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Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864

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Title: Continental Monthly , Vol. 6,  No. 1, July, 1864

Author: Various


        
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTINENTAL MONTHLY , VOL. 6,  NO. 1, JULY, 1864 ***




Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections)







THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:


DEVOTED TO

Literature and National Policy.

VOL. VI.--JULY, 1864.--NO. I.


New York:

JOHN F. TROW, 50 GREENE STREET,

(FOR THE PROPRIETORS.)

1864.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by

JOHN F. TROW,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.

  JOHN F. TROW,
  PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTYPER.
  50 Greene street, New York.

       *       *       *       *       *


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|Transcriber's note: Obvious printer errors have been corrected. All   |
|other inconstencies in spelling or punctuation are as in the original.|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+




AN ARMY: ITS ORGANIZATION AND MOVEMENTS.

_SECOND PAPER._


Having, in the preceding paper, described the general organization[1] of
an army, we proceed to give a succinct account of some of the principal
staff departments, in their relations to the troops.

Army organization--notwithstanding the world has always been engaged in
military enterprises--is of comparatively recent institution. Many of
the principles of existing military systems date no farther back than to
Frederic the Great, of Prussia, and many were originated by Napoleon.
Staff departments, particularly, as now constituted, are of late origin.
The staff organization is undergoing constant changes. Its most improved
form is to be found in France and Prussia. Our own staff system is of a
composite, and, in some respects, heterogeneous character--not having
been, constructed on any regular plan, but built up by gradual
accretions and imitations of European features, from the time of our
Revolution till the present. It has, however, worked with great vigor
and efficiency.

The staff of any commander is usually spoken of in two classes--the
departmental and the personal--the latter including the aides-de-camp,
who pertain more particularly to the person of the commander, while the
former belong to the organization. Of the departmental staff, the
assistant adjutant-generals and assistant inspector-generals are
denominated the 'general staff,' because their functions extend through
all branches of the organization, while the other officers are confined
exclusively to their own departments.

The _chief of staff_ is a recent French imitation. The first officer
assigned in that capacity was General Marcy, on the staff of General
McClellan, in the fall of 1861. Previous to that time the officers of
the adjutant-general's department--on account of their intimate
relations with commanding officers, as their official organs and the
mediums through which all orders were transmitted--had occupied it. The
duties of these officers, however, being chiefly of a bureau character,
allowing them little opportunity for active external supervision, it has
been deemed necessary to select for heads of the staffs, officers
particularly qualified to assist the commander in devising strategical
plans, organizing, and moving troops, etc.; competent to oversee and
direct the proceedings of the various staff departments; untrammelled
with any exclusive routine of duty, and able in any emergency, when the
commander may be absent, to give necessary orders. For these reasons,
although the innovation has not been sanctioned by any law, or any
standing rule of the War Department, and although its propriety is
discussed by many, the custom of assigning officers as chiefs of staff
has become universal, and will probably be permanent. The extent and
character of their duties depend, however, upon themselves, being
regulated by no orders, and the high responsibilities attached to the
position in France have not thus far been assumed by the officers
occupying it here. In the French service, the chief of staff is the
actual as well as the nominal head of the organization; he supervises
all its operations; he is the _alter ego_ of the commander. In the
Waterloo campaign, for instance, Marshal Soult was the chief of
Napoleon's staff, and the emperor attributed his disaster, in part, to
some of the orders issued by the marshal.

Our limits will not permit a description of the duties pertaining to the
various members of the staff, but we pass to the consideration of those
departments, the operations of which most directly affect the soldier,
are indispensable to every army, and are most interesting to the public.

Let us first consider the _quartermaster's department_, which, from the
character and diversity of its duties, the amount of its expenditures,
and its influence upon military operations, may be ranked as among the
most important. This department provides clothing, camp and garrison
equipage, animals and transportation of all kinds, fuel, forage, straw,
and stationery, an immense variety of the miscellaneous materials
required by an army, and for a vast amount of miscellaneous
expenditures. It is, in fact, the great business operator of a military
organization. In an active army, the success of movements depends very
much on its efficiency. Unless the troops are kept properly clothed, the
animals and means of transportation maintained in good condition, and
the immense trains moved with regularity and promptness, the best
contrived plans will fail in their development and execution.

The department, at the commencement of the war, had supplies in store
only for the current uses of the regular army. When the volunteer forces
were organized it became necessary to make hasty contracts and purchases
to a large amount; but as even the best-informed members of the
Government had no adequate prevision of the extent and duration of the
war, and of the necessary arrangements for its demands, a considerable
period elapsed before a sufficient quantity of the required materials
could be accumulated. Those were the days of 'shoddy' cloth and spavined
horses. The department, however, exhibited great administrative energy,
under the direction of its able head, General M. C. Meigs, and has amply
provided for the enormous demands upon it.

Depots for the reception of supplies are established in the large
cities, whence they are transferred as required to the great issuing
depots near the active armies, and from them to the depots in the field.
Thus, the main depots of the Army of the Potomac are at Washington and
Alexandria--a field depot being established at its centre, when lying
for any length of time in camp. Only current supplies are kept on hand
at the latter, and no surplus is transported on the march, except the
required amounts of subsistence and forage.

A great deal is said in connection with military movements, of 'bases of
operation.' These are the points in the rear of an army from which it
receives supplies and reënforcements, and with which its communications
must at all hazards be kept open, except it has means of transportation
sufficient to render it independent of its depots for a considerable
period, or unless the country traversed is able to afford subsistence
for men and animals. When an army marches along a navigable river, its
secondary base becomes movable, and it is less confined to the necessity
of protecting its rear. In Virginia, however, the connection of the Army
of the Potomac with Washington is imperative, and this fact explains the
contracted sphere of the operations of that army.

The transportation of supplies is limited by the ability of the
Government to provide trains, and by the ability of the army to protect
them; for large trains create large drafts on the troops for teamsters,
pioneers, guards, etc. An army train, upon the most limited allowance
compatible with freedom of operations for a few days, away from the
depots, is an immense affair. Under the existing allowances in the Army
of the Potomac, a corps of thirty thousand infantry has about seven
hundred wagons, drawn by four thousand two hundred mules; the horses of
officers and of the artillery will bring the number of animals to be
provided for up to about seven thousand. On the march it is calculated
that each wagon will occupy about eighty feet--in bad roads much more;
consequently a train of seven hundred wagons will cover fifty-six
thousand feet of road--or over ten miles; the ambulances of a corps will
occupy about a mile, and the batteries about three miles; thirty
thousand troops need six miles to march in, if they form but one column;
the total length of the marching column of a corps is therefore _twenty
miles_, even without including the cattle herds and trains of bridge
material. Readers who have been accustomed to think that our armies have
not exhibited sufficient energy in surmounting the obstacles of bad
roads, unbridged streams, etc., will be able to estimate, upon the above
statements, the immense difficulty of moving trains and artillery. The
trains of an army have been properly denominated its _impedimenta_, and
their movement and protection is one of the most difficult incidental
operations of warfare--particularly in a country like Virginia, where
the art of road making has attained no high degree of perfection, and
where the forests swarm with guerillas.

To an unaccustomed observer the concourse of the trains of an army, in
connection with any rapid movement, would give the idea of inextricable
confusion. It is of course necessary to move them upon as many different
roads as possible, but it will frequently happen that they must be
concentrated in a small space, and move in a small number of columns.
During the celebrated 'change of base' from Richmond to Harrison's
Landing, the trains were at first obliged to move upon only one
road--across White Oak Swamp--which happened fortunately to be wide
enough for three wagons to go abreast. There were perhaps twenty-five
hundred vehicles, which would make a continuous line of some forty or
fifty miles. While the slow and toilsome course of this cumbrous column
was proceeding, the troops were obliged to remain in the rear and fight
the battles of Savage Station and White Oak Swamp for its protection. A
similar situation of trains occurred last fall when General Meade
retired from the Rappahannock, but fortunately the country presented
several practicable routes. It is on a retreat, particularly, that the
difficulty of moving trains is experienced, and thousands of lives and
much valuable material have been lost by the neglect of commanding
officers to place them sufficiently far in the rear during a battle, so
as to permit the troops to fall back when necessary, without
interruption.

A march being ordered, supplies according to the capacity of the trains,
are directed to be carried. The present capacity of the trams of the
Army of the Potomac is ten days' subsistence and forage, and sixty
rounds of small-arm ammunition--the men carrying in addition a number of
days' rations, and a number of rounds, upon their persons. When the
wagons reach camp each evening, such supplies as have been expended are
replenished from them. As a general rule the baggage wagons camp every
night with the troops, but the exigencies are sometimes such that
officers are compelled to deny themselves for one or even two weeks the
luxury of a change of clothing--the wagons not reaching camp, perhaps,
till after midnight, and the troops resuming their march an hour or two
afterward. Those who indulge in satires upon the wearers of shoulder
straps would be likely to form a more correct judgment of an officer's
position and its attendant hardships, could they see him at the close of
a fortnight's campaign. Like the soldier, he can rely on nothing for
food or clothing except what is carried by himself, unless he maintains
a servant, and the latter will find a few blankets, a coffee pot, some
crackers, meat, sugar, coffee, etc., for his own and his employer's
consumption, a sufficient burden.

Let us see how the supplies of the quartermaster's department are
distributed.

At stated periods, if circumstances permit--usually at the first of each
month--the regimental quartermasters, after consultation with the
company officers, forward through their superiors to the chief
quartermasters of corps, statements of the articles required by the men.
These are consolidated and presented to the chief quartermaster of the
army, who orders them from Washington, and issues them from the army
depot--the whole operation requiring about a week. The number of
different _kinds_ of articles thus drawn monthly is about five hundred;
the _quantity_ of each kind depends on the number of men to be supplied,
and the nature of the service performed since the previous issue. If
there has been much marching, there will be a great demand for shoes; if
a battle, large quantities of all kinds of articles to replace those
lost on the battle field will be required.

An infantry soldier is allowed the following principal articles of
clothing during a three years' term of service:

                   1st Year. 2d Year. 3d Year.
  Cap,                 1        1                                      1
  Coat,                2        1                                      2
  Trowsers,            3        2                                      3
  Flannel shirt,       3        3                                      3
  Drawers,             3        2                                      2
  Shoes,               4        4                                      4
  Stockings,           4        4                                      4
  Overcoat,            1        0                                      0
  Blanket,             1        0                                      1
  Indiarubber blanket, 1        1                                      1

The prices of these are stated each year in a circular from the
department, and, as the soldier draws them, his captain charges him with
the prices on the company books. The paymaster deducts from his pay any
excess which he may have drawn, or allows him if he has drawn less than
he is entitled to. The clothing is much cheaper than articles of the
same quality at home. Thus, according to the present prices, a coat
costs $7.30; overcoat, $7.50; trowsers, $2.70; flannel shirt, $1.53;
stockings, 32 cents; shoes, $2.05.

The _commissary department_ provides exclusively the subsistence of the
troops. Each soldier is entitled to the following daily ration:

     Twelve ounces of pork or bacon, or one pound four ounces of fresh
     beef.

     One pound six ounces of soft bread or flour, or one pound of hard
     bread, or one pound four ounces of corn meal.

     To every one hundred men, fifteen pounds of beans or peas, and ten
     pounds of rice or hominy.

     To every one hundred men, ten pounds of green coffee, or eight
     pounds of roasted, or one pound and eight ounces of tea.

     To every one hundred men, fifteen pounds of sugar, four quarts of
     vinegar, one pound four ounces of candles, four pounds of soap,
     three pounds twelve ounces of salt, four ounces of pepper, thirty
     pounds of potatoes, when practicable, and one quart of molasses.

     Fresh onions, beets, carrots, and turnips, when on hand, can be
     issued in place of beans, peas, rice, or hominy, if the men desire.

     They can also take in place of any part of the ration an amount
     equal in value of dried apples, dried peaches, pickles, etc., when
     on hand.

A whiskey ration of a gill per day per man can be issued on the order of
the commander, in cases of extra hardship. It is, however, rarely
issued, on account of the difficulty of finding room for its
transportation in any considerable quantities. Moreover, whiskey, in the
army, is subject to extraordinary and mysterious _leakages_, and an
issue can scarcely be made with such care that some drunkenness will not
ensue. When lying in camp, sutlers and others sell to the soldiers
contrary to law, so that old topers usually find methods of gratifying
their appetites--sometimes sacrificing a large proportion of their pay
to the villains who pander to them. The utmost vigilance of the officers
fails to detect the methods by which liquor is introduced into the army.
When a cask is broached in any secluded place, the intelligence seems
communicated by a pervading electrical current, and the men are seized
with a universal desire to leave camp for the purpose of washing, or
getting wood, or taking a walk, or other praise-worthy purposes.

The total weight of a ration is something over two pounds, but in
marching, some articles are omitted, and but a small quantity of salt
meat is carried--fresh beef being supplied from the herds of cattle
driven with the army. A bullock will afford about four hundred and fifty
rations, so that an army of one hundred thousand men needs over two
hundred cattle daily for its supply.

In camp the men can refrain from drawing portions of their rations, and
the surplus is allowed for by the commissaries in money, by which a
company fund can be created, and expended in the purchase of gloves,
gaiters, etc., or luxuries for the table. A hospital fund is formed in
the same way--by an allowance for the portions of the rations not
consumed by the patients--and is expended in articles adapted to diet
for the sick. The rations are ample and of good quality, though the salt
meat is rather tough occasionally, and the consistency of the hard bread
is shot-proof. Company cooks are allowed, and in camp they contrive to
furnish quite appetizing meals. Their position is rather difficult to
fill, and woe is the portion of the cook not competent for his
profession. The practical annoyances to which he is subject make him
realize to the fullest extent 'the unfathomable depths of human woe.' On
the march the men usually prefer to boil their coffee in tin cups, and
to cook their meat on ram-rods--without waiting for the more formal
movements of the cooks. To reach camp before sunset, after a twenty-mile
march, to pitch his little shelter tent, throw in it his heavy arms and
accoutrements, collect some pine twigs for a couch, wash in some
adjacent stream, drink his cup of hot, strong coffee, eat his salt pork
and hard bread, and then wrap himself in his blanket for a dreamless
slumber, is one of the most delicious combinations of luxurious
enjoyment a soldier knows. To-morrow, perhaps, he starts up at the early
_reveille_, takes his hasty breakfast, is marshalled into line before
the enemy, there is a shriek in the air rent by the murderous shell, and
the soldier's last march is ended.

The next department we shall consider is that of _ordnance_, which
supplies the munitions and portions of accoutrements.

The subject of _artillery_ is perhaps the most interesting of the great
number connected with warfare. In the popular estimation it overshadows
all others. All the poetry of war celebrates the grandeur of

  'Those mortal engines whose rude throats
  The immortal Jove's dread clamors counterfeit.'

The thunder of great guns and the dashing of cavalry are the incidents
which spontaneously present themselves to the mind when a battle is
mentioned. Perhaps the accounts of Waterloo are responsible for this.
The steady fighting of masses of infantry, having less particulars to
attract the imagination, is overlooked; the fact, preëminent above all
others in military science, that it is the infantry which contests and
decides battles, that artillery and cavalry are only subordinate
agencies--is forgotten. So splendid have been the inventions and
achievements of the last few years in respect to artillery, as
illustrated particularly at Charleston, that some excuse may easily be
found for the popular misconception. A few remarks presenting some
truths relative to the appropriate sphere of artillery and its powers,
and stating succinctly the results which have been accomplished, may be
found interesting.

Without entering into the history of artillery, it will be sufficient to
state that the peculiar distinguishing excellence of modern improvements
in cannon is the attainment of superior efficiency, accuracy, and
mobility, with a decrease in weight of metal. A gun of any given size is
now many times superior to one of the same size in use fifty or a
hundred years ago. It is not so much in _big guns_ that we excel our
predecessors--for there are many specimens of old cannon of great
dimensions; but by our advance in science we are able so to shape our
guns and our projectiles that with less weight of material we can throw
larger shot to a greater distance and with more accuracy. A long course
of mathematical experiment and calculation has determined the exact
pressure of a charge of powder at all points in the bore of a cannon
during its combustion and evolution into gas. These experiments have
proved that strength is principally required near the breech, and that a
cannon need not be of so great length as was formerly supposed to be
necessary. We are thus able to construct guns which can be handled,
throwing balls of several hundred pounds' weight. Another splendid
result of scientific investigation is the method adopted for casting
such monster guns. In order that the mass of metal may be of uniform
tenacity and character, it should cool equably. This has been secured by
a plan for introducing a stream of water through the core of the
casting, so that the metal cools both within and without simultaneously.

About the time that the Italian war commenced, the subject of rifled
cannon excited much popular interest. Exaggerated expectations were
formed of the changes to be produced by them in the art of warfare. Many
saw in them the means of abolishing war entirely. Of what use is it,
they said, to array armies against each other, if they can be destroyed
at two or three miles' distance? At the commencement of our own contest
there was an undue partiality for rifled ordnance. Almost every
commander of a battery desired to have rifled guns. The more correct
views of the thoroughly accomplished artillery officers to whom was
confided the arrangement of this branch of the service, and actual
experience, have dissipated the unfounded estimate of their utility for
field service, and established the proper proportions in an artillery
force which they should compose. It has been ascertained that fighting
will never be confined to long ranges--that guns which can throw large
volumes of spherical case and canister into lines only a few hundred
yards distant are as necessary as ever.

The necessity for rifled cannon arose from the perfection of rifled
muskets. When these arms reached such a degree of excellence that horses
and gunners could be shot down at a distance of one thousand yards, the
old-fashioned smooth-bore artillery was deprived of its prestige. To
retrieve this disadvantage and restore the superiority of artillery over
musketry in length of range, methods of rifling cannon for field service
became an important study. For assailing distant lines of troops, for
opening a battle, for dispersing bodies of cavalry, for shelling
intrenchments, for firing over troops from hills in their rear, rifled
guns are of invaluable service. But, notwithstanding troops are now
universally armed with muskets of long range, no battle of importance is
fought without close engagements of the lines. The alternate advances
and retreats of the infantry, firing at distances of less than one
hundred yards, charging with fixed bayonets and frantic shouts, will
always characterize any battle fought with vigor and enthusiasm. In such
conflicts, wide-mouthed smooth bores, belching their torrents of iron,
must play a conspicuous part.

Another fact, which will perhaps surprise the general reader, is that
the form and character of _projectiles_ have been matters of as much
difficulty, have received as much investigation, and are of as much
importance, as the shape and character of the guns. In fact, rifled
pieces would be comparatively ineffective except projectiles adapted to
them had been invented. It was necessary that projectiles of greater
weight, of less resistance to the atmosphere, and of more accuracy of
flight, than the old round shot, should be introduced. To accomplish
these ends several things were necessary: 1st, the projectiles should be
elongated; 2d, they should have conical points; 3d, the centre of
gravity should be at a proper distance in front of the centre; 4th,
there should be methods of _steering_ them so that they should always go
point foremost through the whole curve of their flight; 5th, they should
fit the gun so as to take the rifles, yet not so closely as to strain
it. To attain these and other requisites, innumerable plans have been
devised. The projectile offering the best normal conditions is the
_arrow_; it has length, a sharp point, centre of gravity near the head,
and feathers for guiding it (sometimes so arranged that it shall rotate
like a rifled ball). Improved projectiles, therefore, both for muskets
and cannon, correspond in these essentials to the first products of man
in the savage state.

We cannot, in this article, further discuss either such general
principles or those of a more abstruse character, in their application
to artillery, but will briefly state a few facts relative to its
employment--confining ourselves exclusively to the _field service_.

The guns now principally used for battles, in the Northern armies, are
10 and 12-pounder Parrotts, three-inch United States rifles, and light
12-pounder smooth bores. The distinguishing characteristic of the
Parrott guns is lightness of construction, secured by strengthening the
breech (in accordance with the principles mentioned a few paragraphs
back) with a band of wrought iron. This has been applied to guns of all
sizes, and its excellence has been tested by General Gillmore in the
reduction of Forts Pulaski and Sumter. The three-inch guns are made of
wrought iron, are of light weight, but exceedingly tenacious and
accurate. The 12-pounders, sometimes called Napoleons, are of bronze,
with large caliber, and used chiefly for throwing shell and canister at
comparatively short distances.

The greatest artillery conflict of the war (in the field) occurred at
Gettysburg. For two hours in the afternoon of the memorable third day's
battle, about four hundred cannon were filling the heavens with their
thunder, and sending their volleys of death crashing in all directions.

It was estimated that the discharges numbered five or six a second; in
fact, the ear could hardly detect any cessations in the roar. The air
was constantly howling as the shells swept through it, while the falling
of branches, cut from the trees by the furious missiles, seemed as if a
tornado was in the height of its fury: every few minutes, a thunder
heard above all other sounds, denoted the explosion of a caisson,
sweeping into destruction, with a cataract of fire and iron, men and
animals for hundreds of feet around it. The effect of such a fire of
artillery is, however, much less deadly than any except those who have
been subject to it can believe. The prevalent impression concerning the
relative destructiveness of cannon and musketry is another instance of
popular error. In the first place, all firing at over a mile distance
contains a large proportion of the elements of chance, for it is
impossible to get the range and to time the fuses so accurately as to
make any considerable percentage of the shots effective; and in the next
place, except when marching to a close conflict, the men are generally
protected by lying down behind inequalities of the ground, or other
accidental or designed defences. The proportion killed in any battle by
artillery fire is very small. Lines of men frequently lie exposed to
constant shelling for hours, with small loss; in fact, in such cases,
old soldiers will eat their rations, or smoke their pipes, or perhaps
have a game of poker, with great equanimity.

No portion of the military service has been more misrepresented than the
_medical department_. An opinion seems to prevail quite extensively that
the army surgeon is generally a young graduate, vain of his official
position, who cares little for the health of the soldier, and glories in
the opportunities afforded by a battle for reckless operations. Such an
opinion is altogether fallacious. In the regiments there are undoubtedly
many physicians who have adopted the service as a resource for a living
which they were unable to find at home, but the majority are exactly the
same class of professional men as those who pursue useful and honorable
careers in all our cities and villages. When a physician is called upon
at home, it happens in a majority of cases--as every honest member of
the profession will admit--that there is little or no necessity for his
services. Too sagacious to avow this, he gravely makes some simple
prescription, and as gravely pockets his fee. In camp, however, the
potent argument of the fee does not prevail, and men who run to the
doctor with trifling ailments, by which they hope to be relieved from
duty, receive a rebuff instead of a pill. They instantly write letters
complaining of his inhumanity. In regard to operations, it is a frequent
remark by the most experienced surgeons that lives are lost from the
hesitancy to amputate, more frequently than limbs are removed
unnecessarily.

The medical department of an army, like every other, is controlled by a
_system_, and it is this which regulates its connections with the
soldier more than the qualifications of individual surgeons. In the army
the _system_ takes care of everything, even to the minutest details.
Hygienic regulations for preserving the salubrity of camps and the
cleanliness of the troops and their tents, are prescribed and enforced.
Every day there is a 'sick call' at which men who find themselves ill
present themselves to the surgeons for treatment. If slightly affected,
they are taken care of in their own quarters; if more seriously, in the
regimental hospitals; if still more so, in the large hospitals
established by the chief medical officer of the corps; and if necessary,
sent to the Government hospitals established at various places in the
country. To the latter almost all the sick are transferred previous to a
march. To be ill in the army, amid the constant noises of a camp, and
with the non-luxurious appliances of a field hospital, is no very
pleasant matter; but the sick soldier receives all the attention and
accommodation possible under the circumstances.

To every corps is attached a train of ambulances, in the proportion of
two or three to a regiment. They are spring wagons with seats along the
sides, like an omnibus, which can, when necessary, be made to form a bed
for two or three persons. With each train is a number of wagons,
carrying tents, beds, medicine chests, etc., required for the
establishment of hospitals. On the march, the ambulances collect the
sick and exhausted who fall out from the columns and have a surgeon's
certificate as to their condition. When a battle is impending, and the
field of conflict fixed, the chief medical officers of the corps take
possession of houses and barns in the rear, collect hay and straw for
bedding, or, if more convenient, pitch the tents at proper localities. A
detail of surgeons is made to give the necessary attendance. While the
battle proceeds, the lightly wounded fall to the rear, and are there
temporarily treated by the surgeons who have accompanied the troops to
the field, and then find their way to the hospitals. If the fighting has
passed beyond the places where lie the more dangerously wounded, they
are brought to the rear by the 'stretcher bearers' attached to the
ambulance trains, and carried to the hospitals in the ambulances.
Sometimes it happens that the strife will rage for hours on nearly the
same spot, and it may be night before the 'stretcher bearers' can go out
and collect the wounded. But the surgeons make indefatigable exertions,
often exposed to great danger, to give their attention to those who
require it. At the best, war is terrible--all its 'pomp, pride, and
circumstance' disappear in the view of the wounded and dead on the
field, and of the mangled remnants of humanity in the hospitals. But
everything that can be devised and applied to mitigate its horrors is
provided under the systematized organization of the medical department.
In the Army of the Potomac, at least, and undoubtedly in all the other
armies of the North, that department combines skill, vigor, humanity,
and efficiency to an astonishing degree. Its results are exhibited not
only in the small mortality of the camps, but in the celerity of its
operation on the field of battle, and the great proportion of lives
preserved after the terrible wounds inflicted by deadly fragments of
shell and the still more deadly rifle bullet. Military surgery has
attained a degree of proficiency during the experiences of the past
three years which a layman cannot adequately describe; its results are,
however, palpable.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Since that article was written, some changes of detail have
been made, but the principles remain the same.]




ÆNONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.


CHAPTER VIII.

Raising himself with an assumed air of careless indifference, in the
hope of thereby concealing the momentary weakness into which his better
feelings had so nearly betrayed him, Sergius strolled off, humming a
Gallic wine song. Ænone also rose; and, struggling to stifle her
emotion, confronted the new comer.

She, upon her part, stood silent and impassive, appearing to have heard
or seen nothing of what had transpired, and to have no thought in her
mind except the desire of fulfilling the duty which had brought her
thither. But Ænone knew that the most unobservant person, upon entering,
could not have failed at a glance to comprehend the whole import of the
scene--and that therefore any such studied pretence of ignorance was
superfluous. The attitude of the parties, the ill-disguised confusion of
Sergius, her own tears, which could not be at once entirely
repressed--all combined to tell a tale of recrimination, pleading, and
baffled confidence, as plainly as words could have spoken it. Apart,
therefore, from her disappointment at being interrupted at the very
moment when her hopes had whispered that the happiness of reconciliation
might be at hand, Ænone could not but feel indignant that Leta should
thus calmly stand before her with that pretence of innocent
unconsciousness.

'Why do you come hither? Who has demanded your presence?' Ænone cried,
now, in her indignation, caring but little what or how she spoke, or
what further revelations her actions might occasion, as long as so much
had already been exposed.

'My lady,' rejoined the Greek, raising her eyes with a well-executed air
of surprise, 'do I intrude? I came but to say that in the antechamber
there is--'

'Listen!' exclaimed Ænone, interrupting her, and taking her by the hand.
'Not an hour ago you told me about your quiet home in Samos--its green
vines--the blue mountains which encircled it--the little chamber where
your mother died, and in which you were born--and the lover whom you
left weeping at your cruel absence. You spoke of your affection for
every leaf and blade of grass about the place--and how you would give
your life itself to go back thither--yes, even your life, for you would
be content to lie down and die, if you could first return. Do you
remember?'

'Well, my lady?'

'Well, you shall return, as you desired. You have been given to me for
my own; and whether or not the gift be a full and free one, I will claim
my rights under it and set you free. In the first ship which sails from
Ostia for any port of Greece, in that ship you may depart. Are you
content, Leta?'

Still holding her by the hand, Ænone gazed inquiringly into the burning
black eyes which fastened themselves upon her own, as though reading the
bottom of her soul. She could not as yet believe that even if the Greek
had actually begun to cherish any love for Sergius, it could be more
than a passing fancy, engendered by foolish compliments or ill-judged
signs of admiration, and therefore she did not doubt that the offer of
freedom and restoration would be gratefully received. Her only
uncertainty was with regard to the manner in which it would be listened
to--whether with tears of joy or with loud protestations of gratitude
upon bended knees; or whether the prospect of once again visiting that
cottage home and all that had so long been held dear, would come with
such unpremeditated intensity as to stifle all outward manifestations of
delight, except, perhaps, that trembling of the lip or ebb and flow of
color which is so often the surest sign of a full and glowing heart.

For a moment Leta stood gazing up into the face of her mistress,
uttering no word of thanks, and with no tear of joy glistening in her
eye, but with the deepened flush of uncontrollable emotion overspreading
her features. And yet that flush seemed scarcely the token of a heart
overpowered with sudden joy, but rather of a mind conscious of being
involved in an unexpected dilemma, and puzzled with its inability to
extricate itself.

'My mistress,' she responded at length, with lowered gaze, 'it is true
that I said I would return, if possible, to that other home of mine. But
now that you offer me the gift, I would not desire to accept it. Let me
stay here with you.'

Ænone dropped the hand which till now she had held; and an agony of
mingled surprise, suspicion, disappointment, and presentiment of evil
swept across her features.

'Are you then become like all others?' she said with bitterness. 'Has
the canker of this Roman life already commenced to eat into your soul,
so that in future no memory of anything that is pure or good can attract
you from its hollow splendors? Are thoughts of home, of freedom, of
friends, even of the trusted lover of whom you spoke--are all these now
of no account, when weighed against a few gilded pleasures?'

'Why, indeed, should I care to return to that home?' responded the girl.
'Have not the Roman soldiers trodden down those vines and uprooted that
hearth? Is it a desolated and stricken home that I would care to see?'

'False--false!' cried Ænone, no longer regardful of her words, but only
anxious to give utterance--no matter how rashly--to the suspicions which
she had so long and painfully repressed. 'It is even more than the mere
charms of this imperial city which entice you. It is that you are my
enemy, and would stay here to sting the hand that was so truly anxious
to protect you--that for your own purposes you would watch about my
path, and ever, as now, play the spy upon my actions, and--'

'Nay, nay!' cried the Greek, her flashing eye and erect attitude in
strong contrast with the softened tone in which, more from habit than
from prudence, she had spoken. 'When have I played the spy upon you? Not
now, indeed, for I have come in, not believing that I was doing harm,
but simply because my duty has led me hither. I came to tell you that
there is a stranger--an old man--standing in the court below, and that
he craves audience with you. Is this a wrong thing for me to do? Were I
to forbear performance of this duty, would not my neglect insure me
punishment?'

Ænone answered not, but, by a strong effort, kept back the words that
she would have uttered. Still angry and crushed with the sense of being
deceived, and yet conscious that it was not a noble or dignified thing
to be in disputation with her own slave, and that there was, moreover,
the remote possibility that the girl was not her enemy, and might really
dread returning to a desolated and devastated home, what could she say
or do? And while she pondered the matter, the door again opened.

'And this is he of whom I spoke. Do you doubt me now?' exclaimed the
Greek, in a tone in which a shade of malicious triumph mingled with soft
reproach. And she moved away, and left the room, while Ænone, lifting
her eyes, saw her father standing before her.

'A plague take the wench who has just left you!' he muttered. 'Did she
not tell you that I was below? I sent word by her, and here she has left
me for half an hour kicking my heels together in the courtyard. And I
might have stayed there forever, if I had not of myself found my way up.
Even then, there were some who would have stopped me, deeming me,
perhaps, too rough in appearance to be allowed to ascend. But I told
them that there was a time when members of the house of Porthenus did
not wait in antechambers, but stood beside the consuls of the old
republic, and I touched the hilt of my dagger; and whether it was the
one argument or the other which prevailed, here I am.'

With a grim smile the centurion then threw himself down upon a settee
near the door, arranged as properly as possible the folds of his coarse
tunic, drew his belt round so as to show more in front his dagger with
richly embossed sheath--the sole article of courtly and ceremonious
attire in which he indulged--and endeavored to assume an easy and
imposing attitude. For an instant he gazed around the room, observantly
taking in its wealth of mosaic pavement, paintings, statuary, and vases.
Then, as he began to fear lest he might be yielding too much of his
pride before the overbearing influence of so much luxury, he
straightened himself up, gathered upon his features a hard and somewhat
contemptuous expression, and roughly exclaimed:

'Yes, by the gods, the Portheni lived with consuls and proconsuls long
before the house of Vanno began to rise from the dregs and become a
house at all. And the imperator knows it, and is jealous of the fact,
too, or else he would the better acknowledge it. What, now, is that?' he
added, pointing to the central fresco of the ceiling.

'It is--I know not for certain, my father--but I think--'

'Nay, but I know what it is. It is the old story of the three Vanni
overcoming the five Cimbri at the bridge of Athesis. No great matter,
nor so very long ago, even if it were true. But why did he not paint up,
instead, how the founder of the Portheni, with his single arm, slew the
ten Carthaginians under the aqueduct of Megara? Is not now your family
history a portion of his own? His jealousy prevented him, I suppose;
though I doubt not that, when in his cups with his high associates, he
often boasts of his connection with the house of Porthenus. And yet he
would let the only relic of the family starve before assisting him.'

Ænone stood as in a maze of confusion and uncertainty. Were the trials
of the day never to end? First her unsatisfactory strife and pleading
with her husband; then the undignified contest with her own slave into
which she had been betrayed; and now came this old man--her father, to
be sure--but so much the more mortifying to her, as his vulgarity,
querulous complaining, and insulting strictures were forced upon her
ears.

'Are you not comfortable? What more can he or I do for you?' she said,
with some impatience.

'Ay, ay; there it is,' growled the centurion. 'One person must have all
luxuries--paintings, silver, and the like; but if the other has only
mere comforts, an extra tunic, perhaps, or a spare bit of meat for a
dog, what more can he want? But I will tell you what you can do? And it
is not as a gift, I ask it. Poor and despised as he may be, no one can
say that the centurion Porthenus is a beggar. It is as a fair matter of
business that I offer it.'

'Well, my father?'

'It is this: I have two slaves, and can afford to keep only one of them,
particularly as but one can be of use to me. Will the imperator purchase
the other? I will give it for a fair price, and therefore no one can say
that I have asked for anything beyond a proper trade, with which either
side should be well satisfied.'

Ænone listened with a blush of shame for her father overspreading her
face. It did not occur to her that the slave rejected as useless could
be any other than the hunchback, whom her husband had bestowed upon the
centurion a few days before; and for the receiver to try to sell back a
gift to the giver was a depth of meanness for which no filial partiality
or affection could find an excuse.

'I will show him to you,' cried the centurion, losing a little of his
gruffness in his eagerness to effect a transaction, whereby, under the
thin guise of a simple trade, he could extort a benefit. 'I have brought
him with me, and left him below. You will see that he is of good
appearance, and that the imperator will be pleased and grateful to me
for the opportunity of possessing him.'

So saying, Porthenus strode to the head of the stairway, and issued his
commands in a stern voice, which made the vaulted ceilings of the palace
ring. A faint, weak response came up in answer, and in a moment the
slave entered the room.

'Is this the one of whom you spoke?' faltered Ænone, unable for the
moment to retain her self-possession as she beheld, not the angular,
wiry form of the hunchback, but the careworn and slim figure of Cleotos.
'I thought--indeed I thought that you spoke of the inferior of the two.'

'Ay, and so I do,' responded her father. 'Of what use to me can this man
be? The other one, indeed, is of tenfold value. There is no slave in
Rome like unto him for cleaning armor or sharpening a weapon, while to
run of an errand or manage any piece of business in which brains must
bear their part, I will trust him against the world. But as for this man
here, with his weak limbs and his simple face--do you know that I did
but set him to polish the rim of a shield, and in his awkwardness he let
it fall, and spoiled the surface as though a Jewish spear had stricken
it.'

Ænone remained silent, scarcely listening to the words of her father,
while, in a troubled manner, she again mentally ran over, as she had
done hundreds of times before, the chances of recognition by the man who
stood before her.

'But listen to me still further,' continued the centurion, fearful lest
his disparaging comments might defeat the projected sale. 'I only speak
of him as he is useful or not to me. To another person he would be most
valuable; for, though he cannot polish armor, he can polish verses, and
he can write as well as though he were educated for a scribe. For one
favored of fortune like the imperator Sergius Vanno,' and here again the
centurion began to roll the high-sounding name upon his tongue with
obvious relish, 'who wishes an attendant to carry his wine cup, or to
bear his cloak after him, or to trim his lamps, and read aloud his
favorite books, where could a better youth than this be found?'

Ænone, still overpowered by her troubled thoughts, made no response.

'Or to yourself,' eagerly continued the centurion, 'he would be most
suitable, with his pale, handsome face, and his slender limbs. Have you
a page?'

'I have my maidens,' was the answer.

'And that amounts to nothing at all,' asserted her father. 'A plebeian
can have her maidens in plenty, but it is not right that the wife of a
high and mighty imperator,' and here again the words rolled majestically
off his tongue, 'should not also have her male attendants. And the more
so when that wife has been taken from an ancient house like that of
Porthenus,' he added, with a frown in derogation of any tendency to give
undue importance to her present position. 'But with this Cleotos--come
forward, slave, and let yourself be seen.'

Cleotos, who, partly from natural diffidence, and partly from being
abashed at the unaccustomed splendor about him, had, little by little,
from his first entrance, shrunk into a corner, now advanced; and Ænone,
once more resolutely assuring herself that, with the changes which time,
position, difference of place and costume had thrown about her, she
could defy recognition, summoned all her courage, and looked him in the
face. It may have been with an unacknowledged fear lest, now that she
saw him so freely in the broad daylight, some latent spark of the old
attachment might burst into a flame, and withdraw her heart from its
proper duty; but at the first glance she felt that in this respect she
had nothing to dread. In almost every particular, Cleotos had but little
changed. His costume was but slightly different from that which he had
always been accustomed to wear; for the centurion, in view of the chance
of effecting a profitable sale, had, for that occasion, made him put on
suitable and becoming attire. The face was still youthful--the eye, as
of old, soft, expressive, and unhardened by the ferocities of the world
about him. As Ænone looked, it seemed as though the years which had
passed rolled back again, and that she was once more a girl. But it also
seemed as though something else had passed away--as though she looked
not upon a lover, but rather upon a quiet, kindhearted, innocent
friend--one who could ever be dear to her as a brother, but as nothing
else. What was it which had so flitted away that the same face could now
stir up no fire of passion, but only a friendly interest? Something, she
could not tell what; but she thanked the gods that it was so, and drew a
long breath of relief.

But it was none the less incumbent upon her, for the sake of that
present friendship and for the memory of that old regard, to cast her
protection over him. For an instant the thought flashed across her that
it would be well to purchase him, not simply for a page, but so that she
could have him in the way of kind treatment and attention until some
opportunity of restoring him to his native land might occur. But then
again was the danger that, if any great length of time should meanwhile
elapse, unconsidered trifles might lead to a recognition. No, that plan
could not be thought of. She must keep a protecting eye upon him from a
distance, and trust to the future for a safe working out of the problem.

'It cannot be,' she murmured, in answer, half to her father, half to her
own suggestion.

''Tis well,' muttered the centurion, rising with an air of displeasure
which indicated that he thought it very ill. 'I supposed that it would
be a kindness to the imperator or to yourself to give the first offer of
the man. But it matters little. The captain Polidorus will take him any
moment at a fair price.'

'You will not send him to the captain Polidorus?' exclaimed Ænone in
affright. For at once the many atrocities of that man toward his slaves
rose in her mind--how that he had slain one in a moment of passion--how
that he had deliberately beaten another to death for attempting to
escape to the catacombs--how that stripes and torture were the daily
portion of the unfortunates in his power--and that, not by reason of any
gross neglect of their duty, but for the merest and most trifling
inadvertencies. Better death than such a fate.

'Pah! What can I do?' retorted Porthenus, skilfully touching the chord
of her sympathies, as he saw how sensitive she was to its vibrations.
'It is true that Polidorus is no fawning woman, and that he greets his
slaves with the rod and the brand, and what not. It is true that he
thinks but little of sending one of them to Hades through the avenue of
his fishponds. But that, after all, is his affair, and if he chooses to
destroy his property, what should it matter to me? Am I so rich that I
can afford to lose a fair purchaser because he may incline to hang or
drown his bargain? Such self-denial may suit the governor of a
province, but should not be expected of a poor centurion.'

Ænone trembled, and again the impulse to make the purchase came upon
her. Better to risk anything for herself--recognition, discovery,
suspicion, or misconstruction, than that her friendship should so far
fail as to allow this poor captive to fall into the hands of a brutish
tyrant. There was a purse of gold in the half-opened drawer of a table
which stood near her; and, in sore perplexity, she raised it, then let
it fall, and again lifted it. As the centurion listened to the ring of
the metal, his eyes sparkled, and he prepared to apply new arguments,
when Cleotos himself sprang forward.

'I know nothing about this Polidorus of whom they speak,' said he,
dropping upon one knee at her feet. 'And it is not to save myself from
his hands that I ask your pity, most noble lady. There is much that I
have already suffered, and perhaps a little more might make no
difference, or, better yet, might close the scene with me forever. It is
for other reasons that I would wish to be in this house--even as the
lowest, meanest slave of all, rather than to live in the halls of the
emperor Titus himself. There is one in this house, most noble lady, from
whom I have long been cruelly separated, and who--what can I say but
that if, when I was a free man, she gave me her love, now, in my
abasement, she will not fail with that love to brighten my lot?'

Ænone started. At hearing such words, there could be but one thought in
her mind--that he had actually recognized her, and that, without waiting
to see whether or not she had forgotten him, and certainly knowing that
in any event her position toward him had become changed, he was daring
to covertly suggest a renewal of their old relationship. But the next
words reassured her.

'We lived near each other in Samos, my lady. I was happy, and I blessed
the fates for smiling upon us. How was I then to know that she would be
torn away from me upon the very day when I was to have led her to my own
home?'

'You say that she is here? Is it--do you speak of Leta?' cried Ænone.

'Leta was her name,' he responded, in some surprise that his secret had
been so promptly penetrated before he had more than half unfolded it.
'And she is here.'

There was to Ænone perhaps one instant of almost unconscious regret at
learning that she had been forgotten for another. But it passed away
like a fleeting cloud--banished from her mind by the full blaze of
happiness which poured in upon her at the thought that here at last was
what would counteract the cruel schemes which were warring against her
peace, and would thereby bring sure relief to her sorrow.

'And she is here,' repeated Cleotos. 'When at the first she was torn
from my side, most noble lady, I would have died, if I could, for I did
not believe that life had any further blessing in store for me. But,
though the Roman armies were cruel, the fates have been kind, and have
again brought us near. It was but a week ago that, as I looked up by the
moonlight at these palace walls, I saw her. Can it be, that after so
long a time, the gods meant I should be brought near, to have but this
one glimpse of happiness, and then again be sundered from it?'

'It cannot be--it was not meant to be,' exclaimed Ænone, with energy;
and again lifting the purse of gold, she placed it in the centurion's
hand. 'There, I will purchase your slave,' she said. 'Take from this his
proper price, and leave him with me.'


CHAPTER IX.

The centurion received the purse with ill-dissembled joy. Had he been
fully able to control himself, he would doubtless have maintained a
quiet air of dignified self-possession, befitting one giving full value
for what he had received, and therefore not expected to exhibit any
peculiarly marked or lively satisfaction. But the affair had been
concluded so suddenly, and with such a liberal confidence in his
discretion, that, for the moment, his hands trembled with excitement,
and his face shone with avaricious pleasure.

Then he began to count out the gold pieces, gleefully dropping some into
his pouch, and reluctantly putting others back into the purse. From the
first he had established in his own mind the valuation which he would
place upon the slave; and he had taken care to make his calculation upon
such a liberal scale that he could well afford to consent to a large
deduction, if it were required of him. Now he reasoned that, as his
child had merely told him to take out what was proper, there could be no
impropriety in paying himself at the highest possible price. She would
never mind, and there were many comforts which he needed, and which an
extra gold piece or two would enable him to procure for himself.

Then, as he weighed the purse and pondered over it, numerous wants and
requirements, which he had hardly known until that time, came into his
mind. He might supply them all, if he were not too timid or scrupulous
in availing himself of an opportunity such as might never come to him
again. Had even his first valuation of the slave been a sufficient one?
He ought certainly to consider that the man could read and write, and
was of such beauty and grace that he could be trained to a most courtly
air; and it was hardly proper to sell him for no more than the price of
a couple of gladiators, mere creatures of bone and brawn. And, in any
event, it was hardly probable that Ænone knew the true value of slaves,
or even remembered how much her purse had contained.

Thus meanly reflecting, the centurion dropped more of the gold pieces
into his pocket, all the while eying the slave with keen scrutiny, as
though calculating the market value of every hair upon his head. Then,
with a sigh, he handed back the purse, most wofully lightened of its
contents, and turned from the room, endeavoring to compose his features
into a decent appearance of sober indifference, and muttering that he
would not have allowed himself to be betrayed into giving up such a
prize so cheaply had it not been that he had an especial regard for the
imperator Sergius Vanno, and that the house of Porthenus had never
nourished mere traders to wrangle and chaffer over their property.

In one of his conjectures he had been correct. It was little that Ænone
knew or cared about the price she was paying. Had the purse been
returned to her entirely empty, she would have thrown it unheedingly
into the drawer, and have never dreamed but that all had been rightly
done. There was now but one idea filling her heart. She thought not
about money nor any imprudence which she was committing, nor yet upon
the chance of recognition. She only reflected that the day of her
triumph had come--that at the sight of the long-absent lover, Leta would
abandon the wrong path in which she had been straying, would throw
herself into his arms, would tell him how, through the loss of him, she
had become reckless, and had allowed her suffering mind to become
perverted from the right--but that now all was again well; and thus
confessing and being forgiven, would, in the ever-present joy of that
forgiveness, lead for the future a different life, and, instead of a
rival, become to her mistress a friend and ally.

Glowing with this bright hope, Ænone scarcely noticed the shuffling
departure of the centurion, but, fixing her eyes upon the captive,
keenly scrutinized his appearance. Not that it was likely that Leta, in
the first flush of her joy at meeting him, would notice or care in what
guise he was presented, so long as the soul which had so often
responded to her own was there. But it was well that there should be
nothing neglected which, without being directly essential to the
production of a proper impression, might be tributary to it.

The inspection was satisfactory. Not only was the dress of the captive
clean, neat, becoming, and suitable to his station, but his appearance
had undergone visible improvement since Ænone had last seen him. The
rest and partial composure of even the few intervening days had sufficed
to restore tone to his complexion, roundness to his cheeks, and
something of the old merry smile to his eyes. And though complete
restoration was not yet effected, enough had been accomplished to show
that there was much latent beauty which would not fail to develop itself
under the stimulant of additional rest and kindly treatment.

'Go in, thither,' said Ænone, pointing to the adjoining room, in which
Leta was occupied. 'When you are there, you will--it will be told you
what you are to do.'

Cleotos bowed low, and passed through into the other room; and Ænone
followed him with a glance which betrayed the longing she felt to enter
with him and witness the meeting of the two lovers. But a sense of
propriety outweighed her curiosity and restrained her. It was not right,
indeed, that she should intrude. Such recognitions should be sacred to
the persons directly interested in them. She would therefore remain
outside, and there await Cleotos's return. And as she took into her
hands a little parchment ode which lay upon her table, and nervously
endeavored to interest herself in it, she delightedly pictured the
sudden transport of those within the next room, and the beaming joy with
which, hand in hand, they would finally emerge to thank her for their
newly gained happiness.

In the mean time, Leta, having delivered her message, and received her
rebuke for the interruption, had retired to the other room, and there,
as usual, resumed her daily task of embroidery. Bending low over the
intricate stitches and counting their spaces, her features, at a casual
glance, still bore their impress of meek and unconscious humility, so
far did her accustomed self-control seem to accompany her even when
alone. But a more attentive scrutiny would have detected, half hidden
beneath the fringed eyelids, a sparkle of gratified triumph, and, in the
slightly bent corners of the mouth, a shade of haughty disdain; and
little by little, as the moments progressed, these indications of an
inner, irrepressible nature gained in intensity, and, as though her
fingers were stayed by a tumult of thought, her work slowly began to
slip from her grasp.

At length, lifting her head, and, perhaps, for the first time realizing
that she was alone and might indulge her impulses without restraint, she
abruptly threw from her the folds of the embroidery, and stood erect.
Why should she longer trifle with that weak affair of velvet and dyes?
Who was the poor, inanimate, and tearful statue in the next room, to
order her to complete those tasks? What to herself were the past deeds
of the Vanni, that they should be perpetuated in ill-fashioned tapestry,
to be hung around a gilded banquet hall? By the gods! she would from
that day make a new history in the family life; and it should be
recorded, not with silken threads upon embroidered velvet, but should be
engraved deeply and ineffaceably upon human hearts!

Standing motionless in the centre of the room, with one foot upon the
half-completed tapestry, she now for the first time, and in a flash of
inspiration, gave shape and comeliness to her previously confusedly
arranged ideas. Until the present moment she had had but little thought
of accomplishing anything beyond skilfully availing herself of her
natural attractions so as to climb from her menial position into
something a little better and higher. If, in the struggle to raise
herself from the degradation of slavery, she were obliged to engage in a
rivalry with her mistress, and, by robbing her of the affection
naturally belonging to her, were to crush her to the earth, it was a
thing to be deplored, but it must none the less be done. She might,
perhaps, pity the victim, but the sacrifice must be accomplished all the
same.

But now these vague dreams of a somewhat better lot, to be determined by
future chance circumstances, rolled away like a shapeless cloud, and
left in their place one bright image as the settled object of her
ambition. So lofty, so dazzling seemed the prize, that another person
would have shrunk in dismay from even the thought of striving for it,
and even she, for the moment, recoiled. But she was of too determined a
nature to falter long. The higher the object to be attained the fewer
would be the competitors, and the greater the chance of success to
unwearying determination. And if there were but one chance of success in
a thousand, it were still worth the struggle.

This great thought which stimulated her ambition was nothing less than
the resolution to become the wife of the imperator Sergius. At first it
startled her with its apparent wild extravagance; but little by little,
as she weighed the chances, it seemed to become more practicable. There
was, indeed, nothing grossly impossible in the idea. Men of high rank
had ere now married their slaves, and the corrupted society of Rome had
winked at mesalliances which, in the days of the republic, would not
have been tolerated. And she was merely a slave from accidental
circumstances--being free born, and having, but a month before, been the
pride and ornament of a respectable though lowly family. Once let her
liberty be restored, and the scarcely perceptible taint of a few weeks'
serfdom be removed from her, and she would be, in all social respects,
fully the equal of the poor, trembling maid of Ostia, to whom, a few
years before, the patrician had not been ashamed to stoop.

This bar of social inequality thus removed, the rest might be in her own
hands. Sergius no longer felt for his wife the old affection, under the
impulse of which he had wedded her; and the few poor remains of the love
which he still cherished, more from habit than otherwise, were fast
disappearing. This was already so evident as to have become the common
gossip of even the lowliest slaves in the household. And he loved
herself instead, for not only his actions, but his words had told her
so. A little more craft and plotting, therefore--a little further
display of innocent and lowly meekness and timid obedience--a few more
well-considered efforts to widen the conjugal breach--a week or two more
persistent exercise of those fascinations which men were so feeble to
resist--jealousy, recrimination, quarrels, and a divorce--and the whole
thing might be accomplished. In those days of laxity, divorce was an
easy matter. In this case there was no family influence upon the part of
the wife to be set up in opposition--but merely an old centurion,
ignorant and powerless. A few writings, for form's sake--and the day
that sent the weeping wife from the door might install the manumitted
and triumphant slave in her place.

All aglow with the ravishing prospect--her eager hopes converting the
possible into the probable, and again, by a rapid change, the probable
into the certain, the Greek stood spurning the needle work at her feet.
Then glancing around, the whim seized upon her to assume, for a moment
in advance, her coming stately dignity. At the side of the room, upon a
slightly elevated platform, was a crimson lounge--Ænone's especial and
proper seat. Over one arm of this lounge hung, in loose folds, a robe
of purple velvet, with an embroidered fringe of pearls--a kind of cloak
of state, usually worn by her upon the reception of ceremonious visits.
To this lounge Leta strode, threw herself upon it, drew the velvet
garment over her shoulders, so that the long folds fell down gracefully
and swept the marble pavement at her feet, and there, half sitting, half
reclining, assumed an attitude of courtly dignity, as though mistress of
the palace.

And it must be confessed that she well suited the place. With her lithe,
graceful figure thrown into a position in which the gentle languor of
unembarrassed leisure was mingled with the dignity of queenly
state--with her burning eyes so tempered in their brilliancy that they
seemed ready at the same instant to bid defiance to impertinent
intrusion, and to bestow gracious condescension upon suppliant
timidity--with every feature glowing with that proper pride which is not
arrogance, and that proper kindliness which is not humility--there was
probably in all Rome no noble matron who could as well adorn her chair
of ceremony. Beside her, the true mistress of the place would have
appeared as a timid child dismayed with unaccustomed honors; and in
comparison, the empress herself might not fill her throne in the palace
of the Cæsars with half the grace and dignity.

Then, as she there sat, momentarily altering her attitude to correspond
the better with her ideas of proper bearing, and gathering into newer
and more pleasing folds the sweeping breadths of the velvet mantle, the
door was slowly swung open, and there glided noiselessly in, clad in its
neat and coarse tunic, the timid figure of her old lover Cleotos.

For an instant they remained gazing at each other as though paralyzed.
Cleotos--who had looked to see her in her simple white vestment as of
old, and had expected at her first glance to rush to her arms, and there
be allowed to pour forth his joy at again meeting her, never more to
part--beheld with dismay this gorgeously arrayed and queenly figure.
This could not be the Leta whom he had known, or, if so, how changed!
Was this the customary attire of slaves in high-placed families? Or
could it be the token of a guilty favoritism? His heart sank within him;
and he stood nervously clinging against the door behind him, fearing to
advance, lest, at the first step, some terrible truth, of which he had
already seemed to feel the premonitions, might burst upon him.

And she, for the moment, sat aghast, not knowing but that the gods, to
punish her pride and ambition, had sent a spectre to confront her. But
being of strong mind and but little given to superstitious terrors, she
instantly reasoned out the facts of his simultaneous captivity with
herself and coincidence of ownership; and her sole remaining doubt was
in what manner she should treat him. They had parted in sorrow and
tears, and she knew that he now expected her to fall into his arms and
there repeat her former vows of constancy and love. But that could not
be. Had he come to her but an hour before, while her dreams of the
future were of a vague and unsatisfactory character, she might have
acted upon such an impulse. But now, a glorious vision of what might
possibly happen had kindled her ambition with brighter fires than ever
before; and could she surrender all that, and think again only upon
starving freedom in a cottage home?

'Is it thou, Cleotos? Welcome to Rome!' she said at length, throwing
from her shoulder the purple cloak, and approaching him. As she spoke,
she held out her hand. He took it in his own, in a lifeless and
mechanical sort of way, and gazed into her face with a strange look of
inquiring doubt, which momentarily settled into an expression of deeper
apprehension. The blackness of despair began to enter into his soul. Now
that she was divested of her borrowed richness, she looked more like
herself, and that was surely her voice uttering tones of greeting; but
somehow her heart did not seem to be in them, and, for a certainty, this
had not been her wonted style of welcome.

'I thought,' she continued, 'that thou wert slain. Certainly when I
parted from you ere you fled into the mountains--'

'You know that I fled not at all,' he interrupted, the color mounting
into his temples. 'Why do you speak so, Leta? I retired to the mountains
to meet my friends there and with them carry on the defence; and,
previous thereto, I conducted you to what I believed to be a place of
safety. And I fought my best against the foe, and was brought nigh unto
death. This I did, though I can boast of but a weak and slender frame.
And it is hard that the first greeting of one so well loved as you
should be a taunt.'

'Nay, forgive me,' she said. 'I doubt not your valor. It was but in
forgetfulness that I spoke. I meant it not for a taunt.' And in truth
she had not so meant it. It was but the inadvertent expression of a
feeling which the sight of his feeble and boyish figure unwittingly made
upon her--an incapacity to connect deeds of valor with apparent physical
weakness. But this very inability to judge of his true nature by the
soul that strove to look into her own rather than by material
impressions was perhaps no slight proof of the little unison between her
nature and his.

'Sit down here,' she continued, 'and tell me all that has happened to
you.' And they sat together, and he briefly told her of his warlike
adventures, his wound, his captivity, his recognition of herself, and
his successful attempt to be once more under the same roof with her. And
somehow it still seemed to him that their talk was not as of old, and
that her sympathy with his misfortunes was but weak and cheerless; and
though he tried to interweave the customary words of endearment with his
story, there was a kind of inner check upon him, so that they came not
readily to his lips as of old. And she sat, trying to listen, and indeed
keeping the thread of his adventures in her mind; but all the while
finding her attention fail as she speculated how she could best give
that explanation of her feelings which she knew would soon be demanded
of her.

'And here I am at last, Leta--as yourself, a slave!' he concluded.

'Courage, my friend!' was her answer. 'There are very many degrees and
fates reserved for all in this old Rome, and much for every man to
learn. And many a one who has begun as a slave has, in the end, attained
not only to freedom, but to high honor and station.'

'If the gods were to give me honor and station, far be it from me to
refuse the gift,' he said. 'But that, of itself alone, would not content
me, unless you were there to share the good with me. And with yourself I
would crave no other blessing. We are slaves here, Leta, but even that
fate may have its mitigations and happiness for us.'

She was silent. How could she tell it to him? But his suspicions, at
first vague, were now aroused by her very silence into more certainty.

'Tell me,' he cried, again taking her hand, 'tell me my fate; and if
sorrow is to come upon me, let it come now. It seems as though there
were indeed evil tidings in store for me. The blight of anticipated evil
even weighed upon me ere I passed yonder hall, and when I knew no reason
why I should not find you loving of heart and humble of desire as in
other days. Is it all gone? Are you no longer the same? This tawdry
velvet in which I found you arrayed--is it the type of a something
equally foreign to your nature, and which imperial Rome has thrown
about you to aid in crushing out the better feelings of your heart?'

'My friend, my brother,' she said at length, with some real pity and
some false sorrow, 'why have we again met? Why is it now forced upon me
to tell you that the past must always be the past with us?'

He dropped her hand, and the tears started into his eyes. Much as the
words and gestures of the last few minutes had prepared him for the
announcement, yet when it came, it smote him as though there had been no
premonition of it; so lovingly had his heart persisted in clinging to
the faint hope that he might have been mistaken. A low wail of anguish
burst from his lips.

'And this is the end of all?' he sobbed.

'Think only,' she said, 'think only that I am not worthy of you.'

'The old story--the old story which has been repeated from the beginning
of the world,' he cried, stung into life by something of heartlessness
which he detected in her affected sympathy. 'The woman weaves her toils
about the man--gilds his life until there is no brightness which can
compare with it--fills his heart with high hopes of a blissful
future--so changes his soul that he can cherish no thought but of
her--so alters the whole tenor and purpose of his existence that he even
welcomes slavery as a precious boon because it brings him under the same
roof with her. And then--some other fancy having crossed her mind--or an
absence of a week or two having produced forgetfulness--she insults him
with a cruel mockery of self-unworthiness as her sole apology for
perfidy.'

'Nay,' she exclaimed, half glad of an excuse to quarrel with him. 'If
you would rather have it otherwise, think, then, that I have never loved
you as I should, even though I may have imagined that I did.'

'Go on,' he said, seeing that she hesitated.

'I know,' she continued, 'that in other days you have had my words for
it, uttered, indeed, in sympathy and truth, as I then felt them. But I
was a simple girl, then, Cleotos. The sea before me and the mountains
behind bounded all my knowledge of the world. The people whom I saw were
but few. The tastes I had were simple. Is it wonderful that I should
have listened to the first one who spoke to me of love, and should have
imagined that my heart made response to him? But now, now, Cleotos--'

'Now, what?' he exclaimed. 'Would you say that now you have seen the
world better and think differently? What is there in all that you have
since known that should change you? Is it that the sight of war and
tumult--of burning towns and bleeding captives--of insolent soldiers and
cruel taskmasters can have made you less in favor with our own native,
vine-covered retreat, with its neighborhood of simple peasantry? Or
would you say that since then you have met others whom you can love
better than me? Whom, indeed, have you seen but weary prisoners like
myself, or else unpitying conquerors whose love would be your shame? You
blush, Leta! Pray the gods that it be not the latter! Struggle sternly
with yourself to realize that you are merely for the moment fascinated
by the unaccustomed splendors of this swarming city; and that after its
first brightness has worn off from your dazzled eyes, your soul may
return to its native, pure simplicity and innocence, and--and to me.'

'Speak not so, Cleotos,' she responded. 'My eyes are not dazzled with
any splendors; but for all that, our ways now and forever lie in
different directions. We are slaves, and can give little heed to our
affections. Our only course must be for each to strive to rise above
this serfdom; and if, in doing so, either can help the other, it must
be done--but in friendship, not in love. To you, through good conduct,
there may open, even in slavery, many posts of influence and profit;
and, in so much, of better worth than our own boasted liberty with
poverty. And as for me--I see my destiny already beckoning me to a
position such as many a free Roman woman might envy.'

Speaking thus obscurely of her anticipated grandeur--to be gained,
perhaps, by abasement, but none the less in her mind certain to end in
such legitimate position as might sanctify the previous steps
thereto--her face again lit up with a glow of pride, as though she were
already the powerful patrician's wife. And revelling in such dreams, she
saw not the agony which overspread her listener's face as he read her
thoughts partly awrong, and believed her content to throw herself away
forever, in order to gain some temporary exaltation as a wealthy Roman's
plaything.

'And when that day does come,' she continued, 'if, for the memory of our
old friendship, I can help to elevate you to some better sphere--'

'Enough! No more!' he cried bitterly; and starting from her, he fled out
of the room. It were hard enough that he should lose her, harder yet
that he should hear her marking out for herself a life of ruin for some
temporary gain, but harder than all, that she should dare to mistake his
nature so far as to insult him with the promise of aiding his prosperity
through such an influence.

'Let me go hence!' he cried, in his agony, to Ænone, who, still radiant
with her newly discovered hope, met him at the door. 'Send me to the
captain Polidorus--anywhere--only let me leave this house!'




AMERICAN SLAVERY AND FINANCES.

By Hon. Robert J. Walker.


     [The following article, from the pen of Hon. R. J. Walker, forms
     the APPENDIX to the volume just published in England, and
     now exciting great attention there, containing the various
     pamphlets issued by him during the last six months. The subjects
     discussed embrace Jefferson Davis and Repudiation, Recognition,
     Slavery, Finances and Resources of the United States. It would be
     difficult to overestimate the effect of these Letters abroad. As
     our readers already possess them in the pages of THE
     CONTINENTAL, we enable them to complete the series by
     furnishing the ensuing Appendix. It closes with an extract from an
     'Introductory Address' delivered by Mr. Walker before the National
     Institute, at Washington, D. C., giving a short account of the
     various improvements and discoveries made by our countrymen in the
     Inductive Sciences. As showing to England what a high rank we had
     even then taken in the world of science, and pointing out to her
     the number and fame of our savants, it will be read with just pride
     and interest. As the Address was delivered in 1844, it of course
     contains no details of our marvellous progress since that date in
     science and discovery.--ED. CONTINENTAL.]

We have seen by the Census Tables, if the product _per capita_ of the
Slave States in 1859 had been equal to that of the Free States for that
year, that the ADDITIONAL value produced in 1859 in the Slave
States would have been $1,531,631,000. Now as our population augmented
during that decade 35.59 per cent., this _increased_ value, at that
ratio, in 1869 would have been $2,052,332,272. If multiplying the amount
_each year_ by three only, instead of 3-559/1000 the result, during that
decade, would have been as follows:

  Product of 1860, $1,559,039,962
       "     1861,  1,605,811,060
       "     1862,  1,654,085,391
       "     1863,  1,703,707,952
       "     1864,  1,754,819,198
       "     1865,  1,807,464,773
       "     1866,  1,861,688,716
       "     1867,  1,917,539,377
       "     1868,  1,975,065,558
       "     1869,  2,034,317,524
                    -------------
  Total augmented
  product of the  $17,873,539,511
  decade

That is, the total _increased_ product of the Slave States, during the
decade from 1859 to 1869, would have been $17,873,539,511, if the
production in the Slave States had been equal, _per capita_, to that of
the Free States. This, it will be remembered, is gross product. This, it
will be perceived, is far below the actual result, as we can see by
comparing the real product of 1869, $2,052,332,272, as before given,
with the $2,034,317,524, as the result of a multiplication by three each
year.

The ratio of the increase of our _wealth_, from 1850 to 1860, as shown
by the census, was much greater than that of our population--namely,
126.45 per cent. Multiplying by this ratio (126.45), the result would be
an _additional_ product in 1860, in the Slave States, of $3,427,619,475.
But our wealth increases in an augmented ratio during each decade.

Thus, the ratio of the increase of our wealth, as shown by the census,
was as follows:

  From 1820 to 1830, 41 per cent.
   "   1830 to 1840, 42     "
   "   1840 to 1850, 64     "
   "   1850 to 1860, 126.45 "

Thus, the increase of our wealth from 1840 to 1850, was more than 50 per
cent. greater than from 1830 to 1840; and from 1850 to 1860, nearly
double that from 1840 to 1850. At the same duplicate ratio, from 1850 to
1870, the result would be over 250 per cent. That such would have been a
close approximation to the true result, is rendered still more probable
by the fact, that the product of 1859, as shown by the census, was 250
per cent. greater than that of 1849.

If, then, instead of 126.45 per cent., we were to assume 250 per cent.
as the ratio, the result would be in 1869, $5,297,708,612, as the
_increased_ product of the Slave States that year, if the ratio _per
capita_ were equal to that of the Free States. If we carry out these
ratios from 1859 to 1869, either of 126.45, or of 250, into the
aggregate of the decade, the results are startling. Assuming, however,
that of the population only, we have seen that the aggregate result in
the decade from 1859 to 1869 was over seventeen billions of dollars, or
largely more than ten times our debt incurred by this rebellion.

When, then, I reassert the opinion, heretofore expressed by me, that as
the result of the superiority of free over slave labor, our wealth in
1870, and especially in each succeeding decade, as a consequence of the
entire abolition of Slavery in the United States, will be far greater,
notwithstanding the debt, than if the rebellion had never occurred,
there is here presented conclusive official proof of the truth of this
statement. We have seen that our wealth increased from 1850 to 1860,
126.45 per cent., whilst that of England, from 1851 to 1861, augmented
only at the rate of 37 per cent.

Applying these several ratios to the progress of the wealth of the
United Kingdom and the United States, respectively, in 1870, 1880, 1890,
and 1900, the result is given below.

We have seen by the census, that our national wealth was, in

  1850,   $7,135,780,228
  1860,   16,159,616,068

Increase from 1850 to 1860, 126.45 per cent.

England, from 1851 to 1861, 37 per cent.

Assuming these ratios, the result would be as follows:

  UNITED KINGDOM.

  1861, wealth, $31,500,000,000
  1871,   "      48,155,000,000
  1881,   "      59,122,350,000
  1891,   "      80,997,619,500
  1901,   "     110,966,837,715


  UNITED STATES.

  1860, wealth, $16,159,616,068
  1870,   "      36,593,450,585
  1880,   "      82,865,868,849
  1890,   "     187,314,353,225
  1900,   "     423,330,438,288

Thus, it appears by the census of each nation, that, each increasing in
the same ratio respectively as for the last decade, the wealth of the
United States in 1880 would exceed that of the United Kingdom
$23,743,518,849; that in 1890 it would be much more than double, and in
1900, approaching quadruple that of the United Kingdom.

When we reflect that England increases in wealth much more rapidly than
any other country of Europe, the value of these statistics may be
estimated, as proving how readily our national debt can be extinguished
without oppressive taxation.

These are the results, founded on the actual statistics, without
estimating the enormous increase of our national wealth, arising from
the abolition of Slavery. We have seen that, by the official tables of
the census of 1860, the value of the _products_ of the United States, so
far as given, for the year 1859, was $5,290,000,000. But this is very
short of the actual result. The official report (pages 59, 190, 198 to
210) shows that this included _only_ the products of 'agriculture,
manufactures, mines, and fisheries.' In referring to the result as to
'_manufactures_,' at page 59 of his official report before given, the
Superintendent says: 'If to this amount were added the very large
aggregate of mechanical productions below the annual value of $500, of
which no official cognizance is taken, the result would be one of
_startling magnitude_.'

1. This omission alone, for gross product, is estimated at $500,000,000.

2. Milk and eggs, fodder, wood, poultry, and feathers, omitted, gross
products, estimated at $350,000,000.

3. Gross earnings of trade and commerce, including freights, &c., by
land and water, $1,000,000,000.

4. Gross earnings of all other pursuits and business, including all
other omissions, $1,000,000,000.

Total gross products of 1860, as thus estimated, $8,140,000,000, of
which the amount for the Free States, as estimated, is $6,558,334,000,
and for the Slave States, $1,581,666,000.

I have heretofore referred to the vast influence of _education_ as one
of the principal causes of the greater product _per capita_ in the Free
than in the Slave States, of the much larger number of patents, of
inventions, and discoveries, in the former than in the latter.

At the April meeting of 1844, upon the request of the Society, I
delivered at Washington (D. C.) the Introductory Address for the
National Institute, in which, up to that date, an account was given by
me of 'the various improvements and discoveries made by our countrymen
in the inductive sciences.' On reference to that address, which was
published at its date (April, 1844), with their _bulletin_, it will be
seen that, from the great Franklin down to Kinnersley, Fitch, Rumsey,
Fulton, Evans, Rush, the Stevenses of New Jersey, Whitney, Godfrey,
Rittenhouse, Silliman, J. Q. Adams, Cleveland, Adrain, Bowditch, Hare,
Bache, Henry, Pierce, Espy, Patterson, Nulty, Morse, Walker, Loomis,
Rogers, Saxton, and many others; these men, with scarcely an exception,
were from the Free States.


EXTRACT.

And, first, of electricity. This has been cultivated with the greatest
success in our country, from the time when Franklin with his kite drew
down electricity from the thunder cloud, to that when Henry showed the
electrical currents produced by the distant lightning discharge. In
Franklin's day the idea prevailed that there were two kinds of
electricity, one produced by rubbing vitreous substances, the other by
the friction of resinous bodies. Franklin's theory of one electric fluid
in all bodies, disturbed in its equilibrium by friction, and thus
accumulating in one and deserting the other, maintains its ground, still
capable of explaining the facts elicited in the progress of modern
discovery. Franklin believed that electricity and lightning were the
same, and proceeded to the proof. He made the perilous experiment, by
exploring the air with a kite, and drawing down from the thunder cloud
the lightning's discharge upon his own person. The bold philosopher
received unharmed the shock of the electric fluid, more fortunate than
others who have fallen victims to less daring experiments. The world was
delighted with the discoveries of the great American, and for a time
electricity was called Franklinism on the continent of Europe; but
Franklin was born here, and the name was not adopted in England. While
Franklin made experiments, Kinnersley exhibited and illustrated them,
and also rediscovered the seemingly opposite electricities of glass and
resin. Franklin's lightning rod is gradually surmounting the many
difficulties with which it contended, as experience attests the greater
safety of houses protected by the rod, properly mounted, whilst the
British attempt to substitute balls for points has failed. This
question, as to powder magazines, has lately excited much controversy.
Should a rod be attached to the magazine, or should it be placed upon a
post at some distance? This question has been solved by Henry. When an
electrical discharge passes from one body to another, the electricity in
all the bodies in the neighborhood is affected. Henry magnetized a
needle in a long conductor, by the discharge from a cloud, more than a
mile from the conductor. If a discharge passes down a rod, attached to a
powder house, may it not cause a spark to pass from one receptacle for
powder to another, and thus inflame the whole? The electrical plenum,
which Henry supposed, is no doubt disturbed, and to great distances; but
the effect diminishes with the distance. If all the principal conductors
about a building can be connected with a lightning rod, there is no
danger of a discharge; for it is only in leaving or entering a conductor
that electricity produces heating effects; but if not, the rod is safer
at a moderate distance from the building. The rate at which electricity
moved was another of the experiments of Franklin. A wire was led over a
great extent of ground, and a discharge passed through it. No interval
could be perceived between the time of the spark passing to and from the
wire at the two ends. Not long since, Wheatston of England, aided by our
own great mechanic, Saxton, solved the problem. This has induced Arago,
of France, to propose to test the rival theories of light, by similar
means--to measure thus a velocity, to detect which has heretofore
required a motion over the line of the diameter of the earth's orbit.

In galvanism, our countrymen have made many important discoveries. Dr.
Hare invented instruments of such great power as well to deserve the
names of calorimeter and deflagrator. The most refractory substances
yielded to the action of the deflagrator, melting like wax before a
common fire. Even charcoal was supposed to be fused in the experiments
of Hare and Silliman, and the visionary speculated on the possibility of
black as well as white diamonds. Draper, by his most ingenious galvanic
battery, of two metals and two liquids, with one set of elements, in a
glass tube not the size of the little finger, was able to decompose
water. Faraday, of England, discovered the principle, that when a
current of electricity is set in motion, or stopped in a conductor, a
neighboring conductor has a current produced in the opposite direction.
Henry proved that this principle might be made available to produce an
action of a current upon itself, by forming a conductor in the whirls of
a spiral, so that sparks and shocks might be obtained by the use of such
spirals, when connected with a pair of galvanic plates, a current from
which could give no sparks and no shocks. Henry's discoveries of the
effects of a current in producing several alternations in currents in
neighboring conductors--the change of the quality of electricity which
gives shocks to the muscles into that producing heat, and _vice
versa_--his mode of graduating these shocks--his theoretical
investigations into the causes of these alternations--are abstruse, but
admirable; and his papers have been republished throughout Europe. The
heating effects of a galvanic current have been applied by Dr. Hare to
blasting. The accidents which so often happen in quarries may be avoided
by firing the charge from a distance, as the current which heats the
wire, passing through the charge, may be conveyed, without perceptible
diminution, through long distances. A feeble attempt to attribute this
important invention of Dr. Hare to Colonel Pasley, an English engineer,
has been abandoned. This is the marvellous agent by which our eminent
countryman, Morse, encouraged by an appropriation made by Congress,
will, by means of his electric telegraph, soon communicate information
forty miles, from Washington to Baltimore, more rapidly than by
whispering in the ear of a friend sitting near us. A telegraph on a new
plan at that time, invented by Mr. Grout, of Massachusetts, in 1799,
asked a question and received an answer in less than ten minutes through
a distance of ninety miles. The telegraph of Mr. Morse will prove, I
think, superior to all others; and the day is not distant when, by its
aid, we may perhaps ask questions and receive replies across our
continent, from _ocean to ocean_, thus uniting with steam in enlarging
the limits over which our Republic may be safely extended.[2]

Many of our countrymen have contributed to the branch which regards the
action of electrified and magnetic bodies. Lukens's application of
magnetism to steel (called _touching_), the compass of Bissel for
detecting local attraction, of Burt for determining the variation of the
compass, and the observations on the variations of the needle made by
Winthrop and Dewitt, deserve notice and commendation. Not long since,
Gauss, of Germany, invented instruments by which the changes of magnetic
variation and force could be accurately determined. Magnetic action is
ever varying. The needle does not point in the same direction for even a
few minutes together. The force of magnetism, also, perpetually varies.
'True as the needle to the pole' is not a correct simile for the same
place, and, if we pass from one spot to another, is falsified at each
change of our position; for the needle changes its direction, and the
force varies. Enlarged and united observations, embracing the various
portions of the world, must produce important results. The observations
at Philadelphia, conducted by Dr. A. D. Bache, and now continued by him
under the direction of the Topographical Bureau, are of great value, and
will, it is hoped, be published by Congress. Part of them have already
first seen the light in Europe--a result much to be regretted, for we
are not strong enough in science to spare from the national records the
contributions of our countrymen.

These combined observations, progressing throughout the world, are of
the highest importance. The University of Cambridge, the American
Philosophical Society, and Girard College have erected observatories;
and one connected with the Depot of Charts and Instruments has been
built in this city last year by the Government, and thoroughly furnished
with instruments for complete observations. The names of Bache, Gillis,
Pierce, Lovering, and Bond are well known in connection with these
establishments.

A magnetic survey of Pennsylvania has been made by private enterprise,
and the beginning of a survey in New York. Loomis has observed in Ohio,
Locke in Ohio and Iowa, and to him belongs the discovery of the position
of the point of greatest magnetic intensity in the Western World. Most
interesting magnetic observations (now in progress of publication by
Congress) are the result of the toilsome, perilous, and successful
expedition, under Commander Wilkes, of our navy, by whom was discovered
the Antarctic continent, and a portion of its soil and rock brought home
to our country.

The analogy of the auroral displays with those of electricity in motion,
was first pointed out by Dr. A. D. Bache, whose researches, in
conjunction with Lloyd of Dublin, to determine whether differences of
longitude could be measured by the observations of small simultaneous
changes in the position of the magnetic needle, led to the knowledge of
the curious fact, that these changes, which had been traced as
simultaneous, or nearly so, in the continent of Europe, did not so
extend across the Atlantic.

Kindred to these two branches are electro-magnetism and
magneto-electricity, connected with which, as discoverers, are our
countrymen Dana, Green, Hare, Henry, Page, Rogers, and Saxton. The
reciprocal machine for producing shocks, invented by Page, and the
powerful galvanic magnet of Henry, are entitled to respectful notice.
This force, it was thought, might be substituted for steam; but no
experiments have as yet established its use, on any important scale, as
a motive power. The fact that an electrical spark could be produced by a
peculiar arrangement of a coil of wire, connected with a magnet, is a
recent discovery; and the first magneto-electric machine capable of
keeping up a continuous current was invented by Saxton.

Electricity and magnetism touch in some points upon heat. Heat produces
electrical currents; electrical currents produce heat. Heat destroys
magnetism. Melted iron is incapable of magnetic influence. Reduction of
temperature in iron so far decreases the force, that a celebrated
philosopher made an elaborate series of experiments to ascertain whether
a great reduction of temperature might not develop magnetic properties
in metals other than iron. This branch of thermo-electricity has
received from us but little attention. Franklin's experiments, by
placing differently colored cloths in the snow, and showing the depth to
which they sank, are still quoted, and great praise has been bestowed
abroad on a more elaborate series of experiments, by a descendant of
his, Dr. A. D. Bache, proving that this law does not hold good as to
heat, unaccompanied by light. The experiments of Saxon and Goddard
demonstrate that solid bodies do slowly evaporate. It is proper here to
mention our countryman, Count Rumford, whose discoveries as to the
nature and properties of heat, improvement in stoves and gunnery, and in
the structure of chimneys and economy of fuel, have been so great and
useful.

Light accompanies heat of a certain temperature. That it acts directly
to increase or decrease magnetic force, is not yet proved; and the
interesting experiments made by Dr. Draper, in Virginia, go to show that
it is without magnetic influence. The discussion of this subject forms,
the branch of optics, touching physical science on the one side, the
most refined, and the highest range of mathematics on the other.
Rittenhouse first suggested the true explanation of the experiment, of
the apparent conversion of a cameo into an intaglio, when viewed through
a compound microscope, and anticipated many years Brewster's theory.
Hopkinson wrote well on the experiment made by looking at a street lamp
through a slight texture of silk. Joscelyn, of New York, investigated
the causes of the irradiation manifested by luminous bodies, as for
instance the stars. Of late, photographic experiments have occupied much
attention, and Draper has advanced the bold idea, supported by
experiment, that the agent in the so-called photography, is not light,
nor heat, but an agent differing from any other known principle. Henry
has investigated the luminous emanation from lime, calcined with
sulphur, and certain other substances, and finds that it differs much
from light in some of its qualities.

Astronomy is the most ancient and highest branch of physics. One of our
earliest and greatest efforts in this branch was the invention of the
mariner's quadrant, by Godfrey, a glazier of Philadelphia. The transit
of Venus, in the last century, called forth the researches of
Rittenhouse, Owen, Biddle, and President Smith, near Philadelphia, and
of Winthrop, at Boston. Two orreries were made by Rittenhouse, as also a
machine for predicting eclipses. Most useful observations, connected
with the solar eclipses, from 1832 to 1840, have been made by Paine, of
Boston. We have now well-supplied observatories at West Point,
Washington, Cambridge, Philadelphia, Hudson, Ohio, and Tuskaloosa,
Alabama; and the valuable labors of Loomis, Bartlett, Gillis, Bond,
Pierce, Walker, and Kendall are well known. Mr. Adams, so distinguished
in this branch and that of weights and measures, laid last year the
corner stone of an observatory at Cincinnati, where will soon be one of
the largest and most powerful telescopes in the world. Most interesting
observations as to the great comet of 1843 were made by Alexander,
Anderson, Bartlett, Kendall, Pierce, Walker, Downes, and Loomis, and
valuable astronomical instruments have been constructed by Amasa
Holcomb, of Massachusetts, and Wm. J. Young, of Philadelphia.

It is difficult to class the brilliant meteors of November the 13th,
1833. If such meteors are periodic, the discovery was made by Professor
Olmsted; and Mr. Herrick, of New Haven, has added valuable suggestions.
The idea that observers, differently placed at the time of appearance
and disappearance of the same meteor, would give the means of
determining differences of longitude, was first applied in our own
country, where the difference of longitude of Princeton and Philadelphia
was determined by observations of Henry and Alexander, Espy and Bache.
In meteorology our countrymen have succeeded well. Dr. Wells, of South
Carolina, elaborated his beautiful and original theory of the formation
of dew, and supported it by many well-devised and conclusive
experiments. The series of hourly observations, by Professor Snell and
Captain Mordecai, are well known; and the efforts of New York and
Pennsylvania, of the medical department of the army, and its present
enlightened head, Dr. Lawson, have much advanced this branch of science.
The interesting question, Does our climate change? seems to be answered
thus far in the negative, by registers kept in Massachusetts and New
York. There are two rival theories of storms. That of Redfield, of a
rotary motion of a wide column of air, combined with a progressive
motion in a curved line. Espy builds on the law of physics, examines the
action of an upmoving column of air, shows the causes of its motion and
the results, and then deduces his most beautiful theory of rain and of
land and water spouts. This he puts to the test of observation; and in
the inward motion of wind toward the centre of storms, finds a striking
verification of his theory. This theory is also sustained by the
overthrow or injury, in the recent tornado at Natchez, of the houses
whose doors and windows were closed, while those which were open mostly
escaped unhurt. Mr. Espy must be considered, not only here, but
throughout the world, as at the head of this branch of science. This
subject has been greatly advanced by Professor Loomis, whose paper has
been pronounced, by the highest authority, to be the best specimen of
inductive reasoning which meteorology has produced. The most recent and
highly valuable meteorological works of Dr. Samuel Forry are much
esteemed. Many important discoveries in pneumatics were made by Dr.
Franklin and Count Rumford, and the air pump was also greatly improved
by Dr. Prince, of Salem.

Chemistry, in all its departments, has been successfully pursued among
us. Dana, Draper, Ellet, Emmet, Hare, the Mitchells, Silliman, and
Torrey, are well known as chemical philosophers; and Booth, Boyé,
Chilton, Keating, Mather, R. Rogers, Seybert, Shepherd, and Vanuxen, as
_analysts_; and F. Bache, Webster, Greene, Mitchell, Silliman, and Hare,
as authors. In my native town of Northumberland, Pennsylvania, resided
two adopted citizens, most eminent as chemists and philosophers,
Priestley and Cooper. The latter, who was one of my own preceptors, was
greatly distinguished as a writer, scholar, jurist, and physician, as
well as a chemist. Priestley, although I do not concur in his peculiar
views of theology, was certainly one of the most able and learned of
ecclesiastical writers, and possessed also a mind most vigorous and
original. His discoveries in pneumatic chemistry have exceeded those of
any other philosopher. He discovered vital air, many new acids, chemical
substances, paints, and dyes. He separated nitrous and oxygenous airs,
and first exhibited acids and alkalies in a gaseous form. He ascertained
that air could be purified by the process of vegetation, and that light
evolved pure air from vegetables. He detected the powerful action of
oxygenous air upon the blood, and first pointed out the true theory of
respiration. The eudiometer, a most curious instrument for fixing the
purity of air, by measuring the proportion of oxygen, was discovered by
Dr. Priestley. He lived and died in my native town, universally beloved
as a man, and greatly admired as a philosopher. Chemistry has actively
advanced among us during the present century. Hare's compound blowpipe
came from his hand so perfect, in 1802, that all succeeding attempts of
Dr. Clark, of England, and of all others, in Europe and America, to
improve upon it or go beyond the effects produced, have wholly failed.
His mode of mixing oxygen and hydrogen gases, the instant before burning
them, was at once simple, effective, and safe. The most refractory
metallic and mineral substances yielded to the intense heat produced by
the flame of the blowpipe. In chemical analysis, the useful labors of
Keating, Vanuxen, Seybert, Booth, Clemson, Litton, and Moss, would fill
many volumes. In organic chemistry, the researches of Clark, Hare, and
Boyé were rewarded by the discovery of a new ether, the most explosive
compound known to man. Mitchell's experiments on the penetration of
membranes by gases, and the ingenious extension of them by Dr. Rogers,
are worthy of all praise. The softening of indiarubber, by Dr. Mitchell,
renders it a most useful article. Dyer's discovery of soda ash yielded
him a competence. Our countrymen have also made most valuable
improvements in refining sugar, in the manufacture of lard oil and
stearin candles, and the preservation of timber by Earle's process.
Sugar and molasses have been extracted in our country from the
cornstalk, but with what, if any profit, as to either, is not yet
determined. No part of mechanics has produced such surprising results as
the steam engine, and our countrymen have been among the foremost and
most distinguished in this great and progressive branch. When Rumsey, of
Pennsylvania, made a steamboat, which moved against the current of the
James River four miles an hour, his achievement was so much in advance
of the age, as to acquire no public confidence. When John Fitch's boat
stemmed the current of the Delaware, contending successfully with sail
boats, it was called, in derision, the _scheme boat_. So the New
Yorkers, when the steamboat of their own truly great mechanic, Stevens,
after making a trip from Hoboken, burnt accidentally one of its boiler
tubes, it was proclaimed a failure. Fulton also encountered unbounded
ridicule and opposition, as he advanced to confer the greatest benefits
on mankind by the application of steam to navigation. So Oliver Evans,
of Pennsylvania (who has made such useful improvements in the flour
mill), was pronounced insane, when he applied to the Legislatures of
Pennsylvania and Maryland for special privileges in regard to the
application of steam to locomotion on common roads. In 1810 he was
escorted by a mob of boys, when his amphibolas was moved on wheels by
steam more than a mile through the streets of Philadelphia to the river
Schuylkill, and there, taking to the water, was paddled by steam to the
wharves of the Delaware, where it was to work as a dredging machine.
Fulton's was the first successful steamboat, Stevens's the first that
navigated the ocean, Oliver Evans's the first high-pressure engine
applied to steam navigation. Stevens's boat, by an accident, did not
precede Fulton's, and Stevens's engine was wholly American, and
constructed entirely by himself, and his propeller resembled much that
now introduced by Ericsson. Stevens united the highest mechanical skill
with a bold, original, inventive genius. His sons (especially Mr. Robert
L. Stevens, of New York) have inherited much of the extraordinary skill
and talent of their distinguished father. The first steamboat that ever
crossed the ocean was built by one of our countrymen, and their skill in
naval architecture has been put in requisition by the Emperor of Russia
and the Sultan of Turkey. The steam machines invented by our countrymen
to drive piles, load vessels, and excavate roads, are most ingenious and
useful. The use of steam, as a locomotive power, upon the water and the
land, is admirably adapted to our mighty rivers and extended territory.
From Washington to the mouth of the Oregon is but one half,[3] and to
the mouth of the Del Norte but one fourth, of the distance of the
railroads already constructed here; and to the latter point, at the rate
of motion (thirty miles an hour) now in daily use abroad, the trip would
be performed in two days, and to the former in four days. Thus, steam,
if we measure distance by the time in which it is traversed, renders our
whole Union, with its most extended limits, smaller than was the State
of New York ten years since. Steam cars have been moved, as an
experiment, both here and abroad, many hundred miles, at the rate of
sixty miles an hour; but what will be the highest velocity ultimately
attained in common use, either upon the water or the land, is a most
important problem, as yet entirely unsolved. Our respected citizens,
Morey and Drake, have endeavored to substitute the force of explosion of
gaseous compounds for steam. The first was the pioneer, and the second
has shown that the problem is still worth pursuing to solution. An
energetic Western mechanic made a bold but unsuccessful effort to put in
operation an engine acting by the expansion of air by heat; and a
similar most ingenious attempt was made by Mr. Walter Byrnes, of
Concordia, Louisiana; as also to substitute compressed air, and air
compressed and expanded, as a locomotive power. All attempts to use air
as a motive power, except the balloon, the sail vessel, the air gun, and
the windmill, have thus far failed; but what inventive genius may yet
accomplish in this respect, remains yet undetermined. There is, it is
true, a mile or more of pneumatic railway used between Dublin and
Kingstown. An air pump, driven by steam, exhausts the air from a
cylinder in which a piston moves; this cylinder is laid the whole length
of the road, and the piston is connected to a car above, so that, as the
piston moves forward on the exhaustion of the air in front of it, the
car is also carried forward. The original idea of this pneumatic railway
was derived from the contrivance of an American, quite unknown to fame,
who, as his sign expressed it, showed to visitors a new mode of carrying
the mail,[4] more simple, and quite as valuable, practically, as this
atmospheric railway. The submerged propeller of Ericsson, and the
submerged paddle wheel, the rival experiments of our two distinguished
naval officers, Stockton and Hunter, are now candidates for public
favor; and the Princeton on the ocean, as she moves in noiseless
majesty, at a speed never before attained at sea, seems to attest the
value of one of these experiments, while the other is yet to be
determined. The impenetrable iron steam vessel of Mr. Stevens is not yet
completed, nor have those terrific engines of war, his explosive shells,
yet been brought to the test of actual conflict.

In curious and useful mechanical inventions, our countrymen are
unsurpassed, and a visit to our new and beautiful Patent Office will
convince the close observer that the inventive genius of America never
was more active than at the present moment. The machines for working up
cotton, hemp, and wool, from their most crude state to the finest and
most useful fabrics, have all been improved among us. The cotton gin of
Eli Whitney has altered the destinies of one third of our country, and
doubled the exports of the Union. The ingenious improvements for
imitating medals, by parallel lines upon a plain surface, which, by the
distances between them, give all the effects of light and shade that
belong to a raised or depressed surface, invented by Gobrecht and
perfected by Spencer, has been rendered entirely automatic by Saxton, so
that it not only rules its lines at proper distances and of suitable
lengths, but when its work is done it stops. In hydraulics, we have
succeeded well; and the great aqueduct over the Potomac at Georgetown,
constructed by Major Turnbull, of the Topographical Corps, exhibits new
contrivances, in overcoming obstacles never heretofore encountered in
similar projects, and has been pronounced in Europe one of the most
skilful works of the age.

The abstract mathematics does not seem so well suited to the genius of
our countrymen as its application to other sciences. Those among us who
have most successfully pursued the pure mathematics, are chiefly our
much-esteemed adopted citizens, such as Nulty, Adrain, Bonnycastle,
Gill, and Hassler. Bowditch was an American, and is highly distinguished
at home and abroad. Such men as Plana and Babbage rank him among the
first class, and his commentary on the 'Mécanique Céleste' of Laplace,
has secured for him a niche in the temple of fame, near to that of its
illustrious author. Anderson and Strong are known to all who love
mathematics, and Fischer was cut off by death in the commencement of a
bright career. And may I here be indulged in grateful remembrance of two
of my own preceptors, Dr. R. M. Patterson and Eugene Nulty. The first
was the professor at my Alma Mater (the University of Pennsylvania) in
natural philosophy and the application of mathematics to many branches
of science. He was beloved and respected by all the class, as the
courteous gentleman and the profound scholar; and the Mint of the United
States, now under his direction, at Philadelphia, has reached the
highest point of system, skill, and efficiency. In the pure mathematics
Nulty is unsurpassed at home or abroad. In an earlier day, the elder
Patterson, Ellicot, and Mansfield cultivated this branch successfully in
connection with astronomy.

A new and extensive country is the great field for descriptive natural
history. The beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects, shells, plants,
stones, and rocks are to be examined individually and classed; many new
varieties and species are found, and even new genera may occur. The
learned Mitchell, of New York, delighted in these branches. The eminent
Harlan, of Philadelphia, and McMultrie were of a later and more
philosophic school. Nuttall, of Cambridge, has distinguished himself in
natural history, and Haldeman is rising to eminence.

Ornithology is one of the most attractive branches of natural history.
Wilson was the pioneer; Ord, his biographer, followed, and his friend
Titian Peale; Audubon is universally known, and stands preëminent; and
the learned Nuttall and excellent and enthusiastic Townsend are much
respected. Most of these men have compassed sea and land, and
encountered many perils and hardships to find their specimens. They have
explored the mountains of the North, the swamps of Florida, the prairies
of the West, and accompanied the Exploring Expedition to the Antarctic,
and round the world. As botanists, the Bartrams, Barton, and Collins, of
Philadelphia, Torrey, of New York, Gray and Nuttall of Cambridge,
Darlington, of Westchester, are much esteemed. The first botanical
garden in our country was that of the Bartons, near Philadelphia; and
the first work on botany was from Barton, of the same city. Logan,
Woodward, Brailsford, Shelby, Cooper, Horsfield, Colden, Clayton,
Muhlenburg, Marshall, Cutler, and Hosack, were also distinguished in
this delightful branch.

A study of the shells of our country has raised to eminence the names of
Barnes, Conrad, Lea, and Raffinesque. The magnificent fresh-water shells
of our Western rivers are unrivalled in the Old World in size and
beauty. How interesting would be a collection of all the specimens which
the organic kingdom of America presents, properly classified and
arranged according to the regions and States whence they were brought!
Paris has the museum of the natural history of France, and London of
Great Britain; but Washington has no museum[5] of the United States,
though so much richer in all these specimens.

In mineralogy, the work of Cleveland is most distinguished. Shepherd,
Mather, Troost, Torrey, and a few others, still pursue mineralogy for
its own sake; but, generally, our mineralogists have turned geologists,
studying rocks on a large scale, instead of their individual
constituents, and vieing with their brethren in Europe in bold and
successful generalization, and in the application of physical science to
their subject. Maclure was one of the pioneers, and Eaton and Silliman
contributed much to the stock of knowledge. This school has given rise
to the great geological surveys made or progressing in several of the
States. Jackson, in Maine, Hitchcock, in Massachusetts; Vanuxen, Conrad,
and Mather, in New York; the Rogerses, in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and
Virginia; Ducatel, in Maryland; Owen and Locke, in the West; Troost, in
Tennessee; Horton, in Ohio; the courageous, scientific, and lamented
Nicolet, in Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin, have made contributions, not
only to the geology of our country, but to the science of geology
itself, which are conceded to be among the most valuable of the present
day. The able reports of Owen and Nicolet were made to Congress, and
deserve the highest commendation.

In geographical science, the explorations of Lewis and Clark; of Long,
Nicolet, and the able and intrepid Fremont; the effective State survey
of Massachusetts; the surveys of our public lands; the determination of
the boundaries of our States, and especially those of Pennsylvania, by
Rittenhouse and Elliott; of part of Louisiana, by Graham and Kearny; of
Michigan, by Talcott; and of Maine, by Graham; have gained us great
credit. The national work of the coast survey, begun by the late Mr.
Hassler, and prosecuted through all discouragements and difficulties by
that indomitable man, has reflected honor upon his adopted country,
through the Government which liberally supported the work, and through
whose aid it is now progressing, under new auspices, with great
energy.[6] The lake survey is also now advancing under the direction of
Captain Williams, of the Topographical Corps. Among the important recent
explorations, is that of the enlightened, untiring, and intrepid
Fremont, to Oregon, which fixes the pass of the Rocky Mountains within
twenty miles of the northern boundary of Texas. Lieutenant Fremont is a
member of the Topographical Corps, which, together with that of
Engineers, contains so many distinguished officers, whose labors,
together with those of their most able and distinguished chiefs, Colonel
Totten and Colonel Abert, fill so large a portion of the public
documents, and are so well known and highly appreciated by both Houses
of Congress and by the country. The Emperor of Russia has entered the
ranks of our Topographical Corps, and employed one of their
distinguished members, Captain Whistler, to construct his great railroad
from St. Petersburg to Moscow. The travels of our countrymen, Stephens,
to Yucatan and Guatemala, to Egypt, Arabia, and Jerusalem, and of Dr.
Grant to Nestoria, have increased our knowledge of geography and of
antiquities, and have added new and striking proofs of the truths of
Christianity.

Fossil geology occupied much of the time and attention of the great
philosopher and statesman, Jefferson, and he was rewarded by the
discovery of the megatherium. The mastodon, exhumed in 1801, from the
marl pits of New York, by Charles Wilson Peale, has proved but one of an
order of animal giants. Even the tetracaulodon, or tusked mastodon, of
Godman, upon which rested his claims to fame, is not the most curious of
this order, as the investigations of Hayes and Horner have proved. This
order has excited the attention, not only of such minds as Cooper,
Harlan, and Hayes, but has also occupied the best naturalists of France,
Britain, Germany, and Italy.

Fossil conchology has attracted the attention of Conrad, the Lees, and
the Rogerses, not only calling forth much ingenuity in description and
classification, but also throwing great light upon the relative ages of
some of the most interesting geological formations. The earthquake
theory of the Rogerses is one of the boldest generalizations, founded
upon physical reasoning, which our geologists have produced. In the
parallel ridges into which the Apalachian chain is thrown, they see the
crests of great earthquake waves, propagated from long lines of focal
earthquake action, more violent than any which the world now witnesses.
The geologist deals in such sublime conceptions as a world of molten
matter, tossed into waves by violent efforts of escaping vapors,
cooling, cracking, and rending, in dire convulsion. He then ceases to
discuss the changes and formation of worlds, and condescends to inform
us how to fertilize our soil, where to look for coal and iron, copper,
tin, cobalt, lead, and where we need not look for either. He is the
Milton of poetry, and the Watt of philosophy. And here let me add, that
the recent application of chemistry to agriculture is producing the most
surprising results, in increasing and improving the products of the
earth, and setting at defiance Malthus's theory of population.

In medicine, that great and most useful branch of physics, our
countrymen have been most distinguished. From the days of the great
philosopher, physician, patriot, and statesman, Benjamin Rush, down to
the present period, our country has been unsurpassed in this branch; but
I have not time even to give an outline of the eminent Americans, whose
improvements and discoveries in medicine have contributed so much to
elevate the character of our country, and advance the comfort and
happiness of man. Rush, one of the founders of this branch in America,
was one of the signers of our Declaration of Independence, and his
school of medicine was as independent and national as his course in our
Revolutionary struggle. Statistics are chiefly concerned, as furnishing
the facts connected with government and political economy, but they are
also ancillary to physics. The statistical work of Mr. Archibald
Russell, of New York, which immediately preceded the last census,
contained many valuable suggestions, some of which were adopted by
Congress; and had more been incorporated into the law, the census would
have been much more complete and satisfactory. The recent statistical
work of Mr. George Tucker, of Virginia, on the census of 1840, is
distinguished by great talent and research, and is invaluable to the
scholar, the philosopher, the statesman, and philanthropist.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: This address was made and published several months before
any electric telegraph line was in operation, and is believed to
be the first prediction of the success of this principle, as
CONTINENTAL or OCEANIC.]

[Footnote 3: Now only one tenth.]

[Footnote 4: This Idea unquestionably originated in the United States,
but was improved last year, and has been introduced by Mr. Rammel, of
England.]

[Footnote 5: We now have several such museums in Washington.]

[Footnote 6: Our Coast Survey, as commenced by Hassler, and being
completed by Bache, is admitted in Europe to be the best in the world.]




THE CROSS.


  Holy Father, Thou this day
  Dost a cross upon me lay.
  If I tremble as I lift,
  First, and feel Thine awful gift,
  Let me tremble not for pain,
  But lest I may lose the gain
  Which thereby my soul should bless,
  Through mine own unworthiness.

  Let me, drawing deeper breath,
  Stand more firmly, lest beneath
  Thy load I sink, and slavishly
  In the dust it crusheth me.
  Bearing this, so may I strength
  Gather to receive at length
  In turn eternal glory's great
  And far more exceeding weight.

  No, I am not crushed. I stand.
  But again Thy helping hand
  Reach to me, my pitying Sire:
  I would bear my burden higher,
  Bear it up so near to Thee,
  That Thou shouldst bear it still with me.

  He, upon whose careless head
  Never any load is laid,
  With an earthward eye doth oft
    Stoop and lounge too slothfully:
  Burdened heads are held aloft
    With a nobler dignity.

  By Thine own strong arm still led,
  Let me never backward tread,
  Panic-driven in base retreat,
  The path the Master's steadfast feet
  Unswervingly, if bleeding, trod
  Unto victory and God.

  The standard-bearer doth not wince,
  Who bears the ensigns of his prince,
  Through triumphs, in his galled palm,
  Or turn aside to look for balm?
  Nay, for the glory thrice outweighs
  The petty price of pains he pays!

  Till the appointed time is past
  Let me clasp Thy token fast.
  Ere I lay it down to rest,
  Late or early, be impressed
  So its stamp upon my soul
  That, while all the ages roll,
  Questionless, it may be known
  The Shepherd marked me for His own;
  Because I wear the crimson brand
  Of all the flock washed by His hand--
  For my passing pain or loss
  Signed with the eternal cross.




THE ENGLISH PRESS.


IV.

It was in January, 1785, that there appeared, for the first time, a
journal with the title of _The Daily Universal Register_, the proprietor
and printer of which was John Walter, of Printing House Square, a quiet,
little, out-of-the-way nook, nestling under the shadow of St. Paul's,
not known to one man in a thousand of the daily wayfarers at the base of
Wren's mighty monument, but destined to become as famous and as well
known as any spot of ground in historic London. This newspaper boasted
but four pages, and was composed by a new process, with types consisting
of words and syllables instead of single letters. On New Year's day,
1788, its denomination was changed to _The Times_, a name which is
potent all the world over, whithersoever Englishmen convey themselves
and their belongings, and wherever the mighty utterances of the sturdy
Anglo-Saxon tongue are heard. It was long before the infant 'Jupiter'
began to exhibit any foreshadowing of his future greatness, and he had a
very difficult and up-hill struggle to wage. _The Morning Post_, _The
Morning Herald_, _The Morning Chronicle_, and _The General Advertiser_
amply supplied or seemed to supply the wants of the reading public, and
the new competitor for public favor did not exhibit such superior
ability as to attract any great attention or to diminish the
subscription lists of its rivals. _The Morning Herald_ had been started
in 1780 by Parson Bate, who quarrelled with his colleagues of _The
Post_. This journal, which is now the organ of mild and antiquated
conservatism, was originally started upon liberal principles. Bate
immediately ranged himself upon the side of the Prince of Wales and his
party, and thus his fortunes were secured. In 1781 his paper sustained a
prosecution, and the printer was sentenced to pay a fine of £100, and to
undergo one year's imprisonment, for a libel upon the Russian
ambassador. For this same libel the printers and publishers of _The
London Courant_, _The Noon Gazette_, _The Gazetteer_, _The Whitehall
Evening Journal_, _The St. James's Chronicle_, and _The Middlesex
Journal_ received various sentences of fine and imprisonment, together
with, in some cases, the indignity of the pillory. Prosecutions for
libel abounded in those days. Horace Walpole says that, dating from
Wilkes's famous No. 45, no less than two hundred informations had been
laid, a much larger number than during the whole thirty-three years of
the previous reign. But the great majority of these must have fallen to
the ground, for, in 1791, the then attorney-general stated that, in the
last thirty-one years, there had been seventy prosecutions for libel,
and about fifty convictions, in twelve of which the sentences had been
severe--including even, in five instances, the pillory. The law of libel
was extremely harsh, to say the least of it. One of its dogmas was that
a publisher could be held criminally liable for the acts of his
servants, unless proved to be neither privy nor assenting to such acts.
The monstrous part of this was that, after a time, the judges refused to
receive any exculpatory evidence, and ruled that the publication of a
libel by a publisher's servant was proof sufficient of that publisher's
criminality. This rule actually obtained until 1843, when it was swept
away by an act of Parliament, under the auspices of Lord Campbell. The
second was even worse; for it placed the judge above the jury, and
superseded the action of that dearly prized safeguard of an
Englishman's liberties, it asserting that it was for the judge alone,
and not for the jury, to decide as to the criminality of a libel. Such
startling and outrageous doctrines as these roused the whole country,
and the matter was taken up in Parliament. Fierce debates followed from
time to time, and the assailants of this monstrous overriding of the
Constitution--for it was nothing less--were unremitting in their
efforts. Among the most distinguished of these were Burke, Sheridan, and
Erskine, the last of whom was constantly engaged as counsel for the
defence in the most celebrated libel trials of the day. In 1791, Fox
brought in a bill for amending the law of libel, and so great had the
change become in public opinion, through the agitation that had been
carried on, that it passed unanimously in the House of Commons. Erskine
took a very prominent part in this measure, and, after demonstrating
that the judges had arrogated to themselves the rights and functions of
the jury, said that if, upon a motion in arrest of judgment, the
innocence of the defendant's intention was argued before the court, the
answer would be, and was, given uniformly, that the verdict of guilty
had concluded the criminality of the intention, though the consideration
of that question had been by the judge's authority wholly withdrawn from
the jury at the trial. The bill met with opposition in the House of
Lords, especially from Lord Thurlow, who procured the postponement of
the second reading until the opinion of the judges should have been
ascertained. They, on being appealed to, declared that the criminality
or innocence of any act was the result of the judgment which the law
pronounces upon that act, and must therefore be in all cases and under
all circumstances matter of law, and not matter of fact, and that the
criminality or innocence of letters or papers set forth as overt acts of
treason, was matter of law, and not of fact. These startling assertions
had not much weight with the House of Lords, thanks to the able
arguments of Lord Camden, and the bill passed, with a protest attached
from Lord Thurlow and five others, in which they predicted 'the
confusion and destruction of the law of England.' Of this bill, Macaulay
says: 'Fox and Pitt are fairly entitled to divide the high honor of
having added to our statute book the inestimable law which places the
liberty of the press under the protection of juries.' Intimately
connected with this struggle for the liberty of public opinion was
another mighty engine, which was brought to bear, and that was the
Public Association, with its legitimate offspring, the Public Meeting.
The power and influence which this organization exerted were enormous,
and, though it was often employed in a bad or unworthy cause--such, for
instance, as the Protestant agitation, culminating in Lord George
Gordon's riots in 1780--yet it has been of incalculable advantage to the
progress of the state, the enlightenment of the nation, and the
advancement of civilization, freedom, and truth. Take, for instance, the
Slave-Trade Association, the object and scope of which are thus
admirably described by Erskine May, in his 'Constitutional History of
England':

     'It was almost beyond the range of politics. It had no
     constitutional change to seek, no interest to promote, no prejudice
     to gratify, not even the national welfare to advance. Its clients
     were a despised race in a distant clime--an inferior type of the
     human family--for whom natures of a higher mould felt repugnance
     rather than sympathy. Benevolence and Christian charity were its
     only incentives. On the other hand, the slave-trade was supported
     by some of the most powerful classes in the country--merchants,
     shipowners, planters. Before it could be proscribed, vested
     interests must be overborne--ignorance enlightened--prejudices and
     indifference overcome--public opinion converted. And to this great
     work did Granville Sharpe, Wilberforce, Clarkson, and other noble
     spirits devote their lives. Never was cause supported by greater
     earnestness and activity. The organization of the society
     comprehended all classes and religious denominations. Evidence was
     collected from every source to lay bare the cruelties and
     iniquities of the traffic. Illustration and argument were
     inexhaustible. Men of feeling and sensibility appealed with deep
     emotion to the religious feelings and benevolence of the people. If
     extravagance and bad taste sometimes courted ridicule, the high
     purpose, just sentiments, and eloquence of the leaders of the
     movement won respect and admiration. Tracts found their way into
     every house, pulpits and platforms resounded with the wrongs of the
     negro; petitions were multiplied, ministers and Parliament moved to
     inquiry and action.... Parliament was soon prevailed upon to
     attempt the mitigation of the worst evils which had been brought to
     light, and in little more than twenty years the slave trade was
     utterly condemned and prohibited.'

And this magnificent result sprang from a Public Association. In this,
the most noble crusade that has ever been undertaken by man, the
newspapers bore a conspicuous part, and though, as might be expected,
they did not all take the same views, yet they rendered good service to
the glorious cause. But this tempting subject has carried us away into a
rather lengthy digression from our immediate topic. To return,
therefore:

In 1786 there was a memorable action for libel brought by Pitt against
_The Morning Herald_ and _The Morning Advertiser_, for accusing him of
having gambled in the public funds. He laid his damages at £10,000, but
only obtained a verdict for £250 in the first case, and £150 in the
second. In 1789 John Walter was sentenced to pay a fine of £50, to be
exposed in the pillory for an hour, and to be imprisoned for one year,
at the expiration of which he was ordered to find substantial bail for
his good behavior for seven years, for a libel upon the Duke of York. In
the following year he was again prosecuted and convicted for libels upon
the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and the Duke of Clarence, but,
after undergoing four months of his second term of one year's
imprisonment, he was set free, at the instance of the Prince of Wales.
The last trial for libel, previous to the passing of Fox's libel bill,
was that of one Stockdale, for publishing a defence of Warren Hastings,
a pamphlet that was considered as libellously reflecting upon the House
of Commons. However, through the great exertions of Erskine, his
counsel, he was acquitted.

In 1788 appeared the first daily evening paper, _The Star_, which
continued until 1831, when it was amalgamated with _The Albion_. The
year 1789 is memorable for the assumption of the editorship of _The
Morning Chronicle_ by James Perry, under whose management it reached a
greater pitch of prosperity and success than it ever enjoyed either
before or since--greater, in fact, than any journal had hitherto
attained. One of the chief reasons of this success was that he printed
the night's debates in his next morning's issue, a thing which had never
before been accomplished or even attempted. Another secret of Perry's
success was the wonderful tact with which, while continuing to be
thoroughly outspoken and independent, he yet contrived--with one
exception, hereafter to be noticed--to steer clear of giving offence to
the Government. He is thus spoken of by a writer in _The Edinburgh
Review_: 'He held the office of editor for nearly forty years, and he
held firm to his party and his principles all that time--a long time for
political honesty and consistency to last! He was a man of strong
natural sense, some acquired knowledge, a quick tact, prudent,
plausible, and with great heartiness and warmth of feeling.' His want of
education, however, now and then betrayed him into errors, and a curious
instance of this is, that on one occasion, when he meant to say
'epithalamia,' he wrote and printed 'epicedia,' a mistake which he
corrected with the greatest coolness on the following day thus: 'For
'epicedia' read 'epithalamia.'

The next event of importance is the appearance of Bell's _Weekly
Messenger_, in 1796, a newspaper that met with immediate success, and is
the only one of the weeklies of that period which have survived to the
present time. The year '96 is also remarkable for an action brought by
_The Telegraph_ against _The Morning Post_, for damages suffered by
publishing an extract from a French paper, which purported to give the
intelligence of peace between the Emperor of Germany and France, but
which was forged and surreptitiously sent to _The Telegraph_ by the
proprietors of _The Morning Post_. The result was that _The Telegraph_
obtained a verdict for £100 damages. In 1794, _The Morning Advertiser_
had been established by the Licensed Victuallers of London, with the
intention of benefiting by its sale the funds of the asylum which that
body had recently established. It at once obtained a large circulation,
inasmuch as every publican became a subscriber. It exists to the present
day, and is known by the slang _sobriquet_ of the 'Tub,' an appellation
suggested by its _clientèle_. Its opinions are radical, and it is
conducted not without a fair share of ability, but, occasionally
venturing out of its depth, it has more than once been most successfully
and amusingly hoaxed. One of these cases was when a correspondent
contributed an extraordinary Greek inscription, which he asserted had
been recently discovered. This so-called inscription was in reality
nothing but some English doggerel of anything but a refined character
turned into Greek.

In 1797, Canning brought out _The Anti-Jacobin_ as a Government organ,
and Gifford--who began life as a cobbler's apprentice at an
out-of-the-way little town in Devonshire, and afterward became editor of
_The Quarterly Review_ in its palmiest days--was intrusted with its
management. _The Anti-Jacobin_ lasted barely eight months, but was
probably the most potent satirical production that has ever emanated
from the English press. The first talent of the day was engaged upon it;
and among its contributors we find Pitt, Lord Mornington, afterward
Marquis of Wellesley, Lord Morpeth, afterward Earl of Carlisle,
Jenkinson, afterward Earl of Liverpool, Canning, George Ellis, Southey,
Lord Bathurst, Addington, John Hookham Frere, and a host of other
prominent names at the time. The poetry of _The Anti-Jacobin_--its
strongest feature--has been collected into a volume, which has passed
through several editions. This journal was the first to inaugurate
'sensation' headings; for the three columns which were respectively
entitled 'Mistakes,' 'Misrepresentations,' 'Lies,' and which most
truculently slashed away at the opponents of the political opinions of
_The Anti-Jacobin_, decidedly come under that category.

We have now arrived at another era of persecution. Those were ticklish
times, and Pitt, fearing lest revolutionary theories might be
promulgated through the instrumentality of the press, determined to
tighten the reins, and curb that freedom of expression which, after an
interval of rest from prosecution, was manifestly degenerating. Poor
Perry was arraigned on a charge of exhibiting a leaning toward France,
and he and his printer were fined and sent to prison. Pitt really
appears to have had good ground for action, in one instance, at least,
for _The Courier_ had made certain statements which might fairly be
construed as hostile to the Government, and favorable to France.
Moreover, it was stated in the House of Commons by the attorney-general,
that a parcel of unstamped newspapers had been seized in a neutral
vessel bound to France, containing information 'which, if any one had
written and sent in another form to the enemy, he would have committed
the highest crime of which a man can be guilty.' Among other things,
the departure of the West India fleet under the convoy of two frigates
only was noticed, and the greatest fears were expressed for its safety
in consequence. Another thing mentioned was, that as there was to be a
levy _en masse_ in this country, the French would not be so ill advised
as to come here, but would make a swoop upon Ireland. A bill was brought
forward, the chief provisions of which were that the proprietors and
printers of all newspapers should inscribe their names in a book, kept
for that purpose at the stamp office, in order that the book might be
produced in court on occasion of any trial, as evidence of the
proprietorship and responsibility, and that a copy of each issue of
every newspaper should be filed at the stamp office, to be produced as
good and sufficient evidence of publication. A vehement debate followed,
in the course of which Lord William Russell declared the bill to be an
insidious blow at the liberty of the press; and Sir W. Pulteney said
that 'the liberty of the press was of such a sacred nature that we ought
to suffer many inconveniences rather than check its influence in such a
manner as to endanger our liberties; for he had no hesitation in saying
that without the liberty of the press the freedom of this country would
be a mere shadow.' But the great speech of the debate was that of Sir
Francis Burdett, who did not then foresee that the time would come when
he himself should make an attack upon the press.

     'The liberty of the press,' he said, 'is of so delicate a nature,
     and so important for the preservation of that small portion of
     liberty which still remains to the country, that I cannot allow the
     bill to pass without giving it my opposition. A good Government, a
     free Government, has nothing to apprehend, and everything to hope
     from the liberty of the press; it reflects a lustre upon all its
     actions, and fosters every virtue. But despotism courts shade and
     obscurity, and dreads the scrutinizing eye of liberty, the freedom
     of the press, which pries into its secret recesses, discovering it
     in its lurking holes, and drags it forth to public detestation. If
     a tyrannically disposed prince, supported by an unprincipled,
     profligate minister, backed by a notoriously corrupt Parliament,
     were to cast about for means to secure such a triple tyranny, I
     know of no means he could devise so effectual for that purpose as
     the bill now upon the table.'

Spite, however, of this vigorous opposition, the bill passed, and among
other coercive measures it decreed heavy penalties against any
infringement of the stamp act, such as: 'Every person who shall
knowingly and wilfully retain or keep in custody any newspaper not duly
stamped, shall forfeit twenty pounds for each, such unstamped newspaper
he shall so have in custody'--'every person who shall knowingly or
wilfully, directly or indirectly, send or carry or cause to be sent or
carried out of Great Britain any unstamped newspaper, shall forfeit one
hundred pounds,' and 'every person during the present war who shall send
any newspaper out of Great Britain into any country not in amity with
his Majesty, shall forfeit five hundred pounds.' Stringent measures
these, with a vengeance! The onslaught initiated by Parliament was well
seconded by the judges, and Lord Kenyon especially distinguished himself
as an unscrupulous (the word is not one whit too strong) foe to the
press. To such an extent was this persecution carried, that the printer,
publisher, and proprietor of _The Courier_ were fined and imprisoned for
the following 'libel' upon the Emperor Paul: 'The Emperor of Russia is
rendering himself obnoxious to his subjects by various acts of tyranny,
and ridiculous in the eyes of Europe by his inconsistency. He has now
passed an edict prohibiting the exportation of timber deal,' etc. To
fine a man £100 and imprison him for six months for this was a little
overstepping the mark, and a reaction soon followed, as a proof of which
may be noticed the act 39th and 40th George III., cap. 72, which allows
the newspaper to be increased from the old regulation size of
twenty-eight inches by twenty to that of thirty inches and a half by
twenty.

William Cobbett now makes his bow as an English journalist. He was
already notorious in America, as the author of the 'Letters of Peter
Porcupine,' published at Philadelphia; and, upon his return to England,
he projected an anti-democratic newspaper, under the title of _The
Porcupine_, the first number of which appeared in November, 1800. It was
a very vigorous production, and at once commanded public attention and a
large sale. Nevertheless it was but short lived, for the passions and
fears to which it ministered soon calmed down; and, its occupation being
gone, it naturally gave up the ghost and died. Among other celebrities
who now wrote for the newspapers are Porson, the accomplished but
bibulous Greek scholar and critic; Tom Campbell, several of whose most
beautiful poems first appeared in the columns of _The Morning
Chronicle_, Charles Lamb, Southey, Wordsworth, and Mackintosh. These
last five wrote for _The Morning Post_, and raised it, by their
brilliant contributions, from the last place among the dailies--its
circulation had actually sunk to three hundred and fifty before they
joined its ranks--to the second place, and caused it to tread very
closely upon the heels of _The Chronicle_. Tom Campbell, besides his
poetry, wrote prose articles, and was also regularly engaged as a writer
in _The Star_. Porson married James Perry's sister, and many scholarly
articles which graced the columns of _The Morning Chronicle_ toward the
close of the eighteenth century are generally believed to have emanated
from his pen. Mackintosh had written foreign political articles in _The
Oracle_ and _Morning Chronicle_, but, marrying the sister of Daniel
Stuart, the proprietor of _The Morning Post_ and _The Courier_, he
transferred his services to those journals, as well as occasionally to
_The Star_, which belonged to a brother of Stuart. Southey and
Wordsworth's contributions to Stuart's papers were principally poetry.
Charles Lamb's contributions were principally short, witty paragraphs,
which he contributed to any of the papers that would receive them, and
for which he received the magnificent remuneration of sixpence each!
Coleridge had first appeared in the newspaper world as a contributor of
poetry to _The Morning Chronicle_, but was soon after regularly engaged
upon _The Morning Post_ and _The Courier_. Some of his prose articles
have been collected together into a volume, and republished with the
title of 'Essays on His Own Times.' He was especially hostile to France,
and the best proof of the ability and vigor of his anti-Gallican
articles is that Napoleon actually sent a frigate in pursuit of him,
when he was returning from Leghorn to England, with the avowed intention
of getting him into his power if possible. The First Consul had
endeavored to get him arrested at Rome, but Coleridge got a friendly
hint--according to some from Jerome Bonaparte, and according to others
from the Pope, who assisted him in making his escape. Bonaparte had
probably gained intelligence of the whereabout of Coleridge from a
debate in the House of Commons, in the course of which Fox said that the
rupture of the Peace of Amiens was owing to Coleridge's articles in _The
Morning Post_, and added that the writer was then at Rome, and therefore
might possibly fall into the hands of his enemy. Napoleon was very much
irritated by the attacks upon him in _The Morning Chronicle_ as well as
by those in Cobbett's _Political Register_--_The Porcupine_ under a new
name--the _Courrier François de Londres_--the French _emigrés'_
paper--and _L'Ambigu_, which was rather a political pamphlet, published
at periodical intervals, than a regular newspaper. He therefore thought
proper peremptorily to call upon the English Government to put these
papers down with a high hand. But the British cabinet sent this noble
reply:

     'His Majesty neither can nor will in consequence of any
     representation or menace from a foreign power make any concession
     which may be in the smallest degree dangerous to the liberty of the
     press as secured by the Constitution of this country. This liberty
     is justly dear to every British subject; the Constitution admits of
     no previous restraints upon publications of any description; but
     there exist judicatures wholly independent of the executive,
     capable of taking cognizance of such publications as the law deems
     to be criminal; and which are bound to inflict the punishment the
     delinquents may deserve. These judicatures may investigate and
     punish not only libels against the Government and magistracy of
     this kingdom, but, as has been repeatedly experienced, of
     publications defamatory of those in whose hands the administration
     of foreign Governments is placed. Our Government neither has, nor
     wants, any other protection than what the laws of the country
     afford; and though they are willing and ready to give to every
     foreign Government all the protection against offences of this
     nature which the principles of their laws and Constitution will
     admit, they can never consent to new-model those laws or to change
     their Constitution to gratify the wishes of any foreign power.'

But Napoleon indignantly declined to avail himself of the means of
redress suggested to him, and continued to urge the English Government;
who at length made a sort of compromise, by undertaking a prosecution of
Peltier, the proprietor of _L'Ambigu_. Mackintosh was his counsel; and
in spite of his speech for the defence, which Spencer Perceval
characterized as 'one of the most splendid displays of eloquence he ever
had occasion to hear,' and Lord Ellenborough as 'eloquence almost
unparalleled,' Peltier was found guilty--but, as hostilities soon after
broke out again with France, was never sentenced. The best part of the
story, however, is, that all the time ministers were paying Peltier in
private for writing the very articles for which they prosecuted him in
public! This did not come out until some years afterward, when Lord
Castlereagh explained the sums thus expended as 'grants for public and
not private service, and for conveying instructions to the Continent
when no other mode could be found.' The trial of Peltier aroused a
strong feeling of indignation in the country; the English nation has
always been very jealous of any interference with its laws at the
dictation of any foreign potentate, as Lord Palmerston on a recent
occasion found to his cost.

Cobbett was soon after tried for a libel--not, however, upon Napoleon,
but upon the English Government. There must have been an innate tendency
in Cobbett's mind to set himself in opposition to everything around him,
for whereas he had made America too hot to hold him by his
anti-republican views, he now contrived to set the authorities at home
against him by his advanced radicalism. He had to stand two trials in
1804, in connection with Robert Emmet's rebellion. On the second of
these he was fined £500, and Judge Johnson, one of the Irish judges, who
was the author of the libels complained of, retired from his judicial
position with a pension. These reflections in question upon the Irish
authorities would hardly be called libels now-a-days, consisting as they
did chiefly of ridicule and satire, which was, after all, mild and
harmless enough. In 1810, Cobbett got into trouble again. Some militia
soldiers had been flogged, while a detachment of the German Legion stood
by to maintain order. Cobbett immediately published a diatribe against
flogging in the army and the employment of foreign mercenaries. He was
indicted for a 'libel' upon the German Legion, convicted, and sentenced
to two years' imprisonment, to pay a fine of £1,000, and to find
security in £3,000 for his good behavior during seven years--a sentence
which created universal disgust among all classes, and which was not too
strongly designated by Sydney Smith as 'atrocious.'

_The Oracle_--which, by the way, boasted Canning among its
contributors--was rash enough to publish an article in defence of Lord
Melville. The House of Commons fired up at this, and, led on by
Sheridan--_quantum mutatus ab illo!_--Fox, Wyndham, and others, who had
formerly professed themselves friends to the liberty of the press, but
who were now carried away by the virulence of party spirit, caused the
publisher to be brought before them, and made him apologize and make his
submission upon his knees.

In 1805 appeared _The News_, a paper started by John Hunt and his
brother Leigh, then but a mere boy, but who had, nevertheless, had some
experience in newspaper writing from having been an occasional
contributor to _The Traveller_, an evening paper, that was afterward
amalgamated with _The Globe_, which still retains the double title. The
year 1808 was fruitful in prosecutions for libels, but is chiefly
remarkable for the appearance of Hunt's new paper, _The Examiner_. This
was conducted upon what was styled by their opponents revolutionary
principles, an accusation which Leigh Hunt afterward vehemently
repudiated. This same year also gave birth to the first religious paper
which had as yet appeared, under the name of _The Instructor_, as well
as to _The Anti-Gallican_, which seems to have quickly perished of
spontaneous combustion, and _The Political Register_, an impudent piracy
of the title of Cobbett's paper, and directed against him. In 1809,
Government passed a bill in favor of newspapers, to amend some of the
restrictions under which they labored. This was done on account of the
high price of paper: and yet in the following year another attempt was
made to exclude the reporters from the House of Commons. These men had
always done their work well and honestly, although in their private
lives some of them had not borne the very best character. A capital
story is told of Mark Supple, an Irish reporter of the old school, who
was employed on _The Chronicle_. One evening, when there was a sudden
silence in the midst of a debate, Supple bawled out: 'A song from Mr.
Speaker.' The members could not have been more astonished had a
bombshell been suddenly discharged into the midst of them; but, after a
slight pause, every one--Pitt among the first--went off into such shouts
of laughter, that the halls of the House shook again. The
sergeant-at-arms was, however, sent to the gallery to ascertain who had
had the audacity to propose such a thing; whereupon Supple winked at him
and pointed out a meek, sober Quaker as the culprit. Broadbrim was
immediately taken into custody; but Supple, being found out, was locked
up in a solitary chamber to cool his heels for a while, and then having
made a humble apology, to the effect that 'it was the dhrink that did
it,' or something of the kind, was set at liberty. But the reporters at
the period of this unjust and foolish exclusion--for it was successful
for a time--were a very different class of men; and Sheridan told the
House that 'of about twenty-three gentlemen who were now employed
reporting parliamentary debates for the newspapers, no less than
eighteen were men regularly educated at the universities of Oxford or
Cambridge, Edinburgh or Dublin, most of them graduates at those
universities, and several of them had gained prizes and other
distinctions there by their literary attainments.' It was during this
debate that Sheridan uttered that memorable and glowing eulogium upon
the press which has been quoted in the first of the present series of
articles.

It has been shown that at one time the church was the profession which
most liberally supplied the press with writers; but now the bar appears
to have furnished a very large share, and many young barristers had
been and were reporters. The benchers of Lincoln's Inn endeavored to put
a stop to this, and passed a by-law that no man who had ever been paid
for writing in the newspapers should be eligible for a call to the bar.
This by-law was appealed against in the House of Commons, and, after a
debate, in which Sheridan spoke very warmly against the benchers, the
petition was withdrawn upon the understanding that the by-law should be
recalled. From that time to the present, writing in the newspapers and
reporting the debates have been the means whereby many of the most
distinguished of our lawyers have been enabled to struggle through the
days of their studentship and the earlier years of their difficult
career.

The last attempt of the House of Commons against the press culminated in
Sir Francis Burdett's coming forward in its behalf, and, in an article
in Cobbett's paper, among other things he asserted that the House of
Commons had no legal right to imprison the People of England. In acting
thus, Sir Francis amply atoned for the ridiculous attempt which,
prompted by wounded vanity, he had made a few years before to engage the
interference of the House of Commons in his behalf in what he called a
breach of privilege--the said breach of privilege consisting merely in
an advertisement in _The True Briton_ of the resolutions passed at a
public meeting to petition against his return to Parliament. The results
of his bold attack upon the power of the House of Commons, his
imprisonment, the riots, and lamentable loss of life which followed, are
so well known as to render any particularizing of them here unnecessary.
Originating with this affair was a Government prosecution of _The Day_,
the upshot of which was that Eugenius Roche, the editor--who was also
proprietor of another flourishing journal, _The National Register_--one
of the most able, honorable, and gentlemanly men ever connected with the
press, of whom it has been truly said that 'during the lapse of more
than twenty years that he was connected with the journals of London, he
never gained an enemy or lost a friend,' was most unjustly condemned to
a year's imprisonment.

The next important event is the trial of the Hunts for a libel in _The
Examiner_ in 1811. Brougham was their counsel, and made a masterly
defence; and, though Lord Ellenborough, the presiding judge, summed up
dead against the defendants--the judges always appear to have done
so--the jury acquitted them. Yet Brougham in the course of his address
drew the following unfavorable picture of the then state of the press:

     'The licentiousness of the press has reached to a height which it
     certainly never attained in any other country, nor even in this at
     any former period. That licentiousness has indeed of late years
     appeared to despise all the bounds which had once been prescribed
     to the attacks on private character, insomuch that there is not
     only no personage so important or exalted--for of that I do not
     complain--but no person so humble, harmless, and retired as to
     escape the defamation which is daily and hourly poured forth by the
     venal crew to gratify the idle curiosity or still less excusable
     malignity of the public. To mark out for the indulgence of that
     propensity individuals retiring into the privacy of domestic
     life--to hunt them down and drag them forth as a laughing stock to
     the vulgar, has become in our days with some men the road even to
     popularity, but with multitudes the means of earning a base
     subsistence.'

Soon after this trial and another provincial one connected with the same
'libel'--one gets quite sick of the word--in which the defendants were
found guilty in spite of Brougham's exertions in their behalf and the
previous verdict of the London jury in the case of the Hunts, a debate
arose in the House of Commons on the subject of _ex-officio_
informations generally, and especially with regard to their
applicability to the case of newspapers. In the course of this debate
Lord Folkestone charged the Government with partiality in their
prosecutions, and said: 'It appears that the real rule which guides
these prosecutions is this: that _The Courier_ and the other papers
which support the ministry of the day, may say whatever they please
without the fear of prosecution, whereas _The Examiner_, _The
Independent Whig_, _The Statesman_, and papers that take the contrary
line, are sure to be prosecuted for any expression that may be offensive
to the minister'--an accusation which was decidedly true.

In 1812 the Hunts were again prosecuted for a libel upon the Prince
Regent, and sentenced to be imprisoned two years, and to pay a fine of
£500. Bat the imprisonment was alleviated in every possible way, as we
gather from Leigh Hunt's charming description of his prison in his
Autobiography.

     'I papered the walls with a trellis of roses; I had the ceiling
     colored with clouds and sky; the barred windows were screened with
     venetian blinds; and when my book cases were set up with their
     busts and flowers, and a pianoforte made its appearance, perhaps
     there was not a handsomer room on that side of the water.... There
     was a little yard outside, railed off from another belonging to a
     neighboring ward. This yard I shut in with green palings, adorned
     it with a trellis, bordered it with a thick bed of earth from a
     nursery, and even contrived to have a grass plot. The earth I
     filled with flowers and young trees. There was an apple tree from
     which we managed to get a pudding the second year. As to my
     flowers, they were allowed to be perfect.'

We have now arrived at a period which may almost be called that of the
present, inasmuch as many well-known names which still continue to adorn
our current literature first begin to appear, together with many others,
the bearers of which have but recently departed from among us. Cyrus
Redding, John Payne Collier, and Samuel Carter Hall still survive, and,
it is to be hoped, are far off yet from the end of their honorable
career; and William Hazlitt, Theodore Hook, Lord Campbell, Dr. Maginn,
Dr. Croly, Thomas Barnes, William Jordan, and many others, belong as
much to the present generation as to the past. Among other distinguished
writers must be mentioned Jeremy Bentham and David Ricardo, who
contributed articles of sterling merit upon political economy and
finance to the newspapers, and especially to _The Morning Chronicle_, in
which journal William Hazlitt succeeded Lord Campbell, then 'plain John
Campbell,' as theatrical critic. Cyrus Redding was at one time editor of
_Galignani's Messenger_, and was afterward connected with _The Pilot_,
which was considered the best authority on Indian matters, and in some
way or another, at different times, with most of the newspapers of the
day. John P. Collier wrote in _The Times_ and _Morning Chronicle_,
Thomas Barnes in _The Morning Chronicle_ and _Champion_, Croly and S. C.
Hall in _The New Times_--a newspaper started by Stoddart, the editor of
_The Times_, after his quarrel with Walter--Maginn in _The New Times_,
_Standard_, _John Bull_, and many others, William Hazlitt in _The
Morning Chronicle_, _Examiner_, and _Atlas_, and Theodore Hook in _John
Bull_, of which he was the editor.

In 1815, the advertisement duty, which had hitherto stood at three
shillings, was raised to three shillings and sixpence, and an additional
halfpenny was clapped on to the stamp duty. There were then fifty-five
newspapers published in London, of which fifteen were daily, one hundred
and twenty-two in the provinces of England and Wales, twenty-six in
Scotland, and forty-nine in Ireland.

And here let us pause to consider the position which the press had
reached. It had survived all the attempts made to crush it; nay, more,
it had triumphed over all its foes. Grateful to Parliament, whenever
that august assemblage befriended it, and standing manfully at bay
whenever its liberties had been threatened in either House, it had
overcome all resistance, and Lords and Commons recognized in it a safe
and honorable tribunal, before which their acts would be impartially
judged, as well as the truest and most legitimate medium between the
rulers and the ruled. The greatest names of the day in politics and in
literature were proud to range themselves under its banners and to aid
in the glorious work of extending its influence, developing its
usefulness, and elevating its tone and character; and the people at
large had learned to look upon it as the firm friend of national
enlightenment, and the most trustworthy guardian of their constitutional
liberties.




LIFE ON A BLOCKADER.


Life in the camp and in the field has formed the staple of much writing
since the commencement of the war, and all have now at least a tolerable
idea of the soldier's ordinary life. Our sailors are a different matter,
and while we study the daily papers for Army news, we are apt to ignore
the Navy, and forget that, though brave men are in the field, a smaller
proportion of equally brave serve on a more uncertain field, where not
one alone but many forms of death are before them. Shot and shell it is
the soldier's duty to face, and the sailor's as well, but one ball at
sea may do the work of a thousand on shore: it may pass through a
vessel, touching not a soul on board, and yet from the flying splinters
left in its path cause the death of a score; its way may lie through the
boilers, still touching no one, and yet the most horrible of all deaths,
that by scalding steam, result. It may chance to hit the powder
magazine, and sudden annihilation be the fate of both ship and crew; or,
passing below the water line, bring a no less certain, though slower
fate--that which met the brave little Keokuk at Charleston, not many
months since.

Life at sea is a compound of dangers, and though the old tar may
congratulate himself in a stormy night on being safe in the maintop, and
sing after Dibdin--

  'Lord help us! how I pitys
    All unhappy folks on shore'--

to the majority of our present Navy, made up as it is, in part at least,
of volunteer officers and men, it is essentially distasteful, and
endured only as the soldier endures trench duty or forced marches--as a
means of sooner ending the Rebellion, and bringing white-winged Peace in
the stead of grim War.

The history of our ironclads, from their first placing on the stocks, to
the present time, when Charleston engrosses them all, is read with
avidity, but few know anything of life on our blockaders, or, thinking
there is not the dignity of danger associated with them, take little or
no interest in what they may chance to see concerning them. Those who
have friends on blockade duty may be interested to know more of their
daily life than can be crowded into the compass of home letters, and the
writer, one of the squadron off Wilmington, would constitute himself
historian of the doings of at least one ship of the fleet.

Wilmington, Charleston, and Mobile, alone remain of all the rebel ports,
but it is with the first we have to do--where it is, how it looks, &c.

Right down the coast, some 450 miles from New York, and a hundred or
more from the stormy cape of Hatteras, you will see the river which
floats the merchandise to and from the docks at Wilmington, emptying
into the ocean at Cape Fear, from which it takes its name. The river has
two mouths, or rather a mouth proper, which opens to the south of the
cape, and an opening into the side of the river, north of the cape
called New Inlet. Perhaps more seek entrance by this inlet than the
mouth, which is guarded by Fort Caswell, a strong, regularly built fort,
once in Union hands, mounting some long-range English Whitworth guns.
One other fort has been built here since the commencement of the war.
This inlet is guarded by a long line of earthworks, mounted by Whitworth
and other guns of heavy caliber. Wilmington lies some twenty miles from
the mouth, and fifteen north of New Inlet.

One great characteristic of this coast is the columns of smoke, which
every few miles shoot up from its forests and lowlands. All along the
coasts may be seen mounds where pitch, tar, and turpentine are being
made. These primitive manufactories for the staple of North Carolina are
in many places close down to the water's edge, whence their products may
easily be shipped on schooners or light-draft vessels, with little
danger of being caught by the blockaders, who draw too much water to
make a very near approach to shore. So much for the coast we guard; now
for ourselves.

Our vessel, of some thirteen hundred tons, and manned by a crew of about
200 all told, reached blockade ground the early part of March. Our
voyage down the coast had been unmarked by any special incident, and
when at dusk, one spring afternoon, we descried a faint blue line of
land in the distance, and knew it as the enemy's territory, speculation
was rife as to the prospect of prizes. About 11 P. M. a vessel
hove in sight, which, as it neared, proved to be a steamer of about half
our tonnage. Our guns were trained upon the craft, but, instead of
running, she steamed up toward us. We struck a light, but it was as loth
to show its brightness as the ancient bushel-hidden candle. A rope was
turpentined, and touched with burning match, but the flame spread up and
down the whole spiral length of the rope torch, to the infinite vexation
of the lighter. Fierce stampings and fiercer execrations swiftly
terrorized the trembling quartermaster, who, good fellow, did his best,
and then, frightened into doing something desperate, made this blaze. We
hailed them while waiting for fire to throw signals, letting them know
who we were; but the wind carried away our shoutings, and the vessel
actually seemed inclined to run us down. Worse yet--what could the
little vixen mean?--a bright light, flashed across her decks, showed
gathering round her guns a swift-moving band of men. Her crew were
training their guns upon us for our swift capture or destruction: she
could not see our heavy weight of metal, for our ports were closed. She
might be a friend, for so her signal lights seemed to indicate; but if
of our fleet, how should we let her know in time to save the loss of
life and irreparable harm a single ball from her might do? She had
waited long enough for friendly signals from us, and the wind, which
swept our shouts from hearing, brought to us from them, first, questions
as to who we were, then threats to fire if we did not quickly tell, and
then orders passed to the men at the foremost gun: 'One point to the
starboard train her!'--words which made their aim on us more sure and
fatal. 'Bear a hand with that fire and torch! Be quick, for God's sake,
or we'll have a shot through us, and that from a friend, unless we blaze
away like lightning with our rockets.' The crew were stepping from the
gun to get out of the way as it was fired; the captain of the gun held
the lock string in his hand; but the instant had not been lost, and our
rockets, springing high in air, told our story. Danger is past: we learn
they are not only friends, but to be neighbors, and steam in together to
our post rather nearer the shore than other vessels here.

Days pass on in watching, and as yet no foreign sail. We study the line
of our western horizon, and find it well filled in with forts,
embrazures, earthworks, black-nosed dogs of war, and busy traitors. As
time goes on, a new thing opens to the view: a short week ago it seemed
but a molehill: now it has risen to the height of a man, and hourly
increases in size. Two weeks, and now its summit is far above the reach
of spade or shovel throw, and crowned by a platform firmly knit and held
together by well-spliced timbers. As to its object we are somewhat
dubious, but think it the beginning of an earthwork fortress, built high
in order that guns may be depressed and brought to bear on the turrets
of any Monitors which might possibly come down upon this place or
Wilmington.

At night we draw nearer to the shore, watching narrowly for blockade
runners, which evade us occasionally, but oftener scud away
disappointed. One night or early morning, 3 A. M. by the clock,
we tried to heave up anchor; the pin slipped from the shackles, and the
anchor, with forty fathoms of chain attached, slipped and sank to the
bottom in some eight fathoms of water.

The next day we steamed into our moorings of the previous night and
sought to drag for it. While arranging to do so, we saw a puff of smoke
from the shore. Bang! and a massive cannon ball tore whizzing over our
heads. The shore batteries had us in their range, and the firing from
the far-reaching Whitworth guns grows more rapid. Puff after puff rolls
up from the long line of battery-covered hillocks, under the bastard
flag, and the rolling thunder peals on our ears with the whizzing of
death-threatening balls. Oh! the excitement of watching and wondering
where the next ball will strike, and whether it will crush a hole right
through us, wasting rich human life, and scattering our decks with
torn-off limbs and running pools of blood. Quickly as possible we up
anchor and away, and soon are out of reach of balls, which splash the
water not a ship's length from us. Even then we involuntarily dodge
behind some pine board or other equally serviceable screen; and a
newspaper, if that were nearest, would be used for the same purpose--so
say those who have tasted many a naval fight. In fact, the dodge is as
often after the ball has hit as before, as this story of one of our
brave quartermasters will prove: Under fire from rebel batteries, he
noted the cloud of smoke which burst from one of the fort's
embrazures--watched sharply for the ball--heard the distant roar and its
cutting whiz overhead--watched still further, saw it fall into the sea
beyond, and then sang out to the captain, 'There it fell, sir!' and like
lightning dodged behind a mast, as though the necessity had but just
occurred to him.

As our rebel friends see their shot falling short of us, the firing
ceases, and thus harmlessly ends the action which for a few moments
threatened so much, teaching us the folly of too near approaches to
land, or attempts to batter down, to which we have often been tempted,
the earthworks daily erecting. It is folly to attempt it, because the
disabling of these few blockade steamers would open the port to all who
choose to barter with our Southern foes; and, _en passant_, this will
explain why here and elsewhere the rebels build their works under the
very noses of our men-of-war. Thus a vessel runs the blockade, and takes
into them English Whitworth guns, which send balls flying through the
air a good five miles, and whose range is longer than our far-famed
Parrott rifled cannon. These Whitworths they place concealed in
hillsides, or in forests back of the places where they build the regular
fort to protect them. If our vessels approach to batter down these germs
of forts, fire is opened on us from these long rangers, and nine chances
out of ten we are disabled before we can so much as touch them with our
guns; so that for ourselves we accomplish nothing, thereby benefiting
them.

Week days and Sundays pass on alike as far as outside incident is
concerned, but new features in each other open to view as time goes on.
Naval discipline develops the bump of reverence, or at any rate fosters
it for a time, and to the volunteer in his first days or weeks passed on
board a man-of-war, the dignified captain in the retirement of his cabin
is an object of veneration, and the slight peculiarities of some other
officers, merely ornamental additions to shining characters. On a
Sunday, for instance, in the early part of the cruise, the said bump
receives as it were a strengthening plaster, at the sight of officers
and men in full dress--the first resplendent in gold-banded
caps--multiplied buttons--shining sword hilts, et cetera, et cetera, and
the men in white ducks, blue shirts, et cetera, scattered about the
decks in picturesque groups. The captain, from the fact of his occupying
a private cabin, and seeing the officers merely to give orders or
receive reports in the line of their duty, comes but little in contact
with them, and, as there is a certain idea of grandeur in isolation,
obliges a degree of reverence not accorded to those with whom one is in
constant intercourse. A slight feeling of superiority always exists in
the minds of those of the regular navy over the volunteer officers, and
though at first the ward-room mess all seemed 'hail fellow, well met,'
familiarity develops various traits and tendencies, which, in a mess of
eight or nine, will not be persuaded to form a harmonious whole. Our
lieutenant, for instance, who, in the first days of the cruise, appeared
a compound of all the Christian graces, and a 'pattern of a gentleman,'
develops a pleasant little tendency to swear viciously on slight
provocation, and, though, rather afraid to indulge his propensities to
the full, lest the rules of naval service be violated, and disgrace
follow, still recreates himself privately, by pinching the little
messenger boys till they dance, and gritting his teeth, as if he longed
to do more, but didn't dare. It is wonderful how salt water develops
character. Our (on land) _debonnaire_, chivalrous executive, is merged
in the swearing blackguard as far as he can be; and yet strange as it
may seem, no man can be braver in time of danger, or apparently more
forgetful of self. Our paymaster, too, has suffered a sea change: the
gentleman is put away with his Sunday uniform, and taken out to air only
when it is politic to do so: wine and cigars, owned by somebody else,
occasion its instant appearance. No man on ship can show more deference
for another's feelings where the captain is concerned; no man more
thorough disregard where the sailors come into question. Yet this man
has also his redeeming points or point, made perceptible by a solitary
remark, remembered in his favor at times when the inclination has been
to call him a hypocritical scoundrel. One of the mess, rather given to
profanity, said to him one day: 'Paymaster, what's the reason you never
swear?' 'Because,' was the answer, 'I never set an example at home which
I would not wish my children to follow, and so I've got out of the way
of it.'

Various criticisms might be made on officers and men: there are
characters enough among them to furnish material for a volume. Some are
moderately patriotic, but would have been as much so on the other side,
had as strong inducements been held out in the way of 'loaves and
fishes.' Others love the cause for itself, and hold life cheap if its
sacrifice may in any way advance it. Blockade duty is perhaps a harder
test of this love than actual field service; and as months pass on, it
becomes almost unendurable. The first few days can be taken up in sight
seeing on board, and the most novel of these said sights is the drill
which follows the daily call to quarters. The rapid roll of the drum is
the signal: here, there, everywhere, on berth deck, spar deck, quarter
deck, men spring to their feet, jump from their hammocks, and every door
and passage way is blocked up by the crowd, who rush to their respective
quarters, and about the armory, each seeking to be the first, who, fully
equipped with cutlass, gun, and sabre-bayonet affixed, shall be in his
place. Another instant, and all stand about their several guns in rows,
awaiting orders from their officers, who sing out in clear commanding
tones, as though a real fight were impending: 'Pass 9-inch shell and
load!' They drive it home. 'Now run out! train her two points off port
quarter; elevate for five hundred yards! Fire! Run her in! Run out
starboard gun! Run her home! Train her three points off starboard
quarter! Fire!'

High up on the bridge of the hurricane deck, stands the first
lieutenant, overlooking the men as they work the guns, train, load, run
out, and mimic fire. Suddenly he shouts through the trumpet: 'Boarders
and pikemen at port quarter! First boarders advance! Second boarders
advance! Repel boarders! Retreat boarders! Pikemen cover cutlass
division! Fire! Repel boarders!' The second hand scarcely sweeps over a
quarter of its dial before the men have crowded around the port
bulwarks, and are slashing the air with a most Quixotic fury--then
crouch on bent knee, to make ready their pistols, while in their rear,
marines and pikemen, musket and rifle armed, snap their pieces, and pour
into an imaginary foe a vast volley of imaginary balls; then pierce the
air with savage bayonet thrusts. The farce, and yet a most useful farce,
is gone through with. The retreat is ordered to be beat, and all retire;
refill the armory with their deadly rifles and side arms, and then
return to their respective watches, work, or recreation--some gathering
round a canvas checker board; some polishing up bright work; others
making pants, shirts, or coats, or braiding light straw hats. Some are
aloft, and watching with eager eyes to catch the first glimpse of a sail
on the distant horizon; and this he must do from his loftly outlook
before the officer of the deck or quartermaster espies one, as they
sweep the sky with their long-reaching glasses--else he may suffer
reprimand and prison fare.

These and our meals are epochs which measure out the time, between which
the minutes and hours pass most wearily, and are filled with longings
for home or some welcome words from there, the next meal, or the drum
beat to quarters. Said one to me whose time is not used up as is that of
the watch officers, by four-hour watches twice in the twenty-four hours:
'When breakfast's done, the next thing I look forward to is dinner, and
when that's done, I look for supper time, and then wait in patience till
the clock strikes ten, and the 'master at arms' knocks at our several
doors, saying: 'Four bells, gentlemen; lights out, sirs.'' So time drags
often for weeks together. No new excitement fills the head with thought,
and more or less of _ennui_ takes hold on all. In fact, some consider
life on shipboard not many removes from prison life; and a man
overflowing with the sap of life, whose muscles from head to foot tingle
for a good mile run across some open field, a tramp through a grand
forest, or climb of some mountain crag, and who loves the freedom of
good solid _terra firma_--he, I say, feels like a close-caged lion.

After every calm comes a storm, and so, after weeks of listless waiting,
doing nothing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, a very gale of bustle
comes on. 'Sail ho!' comes from the lookout aloft. 'One point off our
starboard bow!' 'Man the windlass and up anchor!' shouts the officer of
the deck, as the strange sail bears down steadily toward us, finally
showing signals which tell us she's a friend and brings a mail. The
Iroquois steams out to meet her; their anchors drop, and they hold
friendly confab. We, too, soon come up, and hear that letters, papers,
fresh meat, and ice await us, on the good old Bay State steamer
Massachusetts. We prepare to lower boats and get our goodies, when we
are told from the Iroquois that a sail lies far off to the N. N. E., and
are ordered off on chase. 'It never rains but it pours,' think we.
Letters, goodies, and now a chance at a prize! 'Begone dull care!' 'Ay,
ay, sir!' responds swift-vanishing _ennui_, as our eyes are strained in
the direction we were told the vessel was seen. No sign of one yet; but
as we enter on our second mile, our lookout cries for the first time: 'A
sail! dead ahead, sir!' After a five miles' run, we near the vessel
sufficiently to make out that she is the brig Perry, one of Uncle Sam's
swiftest sailing vessels, and so we quit chasing, and return to get our
letters and provisions ere the Massachusetts starts again. An hour from
our first meeting we are back, and find her heaving anchor to be off,
for she runs on time, and may not delay here; so haste away with the
boats, or we lose mails, provisions, and all. The boat returns well
laden with barrels of potatoes, quarter of beef, and chunks of ice, but
no mail. 'Letters and papers all sent on board the Iroquois,' says the
Massachusetts; so if we have any, there they are, but no word of any for
us is sent; so with hearts disappointed, but stomachs rejoicing in the
prospect of ice water and fresh meat, we settle down.

Our tongues, under red-tape discipline, keep mum, but inwardly we
protest against this deprivation, brought about by the wild-goose chase
on which we were ordered. Well, to-morrow the State of Georgia is
expected down from Beaufort, and she will bring us a mail, we hope. The
morrow comes, and at daydawn she heaves in sight, just halting as she
nears the flagship, to report herself returned all right, and then down
toward us--with a mail, we trust. She is hardly ten ship's lengths away,
when she spies a sail to southward, notifies us, and we both make chase.
She is deeply laden, we but lightly, so we soon outstrip her, and
overtake the sail, which is a schooner, and looks suspicious, very. We
order her to 'heave to,' which order is wilfully or unwittingly
misunderstood. At any rate she does not slacken her speed, till she
finds our guns brought to bear, and we nearly running her down. Then she
stops: we send a boat with officers and men to board her and see if we
have really a prize, and all is excitement. One officer offers his share
for ten dollars--another for twenty--a third for a V, and one for fifty
cents; but would-be salesmen of their shares are far more numerous than
buyers. And soon the boat returns, reporting the vessel as bound for
Port Royal, with coffee, sugar, and sutlers' stores. Her papers are all
right, and she may go on without further hinderance. Now back to the
State of Georgia for our mails. 'Our mails! our mails!' is the hungry
cry of our almost home-sick hearts. As we get within hailing distance,
we sing out for our letters, and are answered: 'While you were chasing
the schooner, we left your mail on board the Iroquois.' 'The devil you
did!' say some in bitter disappointment, but red tape demands that we
wait till the flagship sees fit to signal us to come for letters. The
hours pass wearily. We have waited weeks for home news, and, now that it
is here, we must wait again--a day, two days--a week even, if it suits
the flagship's convenience. At last the signals float and read: 'Letters
for the ----; come and get them.'

At last! The seals are broken and we read the news. One tells of a sick
mother, dying, and longing to see her son. Another is from M----'s lady
love: we know by the way he blushes, the fine hand and closely written
pages, and various other symptoms. And our fleet of ironclads are busy
at Charleston. Heaven help the cause they work for! Now we must hasten
with our answers, to have them ready for sending at a moment's notice,
when it is signalled: 'A vessel bound North, and will carry your mails,
if ready.'

As the sun goes down, the horizon is lit up with bonfires stretching
along the coast for miles. 'These fires mean something,' we say
knowingly; 'depend upon it, the rebs expect some vessel in to-night.'
Nothing came of it, however, though the following afternoon we saw a
steamer with two smoke stacks come down the river and take a look,
perhaps to see as to her chances of getting out that night. The twilight
darkened into night, and night wore on into the small hours, and now we
gazed into the gloom anxiously, for at this time, if any, she would seek
to run out. With straining eyes and the most intense quiet, we listen
for the sound of paddle wheels. A stranger passing along our decks,
seeing in the darkness the shadowy forms of men crouched in listening
attitudes, would have fancied himself among a body of Indians watching
stealthily some savage prey. The night passes on; gray dawn tells of the
sun's approach, and soon his streaming splendor lights up sea and land.
We look to see if our hoped for prize still waits in the river, but
no--she is not there. The day wears on and still no signs of her. If she
has slipped by us, it is through the mouth and not the inlet, we feel
sure, but still are chagrined, and, doubting the possibility of ever
catching one, go to bed with the blues.

The next day we brighten up a little, to be saddened the more, for the
Massachusetts on her return trip tells us that, so far from there being
good news from Charleston, we have only the worst to hear. The brave
little Keokuk is riddled with balls and sunk, and the fleet of ironclads
have retired from before the city. It is a costly experience, though it
may yet bear precious fruit, for they tell us it has revealed what was
necessary to make our next attack successful. What it is, we cannot
learn, the authorities meaning in the future, doubtless, to wait till
deeds have won them praise, before they make promises of great work.

Night draws on again, and we move in toward shore. Signal lights are
burning, and huge bonfires, built behind the forests, that their glare
may not light up the water, but their reflection against the background
of the sky shows blockade runners the lay and bearings of the land.
Something will surely be done to-night, and we keep vigilant watch. Two
o'clock A. M., and a sound is heard, whether of paddle wheels,
surf on the beach, or blowing off of steam, we cannot tell. 'It's paddle
wheels,' says our ensign, and reports quickly to the captain. The first
lieutenant springs on deck, a steam whistle is heard, so faint that only
steam-taught ears know the sound, and word is passed to slip our chain
and anchor, and make chase in the direction of the sound. They spring to
the chain and work with a will to unshackle it quickly, but things are
not as they should be; the hammer is not at hand, and the pins not fixed
for speedy slipping out, even when struck a sharp, heavy blow. 'I think
I see a dark object off the direction of the sound we heard, sir,' says
some one. 'Confound the chain! will it never unshackle?' they exclaim,
as they seek to unloose it. At last it slips, we steam up, and are off
in pursuit, but which way shall we turn, and where shall we chase? There
is no guiding sound now, and we paddle cautiously on, spending the
balance of the night in this blind work, feeling for the prize which has
slipped from our fingers, for, as day dawns, we see a large steamer,
safe under the walls of the fort. If disappointments make philosophers,
we ought to rank with Diogenes.

The next day is filled with growl and 'ifs' and 'ands,' and 'if _this_
had been so and so,' and 'but for that neglect, which we shall know how
to avoid next time,' etc., etc. The afternoon of another day comes on,
and then a sail is descried, and off we go after it. Seven or eight
miles' run brings us close to it; still it pays no attention, but keeps
straight on. The captain orders a ball to be fired across her bows,
which explodes so near as to splash great jets of water over them. Her
crew and captain strike sail, and let go halliards, while they fly
behind masts, down cockpit, or wherever they can get for safety. Finding
no further harm is meant than to bring them to, they answer back our
hail--say they are going to Beaufort, quite a different direction from
the one they are heading--and seem generally confused. As an excuse they
say their compass is out of order, and as they appear to be wreckers, we
allow them to go on without further molestation, and steam back to our
moorings, consoling ourselves by the fact that these bootless chases are
using up coal, and thereby hastening the time of our going to Beaufort
to coal up, where we shall have a chance to step once more on _terra
firma_.

Another night passes, and there are no indications of runners having
tried to escape us; but at sunrise we see, far to the south, a schooner,
and soon the flagship signals that a prize has been taken by one of our
fleet. It looks very much like the schooner we let go yesterday, and our
head officers swear, if it _is_ that schooner, never to let another go
so easily. One declares the vessel is loaded with cotton, and worth at
least $100,000, but that, notwithstanding, he will sell his share for
$500 in good gold. No one bids so high. Our ensign offers his for one
dollar, and the paymaster sells his to the surgeon for fifty cents, the
magnificence of which bargain the latter learns from the captain, who
says his share will be about seven and a half cents! We steam alongside,
and learn that our prize is the schooner St. George, bound for
Wilmington, via the Bermudas, with a cargo of salt, saltpetre, etc., and
worth perhaps four thousand dollars. We send our prize list on board the
flagship, and have a nice chat over the capture. It puts us in good
humor, and our vessels _chassée_ around each other till afternoon, when
we separate, to hear shortly that the schooner, on being searched, has
disclosed rich merchandise, gold, Whitworth guns, &c., hidden under her
nominal cargo of salt. So hurra again for our prize list! This _almost_
makes up for the loss of the steamer.

As we are on the point of letting go our anchor, the distant boom of
cannon is heard, and the flagship orders us to repair to the seat of
danger with all speed. We haste away, and as we go, hear a third gun
fired. It comes from the direction of the brig Perry, and we cut through
the water toward it, at a twelve-knot rate, for a good half hour, but
hearing no more firing, put in near the shore to watch for the rebel
vessel, as we think those guns were intended to put us on our guard. It
soon grows dark; lights are ordered out, and each man blinds his port.
No talking above a whisper must be heard; we are to be still as an
arctic night. Midnight passes, and lights still flicker along the shore.
It is so dark we cannot see the land, though not more than a mile from
it, and only know what it is by our compass and bearings, and the fires
which lighten up the clouds in spots right over them. One, two, and
three o'clock have passed; no sail or sound yet, and the night so dark
we cannot see a ship's length away. Half past three, and we begin to
heave anchor. The rattle of the chains is just enough to drown the sound
of paddle wheels should a steamer approach, and the sound of her own
wheels would in turn drown our noise; so if one does run in to land, it
may be over us, for any warning we should have of its whereabout.

Suddenly the acting master jumps, looks for an instant across the bows
into the thick darkness, and bids a boy report to the captain and
lieutenant 'a vessel almost on us.' The man at the windlass is stopped,
unshackles the chain, and lets the anchor go with a buoy attached.
Captain and lieutenant come on deck, and order to blaze away with our
fifty-pound Parrott. Crash! through the still air rings the sharp
report, and the ball goes whizzing through the gloom, in the direction
the vessel was seen. The bright flash of the gun, and the thick cloud of
smoke make the darkness tenfold more impenetrable. For half an hour, we
chase in every direction, then fire again toward the shore. It is just
four; a gray light is working up through the mist, and we catch the
faintest glimpse of the Daylight, one of our fleet. A few minutes later,
and we see a speck near the shore, which the spyglass shows to be the
steamer we chased and fired after in the night. The surf beats about
her; in her frantic efforts to escape, she in the darkness has been run
ashore by our close pursuit. We steam up, to get within range and
destroy, if we cannot take her, when the Daylight, now discovering her,
opens fire. Once, twice, three times she has banged away a broadside at
the rebel sidewheel, and now the batteries on shore in turn open fire on
her. The sea fog hangs like a shroud over and between us and the land,
which looms up mysteriously, stretching its gray length along the
western horizon. Spots of fire bursting from the midst of it, tear
through the fog cloud right at us. It seems, in its vast, vague
undefinedness, rather an old-time dragon, with mouth spouting fire and
thun

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