsy was successfully achieved, she longed to
begin all over again, and secretly regretted that she was engaged four
deep.

"How do you like our new acquaintance, Dora?" asked Aunt Pen, following
Joe Leavenworth with her eye, as the "yellow-haired laddie" whirled by
with the ponderous Miss Flora.

"Very much; and I'm glad we met as we did, for it makes things free and
easy, and that is so agreeable in this ceremonious place," replied
Debby, looking in quite an opposite direction.

"Well, I'm delighted to hear you say so, dear, for I was afraid you had
taken a dislike to him, and he is really a very charming young man, just
the sort of person to make a pleasant companion for a few weeks. These
little friendships are part of the summer's amusement, and do no harm;
so smile away, Dora, and enjoy yourself while you may."

"Yes, Aunt, I certainly will, and all the more because I have found a
sensible soul to talk to. Do you know, he is very witty and well
informed, though he says he never had much time for self-cultivation?
But I think trouble makes people wise, and he seems to have had a good
deal, though he leaves it for others to tell of. I am glad you are
willing I should know him, for I shall enjoy talking about my pet heroes
with him as a relief from the silly chatter I must keep up most of the
time."

Mrs. Carroll was a woman of one idea; and though a slightly puzzled
expression appeared in her face, she listened approvingly, and answered,
with a gracious smile,--

"Of course, I should not object to your knowing such a person, my love;
but I'd no idea Joe Leavenworth was a literary man, or had known much
trouble, except his father's death and his sister Clementina's
runaway-marriage with her drawing-master."

Debby opened her brown eyes very wide, and hastily picked at the down on
her fan, but had no time to correct her aunt's mistake, for the real
subject of her commendations appeared at that moment, and Mrs. Carroll
was immediately absorbed in the consumption of a large pink ice.

       *       *       *       *       *

"That girl is what I call a surprise-party, now," remarked Mr. Joe
confidentially to his cigar, as he pulled off his coat and stuck his
feet up in the privacy of his own apartment. "She looks as mild as
strawberries and cream till you come to the complimentary, then she
turns on a fellow with that deused satirical look of hers, and makes him
feel like a fool. I'll try the moral dodge to-morrow, and see what
effect that will have; for she is mighty taking, and I must amuse myself
somehow, you know."

"How many years will it take to change that fresh-hearted little girl
into a fashionable belle, I wonder?" thought Frank Evan, as he climbed
the four flights that led to his "sky-parlor."

"What a curious world this is!" mused Debby, with her nightcap in her
hand. "The right seems odd and rude, the wrong respectable and easy, and
this sort of life a merry-go-round, with no higher aim than pleasure.
Well, I have made my Declaration of Independence, and Aunt Pen must be
ready for a Revolution, if she taxes me too heavily."

As she leaned her hot cheek on her arm, Debby's eye fell on the quaint
little cap made by the motherly hands that never were tired of working
for her. She touched it tenderly, and love's simple magic swept the
gathering shadows from her face, and left it clear again, as her
thoughts flew home like birds into the shelter of their nest.

"Good night, mother! I'll face temptation steadily. I'll try to take
life cheerily, and do nothing that shall make your dear face a reproach,
when it looks into my own again."

Then Debby said her prayers like any pious child, and lay down to dream
of pulling buttercups with Baby Bess, and sinking in the twilight on her
father's knee.

       *       *       *       *       *

The history of Debby's first day might serve as a sample of most that
followed, as week after week went by with varying pleasures and
increasing interest to more than one young _débutante_. Mrs. Carroll did
her best, but Debby was too simple for a belle, too honest for a flirt,
too independent for a fine lady; she would be nothing but her sturdy
little self, open as daylight, gay as a lark, and blunt as any Puritan.
Poor Aunt Pen was in despair, till she observed that the girl often
"took" with the very peculiarities which she was lamenting; this
somewhat consoled her, and she tried to make the best of the pretty bit
of homespun which would not and could not become velvet or brocade.
Seguin, Ellenborough, & Co. looked with lordly scorn upon her, as a worm
blind to their attractions. Miss MacFlimsy and her "set" quizzed her
unmercifully behind her back, after being worsted in several passages of
arms; and more than one successful mamma condoled with Aunt Pen upon the
terribly defective education of her charge, till that stout matron could
have found it in her heart to tweak off their caps and walk on them,
like the irascible Betsey Trotwood.

But Debby had a circle of admirers who loved her with a sincerity few
summer queens could boast; for they were real friends, won by gentle
arts, and retained by the gracious sweetness of her nature. Moon-faced
babies crowed and clapped their chubby hands when she passed by their
wicker thrones; story-loving children clustered round her knee, and
never were denied; pale invalids found wild-flowers on their pillows;
and forlorn papas forgot the state of the money-market when she sang for
them the homely airs their daughters had no time to learn. Certain plain
young ladies poured their woes into her friendly ear, and were
comforted; several smart Sophomores fell into a state of chronic
stammer, blush, and adoration, when she took a motherly interest in
their affairs; and a melancholy old Frenchman blessed her with the
enthusiasm of his nation, because she put a posy in the button-hole of
his rusty coat, and never failed to smile and bow as he passed by. Yet
Debby was no Edgeworth heroine, preternaturally prudent, wise, and
untemptable; she had a fine crop of piques, vanities, and dislikes
growing up under this new style of cultivation. She loved admiration,
enjoyed her purple and fine linen, hid new-born envy, disappointed hope,
and wounded pride behind a smiling face, and often thought with a sigh
of the humdrum duties that awaited her at home. But under the airs and
graces Aunt Pen cherished with such sedulous care, under the flounces
and furbelows Victorine daily adjusted with groans, under the polish
which she acquired with feminine ease, the girl's heart still beat
steadfast and strong, and conscience kept watch and ward that no
traitor should enter in to surprise the citadel which mother-love had
tried to garrison so well.

In pursuance of his sage resolve, Mr. Joe tried the "moral dodge," as he
elegantly expressed it, and, failing in that, followed it up with the
tragic, religious, negligent, and devoted ditto; but acting was not his
forte, so Debby routed him in all; and at last, when he was at his wit's
end for an idea, she suggested one, and completed her victory by saying
pleasantly,--

"You took me behind the curtain too soon, and now the paste diamonds and
cotton-velvet don't impose upon me a bit. Just be your natural self, and
we shall get on nicely, Mr. Leavenworth."

The novelty of the proposal struck his fancy, and after a few relapses
it was carried into effect, and thenceforth, with Debby, he became the
simple, good-humored lad Nature designed him to be, and, as a proof of
it, soon fell very sincerely in love.

Frank Evan, seated in the parquet of society, surveyed the dress-circle
with much the same expression that Debby had seen during Aunt Pen's
oration; but he soon neglected that amusement to watch several actors in
the drama going on before his eyes, while a strong desire to perform a
part therein slowly took possession of his mind. Debby always had a look
of welcome when he came, always treated him with the kindness of a
generous woman who has had an opportunity to forgive, and always watched
the serious, solitary man with a great compassion for his loss, a
growing admiration for his upright life. More than once the beach birds
saw two figures pacing the sands at sunrise with the peace of early day
upon their faces and the light of a kindred mood shining in their eyes.
More than once the friendly ocean made a third in the pleasant
conversation, and its low undertone came and went between the mellow
bass and silvery treble of the human voices with a melody that lent
another charm to interviews which soon grew wondrous sweet to man and
maid. Aunt Pen seldom saw the twain together, seldom spoke of Evan; and
Debby held her peace, for, when she planned to make her innocent
confessions, she found that what seemed much to her was nothing to
another ear and scarcely worth the telling; so, unconscious as yet
whither the green path led, she went on her way, leading two lives, one
rich and earnest, hoarded deep within herself, the other frivolous and
gay for all the world to criticize. But those venerable spinsters, the
Fates, took the matter into their own hands, and soon got the better of
those short-sighted matrons, Mesdames Grundy and Carroll; for, long
before they knew it, Frank and Debby had begun to read together a book
greater than Dickens ever wrote, and when they had come to the fairest
part of the sweet story Adam first told Eve, they looked for the name
upon the title-page, and found that it was "Love."

Eight weeks came and went,--eight wonderfully happy weeks to Debby and
her friend; for "propinquity" had worked more wonders than poor Mrs.
Carroll knew, as the only one she saw or guessed was the utter
captivation of Joe Leavenworth. He had become "himself" to such an
extent that a change of identity would have been a relief; for the
object of his adoration showed no signs of relenting, and he began to
fear, that, as Debby said, her heart was "not in the market." She was
always friendly, but never made those interesting betrayals of regard
which are so encouraging to youthful gentlemen "who fain would climb,
yet fear to fall." She never blushed when he pressed her hand, never
fainted or grew pale when he appeared with a smashed trotting-wagon and
a black eye, and actually slept through a serenade that would have won
any other woman's soul out of her body with its despairing quavers.
Matters were getting desperate; for horses lost their charms, "flowing
bowls" palled upon his lips, ruffled shirt-bosoms no longer delighted
him, and hops possessed no soothing power to allay the anguish of his
mind. Mr. Seguin, after unavailing ridicule and pity, took compassion
on him, and from his large experience suggested a remedy, just as he was
departing for a more congenial sphere.

"Now don't be an idiot, Joe, but, if you want to keep your hand in and
go through a regular chapter of flirtation, just right about face, and
devote yourself to some one else. Nothing like jealousy to teach
womankind their own minds, and a touch of it will bring little Wilder
round in a jiffy. Try it, my boy, and good luck to you!"--with which
Christian advice Mr. Seguin slapped his pupil on the shoulder, and
disappeared, like a modern Mephistopheles, in a cloud of cigar-smoke.

"I'm glad he's gone, for in my present state of mind he's not up to my
mark at all. I'll try his plan, though, and flirt with Clara West; she's
engaged, so it won't damage her affections; her lover isn't here, so it
won't disturb his; and, by Jove! I must do something, for I can't stand
this suspense."

Debby was infinitely relieved by this new move, and infinitely amused as
she guessed the motive that prompted it but the more contented she
seemed, the more violently Mr. Joe flirted with her rival, till at last
weak-minded Miss Clara began to think her absent George the most
undesirable of lovers, and to mourn that she ever said "Yes" to a
merchant's clerk, when she might have said it to a merchant's son. Aunt
Pen watched and approved this stratagem, hoped for the best results, and
believed the day won when Debby grew pale and silent, and followed with
her eyes the young couple who were playing battledoor and shuttlecock
with each other's hearts, as if she took some interest in the game. But
Aunt Pen clashed her cymbals too soon; for Debby's trouble had a better
source than jealousy, and in the silence of the sleepless nights that
stole her bloom she was taking counsel of her own full heart, and
resolving to serve another woman as she would herself be served in a
like peril, though etiquette was outraged and the customs of polite
society turned upside down.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Look, Aunt Pen! what lovely shells and moss I've got! Such a splendid
scramble over the rocks as I've had with Mrs. Duncan's boys! It seemed
so like home to run and sing with a troop of topsy-turvy children that
it did me good; and I wish you had all been there to see," cried Debby,
running into the drawing-room, one day, where Mrs. Carroll and a circle
of ladies sat enjoying a dish of highly flavored scandal, as they
exercised their eyesight over fancy-work.

"My dear Dora, spare my nerves; and if you have any regard for the
proprieties of life, don't go romping in the sun with a parcel of noisy
boys. If you could see what an object you are, I think you would try to
imitate Miss Clara, who is always a model of elegant repose."

Miss West primmed up her lips, and settled a fold in her ninth flounce,
as Mrs. Carroll spoke, while the whole group fixed their eyes with
dignified disapproval on the invader of their refined society. Debby had
come like a fresh wind into a sultry room; but no one welcomed the
healthful visitant, no one saw a pleasant picture in the bright-faced
girl with wind-tossed hair and rustic hat heaped with moss and
many-tinted shells; they only saw that her gown was wet, her gloves
forgotten, and her scarf trailing at her waist in a manner no well-bred
lady could approve. The sunshine faded out of Debby's face, and there
was a touch of bitterness in her tone, as she glanced at the circle of
fashion-plates, saying, with an earnestness which caused Miss West to
open her pale eyes to their widest extent,--

"Aunt Pen, don't freeze me yet,--don't take away my faith in simple
things, but let me be a child a little longer,--let me play and sing and
keep my spirit blithe among the dandelions and the robins while I can;
for trouble comes soon enough, and all my life will be the richer and
the better for a happy youth."

Mrs. Carroll had nothing at hand to offer in reply to this appeal, and
four ladies dropped their work to stare; but Frank Evan looked in from
the piazza, saying, as he beckoned like a boy,--

"I'll play with you, Miss Dora; come and make sand pies upon the shore.
Please let her, Mrs. Carroll; we'll be very good, and not wet our
pinafores or feet."

Without waiting for permission, Debby poured her treasures into the lap
of a certain lame Freddy, and went away to a kind of play she had never
known before. Quiet as a chidden child, she walked beside her companion,
who looked down at the little figure, longing to take it on his knee and
call the sunshine back again. That he dared not do; but accident, the
lover's friend, performed the work, and did him a good turn beside. The
old Frenchman was slowly approaching, when a frolicsome wind whisked off
his hat and sent it skimming along the beach. In spite of her late
lecture, away went Debby, and caught the truant chapeau just as a wave
was hurrying up to claim it. This restored her cheerfulness, and when
she returned, she was herself again.

"A thousand thanks; but does Mademoiselle remember the forfeit I might
demand to add to the favor she has already done me?" asked the gallant
old gentleman, as Debby took the hat off her own head, and presented it
with a martial salute.

"Ah, I had forgotten that; but you may claim it, Sir,--indeed, you may;
I only wish I could do something more to give you pleasure"; and Debby
looked up into the withered face which had grown familiar to her, with
kind eyes, full of pity and respect.

Her manner touched the old man very much; he bent his gray head before
her, saying, gratefully,--

"My child, I am not good enough to salute these blooming cheeks; but I
shall pray the Virgin to reward you for the compassion you bestow on the
poor exile, and I shall keep your memory very green through all my
life."

He kissed her hand, as if it were a queen's, and went on his way,
thinking of the little daughter whose death left him childless in a
foreign land.

Debby softly began to sing, "Oh, come unto the yellow sands!" but
stopped in the middle of a line, to say,--

"Shall I tell you why I did what Aunt Pen would call a very unladylike
and improper thing, Mr. Evan?"

"If you will be so kind"; and her companion looked delighted at the
confidence about to be reposed in him.

"Somewhere across this great wide sea I hope I have a brother," Debby
said, with softened voice and a wistful look into the dim horizon. "Five
years ago he left us, and we have never heard from him since, except to
know that he landed safely in Australia. People tell us he is dead; but
I believe he will yet come home; and so I love to help and pity any man
who needs it, rich or poor, young or old, hoping that as I do by them
some tender-hearted woman far away will do by Brother Will."

As Debby spoke, across Frank Evan's face there passed the look that
seldom comes but once to any young man's countenance; for suddenly the
moment dawned when love asserted its supremacy, and putting pride,
doubt, and fear underneath its feet, ruled the strong heart royally and
bent it to its will. Debby's thoughts had floated across the sea; but
they came swiftly back when her companion spoke again, steadily and
slow, but with a subtile change in tone and manner which arrested them
at once.

"Miss Dora, if you should meet a man who had known a laborious youth, a
solitary manhood, who had no sweet domestic ties to make home beautiful
and keep his nature warm, who longed most ardently to be so blessed, and
made it the aim of his life to grow more worthy the good gift, should it
ever come,--if you should learn that you possessed the power to make
this fellow-creature's happiness, could you find it in your gentle heart
to take compassion on him for the love of 'Brother Will'?"

Debby was silent, wondering why heart and nerves and brain were stirred
by such a sudden thrill, why she dared not look up, and why, when she
desired so much to speak, she could only answer, in a voice that sounded
strange to her own ears,--

"I cannot tell."

Still, steadily and slow, with strong emotion deepening and softening
his voice, the lover at her side went on,--

"Will you ask yourself this question in some quiet hour? For such a man
has lived in the sunshine of your presence for eight happy weeks, and
now, when his holiday is done, he finds that the old solitude will be
more sorrowful than ever, unless he can discover whether his summer
dream will change into a beautiful reality. Miss Dora, I have very
little to offer you; a faithful heart to cherish you, a strong arm to
work for you, an honest name to give into your keeping,--these are all;
but if they have any worth in your eyes, they are most truly yours
forever."

Debby was steadying her voice to reply, when a troop of bathers came
shouting down the bank, and she took flight into her dressing-room,
there to sit staring at the wall, till the advent of Aunt Pen forced her
to resume the business of the hour by assuming her aquatic attire and
stealing shyly down into the surf.

Frank Evan, still pacing in the footprints they had lately made, watched
the lithe figure tripping to and fro, and, as he looked, murmured to
himself the last line of a ballad Debby sometimes sang,--

    "Dance light! for my heart it lies under your feet, love!"

Presently a great wave swept Debby up, and stranded her very near him,
much to her confusion and his satisfaction. Shaking the spray out of her
eyes, she was hurrying away, when Frank said,--

"You will trip, Miss Dora; let me tie these strings for you"; and,
suiting the action to the word, he knelt down and began to fasten the
cords of her bathing-shoe.

Debby stood looking down at the tall head bent before her, with a
curious sense of wonder that a look from her could make a strong man
flush and pale, as he had done; and she was trying to concoct some
friendly speech, when Frank, still fumbling at the knots, said, very
earnestly and low,--

"Forgive me, if I am selfish in pressing for an answer; but I must go
to-morrow, and a single word will change my whole future for the better
or the worse. Won't you speak it, Dora?"

If they had been alone, Debby would have put her arms about his neck,
and said it with all her heart; but she had a presentiment that she
should cry, if her love found vent; and here forty pairs of eyes were on
them, and salt water seemed superfluous. Besides, Debby had not breathed
the air of coquetry so long without a touch of the infection; and the
love of power, that lies dormant in the meekest woman's breast, suddenly
awoke and tempted her.

"If you catch me before I reach that rock, perhaps I will say 'Yes,'"
was her unexpected answer; and before her lover caught her meaning, she
was floating leisurely away.

Frank was not in bathing-costume, and Debby never dreamed that he would
take her at her word; but she did not know the man she had to deal with;
for, taking no second thought, he flung hat and coat away, and dashed
into the sea. This gave a serious aspect to Debby's foolish jest. A
feeling of dismay seized her, when she saw a resolute face dividing the
waves behind her, and thought of the rash challenge she had given; but
she had a spirit of her own, and had profited well by Mr. Joe's
instructions; so she drew a long breath, and swam as if for life,
instead of love. Evan was incumbered by his clothing, and Debby had much
the start of him; but, like a second Leander, he hoped to win his Hero,
and, lending every muscle to the work, gained rapidly upon the little
hat which was his beacon through the foam. Debby heard the deep
breathing drawing nearer and nearer, as her pursuer's strong arms cleft
the water and sent it rippling past her lips. Something like terror took
possession of her; for the strength seemed going out of her limbs, and
the rock appeared to recede before her; but the unconquerable blood of
the Pilgrims was in her veins, and "_Nil desperandum_" her motto; so,
setting her teeth, she muttered, defiantly,--

"I'll not be beaten, if I go to the bottom!"

A great splashing arose, and when Evan recovered the use of his eyes,
the pagoda-hat had taken a sudden turn, and seemed making for the
farthest point of the goal. "I am sure of her now," thought Frank; and,
like a gallant sea-god, he bore down upon his prize, clutching it with a
shout of triumph. But the hat was empty, and like a mocking echo came
Debby's laugh, as she climbed, exhausted, to a cranny in the rock.

"A very neat thing, by Jove! Deuse take me if you a'n't 'an honor to
your teacher, and a terror to the foe,' Miss Wilder," cried Mr. Joe, as
he came up from a solitary cruise and dropped anchor at her side. "Here,
bring along the hat, Evan; I'm going to crown the victor with
appropriate what-d'-ye-call-'ems," he continued, pulling a handful of
sea-weed that looked like well-boiled greens.

Frank came up, smiling; but his lips were white, and in his eye a look
Debby could not meet; so, being full of remorse, she naturally assumed
an air of gayety, and began to sing the merriest air she knew, merely
because she longed to throw herself upon the stones and cry violently.

"It was 'most as exciting as a regatta, and you pulled well, Evan; but
you had too much ballast aboard, and Miss Wilder ran up false colors
just in time to save her ship. What was the wager?" asked the lively
Joseph, complacently surveying his marine millinery, which would have
scandalized a fashionable mermaid.

"Only a trifle," answered Debby, knotting up her braids with a
revengeful jerk.

"It's taken the wind out of your sails, I fancy, Evan, for you look
immensely Byronic with the starch minus in your collar and your hair in
a poetic toss. Come, I'll try a race with you; and Miss Wilder will
dance all the evening with the winner. Bless the man, what's he doing
down there? Burying sunfish, hey?"

Frank had been sitting below them on a narrow strip of sand, absently
piling up a little mound that bore some likeness to a grave. As his
companion spoke, he looked at it, and a sudden flush of feeling swept
across his face, as he replied,--

"No, only a dead hope."

"Deuse take it, yes, a good many of that sort of craft founder in these
waters, as I know to my sorrow"; and, sighing tragically, Mr. Joe turned
to help Debby from her perch, but she had glided silently into the sea,
and was gone.

For the next four hours the poor girl suffered the sharpest pain she had
ever known; for now she clearly saw the strait her folly had betrayed
her into. Frank Evan was a proud man, and would not ask her love again,
believing she had tacitly refused it; and how could she tell him that
she had trifled with the heart she wholly loved and longed to make her
own? She could not confide in Aunt Pen, for that worldly lady would have
no sympathy to bestow. She longed for her mother; but there was no time
to write, for Frank was going on the morrow,--might even then be gone;
and as this fear came over her, she covered up her face and wished that
she were dead. Poor Debby! her last mistake was sadder than her first,
and she was reaping a bitter harvest from her summer's sowing. She sat
and thought till her cheeks burned and her temples throbbed; but she
dared not ease her pain with tears. The gong sounded like a Judgment-Day
trump of doom, and she trembled at the idea of confronting many eyes
with such a telltale face; but she could not stay behind, for Aunt Pen
must know the cause. She tried to play her hard part well; but wherever
she looked, some fresh anxiety appeared, as if every fault and folly of
those months had blossomed suddenly within the hour. She saw Frank Evan
more sombre and more solitary than when she met him first, and cried
regretfully within herself, "How could I so forget the truth I owed
him?" She saw Clara West watching with eager eyes for the coming of
young Leavenworth, and sighed, "This is the fruit of my wicked vanity!"
She saw Aunt Pen regarding her with an anxious face, and longed to say,
"Forgive me, for I have not been sincere!" At last, as her trouble grew,
she resolved to go away and have a quiet "think,"--a remedy which had
served her in many a lesser perplexity; so, stealing out, she went to a
grove of cedars usually deserted at that hour. But in ten minutes Joe
Leavenworth appeared at the door of the summer-house, and, looking in,
said, with a well-acted start of pleasure and surprise,--

"Beg pardon, I thought there was no one here. My dear Miss Wilder, you
look contemplative; but I fancy it wouldn't do to ask the subject of
your meditations, would it?"

He paused with such an evident intention of remaining that Debby
resolved to make use of the moment, and ease her conscience of one care
that burdened it; therefore she answered his question with her usual
directness,--

"My meditations were partly about you."

Mr. Joe was guilty of the weakness of blushing violently and looking
immensely gratified; but his rapture was of short duration, for Debby
went on very earnestly,--

"I believe I am going to do what you may consider a very impertinent
thing; but I would rather be unmannerly than unjust to others or untrue
to my own sense of right. Mr. Leavenworth, if you were an older man, I
should not dare to say this to you; but I have brothers of my own, and,
remembering how many unkind things they do for want of thought, I
venture to remind you that a woman's heart is a perilous plaything, and
too tender to be used for a selfish purpose or an hour's pleasure. I
know this kind of amusement is not considered wrong; but it _is_ wrong,
and I cannot shut my eyes to the fact, or sit silent while another woman
is allowed to deceive herself and wound the heart that trusts her. Oh,
if you love your own sisters, be generous, be just, and do not destroy
that poor girl's happiness, but go away before your sport becomes a
bitter pain to her!"

Joe Leavenworth had stood staring at Debby with a troubled countenance,
feeling as if all the misdemeanors of his life were about to be paraded
before him; but, as he listened to her plea, the womanly spirit that
prompted it appealed more loudly than her words, and in his really
generous heart he felt regret for what had never seemed a fault before.
Shallow as he was, nature was stronger than education, and he admired
and accepted what many a wiser, worldlier man would have resented with
auger or contempt. He loved Debby with all his little might; he meant to
tell her so, and graciously present his fortune and himself for her
acceptance; but now, when the moment came, the well-turned speech he had
prepared vanished from his memory, and with the better eloquence of
feeling he blundered out his passion like a very boy.

"Miss Dora, I never meant to make trouble between Clara and her lover;
upon my soul, I didn't, and wish Seguin had not put the notion into my
head, since it has given you pain. I only tried to pique you into
showing some regret, when I neglected you; but you didn't, and then I
got desperate and didn't care what became of any one. Oh, Dora, if you
knew how much I loved you, I am sure you'd forgive it, and let me prove
my repentance by giving up everything that you dislike. I mean what I
say; upon my life I do; and I'll keep my word, if you will only let me
hope."

If Debby had wanted a proof of her love for Frank Evan, she might have
found it in the fact that she had words enough at her command now, and
no difficulty in being sisterly pitiful toward her second suitor.

"Please get up," she said; for Mr. Joe, feeling very humble and very
earnest, had gone down upon his knees, and sat there entirely regardless
of his personal appearance.

He obeyed; and Debby stood looking up at him with her kindest aspect, as
she said, more tenderly than she had ever spoken to him before,--

"Thank you for the affection you offer me, but I cannot accept it, for I
have nothing to give you in return but the friendliest regard, the most
sincere good-will. I know you will forgive me, and do for your own sake
the good things you would have done for mine, that I may add to my
esteem a real respect for one who has been very kind to me."

"I'll try,--indeed, I will, Miss Dora, though it will be powerful hard
without yourself for a help and a reward."

Poor Joe choked a little, but called up an unexpected manliness, and
added, stoutly,--

"Don't think I shall be offended at your speaking so, or saying 'No' to
me,--not a bit; it 's all right, and I'm much obliged to you. I might
have known you couldn't care for such a fellow as I am, and don't blame
you, for nobody in the world is good enough for you. I'll go away at
once, I'll try to keep my promise, and I hope you'll be very happy all
your life."

He shook Debby's hands heartily, and hurried down the steps, but at the
bottom paused and looked back. Debby stood upon the threshold with
sunshine dancing on her winsome face, and kind words trembling on her
lips; for the moment it seemed impossible to part, and, with an
impetuous gesture, he cried to her,--

"Oh, Dora, let me stay and try to win you! for everything is possible to
love, and I never knew how dear you were to me till now!"

There were sudden tears in the young man's eyes, the flush of a genuine
emotion on his cheek, the tremor of an ardent longing in his voice, and,
for the first time, a very true affection strengthened his whole
countenance. Debby's heart was full of penitence; she had given so much
pain to more than one that she longed to atone for it,--longed to do
some very friendly thing, and soothe some trouble such as she herself
had known. She looked into the eager face uplifted to her own and
thought of Will, then stooped and touched her lover's forehead with the
lips that softly whispered, "No."

If she had cared for him, she never would have done it; poor Joe knew
that, and murmuring an incoherent "Thank you!" he rushed away, feeling
very much as he remembered to have felt when his baby sister died and he
wept his grief away upon his mother's neck. He began his preparations
for departure at once, in a burst of virtuous energy quite refreshing to
behold, thinking within himself, as he flung his cigar-case into the
grate, kicked a billiard-ball into a corner, and suppressed his favorite
allusion to the Devil,--

"This is a new sort of thing to me, but I can bear it, and upon my life
I think I feel the better for it already."

And so he did; for though he was no Augustine to turn in an hour from
worldly hopes and climb to sainthood through long years of inward
strife, yet in after-times no one knew how many false steps had been
saved, how many small sins repented of, through the power of the memory
that far away a generous woman waited to respect him, and in his secret
soul he owned that one of the best moments of his life was that in which
little Debby Wilder whispered "No," and kissed him.

As he passed from sight, the girl leaned her head upon her hand,
thinking sorrowfully to herself,--

"What right had I to censure him, when my own actions are so far from
true? I have done a wicked thing, and as an honest girl I should undo
it, if I can. I have broken through the rules of a false propriety for
Clara's sake; can I not do as much for Frank's? I will. I'll find him,
if I search the house,--and tell him all, though I never dare to look
him in the face again, and Aunt Pen sends me home to-morrow."

Full of zeal and courage, Debby caught up her hat and ran down the
steps, but, as she saw Frank Evan coming up the path, a sudden panic
fell upon her, and she could only stand mutely waiting his approach.

It is asserted that Love is blind; and on the strength of that popular
delusion novel heroes and heroines go blundering through three volumes
of despair with the plain truth directly under their absurd noses: but
in real life this theory is not supported; for to a living man the
countenance of a loving woman is more eloquent than any language, more
trustworthy than a world of proverbs, more beautiful than the sweetest
love-lay ever sung.

Frank looked at Debby, and "all her heart stood up in her eyes," as she
stretched her hands to him, though her lips only whispered very low,--

"Forgive me, and let me say the 'Yes' I should have said so long ago."

Had she required any assurance of her lover's truth, or any reward for
her own, she would have found it in the change that dawned so swiftly in
his face, smoothing the lines upon his forehead, lighting the gloom of
his eye, stirring his firm lips with a sudden tremor, and making his
touch as soft as it was strong. For a moment both stood very still,
while Debby's tears streamed down like summer rain; then Frank drew her
into the green shadow of the grove, and its peace soothed her like a
mother's voice, till she looked up smiling with a shy delight her glance
had never known before. The slant sunbeams dropped a benediction on
their heads, the robins peeped, and the cedars whispered, but no rumor
of what further passed ever went beyond the precincts of the wood; for
such hours are sacred, and Nature guards the first blossoms of a human
love as tenderly as she nurses May-flowers underneath the leaves.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Carroll had retired to her bed with a nervous headache, leaving
Debby to the watch and ward of friendly Mrs. Earle, who performed her
office finely by letting her charge entirely alone. In her dreams Aunt
Pen was just imbibing a copious draught of Champagne at the
wedding-breakfast of her niece, "Mrs. Joseph Leavenworth," when she was
roused by the bride elect, who passed through the room with a lamp and a
shawl in her hand.

"What time is it, and where are you going, dear?" she asked, dozily
wondering if the carriage for the wedding-tour was at the door so soon.

"It's only nine, and I am going for a sail, Aunt Pen."

As Debby spoke, the light flashed full into her face, and a sudden
thought into Mrs. Carroll's mind. She rose up from her pillow, looking
as stately in her nightcap as Maria Theresa is said to have done in like
unassuming head-gear.

"Something has happened, Dora! What have you done? What have you said? I
insist upon knowing immediately," she demanded, with somewhat startling
brevity.

"I have said 'No' to Mr. Leavenworth and 'Yes' to Mr. Evan; and I should
like to go home to-morrow, if you please," was the equally concise
reply.

Mrs. Carroll fell flat in her bed, and lay there stiff and rigid as
Morlena Kenwigs. Debby gently drew the curtains, and stole away, leaving
Aunt Pen's wrath to effervesce before morning.

The moon was hanging luminous and large on the horizon's edge, sending
shafts of light before her till the melancholy ocean seemed to smile,
and along that shining pathway happy Debby and her lover floated into
that new world where all things seem divine.

       *       *       *       *       *




WET-WEATHER WORK.

BY A FARMER.

III.


Will any of our artists ever give us, on canvas, a good, rattling, saucy
shower? There is room in it for a rare handling of the brush:--the
vague, indistinguishable line of hills, (as I see them to-day,)--the
wild scud of gray, with fine gray lines, slanted by the wind, and
trending eagerly downward,--the swift, petulant dash into the little
pools of the highway, making fairy bubbles that break as soon as they
form,--the land smoking with excess of moisture,--and the pelted leaves
all wincing and shining and adrip.

I know no painter who has so well succeeded in putting a wet sky into
his pictures as Turner; and in this I judge him by the literal
_chiaroscuro_ of engraving. In proof of it, I take down from my shelf
his "Rivers of France": a book over which I have spent a great many
pleasant hours, and idle ones too,--if it be idle to travel leagues at
the turning of a page, and to see hill-sides spotty with vineyards, and
great bridges wallowing through the Loire, and to watch the fishermen of
Honfleur putting to sea. There are skies, as I said, in some of these
pictures which make a man instinctively think of his umbrella, or of his
distance from home: no actual rain-drift stretching from them, but such
unmistakable promise of a rainy afternoon, in their little parallel
wisps of dark-bottomed clouds, as would make a provident farmer order
every scythe out of the field.

In the "Chair of Gargantua," on which my eye falls, as I turn over the
pages, an actual thunder-storm is breaking. The scene is somewhere upon
the Lower Seine. From the middle of the left of the picture the lofty
river-bank stretches far across, forming all the background;--its
extreme distance hidden by a bold thrust of the right bank, which juts
into the picture just far enough to shelter a white village, which lies
gleaming upon the edge of the water. On all the foreground lies the
river, broad as a bay. The storm is coming down the stream. Over the
left spur of the bank, and over the meeting of the banks, it broods
black as night. Through a little rift there is a glimpse of serene sky,
from which a mellow light streams down upon the edges and angles of a
few cliffs upon the farther shore. All the rest is heavily shadowed. The
edges of the coming tempest are tortuous and convulsed, and you know
that a fierce wind is driving the black billows on; yet all the water
under the lee of the shores is as tranquil as a dream; a white sail,
near to the white village, hangs slouchingly to the mast: but in the
foreground the tempest has already caught the water; a tall lugger is
scudding and careening under it as if mad; the crews of three
fishermen's boats, that toss on the vexed water, are making a confused
rush to shorten sail, and you may almost fancy that you hear their
outcries sweeping down the wind. In the middle scene, a little steamer
is floating tranquilly on water which is yet calm; and a column of smoke
piling up from its tall chimney rises for a space placidly enough, until
the wind catches and whisks it before the storm. I would wager ten to
one, upon the mere proof in the picture, that the fishermen and the
washerwomen in the foreground will be drenched within an hour.

When I have once opened the covers of Turner,--especially upon such a
wet day as this,--it is hard for me to leave him until I have wandered
all up and down the Loire, revisited Tours and its quiet cathedral, and
Blois with its stately chateau, and Amboise with its statelier, and
coquetted again with memories of the Maid of Orléans.

From the Upper Loire it is easy to slip into the branching valleys
which sidle away from it far down into the country of the Auvergne.
Turner does not go there, indeed; the more's the pity; but I do, since
it is the most attractive region rurally (Brittany perhaps excepted) in
all France. The valleys are green, the brooks are frequent, the rivers
are tortuous, the mountains are high, and luxuriant walnut-trees embower
the roads. It was near to Moulins, on the way hither, through the
pleasant Bourbonnois, that Tristram Shandy met with the poor,
half-crazed Maria, piping her evening service to the Virgin.

And at that thought I must do no less than pull down my "Tristram
Shandy," (on which the dust of years has accumulated,) and read again
that tender story of the lorn maiden, with her attendant goat, and her
hair caught up in a silken fillet, and her shepherd's pipe, from which
she pours out a low, plaintive wail upon the evening air.

It is not a little singular that a British author should have supplied
the only Arcadian resident of all this Arcadian region. The Abbé Delille
was, indeed, born hereabout, within sight of the bold Puy de Dome, and
within marketing-distance of the beautiful Clermont. But there is very
little that is Arcadian, in freshness or simplicity, in either the
"Gardens" or the other verse of Delille.

Out of his own mouth (the little green-backed book, my boy) I will
condemn him:--

    "Ce n'est plus cette simple et rustique déesse
    Qui suit ses vieilles lois; c'est une enchanteresse
    Qui, la baguette en main, par des hardis travaux
    Fait naître des aspects et des trésors nouveaux,
    Compose un sol plus riche et des races plus belles,
    Fertilise les monts, dompte les rocs rebelles."

The _baguette_ of Delille is no shepherd's crook; it has more the
fashion of a drumstick,--_baguette de tambour_.

If I follow on southward to Provence, whither I am borne upon the scuds
of rain over Turner's pictures, and the pretty Bourbonnois, and the
green mountains of Auvergne, I find all the characteristic literature of
that land of olives is only of love or war: the vines, the
olive-orchards, and the yellow hill-sides pass for nothing. And if I
read an old _Sirvente_ of the Troubadours, beginning with a certain
redolence of the fields, all this yields presently to knights, and
steeds caparisoned,--

    "Cavalliers ab cavals armatz."

It is smooth reading, and is attributed to Bertrand de Born,[3] who
lived in the time when even the lion-hearted King Richard turned his
brawny fingers to the luting of a song. Let us listen:--

    "The beautiful spring delights me well,
      When flowers and leaves are growing;
    And it pleases my heart to hear the swell
      Of the birds' sweet chorus flowing
        In the echoing wood;
    And I love to see, all scattered around,
    Pavilions and tents on the martial ground;
        And my spirit finds it good
    To see, on the level plains beyond,
    Gay knights and steeds caparisoned."

[Footnote 3: M. Raynouard, _Poésies de Troubadours_, II. 209.]

But as the Troubadour nestles more warmly into the rhythm of his verse,
the birds are all forgotten, and the beautiful spring, and there is a
sturdy clang of battle, that would not discredit our own times:--

    "I tell you that nothing my soul can cheer,
      Or banqueting or reposing,
    Like the onset cry of 'Charge them!' rung
      From each side, as in battle closing;
        Where the horses neigh,
    And the call to 'aid' is echoing loud,
    And there, on the earth, the lowly and proud
        In the foss together lie,
    And yonder is piled the mingled heap
    Of the brave that scaled the trenches steep.

    "Barons! your castles in safety place,
      Your cities and villages, too,
    Before ye haste to the battle-scene:
      And Papiol! quickly go,
    And tell the lord of 'Yes and No'
    That peace already too long hath been!"[4]

[Footnote 4: I cannot forbear taking a bit of margin to print the
closing stanzas of the original, which carry the clash of sabres in
their very sound.

    "Ie us dic que tan no m' a sabor
      Manjars ni beure ni dormir
    Cum a quant aug cridar: A lor!
      D'ambas las partz; et aug agnir
        Cavals voitz per l'ombratge,
    Et aug cridar: Aidatz! Aidatz!
    E vei cazer per los fossatz
        Paucs e grans per l'erbatge,
    E vei los mortz que pels costatz
    An los tronsons outre passatz.

      "Baros, metetz et gatge
      Castels e vilas e ciutatz,
      Enans q' usquecs no us guerreiatz.

      "Papiol, d'agradatge
      Ad _Oc e No_ t' en vai viatz,
      Dic li que trop estan en patz."

It would seem that the men of that time, like men of most times, bore a
considerable contempt for people who said "Yes" one day, and "No" the
next.]

I am on my way to Italy, (it may as well be confessed,) where I had
fully intended to open my rainy day's work; but Turner has kept me, and
then Auvergne, and then the brisk battle-song of a Troubadour.

When I was upon the Cajano farm of Lorenzo the Magnificent, during my
last "spell of wet," it was uncourteous not to refer to the pleasant
commemorative poem of "Ambra," which Lorenzo himself wrote, and which,
whatever may be said against the conception and conduct of it, shows in
its opening stanzas that the great Medici was as appreciative of rural
images--fir-boughs with loaded snows, thick cypresses in which late
birds lurked, sharp-leaved junipers, and sturdy pines fighting the
wind--as ever he had been of antique jewels, or of the rhythm of such as
Politiano. And if I have spoken slightingly of this latter poet, it was
only in contrast with Virgil, and in view of his strained Latinity. When
he is himself, and wraps his fancies only in his own sparkling Tuscan,
we forget his classic frigidities, and his quarrels with Madonna
Clarice, and are willing to confess that no pen of his time was dipped
with such a relishing _gusto_ into the colors of the hyacinths and
trembling pansies, and into all the blandishments of a gushing and
wanton spring.[5]


[Footnote 5: See Wm. Parr Greswell's _Memoirs of Politiano_, with
translations.]

But classical affectation was the fashion of that day. A certain
Bolognese noble, Berò by name, wrote ten Latin books on rural affairs:
Tiraboschi says he never saw them; neither have I. Another scholar,
Pietro da Barga, who astonished his teachers by his wonderful
proficiency at the age of twelve, and who was afterward guest of the
French ambassador in Venice, wrote a poem on rural matters, to which,
with an exaggerated classicism, he gave the Greek name of
"_Cynegeticon_"; and about the same time Giuseppe Voltolina composed
three books on kitchen-gardening. I name these writers only out of
sympathy with their topics: I would not advise the reading of them: it
would involve a long journey and scrupulous search to find them, through
I know not what out-of-the-way libraries; and if found, no essentially
new facts or theories could be counted on which are not covered by the
treatise of Crescenzi. The Pisans or Venetians may possibly have
introduced a few new plants from the East; the example of the Medici may
have suggested some improvements in the arrangement of forcing-houses,
or the outlay of villas; but in all that regarded general husbandry,
Crescenzi was still the man.

I linger about this period, and the writers of this time, because I
snuff here and there among them the perfume of a country bouquet, which
carries the odor of the fields with it, and transports me to the
"empurpled hill-sides" of Tuscany. Shall I name Sannazaro, with his
"Arcadia"?--a dead book now,--or "Amyntas," who, before he is tall
enough to steal apples from the lowest boughs, (so sings Tasso,) plunges
head and ears in love with Sylvia, the fine daughter of Montano, who has
a store of cattle, "_richissimo d'armenti_"?

Then there is Rucellai, who, under the pontificate of Leo X., came to
be Governor of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and yet has left a poem of
fifteen hundred lines devoted to Bees. In his suggestions for the
allaying of a civil war among these winged people, he is quite beyond
either Virgil or Columella or Mr. Lincoln. "Pluck some leafy branch," he
says, "and with it sprinkle the contending factions with either honey or
sweet grape-juice, and you shall see them instantly forego their
strife":--

            "The two warring bands joyful unite,
    And foe embraces foe: each with its lips
    Licking the others' wings, feet, arms, and breast,
    Whereon the luscious mixture hath been shed,
    And all inebriate with delight."

So the Swiss,[6] he continues, when they fall out among themselves, are
appeased by some grave old gentleman, who says a few pleasant words, and
orders up a good stoop of sweet wine, in which all parties presently dip
their beards, and laugh and embrace and make peace, and so forget
outrage. It may have been the sixteenth-century way of closing a battle.

[Footnote 6:
    "Come quando nei Suizzeri si muove
    Sedizione, e che si grida a l' arme;
    Se qualche nom grave allor si leva in piede
    E comincia a parlar con dolce lingua,
    Mitiga i petti barbari e feroci;
    E intanto fa portare ondanti vasi
    Pieni di dolci ed odorati vini;
    Ahora ognun le labbra e 'l mento immerge
    Ne' le spumanti tazze," etc.
]

Guarini, with all his affectations, has little prettinesses which charm
like the chirping of a bird;--as where he paints (in the very first
scene of the "Pastor Fido") the little sparrow flitting from fir to
beech, and from beech to myrtle, and twittering, "How I love! how I
love!" And the bird-mate ("_il suo dolce desio_") twitters in reply,
"How I love, how I love, too!" "_Ardo d' amore anch' io._"

Messer Pietro Bembo was a different man from Guarini. I cannot imagine
him listening to the sparrows; I cannot imagine him plucking a
flower,--except he have some courtly gallantry in hand, perhaps toward
the Borgia. He was one of those pompous, stiff, scholastic prigs who
wrote by rules of syntax; and of syntax he is dead. He was clever and
learned; he wrote in Latin, Italian, Castlian: but nobody reads him; he
has only a little crypt in the "Autori Diversi." I think of him as I
think of fine women who must always rustle in brocade embossed with hard
jewels, and who never win the triumphs that belong to a charming morning
_déshabillé_ with only the added improvisation of a rose.

In his "Asolani" Bembo gives a very full and minute description of the
gardens at Asolo, which relieved the royal retirement of Caterina, the
Queen of Cyprus. Nothing could be more admirable than the situation:
there were skirts of mountain which were covered, and are still covered,
with oaks; there were grottos in the sides of cliffs, and water so
disposed--in jets, in pools inclosed by marble, and among rocks--as to
counterfeit all the wildness of Nature; there was the same stately array
of cypresses, and of clipped hedges, which had belonged to the villas of
Pliny; temples were decorated with blazing frescoes, to which, I dare
say, Carpaccio may have lent a hand, if not that wild rake, Giorgione.
Here the pretty Queen, with eight thousand gold ducats a year, (whatever
that amount may have been,) and some seventy odd retainers, held her
court; and here Bembo, a dashing young fellow at that time of seven or
eight and twenty, became a party to those disquisitions on Love, and to
those recitations of song, part of which he has recorded in the
"Asolani." I am sorry to say, the beauty of the place, so far as regards
its artificial features, is now all gone. The hall, which may have
served as the presence-chamber of the Queen, was only a few years since
doing service as a farmer's barn; and the traces of a Diana and an
Apollo were still coloring the wall under which a few cows were
crunching their clover-hay.

All the gardening of Italy at that period, as, indeed, at almost all
times, depended very much upon architectural accessories: colonnades and
wall-veil with frescoes make a large part of Italian gardening to this
day. The Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore, and the Borghese Garden at
Rome, are fair types. And as I recall the sunny vistas of this last, and
the noontide loungings upon the marble seats, counting white flecks of
statues amid the green of cypresses, and watching the shadow which some
dense-topped pine flings upon a marble flight of steps or a marble
balustrade, I cannot sneer at the Italian gardening, or wish it were
other than it is. The art-life of Italy is the crowning and the
overlapping life. The Campagna seems only a bit of foreground to carry
the leaping arches of the aqueducts, and to throw the hills of Tivoli
and Albano to a purple distance. The farmers (_fattori_) who gallop
across the fields, in rough sheepskin wrappers, and upon scurvy-looking
ponies, are more picturesque than thrifty; and if I gallop in company
with one of them to his home upon the farther edge of the Campagna,
(which is an allowable wet-day fancy,) I shall find a tall stone house
smeared over roughly with plaster, and its ground-floor devoted to a
crazy cart, a pony, a brace of cows, and a few goats; a rude court is
walled in adjoining the house, where a few pigs are grunting. Ascending
an oaken stair-way within the door, I come upon the living-room of the
_fattore_; the beams overhead are begrimed with smoke, and garnished
here and there with flitches of bacon; a scant fire of fagots is
struggling into blaze upon an open hearth; and on a low table bare of
either cloth or cleanliness, there waits him his supper of _polenta_,
which is nothing more or less than our plain boiled Indian-pudding. Add
to this a red-eyed dog, that seems to be a savage representative of a
Scotch colley,--a lean, wrinkled, dark-faced woman, who is unwinding the
bandages from a squalling _Bambino_,--a mixed odor of garlic and of
goats, that is quickened with an ammoniacal pungency,--and you may form
some idea of the home of a small Roman farmer in our day. It falls away
from the standard of Cato; and so does the man.

He takes his twenty or thirty acres, upon shares, from some wealthy
proprietor of Rome, whose estate may possibly cover a square mile or two
of territory. He sells vegetables, poultry, a little grain, a few curds,
and possibly a butt or two of sour wine. He is a type of a great many
who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory; whether he and
they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift
under the new government, I cannot say.

Around Bologna, indeed, there was a better race of farmers: the
intervening thrift of Tuscany had always its influence. The meadows of
Terni, too, which are watered by the Velino, bear three full crops of
grass in the season; the valley of the Clitumnus is like a miniature of
the Genesee; and around Perugia the crimson-tasselled clovers, in the
season of their bloom, give to the fields the beauty of a garden.

The old Duke of Tuscany, before he became soured by his political
mishaps, was a great patron of agricultural improvements. He had
princely farms in the neighborhood both of his capital and of Pisa. Of
the latter I cannot speak from personal observation; but the dairy-farm,
_Cascina_, near to Florence, can hardly have been much inferior to the
Cajano property of the great Lorenzo. The stables were admirably
arranged, and of permanent character; the neatness was equal to that of
the dairies of Holland. The Swiss cows, of a pretty dun-color, were kept
stalled, and luxuriously fed upon freshly cut ray-grass, clover, or
vetches, with an occasional sprinkling of meal; the calves were
invariably reared by hand; and the average _per diem_ of milk,
throughout the season, was stated at fourteen quarts; and I think
Madonna Clarice never strained more than this into the cheese-tubs of
Ambra. I trust the burghers of Florence, and the new _Gonfaloniere_,
whoever he may be, will not forget the dun cows of the Cascina, or their
baitings with the tender vetches.

The redemption of the waste marshlands in the Val di Chiana by the
engineering skill of Fossombroni, and the consequent restoration of many
thousands of acres which seemed hopelessly lost to fertility, is a
result of which the Medici would hardly have dreamed, and which would do
credit to any age or country.

About the better-cultivated portions of Lombardy there is an almost
regal look. The roads are straight, and of most admirable construction.
Lines of trees lift their stateliness on either side, and carry trailing
festoons of vines. On both sides streams of water are flowing in
artificial canals, interrupted here and there by cross sluices and
gates, by means of which any or all of the fields can be laid under
water at pleasure, so that old meadows return three and four cuttings of
grass in the year. There are patches of Indian-corn which are equal to
any that can be seen on the Miami; hemp and flax appear at intervals,
and upon the lower lands rice. The barns are huge in size, and are
raised from the ground upon columns of masonry.

I have a dapper little note-book of travel, from which these facts are
mainly taken; and at the head of one of its pages I observe an old
ink-sketch of a few trees, with festoons of vines between. It is
yellowed now, and poor always; for I am but a dabbler at such things.
Yet it brings back, clearly and briskly, the broad stretch of Lombard
meadows, the smooth Macadam, the gleaming canals of water, the white
finials of Milan Cathedral shining somewhere in the distance, the
thrushes, as in the "Pastor Fido," filling all the morning air with
their sweet

    "Ardo d' amore! ardo d' amore!"

the dewy clover-lots, looking like wavy silken plush, the green glitter
of mulberry-leaves, and the beggar in steeple-crowned hat, who says,
"_Grazia_," and "_Á rivedervi!_" as I drop him a few kreutzers, and
rattle away to the North, and out of Italy.

       *       *       *       *       *

About the year 1570, a certain Conrad Heresbach, who was Councillor to
the Duke of Cleves, (brother to that unfortunate Anne of Cleves who was
one of the wife-victims of Henry VIII.,) wrote four Latin books on
rustic affairs, which were translated by Barnaby Googe, a Lincolnshire
farmer and poet, who was in his day gentleman-pensioner to Queen
Elizabeth. Our friend Barnaby introduces his translation in this
style:--"I haue thought it meet (good Reader) for thy further profit &
pleasure, to put into English these foure Bookes of Husbandry, collected
& set forth by Master Conrade Heresbatch, a great & a learned Counceller
of the Duke of Cleues: not thinking it reason, though I haue altered &
increased his worke, _with mine owne readings & obseruations_, joined
with the experience of sundry my friends, to take from him (as diuers in
the like case haue done) the honour & glory of his owne trauaile:
Neither is it my minde, that this either his doings or mine, should
deface, or any waves darken the goo

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