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The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862

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Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3,  September, 1862

Author: Various


        
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Language: English

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Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
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THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY


VOL. II.--SEPTEMBER, 1862.--NO. III.


       *       *       *       *       *




HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE.


The death of Henry Thomas Buckle, at this period of his career, is no
ordinary calamity to the literary and philosophical world. Others have
been cut short in the midst of a great work, but their books being
narrative merely, may close at almost any period, and be complete; or
others after them may take up the pen and conclude that which was so
abruptly terminated. So it was with Macaulay; he was fascinating, and
his productions were literally devoured by readers of elevated taste,
though they disagreed almost entirely with his conclusions. His volumes
were read--as one reads Dickens, or Holmes, or De Quincey--to amuse in
leisure hours.

But such are not the motives with which we take up the ponderous tomes
of the historian of Civilization in England. He had no heroes to
immortalize by extravagant eulogy, no prejudices seeking vent to cover
the name of any man with infamy. He knew no William to convert into a
demi-god; no Marlborough who was the embodiment of all human vices. His
mind, discarding the ordinary prejudices of the historian, took a wider
range, and his researches were not into the transactions of a particular
monarch or minister, as such, but into the _laws_ of human action, and
their results upon the civilization of the race. Hence, while he wrote
history, he plunged into all the depths of philosophy; and thus it is,
that his work, left unfinished by himself, can never be completed by
another. It is a work which will admit no broken link from its
commencement to its conclusion.

Mr. Buckle was born in London, in the early part of the year 1824, and
was consequently about thirty-eight years of age at the time of his
death. His father was a wealthy gentleman of the metropolis, and
thoroughly educated, and the historian was an only son. Devoted to
literature himself, it is not surprising that the parent spared neither
money nor labor to educate his child. He did not, however, follow the
usual course; did not hamper the youthful mind by the narrow routine of
the English academy, nor did he make him a Master of Arts at Oxford or
Cambridge.

His early education was superintended by his father directly, but
afterward private teachers were employed. But Mr. Buckle was by nature a
close student, and much that he possessed he acquired without a tutor,
as his energetic, self-reliant nature rendered him incapable of ever
seeing insurmountable difficulties before him. By this means he became
what the students of Oxford rarely are, both learned and liberal. As he
mingled freely with the people, during his youth, a democratic sympathy
entwined itself with his education, and is manifested in every page of
his writings.

Mr. Buckle never married. After he had commenced his great work, he
found no time to enjoy society, no hours of leisure and repose. His
whole soul was engaged in the accomplishment of one great purpose, and
nothing which failed to contribute directly to the object nearest his
heart, received a moment's consideration. He collected around him a
library of twenty-two thousand volumes, all choice standard works, in
Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and English, with all of
which languages he was familiar. It was the best private collection of
books, said some one, in England. It was from this that the historian
drew that inexhaustible array of facts, and procured the countless
illustrations, with which the two volumes of his History of Civilization
abound.

At what age he first conceived the project of writing his history, is
not yet publicly known. He never figured in the literary world previous
to the publication of his first volume. He appears to have early grasped
at more than a mere temporary fame, and determined to stake all upon a
single production. His reading was always systematic, and exceedingly
thorough; and as he early became charmed with the apparent harmony of
all nature, whether in the physical, intellectual, or moral world, he at
once commenced tracing out the laws of the universe, to which, in his
mind, all things were subject, with a view of illustrating that
beautiful harmony, every where prevailing, every where unbroken. All
this influenced every thing, 'and mind and gross matter, each performed
their parts, in relative proportions, and according to the immutable
laws of progress.'

With a view of discussing his subject thoroughly, and establishing his
theory beyond controversy, as he believed, he proposed, before referring
to the _History of Civilization in England_, to discover, so far as
possible, all the laws of political and social economy, and establish
the relative powers and influence of the moral faculties, the intellect,
and external nature, and determine the part each takes in contributing
to the progress of the world. To this, the first volume is exclusively
devoted; and it is truly astonishing to observe the amount of research
displayed. The author is perfectly familiar, not only with a vast array
of facts of history, but with the principal discoveries of every branch
of science; and as he regards all things as a unit, he sets out by
saying that no man is competent to write history who is not familiar
with the physical universe. A fascinating writer, with a fair industry,
can write narrative, but not history.

This is taking in a wide field; and Mr. Buckle may be regarded as
somewhat egotistic and vain; but the fact that he proves himself, in a
great degree, the possessor of the knowledge he conceives requisite,
rather than asserts it, is a sufficient vindication against all
aspersions.

Mr. Buckle regards physical influences as the primary motive power which
produces civilization; but these influences are fixed in their nature,
and are few in number, and always operate with equal power. The capacity
of the intellect is unlimited; it grows and expands, partially impelled
by surrounding physical circumstances, and partially by its own second
suggestions, growing out of those primary impressions received from
nature. The moral influence, the historian asserts, is the weakest of
the three, which control the destiny of man. Not an axiom now current,
but was known and taught in the days of Plato, of Zoroaster, and of
Confucius; yet how wide the gap intervening between the civilization of
the different eras! Moral without intellectual culture, is nothing; but
with the latter, the former comes as a necessary sequence.

All individual examples are rejected. As all things act in harmony, we
can only draw deductions by regarding the race in the aggregate, and
studying its progress through long periods of time. Statistics is the
basis of all generalizations, and it is only from a close comparison of
these, for ages, that the harmonious movement of all things can be
clearly proved.

Mr. Buckle was a fatalist in every sense of the word. Marriages, deaths,
births, crime--all are regulated by Law. The moral status of a community
is illustrated by the number of depredations committed, and their
character. Following the suggestions of M. Quetelot, he brings forward
an array of figures to prove that not only, in a large community, is
there about the same number of crimes committed each year, but their
character is similar, and even the instruments employed in committing
them are nearly the same. Of course, outside circumstances modify this
slightly--such as financial failures, scarcity of bread, etc., but by a
comparison of long periods of time, these influences recur with perfect
regularity.

It is not the individual, in any instance, who is the criminal--but
society. The murderer and the suicide are not responsible, but are
merely public executioners. Through them the depravity of the _public_
finds vent.

Free Will and Predestination--the two dogmas which have, more than any
others, agitated the public mind--are discussed at length. Of course he
accepts the latter theory, but under a different name. Free Will, he
contends, inevitably leads to aristocracy, and Predestination to
democracy; and the British and Scottish churches are cited as examples
of the effect of the two doctrines on ecclesiastical organizations. The
former is an aristocracy, the latter a democracy.

No feature of Mr. Buckle's work is so prominent as its democratic
tendencies. The people, and the means by which they can be elevated,
were uppermost in his mind, and he disposes of established usages, and
aristocratic institutions, in a manner far more American than English.
It is this circumstance which has endeared him to the people of this
country, and to the liberals of Germany--the work having been translated
into German. For the same reason, he was severely criticised in England.

Having devoted the first volume to a discussion of the laws of
civilization, it was his intention to publish two additional volumes,
illustrating them; taking the three countries in which were found
certain prominent characteristics, which he conceived could be fully
accounted for by his theories, but by no other, and above all, by none
founded upon the doctrine of free will and individual responsibility.
These countries were Spain, Scotland, and the United States--nations
which grew up under the most diverse physical influences, and which
present widely different civilizations.

The volume treating upon Spain and Scotland has been published about a
year; and great was the indignation it created in the latter country. In
Spain it is probable that the work is unknown; but it was caught up by
the Scottish reviewers, who are shocked at any thing outside of regular
routine, and whose only employment seems to be to strangle young
authors. _Blackwood_, and the _Edinburgh Review_, contained article
after article against the 'accuser' of Scotland; but the writers,
instead of calmly sifting and disproving Mr. Buckle's untenable
theories, new into a rage, and only established two things, to the
intelligent public--their own malice and ignorance.

Amid all this abuse, our author stood immutable. But once did he ever
condescend to notice his maligners, and then only to expose their
ignorance, at the same time pledging himself never again to refer to
their attacks. A thinking man, he could not but be fully aware that
their style, and self-evident malice, could only add to his reputation.

As already remarked, he did not write to immortalize a hero, but to
establish an idea; did not labor to please the fancy, but to reach the
understanding; hence we read his books, not as we do the brilliant
productions of Macaulay, the smooth narratives of Prescott, or the
dramatic pages of Bancroft; but his thoughts are so well connected, and
so systematically arranged, that to read a single page, is to insure a
close study of the whole volume. We would not study him for his style,
for although fair, it is not pleasing; we can not glide over his pages
in thoughtless ease; but then, at the close of almost every paragraph,
one must pause and _think_.

Being an original writer, Mr. Buckle naturally fell into numerous
errors; but now is not the proper time to refute them. He gives more
than due weight to the powers of nature, in the civilization of man; and
although he probably intimates the fact, yet he does _not_ add that as
the intellect is enlightened, their influences become circumscribed, and
must gradually almost entirely disappear. In the primitive state of the
race, climate, soil, food, and scenery, are all-powerful; but among an
enlightened people, the effects of heat and cold, of barren or
exceedingly productive soils, etc., are entirely modified. This omission
has given his enemies an excellent opportunity for a display of their
refutory powers, of which they have not failed to avail themselves.

The historian is a theorist, yet no controversialist. He states his
facts, and draws his conclusions, as if no ideas different from his own
had ever been promulgated. He never attempts to show the fallacies of
any other author, but readily understands that if he establishes his
system of philosophy, all contrary ones must fall. How fortunate it
would have been for the human race, if all innovators and reformers had
done the same!

That which adds to the regrets occasioned by his loss, which must be
entertained by every American, is the circumstance that his forthcoming
volume was to be devoted to the social and political condition of the
United States, as an example of a country in which existed a general
diffusion of knowledge. Knowing, as all his readers do, that his
sympathies are democratic, and in favor of the elevation of the masses,
we had a right to expect a vindication-the first we ever had--from an
English source. At the time of his death he was traveling through Europe
and Asia for his health, intending to arrive in this country in autumn,
to procure facts as a basis for his third volume, and the last of his
introduction.

Although his work is an unfinished one, it will remain a lasting
monument to the industry of its author. He has done enough to exhibit
the necessity of studying and writing history, henceforth as a
_science_; and of replacing the chaotic fragments of narrative, called
history, with which the world abounds, by a systematic statement of
facts, and philosophical deductions. Some other author, with sufficient
energy and industry, will--not finish the work of Mr. Buckle, but--write
another in which the faults of the original will be corrected, and the
omissions filled; who will go farther in defining the relative
influences of the three powers which control civilization, during the
different stages of human progress.




AN ANGEL ON EARTH.

  Die when you may, you will not wear
  At heaven's court a form more fair
    Than beauty at your birth has given;
  Keep but the lips, the eyes we see,
  The voice we hear, and you will be
    An angel ready-made for heaven.




THE MOLLY O'MOLLY PAPERS.

VIII


Better than wealth, better than hosts of friends, better than genius, is
a mind that finds enjoyment in little things--that sucks honey from the
blossom of the weed as well as from the rose--that is not too dainty to
enjoy coarse, everyday fare. I am thankful that, though not born under a
lucky star, I wasn't born under a melancholy one; that, though there
were at my christening no kind fairies to bestow on me all the blessings
of life--there was no malignant elf to 'mingle a curse with every
blessing.' I'd rather have a few drops of pure sweet than an overflowing
cup tinctured with bitterness.

Not that sorrow has never blown her chill breath on my spirit--yet it
has never been so iced over that it would not here and there bubble
forth with a song of gladness.... There are depths of woe that I have
never fathomed, or rather, to which I have never sunken--for there are
no line and plummet to sound the dreary depths--yet the waves have
overwhelmed me, as every human being, but I soon rose above them.

  'One by one thy griefs shall meet thee,
    Do not fear an armed band;
  One shall fade as others greet thee--
    Shadows passing through the land.'

I have found this true--I know there are some to whom it is not
true--that, though sorrows come not to them 'in battalions,' the shadow
of the one huge Grief is ever on their path, or on their heart; that at
their down-sittings and their up-risings it is with them, even darkening
to them the night, and making them almost curse the sunshine; for it is
ever between them and it--not a mere shadow, nor yet a substance, but a
_vacuum of light_, casting also a shadow. Neither substance nor shadow,
it must be a phantom--it may be of a dead sin--and against such,
exorcism avails. I opine this exorcism lies in no cabalistic words, no
crossing of the forehead, no holy name, in nothing that one can do unto
or for himself, but in entire self-forgetfulness--in doing for, in
sympathizing with, others. So shall this Grief step aside from your
path, get away from between you and the sunshine, till finally it shall
have vanished.

I know--not, however, by experience--that a great _sorrow-berg_, with
base planted in the under-current of a man's being, has been borne at a
fearful rate, right up against all his nobly-built hopes and projects,
making a complete wreck of them. May God help him then! But must his
being ever after be like the lonely Polar Sea on which no bark was ever
launched?

But surely we have troubles enough without borrowing from the future or
the past, as we constantly do. It is often said, it is a good thing that
we can't look into the future. One would think that that mysterious
future, on which we are the next moment to enter, in which we are to
live our everyday life--one would think it a store-house of evils. Do
you expect no good--are there for you no treasures there?

How often life has been likened to a journey, a pilgrimage, with its
deserts to cross, its mountains to climb!... The road to---- Lake,
distant from my home some eight or ten miles, partly lies through a
mountain pass. You drive a few miles--and a beautiful drive it is, with
its pines and hemlocks, their dark foliage contrasting with the blue
sky--on either hand high mountains; now at your left, then at your
right, and again at your left runs now swiftly over stones, now
lingering in hollows, making good fishing-places, a creek, that has come
many glad miles on its way to the river. But how are you to get over
that mountain just before you? Your horse can't draw you up its rocky,
perpendicular front! Never mind, drive along--there, the mountain is
behind you--the road has wound around it. Thus it is with many a
mountain difficulty in our way, we never have it to climb. There is now
and then one, though, that we do have to climb, and we can't be drawn or
carried up by a faithful nag, but our weary feet must toil up its steep
and rugged side. But many a pilgrim before us has climbed it, and we
will not faint on the way. 'What man has done, man may do.' ... Yet,
till I have found out to a certainty, I never will be sure that the
mountain that seemingly blocks up my way, _has not a path winding round
it_.

Then the past.... Some one says we are happier our whole life for having
spent one pleasant day. Keats says: 'A thing of beauty is a joy
_forever_.' I believe this: to me the least enjoyment has been like a
grain of musk dropped into my being, sending its odor into all my
after-life--it may be that centuries hence it will not have lost its
fragrance. Who knows?

But sorrows--they should, like bitter medicines, be washed down with
sweet; we should get the taste of them out of our mouth as soon as
possible.

We are as apt to borrow trouble from the might-have-beens of our past
life as from any thing else. We mourn over the chances we've missed--the
happiness that eel-like has slipped through our fingers. This is folly;
for generally there are so many ifs in the way, that nearly all the
might-have-beens turn into couldn't-have-beens. Even if they do not, it
is well for us when we don't know them.... The object of our weary
search glides past us like Gabriel past Evangeline, so near, did we only
know it: happy is it for us if we do not, like her, too late learn it;
for

  'Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
  The saddest are these--_it might have been!_'

So sad are they, that they would be a suitable refrain to the song of a
lost spirit.

Well, I might have been ----, but am ----

MOLLY O'MOLLY.


IX.

If one wishes to know how barren one's life is of events, the best way
is to try to keep a journal. I tried it in my boarding-school days. With
a few exceptions, the record of one day's outer life was sufficient for
the week; the rest might have been written _ditto, ditto_. Even then,
the events were so trifling that, like entries in a ledger, they might
have been classed as _sundries_. How I tried to get up thoughts and
feelings to make out a decent day's chronicle! How I threw in profound
remarks on what I had read, sketches of character, caricatures of the
teachers, even condescending to give the bill of fare; here, too, there
might have been a great many _dittos_. Had I kept a record of my
dream-life, what a variety there would have been! what extravagances,
exceeded by nothing out of the _Arabian Nights' Entertainments_. Then,
if I could have illuminated each day's page with my own fancy portrait
of myself, the _Book of Beauty_ would not have been a circumstance to my
journal. Certainly, among these portraits would not have been that
plain, snub-nosed daguerreotype, sealed and directed to a dear home
friend; but to the dear home friend no picture in the _Book of Beauty_
or my fancy journal would have had such charms; and if the daguerreotype
would not have illuminated this journal, it was itself illuminated _by
the light of a mother's love_. Alas! this light never more can rest on
and irradiate the plain face of Molly O'Molly.

After all, what a dull, monotonous life ours would be, if within this
outer life there were not the inner life, the 'wheel within the wheel,'
as in Ezekiel's vision. Though this inner wheel is 'lifted up
whithersoever the spirit' wills 'to go,' the outer--unlike that in the
vision--is not also lifted up; perhaps _hereafter_ it will be.

The Mohammedans believe that, although unseen by mortals, 'the decreed
events of every man's life are impressed in divine characters on his
forehead.' If so, I shouldn't wonder if there was generally a large
margin of forehead left, unless there is a great deal of repetition....
The record (not the prophecy) of the inner life, though it is
hieroglyphed on the whole face too, is a scant one; not because there is
but little to record, but because only results are chronicled. Like the
_Veni, vidi, vici_, of Cæsar. _Veni_; nothing of the weary march.
_Vidi_; nothing of the doubts, fears, and anxieties. _Vici_; nothing of
the fierce struggle.

One thing is certain; though we can not read the divine imprint on the
forehead, we know that either there or on the face, either as prophecy
or record, is written, _grief_. Grief, the burden of the sadly-beautiful
song of the poet; yet we find, alas! that _grief is grief_. And the
poet's woe is also the woe of common mortals, though his soul is so
strung that every breeze that sweeps over it is changed to melody. The
wind that wails, and howls, and shrieks around the corners of streets,
among the leafless branches of trees, through desolate houses, is the
same wind that sweeps the silken strings of the Æolian harp.

Then there is _care_, most often traced on the face of woman, the care
of responsibility or of work, sometimes of both. A man, however hard he
may labor, if he loses a day, does not always find an accumulation of
work; but with poor, over-worked woman, it is, work or be overwhelmed
with work, as in the punishment of prisoners, it is, pump or drown. I
can not understand how women do get along who, with the family of John
Rogers' wife, assisted only by the eldest daughter, a girl of thirteen,
wash, iron, bake, cook, wash dishes, and sew for the family, coats and
pantaloons included, and that too without the help of a machine. Oh!
that pile of sewing always cut out, to be leveled stitch by stitch; for,
unlike water, it never will find its own level, unless its level be Mont
Blanc, for to such a hight it would reach if left to itself. I could
grow eloquent on the subject, but forbear.

Croakers to the contrary notwithstanding, there is in the record of our
past lives, or in the prophecy of our future, another word than _grief_
or _care_; it is _joy_. My friend, could your history be truthfully
written, and printed in the old style, are there not many passages that
would shine beautifully in golden letters? I say truthfully written; for
we are so apt to forget our joys, while we remember our griefs. Perhaps
this is because joy and its effects are so evanescent. Leland talks
beautifully of 'the perfumed depths of the lotus-word, _joyousness_;'
but in this world we only breathe the perfume. Could we eat the
lotus!... The fabled lotus-eater wished never to leave the isle whence
he had plucked it. Wrapped in dreamy selfishness, unnerved for the toil
of reaching the far-off shore, he grew indifferent to country and
friends.... So earth would be to us an enchanted isle. The stern toil by
which we are to reach that better land, our _home_, would become irksome
to us. It is well for us that we can only breathe the perfume.

Then, too, the deepest woe we may know--not the highest joy--that is
bliss beyond even our capacity of dreaming. Some one, in regard to the
ladder Jacob saw in his dream, says: 'But alas! he slept at the foot.'
That any ladder should be substantial enough for cumbersome mortality to
climb to heaven, was too great an impossibility even for a dream.

But read for yourself the faces that swirl through the streets of a
city. Now and then there is one on which the results of all evil
passions are traced. Were it not for the _brute_ in it, it might be
mistaken for the face of a fiend. Though such are few, too many bear the
impress of at least one evil passion. Every passion, unbitted and
unbridled, hurries the soul bound to it--as Mazeppa was bound to the
wild horse--to certain destruction.... But I--as all things hasten to
the end--will mention one word more--the _finis_ of the prophecy--the
_stamp on the seal_ of the record--_Death_.... We will not dwell on it.
Who more than glances at the _finis_, who studies the plain word stamped
on the seal?

Yours, MOLLY O'MOLLY.


X.

I have read of a young Indian girl, disguised as her lover, whom she had
assisted to escape from captivity, fleeing from her pursuers, till she
reached the brink of a deep ravine; before her is a perpendicular wall
of rock; behind, the foe, so near that she can hear the crackling of the
dry branches under their tread; yet nearer they come; she almost feels
their breath on her cheek; it is useless to turn at bay; there is hardly
time to measure with her eye the depth of the ravine, or its width. A
step back, another forward, an almost superhuman leap, and she has
cleared the awful chasm.... 'Look before you leap,' is one of caution's
maxims. We may stand looking till it is too late to leap. There are
times when we _must_ put our 'fate to the touch, to win or lose it all;'
there are times when doubt, hesitation, caution is certain destruction.
You are crossing a frozen pond, firm by the shore, but as you near the
centre, the ice beneath your feet begins to crack; hesitate, attempt to
retrace your steps, and you are gone. Did you ever cross a rapid stream
on an unhewn foot-log? You looked down at the swift current, stopped,
turned back, and over you went. You would climb a steep mountain-side.
Half-way up, look not from the dizzy hight, but press on, grasping every
tough laurel and bare root; but hasten, the laurel may break, and you
lose your footing. 'If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all;' but once
resolved to climb, leave thy caution at the foot. Before you give battle
to the enemy, be cautious, reckon well your chances of winning or
losing; above all, be sure of the justice of your cause; but once flung
into the fierce fight, then with _'Dieu et mon droit!'_ for your
battle-cry, let not 'discretion' be _any_ 'part of' your 'valor.'

Then your careful, hesitating people are cautious where there is no need
of caution, they feel their way on the highways and by-ways of life, as
you have seen a person when fording a stream with whose bed he was
unacquainted. I'd rather fall down and pick myself up a dozen times a
day, than thus grope my way along.

There is Nancy Primrose. I have good reason to remember her. She was, in
my childhood, always held up to me as a pattern. She used to come to
school with such smooth, clean pantalets, while mine were splashed with
mud, drabbled by the wet grass, or all wrinkles from having been rolled
up. She would go around a rod to avoid a mud-puddle, or if she availed
herself of the board laid down for the benefit of pedestrians, she
never, as I was sure to do, stepped on one end, so the other came down
with a splash. The starch never was taken out of her sun-bonnet by the
rain, for if there was 'a cloud as big as a man's hand,' she took an
umbrella. It was well that she never climbed the mountain-side, for she
would have surely fallen. It was well that she never crossed a foot-log,
unless it was hewn and had a railing, for she would have certainly been
ducked. It was well she never went on thin ice, (she didn't venture till
the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her
caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her
undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she
never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed,
antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She
never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is
still _Miss_ Nancy, (I am 'Aunt Molly' to all my friends' children,)
though it is said that she might have been Mrs.----. Mr.----, a widower
of some six months' standing, thinking it time to commence his
probation--the engagement preparatory to being received into the full
matrimonial connection--made some advances toward Miss Nancy, she being
the nearest one verging on 'an uncertain age,' (you know widowers
always go the rounds of the old maids.) Though, in a worldly point of
view, he was an eligible match, she, from her fixed habits of caution,
half-hesitated as to whether it was best to receive his attentions--he
got in a hurry (you know widowers are always in a hurry) and married
some one else.... I don't think Miss Nancy would venture to love any man
before marriage--engagements are as liable to be broken as thin ice, and
it isn't best to throw away love. As for her giving it unasked!... How
peacefully her life flows along--or rather, it hardly flows at all,
about as much as a mill-pond--with such a small bit of heaven and earth
reflected in it. Oh! that placidity!--better have some great, heavy,
splashing sorrow thrown into it than that ever calm surface.... As for
me--it was a good thing that I was a girl--rash, never counting the
cost, without caution, it is well that I have to tread the quiet paths
of domestic life. Had I been a boy, thrown out into the rough, dangerous
world, I'd have rushed over the first precipice, breaking my moral, or
physical neck, or both. As it is, had I been like Miss Nancy, I would
have been spared many an agony, and--many an exquisite joy.

You may be sure that I have well learned all of caution's maxims; they
have, all my life, been dinged into my ears. Now I hate most maxims.
Though generally considered epitomes of wisdom, they should, almost all
of them, be received with a qualification. What is true in one case is
not true in another; what is good for one, is not good for another. You,
as far as you are concerned, in exactly the same manner draw two lines,
one on a plane, the other on a sphere; one line will be straight, the
other curved. So does every truth, even, make a different mark on
different minds. This is one reason that I hate most maxims, they never
accommodate themselves to circumstances or individuals. The maxim that
would make one man a careful economist, would make another a miser. 'One
man's meat is another man's poison;' one man's truth is another man's
falsehood.

But how many mistaken ideas have been embodied in maxims--fossilized, I
may say! It would have been better to let them die the natural death of
falsehood, and they might have sprung up in new forms of truth--truth
that never dies. What a vitality it has--a vitality that can not be
dried out by time, nor crushed out by violence. You know how in old
mummy-cases have been found grains of wheat, which, being sown, sprang
up, and bore a harvest like that which waved in the breeze on the banks
of the Nile. You know how God's truth--all truth is God's truth--was
shut up in that old mummy-case, the monastery, and how, when found by
one Luther, and sown broadcast, it sprang up, and now there is hardly an
island, or a river's bank, on which it has not fallen and does not bear
abundant fruit. The 'heel of despotism' could not crush out its life;
ages hence it will be said of it: 'It still lives.'

And still lives, yours,

MOLLY O'MOLLY.




'THAT LAST DITCH.'


Many reasons have been assigned for the _Chivalry's_ determining to die
in that last ditch. One William Shakspeare puts into the mouth of
Enobarbus, in _Antony and Cleopatra_, the best reason we have yet seen.
'Tis thus:

                               'I will go seek
  Some ditch wherein to die: THE FOUL BEST FITS
  MY LATTER PART OF LIFE.'




HOPEFUL TACKETT--HIS MARK.

BY RICHARD WOLCOTT, 'TENTH ILLINOIS.'


  'An' the Star-Spangle' Banger in triump' shall wave
  O! the lan dov the free-e-e, an' the ho mov the brave.'

Thus sang Hopeful Tackett, as he sat on his little bench in the little
shop of Herr Kordwäner, the village shoemaker. Thus he sang, not
artistically, but with much fervor and unction, keeping time with his
hammer, as he hammered away at an immense 'stoga.' And as he sang, the
prophetic words rose upon the air, and were wafted, together with an
odor of new leather and paste-pot, out of the window, and fell upon the
ear of a ragged urchin with an armful of hand-bills.

'Would you lose a leg for it, Hope?' he asked, bringing to bear upon
Hopeful a pair of crossed eyes, a full complement of white teeth, and a
face promiscuously spotted with its kindred dust.

'For the Banger?' replied Hopeful; 'guess I would. Both on 'em--an' a
head, too.'

'Well, here's a chance for you.' And he tossed him a hand-bill.

Hopeful laid aside his hammer and his work, and picked up the hand-bill;
and while he is reading it, let us briefly describe him. Hopeful is not
a beauty, and he knows it; and though some of the rustic wits call him
'Beaut,' he is well aware that they intend it for irony. His countenance
runs too much to nose--rude, amorphous nose at that--to be classic, and
is withal rugged in general outline and pimply in spots. His hair is
decidedly too dingy a red to be called, even by the utmost stretch of
courtesy, auburn; dry, coarse, and pertinaciously obstinate in its
resistance to the civilizing efforts of comb and brush. But there is a
great deal of big bone and muscle in him, and he may yet work out a
noble destiny. Let us see.

By the time he had spelled out the hand-bill, and found that
Lieutenant ---- was in town and wished to enlist recruits for
Company ----, ---- Regiment, it was nearly sunset; and he took off his
apron, washed his hands, looked at himself in the piece of looking-glass
that stuck in the window--a defiant look, that said that he was not
afraid of all that nose--took his hat down from its peg behind the door,
and in spite of the bristling resistance of his hair, crowded it down
over his head, and started for his supper. And as he walked he mused
aloud, as was his custom, addressing himself in the second person,
'Hopeful, what do you think of it? They want more soldiers, eh? Guess
them fights at Donelson and Pittsburg Lannen 'bout used up some o' them
ridgiments. By Jing!' (Hopeful had been piously brought up, and his
emphatic exclamations took a mild form.) 'Hopeful, 'xpect you'll have to
go an' stan' in some poor feller's shoes. 'Twon't do for them there
blasted Seceshers to be killin' off our boys, an' no one there to pay
'em back. It's time this here thing was busted! Hopeful, you an't
pretty, an' you an't smart; but you used to be a mighty nasty hand with
a shot-gun. Guess you'll have to try your hand on old Borey's
[Beauregard's] chaps; an' if you ever git a bead on one, he'll enter his
land mighty shortly. What do you say to goin'? You wanted to go last
year, but mother was sick, an' you couldn't; and now mother's gone to
glory, why, show your grit an' go. Think about it, any how.'

And Hopeful did think about it--thought till late at night of the
insulted flag, of the fierce fights and glorious victories, of the dead
and the dying lying out in the pitiless storm, of the dastardly outrages
of rebel fiends--thought of all this, with his great warm heart
overflowing with love for the dear old 'Banger,' and resolved to go.
The next morning, he notified his 'boss' of his intention to quit his
service for that of Uncle Sam. The old fellow only opened his eyes very
wide, grunted, brought out the stocking, (a striped relic of the
departed Frau Kordwäner,) and from it counted out and paid Hopeful every
cent that was due him. But there was one thing that sat heavily upon
Hopeful's mind. He was in a predicament that all of us are liable to
fall into--he was in love, and with Christina, Herr Kordwäner's
daughter. Christina was a plump maiden, with a round, rosy face, an
extensive latitude of shoulders, and a general plentitude and solidity
of figure. All these she had; but what had captivated Hopeful's eye was
her trim ankle, as it had appeared to him one morning, encased in a warm
white yarn stocking of her own knitting. From this small beginning, his
great heart had taken in the whole of her, and now he was desperately in
love. Two or three times he had essayed to tell her of his proposed
departure; but every time that the words were coming to his lips,
something rushed up into his throat ahead of them, and he couldn't
speak. At last, after walking home from church with her on Sunday
evening, he held out his hand and blurted out:

'Well, good-by. We're off to-morrow.'

'Off! Where?'

'I've enlisted.'

Christina didn't faint. She didn't take out her delicate and daintily
perfumed _mouchoir_, to hide the tears that were not there. She looked
at him for a moment, while two great _real_ tears rolled down her
cheeks, and then--precipitated all her charms right into his arms.
Hopeful stood it manfully--rather liked it, in fact. But this is a
tableau that we've no right to be looking at; so let us pass by how they
parted--with what tears and embraces, and extravagant protestations of
undying affection, and wild promises of eternal remembrance; there is no
need of telling, for we all know how foolish young people will be under
such circumstances. We older heads know all about such little matters,
and what they amount to. Oh! yes, certainly we do.

The next morning found Hopeful, with a dozen others, in charge of the
lieutenant, and on their way to join the regiment. Hopeful's first
experience of camp-life was not a singular one. He, like the rest of us,
at first exhibited the most energetic awkwardness in drilling. Like the
rest of us, he had occasional attacks of home-sickness; and as he stood
at his post on picket in the silent night-watches, while the camps lay
quietly sleeping in the moonlight, his thoughts would go back to his
far-away home, and the little shop, and the plentiful charms of the
fair-haired Christina. So he went on, dreaming sweet dreams of home, but
ever active and alert, eager to learn and earnest to do his duty,
silencing all selfish suggestions of his heart with the simple logic of
a pure patriotism.

'Hopeful,' he would say, 'the Banger's took care o' you all your life,
an' now you're here to take care of it. See that you do it the best you
know how.'

It would be more thrilling and interesting, and would read better, if we
could take our hero to glory amid the roar of cannon and muskets,
through a storm of shot and shell, over a serried line of glistening
bayonets. But strict truth--a matter of which newspaper correspondents,
and sensational writers, generally seem to have a very misty
conception--forbids it.

It was only a skirmish--a bush-whacking fight for the possession of a
swamp. A few companies were deployed as skirmishers, to drive out the
rebels.

'Now, boys,' shouted the captain, 'after'em! Shoot to kill, not to scare
'em!'

'Ping! ping!' rang the rifles.

'Z-z-z-z-vit!' sang the bullets.

On they went, crouching among the bushes, creeping along under the banks
of the brook, cautiously peering from behind trees in search of
'butternuts.'

Hopeful was in the advance; his hat was lost, and his hair more
defiantly bristling than ever. Firmly grasping his rifle, he pushed on,
carefully watching every tree and bush, A rebel sharp-shooter started to
run from one tree to another, when, quick as thought, Hopeful's rifle
was at his shoulder, a puff of blue smoke rose from its mouth, and the
rebel sprang into the air and fell back--dead. Almost at the same
instant, as Hopeful leaned forward to see the effect of his shot, he
felt a sudden shock, a sharp, burning pain, grasped at a bush, reeled,
and sank to the ground.

'Are you hurt much, Hope?' asked one of his comrades, kneeling beside
him and staunching the blood that flowed from his wounded leg.

'Yes, I expect I am; but that red wamus over yonder's redder 'n ever
now. That feller won't need a pension.'

They carried him back to the hospital, and the old surgeon looked at the
wound, shook his head, and briefly made his prognosis.

'Bone shattered--vessels injured--bad leg--have to come off. Good
constitution, though; he'll stand it.'

And he did stand it; always cheerful, never complaining, only,
regretting that he must be discharged--that he was no longer able to
serve his country.

And now Hopeful is again sitting on his little bench in Mynheer
Kordwäner's little shop, pegging away at the coarse boots, singing the
same glorious prophecy that we first heard him singing. He has had but
two troubles since his return. One is the lingering regret and
restlessness that attends a civil life after an experience of the rough,
independent life in camp. The other trouble was when he first saw
Christina after his return. The loving warmth with which she greeted him
pained him; and when the worthy Herr considerately went out of the room,
leaving them alone, he relapsed into gloomy silence. At length, speaking
rapidly, and with choked utterance, he began:

'Christie, you know I love you now, as I always have, better 'n all the
world. But I'm a cripple now--no account to nobody--just a dead
weight--an' I don't want you, 'cause o' your promise before I went away,
to tie yourself to a load that'll be a drag on you all your life. That
contract--ah--promises--an't--is--is hereby repealed! There!' And he
leaned his head upon his hands and wept bitter tears, wrung by a great
agony from his loving heart.

Christie gently laid her hand upon his shoulder, and spoke, slowly and
calmly: 'Hopeful, your soul was not in that leg, was it?'

It would seem as if Hopeful had always thought that such was the case,
and was just receiving new light upon the subject, he started up so
suddenly.

'By jing! Christie!' And he grasped her hand, and--but that is another
of those scenes that don't concern us at all. And Christie has promised
next Christmas to take the name, as she already has the heart, of
Tackett. Herr Kordwäner, too, has come to the conclusion that he wants a
partner, and on the day of the wedding a new sign is to be put up over a
new and larger shop, on which 'Co.' will mean Hopeful Tackett. In the
mean time, Hopeful hammers away lustily, merrily whistling, and singing
the praises of the 'Banger.' Occasionally, when he is resting, he will
tenderly embrace his stump of a leg, gently patting and stroking it, and
talking to it as to a pet. If a stranger is in the shop, he will hold it
out admiringly, and ask:

'Do you know what I call that? I call that _'Hopeful Tackett--his
mark.'_'

And it is a mark--a mark of distinction--a badge of honor, worn by many
a brave fellow who has gone forth, borne and upheld by a love for the
dear old flag, to fight, to suffer, to die if need be, for it; won in
the fierce contest, amid the clashing strokes of the steel and the wild
whistling of bullets; won by unflinching nerve and unyielding muscle;
worn as a badge of the proudest distinction an American can reach. If
these lines come to one of those that have thus fought and
suffered--though his scars were received in some unnoticed, unpublished
skirmish, though official bulletins spoke not of him, 'though fame
shall never know his story'--let them come as a tribute to him; as a
token that he is not forgotten; that those that have been with him
through the trials and the triumphs of the field, remember him and the
heroic courage that won for him by those honorable scars; and that while
life is left to them they will work and fight in the same cause,
cheerfully making the same sacrifices, seeking no higher reward than to
take him by the hand and call him 'comrade,' and to share with him the
proud consciousness of duty done. Shoulder-straps and stars may bring
renown; but he is no less a real hero who, with rifle and bayonet,
throws himself into the breach, and, uninspired by hope of official
notice, battles manfully for the right.

Hopeful Tackett, humble yet illustrious, a hero for all time, we salute
you.




JOHN BULL TO JONATHAN.


  You grow too fast, my child! Your stalwart limbs,
    Herculean in might, now rival mine;
  The starry light upon your forehead dims
    The lustre of my crown--distasteful sign.
  Contract thy wishes, boy! Do not insist
    Too much on what's thine own--thou art too new!
  Bend and curtail thy stature! As I list,
    It is _my_ glorious privilege to do.
  Take my advice--I freely give it thee--
    Nay, would enforce it. I am ripe in years--
  Let thy young vigor minister to me!
    Restrain thy freedom when it interferes!
  No rival must among the nations be
  To jeopardize my own supremacy!




JONATHAN TO JOHN BULL.


  Thanks for your kind advice, my worthy sire!
    Though thrust upon me, and but little prized.
  The offices you modestly require,
    I reckon, will be scarcely realized.
  My service to you! but not quite so far
    That I will lop a limb, or force my lips
  To gratify your longing. Not a star
    Of my escutcheon shall your fogs eclipse!
  Let noble deeds evince my parentage.
    No rival I; my aim is not so low:
  In nature's course, youth soon outstrippeth age,
    And is survivor at its overthrow.
  Freedom is Heaven's best gift. Thanks! I am free,
  Nor will acknowledge your supremacy!




AMERICAN STUDENT LIFE.

SOME MEMORIES OF YALE.


  'Through many an hour of summer suns,
    By many pleasant ways,
  Like Hezekiah's, backward runs
    The shadow of my days.
  I kiss the lips I once have kissed;
    The gas-light wavers dimmer;
  And softly through a vinous mist,
    My college friendships glimmer.'

      --_Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue._

It is now I dare not say how many years since the night that chum and I,
emerging from No. 24, South College, descended the well-worn staircase,
and took our last stroll beneath the heavy shadows that darkly hung from
the old elms of our Alma Mater. Commencement, with its dazzling
excitement, its galleries of fair faces to smile and approve, its
gathered wisdom to listen and adjudge, was no longer the goal of our
student-hopes; and the terrible realization that our joyous college-days
were over, now pressed hard upon us as we paced slowly along, listening
to the low night wind among the summer leaves overhead, or looking up at
the darkened windows whence the laugh and song of class-mates had so oft
resounded to vex with mirth the drowsy ear of night--and tutors. I
thought then, as I have often thought since, that our student-life must
be 'the golden prime' compared with which all coming time would be as
silver, brass, or iron. Here youth with its keenness of enjoyment and
generous heartiness; freedom from care, smooth-browed and mirthful;
liberal studies refining and elevating withal; the Numbers, whose ready
sympathy had divided sorrow and multiplied joy, were associated as they
never could be again; and so I doubt not many a one has felt as he stood
at the door of academic life and looked away over its sunny meadows to
the dark woodlands and rugged hillsides of world-life. How throbbed in
old days the wandering student's heart as on the distant hill-top he
turned to take a last look at disappearing Bologna and remembered the
fair curtain-lecturing Novella de Andrea[1]--fair prototype of modern
Mrs. Caudle; how his spirits rose when, like Lucentio, he came to 'fair
Padua, nursery of arts;' or how he mused for the last time wandering
beside the turbid Arno, in

  'Pisa, renowned for grave citizens,'

we wot not. Little do we know either of the ancient 'larks' of the
Sorbonne, of Leyden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam; somewhat less, in spite of
gifted imagining, of _The Student of Salamanca_. But Howitt's _Student
Life in Germany_, setting forth in all its noisy, smoking, beer-drinking
conviviality the significance of the Burschenleben,

  'I am an unmarried scholar and a free man;'

Bristed's _Five Years in an English University_, congenial in its
setting forth of the Cantab's carnal delights and intellectual
jockeyism; _The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman_,
wherein one 'Cuthbert Bede, B.A.' has by 'numerous illustrations' of
numerous dissipations, given as good an idea as is desirable of the
'rowing men' in that very antediluvian receptacle of elegant
scholarship; are all present evidences of the affectionate interest with
which the graduate reverts to his college days. In like manner _Student
Life in Scotland_ has engaged the late attention of venerable
_Blackwood_, while the pages of _Putnam_, in _Life in a Canadian
College_,[2] and _Fireside Travels_,[3] have given some idea of things
nearer home, some little time ago. But while numerous pamphlets and
essays have been written on our collegiate systems of education, the
general development and present doings of Young America in the
universities remain untouched.

The academic influences exerted over American students are, it must be
premised, vastly different from those of the old world. Imprimis, our
colleges are just well into being. Reaching back into no dim antiquity,
their rise and progress are traceable from their beginnings--beginnings
not always the greatest. Thus saith the poet doctor of his Alma Mater:

  'Pray, who was on the Catalogue
    When college was begun?
  Two nephews of the President,
    And _the_ Professor's son,
  (They turned a little Indian by,
    As brown as any bun;)
  Lord! how the Seniors knocked about
    That Freshman class of one!'

From small beginnings and short lives our colleges have gathered neither
that momentum of years heavy with mighty names and weighty memories, nor
of wealth heaping massive piles and drawing within their cloistered
walls the learning of successive centuries which carries the European
universities crashing down the ages, though often heavy laden with the
dead forms of mediæval preciseness. No established church makes with
them common cause, no favoring and influential aristocracy gives them
the careless security of a complete protection. Their development thus
far has been under very different influences. Founded in the wilderness
by our English ancestors, they were, at first, it is true, in their
course of study and in foolish formula of ceremony an imperfect copy of
trans-Atlantic originals. Starting from this point, their course has
been shaped according to the peculiar genius of our institutions and
people. Republican feeling has dispensed with the monastic dress, the
servile demeanor toward superiors, and the ceremonious forms which had
lost their significance. The peculiar wants of a new country have
required not high scholarship, but more practical learning to meet
pressing physical wants. Again, our numerous religious sects requiring
each a nursery of its own children, and the great extent of our country,
have called, or seemed to call (in spite of continually increasing
facility of intercourse) for some one hundred and twenty colleges within
our borders. Add to this a demand not peculiar but general--the
increased claim of the sciences and of modern languages upon our
regard--and the accompanying fallacy of supposing Latin and Greek
heathenish and useless, and we have a summary view of the influences
bearing upon our literary institutions. Hence both good and evil have
arisen. Our colleges easily conforming in their youthful and supple
energy, have met the demands of the age. They have thrown aside their
monastic gowns and quadrangular caps. They have in good degree given up
the pedantic follies of Latin versification and Hebrew orations. Their
walls have arisen alike in populous city and lonely hamlet, and in
poverty and insignificance they have been content could they give depth
and breadth to any small portion of the national mind. They have
conceded to Science the place which her rapid and brilliant progress
demanded. On the other hand, however, we see long and well-proven
systems of education profaned by the ignorant hands of superficial
reformers. We see the colleges themselves dragging on a precarious life,
yet less revered than cherished by fostering sects, and more hooted at
by the advocates of potato-digging and other practical pursuits, than
defended by their legitimate protectors. It is not to be denied that
there is a powerful element of Materialism among us, and that too often
we neither appreciate nor respect the earnest, abstruse scholar. The
progress of humanity must be shouted in popular catch-words from the
house-tops, and the noisy herald appropriates the laudation of him who
in pain and weariness traced the hidden truth. We hear men of enlarged
thought and lofty views derided as old fogies because beyond unassisted
appreciation, until we are half-tempted to believe the generation to be
multiplied Ephraims given to their idols, who had best be let alone.

The American student, under these influences, differs somewhat from his
European brethren. He is younger by two or three years. Though generally
from the better class, he is more, perhaps, identified with the mass of
the people, and is more of a politician than a scholar. His remarks upon
the Homeric dialects, however laudatory, are most suspiciously vague,
and though he escape such slight errors as describing the Gracchi as a
barbarous tribe in the north of Italy or the Piræus as a meat-market of
Athens, you must beware of his classical allusions. On the other hand he
is more moral, a more independent thinker and a freer man than his
prototype across the sea. His fault is, as Bristed says, that he is
superficial; his virtue, that he is straightforward and earnest in
aiming at practical life.

Such may suffice for a few general remarks. But some memories of one of
our most important universities will better set forth the habits and
customs of the joyous student-life than farther wearisome generality.

The pleasant days are gone that I dreamed away beneath the green arcades
of the fair Elm City. But still come the budding spring and the blooming
summer to embower those quiet streets and to fill the morning hour with
birds' sweet singing. Still comes the gorgeous autumn--the dead summer
lain in state--and the cloud-robed winter to round the circling year.
Still streams the golden sunlight through the green canopies of tented
elms, and still, I ween, do pretty school-girls (feminine of student)
loiter away in flirting fascination the holiday afternoons beneath their
shade. Still do our memories haunt those old walks we loved so well: the
avenue shaded and silent like grove of Academe, fit residence of
colloquial man of science or genial metaphysician; the old cemetery with
its brown ivy-grown wall, its dark, massive evergreens, and moss-grown
stones, that, before years had effaced the inscription, told the mortal
story of early settler; elm-arched Temple street, where the midnight
moon shone so softly through the dark masses of foliage and slept so
sweetly on the sloping green. Still do those old wharves and
warehouses--ancient haunts of colonial commerce and scenes of
continental struggle--rest there in dusty quiet, hearing but murmurs of
the noisy merchant-world without; and the fair bay lies silent among
those green hills that slope southward to the Sound. Methinks I hear the
ripple of its moonlit waves as in the summer night it upbore our gallant
boat and its fair freight; the far-off music stealing o'er the bright
waters; the distant rattling of some paid-out cable as a newly arrived
bark anchors down the bay; or the lonely baying of a watch-dog at some
farm-house on the hight. I see the sail-boats bending under their canvas
and dashing the salt spray from their bows as they rush through the
smooth water, and the oyster-boats cleaving the clear brine like an
arrow, bound for Fair Haven, of many shell-fish; while sturdy sloops and
schooners--suggestive of lobsters or pineapples--bow their big heads
meekly and sway themselves at rest. I see again those long lines of
green-wooded slope, here crowned by a lonely farm-house musing solitary
on the hills as it looks off on the blue Sound, there ending abruptly in
a weather-worn cliff of splintered trap, or anon bringing down some
arable acres to the very beach, where a gray old cottage, kept in
countenance by two or three rugged poplars, like the fisher's hut,

  'In der blauen Fluth sich beschaut.'

Nor can I soon forget those wild hillsides, so glorious both when the
summer floods of foliage came pouring down their sides, and when autumn,
favorite child of the year, donned his coat of many colors and came
forth to join his brethren. Then, on holiday-afternoon, free from
student-care, we climbed the East or West Rock, and looked abroad over
the distant city-spires, rock-ribbed hillside and sail-dotted sea; or
threading the devious path to the Judges' Cave, where tradition said
that in colonial times the regicides, Goffe and Whalley, lay hidden,
read on the lone rock that in the winter wilderness overhung their bleak
hiding-place, in an old inscription carved not without pain, in quaint
letters of other years, the stern and stirring old watchword:


'RESISTANCE TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.'


Or, going further, we climbed Mount Carmel, and looked from its steep
cliff down into the solitary rock-strewn valley--

  'Where storm and lightning from that huge gray wall,
  Had tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base
  Dashed them in fragments.'

Or went on to the Cheshire hillside, where the Roaring Brook, tumbling
down the steep ravine, flashed its clear waters into whitest foam, and
veiled the unsightly rocks with its snowy spray; or, perchance, in
cumbrous boat, floated upon Lake Saltonstall, hermit of ponds, set like
a liquid crystal in the emerald hills--an eyesore to luckless piscatory
students, but highly favored of all lovers of ice, whether applied to
the bottoms of ringing High Dutchers, or internally in shape of summer
refrigerators.

In the midst of these pleasant haunts and this fair city, lies a sloping
green of twenty or twenty-five acres, girt and bisected by rows of huge
elms, and planted with three churches, whose spires glisten above the
tall trees, and with a stuccoed State House, whose peeled columns and
crumbling steps are more beautiful in conception than execution. On the
upper side, looking down across, stretched out in a long line of eight
hundred feet, the buildings of the college stand, in dense shade. Ugly
barracks, four stories high, built of red brick, without a line of
beautifying architecture, they yet have an ancient air of repose, buried
there in the deep shade, that pleases even the fastidious eye. In the
rear, an old laboratory, diverted from its original gastronomic purpose
of hall, which in our American colleges has dispensed with commons, a
cabinet, similarly metamorphosed, and containing some magnificent
specimens of the New World's minerals; a gallery of portraits of
college, colonial and revolutionary worthies--a collection of rare
historical interest; a Gothic pile of library, built of brown sandstone,
its slender towers crowned with grinning, uncouth heads, cut in stone,
which are pointed out to incipient Freshmen as busts of members of the
college faculty; and a castellated Gothic structure of like material,
occupied by the two ancient literary fraternities, and notable toward
the close of the academic year as the place where isolated Sophomores
and Seniors write down the results of two years' study in the Biennial
Examination--make up the incongruous whole of the college proper.

Such is the place where, about the middle of September, if you have been
sojourning through the very quiet vacation in one of the almost deserted
hotels of New-Haven, you will begin to be conscious of an awakening from
the six weeks' torpor, (the _long_ vacation of hurried Americans who
must study forty weeks of the year.) Along the extended row of brick you
will begin to discern aproned 'sweeps' clearing the month and a half's
accumulated rubbish from the walks, beating carpets on the grass-plots,
re-lining with new fire-brick the sheet-iron cylinder-stoves, more
famous for their eminent Professor improver (may his shadow never be
less!) than for their heating qualities, or furbishing old furniture
purchased at incredibly low prices, of the last class, to make good as
new for the Freshmen, periphrastically known as 'the young gentlemen who
have lately entered college.' It may be, too, that your practiced eye
will detect one of these fearful youths, who, coming from a thousand
miles in the interior--from the prairies of the West or the bayous of
the South--has arrived before his time, and now, blushing unseen, is
reconnoitering the intellectual fortress which he hopes soon to storm
with 'small Latin and less Greek,' or, perchance, remembering with sad
face the distance of his old home and the strangeness of the new. A few
days more, and hackmen drive down Chapel street hopefully, and return
with trunks and carpet-bags outside and diversified specimens of
student-humanity within--a Freshman, in spite of his efforts, showing
that his as yet undeveloped character is '_summâ integritate et
innocentiâ_;' a Sophomore, somewhat flashy and bad-hatted, a _hard_
student in the worse sense, with much of the '_fortiter in re_' in his
bearing; a Junior, exhibiting the antithetical '_suaviter in modo_;' a
Senior, whose '_otium cum dignitate_' at once distinguishes him from the
vulgar herd of common mortals. Then succeed hearty greetings of meeting
friends, great purchase of text-books, and much changing of rooms;
students being migratory by nature, and stimulated thereto by the
prospect of choice of better rooms conceded to advanced academical
standing. In which state of things the various employés of college,
including the trusty colored Aquarius, facetiously denominated Professor
_Paley_, under the excitement of numerous quarters, greatly multiply
their efforts.

But the chief interest of the opening year is clustered around the class
about to unite its destinies with the college-world. A new century of
students--

  'The igneous men of Georgia,
  The ligneous men of Maine,'

the rough, energetic Westerner, the refined, lethargic metropolitan,
with here and there a missionary's son from the Golden Horn or the isles
of the Pacific or even a Chinese, long-queued and meta-physical, are to
be divided between the two rival literary Societies.[4] These having
during the last term with great excitement elected their officers for
the coming 'campaign,' and held numerous 'indignation meetings,' where
hostile speeches and inquiries into the numbers to be sent down by the
various academies were diligently prosecuted to the great neglect of
debates and essays, now join issue with an adroitness on the part of
their respective members which gives great promise for political life.
Committees at the station-house await the arrival of every train, accost
every individual of right age and verdancy; and, having ascertained that
he is not a city clerk nor a graduate, relapsed into his ante-academic
state, offer their services as amateur porters, guides, or tutors,
according to the wants of the individual. Having thus ingratiated
themselves, various are the ways of procedure. Should the new-comer
prove confiding, perhaps he is told that 'there is _one_ vacancy left in
our Society, and if you wish, I will try and get it for you,' which,
after a short absence, presumed to be occupied with strenuous effort,
the amiable advocate succeeds in doing, to the great gratitude of his
Freshman friend. But should he prove less tractable, and wish to hear
both sides, then some comrade is perhaps introduced as belonging to the
other Society, and is sorely worsted in a discussion of the respective
excellencies of the two rival fraternities. Or if he be religious, the
same disguised comrade shall visit him on the Sabbath, and with much
profanity urge the claims of his supposititious Society. By such, and
more honorable means, the destiny of each is soon fixed, and only a few
stragglers await undecided the so-called 'Statement of Facts,' when with
infinite laughter and great hustling of 'force committees,' they are
preädmitted to 'Brewster's Hall' to hear the three appointed orators of
each Society laud themselves and deny all virtue to their opponents;
which done, in chaotic state of mind they fall an easy prey to the
strongest, and with the rest are initiated that very evening with lusty
cheers and noisy songs and speeches protracted far into the night.

Nor less notable are the Secret Societies, two or three of which exist
in every class, and are handed down yearly to the care of successors.
With more quiet, but with busy effort, their members are carefully
chosen and pledged, and with phosphorous, coffins, and dead men's bones,
are awfully admitted to the mysteries of Greek initials, private
literature, and secret conviviality. Being picked men, and united, they
each form an _imperium in imperio_ in the large societies much used by
ambitious collegians. Curious as it may seem, too, many of these
societies have gained some influence and notoriety beyond college walls.
The Psi Upsilon, Alpha Delta Phi, and Delta Kappa Epsilon Societies, are
now each ramified through a dozen or more colleges, having annual
conventions, attended by numerous delegates from the several chapters,
and by graduate members of high standing in every department of letters.
Yet they have no deep significance like that of the Burschenschaft.

Close treading on the heels of Society movements, comes the annual
foot-ball game between the Freshmen and Sophomores. The former having
_ad mores majorum_ given the challenge and received its acceptance, on
some sunny autumn afternoon you may see the rival classes of perhaps a
hundred men each, drawn up on the Green in battle and motley array, the
latter consisting of shirt and pants, unsalable even to the sons of
Israel, and huge boots, perhaps stuffed with paper to prevent hapless
abrasion of shins. The steps of the State House are crowded with the
'upper classes,' and ladies are numerous in the balconies of the
New-Haven Hotel. The umpires come forward, and the ground is cleared of
intruders. There is a dead silence as an active Freshman, retiring to
gain an impetus, rushes on; a general rush as the ball is _warned_; then
a seizure of the disputed bladder, and futile endeavors to give it
another impetus, ending in stout grappling and the endeavor to force it
through. Now there is fierce issue; neither party gives an inch. Now
there is a side movement and roll of the struggling orb as to relieve
the pressure. Now one party gives a little, then closes desperately in
again on the encouraged enemy. Now a dozen are down in a heap, and there
is momentary cessation, then up and pressing on again. Here a fiery
spirit grows pugnacious, but is restrained by his class-mates; there
another has his shirt torn off him, and presents the picturesque
appearance of an amateur scarecrow. There are, in short, both

  'Breaches of peace and pieces of breeches,'

until the stronger party carries the ball over the bounds, or it gets
without the crowd unobserved by most, and goes off hurriedly under the
direction of some swift-footed player to the same goal. Then mighty is
the cheering of the victors, and woe-begone the looks, though defiant
the groans of the vanquished. And thus, with much noise and dispute, and
great confounding of umpire, they continue for three, four, or five
games, or until the evening chapel-bell calls to prayers. In the evening
the victors sing pæans of victory by torch-light on the State House
steps, and bouquets, supposed to be sent by the fair ones of the
balconies, are presented and received with great glorification.

Nor less exciting and interesting in college annals, is the Burial of
Euclid. The incipient Sophomores, assisted by the other classes, must
perform duly the funeral rites of their friend of Freshman-days, by
nocturnal services at the 'Temple.' Wherefore, toward midnight of some
dark Wednesday evening in October, you may see masked and
fantastically-dressed students by twos and threes stealing through the
darkness to the common rendezvous. An Indian chief of gray leggins and
grave demeanor goes down arm in arm with the prince of darkness, and a
portly squire of the old English school communes sociably with a
patriotic continental. Here is a reïnforcement of 'Labs,' (students of
chemistry,) noisy with numerous fish-horns; there a detachment of
'Medics,' appropriately armed with thigh-bones, according to their
several resources. Then, when gathered within the hall, a crowded mass
of ugly masks, shocking bad hats, and antique attire, look down from
the steep slope of seats upon the stage where lies the effigy of Father
Euclid, in inflammable state. After a voluntary by the 'Blow Hards,'
'Horne Blenders,' or whatever facetiously denominated band performs the
music, there is a mighty singing of some Latin song, written with more
reference to the occasion than to correct quantities, of which the
following opening stanza may serve as a specimen:

  'Fundite nunc lacrymas,
  Plorate Yalenses:
  Euclid rapuerunt fata,
  Membra et ejus inhumata
  Linquimus tres menses.'

The wild, grotesque hilarity of those midnight songs can never be
forgotten. Then come poem and funeral oration, interspersed with songs,
and music by the band--'Old Grimes is dead,' 'Music from the Spheres,'
and other equally solemn and rare productions. Then are torches lighted,
and two by two the long train of torch-bearers defiles through the
silent midnight streets to the sound of solemn music, and passing by the
dark cemetery of the real dead, bear through 'Tutor's Lane' the coffin
of their mathematical ancestor. They climb the hill beyond, and commit
him to the flames, invoking Pluto, in Latin prayer, and chanting a final
dirge, while the flare of torches, the fearful grotesqueness of each
uncouth disguised wight, and the dark background of the encircling
forest, make the wild mirth almost solemn.

So ends the fun of the closing year; and with the exception of the
various excitements of burlesque debate on Thanksgiving eve, when the
smallest Freshman in either Society is elected President _pro tempore;_
of the _noctes ambrosianæ_ of the secret societies; of appointments,
prize essays, and the periodical issue of the _Yale Literary_, now a
venerable periodical of twenty years' standing; the severe drill of
college study finds little relaxation during the winter months. Three
recitations or lectures each day, a review each day of the last lesson,
review of and examination on each term's study, with two biennial
examinations during the four years' course, require great diligence to
excel, and considerable industry to keep above water. But with the
returning spring the unused walks again are paced, and the dry keels
launched into the vernal waters. Again, in the warm twilight of evening,
you hear the laugh and song go up under the wide-spreading elms. Now,
too, comes the Exhibition of the Wooden Spoon, where the low-appointment
men burlesque the staid performances of college, and present the lowest
scholar on the appointment-list with an immense spoon, handsomely carved
from rosewood, and engraved with the convivial motto: '_Dum vivimus
vivamus_.'

Then, too, come those summer days upon the harbor, when the fleet
club-boats, and their stalwart crews, like those of Alcinous,

  [Greek: 'kouroi anarriptein ala pêdô,']

in their showy uniforms, push out from Ryker's; some bound upward past
the oyster-beds of Fair Haven, away up among the salt-marsh meadows,
where the Quinnipiac wanders under quaint old bridges among fair, green
hills; some for the Light, shooting out into the broad waters of the
open bay, their feathered oars flashing in the sunlight; some for
Savin's Rock, where among the cool cedars that overshadow the steep
rock, they sing uproarious student-songs until the dreamy beauty of
ocean, with its laughing sunlight, its white sails, and green, quiet
shores, like visible music, shall steal in and fill the soul until the
noisy hilarity becomes eloquent silence. And now, as in the
twilight-hour they are again afloat, you may hear the song again:

  'Many the mile we row, boys,
    Merry, merry the song;
  The joys of long ago, boys,
    Shall be remembered long.
  Then as we rest upon the oar,
    We raise the cheerful strain,
  Which we have often sung before,
    And gladly sing again.'

But perhaps the most interesting day of college-life is
'Presentation-Day,' when the Seniors, having passed the various ordeals
of _viva voce_ and written examinations, are presented by the senior
tutor to the President, as worthy of their degrees. This ceremony is
succeeded by a farewell poem and oration by two of the class chosen for
the purpose, after which they partake of a collation with the college
faculty, and then gather under the elms in front of the colleges. They
seat themselves on a ring of benches, inside of which are placed huge
tubs of lemonade, (the strongest drink provided for public occasions,)
long clay pipes, and great store of mildest Turkey tobacco. Here, led on
by an amateur band of fiddlers, flutists, etc., through the long
afternoon of 'the leafy month of June,' surrounded by the other classes
who crowd about in cordial sympathy, they smoke manfully, harangue
enthusiastically, laugh uproariously, and sing lustily, beginning always
with the glorious old Burschen song of 'Gaudeamus':

  'Gaudeamus igitur
  Juvenes dum sumus:
  Post jucundam juventutem,
  Post molestam senectutem,
  Nos habebit humus.'

         *       *       *       *       *

  'Pereat tristitia,
  Pereant osores,
  Pereat diabolus,
  Quivis antiburschius
  Atque irrisores.'

Then as the shadows grow long, perhaps they sing again those stirring
words which one returning to the third semi-centennial of his Alma
Mater, wrote with all the warmth and power of manly affection:

       *       *       *       *       *

  'Count not the tears of the long-gone years,
    With their moments of pain and sorrow;
  But laugh in the light of their memories bright,
    And treasure them all for the morrow.
  Then roll the song in waves along,
    While the hours are bright before us,
  And grand and hale are the towers of Yale,
    Like guardians towering o'er us.

         *       *       *       *       *

  'Clasp ye the hand 'neath the arches grand
    That with garlands span our greeting.
  With a silent prayer that an hour as fair
    May smile on each after meeting:
  And long may the song, the joyous song,
    Roll on in the hours before us,
  And grand and hale may the elms of Yale
    For many a year bend o'er us.'

Then standing in closer circle, they pass around to give, each to each,
a farewell grasp of the hand; and amid that extravagant merriment the
lips begin to quiver, and eyes grow dim. Then, two by two, preceded by
the miscellaneous band, playing 'The Road to Boston,' and headed by a
huge base-viol, borne by two stout fellows, and played by a third, they
pass through each hall of the long line of buildings, giving farewell
cheers, and at the foot of one of the tall towers, each throws his
handful of earth on the roots of an ivy, which, clinging about those
brown masses of stone, in days to come, he trusts will be typical of
their mutual, remembrance as he breathes the silent prayer: 'Lord, keep
our memories green!'

So end the college-days of these most uproarious of mirth-makers and
hardest of American students; and the hundred whose joys and sorrows
have been identified through four happy years, are dispersed over the
land. They are partially gathered again at Commencement, but the broken
band is never completely united. On the third anniversary of their
graduation, the first class-meeting takes place; and the first happy
father is presented with a silver cup, suitably inscribed. On the tenth,
twentieth, and other decennial years, the gradually diminishing band, in
smaller and smaller numbers, meet about the beloved shrine, until only
two or three gray-haired men clasp the once stout hand and renew the
remembrance of 'the days that are gone.'

  'They come ere life departs,
   Ere winged death appears.
  To throng their joyous hearts
    With dreams of sunnier years:
      To meet once more
        Where pleasures sprang,
      And arches rang
        With songs of yore.'

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: 'In the fourteenth century, Novella de Andrea, daughter of
the celebrated canonist, frequently occupied her father's chair; and her
beauty was so striking, that a curtain was drawn before her in order not
to distract the attention of the students.']

[Footnote 2: Vol. i. p. 392.]

[Footnote 3: Vol. iii. pp. 379 and 473.]

[Footnote 4: The Linonian Society was founded in 1753; The Brothers in
Unity, fifteen years later, in 1768.]




GO IN AND WIN.


            Will nothing rouse the Northmen
              To see what they can do?
            When in one day of our war-growth
              The South are growing two?
  When they win a victory it always counts a pair,
  One at home in Dixie, and another _over there_!

            North, you have spent your millions!
              North, you have sent your men!
            But if the war ask billions,
              You must give it all again.
  Don't stop to think of what you've done--it's very fine and true--
  But in fighting for our _life_, the thing is, _what we've yet to do_.

            Who dares to talk of party,
              And the coming President,
            When the rebels threaten 'bolder raids,'
              And all the land is rent?
  How _dare_ we learn 'they gather strength,' by every telegraph,
  If an army of a million could have scattered them like chaff!

            What means it when the people
              Are prompt with blood and gold,
            That this devil-born rebellion
              Is growing two years old?
  The Nigger feeds them as of old, and keeps away their fears,
  While 'gayly into battle' go the 'Southern cavaliers.'

            And the Richmond _Whig_, which lately
              Lay groveling in mud,
            Shows its mulatto insolence,
              And prates of 'better blood:'
  'We ruled them in the Union; we can thrash them out of bounds:
  Ye are mad, ye drunken Helots--cap off, ye Yankee hounds!'

            Yet the Northman has the power,
              And the North would not be still!
            Rise up! rise up, ye rulers!
              Send the people where ye will!
  Don't organize your victories--fly to battle with your bands--
  If you can find the brains to lead, _we'll find the willing hands!_




JOHN NEAL.


John Neal was born at the close of the last century, in Portland, Maine,
where he now resides; and during sixty years it has not been decided
whether he or his twin sister was the elder.

He was born in 1793. When he was four weeks old, he was fatherless. His
school education began early, as his mother was a celebrated teacher.
From his mother's school he went to the town school, where he once
declared in our hearing that he 'got licked, frozen, and stupefied.'
That he had a rough time, may be inferred from the fact that his parents
were Quakers, and he, notwithstanding his peaceful birthright, _fought_
his way through the school as 'Quaker Neal.' He went barefoot in those
days through a great deal of trouble. Somewhere in his early life, he
went to a Quaker boarding-school at Windham, where he always averred
that they starved him through two winters, till it was a luxury to get a
mouthful of brown bread that was not a crumb or fragment that some one
had left. At this school the boys learned to sympathize in advance with
Oliver Twist--to eat trash, till they would quarrel for a bit of salt
fish-skin, and to generalize in their hate of Friends from very narrow
data. We have heard Neal speak of the two winters he spent in that
school as by far the most miserable six or eight months of his whole
life.

Very early, we think at the age of twelve years, he was imprisoned
behind a counter, and continued there till he was near twenty; and by
the time he was twenty one, he had worked his way to a retail shop of
his own in Court street, Boston. We next track him to Baltimore, where,
in 1815, if we are not out in our chronology, John Pierpont, John Neal,
and Joseph L. Lord were in partnership in a wholesale trade. Neal's
somersets in business--from partnership to wholesale jobbing, which he
went into on his own hook with a capital of _one hundred and fifty
dollars_, and as he once said, in speaking of this remarkable business
operation, 'with about as much credit as a lamp-lighter'--may not be any
more interesting to the public than they were to him then; so we shall
not be particular about them in this chapter of chronicles.

At Baltimore he was very successful, after he got at it, in making
money, but failed after the peace in 1816. This failure made him a
lawyer. With his characteristic impetuosity, he renounced and denounced
trade, determined to study law, and beat the profession with its own
weapons.

This impulse drove him at rather more than railroad speed. He studied as
if a demon chased him. By computation of then Justice Story, he
accomplished fourteen years' hard work in four. During this time he was
reading largely in half-a-dozen languages that he knew nothing of when
he began, _and maintaining himself_ by writing, either as editor of _The
Telegraph_, coëditor of _The Portico_, (for which he wrote near a volume
octavo in a year or two,) and also as joint-editor of Paul Allen's
_Revolution_, besides a tremendous avalanche of novels and poetry. We
have amused ourself casting up the amount of this four years' labor. It
seems entirely too large for the calibre of common belief, and we
suppose Neal will hardly believe us, especially if he have grown
luxurious and lazy in these latter days. Crowded into these four years,
we find: for the _Portico_ and _Telegraph_, and half-a-dozen other
papers, ten volumes; 'Keep Cool,' two volumes; 'Seventy-Six,' two
volumes; 'Errata,' two volumes; 'Niagara and Goldau,' two volumes; Index
to Niles' Register, three volumes; 'Otho,' one volume; 'Logan,' four
volumes; 'Randolph,' two volumes; Buckingham's Galaxy, Miscellanies, and
Poetry, two volumes; making the incredible quantity of thirty volumes.
He could no more have gone leisurely and carefully through this amount
of work, than a skater could walk a mile a minute on his skates. The
marvel is, that he got through it on any terms, not that he won his own
disrespect forever. We do not wonder that he manufactured more bayonets
than bee-stings for his literary armory, but we wonder that he became a
literary champion at all. With all the irons Neal had in the fire, we
are not to expect Addisonian paragraphs; and yet he has in his lifetime
been mistaken for Washington Irving, as we can show by an extract from
an old letter of his, which we will give by and by.

A power that could produce what Neal produced between 1819 and 1823,
properly disciplined and economized, might have performed tasks
analogous to those of the lightning, since it has been put in harness
and employed to carry the mail. When genius has its day of humiliation
for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never
economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or
smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need wear no
weeds.

His novels are always like a rushing torrent, never like a calm stream.
They all are dignified with a purpose, with a determination to correct
some error, to remedy some abuse, to do good in any number of instances.
They are not unlike a field of teasels in blossom--there are the thorny
points of this strange plant, and the delicate and exceedingly beautiful
blossom beside, resting on the very points of a hundred lances, with
their lovely lilac bloom. Those who have lived where teasels grow will
understand this illustration. We doubt not it will seem very pointed and
proper to Neal. It must be remembered that the teasel is a very useful
article in dressing cloth, immense cards of them being set in machinery
and made to pass over the cloth and raise and clean the nap. A criticism
taking in all the good and bad points of these novels, would be too
extensive to pass the door of any review or magazine, unless in an
extra. They are full of the faults and virtues of their author's
unformed character. Rich as a California mine, we only wish they could
be passed through a gold-washer, and the genuine yield be thrown again
into our literary currency.

The character of his poems is indicated by their titles, 'Niagara' and
'Goldau,' and by the _nom de plume_ he thought proper to publish them
under, namely, 'Jehu O. Cataract.' But portions of his poetry repudiate
this thunderous parentage, and are soft as the whispering zephyr or the
cooing of doves. The gentleness of strength has a double beauty: its
own, and that of contrast. Still, the predominating character of Neal's
poetry is the sweep of the wild eagle's wing and the roar of rushing
waters.

We read his 'Otho' years since, when we were younger than now, and our
pulse beat stronger; and we read it 'holding our breath to the end'--or
this was the exact sensation we felt, as nearly as we can remember,
twelve years ago.

The character of Neal's periodical writing was just suited to a working
country, that was in too great a hurry to dine decently. People wanted
to be arrested. If they could stop, they had brains enough to judge you
and your wares; but they needed to be lassoed first, and lashed into
quietness afterward, and then they would hear and revere the man who had
been 'smart' enough to conquer them. John Neal seemed to be conscious of
this without knowing it. A veritable woman in his intuitions, he spoke
from them, and the heart of the people responded. The term 'live Yankee'
was of his coinage, and it aptly christened himself.

Neal went to Europe in 1823, and remained three years. That an American
could manage to maintain himself in England by writing, which Neal did,
is a pregnant fact. But his power is better proved than in this way. He
left America with a vow of temperance during his travels; he returned
with it unbroken. Honor to the strong man! He had traveled through
England and France, merely wetting his lips with wine. He wrote volumes
for British periodicals, and also his 'Brother Jonathan' in three
volumes. After looking over the catalogue of his labors for an hour, we
always want to draw a long breath and rest. There is no doubt that since
his return from Europe in 1826, he has written and published, in books
and newspapers, what would make at least one hundred volumes duodecimo.
It would be a hard fate for such an author to be condemned to read his
own productions, for he would never get time to read any thing else.

Neal's peculiar style caused many oddities and extravagances to be laid
at his door that did not belong there. From this fact of style, people
thought he could not disguise himself on paper. This is a mistake, for
his papers in Miller's _European Magazine_ were attributed to Washington
Irving. We transcribe the paragraph of a letter from Neal, promised
above, and which we received years since:

     'The papers I wrote for Miller's _European Magazine_ have been
     generally attributed to no less a person than Washington Irving--a
     man whom I resemble just about as much in my person as in my
     writing. He, Addisonian and Goldsmithian to the back-bone, and
     steeped to the very lips in what is called classical literature, of
     which I have a horror and a loathing, as the deadest of all dead
     languages; he, foil of subdued pleasantry, quiet humor, and genial
     blandness, upon all subjects. I, altogether--but never mind. He is
     a generous fellow, and led the way to all our triumphs in that
     'field of the cloth of gold' which men call the _literary_'.

Neal went to England a sort of Yankee knight-errant to fight for his
country. He had the wisdom to fight with his visor down, and quarter on
the enemy. He took heavy tribute from _Blackwood_ and others for his
articles vindicating America, which came to be extravagantly quoted and
read. His article for _Blackwood_ on the Five Presidents and the Five
Candidates, portraying General Jackson to the life as he afterward
proved to be, was translated into most of the European languages. I
transcribe another paragraph from an old letter. It is too
characteristic to remain unread by the public:

     'For my paper on the Presidents, _Blackwood_ sent me five guineas,
     and engaged me as a regular contributor, which I determined to be.
     But I ventured to write for other journals without consulting him;
     whereat he grew tetchy and impertinent, and I blew him up sky-high,
     recalled an article in type for which he had paid me _fifteen_
     guineas, (I wish he had kept it,) refunded the money, (I wish I
     hadn't,) and left him forever. But this I will say: _Blackwood_
     behaved handsomely to me from first to last, with one small
     exception, and showed more courage and good feeling toward '_my
     beloved_ country' while I was at the helm of that department, than
     any and all the editors, publishers, and proprietors in Britain.
     Give the devil his due, I say!'

This escapade with _Blackwood_ might have been a national loss; but
happily, Neal had accomplished his purpose--vindicated his country by
telling the truth, and by showing in himself the metal of one of her
sons. He had silenced the whole British battery of periodicals who had
been abusing America. He had forced literary England to a capitulation,
and he could well enough afford to leave his fifteen guineas at
_Blackwood's_, and go to France for recreation, as he did about this
time.

In 1826 he returned to America, and applied for admission to the
New-York bar. This started a hornet's nest. He had been 'sarving up' too
many newspaper and other scribblers, to be left in peace any longer.
With an excellent opinion of himself, his contempt was often quite as
large, to say the least of it, as his charity; and he had doubtless, at
times, in England, ridiculed his countrymen to the full of their
deserving; knowing that if he admitted the debtor side honestly, he
would be allowed to fix the amount of credit without controversy. His
Yankees are alarming specimens, which a growing civilization has so
nearly 'used up' that they are now regarded somewhat like fossil remains
of some extinct species of animal.

About the time Neal applied for admission to the New-York bar, a portion
of the people of Portland, stimulated by the aggrieved _literati_ above
mentioned, determined to elevate themselves into a mob _pro tem._, and
expel him from Portland. In the true spirit of his Quaker ancestry, who,
some one has said, always decided they were needed where they were not
wanted, Neal determined to stay in Portland, The mobocrats declared that
he was sold to the British. Neal retorted, in cool irony, that 'he only
wished he had got an offer.' They asserted that he was the mortal enemy
of our peculiar institutions, and that therefore he must be placarded
and mobbed. Hand-bills were issued, and widely circulated. But they did
not effect their object. They only drove this son of the Quakers to
_swear_ that he would stay in Portland. And he did stay, and established
a literary paper, though he once said to us that 'he would as soon have
thought of setting up a _Daily Advertiser_ in the Isle of Shoals three
months before.'

His marriage took place about this time, and was, as he used to say, his
pledge for good behavior. His wife was one of the loveliest of
New-England's daughters, and looked as if she might tame a tiger by the
simple magic of her presence. It is several years since we have met
Neal, and near a dozen since we saw him in his home. At that time he
must have been greatly in fault not to be a proud and happy man. If a
calm, restful exterior, and a fresh and youthful beauty, are signs of
happiness, then Mrs. Neal was one of the happiest women in the world.
The delicate softness, the perfection of youth in her beauty, lives
still in our memory. It is one of those real charms that never drop
through the mind's meshes.

Judging from Neal's impulsive nature, he was not the last man to do
something to be sorry for; but his wife and children looked as if they
were never sorry. We remember a little girl of some five or six years;
we believe they called her Maggie. Her dimpled cheek, her white round
neck and arms, and the perfect symmetry of her form, and the grace of
her motions, have haunted us these twelve years. We would not promise to
remember her as long or as well if we should see her again in these
days. But we made up our mind then, that we would rather be the father
of that child than the author of all Neal had written, or might have
written, even though he had been a wise and prudent man, and had done
his work as well as he doubtless wishes now that he had done it. Neal is
only half himself away from his beautiful home. There, he is in
place--an eagle in a nest lined with down, soft as eider. There his fine
taste is manifest in every thing. If we judge of his taste by his
rapidly-written works, we are sure to do him injustice. We find in him a
union of the most opposite qualities. We can not say a harmonious union.
An inflexible industry is not often united with a bird-like celerity and
grace of movement. With Neal, the two first have always been
combined--the whole on occasions, which might have been multiplied into
unbroken continuity if he had possessed the calm greatness that never
hastens and never rests. He did not rest; but through the first half of
his life, he surely forgot the Scripture which saith: 'He that believeth
shall not make haste.' It has often been asserted, that power which has
rest is greater than a turbulent power. We shall not attempt to settle
whether Erie or Niagara is greater, but we should certainly choose the
Lake for purposes of navigation.

Many men are careless of their character in private, but sufficiently
careful in public. The reverse is true of Neal. He has never hesitated
to throw his gauntlet in the face of the public as he threw his letters
of introduction in the fire when he arrived in Europe. But when he comes
into the charmed circle of his home, he is neither reckless nor
pugilistic, but a downright gentleman. We don't mean to say that Neal
never gets in a passion in private, or that he never needed the
wholesome restraint of a strait-waistcoat in the disputes of a Portland
Lyceum or debating-club. We do not give illustrative anecdotes, because
a lively imagination can conceive them, and probably has manufactured
several that have been afloat; still, we dare guess that the subject has
sometimes given facts to base the fictions on.

We speak of the past. A man with a forty-wildcat power imprisoned in him
is not very likely to travel on from youth to age, keeping the peace on
all occasions. Years bring a calming wisdom. The same man who once swore
five consecutive minutes, because he was forbidden by his landlady to
swear on penalty of leaving her house, and then made all the inmates
vote to refrain from profane language, and rigidly enforced the rule
thus _democratically_ established, is now, after a lapse of more than
thirty years, (particularly provoking impulse aside,) a careful and
dignified gentleman, who might be a Judge, if the public so willed.

That a long line of intellectual and finely developed ancestry gives a
man a better patent of nobility than all the kings of all countries
could confer, is beginning to be understood and believed among us;
though the old battle against titles and privilege, and the hereditary
descent of both, for a time blinded Americans to the true philosophy of
noble birth.

Neal's ancestors came originally from Scotland, and exemplify the
proverb that 'bluid is thicker than water,' in more ways than one. They
have a strong feeling of clanship, or, in other words, they are
convinced that it is an honor to be a Neal, and many of the last
generation have given proof positive that their belief is a fact. The
present generation we have little knowledge of, and do not know whether
they fulfill the promise of the name.

Neal has done good service to the Democracy of our country in many ways,
besides being one of the first and bravest champions of woman's rights.
He has labored for our literature with an ability commensurate with his
zeal, and he has drawn many an unfledged genius from the nest,
encouraged him to try his wings, and magnetized him into
self-dependence. A bold heavenward flight has often been the
consequence. A prophecy of Neal's that an idea or a man would succeed,
has seldom failed of fulfillment. We can not say this of the many
aspiring magazines and periodicals that have solicited the charity of
his name. We recollect, when brass buttons were universally worn on
men's coats, a wag undertook to prove that they were very unhealthy,
from the fact that more than half the persons who wore them suffered
from chronic or acute disease, and died before they had reached a
canonical age. According to this mode of generalization, Neal could be
convicted of causing the premature death of nine tenths of the defunct
periodicals in this country--probably no great sin, if it really lay at
his door.

In a brief outline sketch, such as we have chosen to produce, our
readers will perceive that only slight justice can be done to a man in
the manifold relations to men and things which contribute to form the
character.

John Neal's personal appearance is a credit to the country. He is tall,
with a broad chest, and a most imposing presence. One of the finest
sights we ever saw, was Neal standing with his arms folded before a fine
picture. His devotion to physical exercise, and his personal example to
his family in the practice of it--training his wife and children to take
the sparring-gloves and cross the foils with him in those graceful
attitudes which he could perfectly teach, because they were fully
developed in himself--all this has inevitably contributed to the health
and beauty of his beautiful family.

Few men have had so many right ideas of the art or science of living as
John Neal, and fewer still have acted upon them so faithfully. When we
last saw him, some ten years since--when he had lived more than half a
century--his eye had lost none of its original fire, not a nerve or
sinew was unbraced by care, labor, or struggle. He stood before us, a
noble specimen of the strong and stalwart growth of a new and
unexhausted land.

     NOTE,--The foregoing must have been written years ago, if
     one may judge by the color of the paper; and as the writer is now
     abroad, so as not to be within reach, the manuscript has been put
     into the hands of a gentleman who has been more or less acquainted
     with Mr. Neal from his boyhood up, and he has consented to finish
     the article by bringing down the record to our day, and putting on
     what he calls a 'snapper.'

Most of what follows, if we do not wholly misunderstand the intimations
that accompany the manuscript, is in the very language of Mr. Neal
himself word for word; gathered up we care not how, whether from
correspondence or conversation, so that there is no breach of manly
trust and no indecorum to be charged.

'As to my family,' he writes, in reply to some body's questioning, 'I
know not where they originated, nor how. Sometimes I have thought,
although I have never said as much before, that we must have come up of
ourselves--the spontaneous growth of a rude, rocky soil, swept by the
boisterous north-wind, and washed by the heavy surges of some great
unvisited sea. Of course, the writer you mention, who says that my
ancestors--if I ever had any--'came from Scotland,' must know something
that I never heard of, to the best of my recollection and belief.
Somewhere in England I have supposed they originated, and probably along
the coast of Essex; for there, about Portsmouth and Dover, I have always
felt so much at home in the graveyards--among my own household, as it
were, the names being so familiar to me, and the grave-stones now to be
seen in Portsmouth and Dover, New-Hampshire, where the Neals were first
heard of three or four generations ago, being duplicates of some I saw
in Portsmouth and Dover, England.

'Others have maintained, with great earnestness and plausibility, as if
it were something to brag of, that we have the blood of Oliver Cromwell
in us; and one, at least, who has gone a-field into heraldry, and
strengthens every position with armorial bearings--which only goes to
show the unprofitableness of all such labor, so far as we are
concerned--that we are of the '_red_ O'Neals,' not the _learned_
O'Neals, if there ever were any, but the 'red O'Neals of Ireland,' and
that I am, in fact, a lineal descendant of that fine fellow who
'_bearded_' Queen Elizabeth in her presence-chamber, with his right hand
clutching the hilt of his dagger.

'But, for myself, I must acknowledge that if I ever had a
great-great-grandfather, I know not where to dig for him--on my father's
side, I mean; for on the side of my mother I have lots of grandfathers
and great-grandfathers--and furthermore this deponent sayeth not--up to
the days of George Fox; enough, I think, to show clearly that the Neals
did not originate among the aborigines of the New World, whatever may be
supposed to the contrary. And so, in a word, the whole sum and substance
of all I know about my progenitors, male and female, is, that they were
always a sober-minded, conscientious, hard-working race, with a way and
a will of their own, and a habit of seeing for themselves, and judging
for themselves, and taking the consequences.

'Nor is it true that I am a 'large' or 'tall' man, though, in some
unaccountable way, always passing for a great deal more than I would
ever measure or weigh; and my own dear mother having lived and died in
the belief that I was good six feet, and well-proportioned, like my
father. My inches never exceeded five feet eight-and-a-half, and my
weight never varied from one hundred and forty-seven to one hundred and
forty-nine pounds, for about five-and-forty years; after which, getting
fat and lazy, I have come to weigh from one hundred and sixty-five to
one hundred and seventy-five pounds, without being an inch taller, I am
quite sure.'

Mr. Neal owns up, it appears, to the following publications, omitted by
the writer of the article you mentioned: 'Rachel Dyer,' one volume;
'Authorship,' one volume; 'Brother Jonathan,' three volumes, (English
edition;) 'Ruth Elder,' one volume; 'One Word More;' 'True Womanhood,'
one volume; magazine articles, reviews, and stories in most of the
British and American monthlies, and in some of the quarterlies, to the
amount of twenty volumes, at least, duodecimo. In addition to which, he
has been a liberal contributor all his life to some of the ablest
newspapers of the age, and either sole or sub-editor, or associate, in
perhaps twenty other enterprises, most of which fell through.

He claims, too--being a modest man--and others who know him best
acknowledge his claims, we see--that he revolutionized _Blackwood_ and
the British periodical press, at a time when they were all against us;
that he began the war on titles in this country, that he broke up the
lottery system and the militia system, and proposed (through the
_Westminster Review_) the only safe and reasonable plan of emancipation
that ever appeared; that with him originated the question of woman's
rights; that he introduced gymnasia to our people; and, in short, that
he has always been good for something, and always lived to some purpose.
'And furthermore deponent sayeth not.'




THE SOLDIER AND THE CIVILIAN.


When Charles Dickens expressed regret for having written his foolish
_American Notes_, and _Martin Chuzzlewit_, he 'improved the occasion' to
call us a large-hearted and good-natured people, or something to that
effect--I have not his _peccavi_ by me, and write from 'a favorable
general impression.'

It is not weak vanity which may lead any American to claim that in this
compliment lies a great truth. The American _is_ large-hearted and
good-natured, and when a few of his comrades join in a good work, he
will aid them with a lavish and Jack-tar like generosity. Charity is
peculiarly at home in America. A few generations have accumulated, in
all the older States, hospitals, schools, and beneficent institutions,
practically equal in every respect to those which have been the slow
growth of centuries in any European country. The contributions to the
war, whether of men or money, have been incredible. And there is no
stint and no grumbling. The large heart is as large and generous as
ever.

The war has, however, despite all our efforts, become an almost settled
institution. This is a pity--we all feel it bitterly, and begin to grow
serious. Still there is no flinching. Flinching will not help; we must
go on in the good cause, in God's name. 'Shall there not be clouds as
well as sunshine?' 'Go in, then'--that is agreed upon. Draft your men,
President Lincoln; raise your money, Mr. Chase, we are ready. To the
last man and the last dollar we are ready. History shall speak of the
American of this day as one who was as willing to spend money for
national honor as he was earnest and keen in gathering it up for private
emolument. Go ahead!

But let us do every thing advisedly and wisely.

In the first flush of war, it was not necessary to look so closely at
the capital. We pulled out our loose change and bank-notes, and
scattered them bravely--as we should. Now that more and still more are
needed, we should look about to see how to turn every thing to best
account. For instance, there is the matter of soldiers. Those who rose
in 1861, and went impulsively to battle, acted gloriously--even more
noble will it be with every volunteer who _now_, after hearing of the
horrors of war, still resolutely and bravely shoulders the musket and
dares fate. God sends these times to the world and to men as 'jubilees'
in which all who have lost an estate, be it of a calling or a social
position, may regain it or win a new one.

But still we want to present _every_ inducement. Already the lame and
crippled soldiers are beginning to return among us. The poor souls,
ragged and sun-burnt, may be seen at every corner. They sit in the parks
with unhealed wounds; they hobble along the streets, many of them weary
and worn; poor fellows! they are greater, and more to be envied than
many a fresh fopling who struts by. And the people feel this. They treat
them kindly, and honor them.

But would it not be well if some general action could be adopted on the
subject of taking care of all the incurables which this war is so
rapidly sending us? If every township in America would hold meetings and
provide honorably in some way for the returned crippled soldiers, they
would assume no great burden, and would obviate the most serious
drawback which the country is beginning to experience as regards
obtaining volunteers. It has already been observed by the press, that
the scattering of these poor fellows over the country is beginning to
have a discouraging effect on those who should enter the army. It is a
pity; we would very gladly ignore the fact, and continue to treat the
question solely _con entusiasmo_, and as at first; but what is the use
of endeavoring to shirk facts which will only weigh more heavily in the
end from being inconsidered now? Let us go to work generously,
great-heartedly, and good-naturedly, to render the life of every man who
has been crippled for the country as little of a burden as possible.

Dear readers, it will not be sufficient to guarantee to these men a
pauper's portion among you. I do not pretend to say what you should give
them, or what you should do for them. I only know that there are but two
nations on the face of the earth capable of holding town-meetings and
acting by spontaneous democracy for themselves. One of these is
represented by the Russian serfs, who administer their _mir_ or
'commune' with a certain beaver-like instinct, providing for every man
his share of land, his social position, his rights, so far as they are
able. The Englishman, or German, or Frenchman, is _not_ capable of this
natural town-meeting sort of action. He needs 'laws,' and government,
and a lord or a squire in the chair, or a demagogue on the rostrum. The
poor serf does it by custom and instinct.

The Bible Communism of the Puritans, and the habit of discussing all
manner of secular concerns in meeting, originated this same ability in
America. To this, more than to aught else, do we owe the growth of our
country. One hundred Americans, transplanted to the wild West and left
alone, will, in one week, have a mayor, and 'selectmen,' a town-clerk,
and in all probability a preacher and an editor. One hundred Russian
serfs will not rise so high as this; but leave them alone in the steppe,
and they will organize a _mir_, elect a _starosta_, or 'old man,' divide
their land very honestly, and take care of the cripples!

Such nations, but more especially the American, can find out for
themselves, much better than any living editor can tell them, how to
provide liberally for those who fought while they remained at home. The
writer may suggest to them the subject--they themselves can best 'bring
it out.'

In trials like these it is very essential that our habits of meeting,
discussing and practically acting on such measures, should be more
developed than ever. We have come to the times which _test_ republican
institutions, and to crises when the public meeting--the true
corner-stone of all our practical liberties--should be brought most
boldly, freely, and earnestly into action. Politics and feuds should
vanish from every honorable and noble mind, and all unite in cordial
coöperation for the good work. Friends, there is _nothing_ you can not
do, if you would only get together, inspire one another, and do your
_very best_. You could raise an army which would drive these rebel
rascals howling into their Dismal Swamps, or into Mexico, in a month, if
you would only combine in earnest and do all you can.

Hitherto the man of ease, and the Respectable, disgusted by the
politicians, has neglected such meetings, and left them too much to the
Blackguard to manage after his own way. But this is a day of politics no
longer; at least, those who try to engineer the war with a view to the
next election, are in a fair way to be ranked with the enemies of the
country, and to earn undying infamy. The only politics which the honest
man now recognizes is, the best way to save the country; to raise its
armies and fight its battles. It is not McClellan or anti-McClellan,
which we should speak of, but anti-Secession. And paramount among the
principal means of successfully continuing the war, I place this, of
properly caring for the disabled soldier, and of placing before those
who have not as yet enlisted, the fact, that come what may, they will be
well looked after, for life.

As I said, the common-sense of our minor municipalities will abundantly
provide for these poor fellows, if a spirit can be awakened which shall
sweep over the country and induce the meetings to be held. In many,
something has already been done. But something liberal and large is
requisite. Government will undoubtedly do its share; and this, if
properly done, will greatly relieve our local commonwealths. Here,
indeed, we come to a very serious question, which has been already
discussed in these pages--more boldly, as we are told, than our
cotemporaries have cared to treat it, and somewhat in advance of others.
We refer to our original proposition to liberally divide Southern lands
among the army, and convert the retired soldier to a small planter. Such
men would very soon contrive to hire the 'contraband,' get him to
working, and make something better of him than planterocracy ever did.
At least, this is what Northern ship-captains and farmers contrive to
do, in their way, with numbers of coal-black negroes, and we have no
doubt that the soldier-planter will manage, 'somehow,' to get out a
cotton-crop, even with the aid of hired negroes! Here, again, a bounty
could be given to the wounded. Observe, we mean a bounty which shall, to
as high a degree as is possible or expedient, fully recompense a man for
losing a limb. And as we can find in Texas alone, land sufficient to
nobly reward a vast proportion of our army, it will be seen that I do
not propose any excessive or extravagant reward.

Between our municipalities and our government, _much_ should be done.
But will not this prove a two-stool system of relief, between which the
disbanded soldier would fall to the ground? Not necessarily. Let our
towns and villages do their share, pledging themselves to take _good_
care of the disabled veteran, and to find work for all until Government
shall apportion the lands of the conquered among the army.

And let all this be done _soon_. Let it forthwith form a part of the
long cried for 'policy' which is to inspire our people. If this had been
a firmly determined thing from the beginning, and if we had _dared_ to
go bravely on with it, instead of being terrified at every proposal to
_act_, by the yells and howls of the Northern secessionists, we might
have cleared Dixie out as fire clears tow. 'The enemy,' said one who had
been among them, 'have the devil in them.' If our men had something
solid to look forward to, they too, would have the devil in them, and no
mistake. They fight bravely as it is, without much inducement beyond
patriotism and a noble cause. But the 'secesh' soldier has more than
this--he has the desperation of a traitor in a bad cause, of a fanatic
and of a natural savage. It is no slur at the patriotism of our troops
to say that they would fight better for such a splendid inducement as
we hold out.

We may as well do all we can for the army--at home and away, here and
there, with all our hearts and souls. For it will come to that sooner or
later. The army is a terrible power, and its power has been, and is to
be, terribly exerted. If we would organize it betimes, prevent it from
becoming a social trouble, or rather make of it a great social support
and a _help_ instead of a future hindrance and a drag, we must be busy
at work providing for it. There it is--destined, perhaps, to rise to a
million--the flower, strength, and intellect of America, our productive
force, our brain--yes, the great majority of our mills, and looms, and
printing-presses, and all that is capital-producing, are there, in those
uniforms. There, friends, lie towns and cities, towers and palace-halls,
literature and national life--for there are the brains and arms which
make these things. Those uniforms are not to be, at least, _should not_
be, forever there. But manage meanly and weakly and stingily _now_, and
you destroy the cities and fair castles, the uniform remains in the
myriad ranks, war becomes interminable, the soldier becomes nothing but
a soldier--God avert the day!--and you will find yourself some day
telling your grand-children--if you have any, for I can inform you that
the chances of war diminish many other chances--how 'things _might_ have
been, and how finely we _might_ have conquered the enemy and had an
undivided country--God bless us!'

Will the WOMEN of America take no active part in this movement?

Many years ago, a German writer--one Kirsten--announced the
extraordinary fact, that in the Atlantic States the proportion of women
who died unmarried, or of 'old maids,' was larger than in any European
country. It is certainly true that, owing to the high standard of
expenses adopted by the children of respectable American parents--and
what American is not 'respectable'?--we are far less apt to rush into
'imprudent' marriages than is generally supposed. But what proportion of
unmarried dames will there be, if drafting continues, and the war
becomes a permanent annual subject of draft? The prospect is seriously
and simply frightful! The wreck of morality in France caused by
Napoleon's wars is notorious, for previous to that time the French
peasantry were not so debauched as they subsequently became. But this
shocking subject requires no comment.

On with the war! Drive it, push it, send it howling and hissing on like
the wild tornado, like the mad levin-brand, right into the foe! Pay the
soldier--promise--pledge--do any thing and every thing; but raise an
overwhelming force, and end the war.

Up and fight!

It is better to die now than see such disaster as awaits this country if
war become a fixed disease.




VOLUNTEER BOYS. [1750.]


  'Hence with the lover who sighs o'er his wine,
    Chloes and Phillises toasting;
  Hence with the slave who will whimper and whine,
    Of ardor and constancy boasting;
            Hence with Love's joys,
            Follies and noise.
    The toast that _I_ give is: 'The Volunteer Boys!''




AUTHOR-BORROWING.


Bulwer, in narrating the literary career of a young Chinese, states how
one of his works was very severely handled by the Celestial critics: one
of the gravest of the charges brought against it by these poll-shaved,
wooden-shod, little-foot-worshiping, Great-Wall-building mandarins of
literature being its extreme originality! They denounced Fihoti as
having sinned the unpardonable literary sin of writing a book, a large
share of whose ideas was nowhere to be found in the writings of
Confucius.

But how strange such a charge would sound in our English ears! With us,
if between two authors the most remote resemblance of idea or expression
can be detected, straightway some ultraist stickler for
originality--some Poe--shrieks out, 'Some body must be a thief!' and
forthwith, all along the highways of reviewdom, is sent up the hue and
cry: 'Stop thief! stop thief!' For has not the law thundered from Sinai,
'Thou shalt not steal'? True, plagiarism is nowhere distinctly forbidden
by Moses; but have not critics judicially pronounced it author-_theft_?
Has not metaphor been sounded through every note of its key-board, to
strike out all that is base whereunto to liken it? Have not old Dr.
Johnson's seven-footed words--the tramp of whose heavy brogans has
echoed down the staircase of years even unto our day--declared
plagiarists from the works of buried writers 'jackals, battening on dead
men's thoughts'?

And yet, after a vast deal of such like catachresis, the orthodoxy of
plagiarism remains still in dispute. What we incorporate among the
cardinal articles of literary faith, China abjures as a dangerous
heresy. But neither our own nor the Chinese creed consists wholly of
tested bullion, but is crude ore, in which the pure gold of truth is
mingled with the dross of error. That is a golden tenet of the
tea-growers which licenses the borrowing of ideas; that 'of the earth,
earthy,' which embargoes every one unborrowed. We build upon a rock when
interdicting plagiarism; but on sand when we make that term inclose
author-theft and author-borrowing. The making direct and unacknowledged
quotations, and palming them off as the quoter's, is a very grave
literary offense. But the expression of similar or even identical
thoughts in different language, in this age of the world must be
tolerated, or else the race of authors soon become as extinct as that of
behemoths and ichthyosauri; and, indeed, far from levying any imposts
upon author-borrowing, rather ought we to vote bounties and pensions to
encourage it.

Originality of thought with men is impossible. There is in existence a
certain amount of thought, but it all belongs to God. Lord paramount
over the empire of mind as well as matter, he alone is seized, in fee
simple right, of the whole domain: provinces of which men hold, as
fiefs, by vassal tenure, subject to reversion and enfeoffment to
another. Nor can any man absolve himself from his allegiance, and extend
absolute sovereignty over broad tracts of idea-territory; for while
feudal princes vested in themselves, by conquest merely, the ownership
of kingdoms, God became suzerain over the empire of thought by virtue of
creation--for creation confers right of property. We do not, then,
originate the thoughts we call our own; or else Pantheism tells no lie
when it declares that man is God, for the differentia which
distinguishes God from man is absolute creative power. And if man be
thought-creative, he can as well as God give being unto what was
non-existent, and that, too, not mere gross, perishable matter, but
immortal soul; for thought is mind, and mind is spirit, soul, undying,
immortal. Grant that, and you divide God's empire, and enthrone the
creature in equal sovereignty beside his Maker.

All thought, then, belongs exclusively to God, and is parceled out by
him, as he chooses, among his creature feudatories. As the wind, which
bloweth where it listeth, and no one knoweth whence it cometh, save that
it is sent by God, so is thought, as it blows through our minds. Over
birds, flying at liberty through the free air, boys often advance claims
of ownership more specific than are easily derived from the general
dominion God gave man over the beasts of the field and the birds of the
air; yet, 'All those birds are mine!' exclaims a youngster in
roundabout, with just as much reason as any man can claim, as
exclusively his own, the thoughts which are ever winging their way
through the firmament of mind.

But considered apart from the relation we sustain to God, none of us are
original with respect to our fellow-men. Few, indeed, are the ideas we
derive by direct grant, or through nature, from our liege lord; but far
the greater share, by hooks or personal contact, we gather through our
fellow-men. Consciously, unconsciously, we all teach--we all learn from,
one another. Association does far more toward forming mind than natural
endowments. As not alone the soil whence it springs makes the oak, but
surrounding elements contribute. Seclude a human mind entirely from
hooks and men, and you may have a man with no ideas borrowed from his
fellows. Such a one, in Germany, once grew up from childhood to manhood
in close imprisonment, and poor Kasper Hauser proved--an idiot. It can
hardly be necessary to suggest the well-known fact, that the greatest
readers of men and books always possess the greatest minds. Such are,
besides, of the greatest service to mankind. For since God has so formed
us that we love to give as well as take, a great independent mind,
complete in itself and incapable of receiving from others, must always
stand somewhat apart from men; and even a great heart, when
conjoined--as it seldom is--with a great head, is rarely able to
drawbridge over the wide moat which intrenches it in solitary
loneliness. Originality ever links with it something of
uncongeniality--a feeling somewhat akin to the egotism of that one who,
when asked why he talked so much to himself, replied--for two reasons:
the one, that he liked to talk to a sensible man; the other, that he
liked to hear a sensible man talk. Divorcing itself from
fellow-sympathies, it broods over its own perfections, till, like
Narcissus, it falls in love with itself. And so, a highly original man
can rarely ever be a highly popular man or author. By the very
super-abundance of his excellencies, his usefulness is destroyed; just
as Tarpeia sank, buried beneath the presents of the Sabine soldiery. A
Man once appeared on earth, of perfect originality; and in him, to an
unbounded intellect was added boundless moral power. But men received
him not. They rejected his teachings; they smote him; they crucified
him.

But though the right of eminent domain over ideas does and should inhere
in one superior to us, far different is the case with words. These
'incarnations of thought' are of man's device, and therefore his; and
style--the peculiar manner in which one uses words to express ideas--is
individually personal. Indeed, style has been defined the man himself; a
definition, so far as he is recognized only as a revealer of thought,
substantially correct. In an idea word-embodied, the embodier, then,
possesses with God concurrent ownership. The idea itself may be
borrowed, or it may be his so far as discovery gives title; but the
words, in their arrangement, are absolutely his. All ideas are like
mathematical truths: eternal and unchangeable in their essence, and
originate in nature; words like figures, of a fixed value, but of human
invention; and sentences are formulæ, embodying oftentimes the same
essential truth, but in shapes as various as their paternity. Words, in
sentences, should then be inviolate to their author.

Nor is this to value words above ideas--the flesh above the spirit of
which it is but the incarnation. It is not the intrinsic value of each
that we here regard, but the value of the ownership one has in each.
'Deacon Giles and I,' said a poor man, 'own more cows than any five
other men in the county.' 'How many does Deacon Giles own?' asked a
bystander. 'Nineteen.' 'And how many do you?' 'One.' And that one cow,
which that poor man owned, was worth more to _him_ than the nineteen
which were Deacon Giles's. So, when you have determined whose the style
is which enfolds a thought, whose the thought is, is as little worth
dispute as, after its wrappage of corn has been shelled off, the cob's
ownership is worth a quarrel.

As thoughts bodied in words uttered make up conversation, thought
incarnate in words written constitutes literature. The gross sum of
thought with which God has seen to dower the human mind, though vast, is
finite, and may be exhausted. Indeed, we are told this had been already
done so long ago as times whereof Holy Writ takes cognizance. Since that
time, then, men have been echoing and reëchoing the same old ideas. And
though words, too, are finite, their permutations are infinite. What
Himalayan piles of paper, river-coursed by Danubes and Niagaras of ink,
hath the 'itch of writing' aggregated! And yet, Ganganelli says that
every thing that man has ever written might be contained within six
thousand folio volumes, if filled with only original matter. But how
books lie heaped on one another, weighing down those under, weighed down
by those above them; each crushed and crushing; their thoughts, like
bones of skeletons corded in convent vault, mingled in confusion--like
those which Hawthorne tells us Miriam saw in the burial-cellar of the
Capuchin friars in Rome, where, when a dead brother had lain buried an
allotted period, his remains, removed from earth to make room for a
successor, were piled with those of others who had died before him.

It is said Aurora once sought and gained from Jove the boon of
immortality for one she loved; but forgetting to request also perpetual
youth, Tithonus gradually grew old, his thin locks whitened, his wasting
frame dwindled to a shadow, and his feeble voice thinned down till it
became inaudible. And just so ideas, although immortal, were it not for
author-borrowers, through age grown obsolete, might virtually perish.
But by and by, just as some precious thought is being lost unto the
world, let there come some Medea, by whose potent sorcery that old and
withered idea receives new life-blood through its shrunken veins, and it
starts to life again with recreated vigor--another Æson, with the bloom
of youth upon him. Besides in this way playing the physician to save old
ideas from a burial alive, the author-borrower often delivers many a
prolific mother-thought of a whole family of children--as a prism from
out a parent ray of colorless light brings all the bright colors of the
spectrum, which, from red to violet, were all waiting there only for its
assistance to leap into existence; or sometimes he plays the parson,
wedlocking thoughts from whose union issue new; as from yellow wedded to
red springs orange, a new, a secondary life; or enacts, maybe, the
brood-hen's substitute. Many a thought is a Leda egg, imprisoning twin
life-principles, which,, incubated in the eccaleobion brain of an
author-borrower, have blessed the world; but without such a
foster-parent, in some neglected nest staled and addled, had never burst
the shell.

Author-borrowing should also be encouraged, because it tends to
language's perfection, and thus to incrementing the value of the ideas
it vehicles; for though a gilding diction and elegant expression may not
directly increase a thought's intrinsic worth, yet by bestowing beauty
it increases its utility, and so adds relative value--just as a rosewood
veneering does to a basswood table. There may be as much raw timber in a
slab as in a bunch of shingles, but the latter is worth the most; it
will find a purchaser where the former would not. So there may be as
much truly valuable thought in a dull sermon as in a lively lecture;
but the lecture will please, and so instruct, where the dull sermon will
fall on an inattentive ear. Moreover, author minds are of two classes,
the one deep-thinking, the other word-adroit. Providence bestows her
favors frugally; and with the power of quarrying out huge lumps of
thought, ability to work them over into graceful form is rarely given.
This is no new doctrine, but a truth clearly recognized in metaphysics,
and evidenced in history. Cromwell was a prodigious thinker; but in
language, oh! how deficient. His thoughts, struggling to force
themselves out of that sphynx-like jargon which he spake and wrote,
appear like the treasures of the shipwrecked Trojans, swimming '_rari in
gurgite vasto_'--Palmyra columns, reared in the midst of a desert of
sentences. And Coleridge--than whom in the mines of mental science few
have dug deeper, and though Xerxes-hosts of word-slaves waited on his
pen--often wrote apparently mere bagatelle--the most transcendental
nonsense. Yet he who takes the pains to husk away his obscurity of style
will find solid ears of thought to recompense his labor. Bentham and
Kant required interpreters--Dumont and Cousin--to make understood what
was well worth understanding. These two kinds of
authors--thought-creditors and borrowing expressionists--are as mutually
necessary to each other to bring out idea in its most perfect shape, as
glass and mercury to mirror objects. Dim, indeed, is the reflection of
the glass without its coating of quicksilver; and amalgam, without a
plate on which to spread it, can never form a mirror. The metal and the
silex are

  'Useless each without the other;'

but wed them, and from their union spring life-like images of life.

But it may be objected that in trying to improve a thought we often mar
it; just as in transplanting shrubs from the barren soil in which they
have become fast rooted, to one more fertile, we destroy them. 'Just as
the fabled lamps in the tomb of Terentia burned underground for ages,
but when removed into the light of day, went out in darkness.' That this
sometimes occurs, we own. Some ideas are as fragile as butterflies, whom
to handle is to destroy. But such are exceptions only, and should not
preclude attempts at improvement. If a bungler tries and fails, let him
be Anathema, Maranathema; but let not his failure deter from trial a
genuine artist. Nor is it an ignoble office to be thus shapers only of
great thinkers' thoughts--Python interpreters to oracles. Nor is his
work of slight account who thus--as sunbeams gift dark thunder-clouds
with 'silver lining' and a fringe of purple, as Time with ivy drapes a
rugged wall--hangs the beauties of expression round a rude but sterling
thought. Nay, oftentimes the shaper's labor is worth more than the
thought he shapes. For if the stock out of which the work is wrought be
ever more valuable than the workman's skill, then let canvas and
paint-pots impeach the fame of Raphael; rough blocks from Paros and
Pentelicus, the gold and ivory of the Olympian Jove; tear from the brow
of Phidias the laurel wreath with which the world has crowned him.
Supply of raw material is little without the ability to use it. Furnish
three men with stone and mortar, and while one is building an unsightly
heap of clumsy masonry, the architect will rear up a magnificent
cathedral--an Angelo, a St. Peter's. And so when ideas, which in their
crudeness are often as hard to be digested as unground corn, are run
through the mill of another's mind, and appear in a shape suited to
satisfy the most dyspeptic stomachs, does not the miller deserve a toll?

Finally, author-borrowing has been hallowed by its practice, in their
first essays, by all our greatest writers. Turn to the scroll on which
the world has written the names of those it holds as most illustrious.
How was it with him whom English readers love to call the
'myriad-minded?' Shakespeare began by altering old plays, and his
indebtedness to history and old legends is by no means slight. How with
him who sang 'of man's first disobedience' and exodus from Eden? Even
Milton did not, Elijah-like, draw down his fire direct from heaven, but
kindled with brands, borrowed from Greek and Hebrew altars, the
inspiration which sent up the incense-poetry of a Lost Paradise. And all
the while that Maro sang 'Arms and the Man,' a refrain from the harp of
Homer was sounding in his ears, unto whose tones so piously he keyed and
measured his own notes, that oftentimes we fancy we can hear the strains
of 'rocky Scio's blind old bard' mingling in the Mantuan's melody. If
thus it has been with those who sit highest and fastest on
Parnassus--the crowned kings of mind--how has it been with the mere
nobility? What are Scott's poetic romances, but blossomings of engrafted
scions on that slender shoot from out the main trunk of English
poetry--the old border balladry? Campbell's polished elegance of style,
and the 'ivory mechanism of his verse,' was born the natural child of
Beattie and Pope. Byron had Gifford in his eye when he wrote 'English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' and Spenser when he penned the
'Pilgrimage.' Pope, despairing of originality, and taking Dryden for his
model, sought only to polish and to perfect. Gray borrowed from Spenser,
Spenser from Chaucer, Chaucer from Dante, and Dante had ne'er been Dante
but for the old Pagan mythology. Sterne and Hunt and Keats were only

  Bees, in their own volumes hiving
  Borrowed sweets from others' gardens.

And thus it ever is. The inceptions of true genius are always
essentially imitations. A great writer does not begin by ransacking for
the odd and new. He re-models--betters. Trusting not hypotheses
unproven, he demonstrates himself the proposition ere he wagers his
faith on the corollary; and it is thus that in time he grows to be a
discoverer, an inventor, an _originator_.

Toward originality all should steer; but can only hope to reach it
through imitation. For if originality be the Colchis where the golden
fleece of immortality is won, imitation must be the Argo in which we
sail thither.




INTERVENTION.


  Intervene! and see what you'll catch
  In a powder-mill with a lighted match.
  Intervene! if you think fit,
  By jumping into the bottomless pit.
  Intervene! How you'll gape and gaze
  When you see all Europe in a blaze!
  Russia gobbling your world half in,
  Red Republicans settling with _sin_;
  Satan broke loose and nothing between--
  _That's_ what you'll catch if you intervene!




MACCARONI AND CANVAS.

VII.


'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL.'

There was a shop occupied by a dealer in paintings, engravings,
intaglios, old crockery, and _Bric-à-brac_-ery generally, down the Via
Condotti, and into this shop Mr. William Browne, of St. Louis, one
morning found his way. He had been induced to enter by reading in the
window, written on a piece of paper,

'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL,'

and as he wisely surmised that the dealer intended to notify the English
that he had a painting by Titian for sale, he went in to see it.

Unfortunately for Mr. Browne, familiarly known as Uncle Bill, he had one
of those faces that invariably induced Roman tradesmen to resort to the
Oriental mode of doing business, namely, charging three hundred per cent
profit; and as this dealer having formerly been a courier,
commissionaire and pander to English and American travelers, naturally
spoke a disgusting jargon of Italianized English, and had what he
believed were the most distinguished manners: _he_ charged five hundred
per cent.

'I want,' said Uncle Bill to the 'brick-Bat' man, 'to see your Titian.'

'I shall expose 'im to you in one moment, sare; you walk this way. He's
var' fine pickshoor, var' fine. You ben long time in Rome, sare?'

No reply from Uncle Bill: his idea was, even a wise man may ask
questions, but none but fools answer fools.

Brick-bat man finds that his customer has ascended the human scale one
step; he prepares 'to spring dodge' Number two on him.

'Thare, sar, thare is Il Tiziano! I spose you say you see notheeng bote
large peas board: zat peas board was one táble for two, tree hundret
yars; all zat time ze pickshoor was unbeknounst undair ze táble. Zey
torn up ze table, and you see a none-doubted Tiziano. Var' fine
pickshoor!'

'Do you know,' asked Uncle Bill, 'if it was in a temperance family all
that time?'

'I am not acquent zat word, demprance--wot it means?'

'Sober,' was the answer.

'Yas, zat was in var' sobair fam'ly--in convent of nons.'

'That will account for its being undiscovered so long--all the world
knows they are not inquisitive! If it had been in a drinking-house, some
body falling under the table would have seen it--wouldn't they?'

Brick-bat reflects, and comes to the conclusion that the 'eldairly cove'
is wider-awake than he believed him, at first sight.

'Now I torne zis board you see on ze othaire side, ze Bella Donna of
Tiziano. Zere is one in ze Sciarra palace, bote betwane you and I, I
don't believe it is gin'wine.'

'I don't know much about paintings,' spoke Uncle Bill, 'but I know I've
seen seventy-six of these Belli Donners, and each one was sworn to as
the original picture!'

'Var' true, sare, var' true, Tiziano Vermecellio was grate pantaire, man
of grate mind, and when he got holt onto fine subjick he work him ovair
and ovair feefty, seexty times. Ze chiaro-'scuro is var' fine, and ze
depfs of his tone somethings var' deep, vary. Look at ze flaish, sare,
you can pinch him, and, sare, you look here, I expose grand secret to
you. I take zis pensnife, I scratgis ze pant. Look zare!'

'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I don't see any thing.'

'You don't see anne theengs! Wot you see under ze pant?'

'It looks like dirt.'

'_Cospetto!_ zat is ze gr-and prep-par-ra-tion zat makes ze flaish of
Tiziano more natooral as life. You know grate pantaire, Mistaire Leaf,
as lives in ze Ripetta? Zat man has spend half his lifes scratging
Tiziano all to peases, for find out 'ow he mak's flaish: now he believes
he found out ze way, bote, betwane you and I----' Here the Brick-bat
man conveyed, by a shake of his head and a tremolo movement of his left
hand, the idea that 'it was all in vain.'

'What do you ask for the picture?' asked Uncle Bill

The head of the Brick-bat man actually disappeared between his shoulders
as he shrugged them up, and extended his hands at his sides like the
flappers of a turtle. Uncle Bill looked at the man in admiration; he had
never seen such a performance before, save by a certain contortionist in
a traveling circus, and in his delight he asked the man, when his head
appeared, if he wouldn't do that once more, only once more!

In his surprise at being asked to perform the trick, he actually went
through it again. For which, Uncle Bill thanked him, kindly, and again
asked the price of the Titian.

'I tak' seex t'ousand scudi for him, not one baiocch less.'

'It an't dear,'specially for those who have the money to
scatterlophisticate,' replied Uncle Bill cheerfully.

'No, sare, it ees dogs chip, var' chip. I have sevral Englis' want to
buy him bad; I shall sell him some days to some bodies. Bote, sare, will
you 'ave ze goodniss to write down on peas paper zat word, var' fine
word, you use him minit 'go--scatolofistico sometheengs--I wis' to larn
ze Englis' better as I spiks him.'

'Certainly; give me a pencil and paper, I'll write it down, and you'll
astonish some Englishman with it, I'll bet a hat.'

So it was written down; and if any one ever entered a shop in the
Condotti where there was a Titiano for Sal, and was 'astonished' by
hearing that word used, they may know whence it came.

Mr. Browne, after carefully examining the usual yellow marble model of
the column of Trajan, the alabaster pyramid of Caius Cestius, the verd
antique obelisks, the bronze lamps, lizards, marble _tazze_, and
paste-gems of the modern-antique factories, the ever-present Beatrice
Cenci on canvas, and the water-color costumes of Italy, made a purchase
of a Roman mosaic paper-weight, wherein there was a green parrot with a
red tail and blue legs, let in with minute particles of composition
resembling stone, and left the Brick-bat man alone with his Titiano for
Sal.


SO LONG!

Rocjean came into Caper's studio one morning, evidently having something
to communicate.

'Are you busy this morning? If not, come along with me; there is
something to be seen--something that beats the Mahmoudy Canal of the
Past, or the Suez Canal of the Present, for wholesale slaughter; for I
do assure you, on the authority of Hassel, that nine hundred and
thirty-six million four hundred and sixty-one thousand people died
before it was finished!'

'That must be a work worth looking at. Why, the Pyramids must be as
anthills to Chimborazo in comparison to it! Nine hundred and odd
millions of mortals! Why, that is about the number dying in a
generation--and these have passed away while it was being completed? It
ought to be a master-piece.'

'Can't we get a glass of wine round here?' asked Rocjean, looking at his
watch; 'it is about luncheon-time, and I have a charming little thirst.'

'Oh! yes, there is a wine-shop only three doors from here, pure Roman.
Let us go: we can stand out in the street and drink if you are afraid to
go in.'

Leaving the studio, they walked a few steps to a house that was
literally all front-door; for the entrance was the entire width of the
building, and a buffalo-team could have passed in without let. Outside
stood a wine-cart, from which they were unloading several small casks
of wine. The driver's seat had a hood over it, protecting him from the
sun, as he lazily sleeps there, rumbling over the tufa road, to or from
the Campagna, and around the seat were painted in gay colors various
patterns of things unknown. In the autumn, vine-branches with pendent,
rustling leaves decorate hood and horse, while in spring or summer, a
bunch of flowers often ornaments this gay-looking wine-cart.

The interior of the shop was dark, dingy, sombre, and dirty enough to
have thrown an old Flemish Interior artist into hysterics of delight.
There was an _olla podrida_ browniness about it that would have
entranced a native of Seville; and a collection of dirt around, that
would have elevated a Chippeway Indian to an ecstasy of delight. The
reed-mattings hung against the walls were of a gulden ochre-color, the
smoked walls and ceiling the shade of asphaltum and burnt sienna, the
unswept stone pavement a warm gray, the old tables and benches very rich
in tone and dirt; the back of the shop, even at midday, dark, and the
eye caught there glimpses of arches, barrels, earthen jars, tables and
benches resting in twilight, and only brought out in relief by the faint
light always burning in front of the shrine of the Virgin, that hung on
one of the walls.

In a wine-shop this shrine does not seem out of place, it is artistic;
but in a lottery-office, open to the light of day, and glaringly
common-place, the Virgin hanging there looks much more like the goddess
Fortuna than Santa Maria.

But they are inside the wine-shop, and the next instant a black-haired
gipsy-looking woman with flashing, black eyes, warming up the sombre
color of the shop by the fiery red and golden silk handkerchief which
falls from the back of her head, Neapolitan fashion, illuminating that
dusky old den like fireworks, asks them what they will order?

'A foglietta of white wine.'

'Sweet or dry?' she asks.

'Dry,' (_asciùtto_,) said Rocjean.

There it is on the table, in a glass flask, brittle as virtue, light as
sin, and fragile as folly. They are called Sixtusses, after that pious
old Sixtus V. who hanged a publican and wine-seller sinner in front of
his shop for blasphemously expressing his opinion as to the correctness
of charging four times as much to put the fluoric-acid government stamp
on them as the glass cost. However, taxes must be raised, and the
thinner the glass the easier it is broken, so the Papal government
compel the wine-sellers to buy these glass bubbles, forbidding the sale
of wine out of any thing else save the _bottiglie_; and as it raises
money by touching them up with acid, why, the people have to stand it.
These _fogliette_ have round bodies and long, broad necks, on which you
notice a white mark made with the before-mentioned chemical preparation;
up to this mark the wine should come, but the attendant generally takes
thumb-toll, especially in the restaurants where foreigners go, for the
Roman citizen is not to be swindled, and will have his rights: the
single expression, 'I AM A ROMAN CITIZEN,' will at times save him at
least two _baiocchi_, with which he can buy a cigar. There was a time
when these words would have checked the severest decrees of the highest
magistrate: now when they fire off 'that gun,' the French soldiers stand
at its mouth, laugh, and say; '_Boom!_ you have no balls for your
cartridges!'

The wine finished, our two artists took up their line of march for the
object that had outlived so many millions on millions of human beings,
and at last reached it, discovering its abode afar off, by the crowd of
fair-and unfair, or red-haired Saxons, who were thronging up a staircase
of a house near the Ripetta, as if a steamboat were ringing her last
bell and the plank were being drawn in.

'And pray, can you tell me, Mister Buller, if it's a positive fact that
the man has been so long as they say, at work on the thing?'

'And ah! I haven't the slightest doubt of it, myself. I've been told
that he has worked on it, to be sure, for full thirty years; and I may
say I am delighted, that he has it done at last, and that it is to be
packed up and sent away to St. Petersburg next week. And how do you like
the Hotel Minerva? I think it's not a very dirty inn, but the waiters
are very demanding, and the fleas--'

'I beg you won't speak of them, it makes my blood run cold. Have you
seen the last copy of _Galignani_? The Americans, I am glad to see, have
had trouble with us, and I hope they will be properly punished. Do you
know the Duke of Bigghed is in town?'

'Really! and when did he come--and where is the Duchess? oh!--she's a
very amiable lady--but here's the picture!'

Ushered in, or preceded by this rattle-headed talk, Caper and Rocjean
stood at last before Ivanhof's celebrated painting--finished at last!
Thirty years' work, and the result?

A very unsatisfactory stream of water, a crowd of Orientals, and our
Saviour descending a hill.

The general impression left on the mind after seeing it, was like that
produced by a wax-work show. Nature was travestied; ease, grace,
freedom, were wanting: evidently the thirty years might have been better
spent collecting beetles or dried grasses.

Around the walls of the studio hung sketches painted during visits the
artist had made to the East. Here were studies of Eastern heads,
costumes, trees, soil by river-side, sand in the desert, copied with
scrupulous care and precise truth, yet, when they were all together in
the great painting, the combined effect was a failure.

The artist, they said, had, during this long period, received an annual
pension of so many roubles from the Russian government, and had taken
his time about it. At last it was completed; the painting that had
outlasted a generation was to be sent to St. Petersburg to hibernate
after a lifetime spent in sunny Italy. Well! after all, it was better
worth the money paid for it than that paid for nine tenths of those
kingly toys in the baby-house Green Chambers of Dresden. _Le Roi
s'amuse!_

And the white-haired Saxons came in shoals to the studio to see the
painting with thirty years' labor on it, and accordingly as their
oracles had judged it, so did they: for behold! gay colors are tabooed
in the mythology of the Pokerites, and are classed with perfumes,
dance-music, and jollity, and art earns a precarious livelihood in their
land, where all knowledge of it is supposed to be tied up with the
enjoyers of primogeniture.


ROMAN THEATRES.

The Apollo, where grand opera, sandwiched with moral ballets, is given
for the benefit of foreigners, principally, would be a fine house if you
could only see it; but when Caper was in Rome, the oil-lamps, showing
you where to sit down, did not reveal its proportions, or the dresses of
the box-beauties, to any advantage; and as oil-lamps will smoke, there
settled a veil over the theatre towards the second act, that draped
Comedy like Tragedy, and then set her to coughing.

During Carnival a melancholy ball or two was given there: a few wild
foreigners venturing in masked, believed they had mistaken the house,
for although many women were wandering around in domino, they found the
Roman young men unmasked, walking about dressed in canes and those
dress-coats, familiarly known as tail-coats, which cause a man to look
like a swallow with the legs of a crane, and wearing on their impassive
faces the appearance of men waiting for an oyster-supper--or an
earthquake.

The commissionaire at the hotel always recommends strangers to go to the
Apollo: 'I will git you lôge, sare, first tier--more noble, sare.'

The Capranica Theatre is next in size and importance; it is beyond the
Pantheon, out of the foreign quarter of Rome, and you will find in it a
Roman audience--to a limited extent. Salvini acted there in _Othello_,
and filled the character admirably; it is needless to say that Iago
received even more applause than Othello; Italians know such men
profoundly--they are Figaros turned undertakers. Opera was given at the
Capranica when the Apollo was closed.

The Valle is a small establishment, where Romans, pure blood, of the
middle class, and the nobility who did not hang on to foreigners, were
to be found. Giuseppina Gassier, who has since sung in America, was
prima-donna there, appearing generally in the _Sonnambula_.

But the Capranica Theatre was the resort for the Roman _minenti_, decked
in all their bravery. Here came the shoemaker, the tailor, and the small
artisan, all with their wives or women, and with them the wealthy
peasant who had ten cents to pay for entrance. Here the audience wept
and laughed, applauded the actors, and talked to each other from one
side of the house to the other. Here the plays represented Roman life in
the rough, and were full of words and expressions not down in any
dictionary or phrase-book; nor in these local displays were forgotten
various Roman peculiarities of accentuation of words, and curious
intonations of voice. The Roman people indulge in chest-notes, leaving
head-notes to the Neapolitans, who certainly do not possess such
smoothness of tongue as would classify them among their brethren in the
old proverb: 'When the confusion of tongues happened at the building of
the Tower of Babel, if the Italian had been there, Nimrod would have
made him a plasterer!'

You will do well, if you want to learn from the stage and audience, the
Roman _plebs_, their customs and language, to attend the Capranica
Theatre often; to attend it in 'fatigue-dress,' and in gentle mood,
being neither shocked nor astonished if a good-looking Roman youth
should call your attention to the fact that there is a beautiful girl in
the box to the left hand, and inquire if you know whether she is the
daughter of Santi Stefoni, the grocer? And should the man on the other
side offer you some pumpkin-seeds to eat, by all means accept a few; you
can't tell what they may bring forth, if you will only plant them
cheerfully.

Do not think it strange if a doctor on the stage recommends conserve of
vipers to a consumptive patient; for these poisonous reptiles are caught
in large numbers in the mountains back of Rome, and sold to the city
apothecaries, who prepare large quantities of them for their customers.

When you see, perhaps the hero of the play, thrown into a paroxysm of
anger and fiery wrath by some untoward event, proceed calmly to cut up
two lemons, squeeze into a tumbler their juice, and then drink it
down--learn that it is a common Roman remedy for anger.

Or if, when a piece of crockery, or other fragile article, may be
broken, you notice one of the actors carefully counting the pieces, do
not think it is done in order to reconstruct the article, but to guide
him in the purchase of a lottery-ticket.

When you notice that on one of his hands the second finger is twined
over the first, of the Rightful-heir in presence of the Wrongful-heir,
you may know that the first is guarding himself against the Evil Eye
supposed to belong to the second.

And--the list could be extended to an indefinite length--you will learn
more, by going to the Capranica.

At the Metastasio Theatre there was a French vaudeville company,
passably good, attended by a French audience, the majority officers and
soldiers. Here were presented such attractive plays as _La Femme qui
Mord_, or 'The Woman who Bites;' _Sullivan_, the hero of which gets
_bien gris_, very gray, that is, blue, that is, very tipsy, and at the
close, astonishes the audience with the moral: To get tight is human!
_Dalilah_, etc., etc. The French are not very well beloved by the Romans
pure and simple; it is not astonishing, therefore, that their language
should be laughed at. One morning Rome woke up to find placards all
over the city, headed:

  FRENCH

  TAUGHT IN THIRTY-SIX LESSONS!

  Apply to Monsieur SO-AND-SO.

A few days afterward appeared a fearful wood-cut, the head of a jackass,
with his tongue hanging down several inches, and under it, these words,
in Italian: 'The only tongue yet learnt in less than thirty-six
lessons!'

Caper, seated one night in the parquette of the Metastasio, had at his
side a French infantry soldier. In conversation he asked him:

'How long have you been in Rome?'

'Three years, _Mossu_.'

'Wouldn't you like to return to France?'

'Not at all.'

'Why not?'

'Wine is cheap, here, tobacco not dear, the ladies are extremely kind:
_voila tout!_'

'You have all these in France.'

'_Oui, Mossu!_ but when I return there I shall be a farmer again; and
it's a frightful fact that you may plow your heart out without turning
up but a very small quantity of these articles there!'

French soldiers still protect Rome--and 'these articles there.'


THE BEARDS OF ART.

'Can you tell me,' said Uncle Bill Browne to Rocjean, with the air of a
man about to ask a hard conundrum, 'why beards, long hair, and art,
always go together?'

'Of course, art draws out beards along with talent; paints and bristles
must go together; but high-art drives the hair of the head in, and
clinches it. Among artists first and last there have been men with giant
minds, and they have known it was their duty to show their mental power:
the beard is the index.'

'But the beard points downward,' suggested Caper, 'and not upward.'

'That depends----'

'On _pomade Hongroise_--or beeswax,' interrupted Caper.

'Exactly; but let me answer Uncle Bill. To begin, we may safely assert
that an artist's life--here in Rome, for instance--is about as
independent a one as society will tolerate; its laws, as to shaving
especially, he ignores, and caring very little for the Rules of the
Toilette, as duly published by the--_bon ton_ journals, uses his razor
for mending lead-pencils, and permits his beard to enjoy long vacation
rambles. Again: those who first set the example of long beards, Leonardo
da Vinci, for example, who painted his own portrait with a full beard a
foot long, were men who moved from principle, and I have the belief that
were Leonardo alive to-day, he would say:

"My son, and well-beloved Rocjean, _zitto!_ and let ME talk. Know, then,
that I did permit my beard luxuriant length--for a reason. Thou dost not
know, but I do, that among the ancient Egyptians they worshiped in their
deity the male and female principle combined; so the exponents of this
belief, the Egyptian priests, endeavored in their attire to show a
mingling of the male and female sex; they wore long garments like women,
_vergogna!_ they wore long hair, _guai!_ and they SHAVED THEIR FACES! It
pains me to say, that their indecent example is followed even to this
day, by the priests of what should be a purer and better religion.

"_Silenzio!_ I have not yet said my say. Among Eastern nations, their
proverbs, and what is better, their customs, show a powerful protest
against this impure old faith. You have seen the flowing beards of the
Mohammedans, especially the Turks, and their short-shaved heads of hair,
and you may have heard of their words of wisdom:

"'Long hair, little brain.'

"And that eloquent sentence:

"'Who has no beard has no authority.'

"They have other sayings, which I can not approve of; for instance:

"'Do not buy a red-haired person, do not sell one, either; if you have
any in the house, drive them away.'

"I say I do not approve of this, for the majority of the English have
red heads, and people who want to buy my pictures I never would drive
out of my house, _mai!_"

'Come,' said Caper, 'Leonardo no longer speaks when there is a question
of buying or selling. Assume the first person.'

'Another excellent reason for artists in Rome to wear beards is, that
where their foreign names can not be pronounced, they are often called
by the size, color, or shape, of this face-drapery. This is particularly
the case in the Café Greco, where the waiters, who have to charge for
coffee, etc., when the artist does not happen to have the change about
him, are compelled to give him a name on their books, and in more than
one instance, I know that they are called from their beards, I have a
memorandum of these nicknames: I am called _Barbone_, or Big-bearded;
and you, Caper, are down as _Sbarbato Inglese_, the Shaved Englishman.'

'Hm!' spoke Caper, 'I an't an Englishman, and I don't shave; my beard
has to come yet.'

'What is my name?' asked Uncle Bill.

'_Puga Sempre_, or He Pays Always. A countryman of mine is called _Baffi
Rici_, or Big Moustache; another one, _Barbetta_, Little Beard; another,
_Barbáccia_, Shabby Beard; another, _Barba Nera_, Black Beard; and, of
course, there is a _Barba Rossa_, or Red Beard. Some of the other names
are funny enough, and would by no means please their owners. There is
_Zoppo Francese_, the Lame Frenchman; _Scapiglione_, the Rowdy;
_Pappagallo_, the Parrot; _Milordo_; _Furioso_; and one friend of ours
is known, whenever he forgets to pay two baiocchi for his coffee, as
_San Pietro_!'

'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I'll tell you why I thought you artists wore
long beards: that when you were hard up, and couldn't buy brushes, you
might have the material ready to make your own.'

'You're wrong, Uncle,' remarked Caper; 'when we can't buy them, we get
trusted for them--that's our way of having a brush with the enemy.'

'That will do, Jim, that will do; say no more. None of the artists'
beards here, can compare with one belonging to a buffalo-and-prairie
painter who lives out in St. Louis--it is so long he ties the ends
together and uses it for a boot-jack. Good-night, boys, good-night!'


A CALICO-PAINTER.

Rocjean was finishing his after-dinnerical coffee and cigar, when
looking up from _Las Novedades_, containing the latest news from Madrid,
and in which he had just read _en Roma es donde hay mas mendigos_, Rome,
is where most beggars are found; London, where most engineers, lost
women, and rat-terriers, abound; Brussels, where women who smoke, are
all round--looking up from this interesting reading, he saw opposite him
a young man, whose acquaintance he knew at a glance, was worth making.
Refinement, common-sense, and energy were to be read plainly in his
face. When he left the café, Rocjean asked an artist, with long hair,
who was fast smoking himself to the color of the descendants of Ham, if
he knew the man?'

'No-o-oo, I believe he's some kind of a calico-painter.'

'What?'

'Oh! a feller that makes designs for a calico-mill.'

Not long afterward Rocjean was introduced to him, and found him, as
first impressions taught him he would--a man well worth knowing. Ho was
making a holiday-visit to Rome, his settled residence being in Paris,
where his occupation was designer of patterns for a large calico-mill in
the United States. A New-Yorker by birth, consequently more of a
cosmopolitan than the provincial life of our other American cities will
tolerate or can create in their children, Charles Gordon was every inch
a man, and a bitter foe to every liar and thief. He was well informed,
for he had, as a boy, been solidly instructed; he was polite, refined,
for he had been well educated. His life was a story often told:
mercantile parent, very wealthy; son sent to college; talent for art,
developed at the expense of trigonometry and morning-prayers; mercantile
parent fails, and falls from Fifth avenue to Brooklyn, preparatory to
embarking for the land of those who have failed and fallen--wherever
that is. Son wears long hair, and believes he looks like the painter who
was killed by a baker's daughter, writes trashy verses about a man who
was wronged, and went off and howled himself to a long repose, sick of
this vale of tears, et cetera. Finally, in the midst of his despair,
long hair, bad poetry and painting, an enterprising friend, who sees he
has an eye for color, its harmonies and contrasts, raises him with a
strong hand into the clear atmosphere of exertion for a useful and
definite end--makes him a 'calico-painter.'

It was a great scandal for the Bohemians of art to find this
calico-painter received every where in refined and intelligent society,
while they, with all their airs, long hairs, and shares of impudence,
could not enter--they, the creators of Medoras, Magdalens, Our Ladies of
Lorette, Brigands' Brides, Madame not In, Captive Knights, Mandoline
Players, Grecian Mothers, Love in Repose, Love in Sadness, Moonlight on
the Waves, Last Tears, Resignation, Broken Lutes, Dutch Flutes, and
other mock-sentimental-titled paintings.

'God save me from being a gazelle!' said the monkey.

'God save us from being utility calico-painters!' cried the high-minded,
dirty cavaliers who were not cavaliers, as they once more rolled over in
their smoke-house.

'In 1854,' said Gordon, one day, to Rocjean, after their acquaintance
had ripened into friendship, 'I was indeed in sad circumstances, and was
passing through a phase of life when bad tobacco, acting on an empty
stomach, gave me a glimpse of the Land of the Grumblers. One long year,
and all that was changed; then I woke up to reality and practical life
in a 'Calico-Mill;' then I wrote the lines you have asked me about. Take
them for what they are worth.


REDIVIVUS.

MDCCCLVI

  'He sat in a garret in Fifty-four,
    To welcome Fifty-five.
  'God knows,' said he, 'if another year
    Will find this man alive.
  I was born for love, I live in song,
  Yet loveless and songless I'm passing along,
      And the world?--Hurrah!
      Great soul, sing on!

  'He sat in the dark, in Fifty-four,
    To welcome Fifty-five.
  'God knows,' said he, 'if another year
    I'll any better thrive.
  I was born for light, I live in the sun,
  Yet in, darkness, and sunless, I'm passing on,
      And the world?--Hurrah!
      Great soul, shine on!'

  'He sat in the cold, in Fifty-four,
    To welcome Fifty-five.
  'God knows,' said he, 'I'm fond of fire,
    From warmth great joy derive.
  I was born warm-hearted, and oh! it's wrong
  For them all to coldly pass along:
      And the world?--Hurrah!
      Great soul, burn on!'

  'He sat in a home, in Fifty-five,
    To welcome Fifty-six.
  'Throw open the doors!' he cried aloud,
    'To all whom Fortune kicks!
  I was born for love, I was born for song,
  And great-hearted MEN my halls shall throng.
      And the world?--Hurrah!
      Great soul, sing on!'

  'He sat in bright light, in Fifty-five,
    To welcome Fifty-six.
  'More lights!' he cried out with joyous shout,
    'Night ne'er with day should mix.
  I was born for light, I live in the sun,
  In the joy of others my life's begun.
      And the world?--Hurrah!
      Great soul, shine on!'

  'He sat in great warmth, in Fifty-five,
    To welcome Fifty-six,
  In a glad and merry company
    Of brave, true-hearted Bricks!
  'I was born for warmth, I was born for love,
  I've found them all, thank GOD above!
      And the world?--Ah! bah!
      Great soul, move on!''


A PATRON OF ART.

The Roman season was nearly over: travelers were making preparations to
fly out of one gate as the Malaria should enter by the other; for,
according to popular report, this fearful disease enters, the last day
of April, at midnight, and is in full possession of the city on the
first day of May. Rocjean, not having any fears of it, was preparing not
only to meet it, but to go out and spend the summer with it; it costs
something, however, to keep company with La Malaria, and our artist had
but little money: he must sell some paintings. Now it was unfortunate
for him that though a good painter, he was a bad salesman; he never kept
a list of all the arrivals of his wealthy countrymen or other strangers
who bought paintings; he never ran after them, laid them under
obligations with drinks, dinners, and drives; for he had neither the
inclination nor that capital which is so important for a
picture-merchant to possess in order to drive--a heavy trade, and
achieve success--such as it is. Rocjean had friends, and warm ones; so
that whenever they judged his finances were in an embarrassed state,
they voluntarily sent wealthy sensible as well as wealthy insensible
patrons of art to his aid, the latter going as Dutch galliots laden with
doubloons might go to the relief of a poor, graceful felucca, thrown on
her beam-ends by a squall.

One morning there glowed in Rocjean's studio the portly forms of Mr. and
Mrs. Cyrus Shodd, together with the tall, fragile figure of Miss Tillie
Shodd, daughter and heiress apparent and transparent. Rocjean welcomed
them as he would have manna in the desert, for he judged by the air and
manner of the head of the family, that he was on picture-buying bent. He
even gayly smiled when Miss Shodd, pointing out to her father, with her
parasol, some beauty in a painting on the easel, run its point along the
canvas, causing a green streak from the top of a stone pine to extend
from the tree same miles into the distant mountains of the Abruzzi-the
paint was not dry!

She made several hysterical shouts of horror after committing this
little act, and then seating herself in an arm-chair, proceeded to take
a mental inventory of the articles of furniture in the studio.

Mr. Shodd explained to Rocjean that he was a plain man:

This was apparent at sight.

That he was an uneducated man:

This asserted itself to the eyes and ears.

After which self-denial, he commenced 'pumping' the artist on various
subjects, assuming an ignorance of things which, to a casual observer,
made him appear like a fool; to a thoughtful person, a knave: the whole
done in order, perhaps, to learn about some trifle which a plain,
straightforward question would have elicited at once. Rocjean saw his
man, and led him a fearful gallop in order to thoroughly examine his
action and style.

Spite of his commercial life, Mr. Shodd had found time to 'self-educate'
himself--he meant self-instruct--and having a retentive memory, and a
not always strict regard for truth, was looked up to by the
humble-ignorant as a very columbiad in argument, the only fault to be
found with which gun was, that when it was drawn from its quiescent
state into action, its effective force was comparatively nothing, one
half the charge escaping through the large touch-hole of untruth.
Discipline was entirely wanting in Mr. Shodd's composition. A man who
undertakes to be his own teacher rarely punishes his scholar, rarely
checks him with rules and practice, or accustoms him to order and
subordination. Mr. Shodd, therefore, was--undisciplined: a raw recruit,
not a soldier.

Of course, his conversation was all contradictory. In one breath, on the
self-abnegation principle, he would say, 'I don't know any thing about
paintings;' in the next breath, his overweening egotism would make him
loudly proclaim: 'There never was but one painter in this world, and
his name is Hockskins; he lives in my town, and he knows more than any
of your 'old masters'! _I_ ought to know!' Or, '_I_ am an uneducated
man,' meaning uninstructed; immediately following it with the assertion:
'All teachers, scholars, and colleges are useless folly, and all
education is worthless, except self-education.'

Unfortunately, self-education is too often only education of self!

After carefully examining all Rocjean's pictures, he settled his
attention on a sunset view over the Campagna, leaving Mrs. Shodd to talk
with our artist. You have seen--all have seen--more than one Mrs. Shodd;
by nature and innate refinement, ladies; (the 'Little Dorrits' Dickens
shows to his beloved countrymen, to prove to them that not all nobility
is nobly born--a very mild lesson, which they refuse to regard;) Mrs.
Shodds who, married to Mr. Shodds, pass a life of silent protest against
brutal words and boorish actions. With but few opportunities to add
acquirable graces to natural ease and self-possession, there was that in
her kindly tone of voice and gentle manner winning the heart of a
gentleman to respect her as he would his mother. It was her mission to
atone for her husband's sins, and she fulfilled her duty; more could not
be asked of her, for his sins were many. The daughter was a copy of the
father, in crinoline; taking to affectation--which is vulgarity in its
most offensive form--as a duck takes to water. Even her dress was
marked, not by that neatness which shows refinement, but by precision,
which in dress is vulgar. One glance, and you saw the woman who in
another age would have thrown her glove to the tiger for her lover to
pick up!

Among Rocjean's paintings was the portrait of a very beautiful woman,
made by him years before, when he first became an artist, and long
before he had been induced to abandon portrait-painting for landscape.
It was never shown to studio-visitors, and was placed with its face
against the wall, behind other paintings. In moving one of these to
place it in a good light on the easel, it fell with the others to the
floor, face uppermost; and while Rocjean, with a painting in his hands,
could not stoop at once to replace it, Miss Shodd's sharp eyes
discovered the beautiful face, and, her curiosity being excited, nothing
would do but it must be placed on the easel. Unwilling to refuse a
request from the daughter of a Patron of Art in perspective, Rocjean
complied, and, when the portrait was placed, glancing toward Mrs. Shodd,
had the satisfaction of reading in her eyes true admiration for the
startlingly lovely face looking out so womanly from the canvas.

'Hm!' said Shodd the father, 'quite a fancy head.'

'Oh! it is an exact portrait of Julia Ting; if she had sat for her
likeness, it couldn't have been better. I must have the painting, pa,
for Julia's sake. I _must_. It's a naughty word, isn't it, Mr. Rocjean?
but it is so expressive!'

'Unfortunately, the portrait is not for sale; I placed it on the easel
only in order not to refuse your request.'

Mr. Shodd saw the road open to an argument. He was in ecstasy; a long
argument--an argument full of churlish flings and boorish slurs, which
he fondly believed passed for polished satire and keen irony. He did not
know Rocjean; he never could know a man like him; he never could learn
the truth that confidence will overpower strength; only at last, when
through his hide and bristles entered the flashing steel, did he,
tottering backwards, open his eyes to the fact that he had found his
master--that, too, in a poor devil of an artist.

The landscapes were all thrown aside; Shodd must have that portrait. His
daughter had set her heart on having it, he said, and could a gentleman
refuse a lady any thing?

'It is on this very account I refuse to part with it,' answered Rocjean.

It instantly penetrated Shodd's head that all this refusal was only
design on the part of the artist, to obtain a higher price for the work
than he could otherwise hope for; and so, with what he believed was a
master-stroke of policy, he at once ceased importuning the artist, and
shortly departed from the studio, preceding his wife with his daughter
on his arm, leaving the consoler, and by all means his best half, to
atone, by a few kind words at parting with the artist, for her husband's
sins.

'And there,' thought Rocjean, as the door closed, 'goes 'a patron of
art'--and by no means the worst pattern. I hope he will meet with
Chapin, and buy an Orphan and an Enterprise statue; once in his house,
they will prove to every observant man the owner's taste.'

Mr. Shodd, having a point to gain, went about it with elephantine grace
and dexterity. The portrait he had seen at Rocjean's studio he was
determined to have. He invited the artist to dine with him--the artist
sent his regrets; to accompany him, 'with the ladies,' in his carriage
to Tivoli--the artist politely declined the invitation; to a
_conversazione_, the invitation from Mrs. Shodd--a previous engagement
prevented the artist's acceptance.

Mr. Shodd changed his tactics. He discovered at his banker's one day a
keen, communicative, wiry, shrewd, etc., etc., enterprising, etc., 'made
a hundred thousand dollars' sort of a little man, named Briggs, who was
traveling in order to travel, and grumble. Mr. Shodd 'came the ignorant
game' over this Briggs; pumped him, without obtaining any information,
and finally turned the conversation on artists, denouncing the entire
body as a set of the keenest swindlers, and citing the instance of one
he knew who had a painting which he believed it would be impossible for
any man to buy, simply because the artist, knowing that he (Shodd)
wished it, would not set a price on it, so as to have a very high one
offered (!) Mr. Briggs instantly was deeply interested. Here was a
chance for him to display before Shodd of Shoddsville his shrewdness,
keenness, and so forth. He volunteered to buy the painting.

In Rome, an artist's studio may be his castle, or it may be an Exchange.
To have it the first, you must affix a notice to your studio-door
announcing that all entrance of visitors to the studio is forbidden
except on, say, 'Monday from twelve A.M. to three P.M. This is the
baronial manner. But the artist who is not wealthy or has not made a
name, must keep an Exchange, and receive all visitors who choose to
come, at almost any hours--model hours excepted. So Briggs, learning
from Shodd, by careful cross-questioning, the artist's name, address,
and a description of the painting, walked there at once, introduced
himself to Rocjean, shook his hand as if it were the handle of a pump
upon which he had serious intentions, and then began examining the
paintings. He looked at them all, but there was no portrait. He asked
Rocjean if he painted portraits; he found out that he did not. Finally,
he told the artist that he had heard some one say--he did not remember
who--that he had seen a very pretty head in his studio, and asked
Rocjean if he would show it to him.

'You have seen Mr. Shodd lately, I should think?' said the artist,
looking into the eyes of Mr. Briggs.

A suggestion of a clean brick-bat passed under a sheet of yellow
tissue-paper was observable in the hard cheeks of Mr. Briggs, that being
the final remnant of all appearance of modesty left in the sharp man, in
the shape of a blush.

'Oh! yes; every body knows Shodd--man of great talent--generous,' said
Briggs.

'Mr. Shodd may be very well known,' remarked Rocjean measuredly, 'but
the portrait he saw is not well known; he and his family are the only
ones who have seen it. Perhaps it may save you trouble to know that the
portrait I have several times refused to sell him will never be sold
while I live. The _common_ opinion that an artist, like a Jew, will sell
the old clo' from his back for money, is erroneous.'

Mr. Briggs shortly after this left the studio, slightly at a discount,
and as if he had been measured, as he said to himself; and then and
there determined to say nothing to Shodd about his failing in his
mission to the savage artist. But Shodd found it all out in the first
conversation he made with Briggs; and very bitter were his feelings when
he learnt that a poor devil of an artist dared possess any thing he
could not buy, and moreover had a quiet moral strength which the vulgar
man feared. In his anger, Shodd, with his disregard for truth, commenced
a fearful series of attacks against the artist, regaling every one he
dared to with the coarsest slanders, in the vilest language, against the
painter's character. A very few days sufficed to circulate them, so that
they reached Rocjean's ears; a very few minutes passed before the artist
presented himself to the eyes of Shodd, and, fortunately finding him
alone, told him in four words, 'You are a slanderer;' mentioning to him,
beside, that if he ever uttered another slander against his name, he
should compel him to give him instantaneous satisfaction, and that, as
an American, Shodd knew what that meant.

It is needless to say that a liar and slanderer is a coward;
consequently Mr. Shodd, with the consequences before his eyes, never
again alluded to Rocjean, and shortly left the city for Naples, to
bestow the light of his countenance there in his great character of Art
Patron.

       *       *       *       *       *

'It is a heart-touching face,' said Caper, as one morning, while hauling
over his paintings, Rocjean brought the portrait to light which the
cunning Shodd had so longed to possess for cupidity's sake.

'I should feel as if I had thrown Psyche to the Gnomes to be torn to
pieces, if I had given such a face to Shodd. If I had sold it to him, I
should have been degraded; for the women loved by man should be kept
sacred in memory. She was a girl I knew in Prague, and, I think, with
six or eight exceptions, the loveliest one I ever met. Some night, at
sunset, I shall walk over the old bridge, and meet her as we parted;
_apropos_ of which meeting, I once wrote some words. Hand me that
portfolio, will you? Thank you. Oh! yes; here they are. Now, read them,
Caper; out with them!


ANEZKA OD PRAHA.

  Years, weary years, since on the Moldau bridge,
  By the five stars and cross of Nepomuk,
  I kissed the scarlet sunset from her lips:
    Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there!

  Dark waves beneath the bridge were running fast,
  In haste to bathe the shining rocks, whence rose
  Tier over tier, the gloaming domes and spires,
  Turrets and minarets of the Holy City,
  Its crown the Hradschin of Bohemia's kings.
  O'er Wysscherad we saw the great stars shine;
  We felt the night-wind on the rushing stream;
  We drank the air as if 'twere Melnick wine,
  And every draught whirled us still nearer Nebe:
    Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there!

  Why ever gleam thy black eyes sadly on me?
  Why ever rings thy sweet voice in my ear?
  Why looks thy pale face from the drifting foam--
  Dashed by the wild sea on this distant shore--
  Or from the white clouds does it beckon me?

  My own heart answers: On the Moldau bridge,
    Anezka, we will meet to part no more.




ANTHONY TROLLOPE ON AMERICA.


Mr. Anthony Trollope's work entitled _North-America_ has been
republished in this country, and curiosity has at length been satisfied.
Great as has been this curiosity among his friends, it can not, however,
be said to have been wide-spread, inasmuch as up to the appearance of
this book of travels, comparatively few were aware of the presence of
Mr. Trollope in this country. When Charles Dickens visited America, our
people testified their admiration of his homely genius by going mad,
receiving him with frantic acclamations of delight, dining him, and
suppering him, and going through the 'pump-handle movement' with him.
Mr. Dickens was, in consequence, intensely bored by this attestation of
popular idolatry so peculiar to the United States, and looked upon us as
officious, absurd, and disgusting. Officious we were, and absurd enough,
surely, but far from being disgusting. He ought hardly to beget disgust
whose youth and inexperience leads him to extravagance in his kindly
demonstrations toward genius. However, Mr. Dickens went home rather more
impressed by our faults, which he had had every opportunity of
inspecting, than by our virtues, which possessed fewer salient features
to his humorous eye. Two books--_American Notes_ and _Martin
Chuzzlewit_--were the product of his tour through America. Thereupon,
the American people grew very indignant. Their Dickens-love, in
proportion to its intensity, turned to Dickens-hate, and ingratitude was
considered to be synonymous with the name of this novelist. We gave him
every chance to see our follies, and we snubbed his cherished and chief
object in visiting America, concerning a copyright. There is little
wonder, then, that Dickens, an Englishman and a caricaturist, should
have painted us in the colors that he did. There is scarcely less wonder
that Americans, at that time, all in the white-heat of enthusiasm,
should have waxed angry at Dickens' cold return to so much warmth. But,
reading these books in the light of 1862, there are few of us who do not
smile at the rage of our elders. We see an uproariously funny
extravaganza in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, which we can well afford to laugh
at, having grown thicker-skinned, and wonder what there is to be found
in the _Notes_ so very abominable to an American. Mr. Dickens was a
humorist, not a statesman or philosopher, therefore he wrote of us as a
disappointed humorist would have been tempted to write.

It is not likely that Mr. Trollope's advent in this country would have
given rise to any remark or excitement, his novels, clever though they
be, not having taken hold of the people's heart as did those of Dickens.
He came among us quietly; the newspapers gave him no flourish of
trumpets; he traveled about unknown; hence it was, that few knew a new
book was to be written upon America by one bearing a name not
over-popular thirty years ago. Curiosity was confined to the friends and
acquaintances of Mr. Trollope, who were naturally not a little anxious
that he should conscientiously write such a book as would remove the
existing prejudice to the name of Trollope, and render him personally as
popular as his novels. For there are, we believe, few intelligent
Americans (and Mr. Trollope is good enough to say that we of the North
are all intelligent) who are not ready to '_faire l'aimable_' to the
kindly, genial author of _North-America_. It is not being rash to state
that Mr. Trollope, in his last book, has not disappointed his warmest
personal friends in this country, and this is saying much, when it is
considered that many of them are radically opposed to him in many of
his opinions, and most of them hold very different views from him in
regard to the present war. They are not disappointed, because Mr.
Trollope has _labored_ to be impartial in his criticisms. He has, at
least, _endeavored_ to lay aside his English prejudices and judge us in
a spirit of truth and good-fellowship. Mr. Trollope inaugurated a new
era in British book-making upon America, when he wrote: 'If I could in
any small degree add to the good feeling which should exist between two
nations which ought to love each other so well, and which do hang upon
each other so constantly, I should think that I had cause to be proud of
my work.' In saying this much, Mr. Trollope has said what others of his
ilk--Bulwer, Thackeray, and Dickens--would _not_ have said, and he may
well be proud, or, at least, he can afford _not_ to be proud, of a
superior honesty and frankness. He has won for himself kind thoughts on
this side of the Atlantic, and were Americans convinced that the body
English were imbued with the spirit of Mr. Trollope, there would be
little left of the resuscitated 'soreness.'

In his introduction, Mr. Trollope frankly acknowledges that 'it is very
hard to write about any country a book that does not represent the
country described in a more or less ridiculous point of view.' He
confesses that he is not a philosophico-political or
politico-statistical or a statistico-scientific writer, and hence,
'ridicule and censure run glibly from the pen, and form themselves into
sharp paragraphs, which are pleasant to the reader. Whereas, eulogy is
commonly dull, and too frequently sounds as though it were false.' We
agree with him, that 'there is much difficulty in expressing a verdict
which is intended to be favorable, but which, though favorable, shall
not be falsely eulogistic, and though true, not offensive.' Mr. Trollope
has not been offensive either in his praise or dispraise; and when we
look upon him in the light in which he paints himself--that of an
English novelist--he has, at least, done his best by us. We could not
expect from him such a book as Emerson wrote on _English Traits_, or
such an one as Thomas Buckle would have written had death not staid his
great work of _Civilization_. Nor could we look to him for that which
John Stuart Mill--the English De Tocqueville--alone can give. For much
that we expected we have received, for that which is wanting we shall
now find fault, but good-naturedly, we hope.

Our first ground of complaint against Mr. Trollope's _North-America_, is
its extreme verbosity. Had it been condensed to one half, or at least
one third of its present size, the spirit of the book had been less
weakened, and the taste of the public better satisfied. The question
naturally arises in an inquiring mind, if the author could make so much
out of a six months' tour through the Northern States, what would the
consequences have been had he remained a year, and visited Dixie's land
as well? The conclusions logically arrived at are, to say the least,
very unfavorable to weak-eyed persons who are condemned to read the
cheap American edition. Life is too short, and books are too numerous,
to allow of repetition; and at no time is Mr. Trollope so guilty in this
respect as when he dilates upon those worthies, Mason and Slidell, in
connection with the Trent affair. It was very natural, especially as
England has come off first-best in this matter, that Mr. Trollope should
have made a feature of the Trent in reporting the state of the American
pulse thereon. One reference to the controversy was desirable, two
endurable, but the third return to the charge is likely to meet with
impatient exclamations from the reader, who heartily sympathizes with
the author when he says: 'And now, I trust, I may finish my book without
again naming Messrs. Slidell and Mason.'

It certainly was rash to rave as we did on this subject, but it was
quite natural, when our jurists, (even the Hon. Caleb Cushing) who were
supposed to know their business, assured us that we had right on our
side. It was extremely ridiculous to put Captain Wilkes upon a pedestal
a little lower than Bunker-Hill monument, and present him with a hero's
sword for doing what was then considered _only_ his duty. But it must be
remembered that at that time the mere performance of duty by a public
officer was so extraordinary a phenomenon that loyal people were brought
to believe it merited especial recognition. Our Government, and not the
people, were to blame. Had the speech of Charles Sumner, delivered on
his 'field-day,' been the verdict of the Washington Cabinet _previous_
to the reception of England's expostulations, the position taken by
America on this subject would have been highly dignified and honorable.
As it is, we stand with feathers ruffled and torn. But if, as we
suppose, the Trent imbroglio leads to a purification of maritime law,
not only America, but the entire commercial world will be greatly
indebted to the super-patriotism of Captain Wilkes.

'The charming women of Boston' are inclined to quarrel with their friend
Mr. Trollope, for ridiculing their powers of argumentation _apropos_ to
Captain Wilkes, for Mr. Trollope must confess they knew quite as much
about what they were talking as the lawyers by whom they were
instructed. They have had more than their proper share of revenge,
however, meted out for them by the reviewer of the London _Critic_, who
writes as follows:

     'Mr. Trollope was in Boston when the first news about the Trent
     arrived. Of course, every body was full of the subject at once--Mr.
     Trollope, we presume, not excluded--albeit he is rather sarcastic
     upon the young ladies who began immediately to chatter about it.
     'Wheaton is quite clear about it,' said one young girl to me. It
     was the first I had heard of Wheaton, and so far was obliged to
     knock under.' Yet Mr. Trollope, knowing very little more of Wheaton
     than he did before, and obviously nothing of the great authorities
     on maritime law, inflicts upon his readers page after page of
     argument upon the Trent affair, not half so delightful as the
     pretty babble of the ball-room belle. With all due respect to Mr.
     Trollope, and his attractions, we are quite sure that we would much
     sooner get our international law from the lips of the fair
     Bostonian than from _his_.'

After such a champion as this, could the fair Bostonians have the heart
to assail Mr. Trollope?

Mr. Trollope treats of our civil war at great length; in fact, the
reverberations of himself on this matter are quite as objectionable as
those in the Trent affair. But it is his treatment of this subject that
must ever be a source of regret to the earnest thinkers who are
gradually becoming the masters of our Government's policy, who
constitute the bone and muscle of the land, the rank and file of the
army, and who are changing the original character of the war into that
of a holy crusade. It is to be deplored, because Mr. Trollope's book
will no doubt influence English opinion, to a certain extent, and
therefore militate against us, and we already know how his mistaken
opinions have been seized upon by pro-slavery journals in this country
as a _bonne bouche_ which they rarely obtain from so respectable a
source; the more palatable to them, coming from that nationality which
we have always been taught to believe was more abolition in its creed
than William Lloyd Garrison himself, and from whose people we have
received most of our lectures on the sin of slavery. It is sad that so
fine a nature as that of Mr. Trollope should not feel
conscience-stricken in believing that 'to mix up the question of general
abolition with this war must be the work of a man too ignorant to
understand the real subject of the war, or too false to his country to
regard it.' Yet it is strange that these 'too ignorant' or 'too false'
men are the very ones that Mr. Trollope holds up to admiration, and
declares that any nation might be proud to claim their genius.
Longfellow and Lowell, Emerson and Motley, to whom we could add almost
all the well-known thinkers of the country, men after his own heart in
most things, belong to this 'ignorant' or 'false' sect. Is it their one
madness? That is a strange madness which besets our _greatest_ men and
women; a marvelous anomaly surely. Yet there must be something
sympathetic in abolitionism to Mr. Trollope, for he prefers Boston, the
centre of this ignorance, to all other American cities, and finds his
friends for the most part among these false ones, by which we are to
conclude that Mr. Trollope is by nature an abolitionist, but that
circumstances have been unfavorable to his proper development. And these
circumstances we ascribe to a hasty and superficial visit to the British
West-India colonies.

It is well known that in his entertaining book on travels in the
West-Indies and Spanish Main, Mr. Trollope undertakes to prove that
emancipation has both ruined the commercial prosperity of the British
islands and degraded the free blacks to a level with the idle brute. Mr.
Trollope is still firm in this opinion, notwithstanding the statistics
of the Blue Book, which prove that these colonies never were in so
flourishing a condition as at present. We, in America, have also had the
same fact demonstrated by figures, in that very plainly written book
called the _Ordeal of Free Labor_. Mr. Trollope, no doubt, saw some very
lazy negroes, wallowing in dirt, and living only for the day, but later
developments have proved that his investigations could have been simply
those of a dilettante. It is highly probable that the planters who have
been shorn of their riches by the edict of Emancipation, should paint
the present condition of the blacks in any thing but rose-colors, and
we, of course, believe that Mr. Trollope _believes_ what he has written.
He is none the less mistaken, if we are to pin our faith to the Blue
Book, which we are told never lies. And yet, believing that emancipation
has made a greater brute than ever of the negro, Mr. Trollope rejoices
in the course which has been pursued by the home government. If both
white man and black man are worse off than they were before, what good
could have been derived from the reform, and by what right ought he to
rejoice? Mr. Trollope claims to be an anti-slavery man, but we must
confess that to our way of arguing, the ground he stands upon in this
matter is any thing but _terra firma_. Mr. Trollope was probably
thinking of those dirty West-India negroes when he made the following
comments upon a lecture delivered by Wendell Phillips:

     'I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so
     bloodthirsty, as a professed philanthropist; and that when the
     philanthropist's ardor lies negro-ward, it then assumes the deepest
     die of venom and bloodthirstiness. There are four millions of
     slaves in the Southern States, none of whom have any capacity for
     self-maintenance or self-control. Four millions of slaves, with the
     necessities of children, with the passions of men, and the
     ignorance of savages! And Mr. Phillips would emancipate these at a
     blow; would, were it possible for him to do so, set them loose upon
     the soil to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a
     hell upon earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled
     passions and unsatisfied wants of men.'

Mr. Trollope should have thought twice before he wrote thus of the
American negro. Were he a competent authority on this subject, his
opinion might be worth something; but as he never traveled in the South,
and as his knowledge of the negro is limited to a surface acquaintance
with the West-Indies, we maintain that Mr. Trollope has not only been
unjust, but ungenerous. Four millions of slaves, none of whom have any
capacity for self-maintenance or self-control! Whom are we to believe?
Mr. Trollope, who has never been on a Southern plantation, or Frederick
Law Olmsted? Mr. Pierce, who has been superintendent of the contrabands
at Fortress Monroe and at Hilton Head, officers attached to Burnside's
Division, and last and best, General David Hunter, an officer of the
regular army, who went to South-Carolina with anti-abolition
antecedents? All honor to General Hunter, who, unlike many others, has
not shut his eyes upon facts, and, like a rational being, has yielded to
the logic of events. It is strange that these authorities, all of whom
possess the confidence of the Government, should disagree with Mr.
Trollope. _None_ self-maintaining? Robert Small is a pure negro. Is he
not more than self-maintaining? Has he not done more for the Federal
Government than any white man of the Gulf States? Tillman is a negro;
the best pilots of the South are negroes: are _they_ not
self-maintaining? Kansas has welcomed thousands of fugitive slaves to
her hospitable doors, not as paupers, but as laborers, who have taken
the place of those white men who have gone to fight the battles which
they also should be allowed to take part in. The women have been gladly
accepted as house-servants. Does not this look like self-maintenance?
Would negroes be employed in the army if they were as Mr. Trollope
pictures them? He confesses that without these four m

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