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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858

Author: Various


        
Release date: May 2, 2007 [eBook #21273]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 2, NO. 14, DECEMBER 1858 ***




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










THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. II.--DECEMBER, 1858.--NO. XIV.




THE IDEAL TENDENCY.


We are all interested in Art; yet few of us have taken pains to justify
the delight we feel in it. No philosophy can win us away from
Shakspeare, Plato, Angelo, Beethoven, Goethe, Phidias,--from the masters
of sculpture, painting, music, and metaphor. Their truth is larger than
any other,--too large to be stated directly and lodged in systems,
theories, definitions, or formulas. They suggest and assure to us what
cannot be spoken. They communicate life, because they do not endeavor to
measure life. Philosophy will present the definite; Art refers always to
the vast,--to that which cannot be comprehended, but only enjoyed and
adored. Art is the largest expression. It is not, like Science, a basket
in which meat and drink may be carried, but a hand which points toward
the sky. Our eyes follow its direction, and our souls follow our eyes.
Man needs only to be shown an open space. He will rise into it with
instant expansion. We are made partakers of that illimitable energy.
Only poetry can give account of poetry, only Art can justify Art; and we
cannot hope to speak finally of this elastic Truth, to draw a circle
around that which is vital, because it has in it something of
infinity,--but we may hope to remove a doubt growing out of the very
largeness which exalts and refreshes us. Art is not practical. It offers
no precept, but lies abroad like Nature, not to be grasped and
exhausted. Neither is it anxious about its own reception, as though any
man could long escape the benefit which it brings. Every principle of
science, every deduction of philosophy, is a tool. Our very religion, as
we dare to name it, is a key which opens the heavens to admit myself and
family. Art offers only life; but perhaps that will appear worth taking
without looking beyond. Can we look beyond? Life is an end in itself,
and so better than any tool.

What is that which underlies all arts as their essence, the thing to be
expressed and celebrated? What is poetry, the creation from which the
artist is named? We shall answer boldly: it is no shaping of forms, but
a making of man. Nature is a _plenum_, is finished, and the Divine
account with her is closed; but man is only yet a chick in the egg. With
him it is still the first day of creation, and he has not received the
benediction of a completed work. And yet the completion is involved and
promised in our daily experience. Man is a perpetual seeker. He sees
always just before him his own power, which he must hasten to overtake.
He weighs himself often in thought; yet it is not his present, but a
presumptive value, of which he is taking account. We are continually
entering into our future, and it is so near us, we are already in every
hour so full of it, that we draw without fraud on the credit of
to-morrow. The student who has bought his first law-book is already a
great counsellor. With the Commentaries he carries home consideration
and the judicial habit. Some wisdom he imbibes through his pores and
those of the sheepskin cover. Now he is grave and prudent, a man of the
world and of authority; but if he had chosen differently, and brought
home the first book of Theology, his day would have been tinted with
other colors. For every choice carries a future involved in itself, and
we begin to taste that when we take our course toward it. The habit of
leaning forward and living in advance of himself has made its mark upon
every man. We look not at the history or performance of the stranger,
but at his pretensions. These are written in his dress, his air and
attitude, his tone and occupation. The past is already nothing, the
present is sliding away; to know any man, we must keep our eyes out in
advance on the road he is following. For man is an involuntary, if not a
willing traveller. Time does not roll from under his feet, but he is
carried along with the current, and can never again be where or what he
was. Nothing in his experience can ever be quite repeated. If you see
the same trees and hills, they do not appear the same from year to year.
Yesterday they were new and strange; you and they were young together.
To-day they are familiar and disregarded. Soon they will be old friends,
prattling to gray hairs of the brown locks and bounding breath of youth.

The pioneer of our growth is Imagination. Desire and Hope go on before
into the wilderness of the unknown; they open paths; they make a
clearing; they build and settle firmly before we ourselves in will and
power arrive at this opening, but they never await our coming. They are
the "Fore-runners," off again deeper into the vast possibility of being.
The boy walks in a dream of to-morrow. Two bushels of hickory-nuts in
his bag are no nuts to him, but silver shillings; yet neither are the
shillings shillings, but shining skates, into which they will presently
be transmuted. Already he is on the great pond by the roaring fire, or
ringing away into distant starry darkness with a sparkling brand.
Already, before his first skates are bought, before he has seen the coin
that buys them, he is dashing and wheeling with his fellows, a leader of
the flying train.

That early fore-reaching is a picture of our entire activity. "Care is
taken," said Goethe, "that the trees do not grow into the sky"; but man
is that tree which must outgrow the sky and lift its top into finer air
and sunshine. The essential seed is Growth; not shell and bark, nor
kernel, but a germ which pierces the soil and lifts the stone. Spirit is
such a germ, and perpetual reinforcement is its quality; so that the
great Being is known to us as a becoming Creator, adding himself to
himself, and life to life, in perpetual emanation.

The boy's thought never stops short of some personal prowess. It is
ability that charms him. To be a man, as he understands manliness, is to
have the whole planet for a gymnasium and play-ground. He would like to
have been on the other side of Hydaspes when Alexander came to that
stream. But he soon discovers that wit is the sword of sharpness,--that
he is the ruler who can reach the deepest desire of man and satisfy
that. If there is power in him, he becomes a careful student, examines
everything, examines his own enthusiasm, examines his last examination,
tries every estimate again and again. He distrusts his tools, and then
distrusts his own distrust, lifting himself by the very boot-straps in
his metaphysics, to get at some foundation which will not move. He will
know what he is about and what is great. He puts Cæsar, Milton, and
Whitfield into his crucible; but that which went in Cæsar comes out a
part of himself. The bold yet modest young chemist is egotistical. He
cannot be anybody else but John Smith. Why should he? Who knows yet what
it is to be John Smith? Napoleon and Washington are only playing his own
game for him, since he so easily understands and accepts their play. A
boy reads history as girls cut flowers from old embroidery to sew them
on a new foundation. They are interested in the new, and in the old only
for what they can make of it. So he sucks the blood of kings and
captains to help him fight his own battles. He reads of Bunker's Hill
and the Declaration of Independence with constant reference to the part
he shall take in the politics of the world. His motto is, _Sic semper
tyrannis_! Benjamin Franklin, and after him John Smith,--perhaps a
better man than he. We live on that _perhaps_. Every great man departed
has played out his last card, has taken all his chances. We are glad to
see his power limited and scaled up. Shakspeare, we say, did not know
everything; and here am I alone with the universe, nothing but a little
sleepiness between me and all that Shakspeare and Plato knew or did not
know. If I should be jostled out of my drowsiness, who can tell what may
be given me to see, to say, or to do? Let us make ready and get upon
some high ground from which we may overlook the work of the world; for
the secret of all mastery is dormant, yet breathing and stirring in you
and me.

Out of such material as we can gather we make a world in which we walk
continually up and down. In it we find friends and enemies, we love and
are loved, we travel and build. In it we are kings; we ordain and
arrange everything, and never come away worsted from any encounter. For
this sphere arises in answer to the practical question, What can I be
and do? It is an embodiment of the force that is in me. Every dreamer,
therefore, goes on to see himself among men and things which he can
understand and master, with which he can deal securely. The stable-boy
has hid an old volume among the straw, and he walks with Portia and
Desdemona while he grooms the horses. Already in his smock-frock he is a
companion for princes and queens. But the rich man's son, well born, as
we say, in the great house yonder, has one only ambition in life,--to
turn stable-boy, to own a fast team and a trotting-wagon, to vie with
gamesters upon the road. That is an activity to which he is equal, in
which his value will appear. Both boys, and all boys, are looking
upward, only from widely different levels and to different heights.

The young blasphemer does not love blasphemy, but to have his head and
be let alone by Old Aunty, who combs his hair as if he were a girl. So
always there is some ideal aim in the mixed motive. Out of six gay young
men who drive and drink together, only one cares for the meat and the
bottle. With the rest this feasting gallantly on the best, regardless of
expense, is part of a system. It is in good style, is convivial. For
these green-horns of society to live together, to be _convivæ_, is not
to think and labor together, as wise men use, but to laugh and be
drunken in company.

Into the lowest courses there enters something to keep the filth from
overwhelming self-respect. The advocates of slavery have not, as it
appears, lost all pretence of honor and honesty. Thieves are sustained
by a sense of the injustice of society. They do but right an old wrong,
taking bravely what was accumulated by cautious cunning. They cultivate
many virtues, and, like the best of us, make much of these, identify
themselves with these. If a man is harsh and tyrannical, he regrets that
he has too much force of character. And it is not safe to accuse a
harlot of stealing and lying. She has her ideal also, and strives to
keep the ulcer of sin within bounds,--to save a sweet side from
corruption.

Is this stooping very low to look for the Ideal Tendency? The greater
gain, if we find it prevailing in these depths. We may doubt whether
thieves and harlots are subject to the same law which irresistibly lifts
us, for we know that our own sin is not quite like other sin. But I must
not offer all the cheerful hope I feel for the worst offenders, because
too much faith passes for levity or impiety; and men thank God only for
deliverance from great dangers, not for preservation from all danger.
For gratitude we must not escape too easily and clean, but with some
smell of fire upon us.

Yet in our own experience this planning what we shall do and become is
constant, and always we escape from the present into larger air. The boy
will not be content with that skill in skating which occupies his mind
to-day. That belongs to the day and place, but next year he goes to the
academy and fresh exploits engage him. He works gallantly in this new
field and harness, because his thought has gone forward again, and he
sees through these studies the man of thought. Already as a student he
is a philosopher, a poet, a servant of the Muse. Bacon and Milton look
kindly on him in invitation, he is walking to their company and in their
company. The young hero-worshipper cannot remain satisfied with mere
physical or warlike prowess. He soon sees the superiority of mental and
moral mastery, of creation of good counsel. He will reverence the
valiant reformer who brings justice in his train, the saint in whom
goodness is enamored of goodness, the gentleman whose heart-beat is
courtesy, the prophet in whom a religion is born, all who have been
inspired with liberal, not dragged by sordid aims.

How beautiful to him is the society of poets! He reads with idolatry the
letters and anecdotes of Coleridge and Wordsworth, Goethe and Schiller,
Beethoven and Raphael. Look at the private thought of these men in
familiar intercourse: no plotting for lucre, but a conspiracy to reach
the best in life. The saints are even more ardent in aspiration, for
their tender hearts were pressed and saddened by fear. They are now set
on fire by a sense of great redemption. They are prisoners pardoned.

For scholars the world is peopled only with saints, philosophers, and
poets, and the studious boy seeks his own amid their large activity. So
much of it meets his want, yet the whole does not meet all his want. He
must combine and balance and embrace conflicting qualities. Every day
his view enlarges. What was noble last year will now by no means content
his conscience. Duty and beauty have risen.

The Ideal Tendency characterizes man, affords the only definition of
him; and it is a perpetual, irresistible expansion. No matter on what it
fastens, it will not stay, but spreads and soars like light in the
morning sky.

To-day we are charmed with our partners, and think we can never tire of
Alfred and Emily. To-morrow we discover without shame, after all our
protestations and engagements, that their future seems incommensurate
with our own. To our surprise, they also feel their paths diverging from
ours. We part with a show of regret, but real joy to be free.

Both parties have gained from their intercourse a certainty of power and
promise of greater power. Silly people fill the world with lamentation
over human inconstancy; but if we follow love, we cannot cling to the
beloved. We must love onward, and only when our friends go before us can
we be true both to friendship and to them.

How eager and tremulous his excitement when at last the youth encounters
all beauty in a maiden! Now he is on his trial. Can he move her? for he
must be to her nothing or all. How stately and far-removed she seems in
her crystal sphere! All her relations are fair and poetic. Her book is
not like another book. Her soft and fragrant attire, can it be woven of
ribbons and silk? She, too, has dreamed of the coming man, heroic,
lyrical, impassioned; the beat of his blood a pæan and triumphal march;
a man able to cut paths for her and lead her to all that is worthiest in
life. Her day is an expectation; her demand looks out of proud eyes.
Can he move this stately creature, pure and high above him as the clear
moon yonder, never turning from her course,--this Diana, who will love
upward and stoop to no Endymion? Now it will appear whether he can pass
with another for all he is to himself. This will be the victory for
which he was born, or blackest defeat. If she could love him! If he
should, after all, be to her only such another as her cousin Thomas, who
comes and goes with all his pretensions as unregarded as Rover the
house-dog! Between these _ifs_ he vacillates, swung like a ship on
stormy waters, touching heaven and hell.

Meanwhile the maiden dares hardly look toward this generous new-comer,
whose destiny lies broad open in his courage and desire. Others she
could conciliate and gently allure, but she will not play with the lion.
She will throw no web around his strength to tear her heart away, if it
does not hold him. For the first time she guards her fancy. She will not
think of the career that awaits him, of the help there is in him for
men, and the honor that will follow him from them,--of the high studies,
tasks, and companionship to which he is hastening. What avails this
avoidance, this turning-away of the head? A fancy that must be kept is
already lost. She read his quality in the first glance of deep-meaning
eyes. When at last he speaks, she sees suddenly how beyond all recovery
he had carried away her soul in that glance. They marry each the
expectation of the other. It was a promise in either that shone so fair.
Happy lovers, if only as wife and husband they can go on to fulfil the
promise! For love cannot be repeated; every day it must have fresh food
in a new object; and unless character is renewed, love must leave it
behind and wander on.

If the wife is still aspiring,--if she lays growing demands on her
hero,--if her thought enlarges and she stands true to it, separate from
him in integrity as he saw her first, following not his, but her own
native estimate,--she will always be his mistress. She will still have
that charm of remoteness which belongs only to those who do not lean and
borrow, to natures centred for themselves in the deep. There is
something incalculable in such independence. It is full of surprise for
the most intimate. In one breast the true wife prepares for her husband
a course of loves. Every day she offers a new heart to be won. Every day
the woman he could reach is gone, and there again before him is the
inaccessible maiden who will not accept to-day the behavior of
yesterday. This withdrawal and advancement from height to height is true
virginity, which never lies down with love but keeps him always on foot
and girded for fresh pursuit. Noble lovers rely on no pledges, point to
no past engagements, but prefer to renew their relation from hour to
hour. The heroic woman will command, and not solicit love. Let him go,
when I cease to be all to him, when I can no longer fill the horizon of
his imagination and satisfy his heart. But if there is less ascension in
a woman, she is no mate for an advancing man. He must leave her; he
walks by her side alone. So we pass many dear companions, outgrowing
alike our loves and our fears.

Once or twice in youth we meet a man of sounding reputation or real
wisdom, whose secret is hid above our discovery. His manners are
formidable while we do not understand them. In his presence our tongues
are tied, our limbs are paralyzed. Thought dies out before him, the will
is unseated and vacillates, we are cowed like Antony beside Cæsar. In
solitude we are ashamed of this cowardice and resolve to put it away;
but when the great man returns, our knees knock and we are as weak as
before. It is suicide to fly from such mortification. A brave boy faces
it as well as he can. By-and-by the dazzle abates, he sees some flaw,
some coarseness or softness, in this shining piece of metal; he begins
to fathom the motives and measure the orbit of this tyrannous
benefactor. They are the true friends who daunt and overpower us, to
whom for a little we yield more than their due.

This rule is universal, that no man can admire downward. All enthusiasm
rises and lifts the subject of it. That which seems to you so base an
activity is lifted above low natures. What matter, then, where the
standard floats at this moment, since it cannot remain fixed?

Perfection retreats, as the horizon withdraws before a traveller, and
lures us on and on. It even travels faster than our best endeavors can
follow, and so beckons to us from farther and farther away. We may give
ourselves to the ideal, or we may turn aside to appetite and sleep; but
in every moment of returning sanity we are again on our feet and again
upon an endless ascending road.

When a man has tasted power, when he sees the supply there is so near in
Nature for all need, he hungers for reinforcement. That desire is
prayer. It opens its own doors and takes supplies from God's hand. No
wise man can grudge the necessary use of the mind to serve the body with
shelter and food, for we go merrily to Nature, and with our milk we
drink order, justice, beauty, and benignity. We cannot take the husks on
which our bodies are fed, without expressing these juices also, which
circulate as sap and blood through the sphere. We cannot touch any
object but some spark of vital electricity is shot through us. Every
creature is a battery, charged not with mere vegetable or animal, but
with moral life. Our metaphysical being is fed from something hidden in
rocks and woods, in streams and skies, in fire, water, earth, and air.
While we dig roots, and gather nuts, and hunt and roast our meat, our
blood is quickened not in the heart alone. Deeper currents are swelled.
The springs of our humanity are opened in Nature; for that which streams
through the landscape, and comes in at the eye and ear, is plainly the
same fluid which enters as consciousness, and is the life by which we
live. While we enjoy this spiritual refreshment and keep ourselves open
to it, we may dig without degradation; but if our minds fasten on the
thing to be done, on commodity and safety, on getting and having, those
avenues seem to close by which the soul was fed. Then we forget our
incalculable chances and certainties; we go mad, and make the mind a
muck-rake. If a man will direct his faculties to any limited and not to
illimitable ends, he cripples his faculties. No matter whether he is
deluded by a fortune or a reputation or position, if he does not give
himself wholly to grow and be a man, regardless of minor advantages, he
has lost his way in the world. "Be true," said Schiller, "to the dream
of thy youth." That dream was generous, not sordid. We must be
surrendered to the perfection which claims us, and suffer no narrow aim
to postpone that insatiable demand.

But the potency of life will bring back every wanderer, as he well
knows. Every sinner keeps his trunk packed, ready to return to the good.
The poor traders really mean to buy love with their gold. Feeling the
hold of a chain which binds us even when we do not cling to it, we grow
prodigal of time and power. The essence of life, as we enjoy it, is a
sense of the inextinguishable ascending tendency in life; and this gives
courage when there is yet no reverence or devotion.

In development of character is involved great change of circumstances.
We cannot grow or work in a corner. It is not for greed alone or mainly
that men make war and build cities and found governments, but to try
what they can do and become, to justify themselves to themselves and to
their fellows. We desire to please and help,--but still more, at first,
to be sure that we can please and help. If he hears any man speak
effectually in public, the ambitious boy will never rest till he can
also speak, or do some other deed as difficult and as well worth doing.
For the trial of faculty we must go out into the world of institutions,
range ourselves beside the workers, take up their tools and strike
stroke for stroke with them. Every new situation and employment dazzles
till we find out the trick of it. The boy longs to escape from a farm to
college, from college to the city and practical life. Then he looks up
from his desk, or from the pit in the theatre, to the gay world of
fashion,--harder to conquer than even the world of thought. At last he
makes his way upward into the sacred circle, and finds there a little
original power and a great deal of routine. These fine parts are like
those of players, learned by heart. The men who invented them, with whom
they were spontaneous, seem to have died out and left their manners with
their wardrobes to narrow-breasted children, whom neither clothes nor
courtesies will fit. So in every department we find the snail freezing
in an oyster-shell. The judges do not know the meaning of justice. The
preacher thinks religion is a spasm of desire and fear. A young man soon
loses all respect for titles, wigs, and gowns, and looks for a muscular
master-mind. Somebody wrote the laws, and set the example of noble
behavior, and founded every religion. Only a man capable of originating
can understand, sustain, or use any institution. The Church, the State,
the Social System come tumbling ruinous over the heads of bunglers, who
cannot uphold, because they never could have built them, and the rubbish
obstructs every path in life. An honest, vigorous thinker will clear
away these ruins and begin anew at the earth. When the boy has broken
loose from home, and fairly entered the world that allured him, he finds
it not fit to live in without revolutions. He is as much cramped in it
as he was in the ways of the old homestead. Feeding the pigs and picking
up chips did not seem work for a man, but he finds that almost all the
activity of the race amounts to nothing more; no more thought or purpose
goes into it. Men find Church and State and Custom ready-made, and they
fall into the procession, ask no searching questions, but take things
for granted without reason; and their imitation is as easy as picking up
chips. It is no doing, but merely sliding down hill. The way of the
world will not suit a valiant boy. To make elbow-room and get
breathing-space, he becomes a reformer; and when now he can find no new
worlds to conquer, he will make a world, laying in truth and justice
every stone. The same seeker, who was so fired by the sight of his eyes,
looking out from a mill-yard or a shoe-shop on the many-colored activity
of his kind, who ran such a round of arts and sciences, pursuing the
very secret of his being in each new enterprise, is now discontented
with all that has been done. He begins again to look forward,--he
becomes a prophet, instead of the historian he was. He easily sees that
a true manhood would disuse our ways of teaching and worshipping, would
unbuild and rebuild every town and house, would tear away the jails and
abolish pauperism as well as slavery. He sees the power of government
lying unused and unsuspected in spelling-books and Bibles. Now he has
found a work, not for one finger, but for fighting Hercules and singing
Apollo, worthy of Minerva and of Jove. He will try what man can do for
man.

The history of every brave girl is parallel with that of her play-fellow
and yoke-fellow. She sighs for sympathy, for a gallant company of youths
and maidens worthy of all desire. Her music, drawing, and Italian are
only doors which she hopes to open upon such a company. She longs for
society to make the hours lyrical, for tasks to make them epic and
heroic. The attitudes and actions of imaginative young persons are
exalted every moment by the invisible presence of lovers, poets,
inspired and inspiring companions. Such as they are we also shall be;
when we walk among them and with them, we shall wash our hands of all
injustice, meanness, and pretension. Women are as tired as men of our
silly civilization, its compliments, restraints, and compromises. They
feel the burden of routine as heavily, and keep their elasticity under
it as long as we. What they cannot hope to do, a great-hearted man,
some lover of theirs, shall do for them; and they will sustain him with
appreciation, anticipating the tardy justice of mankind. Every generous
girl shares with her sex that new development of feminine consciousness,
which the vulgar have named, in derision, a movement for woman's rights.
She will seek to be more truly woman, to assert her special power and
privilege, to approach from her own side the common ideal, offering a
pure soprano to match the manly bass.

We all look for a future, not only better than our won past, but better
than any past. Humanity is our inheritance, but not historical humanity.
Man seems to be broken and scattered all abroad. The great lives are
only eminent examples of a single virtue, and by admiration of every
hero we have been crippled on some one side. If he is free, he is also
coarse; if delicate, he is overlaid by the gross world; saints are timid
and feverish, afraid of being spattered in the first puddle; heroes are
profane. We must melt up all the old metal to make a new man and carry
forward the common consciousness. Every failure was part of the final
success. We go over a causeway in which every timber is some soldier
fallen in this enterprise. Who doubts the result doubts God. We say,
regretfully "If I could only continue at my best!" and we ach with the
little ebb, between wave and wave, of an advancing tide. But this tide
is Omnipotence. It rises surely, if it were only an inch in a thousand
years. The changes in society are like the geologic upheaval and sinking
of continents; yet man is morally as far removed from the savage as he
is physically superior to the saurian. We do not see the corn grow or
the world revolve; yet if motion be given as the primal essence, we must
look for inconceivable results. Wisdom will take care of wisdom, and
extend. Consider the growth of intellect in the history of your own
parish for twenty years. See how old views have died out of New England
and new ones come in. Every man is fortified in his opinions, yet no man
can hold his opinions. The closer they are hugged, the faster in any
community they change. The ideas of such men as Swedenborg, Goethe,
Emerson, float in the air like spores, and wherever they light they
thrive. The crabbedest dogmatist cannot escape; for, if he open his eyes
to seek his meet, some sunshine will creep in. We have combustibles
stored in the stupidest of us, and a spark of truth kindles our
slumbering suspicion. Since the great reality is organized in man, and
waits to be revealed in him, it is of no avail to shut out the same
reality from our ears. Thinkers have held to be dangerous, and excluded
from the desks of public instruction; but the boys were already occupied
with the same thoughts. They would hear nothing new at the lecture, and
they are more encouraged by the terror of the elders than by any word
the wise man could speak. In pursuit of truth, the difficulty is to ask
a question; for in the ability to ask is involved ability to reach an
answer. The serious student is occupied with problems which the doctors
have never been able to entertain, and he knows that their discourse is
not addressed to him. If you have not wit to understand what I seek, you
may croak with the frogs: you are left out of my game.

And the old people, unhappily, suspect that this boy, whose theory they
do not comprehend, is master of their theory. They are puzzled and
panic-stricken; they strike in the dark. In all controversy, the strong
man's position is unassailed. His adversary does not see where he is,
but attacks a man of straw, some figment of his own, to the amusement of
intelligent spectators. Always our combatant is talking quite wide of
the whole question. So the wise man can never have an opponent; for
whoever is able to face and find him has already gone over to his side.
By material defences, we shut our light for a little, by going where
only our own views are repeated, and so boxing ourselves from all
danger of conviction; but if a strong thinker could gain the mere brute
advantage of having an audience confined in their seats to hear him out,
he would carry them all inevitably to his conclusion. They know it and
run away. But the press has made our whole world of civilization one
great lecture-room, from which no reading man can escape, and the only
defence against progress is stolid preoccupation with trade or trifles.
Yet this persistency is holding the breath, and can no more be continued
in the mind than that in the body. Blundering and falsehood become
intolerable to the blunderers; they must return to thought, and that is
proper in a single direction, is approached by ten thousand avenues
toward the One. It is religious, not ignorance or dogma. We cannot think
without exploration of the divine order and recognition of its divinity,
without finding ourselves carried away by it to service and adoration.
All good is assured to us in Truth, and Truth follows us hard, drives us
into many a corner, and will have us at last. So Love surprises all, and
every virtue has a pass-key to every heart. Out of conflicting
experience, amid barbarism and dogmatism, from feathers that float and
stones that fall, we deduce the great law of moral gravitation, which
binds spirit to spirit, and all souls to the best. Recognition of that
law is worship. We rejoice in it without a taint of selfishness. We
adore it with entire satisfaction. Worship is neither belief nor hope,
but this certainty of repose upon Perfection. We explore over our heads
and under our feet a harmony that is only enriched by dissolving
discords. The drag of time, the cramp of organization, are only false
fifths. It is blasphemy to deny the dominant. We cannot escape our good;
we shall be purified. When our destiny is thus assured to us, we become
impatient of sleep and sin, and redouble exertion. We devote ourselves
to this certainty, and our allegiance is religion. There is nothing in
man omitted from the uplift of Ideality. That is a central and total
expansion of him, is an inmost entering into his inmost, is more himself
than he is himself. All reverence is directed toward this Creator
revealed in flesh, though not compassed. We adore him in others, while
yet we despise him in ourselves. Every other motion of man has an
external centre, is some hunger or passion, acts on us from its seat in
Nature or the body, and we can face it, deny and repudiate it with the
body; but this is the man flowing down from his source.

We must not be tempted to call things by too fine names, lest we should
disguise them. All that is great is plain and familiar. The Ideal
Tendency is simple love of life, felt first as desire and then as
satisfaction. The men who represent it are not seekers, but finders, who
go on to find more and more; for in the poet desire has fulfilled
itself. Enjoyment makes the artist. He has gone on before us, reaching
into the abyss of possibility; but he has reached more mightily. He
begins to know what is promised in the universal attraction, in this
eager turning of all faces toward our future. There is a centre from
which no eye can be diverted, for it is the beam of sight. Look which
way you will, that centre is everywhere. The universe is flooded with a
ray from it, and the light of common day on every object is a refraction
or reflection of that brightness.

Shallow men think of Ideality as another appetite, to be fed with pretty
baubles, as the body is satisfied with meat and sleep; but the
representative of that august impulse feels in it his immortality, and
by all his lovely allegories, mythologies, fables, pictures, statues,
manners, songs, and symphonies, he seeks to communicate his own feeling,
that by specific gravity man must rise. It is no wonder, then, that we
love Art while it offers us reinforcement of being, and despise the
pretenders, for whom it is pastime, not prophecy.

For, in spite of all discouragement from the materialists, men
stultified by trade or tradition, we have trusted the high desire and
followed it thus far. We felt the sacredness of life even in ourselves,
and there was always reverence in our admiration. We could not be made
to doubt the divinity of that which walked with us in the wood or looked
on us in the morning. The grasses and pebbles, the waters and rocks,
clouds and showers, snow and wind, were too brother-like to be denied.
They sang the same song which fills the breast, and our love for them
was pure. The men and women we sought, were they not worthy of honor?
The artist comes to bid us trust the Ideal Tendency, and not dishonor
him who moves therein. He is no trifler, then, to be thrust aside by the
doctors with their sciences, or the economists with production and use.
He offers manhood to man and womanhood to woman.

We have named Ideality a love of life. Nay, what is it but life
itself,--and that loving but true living? What word can have any value
for us, unless it is a record of inevitable expansions in character. The
universe is pledged to every heart, and the artist represents its
promise. He sings, because he sees the manchild advancing, by blind
paths it may be, but under sure guidance, propelled by inextinguishable
desires toward the largest experience. He is no longer afraid of old
bugbears. He feels for one, that nothing in the universe, call it by
what ugly name you will, can crush or limit the lift of that leaven
which works in the breast. Out of all eyes there looks on him the same
expectation, and what for others is a great _perhaps_ for him has become
unavoidable certainty.




THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN.

     "The mind of man is first led to adore the forces of Nature,
     and certain objects of the material world; at a later period,
     it yields to religious impulses of a higher and purely
     spiritual character."

HUMBOLDT


CHAPTER I.

Alpheus and Eleusa, Thessalian Greeks, travelled in their old age, to
escape poverty and misfortune, which had surely taken joint lease with
themselves of a certain hut among the hills, and managed both household
and flock.

The Halcyon builds its nest upon a floating weed; so to the drifting
fortunes of these wanderers clung a friendless child, innocent and
beautiful Evadne.

Some secret voice, the country-people say, lured the shepherd from his
home, to embark on the Ægean Sea, and lead the little one away, together
with his aged wife, to look for a new home in exile. Mariners bound for
Troas received them into their vessel, and the voyage began.

The Greeks lamented when they beheld the shores of Asia. Heavy clouds
and the coming night concealed the landmarks which should have guided
their approach, and, buffeted by the uncertain winds, they waited for
the morning. By the light of dawn, they saw before them an unknown
harbor, and the dwellings of men; and here the mariners determined to be
rid of their passengers, who vexed them by their fears; while to these
three any port seemed desirable, and they readily consented to put off
towards the shore. At the hour when the winds rise, at early dawn, they
gladly parted from the seamen and the tossing ship, and took the way
before them to the little town.

No fisherman, shadowless, trod the sands; no pious hand lighted the fire
of sacrifice in the vanishing twilight; even the herds failed to cry
out for the coming day. Strange fears began to chill the hearts of the
Thessalians. They walked upon a trackless way, and when they entered the
dwellings they found them untenanted. Over the doorways hung vines
dropping their grapes, and birds flew out at the open windows. They
climbed a hill behind the town, and saw how the sea surrounded them. The
land on which they stood was no promontory, but an island, separated by
a foaming interval of water from the shore, which they now saw, not
distant, but inaccessible.

Then these miserable ones clung to each other on the summit of the rock,
gazing, until they were fully persuaded of their misfortune. The winds
waved and fluttered their garments, the waters uttered a voice breaking
on the rocky shore, and rose mute upon the farther coast. The rain now
began to fall from a morning cloud, and the travellers, for the first
time, found shelter under a foreign roof.

All day they watched the sails approaching the headlands, or veering
widely away and beating towards unseen harbors, as when a bird driven by
fear abandons its nest, but drawn by love returns and hovers around it.
Four days and nights had passed before the troubled waves ceased to
hinder the craft of the fisherman. The Greeks saw with joy that their
signals were answered, and a boat approached, so that they could hear a
man's voice crying to them,--

"What are you who dwell on the island of the profane, and gather fruits
sacred to Apollo?"

"If I may be said to dwell here," replied the old man, "it is contrary
to my own will. I am a Greek of Thessaly. Apollo himself should not have
forbidden me to gather the wild grapes of this island, since I and this
child and Eleusa, my wife, have not during many days found other food."

"It is indeed true," exclaimed the boatman, "that madness presently
falls upon those who eat of these grapes, since you speak impious words
against the god. Behold, yonder is woody Tenedos, where his altar
stands; it is now many years, since, filled with wrath against the
dwellers here, he seized this rock, and hurled it into the sea; the very
hills melted in the waves. I myself, a child then, beheld the waters
violently urged upon the land. Moved without winds, they rose, climbing
upon the very roofs of the houses. When the sea became calm, a gulf lay
between this and the coast, and what had been a promontory was left
forever an island. Nor has any man dared to dwell upon it, nor to gather
its accursed fruits. Many men have I known who saw gods walking upon
this shore, visible sometimes on the high cliffs inaccessible to human
feet. Therefore, if you, being a stranger, have ignorantly trespassed on
this garden, which the divinities reserve, perhaps for their own
pleasure, strive to escape their resentment and offer sacrifices on the
altar of Tenedos."

"Give me a passage in your boat to the land yonder, and I will depart
out of your coasts," replied the Greek.

The fisherman, hitherto so friendly, remained silent, and words were
wanting to him wherewith to instruct the stranger. When he again spoke,
he said,--

"Why, old man, not having the vigor or the carelessness of youth, have
you quitted your home, leading this woman into strange lands, and this
child, whose eyes are tearful for the playmates she has left? I call a
little maid daughter, who is like unto her, and she remains guarded at
home by her mother, until we shall give her in marriage to one of her
own nation and language."

"Waste no more words," answered the old man, "I will narrate my story as
we row towards your harbor."

"It were better for you," said the boatman, "that they who brought you
hither should take you into their ship again. Enter our town, if you
will, but be not amazed at what shall befall you. It is a custom with us
to make slaves of those who approach us unsolicited, in order to
protect ourselves against the pirates and their spies, who have formerly
lodged themselves among us in the guise of wayfaring men, and so robbed
us of our possessions. Therefore it is our law, that those who land on
our coast shall, during a year, serve us in bondage."

Anger flamed in the eye of the stranger.

"You do well," he cried, "to ask of me why I left the land which bore
me. Never did I there learn to suspect vile and inhospitable customs. If
you have pity for the aged and the unfortunate, and would not gladly see
them cast into slavery, bring hither some means of life to this rock,
which cowards have abandoned for me. Meanwhile, I will watch for some
friendly sail, which, approaching, may bear me to any harbor, where
worse reception can hardly await me.--Know that I fear not the anger of
your gods; many years have I lived, and I have never yet beheld a god.
My father has told me, that, in all his wanderings, among lonely hills,
at the hour of dawn, or by night, or, again, in populous places, he has
never seen one whom he believed to be a god. Moreover, in Athens itself
are those who doubt their existence. Leave me to gather the grapes of
Apollo!"

So saying, he turned away from the shore, not deigning to ask more from
the stranger.

When the golden crescent moon, no sooner visible than ready to vanish in
the rosy western sky, was smiling on the exiles with the old familiar
look she wore above the groves of Thessaly, the sad-hearted ones were
roused again by the voice of their unknown friend.

"Come down to the shore," he cried; "I have returned to you with gifts;
my heart yearns to the child; she is gentle, and her eyes are like those
of the stag when the hunters surround him. Take my flasks of oil and
wine, and these cakes of barley and wheat. I bring you nets, and cords
also, which we fishermen know how to use. May the gods, whom you
despise, protect you!"

Late into the night the Greeks remained upon the border of the sea,
wondering at their strange fate. To the idle the day is never
sufficiently long,--the night also is wasted in words.


CHAPTER II.

The days which the exiles passed in solitude were not unhappy. The child
Evadne pruned the large-leaved vines, and gave the rugged cheeks of
certain melons to the sun. The continual hope of departure rendered all
privations supportable.

Was it hope, or was it fear, that stirred their bosoms when at last a
sail appeared not distant? They hoped that its white wings might turn
seaward!

"Mother," cried the shepherd, "no seaman willingly approaches this
shore, for the white waves warn him how the rocks He beneath the water.
Even walls and roofs of houses are seen, or guessed at, ingulfed
formerly by the sea; and the tale of that disaster, as told us by the
fisherman, is doubtless known to mariners, who, fearing Apollo, dare not
land upon this island. While, on the other hand, we have heard how
pirates, and even poor wayfaring folk, are so ill-received in the bay,
that from them, though they be not far off, we yet look for no
assistance. Let us, then, be content, and cease to seek after our fate,
which doubtless is never at rest from seeking after us. And let us not
be in haste to enter again into a ship, (so fearful and unnatural a
thing for those born to walk upon the land,) nor yet to beg our way
along painful and unknown roads, in search of men of a new religion and
a different language from that of Greeks. Neither, dear wife, if we must
suffer it, let us dread slavery too much. Life is long enough for those
who die young, and too long for the aged. One year let us patiently
give, more especially if it be unavoidable to give it. Vex me with no
more lamentations; some unforeseen accident may relieve us from our
misfortunes."

Eleusa, the good old wife, ever obedient to the husband of her youth,
talked no more of departure, nor yet complained of their miserable
lodgings in the ruined huts, on which her housewifely care grieved to
expend itself in vain.

Evadne would not be restrained from wandering. She penetrated alone the
wildest thickets; the nests of timid birds were known to her; and she
traced the bee to his hidden city. Deep in the woods she discovered a
wide chasm, in which the water of the sea palpitated with the beating of
the great heart of Ocean from which it flowed. Trees were still erect,
clasped by the salt waves, but quite dead; and all around their base
were hung fringes of marine growth, touched with prismatic tints when
seen through the glittering water, but brown and hideous when gathered,
as the trophy remaining in the hand which has dared to seize old Proteus
by the locks. All around this avenue, into which the sea sometimes
rushed like an invading host of armed men, the laurels and the delicate
trees that love to bend over the sources of the forest-streams hung
half-uprooted and perilously a-tiptoe over the brink of shattered rocks,
and withered here and there by the touch of the salt foam, towards which
they seemed nevertheless fain to droop, asking tidings of the watery
world beyond.

The skeleton-arms of the destroyed ones were feeble to guard the passage
of the ravine. Evadne broke a way over fallen trees and stepping-stones
imbedded in sea-sand, and gained the opposite bank. The solitude in
which she found herself appeared deeper, more awful, than before the
chasm lay between the greater island and the less. She listened
motionless to the soft, but continual murmur of the wood, the music of
leaves and waves and unseen wings, by which all seeming silence of
Nature is made as rich to the ear as her fabrics to the eye, so that, in
comparison, the garments of a king are mean, though richly dyed,
embroidered on every border, and hung with jewels.

While the little wood-ranger stood and waited, as it were, for what the
grove might utter, her eye fell upon the traces of a pathway, concealed,
and elsewhere again disclosed, overgrown by sturdy plants, but yet
threading the shady labyrinth. She followed the often reappearing line
upon the hillside, and as she climbed higher, with her rose the
mountains and the sea. The shore, the sands, the rocky walls, showed
every hue of sunbeams fixed in stone. The leafy sides of Tenedos had
caught up the clear, green-tinted blue of the sea, and wore it in a
noonday dream under the slumberous light that rested on earth and sea
and sky. Above the horizon, far away, the very clouds were motionless;
and where the sunbeams marked a tranquil sail, it seemed, with wave and
cloud, to express only Eternal Repose. But the eager child pressed
onward, for the crown of the hill seemed almost reached, and she longed
for a wider, wider view of the beautiful Ægean.

Suddenly she arrived where a sculptured stone lay in the pathway. Some
patient and skilful hand had wrought there the emblem of a rose, and
among the chiselled petals stood drops of rain, collected as in a cup.
On the border a pure white bird had just alighted, and Evadne watched
how it bent and rose and seemed to caress the flower of stone, while it
drank of the dew around and within it. Her eyes filled with tears as she
mused on the vanished hand of Art, whose work Nature now reclaimed for
this humble, but grateful use. The dove took wing, and the child
proceeding came to a level turf where a temple of white marble stood.
Eight slender columns upheld a marble canopy, beneath which stood the
image of a god. One raised hand seemed to implore silence, while the
other showed clasping fingers, but they closed upon nothing. Around the
statue's base lay scattered stones. Evadne gathered them, and reunited
they formed the lyre of Apollo. She replaced, for an instant, in the
cold and constant grasp a fragment of the ruined harp. Then the aspect
of the god became regretful, sad, as of one who desires a voice from
the lips of the dead. Hastily she flung the charm away, and gentle grace
returned to the listening boy, from whom, sleeping, some nymph might
have stolen his lyre, whose complaining chords now vibrated to his ear
and called their master to the pursuit. Evadne reposed on the steps of
the temple, and fixedly gazed upon the god. Her fancy endowed the firm
hand with an unbent bow; then the figure seemed to pause in the chase,
and listen for the baying of the hounds. Then she imaged a shepherd's
staff, and the shepherd-god waited tenderly for the voice of a lost
lamb.

"So stood Apollo in Thessaly," she softly said, "when he carried the
shepherd's staff. Oh that I were the lost Thessalian lamb for whom he
waits, that he might descend and I die for joy on his breast!"

Then, half afraid that the lips might break their marble stillness in
reply, she asked the protection of the deity, whom she was fain to
adore, but whom her adopted parents dared to despise.

Sole worshipper at a deserted shrine, she had no offering to place
there, but of flowers. She wove a crown and laid it at his feet, and,
while she bent by the pedestal, to hang a garland there, oh, terror! a
voice cried, "Evadne! Evadne!" A tide of fear rushed to her heart. The
god stood motionless yet. Who could have uttered her name? A falling
branch, a swift zephyr, may have seemed for an instant articulate, and
yet it was surely a human voice which had called her. Her reverie was
broken now, like a cataract brought to its downfall. A moment since, all
was peace and joyfulness; now she remembered, with alarm, how long she
had left her foster-parents alone, and the way by which she had come was
unknown, as if she had never traced it. She crossed the floor of the
temple, and, as she turned to whisper, "Farewell! beautiful god!" the
form gently inclined itself, and the uplifted hand stirred lightly.
Evadne darted forward and looked no more behind. She bounded over chasms
in the pathway, and broke the tender branches before her with impatient
hands, so that her descent from the temple was one mad flight.


CHAPTER III.

When Evadne returned to Alpheus and to her foster-mother, she was silent
concerning her discovery, and it seemed the more sweet to her for being
secret. Her thoughts made pilgrimages to the temple hidden by the
laurels once set to adorn it, and the deserted God of Youth and Immortal
Beauty drew from her an untaught and voiceless worship. How tedious now
appeared the labors of their half-savage life!--for the ensnaring of
fish and the gathering of fruits for the little household gave the child
no leisure to climb the hill a second time, to seek the lost temple, now
all her own. Two weary days had passed, and on the morning of the third
Evadne performed all her labors, such as they were, of field or of the
house.

Eleusa was absorbed in the art, new to her, of repairing a broken net,
when the child abruptly fled away into the forest, crying out, "I go to
seek wild grapes." She would not hear the voices calling her back. She
gained rapidly the path, already familiar, and wherein every bough and
every leaf seemed expectant of her coming footsteps.

Hamadryads veiled themselves, each in her conscious tree, eluding human
approach. She steals more gently along, that she may haply surprise a
vision. The little grassy plain appears beyond the wavering
oak-branches. It is reached at last, and there,--surely it is no
delusion,--there rests a sleeping youth! Another step, and she bent
aside the boughs. He stands erect, listening.

"It is the god!" she cries; and, falling back, would have been
precipitated from the rock, had not the youth rapidly bounded forward
and grasped her hand.

"Little one, beautiful child," he cried, "do not fear me! I have indeed
played the god formerly, to scare from my hunting-ground the poor fools
who dread the anger of Apollo. Tell me, who are you, thus wandering in
the awful garden of the gods? Who brought you hither, and what name has
been given you?"

Trembling still, and not knowing how to relate it, Evadne stammered
forth some words of her history. Her senses were bewildered by the
beauty of the hunter-boy, who now appeared how different from the marble
god! Bold, and as if ever victorious, with an undaunted brow, like
Bacchus seen through the tears of sad Ariadne awakened. Strong and swift
were his limbs, as those of a panther. His cheek was ruddy, and his
half-naked form was brown, as those appear who dwell not under a roof,
but in the uncertain shade of the forest. His locks were black and
wildly disordered, and his eyes were most like to a dark stream lighted
with golden flashes; but the laughing beauty of his lip no emblem could
convey.

Soon, seated on the turf, the story of each child was related.

"I am nobly born," said the boy, "but I love the life of a hunter. My
father has left me alone, and when I am a man, I, too, shall follow him
to Rome. But liberty is sweeter than honor or power. I escape often from
my tutor, who suspects not where I hide myself, and range all the
forests. Embarking by night, in former years, I often visited this
island. I know where to gather fruits and seek vineyards among the
ruined huts of the village beneath us. By night I descend and gather
them, for my free wanderings by day caused the fishermen to relate that
a god walked upon the shore. When some, more curious or bold, turned
their prows hitherward, to observe what form moved upon the hill, I
rolled great rocks down, with a thundering noise, into the sea, and have
terrified all men from the spot."

"We now call the vineyards and gardens ours," said Evadne, "but it
appears they truly belong to you. Descend to the shore and we will share
with you, not only the ripest clusters of the vines, but wine and loaves
which the fisherman brings us."

"Bring me hither the wine, and I will gladly drink of it, nor waste one
drop in oblation; but I must not descend to the shore, and you must be
silent concerning me, for my tutor offers large rewards to any one who
will disclose where I hide myself. The slaves on the coast here are
ready to betray me. I have watched them sailing near the island, lured
by the promise of a handful of gold, but not daring to land upon it,
lest they should behold, against his will, a divine being."

"Then I will climb up hither and bring you the fruits," said Evadne.

"Nay, my bird," answered the boy, "lay them only on the altar, below,
and when it is safe to descend, call me."

"If I call softly, you cannot hear me; and I cannot call loudly enough
to reach you upon this hill."

"The secrets of the island are not known to you," her companion said,
and arose quickly; "follow me,--I will teach you. You know not why
Apollo is listening? It is for the good of the worshippers, who care not
to mount the hill to adore him. Above the town stands an altar; voices
uttered there are brought up hither by an echo. There the pious repaired
once, and laid their gifts, and songs and the music of flutes sounded in
honor of the deity, who was held too sacred to be approached. Hold me
not too sacred, little one!--you shall approach without fear; but give
me your voice at this altar, when your foster-father sleeps."

"But what shall I call you?" cried the laughing Evadne.

"Call _Hylas_. Echo has often repeated, the name, they say, in the
country of Mysia, and these groves shall learn it of you! Now follow me
over the floor of the temple,--but lightly! lightly! See how the god
would warn us away! He nods on his pedestal; even the loud thunder may
some day cause his fall; already he is half shaken down from his shrine
by earthquakes."

Then, firmly, bold Hylas held trembling Evadne, who glanced for an
instant down the leafy passage of echoes.


CHAPTER IV.

When the day was over, Alpheus called to him his foster-child.

"You have willingly followed us into our exile," he said, "nor have you
ever inquired whither we lead you. Listen to me; I shall confide to you
a secret, so that, if evil befall us, you may go on and fulfil your
journey.

"In Asia stands a city, called Thyatira, and there dwell men of a new
religion, called Christians. Of this faith I know as yet but little.
But, dear Evadne, your father is yet living, and has sent, praying me to
conduct you to him, that you may be taught among Christians. I have
labored to fulfil his wish, for in our youth we were dear to each other.
The moon saw us nightly upon the hills, guarding our flocks, and by day
we practised the labors and the sports of Greeks."

"What is the religion of my father?" asked the child.

"I cannot tell it to you; I know only that the Christians worship one
god."

"Apollo, then, is my choice."

"Not so, child. The god of Christians is not known to us; but he shall
overthrow the idols of the whole world. The bow of Diana, the lyre of
Apollo, are already broken."

The child started. Was the temple known to Alpheus, too? Had he seen
there the fragments of a shattered harp?

The old man continued his discourse, but Evadne's thoughts had flown
away towards the lost temple.

"There alone will I worship," she murmured to herself. She dreamed of
adoring the deity of stone, but Hylas haunted all her thoughts. Yes,
Evadne! one god is sufficient for you!

Under cover of the darkness, the friendly boatman drew near, and the
islanders heard the unaccustomed sound of the boat drawn up the beach by
the youth, whose superstitious fears began to vanish as he observed that
no calamity fell upon these dwellers on the sacred spot.

"I come," he said, "with gifts truly, but also with good tidings. Have
patience yet awhile. Your retreat is still unknown, and, after a few
days, I may find you the means of escape."

Evadne alone was silent, and her tears flowed secretly.

The sun was already set, on the following day, before she stole away to
meet the hunter-boy. In his hand, as he advanced joyously to greet her,
he bore a white dove, which his arrow had pierced.

"I struck it," he said, while he pointed to its broken wing and bleeding
breast, "when it alighted on the edge of a stone fallen from the
temple."

Evadne concealed her ready tears and uttered no reproach against her
hero; but she pressed the dead bird to her bosom.

"Tell me, Hylas," she asked, "do you worship this god before us, or that
of the Christians?"

The boy laughed gayly.

"I worship this strong right arm," he said, "and my own bold will, which
has conquered and shall conquer again! The stories of the gods are but
fables. To us who are brave nothing can be forbidden; it is the weak who
are unfortunate, and no god is able either to assist or to destroy us.
As to the Christians, they are a despised people, a race of madmen, who,
pretending to love poverty and martyrdom, are followed by the rude and
ignorant. As for us, we are gods, both to them and to ourselves."

Evadne knew that she herself must be counted among the rude and
ignorant; she dared not raise her eyes to the young noble, who watched
her quivering lip, and but dimly guessed how he had wounded her.

"Leave caressing the dead bird," he said, at last, "and I will tell you
tales of Rome and its glories."

And he charmed back again her innocent smiles, with noble traditions of
kings, of gods, and of heroes, till the round moon stood above Gargarus,
cold, in a rose-tinted heaven.

But again at sunrise the child sought the spot to bring a basket, heavy
with gifts, for Hylas. He came at the call of Evadne, fresh, glowing,
beautiful as a child rocked on the breast of Aurora, and upheld by her
cool, fanning wings. His cheek wore the kiss of the Sun, and his closely
curling locks were wet by the scattered fountain, cold in the shaded
grove. He broke the early silence of the air with song and story, and
named for the admiring child the towns, the headlands, and the hills,
over which the eye delighted to wander.

"Now is the hour," he said, "when mariners far away behold for a little
while the dome of this temple. They believe that the gods have rendered
it invisible except at the rising day; but, in truth, the oaks, the
laurels, and the unpruned ivy conceal it from view, at all times, except
when the rays from the east strike upward. I have delighted to teach the
people fables concerning this island and the lost temple; for as long as
they fear to tread upon this spot, I have a retreat for myself, where I
range unmolested.

"See yonder, so white among the dark cypress-trees, my father's villa!
It has gardens and shady groves, but I love best the wild branching oaks
which give their shade to Evadne! Far away in the purple distance stands
the Mount of Ida. There dwelt Paris, content with the love of Oenone,
until he knew himself to be the son of a king, for whom Argive Helen
alone was found worthy; for his eyes had rested once upon immortal
charms, of which the green eternal pines of Ida are still whispering the
story. See how the people of this village of Athos flock together! Some
festival occupies them. I see them going forth from the gates in
hurrying crowds; and now a band of men approaches. Some one is about to
enter their town, to whom they wish to do honor, and doubtless they bear
green branches to strew in the way. I know not what festival they
celebrate, for the altars are all deserted."

"I see a boat put off from the shore," said Evadne, "and it seems to
turn its prow hitherward."

But it soon was concealed by the woody hill-top, although its course was
seen to be directed towards the ruined huts upon the shore. Not long
after, the children heard the name of "Evadne," brought faintly by the
echoes, like the words of unseen ghosts who strive to awaken some
beloved sleeper unconscious of their presence.

Evadne feared to return, and dared not stay. For the first time, the
voice of her foster-father failed to bring her obedient footsteps; for
her fluttering heart suspected something strange and unwelcome awaiting
her. She wept at parting from Hylas, and the boy detained her. He also
seemed troubled.

"Dear little one," he said, "betray me not! These men of Athos have seen
me, and have authority to bring me bound before some ruler who has
entered their town. They come to look for me now. I fly to my
hiding-place, and you will deny that you saw any one in this forest."

He was gone down the face of the cliff, with winged feet, light of tread
as Jove's messenger. More slowly, Evadne retraced the downward path, and
lingered on the banks of the ravine, where the bitter waters were
sobbing among the rocks. She lay down upon the ground, and dreamed,
while yet waking, of her home in Thessaly, of her unknown father in the
Christian city of Thyatira, and of Hylas, ever Hylas, and the pain of
parting. How long she hid herself she guessed not, until the sun at the
zenith sent down his brightest beam to discover the lost Thessalian
lamb. Then, subdued and despairing, she travelled on to meet the
reproaches that could not fail to await her.


CHAPTER V.

At midnight the sleepless girl stole from her couch, and laid on the
altar beyond the village heavy clusters of grapes and the richest fruits
from her store of dainties. "Hylas!" she softly cried, and the
sleepless echo repeated the name; but though she watched long, no form
emerged from the forest. Timidly she flitted back to her dwelling, and
waited for an eastern gleam. At last the veil of night was lifted a
little, a wind ruffled the waves, and the swaying oaks repeated to the
hills the message of coming splendors from the Orient. Evadne gladly saw
that the stars were fewer and paler in the sky, and she walked forth
again, brushing cold dews from the vines and the branches. A foreboding
fear led her first to look at the altar where she had left her offering.
It was untouched. Then she entered the still benighted wood, and passed
the cold gray waters. Arrived at the temple, she felt a hateful
stillness in the place.

"Hylas!" she loudly called, "come to me! For _you_ there is no danger;
but for me, they will take me away at sunrise. The Christians will come
to-day and carry me hence. Oh, Hylas! where do you hide yourself?"

But only a strong and angry wind disturbed the laurels around the
temple, and all was still. Then the song of the birds began all around
her, and a silver gleam shot across the eastern horizon. Suddenly
rosy-tinged signals stood among the sad-colored torn clouds above her
head. The hour for her departure was approaching. She gazed intently
down among the pines, where Hylas had disappeared, and painfully and
slowly began to descend. The wild-eyed hares glanced at her and shrank
into concealment again. The birds uttered cries of alarm, and the
motionless lizards lay close to her feet. Her heart beat anxiously when
she heard the sudden stroke of a bird's wing, scared from its nest, and
she paused often to listen, but no human voice was heard.

She penetrated slowly thus to that shore of the island which she had
never yet visited. She reached a border of white sand, and studied its
surface. She found a record there,--traces of footsteps, and the long
trail of a boat, drawn from a thicket of laurels to the shore, and down
to the water's edge. She stood many minutes contemplating these signs.
She imaged to herself the retreat by night, by the late rising light of
the waning moon. She seemed to see the youth, his manly arm urging the
boat from its hiding-place. In this spot his foot pressed the sand.
There he walked before and drew the little craft behind him. He launched
it here, and, had not the winds urged the water up the shore, his last
footstep might have remained for Evadne to gaze at.

He is surely gone! To return for the smiles of Evadne? She knows not if
he will return; but she glances upward at the sky, and feels that she
soon will have quitted the island, this happy island, forever!

Upward through the wood again she toils to take a last look at the
temple. The spot seemed already to have forgotten her. And yet here lies
a withered crown she wove once for Hylas; and here she finds at last the
dart she lost for him, when she drew his bow in play. Now she sees on
the shore at Athos an assembly of the people, and the men push off their
boats. The village is already alive, and awake. The rising of the sun is
looked for, and the clouds are like a golden fleece. Slowly above the
tree-tops the swans are waving their great pinions, to seek the stream
of Cayster. All creatures recognize the day, and only one weeps to see
the light.

Evadne knew that on yonder shore waited the dreaded messengers who would
gather the homeless into the Christian fold. She stayed to utter one
farewell to the cold, the cruel marble, with its unvaried smile.

"Be my god!" she cried, aloud. "In whatever strange land, to whatever
unknown religion I may be led, the god of this forgotten temple shall
have the worship of my heart!"

She crossed the marble pavement. She clasped with her white cold arms
the knees of Apollo--Hold! the form totters!--it is too late!--it must
fall! She rises to flee away, but the very floor is receding from her
tread. And slowly, with a majesty even in destruction, the god bows
himself, and drops from his pedestal.

The crashing fall is over. The foundations of the shrine, parted long
ago by earthquakes, and undermined by torrents, have slipped from their
place. Stones slide gradually to the brink of the rock, and some have
fallen near the sculptured rose; and yet some portions of the graceful
temple stand, and will support the dome yet, until some boisterous storm
shakes roughly the remaining columns.

But the god is dethroned, shivered, ruined. Evadne should arise and go.
The daylight overflows the sky, and she is quite, quite still, where the
hand of Apollo has laid her. Her forehead was but touched by fingers
that once held the lyre; and a crimson stream flows through the locks
upon her brow. A smile like that which the god wore is fixed and
changeless now upon her lip. Why does she smile? Because, in the dawn of
life, of grief, of love, she found peace.

The sun was up, and there was no more silence or repose along the coast.
Vigor and toil gave signs of their awakening. Sails were unfurled upon
the wavering masts, and showed white gleams, as the sunlight struck each
as it broadened out and swayed above its bright reflection below. Oars
were dipped in the smooth sea, and an eager crowd stood waiting to visit
the exiles on the once dreaded island. Evadne was already missed. Again
and again voices called upon her, the echoes repeated the sound, and the
groves had but one voice,--"Evadne!" She stirred not at the sound, but
her smile grew sweeter, and her brow paler, and cold as the marble hand
that pressed it.

Oh, Alpheus! oh, Eleusa! chide not! you will be weeping soon! She has,
indeed, angered you of late. She left her foster-parents alone, and
threaded the forest. She hid herself when you called, and, when the
fisher's boat was waiting to convey her with you to the shore, where
friends were ready to receive her and lead her to her father, then she
was wandering!

Eleusa is querulous. No wonder! for the child is sadly changed. They
will see her soon; a Christian prophet comes to break the heathen spell
of the island. The men of yonder village consent to abjure the worship
of Apollo. They come with the teacher of a new religion to consecrate
the spot anew. The busy crowd, as on a day of festival, embark to claim
again the once deserted spot.

Alpheus and Eleusa wait sadly for their approach, for trouble possesses
their hearts. They pine for their once gentle, submissive child. But the
teacher comes, and hails them in words of a new benediction. _The Great
Name_ is uttered also in their hearing. Calmness returns to them, in the
presence of the holy man. It is not Paul, mighty to reprove, and learned
as bold,--it is that "one whom Jesus loved." He has rested on his bosom,
and looked on him pierced on the cross. The look from his dying eyes and
the tones of his tender love are ever present in the soul of this
beloved disciple. The awful revelations of Patmos had not yet illumined
his eyes. His locks were white as the first blossoms of the spring, but
his heart was not withered by time, and men believed of him that he
should never see death. Those who beheld him loved him, and listened
because they loved. What he desired was accomplished as if a king had
commanded it, and what he taught was gathered in among the treasures of
the heart.

The first care of the Apostle was to seek the lost child, and the youths
of his company went on, and scaled the hill. Meanwhile, not far from the
altar, on which an unregarded offering lay, the people gathered round
their master, while to Alpheus and Eleusa he related the immortal story
of Judea.

Before mid-day the villagers had returned to their dwellings. With John,
their friend and consoler, two mourners departed from the island, where
fabled Apollo no longer possessed a shrine. His altar was torn away; a
newly-made grave was marked by a cross roughly built of its broken
stones.

"I will return here," said the fisherman of Athos, "when you are far
away in some Christian city of Asia. I will return and carve here the
name of 'Evadne.'"




THE SKATER.


    The skater lightly laughs and glides,
      Unknowing that beneath the ice
      Whereon he carves his fair device
    A stiffened corpse in silence slides.

    It glareth upward at his play;
      Its cold, blue, rigid fingers steal
      Beneath the trendings of his heel;
    It floats along and floats away.

    He has not seen its horror pass;
      His heart is blithe; the village hears
      His distant laughter; he careers
    In festive waltz athwart the glass.--

    We are the skaters, we who skim
      The surface of Life's solemn flood,
      And drive, with gladness in our blood,
    A daring dance from brim to brim.

    Our feet are swift, our faces burn,
      Our hopes aspire like soaring birds;
      The world takes courage from our words,
    And sees the golden time return.

    But ever near us, silent, cold,
      Float those who bounded from the bank
      With eager hearts, like us, and sank
    Because their feet were overbold.

    They sank through breathing-holes of vice,
      Through treacherous sheens of unbelief;
      They know not their despair and grief:
    Their hearts and minds are turned to ice.




THOMAS JEFFERSON.[1]

[Concluded.]


Mr. Jefferson returned from France in the autumn of 1789, and the
following spring took office as Secretary of State. He was unwilling to
abandon his post abroad, but the solicitations of Washington controlled
him. He plainly was the most suitable person for the place. Franklin,
the father of American diplomacy, was rapidly approaching the close of
his long and busy life, and John Adams, the only other statesman whose
diplomatic experience could be compared with that of Thomas Jefferson,
was Vice President.

It would be a tedious task to enter into a detail of the disputes which
arose in Washington's Cabinet, nor is it necessary to do so. Most candid
persons, who have examined the subject, are convinced that the
differences were unavoidable, that they were produced by exigencies in
affairs upon which men naturally would disagree, by conflicting social
elements, and by the dissimilar characters, purposes, and political
doctrines of Jefferson and Hamilton. Jefferson's course was in
accordance with the general principles of government which from his
youth he had entertained.

As to the accusation, so often made, that he opposed an administration
of which he was a member and which by the plainest party-rules he was
bound to support, it is completely answered by the statement, that his
conduct was understood by Washington, that he repeatedly offered to
resign, and that when he retired it was in opposition to the President's
wish. It is not worth while for us to apply a higher standard of party
loyalty to Washington's ministers than he himself applied.

One great difficulty encountered by the politicians of that day seems to
have been purely fanciful. Strictly speaking, the government did not
have a policy. It went into operation with the impression that it would
be persistently resisted, that its success was doubtful, and that any
considerable popular disaffection would be fatal to it. These fears
proved to be unfounded. The day Washington took the oath, the government
was as stable as it now is. Disturbing elements undoubtedly existed, but
they were controlled by great and overruling necessities, recognized by
all men. Thus the final purpose of the administration was accomplished
at the outset. The labor which it was expected would task the patriotism
and exercise the skill of the most generous and experienced was
performed without an effort,--as it were, by a mere pulsation of the
popular heart. The question was not, How shall the government be
preserved? but, How shall it be administered? This is evident now, but
was not seen then. The statesmen of the time believed that the Union was
constantly in danger, and that their best efforts were needed to protect
it. In this spirit they approached every question which presented
itself. Thinking that every measure directly affected the safety of the
republic, a difference of opinion could not be a mere disagreement upon
a matter of policy. In proportion to the intensity of each man's
patriotism was his conviction that in his way alone could the government
be preserved, and he naturally thought that his opponents must be either
culpably neglecting or deliberately plotting against the interests of
the country. Real difficulties were increased by imaginary ones.
Opposition became treason. Parties called themselves Republicans and
Federalists;--they called each other monarchists and anarchists. This
delusion has always characterized our politics; noisy politicians of
the present day stigmatize their adversaries as disunionists; but during
the first twenty years it was universal, and explains the fierce
party-spirit which possessed the statesmen of that period, and likewise
accounts for many of their errors.

Among these errors must be placed the belief which Jefferson had, that
there was a party of monarchists in the country. Sir. Randall makes a
long argument in support of this opinion, and closes with an intimation
that those who refuse to believe now cannot be reached by reason. He may
rank us with these perverse skeptics; for, in our opinion, his argument
not only fails to establish his propositions, but is strong against
them. Let it be understood;--the assertion is not, that there were some
who would have preferred a monarchy to a republic, but that, after the
government was established, Ames, Sedgwick, Hamilton, and other Federal
leaders, were plotting to overturn it and create a monarchy. Upon this
we have no hesitation in taking issue. The real state of the case, and
the circumstances which deceived Mr. Jefferson, may be briefly set
forth.

Jefferson left France shortly after the taking of the Bastile. He saw
the most auspicious period of the Revolution. During the session of the
Estates General, the evils which afflicted France were admitted by all,
but the remedies proposed were, as yet, purely speculative. The roseate
theories of poets and enthusiasts had filled every mind with vague
expectations of some great good in the future. Nothing had occurred to
disturb these pleasing anticipations. There was no sign of the fearful
disasters then impending. The delirium of possession had not seized upon
the nation,--her statesmen had not learned how much easier it is to plan
than to achieve,--nor had the voice of Burke carried terror throughout
Europe. Even now, it is impossible to read the first acts of that drama
without being moved to sympathetic enthusiasm. What emotions must it not
have excited while the awful catastrophe was yet concealed! Tried by any
received test, France, for centuries, had been the chief state in
Europe,--inferior to none in the arts of war, superior to any in the
arts of peace. Fashion and letters had given her an empire more
permanent than that which the enterprise of Columbus and the fortune of
Charles gave to Spain, more extended than that which Trafalgar and
Waterloo have since given to England. Though her armies were resisted,
her wit and grace were irresistible; every European prince was her
subject, every European court a theatre for the display of her address.
The peculiar spirit of her genius is not more distinctly to be seen in
the verse of Boileau than in that of Pope,--in the sounding periods of
Bossuet than in Addison's easy phrase. The spectacle of a nation so
distinguished, which had carried tyranny to a perfection and invested it
with a splendor never before seen, becoming the coryphæus of freedom,
might easily have fascinated a mind less impressible by nature, and less
disposed by education for favorable impressions, than that of Jefferson.
He shared the feeling of the hour. His advice was asked, and
respectfully listened to. This experience, while, as he says, it
strengthened his preconceived convictions, must have prevented him from
carefully observing, certainly from being affected by, the influences
which had been at work in his own country. He came home more assured in
republicanism, and expecting to find that America had kept pace with
him.

But many things had occurred in America to excite doubts of the
efficiency of republican institutions. The government of the
Confederation was of little value. During the war, common interests and
dangers had bound the Colonies together; with peace came commercial
rivalries, boundary disputes, relations with other countries, the
burdens of a large debt,--and the scanty powers with which Congress had
been clothed were inadequate to the public exigencies. The Congress was
a mere convention, in which each State had but one vote. To the most
important enactments the consent of nine States was necessary. The
concurrence of the several legislatures was required to levy a tax,
raise an army, or ratify a treaty. The executive power was lodged in a
committee, which was useless either for deliberation or action. The
government fell into contempt; it could not protect itself from insult;
and the doors of Congress were once besieged by a mob of mutinous
soldiery. The States sometimes openly resisted the central government,
and to the most necessary laws, those for the maintenance of the
national credit, they gave but a partial obedience. They quarrelled with
each other. New York sent troops into the field to enforce her claims
upon her New England neighbors. The inhabitants of the Territories
rebelled. Kentucky, Vermont, and Tennessee, under another name, declared
themselves independent, and demanded admission into the Union. In New
Hampshire and Pennsylvania, insurrections took place. In Massachusetts,
a rebellion was set on foot, which, for a time, interrupted the sessions
of the courts. An Indian war, attended by the usual barbarities, raged
along the northern frontier. Foreign states declined to negotiate with a
government which could not enforce its decrees within its own borders.
England haughtily refused to withdraw her troops from our soil; Spain
closed the Mississippi to the commerce and encroached upon the territory
of the Confederation. Every consideration of safety and advantage
demanded a government with strength enough to secure quiet at home and
respect abroad. It is not to be denied that many thoughtful and
experienced men were discouraged by the failure of the Confederation,
and thought that nothing but a monarchy could accomplish the desired
purpose.

There were also certain social elements tending in the same direction,
and these were strongest in the city of New York, where Jefferson first
observed them. That city had been the centre of the largest and most
powerful Tory community in the Colonies. The gentry were nearly all
Tories, and, during the long occupation of the town, the tradespeople,
thriving upon British patronage, had become attached to the British
cause. There, and, indeed, in all the cities, there were aristocratic
circles. Jefferson was of course introduced into them. In these circles
were the persons who gave dinners, and at whose tables he heard the
opinions expressed which astonished and alarmed him.

What is described as polite society has never been much felt in American
politics; it was not more influential then. Besides, in many cases,
these opinions were more likely to have been the expression of
affectation than of settled conviction. Nothing is more common than a
certain insincerity which leads men to profess and seemingly believe
sentiments which they do not and cannot act upon. The stout squire who
prides himself upon his obstinacy, and whose pretty daughter manages him
as easily as she manages her poodle, is a favorite character in English
comedy. Every one knows some truculent gentleman who loudly proclaims
that one half of mankind are knaves and the other half would be if they
dared, but who would go mad with despair if he really believed the
atrocious principles he loves to announce. Jefferson was not so
constituted as to make the proper allowance for this kind of
insincerity. Though undemonstrative, he was thoroughly in earnest. In
fact, he was something of a precisian in politics. He spoke of kings and
nobles as if they were personal foes, and disliked Scott's novels
because they give too pleasing a representation of the institution of
chivalry. He probably looked upon a man who spoke covetously of titles
much as a Salem elder a century before would have looked upon a
hard-swearing Virginia planter. In the purse-proud citizens, who, after
dinner, used to talk grandly about the British Constitution, he saw a
set of malignant conspirators, when in fact not one in ten had ever
thought seriously upon the subject, or had enough force of character to
attempt to carry out his opinions, whatever they might have been.

The political discontents were hardly more formidable. We have admitted
that some influential persons were in favor of a monarchy; but no one
took a decided step in that direction. In all the published
correspondence there is not a particle of evidence of such a movement.
Even Hamilton, in his boldest advances towards a centralization of
power, did not propose a monarchy. Those who were most doubtful about
the success of a republic recognized the necessity of making the
experiment, and were the most active in establishing the present one.
The sparsity of the population, the extent of the country, and its
poverty, made a royal establishment impossible. The people were
dissatisfied with the Confederation, not with republicanism. The breath
of ridicule would have upset the throne. The King, the Dukes of
Massachusetts and Virginia, the Marquises of Connecticut and Mohawk,
Earl Susquehanna and Lord Livingston, would have been laughed at by
every ragamuffin. The sentiment which makes the appendages of royalty,
its titles and honors, respectable, is the result of long education, and
has never existed in America. Washington was the only person mentioned
in connection with the crown; but had he attempted to reach it, he would
have lost his power over the people. He was strong because he had
convinced his country that he held personal objects subservient to
public ones,--that, with him, "the path of duty was the way to glory."
He had none of the magnetism which lulls the senses and leads captive
the hearts of men. Had he clothed himself in the vulgar robes of
royalty,--had he taken advantage of the confidence reposed in him for a
purpose of self-aggrandizement, and that of so petty and commonplace a
kind,--he would have sunk to a level with the melodramatic heroes of
history, and that colossal reputation, which rose, a fair exhalation
from the hearts of grateful millions, and covered all the land, would
have vanished like a mist.

Whatever individuals may have wished for, the charge of monarchical
designs cannot be brought against the Federalists as a party. New
England was the mother of the Revolution, and became the stronghold of
Federalism. In South Carolina and New York, a majority of the
inhabitants were Tories; the former State voted for Mr. Jefferson every
time he was a candidate, the latter gave him his election in 1800. It
requires a liberal expenditure of credulity to believe that the children
of the Puritans desired a monarchy more than the descendants of the
Cavaliers and the adherents of De Lancy and Ogden. Upon this subject
Jefferson does not seem to have understood that disposition which can be
dissatified with a measure, and yet firm and honest in supporting it.
Public men constantly yield or modify their opinions under the pressure
of political necessity. He himself gives an instance of this, when, in
stating that he was not entirely content with the Constitution, he
remarks that not a member of the Federal Convention approved it in all
its parts. Why may we not suppose that Hamilton and Ames sacrificed
their opinions, as well as Mr. Jefferson and the framers of the
Constitution?

The evidence with which Mr. Randall fortifies his position is
inconclusive. It consists of the opinions of leading Republicans, and
extracts from the letters of leading Federalists. The former are liable
to the objection of having been prompted by political prejudices; the
latter will not bear the construction which he places upon them. They
are nothing more than expressions of doubt as to the stability of the
government, and of regret that one of a different kind was not
adopted,--most of which were made after the Federalists were defeated.
We should not place too literal a construction upon the repinings of
disappointed placemen. Mr. Randall, we believe, has been in political
life, and ought to be accustomed to the disposition which exists among
public men to think that the country will be ruined, if it is deprived
of their services. After every election, our ears are vexed by the
gloomy vaticinations of defeated candidates. This amiable weakness is
too common to excite uneasiness.

An argument of the same kind, and quite as effective as Mr. Randall's,
might be made against Jefferson. His letters contain predictions of
disaster in case of the success of his opponents, and the Federalists
spoke as harshly of him as he of them. They charged him with being a
disciple of Robespierre, said that he was in favor of anarchy, and would
erect a guillotine in every market-place. He called them monarchists,
and said they sighed after King, Lords, and Commons. Neither charge will
be believed. The heads of the Federalists were safe after the election
of Mr. Jefferson, and the republic would have been safe if Hamilton and
Adams had continued in power.

Both parties formed exaggerated opinions. That Jefferson did so, no one
can doubt who observes the weight he gave to trifles,--his annoyance at
the etiquette of the capital,--at the levees and liveries,--at the
President's speech,--the hysterical dread into which he was thrown by
the mere mention of the Society of the Cincinnati, and the "chill" which
Mr. Randall says came over him "when he heard Hamilton praise Cæsar."
This spirit led him to the act which every one must think is a stain
upon his character: we refer to the compilation of his "Ana." As is well
known, that book was written mainly for the purpose of proving that the
Federalists were in favor of a monarchy. It consists chiefly of reports
of the conversations of distinguished characters. Some of these
conversations--and it is noticeable that they are the most innocent
ones--took place in his presence. The worst expressions are mere reports
by third parties. One story rests upon no better foundation than that
Talleyrand told it to Volney, who told it to Jefferson. At one place we
are informed, that, at a St. Andrew's Club dinner, the toast to the
President (Mr. Adams) was coldly received, but at that to George the
Third "Hamilton started to his feet and insisted on a bumper and three
cheers." This choice bit of scandal is given on the authority of "Mr.
Smith, a Hamburg merchant," "who received it from Mr. Schwarthouse, _to
whom it was told by one of the dinner-party_." At a dinner given by some
members of the bar to the federal judges, this toast was offered: "Our
_King_ in old England,"--Rufus King being the American minister in that
country. Whereupon Mr. Jefferson solemnly asks us "to observe the
_double entendre_ on the word King." Du Ponceau told this to Tenche
Coxe, who told it to Jefferson. Such stuff is repeated in connection
with descriptions of how General and Mrs. Washington sat on a raised
sofa at a ball, and all the dancers bowed to them,--and how Mrs. Knox
mounted the steps unbidden, and, finding the sofa too small for three,
had to go down. We are told that at one time John Adams cried, "Damn
'em! you see that an elective government will not do,"--and that at
another he complimented a little boy who was a Democrat, saying, "Well,
a boy of fifteen who is not a Democrat is good for nothing,--and he is
no better who is a Democrat at twenty." Of this bit of treason Jefferson
says, "Ewen told Hurt, and Hurt told me." These are not mere scraps,
published by an indiscreet editor. They were revised by Mr. Jefferson in
1818, when he was seventy-five years old, after, as he says, the
passions of the time were passed away,--with the intention that they
should be published. It is humiliating to record this act. No
justification for it is possible. It is idle to say that these
revelations were made to warn the country of its danger. As evidence
they are not entitled to a thought. More flimsy gossip never floated
over a tea-table. Besides, for such a purpose they should have been
published when the contest was in progress, when the danger was
imminent, not after the men whom he arraigned were defeated and most of
them in their graves. Equally unsatisfactory is the excuse, that they
illustrate history. This may be true, but it does not acquit Mr.
Jefferson. Pepys tells us more than Hume about the court of Charles II.,
and Boswell's Life of Johnson is the best biography in the
language,--but he must be a shabby fellow who would be either a Boswell
or a Pepys. Mr. Randall's excuse, that the act was done in
self-vindication, is the worst of all. Jefferson was the victor and
needed no defence, surely not so mean and cowardly a defence. That a
grave statesman should stoop to betray the confidence of familiar
intercourse,--that a skeptical inquirer, who systematically rejected
everything which did not stand the most rigid tests, should rely on the
ridiculous gossip of political circles,--that a deliberate and
thoughtful man should jump to a conclusion as quickly as a child, and
assert it with the intolerance of a Turk, certainly is a strange
anomaly. We can account for it only by supposing that upon the subject
of a monarchy he was a little beside himself. It is certain, that,
through some weakness, he was made to forget gentlemanly propriety, and
the plainest rules for the sifting of testimony;--let us believe that
the general opinions which he formed, and which his biographer
perpetuates, resulted from the same unfortunate weakness.

We have dwelt upon this subject, both on account of the prominence which
Mr. Randall has given it, and because, as admirers of Mr. Jefferson, we
wished to make a full and distinct statement of the most common and
reasonable complaint against him. The biographer has done his hero a
great injury by reviving this absurd business, and has cast suspicion
upon the accuracy of his book. It is time that our historians approached
their subjects with more liberal tempers. They should cease to be
advocates. Whatever the American people may think about the policy of
the Federalists, they will not impute to them unpatriotic designs. That
party comprised a majority of the Revolutionary leaders. It is not
strange that many of them fell into error. They were wealthy and had the
pride of wealth. They had been educated with certain ideas about rank,
which a military life had strengthened. The liberal theories which the
war had engendered were not understood, and, during the French
Revolution, they became associated with acts of atrocity which Mr.
Jefferson himself condemned. Abler men than the Federalists failed to
discriminate between the crime and the principles which the criminals
professed. Students of affairs are now in a better position than Mr.
Jefferson was, to ascertain the truth, and they will not find it
necessary to adopt his prejudices against a body of men who have adorned
our history by eloquence, learning, and valor.

Jefferson's position in Washington's government must have been extremely
disagreeable. There was hardly a subject upon which he and Hamilton
agreed. Washington had established the practice of disposing of the
business before the Cabinet by vote. Each member was at liberty to
explain his views, and, owing to the wide differences in opinion, the
Cabinet Council became a debating society. This gave Hamilton an
advantage. Jefferson never argued, and, if he had attempted it, he would
have been no match for his adversary. He contented himself with a plain
statement of his views and the reasons which influenced him, made in the
abstract manner which was habitual with him. Hamilton, on the other
hand, was an adroit lawyer, and a painstaking dialectician, who
carefully fortified every position. He made long speeches to the
Cabinet, with as much earnestness as one would use in court. Though
Jefferson had great influence with the President, he was generally
outvoted. Knox, of course, was against him. Randolph, the
Attorney-General, upon whose support he had a right to depend, was an
ingenious, but unsteady, sophist. He had so just an understanding, that
his appreciation of his opponent's argument was usually stronger than
his confidence in his own. He commonly agreed with Jefferson, and voted
with Hamilton. The Secretary of State was not allowed to control his
own department. Hamilton continually interfered with him, and had
business interviews with the ministers of foreign countries. The dispute
soon spread beyond the Cabinet, and was taken up by the press. Jefferson
again and again asked leave to resign; Washington besought him to
remain, and endeavored to close the breach between the rival
Secretaries. For a time, Jefferson yielded to these solicitations; but
finally, on the 31st of December, 1793, he left office, and was soon
followed by Hamilton.

After reaching Monticello, Mr. Jefferson announced, that he had
completely withdrawn from affairs, and that he did not even read the
journals, preferring to contemplate "the tranquil growth of lucern and
potatoes." These bucolic pleasures soon palled. Cultivating lucern and
potatoes is, without doubt, a dignified and useful employment, but it is
not likely to content a man who has played a great part, and is
conscious that he is still able to do so. We soon find him a candidate
for the Presidency, and, strange as it may seem, in 1797, he was
persuaded to leave his "buckwheat-dressings" and take the seat of
Vice-President.

Those who are interested in party tactics will find it instructive to
read Mr. Randall's account of the opposition to Adams's administration.
His correspondence shows that Adams was the victim of those in whom he
confided. He made the mistake of retaining the Cabinet which Washington
had during the last year or two of his term, and a weaker one has never
been seen. His ministers plotted against him,--his party friends opposed
and thwarted him. The President had sufficient talent for a score of
Cabinets, but he likewise had many foibles, and his position seemed to
fetter his talents and give full play to his foibles. The opposition
adroitly took advantage of the dissensions of their adversaries. In
Congress, the Federalists were compelled to carry every measure by main
force, and every inch of ground was contested. The temporizing Madison,
formerly leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, had
been succeeded by Albert Gallatin, a man of more enterprising spirit and
firmer grasp of thought. He was assisted by John Randolph, who then
first displayed the resources of his versatile and daring intellect. Mr.
Jefferson, also, as the avowed candidate for the succession, may be
supposed to have contributed his unrivalled knowledge of the springs of
human action. Earnest as the opposition were, they did not abuse the
license which is permitted in political contests. But the Federalists
pursued Mr. Jefferson with a vindictiveness which has no parallel, in
this country. They boasted of being gentlemen, and prided themselves
upon their standing and culture, yet they descended to the vilest tricks
and meanest scandal. They called Jefferson a Jacobin,--abused him
because he liked French cookery and French wines, and wore a red
waistcoat. To its shame, the pulpit was foremost in this disgraceful
warfare. Clergymen did not hesitate to mention him by name in their
sermons. Cobbett said, that Jefferson had cheated his British creditors.
A Maryland preacher improved this story, by saying that he had cheated a
widow and her daughters, of whose estate he was executor. He was
compared to Rehoboam. It was said, that he had a negro mistress, and
compelled his daughters to submit to her presence,--that he would not
permit his children to read the Bible,--and that, on one occasion, when
his attention was called to the dilapidated condition of a church, he
remarked, "It is good enough for him who was born in a manger."
According to his custom, he made no reply to these slanders, and, except
from a few mild remarks in his letters, one cannot discover that he
heard of them.

Mr. Adams did not show his successor the customary courtesy of attending
his inauguration, leaving Washington the same morning. The new
President, entirely unattended and plainly dressed, rode down the avenue
on horseback. He tied his horse to the paling which surrounded the
Capitol grounds, and, without ceremony, entered the Senate Chamber. The
contrast between this somewhat ostentatious simplicity and the parade at
the inaugurations of Washington and Adams showed how great a change had
taken place in the government.

The Presidency is the culmination of Mr. Jefferson's political career,
and we gladly turn to a contemplation of his character in other aspects.

The collections of Jefferson's writings and correspondence, which have
been published, throw no light upon his domestic relations. We have
complained of the prolixity of Mr. Randall's book, but we do not wish to
be understood as complaining of the number of family letters it
contains. They form its most pleasing and novel feature. They show us
that the placid philosopher had a nature which was ardent, tender, and
constant. His wife died after but ten years of married life. She was the
mother of six children, of whom two, Martha and Maria, reached maturity.
Though still young, Mr. Jefferson never married again, finding
sufficient opportunity for the indulgence of his domestic tastes in the
society of his daughters. Martha, whom he nicknamed Patsey, was plain,
resembling her father in features, and having some of his mental
characteristics. Maria, the youngest, inherited the charms of her
mother, and is described as one of the most beautiful women of her time.
Her natural courtesy procured for her, while yet a child, from her
French attendants, the _sobriquet_ of Polie, a name which clung to her
through life.

Charged with the care of these children, Jefferson made their education
one of his regular occupations, as systematically performed as his
public duties. He planned their studies, and descended to the minutest
directions as to dress and deportment. While they were young, he himself
selected every article of clothing for them, and even after they were
married, continued their constant and confidential adviser. When they
were absent, he insisted that they should inform him how they occupied
themselves, what books they read, what tunes they played, dwelling on
these details with the fond particularity of a lover. Association with
his daughters seemed to awaken his noblest and most refined impulses,
and to reveal the choicest fruit of his reading and experience. His
letters to them are models of their kind. They contain not only those
general precepts which an affectionate parent and wise man would
naturally desire to impress upon the mind of a child, but they also show
a perception of the most subtile feminine traits and a sympathy with the
most delicate feminine tastes, seldom seen in our sex, and which
exhibits the breadth and symmetry of Jefferson's organization. One of
the most characteristic of these letters is in the possession of the
Queen of England, to whom it was sent by his family, in answer to a
request for an autograph.

His daughters were in France with him, and were placed at school in a
convent near Paris. Martha was captivated by the ceremonials of the
Romish Church, and wrote to her father asking that she might be
permitted to take the veil. It is easy to imagine the surprise with
which the worldly diplomatist read the epistle. He did not reply to it,
but soon made a visit to the Abbaye. He smiled kindly at the young
enthusiast, who came anxiously to meet him, told the girls that he had
come for them, and, without referring to Martha's letter, took them back
to Paris. The account-book shows that after this incident the young
ladies did not diminish their attention to the harpsichord, guitar, and
dancing-master.

Maria, who was married to John W. Eppes, died in 1804, leaving two
children. Martha, wife of Thomas M. Randolph, survived her father. She
was the mother of ten children. The Randolphs lived on Mr. Jefferson's
estate of Monticello, and after he retired from public life he found his
greatest pleasure in the society of the numerous family which surrounded
him,--a pleasure which increased with his years. Mr. Randall publishes
a few letters from some of Jefferson's grand-daughters, describing their
happy child-life at Monticello. Besides being noticeable for grace of
expression, these letters breathe a spirit of affection for Mr.
Jefferson which only the warmest affection on his part could have
elicited. The writers fondly relate every particular which illustrates
the habits and manners of the retired statesman; telling with what
kindness be reproved, with what heartiness he commended them; how the
children loved to follow him in his walks, to sit with him by the fire
during the winter twilight, or at the window in summer, listening to his
quaint stories; how he directed their sports, acted as judge when they
ran races in the garden, and gathered fruit for them, pulling down the
branches on which the ripest cherries hung. All speak of the pleasure it
gave him to anticipate their wishes by some unexpected gift. One says
that her Bible and Shakspeare came from him,--that he gave her her first
writing-desk, her first watch, her first Leghorn hat and silk dress.
Another tells how he saw her tear her dress, and in a few days brought a
new and more beautiful one to mend it, as he said,--that she had refused
to buy a guitar which she admired, because it was too expensive, and
that when she came to breakfast the next morning the guitar was waiting
for her. One of these ladies seems to give only a natural expression to
the feelings which all his grand-children had for him, when she prettily
calls him their good genius with magic wand, brightening their young
lives by his kindness and his gifts.

Indeed, the account which these volumes give of Monticello life is very
interesting. The house was a long brick building, in the Grecian style,
common at that time. It was surmounted by a dome; in front was a
portico; and there were piazzas at the end of each wing. It was situated
upon the summit of a hill six hundred feet high, one of a range of such.
To the east lay an undulating plain, unbroken save by a solitary peak;
and upon the western side a deep valley swept up to the base of the Blue
Ridge, which was twenty miles distant. The grounds were tastefully
decorated, and, by a peculiar arrangement which the site permitted, all
the domestic offices and barns were sunk from view. The interior of the
mansion was spacious, and even elegant; it was decorated with natural
curiosities,--Indian and Mexican antiquities, articles of _virtù_, and a
large number of portraits and busts of historical characters. The
library--which was sold to the government in 1815--contained between
nine and ten thousand volumes. He had another house upon an estate
called Poplar Forest, ninety miles from Monticello.

Mr. Jefferson was too old to attempt any new scientific or literary
enterprise, but as soon as he reached home he began to renew his former
acquaintances. His meteorological observations were continued, he
studied botany, and was an industrious reader of three or four
languages. When nearly eighty, we find him writing elaborate
disquisitions on grammar, astronomy, the Epicurean philosophy, and
discussing style with Edward Everett. The coldness between him and John
Adams passed away, and they used to write one another long letters, in
which they criticized Plato and the Greek dramatists, speculated upon
the end for which the sensations of grief were intended, and asked each
other whether they would consent to live their lives over again.
Jefferson, with his usual cheerfulness, promptly answered, Yes.

He dispensed a liberal hospitality, and in a style which showed the
influence of his foreign residence. Though temperate, he understood the
mysteries of the French _cuisine_, and liked the wines of Médoc. These
tastes gave occasion to Patrick Henry's sarcasm upon gentlemen "_who
abjured their native victuals_." Mr. Randall tells an amusing anecdote
of a brandy-drinking Virginian, who wondered how a man of so much taste
could drink cold, sour French wine, and insisted that some night he
would be carried off by it.

No American has ever exerted so great and universal an attraction. Men
of all parties made pilgrimages to Monticello. Foreigners of distinction
were unwilling to leave the country without seeing Mr. Jefferson; men of
fashion, artists, _littérateurs_, _savants_, soldiers, clergymen,
flocked to his house. Mrs. Randolph stated, that she had provided beds
for fifty persons at a time. The intrusion was often disagreeable
enough. Groups of uninvited strangers sometimes planted themselves in
the passages of his house to see him go to dinner, or gathered around
him when he sat on the portico. A female once broke a window-pane with
her parasol to got a better view of him. But no press of company was
permitted to interfere with his occupations. The early morning was
devoted to correspondence; the day to his library, to his workshop, or
to business; after dinner he gave himself up to society.

Making every allowance for the exaggerations of his admirers, it cannot
be doubted that Jefferson was a master of conversation. It had
contributed too much to his success not to have been made the subject of
thought. It is true, he had neither wit nor eloquence; but this was a
kind of negative advantage; for he was free from that striving after
effect so common among professed wits, neither did he indulge in those
monologues into which eloquence betrayed Coleridge and seduces Macaulay.
He had great tact, information, and worldly knowledge. He never
disputed, and had the address not to attempt to control the current of
conversation for the purpose of turning it in a particular direction,
but was always ready to follow the humor of the hour. His language, if
seldom striking, never failed to harmonize with his theme, while, of
course, the effect of everything he said was heightened by his age and
reputation.

Unfortunately, his latter days were clouded by pecuniary distress.
Although prudent and methodical, partly from unavoidable circumstances,
and partly from the expense of his enormous establishment, his large
estate became involved. The failure of a friend for whom he had indorsed
completed his ruin and made it necessary to sell his property. This,
however, was not done until after his death, when every debt was paid,
even to a subscription for a Presbyterian church.

As is well known, the chief labor of his age was the establishment of
the University of Virginia. He was the creator of that institution, and
displayed in behalf of it a zeal and energy truly wonderful. When unable
to ride over to the University, which was eight miles from Monticello,
he used to sit upon his terrace and watch the workmen through a
telescope. He designed the buildings, planned the organization and
course of instruction, and selected the faculty. He seemed to regard
this enterprise as crowning and completing a career which had been
devoted to the cause of liberty, by providing for the increase and
diffusion of knowledge.

In February, 1826, the return of a disease by which he had at intervals
been visited convinced Jefferson that he should soon die. With customary
deliberation and system, he prepared for his decease, arranging his
affairs and giving the final directions as to the University. To his
family he did not mention the subject, nor could they detect any change
in his manner, except an increased tenderness in each night's farewell,
and the lingering gaze with which he followed their motions. His mental
vigor continued. His will, quite a long document, was written by
himself; and on the 24th of June he wrote a reply to an invitation to
the celebration at Washington of the ensuing Fourth of July. It is
difficult to discover in what respect this production is inferior to his
earlier performances of the same kind. It has all of the author's ease
and precision of style, and more than his ordinary distinctness and
earnestness of thought. This was his last letter. He rapidly declined,
but preserved possession of his faculties. He remarked, as if surprised
at it, upon his disposition to recur to the scenes of the Revolution,
and seemed to wish that his life might be prolonged until the Fourth of
July. This wish was not denied to him; he expired at noon of that day,
precisely fifty years after the Declaration of Independence. A few hours
afterwards the great heart of John Adams ceased to beat.

So much has been said about Mr. Jefferson's religious opinions, and our
biographer gives them such prominence, that we shall be pardoned for
alluding to them, although they are not among the topics which a critic
generally should touch. Mr. Randall says that Jefferson was "a public
professor of his belief in the Christian religion." We do not think that
this unqualified statement is supported by Jefferson's explanation of
his views upon Christianity, which Mr. Randall subsequently gives.
Religion, in the sense which is commonly given to it, as a system of
faith and worship, he did not connect with Christ at all. He was a
believer in the existence of God, in a future life, and in man's
accountability for his actions here: in so far as this, he may be said
to have had a system of worship, but not of Christian worship. He
regarded Christ simply as a man, with no other than mortal power,--and
to worship him in any way would, in his opinion, have been idolatry. His
theology recognized the Deity alone. The extracts from his public
papers, upon which Mr. Randall relies, contain nothing but those general
expressions which a Mohammedan or a follower of Confucius might have
used. He said he was a Christian "in the only sense in which Christ
wished any one to be"; but received Christ's teachings merely as a
system, and not a perfect system, of morals. He rejected the narratives
which attest the Divine character or the Divine mission of the Saviour,
thinking them the fictions of ignorance and superstition.

He was, however, far from being a scoffer. He attended the Episcopal
service regularly, and was liberal in his donations to religious
enterprises. Nor do we think that this conformity arose from weakness or
hypocrisy, but rather from a profound respect for opinions so generally
entertained, and a lively admiration for the character and life of
Christ.

If a Christian is one who sincerely believes and implicitly obeys the
teachings of Jesus so far as they affect our relations with our
fellow-men, then Mr. Jefferson was a Christian in a sense in which few
can be called so. Though the light did not unseal his vision, it filled
his heart. Among the statesmen of the world there is no one who has more
rigidly demanded that the laws of God shall be applied to the affairs of
Man. His political system is a beautiful growth from the principles of
love, humility, and charity, which the New Testament inculcates.

When reflecting upon Mr. Jefferson's mental organization, one is
impressed by the variety and perfectness of his intellectual faculties.
He united the powers of observation with those of reflection in a degree
hardly surpassed by Bacon. Yet he has done nothing which entitles him to
a place among the first of men. It may be said, that, devoted to the
inferior pursuit of politics, he had no opportunity to exercise himself
in art or philosophy, where alone the highest genius finds a field. But
we think his failure--if one can fail who does not make an attempt--was
not for want of opportunity. He did not possess any imagination. He was
so deficient in that respect as to be singular. The imagination seems to
assist the mental vision as the telescope does that of the eye; he saw
with his unaided powers only.

He says, "Nature intended him for the tranquil pursuits of science," and
it is impossible to assign any reason why he should not have attained
great eminence among scientific men. The sole difficulty might have
been, that, from very variety of power, he would not give himself up to
any single study with the devotion which Nature demands from those who
seek her favors.

Within his range his perception of truth was as rapid and unfailing as
an instinct. Without difficulty he separated the specious from the
solid, gave great weight to evidence, but was skeptical and cautious
about receiving it. Though a collector of details, he was never
incumbered by them. No one was less likely to make the common mistake of
thinking that a particular instance established a general proposition.
He sought for rules of universal application, and was industrious in the
accumulation of facts, because he knew how many are needed to prove the
simplest truth. The accuracy of his mental operations, united with great
courage, made him careless of authority. He clung to a principle because
he thought it true, not because others thought it so. There is no
indication that he valued an opinion the more because great men of
former ages had favored it. His self-reliance was shown in his
unwillingness to employ servants. Even when very feeble, he refused to
permit any one to assist him. He had extraordinary power of
condensation, and, always seeing the gist of a matter, he often exposed
an argument of hours by a single sentence. Some of his brief papers,
like the one on Banking, contain the substance of debates, which have
since been made, filling volumes. He was peculiar in his manner of
stating his conclusions, seldom revealing the processes by which he
arrived at them. He sets forth strange and disputed doctrines as if they
were truisms. Those who have studied "The Prince" for the purpose of
understanding its construction will not think us fanciful when we find a
resemblance between Jefferson's mode of argumentation and that of
Machiavelli. There is the same manner of approaching a subject, the same
neglect of opposing arguments, and the same disposition to rely on the
force of general maxims. Machiavelli exceeded him in power of
ratiocination from a given proposition, but does not seem to have been
able to determine whether a given proposition was right or wrong.

In force of mind Jefferson has often been surpassed: Hamilton was his
superior. As an executive officer, where action was required, he could
not have been distinguished. It is true, he was a successful President,
but neither the time nor the place demanded the highest executive
talents. When Governor of Virginia, during the Revolution, he was more
severely tried, and, although some excuse may be made for him, he must
be said to have failed.

Upon matters which are affected by feeling and sentiment, the judgment
of woman is said to surpass that of our sex,--her more sensitive
instincts carrying her to heights which our blind strength fails to
reach. If this be true, Jefferson in some respects resembled woman. We
have already alluded to the delicacy of his organization; it was
strangely delicate, indeed, for one who had so many solid qualities.
Like woman, he was constant rather than passionate; he had her
refinement, disliking rude company and coarse pleasures,--her love of
luxury, and fondness for things whose beauty consists in part in their
delicacy and fragility. His political opponents often refused to speak
with him, but their wives found his society delightful. Like woman, his
feelings sometimes seemed to precede his judgment. Such an organization
is not often a safe one for business; but in Mr. Jefferson, with his
homely perceptions, it accomplished great results.

The attributes which gave him his great and peculiar influence seem to
us to have been qualities of character, not of the mind. Chief among
these must be placed that which, for want of a better term, we will call
sympathy. This sympathy colored his whole nature, mental and moral. It
gave him his many-sidedness. There was no limit to his intellectual
tastes. Most persons cherish prejudices, and think certain pursuits
degrading or useless. Thus, business-men sneer at artists, and artists
sneer at business-men. Jefferson had nothing of this. He understood and
appreciated the value of every employment. No knowledge was too trivial
for him; with the same affectionate interest, he observed the courses
of the winds and the growth of a flower.

Sympathy in some sort supplied the place of imagination, making him
understand subjects of which the imagination alone usually informs us.
Thus, he was fond of Art. He had no eye for color, but appreciated the
beauties of form, and was a critic of sculpture and architecture. He
valued everything for that which belonged to it; but tradition
sanctified nothing, association gave no additional value. He committed
what Burke thought a great crime, that of thinking a queen nothing but a
woman. He went to Stratford-on-Avon, and tells us that it cost him a
shilling to see Shakspeare's tomb, but says nothing else. He might have
admired the scenery of the place, and he certainly was an admirer of
Shakspeare; but Stratford had no additional beauty in his eyes because
Shakspeare was born and buried there. After his death, in a secret
drawer of his secretary, mementoes, such as locks of hair, of his wife
and dead children, even of the infant who lived but a few hours after
birth, were found, and accompanying each were some fond words. The
packages were neatly arranged, and their envelopes showed that they had
often been opened. It needed personal knowledge and regard to awaken in
him an interest in objects for their associations.

The characteristic of which we speak showed itself in the intensity and
quality of his patriotism. There never was a truer American. He
sympathized with all our national desires and prejudices, our enterprise
and confidence, our love of dominion and boundless pride. Buffon
asserted that the animals of America were smaller than those of Europe.
Jefferson flew to the rescue of the animals, and certainly seems to have
the best of the argument. Buffon said, that the Indian was cold in love,
cruel in war, and mean in intellect. Had Jefferson been a descendant of
Pocahontas, he could not have been more zealous in behalf of the Indian.
He contradicted Buffon upon every point, and cited Logan's speech as
deserving comparison with the most celebrated passages of Grecian and
Roman eloquence. Nowhere did he see skies so beautiful, a climate so
delightful, men so brave, or women so fair, as in America. He was not
content that his country should be rich and powerful; his ardent
patriotism carried him forward to a time when the great Republic should
give law to the world for every department of thought and action.

But this sympathetic spirit is most clearly to be seen in that broad
humanity which was the source of his philosophy. He sympathized with
man,--his sufferings, joys, fears, hopes, and aspirations. The law of
his nature made him a democrat. Men of his own rank, when introduced to
him, found his manner cold and reserved; but the young and the ignorant
were attracted from the first. Education and interest did not affect
him. Born a British subject, he became the founder of a democracy. He
was a slaveholder and an abolitionist. The fact, that the African is
degraded and helpless, to his, as to every generous mind, was a reason
why he should be protected, not an excuse for oppressing him.

Though fitness for the highest effort be denied to Jefferson, yet in the
pursuit to which he devoted himself, considered with reference to
elevation and wisdom of policy and actual achievement, he may be
compared with any man of modern times. It is the boast of the most
accomplished English historian, that English legislation has been
controlled by the rule, "Never to lay down any proposition of wider
extent than the particular case for which it is necessary to provide."
Therefore politics in England have not reached the dignity of a science;
and her public men have been tacticians, rather than statesmen. Burke
may be mentioned as an exception. No one will claim for Jefferson
Burke's amplitude of thought and wealth of imagination, but he surpassed
him in justness of understanding and practical efficiency. Burke was
never connected with the government, except during the short-lived
Rockingham, administration. Among Frenchmen, the mind instinctively
recurs to the wise and virtuous Turgot. But it was the misfortune of
Turgot to come into power at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI. It
became his task to reform a government which was beyond reform, and to
preserve a dynasty which could not be preserved. His illustrious career
is little more than a brilliant promise. Jefferson undoubtedly owed much
to fortune. He was placed in a country removed from foreign
interference, with boundless resources, and where the great principles
of free government had for generations been established,--among a people
sprung from many races, but who spoke the same language, were governed
by similar laws, and whose minds' rebellion had prepared for the
reception of new truths and the abandonment of ancient errors. To be
called upon to give symmetry and completeness to a political system
which seemed to be Providentially designed for the nation over which it
was to extend, to be able to connect himself with the future progress of
an agile and ambitious people, was certainly a rare and happy fortune,
and must be considered, when we claim superiority for him over those who
were placed in the midst of apathy and decay. His influence upon us may
be seen in the material, but still more distinctly in the social and
moral action of the country. With those laws which here restrain
turbulent forces and stimulate beneficent ones,--with the bright visions
of peace and freedom which the unhappy of every European race see in
their Western skies, tempting them hither,--with the kind spirit which
here loosens the bonds of social prejudice, and to ambition sings an
inspiring strain,--with these, which are our pride and boast, he is
associated indissolubly and forever. With the things which have brought
our country into disrepute--we leave it for others to recall the dismal
catalogue--his name cannot be connected.

Not the least valuable result of his life is the triumphant refutation
which it gives to the assertion, so often made by blatant sophisters,
that none but low arts avail in republics. He has been called a
demagogue. This charge is the charge of misconception or ignorance. It
is true, he believed that his doctrines would prevail; he was sensitive
to the opinions of others, nor was he "out of love with noble fame"; but
his successes were fairly, manfully won. He had none of the common
qualifications for popularity. No glare of military glory surrounded
him; he had not the admired gift of eloquence; he was opposed by wealth
and fashion, by the Church and the press, by most of the famous men of
his day,--by Jay, Marshall, the Pinckneys, Knox, King, and Adams; he had
to encounter the vehement genius of Hamilton and the _prestige_ of
Washington; he was not in a position for direct action upon the people;
he never went beyond the line of his duty, and, from 1776 to his
inaugural address, he did not publish a word which was calculated to
excite lively, popular interest;--yet, in spite of all and against all,
he won. So complete was the victory, that, at his second election,
Massachusetts stood beside Virginia, supporting him. He won because he
was true to a principle. Thousands of men, whose untutored minds could
not comprehend a proposition of his elaborate philosophy, remembered
that in his youth he had proclaimed the equality of men, knew that in
maturity he remained true to that declaration, and, believing that this
great assurance of their liberties was in danger, they gathered around
him, preferring the scholar to orators and soldiers. They had confidence
in him because he had confidence in them. There is no danger in that
demagogism the art of which consists in love for man. Fortunate, indeed,
will it be for the Republic, if, among the aspirants who are now
pressing into the strife, and making their voices heard in the great
exchanges of public opinion, there are some who will imitate the civic
virtues and practise the benign philosophy of Thomas Jefferson!

We take leave of this book with reluctance. It is verbose and dull, but
it has led us along the path of American renown; it recites a story
which, however awkwardly told, can never fall coldly on an American ear.
It has, besides, given us an opportunity, of which we have gladly
availed ourselves, to make some poor amends for the wrongs which
Jefferson suffered at the hands of New England, to bear our testimony to
his genius and services, and to express our reverent admiration for a
life which, though it bears traces of human frailty, was bravely devoted
to grand and beneficent aims.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _The Life of Thomas Jefferson._ By HENRY S. RANDALL, LL.D.
In three volumes. New York: Derby & Jackson. 1858.]




A BUNDLE OF IRISH PENNANTS.


"Did you ever see the 'Three Chimneys,' Captain Cope?" I asked.

"I can show you where they are on the chart, if that'll do. I've been
right over where they're laid down, but I never saw the Chimneys myself,
and I never knew anybody that had seen them."

"But they are down on the chart," broke in a pertinacious matter-of-fact
body beside us.

"What of that?" replied the captain; "there's many a shoal and lone rock
down on the charts that nobody ever could find again. I've had my ship
right over the Chimneys, near enough to see the smoke, if they had been
there."

So opened the series of desultory conversations here set down. It is
talk on board ship, or specimen "yarns," such as really are to be picked
up from nautical men. The article usually served up for
magazine-consumption is, of course, utterly unlike anything here given,
and is as entirely undiscoverable anywhere on salt water as the three
legendary rocks above alluded to. The place was the deck of the "Elijah
Pogram," one of Carr & Co.'s celebrated Liverpool liners, and the time,
the dog-watches of a gusty April night; the latitude and longitude,
anywhere west of Greenwich and north of the line that is not
inconsistent with blue water.

The name "Irish Pennant" is given, on the _lucus-a-non_ principle, (just
as a dead calm is "an Irish hurricane, straight up and down,") to any
dangling end of rope or stray bit of "shakings," and its appropriateness
to the following sketches will doubtless be perceived by the reader, on
reaching the end.

The question was asked, not so much from a laudable desire of obtaining
information as to set the captain talking. It was a mistake on my part.
Sailors do not like point-blank questions. They remind them
unpleasantly, I suppose, of the Courts of Admiralty, or they betray
greenness or curiosity on the asker's part, and thus effectually bar all
improving conversation.

There is one exception. If the inquirer be a lady, young and fair, the
chivalry of the sea is bound to tell the truth, the whole truth, and
often a good deal more than the truth.

And at the last reply a pair of bewitching dark eyes were turned upon
that weather-beaten mariner; that is to say, in plain English, a young
and rather pretty lady-passenger looked up at Captain Cope, and said,--

"Do tell us some of your sea-stories, Captain Cope,--do, please!"

"Why, Ma'am," replied he, "I've no stories. There's Smith of the
'Wittenagemot' can tell them by the hour; but I never could."

"Weren't you ever wrecked, Captain Cope?"

"No,--I can't say I ever was, exactly. I was mate of the 'Moscow' when
she knocked her bottom out in Bootle Bay; but she wasn't lost, for I
went master of her after that."

"Were you frightened, Captain Cope?"

"Well, no,--I can't say I was; though I must say I never expected to see
morning again. I never saw any one more scared than was old Captain
Tucker that night. We dragged over the outer bar and into Bootle Bay,
and there we lay, the ship full of water, and everything gone above the
monkey-rail. The only place we could find to stand was just by the cabin
gangway. The 'Moscow' was built with an old-fashioned cabin on deck, and
right there we hung, all hands of us. The old man he read the service to
us,--and that wouldn't do, he was so scared; so he got the black cook,
who was a Methodist, and made him pray; and every two minutes or so, a
sea would come aboard and all in among us,--like to wash us clean out of
the ship.

"After midnight the life-boat got alongside, and all hands were for
scrambling aboard; but I'd got set in my notion the ship would live the
gale out, and I wouldn't go aboard. Well, the old man was too scared to
make long stories, and he tumbled aboard the life-boat in a hurry. The
last words he said to me, as he went over the side, were,--'Good-bye,
Mr. Cope! I never shall see you again!' However, he got up to the city,
to Mrs. McKinney's, and there he found a lot of the captains, and he was
telling them all how he'd lost his ship, and what a fool poor Cope was
to stick aboard of her, and all that. When the morning came, the gale
had broke, and the old man began to think he'd been in too much of a
fright, and he'd better get the tug and go down to look after the ship.

"I was so knocked up, for want of sleep, and the gale and all, that,
when they got down to us, my head was about gone. I don't remember
anything, myself; but they told me, that, when they got aboard, I was
poking about decks as if I was looking for something.

"'How are you, Mr. Cope?' sung out old Tucker. 'I never expected to see
_you_ again in _this_ world.'

"'I can't find my razor-strop,' says I; I've lost my razor-strop.'

"'Never mind your strop,' says he. 'What you want is to go aboard the
tug and be taken care of. We'll find your strop.'

"Well, they could hardly get me away, I was so set that I must have that
strop; but after I got up to town, and had a bath and some breakfast,
and a couple of hours' sleep or so, I was all right again. That was the
end of old Tucker's going to sea; and when the 'Moscow' was docked and
refitted, I got her, and kept her until the firm built me the 'Pogram,'
here."

"Mr. Brown, isn't it about time we were getting in that mizzen
to'gall'nt-s'l? It's coming on to blow to-night."

"Steward," (as that functionary passed us,) "put a handful of cigars in
my monkey-jacket pocket, and have a cup of coffee ready for me about
twelve."

"Then you mean to be up, to-night?" said the father of pretty Mrs.
Bates,--the only one of us to whom Captain Cope fairly opened his heart.

"Why, yes, Mr. Roberts--I think I shall. It looks rather dirty to the
east'ard, and the barometer has fallen since morning. I've two as good
mates as sail; but if anything is going to happen, I'd rather have it
happen when I'm on deck,--that's all."

"Wasn't Stewart, of the 'Mexican,' below, when she struck?"

"Yes, he was,--and got blamed for it, too. I don't blame him, myself; he
was on deck the next minute; and if he had been there before, it would
have made no difference with that ship; but if _I_ lose a vessel, I
don't want to be talked about as he was. I went mate with him two
voyages, and he'd put on his night-gown and turn in comfortably every
night, and leave his mates to call him; but I never could do that. I
don't find fault with any man that can; only it's not my way."

"But don't you feel sleepy, Captain Cope?" asked Mrs. Bates.

"Not when I'm on deck, Ma'am; though, when I first went mate, I could
sleep anyhow and anywhere. I sailed out of Boston to South America, in a
topsail-schooner, with an old fellow by the name of Eaton,--just the
strangest old scamp you ever dreamed of. I suppose by rights he ought to
have been in the hospital; he certainly was the nearest to crazy and not
be it. He used to keep a long pole by him on deck,--a pole with a sharp
spike in one end,--and any man who'd get near enough to him to let him
have a chance would feel that spike. I've known him to keep the cook up
till midnight frying doughnuts; then he'd call all hands aft and range
'em on the quarter-deck, and go round with his hat off and a plate of
doughnuts in his hand, saying, as polite as you please, 'Here, my man,
won't you take a doughnut?--they won't hurt you; nice and light; had
them fried a purpose for you.' And then he'd get a bottle of wine or
Curaçoa cordial, and go round with a glass to each man, and make him
take a drink. You'd see the poor fellows all of a shake, not knowing how
to take it,--afraid to refuse, and afraid still more, if they didn't,
that the old man would play 'em some confounded trick. In the midst of
it all, he'd seem as if he'd woke up out of a dream, and he'd sing out,
in a way that made them fellows scatter, 'What the ---- are all you men
doing here at this time of night? Go forrard, every man jack of you! Go
forrard, I tell you!' and it was 'Devil take the hindmost!'

"Well,--the old man was always on the look-out to catch the watch
sleeping. He never seemed to sleep much himself;--I've heard _that's_ a
sign of craziness;--and the more he tried, the more sure we were to try
it every chance we had. So sure as the old man caught you at it, he'd
give you a bucketful of water, slap over you, and then follow it up with
the bucket at your head. Fletcher, the second mate, and I, got so we
could tell the moment he put foot on the companion-way, and, no matter
how sound we were, we'd be on our feet before he could get on deck. But
Fletcher got tired of his vagaries, and left us at Pernambuco, to ship
aboard a homeward-bound whaler, and in his place we got a fellow named
Tubbs, a regular duff-head,--couldn't keep his eyes open in the daytime,
hardly.

"Well,--we were about two days out of Pernambuco, and Tubbs had the
middle watch, of a clear starlight night, with a steady breeze, and
everything going quietly, and nothing in sight. So, in about ten minutes
after the watch got on deck, every mother's son of them was hard and
fast. The wind was a-beam, and the old schooner could steer herself; so,
even the man at the helm was sitting down on a hencoop, with one arm
round the tiller, and snoring like a porpoise. I heard the old man rouse
out of his bunk and creep on deck, and, guessing fun was coming, I
turned out and slipped up after him. The first thing I saw was old Eaton
at work at the tiller. He got it unshipped and braced up with a pair of
oars and a hencoop, without waking the man at the helm,--how, I couldn't
tell,--but he was just like a cat; and then he blew the binnacle-light
out; and then he started forrard, with his trumpet in his hand. He
caught sight of me, standing halfway up the companion-way, and shook his
fist at me to keep quiet and not to spoil sport. He slipped forward and
out on to the bowsprit, clear out to the end of the flying-jib-boom, and
stowed himself where he couldn't be well seen to leeward of the sail.
Then he sung out with all his might through the trumpet, '_Schooner
ahoy, there! Port your hellum!--port_ H-A-A-A-RD! I say,--you're right
aboard of us!'--And then he'd drop the trumpet, and sing out as if in
the other craft to his own crew, and then again to us. Of course, every
man was on his feet in a second, thinking we were all but afoul of
another vessel. The man who was steering was trying, with all his might,
to put his helm a-port,--and when he found what was to pay there, to
ship the tiller. This wasn't so easy; for the old man had passed the
slack of the main-sheet through the head of the rudder, and belayed it
on one of the boom-cleats, out of reach,--and, what with just waking up,
and half a dozen contradictory orders sung out at once, besides
expecting to strike every minute, he had almost lost what little wits he
had.

"As for Tubbs, he was like a hen with her head cut off,--one minute at
the lee rail, and the next in the weather-rigging, then forrard to look
out for the strange craft, and then aft to see why the schooner didn't
answer her helm. Meanwhile, he was singing out to the watch to brace
round the fore-topsail and help her, to let fly the jib-sheets, and to
haul aft the main-boom; the watch below came tumbling up, and everybody
was expecting to feel the bunt of our striking the next minute. I
laughed as though I should split; for nobody could see me where I stood,
in the shadow of the companion-way, and everybody was looking out ahead,
for the other vessel. First I knew, the old man had got in board again,
and was standing there aft, as if he'd just come on deck. 'What's all
this noise here?' says he.--'What are you doing on deck, Mr. Cope? Go
below, Sir!--Go below, the larboard watch, and let's have no more of
this! Who's seen any vessel? Vessel, your eye, Mr. Tubbs! I tell you,
you've been dreaming.' Then, as he got his head about to the level of
the top of the companion-way, and out of the reach of any spare
belaying-pin that might come that way, says he,--'I've just come in from
the end of the flyin'-jib-boom, and there was no vessel in sight, except
one topsail-schooner, _with the watch all asleep_,--so it can't be her
that hailed you.'

"That cured all sleeping on the watch for _that_ voyage, I tell you. And
as for Tubbs, you had only to say, 'Port your helm,' and he was off."

Just then Mr. Brown came aft to ask if it wasn't time to have in the
fore-topgallant-sail,--and a little splash of rain falling broke up our
party and drove most of us below. I knew that reefing topsails would
come in the course of an hour or so, if the wind held on to blow as it
did; so, as I waited to see that same, I lighted a cheroot, and as soon
as the fore-topgallant-sail was clewed up I made my way forward, for a
chat with Mr. Brown, the English second mate.

Mr. Brown was a character. He was a thorough English sailor;--could do,
as he owned to me in a shamefaced way, that was comical enough,
"heverything as could be done with a rope aboard a ship." He had been
several India voyages, where the nice work of seamanship is to be
learned, which does not get into the mere "ferry-boat" trips of the
Liverpool packet-service. He had been in an opium clipper, the
celebrated ---- of Boston,--and left her, as he told her agent, "because
he liked a ship as 'ad a lee-rail to her; and the ----'s lee-rail," he
said, "was commonly out of sight, pretty much all the way from the
Sand'eads to the Bocca Tigris." He was rich in what he called "'ats,"
having one for every hour of the day, and, for aught I know, every day
in the year. It was Fred ----'s and my daily amusement to watch him, and
we never seemed to catch him coming on deck twice in the same head-gear.
He took quite a fancy to me, because I did not bother him when busy, and
because I liked to listen to his talk. So, handing him a cigar, as a
prefatory to conversation, I asked him our whereabouts. "Four hundred
miles to the heast'ard of Georges we were this noon, and we've made
nothink to speak of since, Sir. This last tack has lost us all we made
before. I hought to know where we are. I've drifted 'ere without even a
'en-coop hunder me. I was third mate aboard the barque 'Jenny,' of
Belfast, when she was run down by the steamer 'United States.' The
barque sunk in less than seven minutes after the steamer struck us, and
I come up out of her suction-like. I found myself swimming there, on
top, and not so much as a capstan-bar to make me a life-buoy. I knew the
steamer was hove to, for I could hear her blow hoff steam; and once, as
I came up on a wave, I got a sight of her boats. They were ready enough
to pick us up, and we was ready enough to be picked up, such as were
left; but how to do it was another matter, with a sea like this
running, and a cloud over the moon every other minute. I soon see that
swimming wouldn't 'old out much longer, and I must try something helse.
Now, Sir, what I'm a-telling you may be some use to you some day, if you
have to stay a couple of hours in the water. If you can swim about as
well as most men can, you can tell 'ow long a man's strength would last
him 'ereaways to-night. Besides, I was spending my breath, when I rose
on a sea, in 'ollering,--and you can't swim and 'oller. So I tried a
trick I learned, when a boy, on the Cornish coast, where I was born,
Sir;--it's one worth knowing. I doubled back my feet hunder me till my
'eels come to the small of my back, and I could float as long as I
wanted to, and, when I rose on a wave, 'oller. They 'eard me, it seems,
and pulled round for me, but it was an hour before they found me, and my
strength was nigh to gone. I couldn't 'oller no more, and was about
giving up. But they picked up the cook, and he told 'em he knowed it was
Mr. Brown's voice, and begged 'em to keep on. The last I remember was,
as the steamer burned a blue light for her boats, when they caught a
sight of me in the trough of the sea. I saw them too, and gave a last
screech, and then I don't remember hanythink, Sir, till Cookie was
'elping 'aul (Mr. Brown always dropped his aspirates as he grew excited)
me into the boat. Now, just you remember what I've been a-telling you
about floating."--"_Forrard there! Stand by to clew up and furl the main
to'gall'n-s'l! Couple of you come aft here and brail up the spanker!
Lively, men, lively!_"--And Mr. Brown was no longer my Scheherazade.

When I got back to the shelter of the wheel-house, I found the captain
and old Roberts still comfortably braced up in opposite corners and
yarning away. There was nothing to be done but to watch the ship and the
wind, which promised in due time to be a gale, but as yet was not even a
reefing breeze. They had got upon a standing topic between the
two,--vessels out of their course. The second night out, we had made a
light which the captain insisted was a ship's light, but old Roberts
declared was one of the lights on the coast of Maine,--Mount Desert, or
somewhere thereabouts. He was an old shipping-merchant, had been many a
time across the water in his own vessels, and thought he knew as much as
most men. So, whenever other subjects gave out, this, of vessels drifted
by unsuspected currents out of their course, was unfailing. They were at
it now.

"When I was last in Liverpool," said the captain, "there was a brig from
Machias got in there, and her captain came up to Mrs. McKinney's. He
told us that it was thick weather when he got upon the Irish coast, and
he was rather doubtful about his reckoning; so he ordered a sharp
look-out for Cape Clear. According to his notion, he ought to be up with
it about noon, and, as the sun rose and the fog lifted a little, he was
hoping to sight the land. Once or twice he fancied he had a glimpse of
it, but wasn't sure,--when the mate came aft and reported that they
could hear a bell ringing. 'Sure enough,' he said, 'there was the toll
of a bell coming through the mist.'

"'That's some ship's bell,' said he to the mate; 'only it's wonderful
heavy for a ship, and it can't be a church-bell on shore, can it?'

"And while they were arguing about it, a cutter shot out of the fog and
hailed if they wanted a pilot.

"'Pilot!' says the Down-Easter,--'pilot!--where for? No, thank ye, not
yet,--I can find my way up George's without a pilot. What bell's that?'

"'Rather think you can, Captain; but you'll want a pilot here;--that's
the bell on the floating light off Liverpool.'

"'What!' says the captain,--have I come all the way up Channel without
knowing it? I've been on the look-out for Cape Clear ever since
daybreak, and here, by ginger, I've overrun my reckoning _three hundred
miles_.'"

"Well," said old Roberts, "one of my captains, Brandegee, you know, who
had the 'China,' got caught, one November, just as he was coming on the
coast, in a gale from the eastward. He knew he was somewhere near
Provincetown, but how near he couldn't say. It was snowing, and blowing,
and ice-making all over the decks and rigging, and an awful night
generally. He did not dare to run before it, because it was blowing at a
rate to take him halfway in Worcester County in the next twenty-four
hours. He couldn't stand to the south'ard, because that would put the
back of Cape Cod under his lee. He was afraid to stand to the north'ard,
not knowing precisely where the coast of Maine might be. So he hove the
ship to, under as little sail as he could, and let her drift. I've heard
him say, he heard the breakers a hundred times that night," ('I'll bet
he did,' ejaculated the captain.) "and it seemed like three nights in
one before morning came. When it did come, wind and sea appeared to have
gone down. The lookouts were half dead with cold and sleep and all; but
they made out to hail land on the weather bow.

"'Good George!' said old Brandegee, 'how did land get on the _weather_
bow? We must have got inside of Cape Cod, and that must be Sharkpainter
Hill.'

"'Land on the lee quarter,' hailed the watch, again: and in a minute
more, 'Land on the lee beam,--land on the lee bow.'

"Brandegee sung out to heave the lead and let go both anchors, and he
said that, but for the gale having gone down so, he should have expected
to strike the next minute. Just as the anchors came home and the ship
headed to the wind, the second mate came aft, rubbing his eyes and
looking very queer.

"'Captain Brandegee,' says he, 'if I was in Boston Harbor, I should say
that there was Nix's Mate.'

"'Well, Mr. Jones,' says the old man, dropping out the words very
slowly, 'if--that's--Nix's Mate,--Rainsford Island--ought--to--be--here
away, and--as--I'm--a--living--man, THERE IT IS!'

"Half-frozen as they were, there was a cheer rung out from that crew
that waked half the North-End out of their morning nap.

"'Just my plaguy luck!' said the old fellow to me, as he told it. 'If
I'd held on to my anchors another half-hour, I might have come
handsomely alongside of Long Wharf and been up to the custom-house
before breakfast.'

"He had drifted broadside square into Boston Harbor, past Nahant, the
Graves, Cohasset Rocks, and everything."

"I've heard of that," said the captain,--"and as it's my opinion it
couldn't be done twice, I don't mean to try it."

    "I hear the noise about thy keel,
      I hear the bell struck in the night,
      I see the cabin-window bright,
    I see the sailor at the wheel,"--

repeated Fred ----, in my ear. "Come below out of this wet and rain,"
added he.

We passed the door of the mate's state-room as we went below, and,
seeing it ajar, and Mr. Pitman, the mate, sitting there, we looked in.

"Come in, gentlemen," said he; "my watch on deck is in half an hour, and
I'm not sleepy to-night."

F---- took up a carved whale's tooth, and asked if Mr. Pitman had ever
been in the whaling business.

"Two voyages,--one before the mast, one boat-steerer;--both in the
Pacific. But whaling didn't suit me. I've a Missus now, and a couple of
as fine boys as ever you saw; and I rather be where I can come home
oftener than once in three years."

"How did you like whaling?" said I.

"Well, I don't believe there's any man but what feels different
alongside of a whale from what he does on the ship's deck. Some of those
Nantucket and New Bedford men, who've been brought up to it, as you may
say, take it naturally, and think of nothing but the whale. I've heard
of one of them boat-steerers who got ketched in a whale's mouth and
didn't come out of it quite as whole as he went in. When they asked him
what he thought when the whale nabbed him, he said he 'thought she'd
turn out about forty barrels.'

"There's a good many things about the whale, gentlemen, that everybody
don't know. Why does one whale sink when he's killed, and another don't?
Where do the whales go to, now and then?--I sailed with one captain who
used to say, that, books or no books, can't live under water or not, _he
knew_ that whales do live under water months at a time. I can't say,
myself; but this I can say,--they go ashore. You may look hard at that,
but I've seen it. We were off the coast of South America, in company
with five other ships; and all our captains were ashore one afternoon.
We had to pull some two miles or so to go off to them, and, starting
off, all hands were for racing. I was pulling stroke in the captain's
boat, and the old man gives us the word to pull easy, and let 'em head
on us. It was hard work to hold in, with every one of the boats giving
way, strong, the captains singing out bets, and cheering their
men,--singing out, 'Break your backs and bend your oars!' 'There she
blows!' and all that. But the old man kept muttering to us to take it
easy and let them head on us. We were soon the last boat, and then, as
if he'd given up the race, he gave the word to 'easy.'

"'Good-night, Capt. T----! we'll send your ship in to tow you off,' was
the last words they said to us.

"'There'll be something else to tow off,' says he. 'It's the race, who
shall see Palmer's Island first, that I'm bound to win.'

"He gave the boat a sheer in for the beach, to a little bight that made
up in the land,--across the mouth of which we had to pull, in going off.

"'D'ye see that rock on the beach, boys,' says he, 'in range of that
lone tree, on the point? Did any of you ever see that rock before? I
wish this bloody coast had a few more such rocks! That's a cow whale,
and this bight is her nursery, and she is up on the beach for her calf's
convenience. Now, then,'--as we opened the bight and got a fair sight of
it,--'give way, strong as you please,--and we'll head her off, before
she knows it.'

"We got her and got the calf, and when, next morning, the other ships
saw us cutting in, they didn't say much about that race; and 'Old T.'s
Nursery' was a byword on the coast as long as we staid there.

"There goes eight bells, and I rather think Mr. Brown will want me on
deck." We followed, for there was the prospect of seeing topsails
reefed,--the most glorious event of a landsman's sea-experiences. We had
begun the day with a dead calm, but toward night the wind had come out
of the eastward. Each plunge the ship gave was sharper, each shock
heavier. The topmasts were working, the lee-shrouds and backstays
straining out into endless curves. A deeper plunge than usual, a pause
for a second, as if everything in the world suddenly stood still, and a
great white giant seems to spring upon our weather-bow and to leap on
board. We hear the crash and feel the shock, and presently the water
comes pouring aft,--and Captain Cope calls out to reef
topsails,--double-reef fore and mizzen,--one reef in the main. The mates
are in the weather-rigging before the word is out of the captain's lips,
to take the earings of their respective topsails; and then follows the
rush of men up the shrouds and out along the yards. The sails are
slatting and flapping, and one can hardly see the row of broad backs
against the dusky sky as they bend over the canvas. There are hoarse
murmurs, and calls to "light up the sail to windward"; and presently
from the fore-topsail-yard comes the cry, ringing and clear,--"Haul away
to leeward!"--repeated next moment from the main and echoed from the
mizzen. Sheltered by the weather-bulwarks, and with one arm round a
mizzen-backstay, there is a capital place to watch all this and feel the
glorious thrill of the sea,--to look down the sloping deck into the
black billows, with here and there a white patch of foam, and while the
organ-harp overhead is sounding its magnificent symphony. It is but
wood and iron and hemp and canvas that is doing all this, with some
thirty poor, broken-down, dissipated wretches, who, being fit for
nothing else, of course _are_ fit for the fo'castle of a Liverpool
Liner. Yet it is, for all that, something which haunts the memory
long,--which comes back years after in inland vales and quiet
farm-houses like brown-moss agates set in emerald meadows, in book-lined
studios, and in close city streets. For it is part of the might and
mystery of the sea, the secret influence that sets the blood on fire and
the heart throbbing,--of any in whose veins runs some of the true
salt-water sympathy. Men are born landsmen, and are born on land, but
belong to the Ocean's family. Sooner or later, whatever their calling,
they recognize the tie. They may struggle against it, and scotch it, but
cannot kill it. They may not be seamen,--they may wear black coats and
respectable white ties, and have large balances in the bank, but they
are the Sea's men,--brothers by blood-relationship, if not by trade, of
Ulysses and Vasco, of Columbus and Cabot, of Frobisher and Drake.

Other stories of the sea are floating through my memory as I
write,--tales told with elbows leaning on cabin-tables, while the
swinging-lamp oscillated drearily overhead, and sent uncertain shadows
into the state-room doors. There is the story which Vivian Grey told us
of the beautiful clipper "Nighthawk,"--her who sailed with the "Bonita"
and "Driving-Scud" and "Mazeppa," in the great Sea-Derby, whose course
lay round the world. How, one Christmas-day, off the pitch of Cape Horn,
he, standing on her deck, saw her dive bodily into a sea, and all of her
to the mainmast was lost in ocean,--her stately spars seemingly rising
out of blue water unsupported by any ship beneath;--it seemed an age to
him, he said, before there was any forecastle to be seen rising from the
brine. Also, how, caught off that same wild cape, they had to make sail
in a reef-topsail-breeze to claw off its terrible rocks, seen but too
plainly under their Ice. How, as he said, "about four in the afternoon
it seemed to blow worse than ever, and you could see the staunch boat
was pressed down under her canvas, and every spar was groaning and
quivering, while the ship went bodily to leeward." And next, "how she
seemed to come to herself, as it were, with a long staggering roll, and
to spring to windward as if relieved of a dead weight; for the gale had
broken, and the foam-belt along the cliffs grew dimmer and dimmer, and
the land fainter and fainter. And then," he said, "to hear the
fo'castle-talk, you would have said that never was such a ship, such
spars, such a captain, such seamanship, and such luck, since Father
Jason cleared the 'Argo' from the Piræus, for Colchis and a market."

Or I might tell you how Dr. ----, the ship-surgeon, was in that Collard
steamer which ran down the fishing-boat in the fog off Cape Race,--and
how, looking from his state-room window, he saw a mighty cliff so near
that he could almost lay his hand upon it. How Fanshaw was on board the
"Sea-King" when she was burned, off Point Linus,--and how he hung in the
chains till he was taken off, and his hair was repeatedly set on fire by
the women--emigrant-passengers--jumping over his head into the sea.

But not so near a-shaking hands with Death did any of them tell, as Ned
Kennedy,--who, poor fellow, lies buried in some lone _cañon_ of the
Sierra Madre. Let us hear him give it in his wild, reckless way. Ned was
sitting opposite us, his thick, black hair curling from under his plaid
travelling-cap,--his thick eyebrows working, and his hands occupied in
arranging little fragments of pilot-biscuit on the table. He broke in
upon the last man who was talking, with a--

"Tell you what, boys,--I've a better idea of what all that means. I
suppose you both know what the Mediterranean lines of steamers are, and
what capital seamanship, and travelling comfort, and all that, you find
there. The engineers, however, are Scotch, English, or American, always;
because why? A French officer once told me the reason. 'You see, _mon
ami_,' he said, 'this row of handles which are used to turn these
different stops and cocks. Now, my countrymen will take them down and
use them properly, each one, just as well as your countrymen; but they
will put them back again in their places never.' So it is, and the
engineers are all as I say.

"I left Naples for Genoa in the 'Ercolano,' of the Naples line. There
were not many passengers on board,--no women,--and what there were were
all priests or soldiers. Nobody went by the Neapolitan line except
Italians, at that time,--the French company having larger, handsomer,
and decidedly cleaner vessels. Of course, as a heretic and a civilian, I
had nobody to talk to; so, finding that the engineer had a Saxon tongue
in his head, I dove down into his den and made acquaintance. Being shut
up there with Italians so much, he thawed out to me at once, and we were
sworn brothers by the time we reached Civita Vecchia.

"The 'Ercolano' was as crazy an old tub as every floated: judging from
the extensive colonies which tenanted her berths, she must have been
launched about the same time as Fulton's 'Clermont,' or the old 'Ben
Franklin,' Captain Bunker, once so well known off the end of Newport
wharf. You know how those boats are managed,--stopping all day in port
and running at night. We brought up at Leghorn in that way, and Marston,
the engineer, proposed to me to have a run ashore. I had no _visé_ for
Tuscany then, and the Austrian police are very strict; but Marston
proposed to pass me off for one of the steamer's officers. So he fished
out an old uniform coat of his and made me put it on; and, sure enough,
the bright buttons and shoulder-straps carried me through,--only I was
dreadfully embarrassed." (Ned never was disturbed at anything.--if an
elephant had walked into the cabin, he would have offered him a seat and
cigar.) "by the sentries all presenting arms to my coat, which sat upon
me as a shirt is supposed to on a bean-pole. I overheard one man
attribute my attenuated frame to the effects of sea-sickness. We went
into various shops, and finally into one where all sorts of sea-notions
were kept, and Marston said, 'Here's what I've been in search of this
month past. I began to think I should have to send to London for it. The
'Ercolano' is a perfect sieve, and may go down any night with all
aboard; and here's a swimming-jacket to wear under your coat,--just the
thing.' He fitted and bought one, and was turning to go, when a fancy
popped into my head: 'Marston,' said I, 'is this coat of yours so very
baggy on me?' 'H-e-em,' said he. 'I've known more waxy fits; a trifle of
padding wouldn't hurt your looks.' 'I know it,' said I; 'every soldier
we passed seemed to me to smoke me for an impostor, knowing the coat
wasn't made for me. Here, let's put one of these things underneath.' I
put it on, buttoned the coat over it, inflated it, and the effect was a
marvel;--it made a portly gentleman of me at once. I couldn't bear to
take it off. 'Just the thing for diligence-travelling in the South of
France,' said I; 'keep your neighbor's elbows from your ribs.' I never
thought that I must buy a coat to match it. I was so tickled at my own
fancy that buy it I would, in spite of Marston's remonstrance. Then we
went off and dined, and got very jolly together,--at least, I did,--so
that, when we pulled off to the steamer, I thought nothing about my coat
or the jacket under it.

"There was a dirty-looking sky overhead, and a nasty cobbling sea
getting up under foot as we ran out of Leghorn Harbor, and a little
French screw which we left at her anchor was fizzing off steam from her
waste-pipe,--evidently meaning to stay where she was. But our captain,
having been paid in advance for all the dinners of the voyage, preferred
being at sea before the cloth was laid. That made sure of at least
twenty out of every twenty-five passengers as non-comedents, and
lightened the cook's labors wonderfully. So we were soon jumping and
bobbing about and throwing water in a lively way enough; and our black
gowns and blue coats were lying about decks in every direction, with
what had been _padres_ and soldiers an hour before inside. I lit a cigar
and picked out the driest place I could find, and hugged myself on my
luck,--another man's coat getting wet on my back, while the air-tight
jacket was keeping me dry as a bone.

"As night fell, it grew worse and worse; and the little Sicilian captain
came on deck, looking rather wild. He called his pilots and mates into
consultation, and from where I lay I could hear the words, 'Spezzia,'
and 'Porto Venere,' several times; so I suppose they were debating
whether or no to keep her head to the gale, or to edge away a point or
two, and run for that bay. But with a head sea and a Mediterranean gale
howling down from the gorges of the Ligurian Alps, that thing wasn't so
easy. The boat would plunge into a sea and bury to her paddle-boxes,
then pitch upward as if she were going to jump bodily out of water, and
slap down into it again, while her guards would spring and quiver like
card-board. The engine began to complain, as they will when a boat is
laboring heavily. You could hear it take, as it were, long breaths, and
then stop for a second altogether. I slipped below into the engine-room,
and found Marston looking very sober. 'Kennedy,' said he, 'the
'Ercolano' will be somebody's coffin before to-morrow morning, I'm
afraid. I'm carrying more steam than is prudent or safe, and the
_padrone_ has just sent orders to put on more. We are not making a mile
an hour, he says; and our only chance is to get under the lee of the
land. Look at those eccentrics and that connecting-rod! I expect to see
something go any minute; and then--there's no use saying what will come
next.' He sat down on his bench and covered his face with his hands.

"It seems, the 'Spezzia' question was decided about that time on deck,
and the 'Ercolano's' bow suffered to fall off in the direction of that
bay. The effect was that the next sea caught us full on the weather-bow
with a shock that pitched everything movable out of its place. There was
a twist and a grind from the machinery, a snap and a crash, and then
part after part gave way, as the strain fell upon it in turn. Marston,
with an engineer's instinct, shut off the steam; but the mischief was
done. We felt the 'Ercolano' give a wild sheer, and then a long,
sickening roll, as if she were going down bodily,--and we sprang for the
companion-ladder. Everything on deck was at sixes and sevens when we
reached it '_Sangue di San Gennaro! siamo perduli!_' howled the captain;
and even the poor sea-sick passengers seemed to wake up a little. It was
a bad look-out. We got pretty much of every wave that was going, so
there was hardly any standing forward; and, having no steam on, the wind
and the sea had their own way with us. The gallant little _padrone_
seemed to keep up his pluck, and made out to show a little sail, so as
to bring her by the wind; but that, in a long, sharp steamer, didn't
mend matters much. To make things completely cheerful and comfortable,
word was passed up that we were leaking badly. I confess I didn't see
much hope for us; and having lugged up my valise from below, where there
was already a foot of water over the cabin-floor, I picked out the
little valuables I could stow about me and kicked the rest into a
corner. Still we had our boats, and, as the gale seemed to be breaking a
little, there was hope for us. At last they managed to get them into the
water, and keep them riding clear under our lee. The priests were
bundled in like so many wet bales of black cloth, and then the soldiers,
and Marston and I tried to follow; but a 'No room for heretics here,'
enforced by a bit of brown steel in a soldier's hands, kept us back. The
chance wasn't worth fighting for, after all. I didn't believe the
steamer would sink, any way. I was aboard the 'San Francisco' when she
drifted for nine days. However, there wasn't much time left for us to
speculate on that,--for a rush of firemen and crew and the like into
the boats was the next thing, and then the fasts were cast off or cut,
and the wind and sea did the rest. They shot away into the darkness. A
couple of firemen, two of the priests, and a soldier were left on board.
The firemen went to getting drunk,--the priests were too sick to move or
care for anything,--the soldier sat quietly down on the cabin-skylight;
Marston and I climbed on to the port paddle-box to look out for a sail.

"The clouds had broken with the dying of the gale, and the moon shone
out, lighting up the foaming sea far and wide, and showing our
water-logged or sinking craft. Every wave that swept over us found its
way below, and we settled deeper and deeper. Still, if we could only
hold on till morning, those seas are alive with small craft, and we
stood a good chance of being picked off. I was saying as much to Marston
when the 'Ercolano' gave a lurch and then dove bows first into the sea.
A great wave seemed to curl over us, and then to thrust us by the
shoulders down into the depths, and all was darkness and water. I went
down, down, and still I was dragged lower still, though the pressure
from above ceased, and I was struggling to rise. I struck out with hands
and feet;--I was held fast. I felt behind me and found a hand grasping
my coat-tails. Marston had seized me, and with the other hand was
clinging to the iron rail on the top of the paddle-box,--clinging with
the death-grip of a drowning man, if you know what that is. I tried to
unclasp the fingers,--to drive him from his hold on the rail. Of course
I couldn't; it was Death's hand, not his, that was holding there, and my
own strength was going, when a thought flashed into my mind. I tore open
my coat, and it slipped from me like a grape-skin from the grape, and I
went up like an arrow.

"Never shall I forget the blessed light of heaven, and the sweet air in
my lungs once more. Bad off as I was, it was better than being anchored
to a sinking wreck by a dead man's grasp. I heard a voice near me that
night repeating the Latin prayers of the Romish Church for the departing
soul, but I couldn't see the speaker. The moon had gone under a cloud
again, but there was light enough for me to catch a glimpse of some
floating wreck on the crest of a wave above me; and then it came down
right on top of me,--a lot of rigging and a spar or two,--our topmast
and yard, which had gone over the side just before we foundered. I
climbed on to it, and found my prospects hugely improving,--especially
as clinging to the other end was the soldier left on board. As soon as I
could persuade him I was no spook or mermaid, he was almost as pleased
as I was, especially when he found I was the '_eretico_.' He was a
Swiss, it seemed, of King Ferdinand's regiments, going home on furlough,
and a Protestant, which was why he was left on board.

"Between us both we managed to get the spars into some sort of a
raft-shape, so that they would float us more comfortably; and there we
watched for the morning. When that came, the sea had smoothed itself,
and the wind died away considerably,--as it does in the Mediterranean at
short notice. We looked every way for the white lateen-sails of the
coasting and fishing craft, but in vain. It grew hotter and hotter as
the sun got higher, and hope and strength began to give out. I lay down
on the raft and slept,--how long I don't know, for my first
consciousness was my friend's cry of "A ship!" I looked up, and there,
sure enough, in the northeast, was a large ship, running before the
wind, right in our direction. I suspect poor Fritzeli must have been
asleep also, that he hadn't seen her before,--for she was barely a
couple of miles off. She was apparently from Genoa or Spezzia; but the
main thing was, that she was travelling our road, and that with a will.
I tore off my shirt-sleeve at the shoulder, and waved it, while Fritzeli
held up his red sash. But it was an anxious time. On she came,--a big
frigate. We could see a commodore's pendant flying at the main, and
almost hear the steady rush of water under her black bows. Did they see
us, or not? There was no telling; a man-of-war walks the sea's roads
without taking hats off to everybody that comes along. A quiet report
goes up to the officer of the deck, a long look with a glass, and the
whole affair would be settled without troubling us to come into council.
On she came, till we could see the guns in her bow ports, and almost
count the meshes in her hammock netting. The shadow of her lofty sails
was already fallen upon us before she gave a sign of recognition. Then
her bow gave a wide sheer, and her whole broadside came into view, as
she glided by the spars where we were crouching. An officer appeared at
her quarter and waved his gold-banded cap to us, as the frigate rounded
to, to the leeward of us,--and the glorious stripes and stars blew out
clear against the hot sky. A light dingey was in the water before the
main yard had been well swung aback, and a midshipman was urging the
men, who needed no urging, to give way strong. I didn't know how weak I
had got, till they were lifting me aboard the boat. An hour after, when
I had had something to eat and was a little restored and had told my
story, the officer of the deck was relieved and came below to see me.

"'I fancy, Sir, we've just passed something of your steamer,' he
said,--'a yawlboat, bottom up, with a name on the stern which we
couldn't well make out: _Erco_ something, it looked like. Hadn't been
long in the water, I should say.'

"And that was the last of the steamer. Fritzeli and I were the sole
survivors."




THE JOLLY MARINER:

A BALLAD.

    It was a jolly mariner
      As ever hove a log;
    He wore his trousers wide and free,
      And always ate his prog,
    And blessed his eyes, in sailor-wise,
      And never shirked his grog.

    Up spoke this jolly mariner,
      Whilst walking up and down:--
    "The briny sea has pickled me,
      And done me very brown;
    But here I goes, in these here clo'es,
      A-cruising in the town!"

    The first of all the curious things
      That chanced his eye to meet,
    As this undaunted mariner
      Went sailing up the street,
    Was, tripping with a little cane,
      A dandy all complete!

    He stopped,--that jolly mariner,--
      And eyed the stranger well;--
    "What that may be," he said, says he,
      "Is more than I can tell;
    But ne'er before, on sea or shore,
      Was such a heavy swell!"

    He met a lady in her hoops,
      And thus she heard him hail:--
    "Now blow me tight!--but there's a sight
      To manage in a gale!
    I never saw so small a craft
      With such a spread o' sail!

    "Observe the craft before and aft,--
      She'd make a pretty prize!"
    And then, in that improper way,
      He spoke about his eyes,
    That mariners are wont to use,
      In anger or surprise.

    He saw a plumber on a roof,
      Who made a mighty din:--
    "Shipmate, ahoy!" the rover cried,
      "It makes a sailor grin
    To see you copper-bottoming
      Your upper-decks with tin!"

    He met a yellow-bearded man,
      And asked about the way;
    But not a word could he make out
      Of what the chap would say,
    Unless he meant to call him names
      By screaming, "Nix furstay!"

    Up spoke this jolly mariner,
      And to the man said he,
    "I haven't sailed these thirty years
      Upon the stormy sea,
    To bear the shame of such a name
      As I have heard from thee!

    "So take thou that!"--and laid him flat.
      But soon the man arose,
    And beat the jolly mariner
      Across his jolly nose,
    Till he was fain, from very pain,
      To yield him to the blows.

    'Twas then this jolly mariner,
      A wretched jolly tar,
    Wished he was in a jolly-boat
      Upon the sea afar,
    Or riding fast, before the blast,
      Upon a single spar!

    'Twas then this jolly mariner
      Returned unto his ship,
    And told unto the wondering crew
      The story of his trip,
    With many oaths and curses, too,
      Upon his wicked lip!--

    As hoping--so this mariner
      In fearful words harangued--
    His timbers might be shivered, and
      His le'ward scuppers danged,
    (A double curse, and vastly worse
      Than being shot or hanged!)

    If ever he--and here again
      A dreadful oath he swore--
    If ever he, except at sea,
      Spoke any stranger more,
    Or like a son of--something--went
      A-cruising on the shore!




SUGGESTIONS.

    "Waste words, addle questions."

    BISHOP ANDREWS.


AFFAIRS.

When affairs are at their worst, a bold project may retrieve them by
giving an assurance, else wanting, that hope, spirit, and energy still
exist.


AFFINITIES.

Place an inferior character in contact with the finest circumstances,
and, from wanting affinities with them, he will still remain, from no
fault of his own, insensible to their attractions. Take him up the mount
of vision, and show him the finest scene in Nature, and, instead of
taking in the whole circle of its beauty, he will, quite as likely, have
his attention engrossed by something mean and insignificant under his
nose. I was reminded of this, on taking a little boy, three years old,
to the top of the New York Reservoir. Placing him on one of the
parapets, I endeavored to call his attention to the more salient and
distant features of the extended prospect; but the little fellow's mind
was too immature to be at all appreciative of them. His interest was
confined to what he saw going on in a dirty inclosure on the opposite
side of the street, where two or three goats were moving about. After
watching them with curious interest for some time, "See, see!" said he,
"dem is pigs down dare!" Was there need for quarrelling with my fine
little man for seeing pigs where there were only goats, or goats where
there was much worthier to be seen?


AFTER THE BATTLE.

A brave deed performed, a noble object accomplished, gives a fillip to
the spirits, an exhilaration to the feelings, like that imparted by
Champagne, only more permanent. It is, indeed, admirably well said by
one wise to discern the truth of things, and able to give to his thought
a vigorous expression, that "a man feels relieved and gay when he has
put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or
done otherwise shall give him no peace."


APPLAUSE.

Noble acts deserve a generous appreciation. Indeed, it is a species of
injustice not to warmly applaud whatever is wisely said or ably done.
Fine things are shown that they may be admired. When the peacock struts
about, it is to show what a fine tail he has.


ARTISTS.

The artist's business is with the beautiful. The repugnant is outside of
his province. Let him study only the beautiful, and he will always be
pleased; let him treat only of the beautiful, with a true feeling for
it, and he will always give pleasure.

The artist must love both his art and the subjects of his art. Nothing
that is not lovable is worth portraying. In the portrait of Rosa
Bonheur, she is appropriately represented with one arm thrown
affectionately around the neck of a bull. She must have loved this order
of animals, to have painted them so well.


AUTHORS.

Instead of the jealousies that obtain among them, there is no class that
ought to stand so close together, united in a feeling of common
brotherhood, to strengthen, to support, and to encourage, by mutual
sympathy and interchange of genial criticism, as authors. A sensitive
race, neglect pierces like sharp steel into the very marrow of their
being. And still they stand apart! Alive to praise, and needing its
inspiration, their relations are those of icebergs,--cold, stiff, lofty,
and freezing. What infatuation is this! They should seek each other out,
extend the hand of fellowship, and bridge the distance between them by
elaborate courtesies and kindly recognitions.


AN AUTHOR'S FIRST BOOK.

No man is a competent judge of what he himself does. An author, on the
eve of his first publication, and while his book is going through the
press, is in a predicament like that of a man mounted on a fence, with
an ugly bull in the field that he is obliged to cross. The apprehended
silence of the journals concerning his merits--for no notice is the
worst notice--constitutes one of the "horns of his dilemma"; while their
possibly invidious comments upon his want of them constitute another and
equally formidable "horn." Between these, and the uncertainty as to
whether he will not in a little time be cut by one-half of his
acquaintances and only indulgently tolerated by the other half, his
experience is apt to be very peculiar, and certainly not altogether
agreeable. Never, therefore, envy an author his feelings on such an
occasion, on the score of their superior enjoyment, but rather let him
be visited with your softest pity and tenderest commiseration.


BOOKS.

A book is only a very partial expression of its author. The writer is
greater than his work; and there is in him the substance, not of one, or
a few, but of many books, were they only written out.


CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Small circumstances illustrate great principles. To-day my dinner cost
me sixpence less than usual. This is an incident not quite so important
as some others recorded in history, but the causes of it originated more
than two thousand years ago. It will also serve to explain the
principle, that causes are primary and secondary, remote and
immediate,--and that historians, when they speak of certain effects as
produced by certain causes. Socrates one day had a conversation with
Aristippus, in which he threw out certain remarks on the subject of
temperance. Being overheard by Xenophon, they were subsequently
committed to writing and published by him. These, falling in my way last
evening, made such an impression on my mind, that I was induced to-day
to forego my customary piece of pudding after dinner, to the loss of the
eating-house proprietor, whose receipts were thus diminished, first, by
a few observations of an ancient Greek, secondly, by a report given of
them by a bystander, and, thirdly, by the accidental perusal of them,
after twenty centuries, by one of his customers.


CHEERFULNESS.

Sullen and good, morbid and wise, are impossible conditions. The best
test, both of a man's wisdom and goodness, is his cheerfulness. When one
is not cheerful, he is almost invariably stupid. A sad face seldom gets
into much credit with the world, and rarely deserves to. "Sorrow," says
old Montaigne, "is a base passion."

"The quarrel between Gray and me," said Horace Walpole, "arose from his
being too serious a companion." In my opinion, this was a good ground
for cutting the connection. What right has any one to be "too serious a
companion?"


COWARDS.

In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that
imperil the brave. For cowards the road of desertion to the enemy should
be left open; they will carry over to them nothing but their fears. The
poltroon, like the scabbard, is an incumbrance when once the sword is
drawn.


CRITICISM.

No work deserves to be criticized which has not much in it that deserves
to be applauded. The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention
to what is excellent The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect
may be safely left to that final neglect from which no amount of present
undeserved popularity can rescue it.

Ever so critical of things: never but good-naturedly so of persons.


CULTURE.

Partial culture runs to the ornate; extreme culture to simplicity.


DEATH.

Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through
over-population, the most frightful of curses. To death we owe our life;
the passing of one generation clears the way for another; and thus, in
the economy of Providence, the very extinction of being is a provision
for extending the boon of existence. Even wars and disease are _a good
misunderstood_. Without them, child-murder would be as common in
Christendom as it is in over-populated China.


DEBTORS AND CREDITORS.

To interest a number of people in your welfare, get in debt to them. If
they will not then promote your interest, it is because they are not
alive to their own. It is to the advantage of creditors to aid their
debtors. Cæsar owed more than a million of dollars before he obtained
his first public employment, and at a later period his liabilities
exceeded his assets by ten millions. His creditors constituted an
important constituency, and doubtless aided to secure his elections.


DIFFICULTIES.

Great difficulties, when not succumbed to, bring out great virtues.


DISGUST.

A fit of disgust is a great stimulator of thought. Pleasure represses
it.


EARNESTNESS.

M. de Buffon says that "genius is only great patience." Would it not be
truer to say that genius is great earnestness? Patience is only one
faculty; earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties: it is the
cause of patience; it gives endurance, overcomes pain, strengthens
weakness, braves dangers, sustains hope, makes light of difficulties,
and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them. Yes, War yields
its victories, and Beauty her favors, to him who fights or wooes with
the most passionate ardor,--in other words, with the greatest
earnestness. Even the simulation of earnestness accomplishes much,--such
a charm has it for us. This explains the success of libertines, the
coarseness of whose natures is usually only disguised by a certain
conventional polish of manners: "their hearts seem in earnest, because
their passions are."


EDUCATION OF THE SEXES.

Girls are early taught deceit, and they never forget the lesson. Boys
are more outspoken. This is because boys are instructed that to be frank
and open is to be manly and generous, while their sisters are
perpetually admonished that "this is not pretty," or "that is not
becoming," until they have learned to control their natural impulses,
and to regulate their conduct by precepts and example. The result of all
this is, that, while men retain much of their natural dispositions,
women have largely made-up characters.


EMERSON'S ESSAYS.

I have not yet been able to decide whether it is better to read certain
of Emerson's essays as poetry or philosophy. Perhaps, though, it would
be no more than just to consider them as an almost complete and perfect
union of the two. Certainly, no modern writer has more of vivid
individuality, both of thought and expression,--and few writers, of any
age, will better bear reperusal, or surpass him in the grand merit of
suggestiveness. There is much in his books that I cannot clearly
understand, and passages sometimes occur that once seemed to me
destitute of meaning; but I have since learned, from a greater
familiarity with what he has written, to respect even his obscurities,
and to have faith that there is at all times behind his words both a man
and a meaning.


ENGLISHMEN.

There is in the character of perhaps a majority of Englishmen a singular
commingling of the haughty and the subservient,--the result, doubtless,
of the mixed nature, partly aristocratic and partly democratic, of the
government, and of the peculiar structure of English society, in which
every man indemnifies himself for the subserviency he is required to
exhibit to the classes above, by exacting a similar subserviency from
those below him. Thackeray, who is to be considered a competent judge of
the character of his countrymen, puts the remark into the mouth of one
of his characters, that, "if you wish to make an Englishman respect you,
you must treat him with insolence." The language is somewhat too strong,
and it would not be altogether safe to act upon the suggestion; but the
witticism embodies a modicum of truth, for all that.


EXAMPLE.

Example has more followers than reason.


EXCITEMENT COUNTERVAILS PAIN.

We wince under little pains, but Nature in us, through the excitement
attendant upon them, seems to brace us to endure with fortitude greater
agonies. A curious circumstance, that will serve as an illustration of
this, is told by an eminent surgeon of a person upon whom it became
necessary to perform a painful surgical operation. The surgeon, after
adjusting him in a position favorable to his purpose, turned for a
moment to write a prescription; then, taking up the knife, he was about
making an "imminent deadly breach" in the body of his subject, when he
observed an expression of distress upon his countenance. Wishing to
reassure him, "What disturbs you?" he inquired. "Oh," said the sufferer,
"you have left the pen in the inkstand!" and this being removed, he
submitted to the operation with extraordinary composure.


FACT AND FANCY.

"See, nurse I see!" exclaimed a delighted papa, as something like a
smile irradiated the face of his infant child,--"an angel is whispering
to it!" "No, Sir," replied the more matter-of-fact nurse,--"it is only
wind from its stomach."


FINE HOUSES.

To build a huge house, and furnish it lavishly,--what is this but to
play baby-house on a large scale?


FINE LADIES.

If you would know how many of the "airs" of a fine lady are "put on,"
contrast her with a woman who has never had the advantages of a genteel
training. What appear as the curvettings and prancings of a high-mettled
nature turn out, from the light thus afforded, to be only the tricks of
a skilful grooming.


FUTURE LIFE

Altogether too much thought is given to the next world. One world at a
time ought to be sufficient for us. If we do our duty manfully in this,
much consideration of our relations to that next world may be safely
postponed until we are in it.


GREAT MEN.

Oh, the responsibility of great men! Could some of these the originators
of new beliefs, of new methods in Art, of new systems of state and
ecclesiastical polity, of novel modes of practice in medicine, and the
like.--"revisit the pale glimpses of the moon," and look upon the
streams of blood and misery that have flowed from fountains they have
unsealed, they would skulk back to their graves faster and more
affrighted than when they first descended into them.


HABITS.

Habit to a great extent, is the forcing of Nature to your way, instead
of leaving her to her own. Struck by this consideration, "He is a fool,
then, who has any habits," said W. Softly, my dear Sir,--the position is
an extreme one. Bad habits are very bad, and good habits, blindly
followed, are not altogether good, for they make machines of us.
Occasional excesses may be wholesome; and Nature accommodates herself to
irregularities, as a ship to the action of waves. Good habits are in the
nature of allies: we may strengthen ourselves by an alliance with them,
but they should not outnumber the forces they act with. Habits are the
Hessians of our moral warfare: the good or the ill they do depends on
the side they fight on.


HEROISM.

The race of heroes, though not prolific, is never extinct. Nature,
liberal in this, as in all things else, has sown the constituent
qualities of heroism broadcast. Elements of the heroic in character
exist in almost every individual; it is only the felicitous combination
of them all in one that is rare.


IDEAS.

Ideas, in regard to their degrees of merit, may be divided, like the
animal kingdom, into classes or families. First in rank are those ideas
that have in them the germs of a great moral unfolding,--as the ideas of
a religious teacher, like Socrates or Confucius. Next in merit are those
ideas that lay open the secrets of Nature, or add to the combinations of
Art,--as the ideas of inventors and discoverers. Next in the order of
excellence are all new and valuable ideas on diseases and their
treatment, on the redress of social abuses, on government and laws and
their administration, and all similar ideas on all other subjects
connected with material welfare or intellectual and moral advancement.
Last and least, ideas that are only the repetition of other ideas,
previously known, though not so well expressed.


INSTITUTIONS.

When an institution, not designed to be stationary, ceases to be
progressive, it is usually because its officers have lost their
ambition to make it so. In such a contingency, they had better be called
upon to resign, and thus to open the way for a more executive and
energetic management.


LAWYERS.

The lawyer's relation to society is like that of the scarecrow to the
cornfield; concede that he effects nothing of positive good, and he
still exerts a wholesome influence from the terror his presence
inspires.


LEADERSHIP.

He who aspires to be leader must keep in advance of his column. His
fears must not play traitor to his occasions. The instant he falls into
line with his followers, a bolder spirit may throw himself at the head
of the movement initiated, and from that moment his leadership is gone.


LET THE RIGHT PREVAIL.

It is better that ten times ten thousand men should suffer in their
interests than that a right principle should not be vindicated. Granting
that all these will be injured by the suppression of the false, an
infinitely greater number will as certainly be prejudiced by throwing
off the allegiance due to truth. Throughout the future, all have an
interest in the establishment of sound principles, while only a few in
the present can have even a partial interest in the perpetuation of
error.


LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

It is pleasanter and more amiable to applaud than to condemn, and they
who look wisely to their happiness will endeavor, as they go through
life, to see as much to admire, and as few things that are repugnant, as
possible. Nothing that is not distinctively excellent is worthy of
particular study or comment.


LOVERS' DIFFERENCES.

Their love for each other is only partial who differ much and widely.
When a loving heart speaks to a heart that loves in return, an
understanding is easily arrived at.


WHAT LOVE PROVES.

The existence of so much love in the world establishes that there is in
it much of the excellence that justifies so exalted a passion. Almost
every man has been a lover at some period in his life, and, out of so
many lovers, it is unreasonable to suppose that all of them have been
mistaken in their estimates.


MAGNANIMITY.

Justice to the defeated exalts the victor from a subject of admiration
to an object of love. To the fame of superior courage or address he
thereby adds the glory of a greater magnanimity. Praise, too, of a
vanquished opponent makes our victory over him appear the more signal.


MANHOOD.

The question is not, the number of facts a man knows, but how much of a
fact he is himself.


MEAN MEN.

If a man is thoroughly mean by nature, let him give full swing to his
meanness. Such a fellow brings discredit upon generosity by putting on
its semblance. If he attempts to disguise the smallness of his soul, he
only adds to his contemptible trait of meanness the still more
despicable vice of hypocrisy. Mean by the sacred institution of Nature,
and without a generous trait to mar the excellence of his native
meanness, so long as he continues unqualifiedly mean, he exists a
perfect type of a particular character, and presents to us a fine
illustration of the vast capabilities of Nature.


METHODS OF THE ENTERPRISING.

Great personal activity at times, and closely sedentary and severely
thoughtful habits at other times, are the forces by which able men
accomplish notable enterprises. Sitting with thoughtful brows by their
evening firesides, they originate and mature their plans; after which,
with energies braced to their work, they move to the easy conquest of
difficulties accounted formidable, because they have deliberated upon
and mastered the _best methods_ for overcoming them.


MILITARY SCHOOLS.

The existence of military schools is a proof that the other schools have
not done their duty.


NATURE AND ART.

The art of being interesting is largely the art of being _real_,--of
being without art.


NEWSPAPERS.

The world is not fairly represented by its newspapers. Life is something
better than they make it out to be. They are mainly the records of the
crimes that curse and the casualties that afflict it, the contests of
litigants and the strifes of politicians; but of the sweet amenities of
home and social life they are and must be silent. Not without a reason
has the poet fled from the "poet's corner."


NON-COMMUNICANTS.

Certain minds are formed to take in truths, but not to utter them. They
hoard their knowledge, as misers their gold. Their communicativeness is
small. Their appreciation of principles is greater than their sympathy
for persons.


OPINIONS.

The best merit of an opinion is, that it is sound; its next best merit,
that it is briefly expressed.


POETS AND POETRY.

The "twelve rules for a poet" are eleven too many. The poet needs but
one rule for his guidance as a poet,--namely, never to write poetry.[2]


POPULAR ASPIRANTS.

The fate of a popular aspirant is often like that of a prize ox. When in
his best condition, he is put up for exhibition, decorated with flowers
and ribbons, and afterwards led out to be slaughtered.


PRAISE.

No one, probably, was ever injured by having his good qualities made the
subject of judicious prai

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