← catalogue

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866

by Various · English · Gutenberg #21902 · 493,359 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866

Author: Various


        
Release date: June 22, 2007 [eBook #21902]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21902

Credits: 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).


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 17, NO. 103, MAY, 1866 ***




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, Science, Art, and Politics._


VOL. XVII.--MAY, 1866.--NO. CIII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
to the end of the article.




THE HARMONISTS.


My brother Josiah I call a successful man,--very successful, though only
an attorney in a manufacturing town. But he fixed his goal, and reached
it. He belongs to the ruling class,--men with slow, measuring eyes and
bull-dog jaws,--men who know their own capacity to an atom's weight, and
who go through life with moderate, inflexible, unrepenting steps. He
looks askance at me when I cross his path; he is in the great market
making his way: I learned long ago that there was no place there for me.
Yet I like to look in, out of the odd little corner into which I have
been shoved,--to look in at the great play, never beginning and never
ending, of bargain and sale, for which all the world's but a stage; to
see how men like my brother have been busy, since God blessed all things
he had made, in dragging them down to the trade level, and stamping
price-marks on them. Josiah looks at me grimly, as I said. Jog as
methodically as I will from desk to bed and back to desk again, he
suspects some outlaw blood under the gray head of the fagged-out old
clerk. He indulges in his pictures, his bronzes: I have my high
office-stool, and bedroom in the fifth story of a cheap hotel. Yet he
suspects me of having forced a way out of the actual common-sense world
by sheer force of whims and vagaries, and to have pre-empted a homestead
for myself in some dream-land, where neither he nor the tax-gatherer can
enter.

"It won't do," he said to-day, when I was there (for I use his books now
and then). "Old Père Bonhours, you're poring over? Put it down, and come
take some clam soup. Much those fellows knew about life! Zachary!
Zachary! you have kept company with shadows these forty years, until you
have grown peaked and gaunt yourself. When will you go to work and be a
live man?"

I knew we were going to have the daily drill which Josiah gave to his
ideas; so I rolled the book up to take with me, while he rubbed his
spectacles angrily, and went on.

"I tell you, the world's a great property-exchanging machine, where
everything has its weight and value; a great, inexorable machine,--and
whoever tries to shirk his work in it will be crushed! Crushed! Think
of your old friend Knowles!"

I began to hurry on my old overcoat; I never had but two or three
friends, and I could not hear their names from Josiah's mouth. But he
was not quick to see when he had hurt people.

"Why, the poet,"--more sententious than before,--"the poet sells his
song; he knows that the airiest visions must resolve into trade-laws.
You cannot escape from them. I see your wrinkled old face, red as a
boy's, over the newspapers sometimes. There was the daring of that Rebel
Jackson, Frémont's proclamation, Shaw's death; you claimed those things
as heroic, prophetic. They were mere facts tending to solve the great
problem of Capital _vs._ Labor. There was one work for which the breath
was put into our nostrils,--to grow, and make the world grow by giving
and taking. Give and take; and the wisest man gives the least and gains
the most."

I left him as soon as I could escape. I respect Josiah: his advice would
be invaluable to any man; but I am content that we should live
apart,--quite content. I went down to Yorke's for my solitary chop. The
old prophet Solomon somewhere talks of the conies or ants as "a feeble
folk who prepare their meat in the summer." I joke to myself about that
sometimes, thinking I should claim kindred with them; for, looking back
over the sixty years of Zack Humphreys's life, they seem to me to have
pretty much gone in preparing the bread and meat from day to day. I see
but little result of all the efforts of that time beyond that solitary
chop; and a few facts and hopes, may be, gathered outside of the market,
which, Josiah says, absorb all of the real world. All day, sitting here
at my desk in Wirt's old counting-house, these notions of Josiah's have
dogged me. These sums that I jotted down, the solid comforts they
typified, the homes, the knowledge, the travel they would buy,--these
were, then, the real gist of this thing we called life, were they? The
great charities money had given to the world,--Christ's Gospel preached
by it.--Did it cover all, then? Did it?

What a wholesome (or unwholesome) scorn of barter Knowles had! The old
fellow never collected a debt; and, by the way, as seldom paid one. The
"dirty dollar" came between him and very few people. Yet the heart in
his great mass of flesh beat fiercely for an honor higher than that
known to most men. I have sat here all the afternoon, staring out at the
winter sky, scratching down a figure now and then, and idly going back
to the time when I was a younger man than now, but even then with
neither wife nor child, and no home beyond an eating-house; thinking how
I caught old Knowles's zest for things which lay beyond trade-laws; how
eager I grew in the search of them; how he inoculated me with
Abolitionism, Communism, every other fever that threatened to destroy
the commercial status of the world, and substitute a single-eyed regard
for human rights. It occurred to me, too, that some of those odd,
one-sided facts, which it used to please me to gather then,--queer bits
of men's history, not to be judged by Josiah's rules,--it might please
others to hear. What if I wrote them down these winter evenings? Nothing
in them rare or strange; but they lay outside of the market, and were
true.

Not one of them which did not bring back Knowles, with his unwieldy heat
and bluster. He found a flavor and meaning in the least of these hints
of mine, gloating over the largess given and received in the world, for
which money had no value. His bones used to straighten, and his eye
glitter under the flabby brow, at the recital of any brave, true deed,
as if it had been his own; as if, but for some mischance back yonder in
his youth, it might have been given to even this poor old fellow to
strike a great, ringing blow on Fate's anvil before he died,--to give
his place in the life-boat to a more useful man,--to help buy with his
life the slave's freedom.

Let me tell you the story of our acquaintance. Josiah, even, would hold
the apology good for claiming so much of your time for this old dreamer
of dreams, since I may give you a bit of useful knowledge in the telling
about a place and people here in the States utterly different from any
other, yet almost unknown, and, so far as I know, undescribed. When I
first met Knowles it was in an obscure country town in Pennsylvania, as
he was on his way across the mountains with his son. I was ill in the
little tavern where he stopped; and, he being a physician, we were
thrown together,--I a raw country lad, and he fresh from the outer
world, of which I knew nothing,--a man of a muscular, vigorous type even
then. But what he did for me, or the relation we bore to each other, is
of no import here.

One or two things about him puzzled me. "Why do you not bring your boy
to this room?" I asked, one day.

His yellow face colored with angry surprise. "Antony? What do you know
of Antony?"

"I have watched you with him," I said, "on the road yonder. He's a
sturdy, manly little fellow, of whom any man would be proud. But you are
not proud of him. In this indifference of yours to the world, you
include him. I've seen you thrust him off into the ditch when he caught
at your hand, and let him struggle on by himself."

He laughed. "Right! Talk of love, family affection! I have tried it. Why
should my son be more to me than any other man's son, but for an
extended selfishness? I have cut loose all nearer ties than those which
hold all men as brothers, and Antony comes no closer than any other."

"I've watched you coming home sometimes," I said, coolly. "One night you
carried the little chap, as he was sound asleep. It was dark; but I saw
you sit by the pond yonder, thinking no one saw you, caressing him,
kissing his face, his soiled little hands, his very feet, as fierce and
tender as a woman."

Knowles got up, pacing about, disturbed and angry; he was like a woman
in other ways, nervous, given to sudden heats of passion,--was leaky
with his own secrets. "Don't talk to me of Antony! I know no child, no
wife, nor any brother, except my brother-man."

He went trotting up and down the room, then sat down with his back to
me. It was night, and the room was dimly lighted by the smoky flame of a
lard lamp. The solitary old man told me his story. Let me be more chary
with his pain than he was; enough to say that his wife was yet living,
but lost, to him. Her boy Antony came into the room just when his father
had ceased speaking,--a stout little chap of four years, with Knowles's
ungainly build, and square, honest face, but with large, hazel,
melancholy eyes. He crept up on my bed, and, lying across the foot, went
to sleep.

Knowles glanced at him,--looked away, his face darkening. "Sir," he
said, "I have thrust away all arbitrary ties of family. The true
life,"--his eye dilating, as if some great thought had come into his
brain,--"the true life is one where no marriage exists,--where the soul
acknowledges only the pure impersonal love to God and our brother-man,
and enters into peace. It can so enter, even here, by dint of long
contemplation and a simple pastoral work for the body."

This was new talk in that country tavern: I said nothing.

"I'm not dreaming dreams," raising his voice. "I have a real plan for
you and me, lad. I have found the Utopia of the prophets and poets, an
actual place, here in Pennsylvania. We will go there together, shut out
the trade-world, and devote ourselves with these lofty enthusiasts to a
life of purity, celibacy, meditation,--helpful and loving to the great
Humanity."

I was but a lad; my way in life had not been smooth. While he talked on
in this strain my blood began to glow. "What of Tony?" I interrupted,
after a while.

"The boy?" not looking at the little heap at the foot of the bed. "They
will take him in, probably. Children are adopted by the society; they
receive education free from the personal taints given by father and
mother."

"Yes," not very clear as to what he meant.

The moon began to fleck the bare floor with patches of light and shadow,
bringing into relief the broad chest of the man beside me, the big,
motionless head dropped forward, and the flabby yellow face set with a
terrible, lifelong gravity. His scheme was no joke to him. Whatever soul
lay inside of this gross animal body had been tortured nigh to death,
and this plan was its desperate chance at a fresh life. Watching me
askance as I tried to cover the boy with the blankets, he began the
history of this new Utopia, making it blunt and practical as words could
compass, to convince me that he was no dreamer of dreams. I will try to
recall the facts as he stated them that night; they form a curious story
at all times.

In 1805, a man named George Rapp, in Würtemberg, became possessed with
the idea of founding a new and pure social system,--sowing a mere seed
at first, but with the hope, doubtless, of planting a universal truth
thereby which should some day affect all humanity. His scheme differed
from Comte's or Saint Simon's, in that it professed to go back to the
old patriarchal form for its mode of government, establishing under
that, however, a complete community of interest. Unlike other communist
reformers, too, Rapp did not look through his own class for men of equal
intelligence and culture with himself of whom to make converts, but,
gathering several hundred of the peasants from the neighborhood, he
managed to imbue them with an absolute faith in his divine mission, and
emigrated with them to the backwoods of Pennsylvania, in Butler County.
After about ten years they removed to the banks of the Wabash, in
Indiana; then, in 1825, returned to Pennsylvania, and settled finally in
Beaver County, some sixteen miles below Pittsburg, calling their village
Economy.

"A great man, as I conceive him, this Rapp," said Knowles. "His own
property, which was large, was surrendered to the society at its
foundation, and this to the least particular, not reserving for his own
use even the library or gallery of paintings pertaining to his family;
nor did the articles of association allow any exclusive advantage to
accrue to him or his heirs from the profits of the community. He held
his office as spiritual and temporal head, not by election of the
people, but assumed it as by Divine commission, as Moses and Aaron held
theirs; and not only did the power of the man over his followers enable
him to hold this autocratic authority during a long life, unimpaired,
but such was the skill with which his decrees were framed that after his
death this authority was reaffirmed by the highest legal tribunal of the
country.[A] With all his faith in his divine mission, too, he had a
clear insight into all the crookedness and weakness of the natures he
was trying to elevate. He knew that these dogged, weak Germans needed
coercion to make them fit for ultimate freedom; he held the power of an
apostle over them, therefore, with as pure purpose, it's my belief, as
any apostle that went before him. The superstitious element lay ready in
them for him to work upon. I find no fault with him for working it."

"How?" I asked.

Knowles hesitated. "When their stupidity blocked any of his plans for
their advancement, he told them that, unless they consented, their names
should be blotted out from the Book of Life,--which was but a coarse way
of stating a great truth, after all; telling them, too, that God must be
an unjust Judge should he mete out happiness or misery to them without
consulting him,--that his power over their fate stretched over this life
and the next,--which, considering the limitless influence of a strong
mind over a weak one, was not so false, either."

Rapp's society, Knowles stated, did not consist altogether of this
class, however. A few men of education and enthusiasm had joined him,
and carried out his plans with integrity. The articles of association
were founded in a strict sense of justice; members entering the society
relinquished all claim to any property, much or little, of which they
might be possessed, receiving thereafter common maintenance, education,
profit, with the others; should they at any time thereafter choose to
leave, they received the sum deposited without interest. A suit had just
been decided in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania[B] which had elicited
this point.

Knowles, more and more eager, went on to describe the settlement as it
had been pictured to him; the quaint, quiet village on the shores of
"the Beautiful River," the rolling hills of woodland, the quiet valleys
over which their flocks wandered, the simple pastoral work in which all
joined; the day begun and ended with music;--even the rich, soft tints
of the fresh Western sky about them were not forgotten, nor the
picturesque dresses of the silent, primitive people.

"A home in which to forget all pain and sore, boy," ended the old man,
gulping down a sigh, and then falling into a heavy silence.

It was long before I broke it. "They do not marry?"

"No," anxiously, as if I had reached the core of the truth in this
matter at last. "It was their founder's scheme, as I believe, to lift
them above all taint of human passion,--to bring them by pure work,
solitude, and contact with a beautiful nature into a state of being
where neither earthly love, nor hate, nor ambition can enter,--a sphere
of infinite freedom, and infinite love for Him and all His creatures."

There was no doubting the fire of rapt enthusiasm in his eye, rising and
looking out across the moonlit fields as if already he saw the pleasant
hills of Beulah.

"Thank God for George Rapp! he has found a home where a man can stand
alone,"--stretching out his arms as if he would have torn out whatever
vestige of human love tugged at his sick old heart, his eye hunting out
Tony as he spoke.

The boy, startled from his sleep, muttered, and groped as a baby will
for its mother's breast or hand. No hand met the poor little fingers,
and they fell on the pillow empty, the child going to sleep again with a
forlorn little cry. Knowles watched him, the thick lips under his
moustache growing white.

"I purpose," he said, "that next week you and I shall go to these
people, and, if possible, become members of their community,--cut loose
from all these narrow notions of home and family, and learn to stand
upright and free under God's heaven. The very air breathed by these
noble enthusiasts will give us strength and lofty thoughts. Think it
over, Humphreys."

"Yes."

He moved to the door,--held it open uncertainly. "I'll leave the boy
here to-night. He got into a foolish habit of sleeping in my arms when
he was a baby; it's time he was broke of it."

"Very well."

"He must learn to stand alone, eh?" anxiously. "Good night";--and in a
moment I heard his heavy steps on the stairs, stopping, then going on
faster, as if afraid of his own resolution.

In the middle of the night I was wakened by somebody fumbling for Tony
at my side,--"Afraid the child would prove troublesome,"--and saw him go
off with the boy like a mite in his arms, growling caresses like a
lioness who has recovered her whelp. I say lioness, for, with all his
weight of flesh and coarseness, Knowles left the impression on your mind
of a sensitive, nervous woman.

       *       *       *       *       *

Late one spring afternoon, a month after that, Knowles and I stood on
one of the hills overlooking the communist village of Economy. I was
weak and dizzy from illness and a long journey; the intense quiet of the
landscape before me affected me like a strain of solemn music. Knowles
had infected me with his eager hope. Nature was about to take me to her
great mother's bosom, for the first time. Life was to give me the repose
I asked, satisfy all the needs of my soul: here was the foretaste. The
quaint little hamlet literally slept on the river-bank; not a living
creature was visible on the three grass-grown streets; many of the
high-gabled brick houses, even at that date of the colony, were closed
and vacant, their inmates having dropped from the quiet of this life
into an even deeper sleep, and having been silently transferred to rest
under the flat grass of the apple-orchards, according to the habit of
the society. From the other houses, however, pale rifts of smoke wavered
across the cold blue sky; great apple and peach orchards swept up the
hills back of the town, quite out of sight. They were in blossom, I
remember, and covered the green of the hills with a veil of delicate
pink. A bleak wind, as we stood there, brought their perfume towards us,
and ruffled the broad, dark river into sudden ripples of cut silver:
beyond that, motion there was none. Looking curiously down into the
town, I could distinguish a great, barn-like church, a public laundry,
bakery, apiary, and one or two other buildings, like factories, but all
empty, apparently, and deserted. After all, was this some quaint German
village brought hither in an enchanted sleep, and dropped down in the
New World? About the houses were silent, trim little gardens, set round
with yew and box cut in monstrous shapes, and filled with plants of
which this soil knew nothing. Up a path from the woods, too, came at
last some curious figures, in a dress belonging to the last century.

Knowles had no idea, like mine, of being bewitched; he rubbed his hands
in a smothered excitement. "We too shall be Arcadians!" he burst out.
"Humphreys!" anxiously, as we plodded down the hill, "we must be
careful, very careful, my boy. These are greatly innocent and pure
natures with which we have come in contact: the world must have grown
vague and dim to them long ago, wrapped in their high communings. We
must leave all worldly words and thoughts outside, as a snake drops his
skin. No talk of money here, lad. It would be as well, too, not to
mention any family ties, such as wife or child: such bonds must seem to
this lofty human brotherhood debasing and gross."

So saying, and dropping Tony's hand in order that the child even might
stand alone, we came into the village street; Knowles growing red with
eagerness as one of the odd figures came towards us. "Careful, Zachary!"
in a hoarse whisper. "It all depends on this first day whether we are
accepted or not. Remember their purity of thought, their forms gathered
from the patriarchs and apostles!"

I had a vague remembrance of a washing of feet, practised in those days;
of calf-killing and open tents for strangers; so stood perplexed while
the brother approached and stood there, like an animate lager-bier
barrel, dressed in flannel, with a round hat on top. "_Was brauchen
Sie?_" he grumbled.

I don't know in what words Knowles's tremulous tones conveyed the idea
that we were strangers, going on to state that we were also world-weary,
and--

"Ach! want der supper," he said, his face brightening, and, turning, he
jogged on, elephant-like, before, muttering something about himself,
"Bin Yosef, an keepit der tavern,"--to the door of which, one of the
silent brick dwellings, he speedily brought us; and, summoning some
"Christ-ina" in a subdued bellow from the bowels of the cellar, went
into the neat bar-room, and swallowed two glasses of wine to revive
himself, dropping exhausted, apparently, into a chair.

Christina, an old dried-up woman, in the quaint, daintily clean dress of
blue, emerged from the cellar-door, bringing with her a savory smell of
frying ham and eggs. She glanced at us with suspicious blue eyes, and
then, with "_Ach! der Liebling! mein schöner Schatz!_" caught up Tony to
her shrivelled breast in a sudden surprise, and, going back to the
door, called "Fredrika!" Another old woman, dried, withered, with pale
blue eyes, appeared, and the two, hastily shoving us chairs, took Tony
between them, chattering in delighted undertones, patting his fat
cheeks, his hands, feeling his clothes, straightening his leg, and
laughing at the miniature muscles.

Knowles stared dumbly.

"You will haf der supper, hein?" said the first old woman, recollecting
herself and coming forward, her thin jaws yet reddened. "Der ham?
Shickens? It is so long as I haf seen a little shild," apologetically.

I assented to the ham and chicken proposition, answering for myself and
Tony at least. As they went down the stairs, they looked wistfully at
him. I nodded, and, picking him up, they carried him with them. I could
presently distinguish his shrill little tones, and half a dozen women's
voices, caressing, laughing with him. Yet it hurt me somehow to notice
that these voices were all old, subdued; none of them could ever hold a
baby on her lap, and call it hers. Joseph roused himself, came suddenly
in with a great pitcher of domestic wine, out again, and back with
ginger-cakes and apples,--"Till der supper be cookin'," with an
encouraging nod,--and then went back to his chair, and presently snored
aloud. In a few minutes, however, we were summoned to the table.

Knowles ate nothing, and looked vaguely over the great smoking dishes,
which Tony and I proved to be marvels of cookery. "Doubtless," he said,
"some of these people have not yet overcome this grosser taste; we have
yet seen but the dregs of the society; many years of Rapp's culture
would be needed to spiritualize German boors."

The old women, who moved gently about, listened keenly, trying to
understand why he did not eat. It troubled them.

"We haf five meals a day in der society," said Christina, catching a
vague notion of his meaning, "Many as finds it not enough puts cheese
and cakes on a shelf at der bed-head, if dey gets faint in de night."

"Do you get faint in the night?" I asked.

"Most times I does," simply.

Knowles burst in with a snort of disgust, and left the table. When I
joined him on the stoop he had recovered his temper and eagerness, even
laughing at Joseph, who was plying him in vain with his wine.

"I was a fool, Humphreys. These are the flesh of the thing; we'll find
the brain presently. But it was a sharp disappointment. Stay here an
hour, until I find the directors of the society,--pure, great thinkers,
I doubt not, on whom Rapp's mantle has fallen. They will welcome our
souls, as these good creatures have our bodies. Yonder is Rapp's house,
they tell me. Follow me in an hour."

As he struck into one of the narrow paths across the grassy street, I
saw groups of the colonists coming in from their field-work through the
twilight, the dress of the women looking not unpicturesque, with the
tight flannel gown and broad-rimmed straw hat. But they were all old, I
saw as they passed; their faces were alike faded and tired; and whether
dull or intelligent, each had a curious vacancy in its look. Not one
passed without a greeting more or less eager for Tony, whom Christina
held on her knees, on the steps of the stoop.

"It is so long as I haf not seen a baby," she said, again turning her
thin old face round.

I found her pleased to be questioned about the society.

"I haf one, two, dree kinder when we come mit Father Rapp," she said.
"Dey is dead in Harmony; since den I just cooken in der tavern. Father
Rapp say the world shall end in five years when we come in der society,
den I shall see mein shilds again. But I wait, and it haf not yet end."

I thought she stifled a quick sigh.

"And your husband?"

She hesitated. "John Volz was my man, in Germany. He lives in yonder
house, mit ein ander family. We are in families of seven."

"Husbands and wives were separated, then?"

"Father Rapp said it must to be. He knows."

There was a long pause, and then, lowering her voice, and glancing
cautiously around, she added hurriedly, "Frederick Rapp was his brother:
he would not leave his wife."

"Well, and then?"

The two old women looked at each other, warningly, but Christina, being
on the full tide of confidence, answered at last in a whisper, "Father
Rapp did hold a counsel mit five others."

"And his brother?"

"He was killed. He did never see his child."

"But," I resumed, breaking the long silence that followed, "your women
do not care to go back to their husbands? They dwell in purer thoughts
than earthly love?"

"Hein?" said the woman with a vacant face.

"Were you married?"--to Fredrika, who sat stiffly knitting a blue
woollen sock.

"Nein," vacantly counting the stitches. "Das ist not gut, Father Rapp
says. He knows."

"_She_ war not troth-plight even," interrupted the other eagerly, with a
contemptuous nod, indicating by a quick motion a broken nose, which
might have hindered Fredrika's chances of matrimony. "There is Rachel,"
pointing to a bent figure in a neighboring garden; "she was to marry in
the summer, and in spring her man came mit Father Rapp. He was a sickly
man."

"And she followed him?"

"Ya. He is dead."

"And Rachel?"

"_Ya wohl!_ There she is," as the figure came down the street, passing
us.

It was only a bent old Dutchwoman, with a pale face and fixed, tearless
eyes, that smiled kindly at sight of the child; but I have never seen in
any tragedy, since, the something which moved me so suddenly and deeply
in that quiet face and smile. I followed her with my eyes, and then
turned to the women. Even the stupid knitter had dropped her work, and
met my look with a vague pity and awe in her face.

"It was not gut she could not marry. It is many years, but she does at
no time forget," she mumbled, taking up her stocking again. Something
above her daily life had struck a quick response from even her, but it
was gone now.

Christina eagerly continued; "And there is ----" (naming a woman, one of
the directors.) "She would be troth-plight, if Father Rapp had not said
it must not be. So they do be lovers these a many years, and every night
he does play beneath her window until she falls asleep."

When I did not answer, the two women began to talk together in
undertones, examining the cut of Tony's little clothes, speculating as
to their price, and so forth. I rose and shook myself. Why! here in the
new life, in Arcadia, was there the world,--old love and hunger to be
mothers, and the veriest gossip? But these were women: I would seek the
men with Knowles. Leaving the child, I crossed the darkening streets to
the house which I had seen him enter. I found him in a well-furnished
room, sitting at a table, in council with half a dozen men in the
old-time garb of the Communists. If their clothes were relics of other
times, however, their shrewd, keen faces were wide awake and alive to
the present. Knowles's alone was lowering and black.

"These are the directors of the society," he said to me aloud, as I
entered.

"Their reception of us is hardly what I expected," nodding me to a seat.

They looked at me with a quiet, business-like scrutiny.

"I hardly comprehend what welcome you anticipated," said one, coolly.
"Many persons offer to become members of our fraternity; but it is, we
honestly tell you, difficult to obtain admission. It is chiefly an
association to make money: the amount contributed by each new-comer
ought, in justice, to bear some proportion to the advantage he
obtains."

"Money? I had not viewed the society in that light," stammered Knowles.

"You probably," said the other, with a dry smile, "are not aware how
successful a corporation ours has been. At Harmony, we owned thirty
thousand acres; here, four thousand. We have steam-mills, distilleries,
carry on manufactures of wool, silk, and cotton. Exclusive of our
stocks, our annual profit, clear of expense, is over two hundred
thousand dollars. There are few enterprises by which money is to be made
into which our capital does not find its way."

Knowles sat dumb as the other proceeded, numbering, alertly as a broker,
shares in railroad stocks, coal-mines, banks.

"You see how we live," he concluded; "the society's lands are
self-supporting,--feed and clothe us amply. What profits accrue are
amassed, intact."

"To what end?" I broke in. "You have no children to inherit your wealth.
It buys you neither place nor power nor pleasure in the world."

The director looked at me with a cold rebuke in his eyes. "It is not
surprising that many should desire to enter a partnership into which
they bring nothing, and which is so lucrative," he said.

"I had no intention of coming empty-handed," said Knowles in a subdued
voice. "But this financial point of view never occurred to me."

The other rose with a look of pity, and led us out through the great
ware-rooms, where their silks and cottons were stored in chests, out to
the stables to inspect stock, and so forth. But before we had proceeded
far, I missed Knowles, who had trotted on before with a stunned air of
perplexity. When I went back to the tavern, late that night, I found him
asleep on the bed, one burly arm around his boy. The next morning he was
up betimes, and at work investigating the real condition of the
Harmonists. They treated him with respect, for, outside of what Josiah
called his vagaries, Knowles was shrewd and honest.

Tony and I wandered about the drowsy village and meadows, looking at the
queer old gardens, dusky with long-forgotten plants, or sometimes at
their gallery of paintings, chief among which was one of West's larger
efforts.

It was not until the close of the second day that Knowles spoke openly
to me. Whatever the disappointment had cost him, he told nothing of
it,--grew graver, perhaps, but discussed the chances in the stock market
with the directors,--ate Christina's suppers, watching the poor withered
women and the gross men with a perplexed look of pity.

"They are but common minds and common bodies, perhaps," he said one
evening, as we sat in our corner, after a long, quiet scrutiny of them:
"in any case, their lives would have been meagre and insignificant, and
yet, Humphreys, yet even that little possibility seems to have been here
palsied and balked. I hope George Rapp cannot look back and see what his
scheme has done for these people."

"You were mistaken in it, then?"

His dark face reddened gloomily. "You see what they are. Yet Rapp,
whatever complaints these people may make of him, I believe to have been
an enthusiast, who sacrificed his property to establish a pure, great
reform in society. But human nature! human nature is as crooked to drive
as a pig tied by a string. Why, these Arcadians, sir, have made a god of
their stomachs, and such of them as have escaped that spend their lives
in amassing dollar after dollar to hoard in their common chest."

I suggested that Rapp and he left them nothing else to do. "You shut
them out both from a home and from the world; love, ambition, politics,
are dead words to them. What can they do but eat and grub?"

"Think! Go back into Nature's heart, and, with contemplation, bear fruit
of noble thoughts unto eternal life!" But he hesitated; his enthusiasm
hung fire strangely.

After a while,--"Well, well, Zachary," with a laugh, "we'd better go
back into the world, and take up our work again. Josiah is partly right,
may be. There are a thousand fibres of love and trade and mutual help
which bind us to our fellow-man, and if we try to slip out of our place
and loose any of them, our own souls suffer the loss by so much life
withdrawn. It is as well not to live altogether outside of the market;
nor--to escape from this," lifting Tony up on his knee, and beginning a
rough romp with him. But I saw his face work strangely as he threw the
boy up in the air, and when he caught him, he strained him to his burly
breast until the child cried out. "Tut! tut! What now, you young
ruffian? Come, shoes off, and to bed; we'll have a little respite from
you. I say, Humphreys, do you see the hungry look with which the old
women follow the child? God help them! I wonder if it will be made right
for them in another world!" An hour after, I heard him still pacing the
floor up stairs, crooning some old nursery song to put the boy to sleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

I visited the Harmonists again not many months ago; the village and
orchards lie as sleepily among the quiet hills as ever. There are more
houses closed, more grass on the streets. A few more of the simple,
honest folk have crept into their beds under the apple-trees, from which
they will not rise in the night to eat, or to make money,--Christina
among the rest. I was glad she was gone where it was sunny and bright,
and where she would not have to grow tired for the sight of "a little
shild." There have been but few additions, if any, to the society in the
last twenty years. They still retain the peculiar dress which they wore
when they left Würtemberg: the men wearing the common German peasant
habit; the women, a light, narrow flannel gown, with wide sleeves and a
bright-colored silk handkerchief crossed over the breast, the whole
surmounted by a straw hat, with a rim of immense width. They do not
carry on the manufactures of silk or woollen now, which were Rapp's
boast; they have "struck oil" instead, and are among the most successful
and skillful land-owners in Pennsylvania in the search for that
uncertain source of wealth.

The "Economite Wells" are on the Upper Alleghany, nearly opposite
Tidionte. In later years, I believe, children have been brought into the
society to be cared for by the women.

It needs no second-sight to discern the end of Rapp's scheme. His single
strength sustained the colony during his life, and since his death one
or two strong wills have kept it from crumbling to pieces, converting
the whole machinery of his system into a powerful money-making agent.
These men are the hand by which it keeps its hold on the world,--or the
market, perhaps I should say. They are intelligent and able; honorable
too, we are glad to know, for the sake of the quiet creatures drowsing
away their little remnant of life, fat and contented, driving their
ploughs through the fields, or smoking on the stoops of the village
houses when evening comes. I wonder if they ever cast a furtive glance
at the world and life from which Rapp's will so early shut them out?
When they finish smoking, one by one, the great revenues of the society
will probably fall into the hands of two or three active survivors, and
be merged into the small currents of trade, according to the rapid
sequence which always follows the accretion of large properties in this
country.

Rapp is remembered, already, even by the people whom he meant to serve,
only as a harsh and tyrannical ruler, and his very scheme will not only
prove futile, but be forgotten very soon after Fredrika and Joseph have
drank their last cup of home-made wine, and gone to sleep under the
trees in the apple-orchard.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] _Vide_ Trustees of Harmony Society _vs._ Nachtrieb, 19 Howard, U. S.
Reports, p. 126, Campbell, J.

[B] Schreiber _vs._ Rapp, 5 Watts, 836, Gibson, C. J.




ABRAHAM DAVENPORT.


    In the old days (a custom laid aside
    With breeches and cocked hats) the people sent
    Their wisest men to make the public laws.
    And so, from a brown homestead, where the Sound
    Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas,
    Waved over by the woods of Rippowams,
    And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil deaths,
    Stamford sent up to the councils of the State
    Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport.

    'Twas on a May-day of the far old year
    Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell
    Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring,
    Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,
    A horror of great darkness, like the night
    In day of which the Norland sagas tell,--
    The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky
    Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim
    Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs
    The crater's sides from the red hell below.
    Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard fowls
    Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars
    Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings
    Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died;
    Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp
    To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter
    The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ
    Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked
    A loving guest at Bethany, but stern
    As Justice and inexorable Law.

    Meanwhile in the old State-House, dim as ghosts,
    Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut,
    Trembling beneath their legislative robes.
    "It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn,"
    Some said; and then, as if with one accord,
    All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport.
    He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice
    The intolerable hush. "This well may be
    The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;
    But be it so or not, I only know
    My present duty, and my Lord's command
    To occupy till he come. So at the post
    Where he hath set me in his providence,
    I choose, for one, to meet him face to face,--
    No faithless servant frightened from my task,
    But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls;
    And therefore, with all reverence, I would say,
    Let God do his work, we will see to ours.
    Bring in the candles." And they brought them in.

    Then by the flaring lights the Speaker read,
    Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands,
    An act to amend an act to regulate
    The shad and alewive fisheries. Whereupon
    Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport,
    Straight to the question, with no figures of speech
    Save the nine Arab signs, yet not without
    The shrewd dry humor natural to the man:
    His awe-struck colleagues listening all the while,
    Between the pauses of his argument,
    To hear the thunder of the wrath of God
    Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud.

    And there he stands in memory to this day,
    Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen
    Against the background of unnatural dark,
    A witness to the ages as they pass,
    That simple duty hath no place for fear.




LAST DAYS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.


PART II.

It is too general an opinion, confirmed by tradition, (and quite as
untrue as many traditions,) that Landor, seated securely upon his high
literary pedestal, never condescended to say a good word of writers of
less degree, and that the praise of greater lights was rarely on his
lips. They who persist in such assertions can have read but few of his
works, for none of his profession has given so much public approbation
to literary men. The form of his writings enabled him to show himself
more fully than is possible to most authors, and in all his many
literary discussions he gave expression to honest criticism, awarding
full praise in the numerous cases where it was due. Even at an age when
prejudice and petulancy are apt to get the better of a man's judgment,
Landor was most generous in his estimate of many young writers. I
remember to have once remarked, that on one page he had praised (and not
passingly) Cowper, Byron, Southey, Wordsworth, Burns, Campbell, Hemans,
and Scott. In the conversation between Archdeacon Hare and Landor, the
latter says: "I believe there are few, if any, who enjoy more heartily
than I do the best poetry of my contemporaries, or who have commended
them both in private and in public with less parsimony and reserve."

_Hare._ "Are you quite satisfied that you never have sought a pleasure
in detecting and exposing the faults of authors, even good ones?"

_Landor._ "I have here and there sought that pleasure, and found it. To
discover a truth and separate it from a falsehood is surely an
occupation of the best intellect, and not at all unworthy of the best
heart. Consider how few of our countrymen have done it, or attempted it,
on works of criticism; how few of them have analyzed and compared.
Without these two processes there can be no sound judgment on any
production of genius."

_Hare._ "How much better would it be if our reviewers and magazine men
would analyze, in this manner, to the extent of their abilities, and
would weigh evidence before they pass sentence!"

And if this analyzing is needed in England, the land of reviews and
reviewing, how much more necessary is it in America, where veritable
criticism is not even old enough to be young; its germ, however
grovelling it may be, not yet having taken the primary form of the
caterpillar.

Great as was Landor's personal animosity towards Byron, he considered
him a "great poet,"--"the keenest and most imaginative of poets"; nor
should we attribute this dislike to the bitter attacks made by Byron
upon the "deep-mouthed Boeotian," though surely such would be
sufficient to excite indignation in more amiable breasts. It was Byron's
furious assaults upon Landor's beloved friend, Southey, that roused the
ire of the lion poet; later knowledge of the man, derived from private
sources, helped to keep alive the fire of indignation. "While he wrote
or spoke against me alone, I said nothing of him in print or
conversation; but the taciturnity of pride gave way immediately to my
zeal in defence of my friend. What I write is not written on slate; and
no finger, not of Time himself, who dips it in the clouds of years, can
efface it. To condemn what is evil and to commend what is good is
consistent. To soften an asperity, to speak all the good we can after
worse than we wish, is _that_, and more. If I must understand the
meaning of consistency as many do, I wish I may be inconsistent with all
my enemies. There are many hearts which have risen higher and sunk lower
at his tales, and yet have been shocked and sorrowed at his untimely
death a great deal less than mine has been. Honor and glory to him for
the extensive good he did! peace and forgiveness for the partial evil!"

Shall Landor be branded with intense egotism for claiming immortality?
Can it be denied that he will be read with admiration as long as
printing and the English language endure? Can there be greatness without
conscious power? Do those of us who believe in Christ as the grandest of
men degrade his manly and inspired self-confidence to the level of
egotism? Far be it from me, however, to insinuate a comparison where
none can exist, save as one ray of light may relate to the sun. Egotism
is the belief of narrow minds in the supreme significance of a mortal
self: conscious power is the belief in certain immortal attributes,
emanating from, and productive of, Truth and Beauty. I should not call
Landor an egotist.

The friendship existing between Southey and Landor must have had much of
the heroic element in it, for instances are rare where two writers have
so thoroughly esteemed one another. Those who have witnessed the
enthusiasm with which Landor spoke of Southey can readily imagine how
unpardonable a sin he considered it in Byron to make his friend an
object of satire. Landor's strong feelings necessarily caused him to be
classed in the _ou tout ou rien_ school. Seeing those whom he liked
through the magnifying-glass of perfection, he painted others in less
brilliant colors than perhaps they merited. Southey to Landor was the
essence of all good things, and there was no subject upon which he dwelt
with more unaffected pleasure. "Ah, Southey was the best man that ever
lived. There never was a better, my dear, good friends, Francis and
Julius Hare, excepted. They were true Christians; and it is an honor to
me that two such pure men should have been my friends for so many years,
up to the hour of death." It was to Julius Hare that Landor dedicated
his great work of "Pericles and Aspasia," and, while in England, it was
his habit to submit to this friend (and to his brother also, I think)
his manuscript. The complete edition of his works published in 1846 was
inscribed to Julius Hare and to John Forster, an equally devoted friend.
Both of the Hares have been embalmed in his verse.

Esteemed so highly in Landor's heart, Southey occupies the place of
honor in the "Imaginary Conversations," taking part in four dialogues,
two with Porson and two with Landor, on subjects of universal literary
interest, Milton and Wordsworth. These Conversations are among the most
valuable of the series, being models of criticism. Landor delighted to
record every meeting with Southey, where it was compatible with the
subject-matter. Thus in writing of Como he says: "It was in Como I
received and visited the brave descendants of the Jovii; it was in Como
I daily conversed with the calm, philosophical Sironi; and I must love
the little turreted city for other less intrinsic recollections. Thither
came to see me the learned and modest Bekker; and it was there, after
several delightful rambles, I said farewell to Southey." Often have I
heard Landor express his great liking for "The Curse of Kehama." One may
obtain an idea of how this admiration was reciprocated, from Southey's
criticism on "Gebir," in the Critical Review for September, 1799. Of
Gebir's speech to the Gadites, he says: "A passage more truly Homeric
than the close of this extract we do not remember in the volumes of
modern poetry." He took the entire poem as a model in blank verse. After
Southey's death, Landor used his influence with Lord Brougham to obtain
a pension for the family, in justice to the memory of one who had added
to the fame of England's literature. Again, in a letter to Southey's
son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, he pronounced a eulogy upon his
friend's character and public services.

Directing Landor's attention to the assertion in Pycroft's "Course of
English Reading," that he, Landor, failed to appreciate Chaucer, the old
man, much vexed, refuted such a falsehood, saying: "On the contrary, I
am a great admirer of his. I am extremely fond of the 'Canterbury
Tales.' I much prefer Chaucer to Spenser; for allegory, when spun out,
is unendurable." It is strange that a man apparently so well read as Mr.
Pycroft should have so unjustly interpreted Landor, when it needed but a
passing reference to the Conversations to disprove his statement. By
turning to the second dialogue between Southey and Landor, he might have
culled the following tribute to Chaucer: "I do not think Spenser equal
to Chaucer even in imagination, and he appears to me very inferior to
him in all other points, excepting harmony. Here the miscarriage is in
Chaucer's age, not in Chaucer, many of whose verses are highly
beautiful, but never (as in Spenser) one whole period. I love the
geniality of his temperature: no straining, no effort, no storm, no
fury. His vivid thoughts burst their way to us through the coarsest
integuments of language." In another book Landor says: "Since the time
of Chaucer there have been only two poets who at all resemble him; and
these two are widely dissimilar one from the other,--Burns and Keats.
The accuracy and truth with which Chaucer has described the manners of
common life, with the foreground and background, are also to be found in
Burns, who delights in broader strokes of external nature, but equally
appropriate. He has parts of genius which Chaucer has not in the same
degree,--the animated and pathetic. Keats, in his 'Endymion,' is richer
in imagery than either; and there are passages in which no poet has
arrived at the same excellence on the same ground. Time alone was
wanting to complete a poet, who already far surpassed all his
contemporaries in this country in the poet's most noble attributes."
Once more, in some beautiful lines to the fair and free soul of
poesy,--Keats,--Landor concludes with a verse that surely shows an
appreciation of Chaucer:--

    "Ill may I speculate on scenes to come,
    Yet would I dream to meet thee at our home
    With Spenser's quiet, Chaucer's livelier ghost,
    Cognate to thine,--not higher and less fair,--
    And Madalene and Isabella there
    Shall say, _Without thee half our loves were lost_."

When a man chooses an author as a companion, not for time but for
eternity, he gives the best possible proof of an esteem that no rash
assertion of critics can qualify.

"I have always deeply regretted that I never met Shelley," said Landor
to me. "It was my own fault, for I was in Pisa the winter he resided
there, and was told that Shelley desired to make my acquaintance. But I
refused to make his, as, at that time, I believed the disgraceful story
related of him in connection with his first wife. Years after, when I
called upon the second Mrs. Shelley, who, then a widow, was living out
of London, I related to her what I had heard. She assured me that it was
a most infamous falsehood, one of the many that had been maliciously
circulated about her husband. I expressed my sorrow at not having been
undeceived earlier, and assured her I never could forgive myself for
crediting a slander that had prevented me from knowing Shelley. I was
much pleased with Mrs. Shelley." Landor's enthusiasm was most aroused at
generous deeds; for these he honored Shelley. Meanness he scorned, and
believed it to be an attribute of Byron. As a proof of contrast in the
natures of these two poets, he related an interesting anecdote, which
has appeared in one of his Conversations. "Byron could comprehend
nothing heroic, nothing disinterested. Shelley, at the gates of Pisa,
threw himself between him and the dragoon, whose sword in his
indignation was lifted and about to strike. Byron told a common friend,
some time afterward, that he could not conceive how any man living
should act so. 'Do you know he might have been killed! and there was
every appearance that he would be!' The answer was, 'Between you and
Shelley there is but little similarity, and perhaps but little sympathy;
yet what Shelley did then, he would do again, and always. There is not a
human creature, not even the most hostile, that he would hesitate to
protect from injury at the imminent hazard of life.' ... 'By God! I
cannot understand it!' cried Byron. 'A man to run upon a naked sword for
another!'"

And this Shelley, who, through a noble impulse, would have sacrificed
himself, is the man whom Moore seriously advised Byron to avoid, lest
his religious theories should undermine the immaculate morality of the
author of Don Juan! It is to be supposed that Moore wrote in earnestness
of spirit, yet it is impossible not to smile in wonderment at this
letter. Moore doubtless had greater belief in salvation by faith than by
works. "Ah, Moore was a superstitious dog!" exclaimed Landor one day. "I
was once walking with him in a garden," (I forget in what part of
England,) "laughing and joking, when Moore remarked the approach of some
dignitary of the Catholic Church. He immediately began to mumble
something, ran forward, and on his knees implored a blessing from the
priest, crossing himself with reverential air. Ah, what it is to have
faith! Landor, Landor, you are incorrigible! Don't you think so,
Giallo?" asked the master of his dog. "I never heard Moore sing, much to
my regret. I once asked him, but he excused himself with a sigh, saying
that he had lost his voice."

       *       *       *       *       *

One of Landor's prominent characteristics was generosity, carried to the
verge of rashness. Even in his last years, when living on a very limited
income, he was only too ready to empty his pockets at the call of any
charity, whether public or private. Impulse, however, prompted him to
give most heartily when he thought to further the cause of liberty. At
the time a subscription was opened in Florence to aid Garibaldi's
Sicilian expedition, Landor, anxious to lay an offering at the feet of
his heart's hero, pulled out his watch, the only article of value about
him, and begged Mr. Browning to present it to the fund. Mr. Browning
took it, but knowing how lost the old man would be without his
timepiece, kept it for a few days; and then, seizing a favorable moment
when Landor was missing his watch greatly, though without murmuring, Mr.
Browning persuaded him to retain it. This he did, with reluctance, after
being assured of the fund's prosperous condition. It was about the same
time, I think, that Landor wrote an Italian Conversation between
Savonarola and the Prior of San Marco, which he published in pamphlet
form for the benefit of this or a similar cause. Most admirably did
Landor write Italian, his wonderful knowledge of Latin undoubtedly
giving him the key to the soft, wooing tongue. He, of course, spoke the
language with equal correctness; but, as with most Englishmen who go to
Italy after having arrived at mature years, his pronunciation was
_proprio Inglese_.

Landor would never accept payment for his books, presenting the amount
due him either to the publisher, or, more generally, to some friend who
had been most active in aiding their publication. Few will applaud this
idiosyncrasy, the general and sensible opinion being that the laborer is
worthy of his hire: but Landor took peculiar pride in writing for fame
alone, without thought of the more tangible product of genius; and,
unlike most authors, he could well afford to indulge in this heroic
taste. Three years ago--and for the first time in his life, he
said--Landor accepted payment for a Conversation contributed to the
London Athenæum. The money had no sooner been received, than he urged,
though unsuccessfully, its acceptance upon a young American in whom he
was interested, declaring that he had no possible use for it. On another
occasion he proposed to give everything he might write to this same
American, to dispose of for the latter's benefit, and appeared grieved
when the offer was gratefully declined.

One day I was surprised by the appearance of Landor's little
waiting-maid bearing an old Florentine box of carved wood, almost as
large as herself, which she deposited on the table in obedience to her
master's wishes. She departed without vouchsafing any explanation.
Curiosity however was not long unsatisfied, for soon Giallo's white nose
peered through the door and heralded the coming of the old lion, who had
no sooner entered the room than he put into my hands a quaint old key,
saying: "I have brought you something that one of these days, when these
old bones of mine are packed away in the long box, may be of
considerable value. I have brought you what we may call, in anticipation
of a long-deferred but inevitable event, my literary remains. In that
box you will find all my notes and memoranda, together with many
unpublished verses. You can do what you like with them." Startled at
this unexpected endowment, I looked very great hesitancy, whereupon
Landor smiled, and begged me to unlock the box, as its opening would not
be fraught with evil consequences. "It is not Pandora's casket, I assure
you," he added. Turning the key and raising the lid, I discovered quite
a large collection of manuscripts, of very great interest to me of
course, but to which I had no right, nor was I the proper person with
whom to leave them. To have argued would have been useless.
Expostulation with Landor when in the white heat of a new idea was
Quixotic, so I expressed my very grateful thanks, and determined to
watch for a favorable opportunity to return the gift. I had not long to
wait, as it was not more than a month after that Landor bore them off,
with the intention of making certain selections for immediate
publication in England and returning the remainder. Time had not dealt
gently with Landor's memory of things nearest, therefore I knew that the
old Florentine box would wait in vain for its jewels. I was right: they
never came. The box since then has braved shipwreck, and now stands
beneath a modern writing-table, dark and proud of its antiquity,
telling perpetually of former noble associations. I felt relieved that
it so happened the manuscripts were not again left with me, yet I should
have been a saint had I not occasionally experienced a secret regret at
not having been forced to retain them in spite of entreaty and
propriety.

The greater part of these manuscripts have since appeared, under the
title of "Heroic Idyls, with Additional Poems," published late in 1863
by T. Cantley Newby, London.[C] This very last fruit off an old tree can
in no way add to Landor's reputation; it is interesting, however, for
having been written "within two paces of his ninetieth year," and as
showing the course of the mind's empire. Landor would have been more
heroic than these Idyls had he withheld them from publication, for it is
not cheering to see Thor cracking nuts with his most ponderous hammer.
And Landor realized as much when he wrote the following apology:--

    "You ask how I, who could converse
    With Pericles, can stoop to worse:
    How I, who once had higher aims,
    Can trifle so with epigrams.
    I would not lose the wise from view,
    But would amuse the children too:
    Besides, my breath is short and weak,
    And few must be the words I speak."

Ah! but it is a question whether the children are amused. Occasionally
there is a line with the old ring to it, a couplet seasoned with Attic
salt, but for the rest there is the body without the spirit,--there is
the well of English undefiled, but it is pumped dry! Probably the desire
to publish was never so great as during Landor's last years, when the
interests of his life had narrowed down to reading and writing, and he
had become a purely introverted man. It was then he wrote:--

    "The heaviest curse that can on mortal fall
    Is, 'Who has friends may he outlive them all!'
    This malediction has awaited me,
    Who had so many.... I could once count three."

Cursed thus, he turned to the public for the only consolation left him
on this side of the grave. It was not sufficient to write, for it is he
as the Homer of his Idyls that confesses

    "A pardonable fault: we wish for listeners
    Whether we speak or sing: the young and old
    Alike are weak in this, unwise and wise
    Cheerful and sorrowful."

Twenty years before, Landor wrote to Lady Blessington: "Once beyond
seventy, I will never write a line in verse or prose for publication. I
will be my own Gil Blas. The wisest of us are unconscious when our
faculties begin to decay." He, wisest of all, forgot his own good
resolutions; but the listeners to these latter-day Idyls were few, and
Landor had scarce collected his small audience before the lights were
blown out and the curtain fell upon the deathbed of the singer.

To express a liking for any of Landor's pictures--provided you were a
friend--was almost sufficient to cause them to be taken down and
presented to you; hence to praise anything in his presence was
exceedingly unsafe. I remember looking over a large album once belonging
to Barker, the English artist, which Landor had purchased to relieve him
of certain debts, and particularly admiring four original sketches by
Turner--two in oil and two in india-ink--that had been given by this
artist to his brother-painter. No sooner had I spoken than Landor went
in search of the scissors, and, had I not earnestly protested, would
have cut out the Turners and given them to me. Such being Landor's
disposition, one can well imagine how easily he could be imposed upon by
designing people. There is an instance of his kindly feeling so
prominent and so honorable both to himself and the object of it, that it
is but right the public should read the contents of two letters
belonging to and greatly treasured by me. They were put into my hands
nearly four years ago by Landor to do with as I pleased after his death.
The letters explain themselves.

    "8 SOUTH BANK, REGENT'S PARK,
    LONDON, March 24, 1856.

    "MY VENERABLE FRIEND,--

"Though I very gratefully appreciate the generosity of your intentions,
still I must confess that few things have ever affected me more
painfully than to see from the 'Times' of to-day my private
circumstances--the sacred domain of life--thrust as an object of
commiseration upon public discussion,--a miserable subject of public
sneers.

"My head turns giddy at the very thought, and my resignation is scarcely
able to overcome the shame. I don't know how I shall muster sufficient
resolution to appear in public ever hereafter; and I fear, with all your
good intentions, you shall have become the involuntary instrument for
driving me out of England before my time. I really scarcely can imagine
what else I have to do, unless you devise some means for healing the
wound.

"I am poor, very poor; but there was, I dare say, something honorable in
that poverty, something sacred I would say. But seeing it made the
object of a public appeal for commiseration, I feel as if everything
that was sacred in my position had undergone a profanation.

"I repeat that I respect and appreciate the nobility of your impulses,
but I regret that such a step should have been taken without my having
an idea of its possibility.

"I will say no more, but leave it with your prudence and discretion to
mitigate the blow your kindness has inflicted on me. And remain with
wonted esteem, only mingled with grief,

    "Yours very truly,

    "KOSSUTH.

    "TO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR."

Opposite the nervous yet legible scrawl of the noble and maligned
Magyar, Landor traced the following answer.

"It is impossible for me to rest until I have attempted to remove the
vexation I have caused to the man I most venerate of any upon earth.

"My noble Kossuth! 'the sacred domain of your life' is far more
extensive than your measurement. Neither your house nor your banker's
are its confines. Do not imagine that the world is ignorant of your
circumstances; it would be a crime to be indifferent to them.

"The editor of the Atlas, in announcing that he had _secured your
co-operation_, published a manifesto. I know nothing of this editor; but
so long as you contributed to the paper, I was your humble subsidiary.

"Consider how many men, wealthier than you and me, have accepted the
offers of those who came forward to indemnify the persecuted for the
demolition of their property. Ask yourself if Demosthenes or Milton, the
two most illustrious defenders of liberty, by speech and pen, would have
thrust aside the tribute which is due to such men alone. Would you dash
out the signature of one who declares you his trustee for a legacy to
your children? No, you would not. Neither will you reject the proofs of
high esteem, however manifested, which England, however debased, is
anxious to give.

"Believe me ever sincerely and affectionately yours,

    "W. S. LANDOR.

    "March 27."

Landor was essentially a hero-worshipper. His admiration for Washington
exceeded that entertained by him for any man of any time. Franklin, too,
he greatly esteemed. "Ah, if you had but another Washington and
Franklin!" he exclaimed one day. To have suffered for freedom was the
open-sesame to Landor's heart; nor did age in any way chill this noble
enthusiasm, as the letter here inserted amply proves. It was sufficient
to name Kossuth to bring fire to the old man's eye and eulogistic
volubility to his tongue.

Orsini, too, was a great favorite with him. Coming in one morning as
usual, and sitting down in the arm-chair by the fire, he took from under
his arm a small paper-covered book, saying: "I have brought you
something that I know you will like to read. Giallo and I have enjoyed
it immensely; and a better critic than Giallo is not to be found in all
Italy, though I say it who shouldn't. An approving wag of his tail is
worth all the praise of all the Quarterlies published in the United
Kingdom." Hereupon Giallo, apparently delighted at this compliment,
barked and frisked about like a creature bewitched, jumped into his
master's lap, and did not return to a quiescent state until he had
kissed his master's face. "Down, Giallo, down!" finally cried Landor.
"Where are your manners, sir? Don't you know it is very uncivil to
interrupt a conversation? And, moreover, remember never to spoil a
_tête-à-tête_." Then turning to me, Landor continued, presenting the
book, "Here it is; the _Memorie Politiche di Felice Orsini_, which you
will find vastly entertaining and far more romantic than any novel. A
very noble, brave fellow was that Orsini, and handsome too! It is a
great pity he did not succeed in his plot against that scoundrel
Napoleon, although it was not well planned, and failure was written on
the face of it." Right gladly did I read memoirs which were all that
Landor (and Giallo) claimed. It is strange that this book should be so
little known. Were students of Italian to transfer their affections from
_Le mie Prigioni_ to these _Memorie Politiche_, they would be the
gainers; for the patriotism of Silvio Pellico is but a sick and weakly
sentiment compared with the dauntless energy and unflinching
determination of Orsini. His escape from Mantua, aided by no other
friends than four sheets and four towels, and described most admirably
and in detail by him, is one of the most brilliant and perilous exploits
in the annals of prison history. Those who knew Orsini have since told
me that he was one of the most lovable of men, as he was one of the most
handsome,--full of the fire of intense and stalwart manhood, yet as
gentle as a young girl. Disappointed and wronged in his domestic
relations, a loving but wretched father, and stung to madness by his
country's servitude, whose cause he early made his own, Orsini's life
was from the beginning a tragedy. Fate seemed to have wrested from him
every form of happiness in order to make him a more desperate
conspirator. He conspired from pure love of liberty, for which at any
moment he was ready to die. Those who merely know Orsini by the last act
of his life can have no proper appreciation of the wonderful purity and
nobility of his character. In his attempt to assassinate Louis Napoleon,
he was actuated by as exalted motives as led Charlotte Corday to do a
bloody deed. Exiled, a price upon his head, deceived by those in whom he
had put faith, in despair at the state of Italian affairs, Orsini
committed what he himself, in a letter to his intended victim, Napoleon,
confessed to be _un fatale errore mentale_,--assassination being in
direct opposition to the faith and facts of his life up to the
conspiracy of the 14th of January. For this fatal error he offered his
own blood as an expiatory sacrifice. Few nobler heads than Orsini's have
bowed before the guillotine.

In "Pericles and Aspasia," Cleone has written with Landor's pen, that
"study is the bane of boyhood, the aliment of youth, the indulgence of
manhood, and the restorative of old age." Of this theory there could be
no better example than Landor's self. That life which outlasted all the
friends of its zenith was made endurable by a constant devotion to the
greatest works of the greatest men. Milton and Shakespeare were his
constant companions, by night as well as by day. "I never tire of them,"
he would say; "they are always a revelation. And how grand is Milton's
prose! quite as fine as his poetry!" He was very fond of repeating the
following celebrated lines that have the true ring to a tuneful ear as
well as to an appreciative intellect:--

    "But when God commands to take the trumpet
    And blow a dolorous or thrilling blast,
    It rests not with man's will what he shall say
    Or what he shall conceal."

"Was anything more harmonious ever written?" Landor would ask. "But
Milton, you know, is old-fashioned. I believe _I_ am old-fashioned.
However, it is rather an honor to be classed thus, if one may keep such
distinguished company." How devoted a student of Milton Landor was is
evidenced in his delightful critical conversation between Southey and
himself, wherein he declared, "Such stupendous genius, so much fancy, so
much eloquence, so much vigor of intellect never were united as in
Paradise Lost." Yet the lover is still an impartial critic, and does not
indorse all things. Quoting the charming couplet,

    "Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
    And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay,"

he says: "I would rather have written these two lines than all the
poetry that has been written since Milton's time in all the regions of
the earth." In 1861 Landor sent me the last lines he ever wrote,
addressed to the English Homer, entitled

    "MILTON IN ITALY.

    "O Milton! couldst thou rise again, and see
    The land thou lovedst in an earlier day!
    See, springing from her tomb, fair Italy
    (Fairer than ever) cast her shroud away,--
    That tightly-fastened, triply-folded shroud!
    Around her, shameful sight! crowd upon crowd,
    Nations in agony lie speechless down,
    And Europe trembles at a despot's frown."

The despot is, of course, Louis Napoleon, for Landor would never allow
that the French Emperor comprehended his epoch, and that Italian
regeneration was in any way due to the co-operation of France. In his
allegorical poem of "The gardener and the Mole," the gardener at the
conclusion of the argument chops off the mole's head, such being the
fate to which the poet destined Napoleon. No reference, however, is made
to "that rascal" in the lines to Milton inserted in the "Heroic Idyls,"
and as the printed version was, doubtless, Landor's own preference, it
is but just to insert it here:--

    "O Milton! couldst thou rise again and see
    The land thou lovedst in _thy_ earlier day
    See springing from her tomb fair Italy
    (Fairer than ever) cast her shroud away,
    That tightly-fastened, triply-folded shroud,
    _Torn by her children off their mother's face!_
    _O couldst thou see her now, more justly proud_
    _Than of an earlier and a stronger race!"_

There certainly is more unity of idea in the printed copy, but so faulty
is it in punctuation--or at least for the want of it--that one is
warranted in believing the substitution of _thy_ for _an_, in the second
line, to be an _erratum_. Though Milton visited Italy in his youth,
there is no evidence to prove that he did not love it in old age. In its
present form the line loses in sense. Nothing annoyed Landor more than
to have his manuscript "corrected," and no one's temper was ever more
tried than his in this respect; for, having an orthography peculiar to
himself, which he maintained was according to the genius of the
language, and which printers would persist in translating into the
vulgate, Landor grew to be morbidly sensitive concerning revision. It
was the more intolerable to him, because of his extreme care in the
preparation of his manuscript. Few celebrated authors have written so
clear and clean a hand; none ever sent his work to the press in a more
highly finished state. Fastidious beyond expression, the labor of
correction was unending. Even "Gebir" was subjected to revision, and at
one time I was intrusted with quite a long introduction, which, the day
after, Landor altered and sent to me the following note.

"Again the old creature comes to bother you. The enclosed is to take the
place of what I wrote yesterday, and to cancel, as you will see, what a
tolerably good critic" (Southey) "thought _too good to be thrown away_,
&c., &c. I do not think so, but certainly the beginning of 'Gebir' is
better with

    'Kings! ye athirst for conquest,' etc.

_You_ are not _athirst_ for it but _take it coolly_."

Later, this introduction passed out of my hands. Previously Landor had
written on a slip of paper now before me:--

"'Gebir' should begin thus:--

    'Hear ye the fate of Gebir!'

_Not_

    'I sing the _fates_ of Gebir,'"--

which is a correction suggested to future publishers of this poem.

It would be a hopeful sign were our young American writers inoculated
with somewhat of Landor's reverence for literature, as it was no less
than reverence that made him treat ideas with respect, and array them in
the most dignified language, thus making of every sentence a study. And
it is well that these writers should know what intense labor is required
to produce anything great or lasting. "Execution is the chariot of
genius," William Blake, the great poet-artist, has said; and it is just
this execution which is unattainable without immense application and
fastidiousness. If patience be genius,--"La patience cherche et le génie
trouve,"--and if execution be its chariot, what possible fame can there
be for the slipshod writers of to-day, who spawn columns and volumes at
so much a minute, regardless of the good name of their mother tongue,
devoid of ideas, which are the product only of brains that have been
ploughed up and sown with fruitful seed? An author's severest critic
should be himself. To be carried away by the popular current is easy and
pleasant, but some fine morning the popular man wakes up to find himself
stranded and deserted,--Nature playing queer pranks with currents
changing their beds as best suits her fancy;--for even popular taste
follows laws of progression, and grows out of one error into a less.
Pope wisely maintains that "no man ever rose to any degree of perfection
in writing but through obstinacy and an inveterate resolution against
the stream of mankind." Unless he mount the chariot of execution, his
ideas, however good, will never put a girdle round the earth. They will
halt and limp as do his own weary feet.

       *       *       *       *       *

Landor's enthusiasm for Shakespeare grew young as he grew old, and it
was his desire to bid farewell to earth with his eyes resting upon the
Shakespeare that so constantly lay open before him. Nothing excited his
indignation more than to hear little people of great pretension
carpingly criticise the man of whom he makes Southey, in a discussion
with Porson, declare, that "all the faults that ever were committed in
poetry would be but as air to earth, if we could weigh them against one
single thought or image such as almost every scene exhibits in every
drama of this unrivalled genius." In three fine lines Landor has said
even more:--

    "In poetry there is but one supreme,
    Though there are many angels round his throne,
    Mighty, and beauteous, while his face is hid."

To Landor's superior acumen, also, we owe two readings of Shakespeare
that have made intelligible what was previously "a contradictory
inconceivable." Did it ever occur to dealers in familiar quotations that
there was a deal of nonsense in the following lines as they are printed?

    "_Vaulting_ ambition that o'erleaps _itself_
    And falls on the _other side_."

"Other side of what?" exclaims Landor "It should be _its sell_. _Sell_
is _saddle_ in Spenser and elsewhere, from the Latin and Italian." Yet,
in spite of correction, every Macbeth on the stage still maintains in
stentorian tones that ambition o'erleaps _itself_, thereby demonstrating
how useless it is to look for Shakespearian scholarship in so-called
Shakespearian actors, who blindly and indolently accept theatrical
tradition.

Equally important is Landor's correction of the lines

        "And the _delighted_ spirit
    To bathe in fiery floods."

"Truly this would be a very odd species of delight. But Shakespeare
never wrote such nonsense; he wrote _belighted_ (whence our _blighted_),
struck by lightning; a fit preparation for such bathing."

The last stanza ever inscribed to Shakespeare by Landor was sent to me
with the following preface: "An old man sends the last verses he has
written, or probably he may ever write to ---- ----."

    "SHAKESPEARE IN ITALY.

    "Beyond our shores, beyond the Apennines,
    Shakespeare, from heaven came thy creative breath!
    'Mid citron grove and overarching vines
    Thy genius wept at Desdemona's death:
    In the proud sire thou badest anger cease,
    And Juliet by her Romeo sleep in peace.
    Then rose thy voice above the stormy sea,
    And Ariel flew from Prospero to thee.

    "July 1, 1860."

Dante was not one of Landor's favorites, although he was quite ready to
allow the greatness of _il gran poeta_. He had no sympathy with what he
said was very properly called a comedy. He would declare that about one
sixth only of Dante was intelligible or pleasurable. Turning to Landor's
writings, I find that in his younger days he was even less favorable to
Dante. In the "Pen_te_meron" (the author spelling it so) he, in the garb
of Petrarch, asserts that "at least sixteen parts in twenty of the
_Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_ are detestable both in poetry and principle;
the higher parts are excellent, indeed." Dante's powers of language, he
allows, "are prodigious; and, in the solitary places where he exerts his
force rightly, the stroke is irresistible. But how greatly to be pitied
must he be who can find nothing in Paradise better than sterile
theology! and what an object of sadness and consternation he who rises
up from hell like a giant refreshed!" While allowing his wonderful
originality, Landor goes so far as to call him "the great master of the
disgusting"! Dante is not sympathetic.

Yet he wrote the glorious episode of Francesca da Rimini, of which
Landor's Boccaccio says: "Such a depth of intuitive judgment, such a
delicacy of perception, exists not in any other work of human genius;
and from an author who, on almost all occasions, in this part of the
work, betrays a deplorable want of it."

Landor used often to say what Cleone has written to Aspasia,--"I do not
believe the best writers of love-poetry ever loved. How could they write
if they did? where could they collect the thoughts, the words, the
courage?" This very discouraging belief admits of argument, for there is
much proof to the contrary. Shelley and Keats could not write what they
had not felt; and Mrs. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese, the most
exquisite love-poems in the English language, came direct from the
heart. It were hardly possible to make poetry while living it; but when
the white heat of passion has passed, and hangs as a beautiful picture
on memory's walls, the artist may write his poem. If the best writers of
love-poetry have never loved, at least they have been capable of loving,
or they could not make the reader feel. Appreciation is necessary to
production. But Petrarca was such a poet as Cleone refers to. He was
happy to be theoretically miserable, that he might indite sonnets to an
unrequited passion: and who is not sensible of their insincerity? One is
inclined to include Dante in the same category, though far higher in
degree. Landor, however, has conceived the existence of a truly ardent
affection between Dante and Beatrice, and it was my good fortune to hear
him read this beautiful imaginary conversation. To witness the aged poet
throwing the pathos of his voice into the pathos of his intellect, his
eyes flooded with tears, was a scene of uncommon interest. "Ah!" said
he, while closing the book, "I never wrote anything half as good as
that, and I never can read it that the tears do not come." Landor's
voice must have been exceedingly rich and harmonious, as it then (1861)
possessed much fulness. This was the first and only time I ever heard
him read aloud one of his own Conversations.

       *       *       *       *       *

Petrarch and Boccaccio were highly esteemed by Landor, who did not
sympathize with Lord Chesterfield in his opinion that the former
deserved his _Laura_ better than his _lauro_. The best evidence of this
predilection is Landor's great work, "The Pentemeron," second only to
his greatest, "Pericles and Aspasia." Its _couleur locale_ is
marvellous. On every page there is a glimpse of cloudless blue sky, a
breath of warm sunny air, a sketch of Italian manner. The masterly
_gusto_ with which the author enters into the spirit of Italy would
make us believe him to be "the noblest Roman of them all," had he not
proved himself a better Grecian. Margaret Fuller realized this when,
after comparing the Pentemeron and Petrarca together, she wrote: "I find
the prose of the Englishman worthy of the verse of the Italian. It is a
happiness to see such marble beauty in the halls of a contemporary."

       *       *       *       *       *

I gave evidence of great surprise one day upon hearing Landor express
himself warmly in favor of Alfieri, as I had naturally concluded, from a
note appended to the Conversation between "Galileo, Milton, and a
Dominican," that he entertained a sorry opinion of this poet. Reading
the note referred to, Landor seemed to be greatly annoyed, and replied:
"This is a mistake. It was never my intention to condemn Alfieri so
sweepingly." A few days later I received the following correction.
"Keats, in whom the spirit of poetry was stronger than in any
contemporary, at home or abroad, delighted in Hellenic imagery and
mythology, displaying them admirably; but no poet came nearer than
Alfieri to the heroic, since Virgil. Disliking, as I do, prefaces and
annotations, excrescences which hang loose like the deciduous bark on a
plane-tree, I will here notice an omission of mine on Alfieri, in the
'Imaginary Conversations.' The words, '_There is not a glimpse of poetry
in his Tragedies_,' should be, as written, '_There is not an extraneous
glimpse_,' &c."

Since then Landor has addressed these lines to Alfieri:--

            "Thou art present in my sight,
    Though far removed from us, for thou alone
    Hast touched the inmost fibres of the breast,
    Since Tasso's tears made damper the damp floor
    Whereon one only light came through the bars," &c.;

thus redeeming the unintentioned slur of many years' publicity.

Landor pronounced (as must everyone else) Niccolini to be the best of
the recent Italian poets. Of Redi, whose verses taste of the rich juice
of the grape in those good old days when Tuscan vines had not become
demoralized, and wine was cheaper than water, Landor spoke fondly. Leigh
Hunt has given English readers a quaff of Redi in his rollicking
translation of "Bacchus in Tuscany," which is steeped in
"Montepulciano," "the king of all wine."

But Redi is not always bacchanalian. He has a loving, human heart as
well, which Landor has shown in a charming translation given to me
shortly after our conversation concerning this poet. "I never publish
translations," he remarked at the time; but though translations may not
be fit company for the "Imaginary Conversations," the verses from Redi
are more than worthy of an abiding place here.

    "Ye gentle souls! ye love-devoted fair!
      Who, passing by, to Pity's voice incline,
    O stay awhile and hear me; then declare
      If there was ever grief that equals mine.

    "There was a woman to whose sacred breast
      Faith had retired, where Honor fixt his throne,
    Pride, though upheld by Virtue she represt....
      Ye gentle souls! that woman was my own.

    "Beauty was more than beauty in her face,
      Grace was in all she did, in all she said.
    In sorrow as in pleasure there was grace....
      Ye gentle souls! that gentle soul is fled."

FOOTNOTES:

[C] Out of three hundred and forty-eight pages, sixty-eight are devoted
to Latin verses.




TO-MORROW.


    'Tis late at night, and in the realm of sleep
          My little lambs are folded like the flocks;
          From room to room I hear the wakeful clocks
          Challenge the passing hour, like guards that keep
    Their solitary watch on tower and steep;
          Far off I hear the crowing of the cocks,
          And through the opening door that time unlocks
          Feel the fresh breathing of To-morrow creep.
    To-morrow! the mysterious, unknown guest,
          Who cries aloud: "Remember Barmecide,
          And tremble to be happy with the rest!"
    And I make answer: "I am satisfied;
          I dare not ask; I know not what is best;
          God hath already said what shall betide."




DOCTOR JOHNS.


LVIII.

A letter from Reuben indeed has come; but not for Miss Adèle. The Doctor
is glad of the relief its perusal will give him. Meantime Miss Eliza, in
her stately, patronizing manner, and with a coolness that was worse than
a sneer, says, "I hope you have pleasant news from your various friends
abroad, Miss Maverick?"

Adèle lifted her eyes with a glitter in them that for a moment was
almost serpent-like; then, as if regretting her show of vexation, and
with an evasive reply, bowed her head again to brood over the strange
suspicions that haunted her. Miss Johns, totally unmoved,--thinking all
the grief but a righteous dispensation for the sin in which the poor
child had been born,--next addressed the Doctor, who had run his eye
with extraordinary eagerness through the letter of his son.

"What does Reuben say, Benjamin?"

"His 'idols,' again, Eliza; 't is always the 'flesh-pots of Egypt.'"

And the Doctor reads: "There is just now rare promise of a good venture
in our trade at one of the ports of Sicily, and we have freighted two
ships for immediate despatch. At the last moment our supercargo has
failed us, and Brindlock has suggested that I go myself; it is short
notice, as the ship is in the stream and may sail to-morrow, but I
rather fancy the idea, and have determined to go. I hope you will
approve. Of course, I shall have no time to run up to Ashfield to say
good by. I shall try for a freight back from Naples, otherwise shall
make some excuse to run across the Straits for a look at Vesuvius and
the matters thereabout. St. Paul, you know, voyaged in those seas, which
will interest you in my trip. I dare say I shall find where he landed:
it's not far from Naples, Mrs. Brindlock tells me. Give love to the
people who ever ask about me in Ashfield. I enclose a check of five
hundred dollars for parish contingencies till I come back; hoping to
find you clean out of harness by that time." (The Doctor cannot for his
life repress a little smile here.) "Tell Adèle I shall see her blue
Mediterranean at last, and will bring her back an olive-leaf, if I find
any growing within reach. Tell Phil I love him, and that he deserves all
the good he will surely get in this world, or in any other. Ditto for
Rose. Ditto for good old Mrs. Elderkin, whom I could almost kiss for the
love she's shown me. What high old romps haven't we had in her garden!
Eh, Adèle? (I suppose you'll show her this letter, father.)

"Good by, again.

"N. B. We hope to make a cool thirty thousand out of this venture!"

Adèle had half roused herself at the hearing of her name, but the
careless, jocular mention of it, (so it seemed at least,) in contrast
with the warmer leave-taking of other friends, added a new pang to her
distress. She wished, for a moment, that she had never written her
letter of thanks. What if she wished--in that hour of terrible suspicion
and of vain search after any object upon which her future happiness
might rest--that she had never been born? Many a one has given hearty
utterance to that wish with less cause. Many a one of those just
tottering into childhood will live to give utterance to the same. But
the great wheel of fate turns ever relentlessly on. It drags us up from
the nether mysterious depths; we sport and struggle and writhe and
rejoice, as it bears us into the flashing blaze of life's meridian;
then, with awful surety, it hurries us down, drags us under, once more
into the abysses of silence and of mystery. Happy he who reads such
promise as he passes in the lights fixed forever on the infinite depths
above, that the silence and the mystery shall be as welcome as sleep to
the tired worker!

"It will be of service to Reuben, I think, Benjamin," said Aunt Eliza;
"I quite approve,"--and slipped away noiselessly.

The Doctor was still musing,--the letter in his hand,--when Adèle rose,
and, approaching him, said in her gentlest way, "It's a great grief to
you, New Papa, I know it is, but 'God orders all things well,'--except
for me."

"Adaly! my child, I am shocked!"

She had roused the preacher in him unwittingly.

"I can't listen now," said she, impatiently, "and tell me,--you
must,--did papa give you the name of this--new person he is to marry?"

"Yes, Adaly, yes," but he has forgotten it; and, searching for the
previous letter, he presently finds it, and sets it before
her,--"Mademoiselle Chalet."

"Chalet!" screams she. "There is some horrible mistake, New Papa. More
than ever I am in the dark,--in the dark!" And with a hasty adieu she
rushed away, taking her course straight for the house of that outlawed
woman, with whom now, more than ever, she must have so many sympathies
in common. Her present object, however, was to learn if any more
definite evidence could be found that the deceased lady--mother still,
in her thought--bore the name of Chalet. She found the evidence. One or
two little books (devotional books they prove to be), which the mistress
of the house had thrown by as valueless, were brought out, upon the
fly-leaves of which the keen eyes of Adèle detected the name,--crossed
and recrossed indeed, as if the poor woman would have destroyed all
traces of her identity,--but still showing when held to the light a
portion of the name she so cherished in her heart,--Chalet.

Adèle was more than ever incensed at thought of the delusion or the
deception of her father. But, by degrees, her indignation yielded to her
affection. He was himself to come, he would make it clear; this new
mother--whom she was sure she should not love--was to remain; the Doctor
had told her this much. She was glad of it. Yet she found in that fact a
new proof that this person could not be her true mother. _She_ would
have rushed to her arms; no fear of idle tongues could have kept her
back. And though she yearned for the time when she should be clasped
once more in her father's arms, she dreaded the thought of crossing the
seas with him upon such empty pilgrimage. She half wished for some
excuse to detain her here,--some fast anchor by which her love might
cling, within reach of that grave where her holier affections had
centred.

This wish was confirmed by the more cordial manner in which she was
received by the Elderkins, and, indeed, by the whole village, so soon as
the Doctor had made known the fact--as he did upon the earliest
occasion--that Mr. Maverick was speedily to come for Adèle, and to
restore her to the embraces of a mother whom she had not seen for years.

Even the spinster, at the parsonage, was disposed to credit something to
the rigid legal aspects which the affair was taking, and to find in them
a shelter for her wounded dignities. Nor did she share the inquietude of
the Doctor at thought of the new and terrible religious influences to
which Adèle must presently be exposed; under her rigid regard, this
environment of the poor victim with all the subtlest influences of the
Babylonish Church was but a proper and orderly retribution under
Providence for family sins and the old spurning of the law. 'T was
right, in her exalted view, that she should struggle and agonize and
wrestle with Satan for much time to come, before she should fully
cleanse her bedraggled skirts of all taint of heathenism, and stand upon
the high plane with herself, among the elect.

"It is satisfactory to reflect, Benjamin," said she, "that during her
residence with us the poor girl has been imbued with right principles;
at least I trust so."

And as she spoke, the exemplary old lady plucked a little waif of down
from her bombazine dress, and snapped it away jauntily upon the
air,--even as, throughout her life, she had snapped from her the
temptations of the world. And when, in his Scripture reading that very
night, the Doctor came upon the passage "_Wo unto you, Pharisees!_" the
mind of the spinster was cheerfully intent upon the wretched sinners of
Judæa.


LIX.

THE news of Maverick's prospective arrival, and the comments of the good
Doctor,--as we have said,--shed a new light upon the position of Adèle.
Old Squire Elderkin, with a fatherly interest, was not unaffected by it;
indeed, the Doctor had been communicative with him to a degree that had
enlisted very warmly the old gentleman's sympathies.

"Better late than never, Doctor," had been his comment; and he had
thought it worth his while to drop a hint or two in the ear of Phil.

"I say, Phil, my boy, I gave you a word of caution not long ago in
regard to--to Miss Maverick. There were some bad stories afloat, my boy;
but they are cleared up,--quite cleared up, Phil."

"I'm glad of it, sir," says Phil.

"So am I,--so am I, my boy. She's a fine girl, Phil, eh?"

"I think she is, sir."

"The deuse you do! Well, and what then?"

Phil blushed, but the smile that came on his face was not a hearty one.

"Well, Phil?"

"I said she was a fine girl, sir," said he, measuredly.

"But she's an uncommon fine girl, Phil, eh?"

"I think she is, sir."

"Well?"

Phil was twirling his hat in an abstracted way between his knees. "I
don't think she's to be won very easily," said he at last.

"Nonsense, Phil! Faint heart never won. Make a bold push for it, my boy.
The best birds drop at a quick shot."

"Do they?" said Phil, with a smile of incredulity that the old gentleman
did not comprehend.

He found, indeed, a much larger measure of hope in a little hint that
was let fall by Rose two days after. "I wouldn't despair if I were you,
Phil," she had whispered in his ear.

Ah, those quiet, tender, sisterly words of encouragement, of cheer, of
hope! Blest is the man who can enjoy them! and accursed must he be who
scorns them, or who can never win them.

Phil, indeed, had never given over most devoted and respectful
attentions to Adèle; but he had shown them latterly with a subdued and
half-distrustful air, which Adèle with her keen insight had not been
slow to understand. Trust a woman for fathoming all the shades of doubt
which overhang the addresses of a lover!

Yet it was not easy for Phil, or indeed for any other, to understand or
explain the manner of Adèle at this time. Elated she certainly was in
the highest degree at the thought of meeting and welcoming her father;
and there was an exuberance in her spirits when she talked of it, that
seemed almost unnatural; but the coming shadow of the new mother whom
she was bound to welcome dampened all. The Doctor indeed had warned her
against the Romish prejudices of this newly found relative, and had
entreated her to cling by the faith in which she had been reared; but it
was no fear of any such conflict that oppressed her;--creeds all
vanished under the blaze of that natural affection which craved a
motherly embrace and which foresaw only falsity.

What wonder if her thought ran back, in its craving, to the days long
gone,--to the land where the olive grew upon the hills, and the sunshine
lay upon the sea,--where an old godmother, with withered hands clasped
and raised, lifted up her voice at nightfall and chanted,--

    "O sanctissima,
    O piissima,
    Dulcis virgo Maria,
    Mater amata,
    Intemerata,
    Ora, ora, pro nobis!"

The Doctor would have been shocked had he heard the words tripping from
the tongue of Adèle; yet, for her, they had no meaning save as
expressive of a deep yearning for motherly guidance and motherly
affection.

Mrs. Elderkin, with her kindly instinct, had seen the perplexity of
Adèle, and had said to her one day, "Ady, my dear, is the thought not
grateful to you that you will meet your mother once more, and be clasped
in her arms?"

"If I could,--if I could!" said Adèle, with a burst of tears.

"But you will, my child, you will. The Doctor has shown us the letters
of your father. Nothing can be clearer. Even now she must be longing to
greet you."

"Why does she not come, then?"--with a tone that was almost taunting.

"But, Adèle, my dear, there may be reasons of which you do not know or
which you could not understand."

"I could,--I do!" said Adèle, with spirit mastering her grief. "'T is
not my mother, my true mother; she is in the graveyard; I know it!"

"My dear child, do not decide hastily. We love you; we all love you. You
know that. And whatever may happen, you shall have a home with us. I
will be a mother to you, Adèle."

The girl kissed her good hostess, and the words lingered on her ear long
after nightfall. Why not her mother? What parent could be more kind?
What home more grateful? And should she bring dishonor to it then? Could
she be less sensitive to that thought than her father had already shown
himself? She perceives, indeed, that within a short time, and since the
later communications from her father, the manner of those who had looked
most suspiciously upon her has changed. But they do not know the secret
of that broidered kerchief,--the secret of that terrible death-clasp,
which she never, never can forget. She will be true to her own sense of
honor; she will be true, too, to her own faith,--the faith in which she
has been reared,--whatever may be the persuasions of that new relative
beyond the seas whom she so dreads to meet.

Indeed, it is with dreary anticipations that she forecasts now her
return to that _belle France_ which has so long borne olive-branches
along its shores for welcome; she foresees struggle, change,
hypocrisies, may be,--who can tell?--and she begins to count the weeks
of her stay amid the quiet of Ashfield in the same spirit in which
youngsters score off the remaining days of the long vacation. Adèle
finds herself gathering, and pressing within the leaves of some
cherished book, little sprays of dead bloom that shall be, in the dim
and mysterious future, mementoes of the walks, the frolics, the joys
that have belonged to this staid New England home. From the very
parsonage door she has brought away a sprig of a rampant sweet-brier
that has grown there this many a year, and its delicate leaflets are
among her chiefest treasures.

More eagerly than ever she listens to the kindly voices that greet her
and speak cheer to her in the home of the Elderkins,--voices which she
feels bitterly will soon be heard no more by her. Even the delicate and
always respectful attentions of Phil have an added, though a painful
charm, since they are so soon to have an end. She knows that she will
remember him always, though his tenderest words can waken no hopes of a
brighter future for her. She even takes him partially into her
confidence, and, strolling with him down the street one day, she decoys
him to the churchyard gate, where she points out to him the stone she
had placed over the grave that was so sacred to her.

"Phil," said she, "you have always been full of kindness for me. When I
am gone, have a care of that stone and grave, please, Phil. My best
friend lies there."

"I don't think you know your best friends," stammered Phil.

"I know you are one," said Adèle, calmly, "and that I can trust you to
do what I ask about this grave. Can I, Phil?"

"You know you can, Adèle; but I don't like this talk of your going, as
if you were never to be among us again. Do you think you can be happiest
yonder with strangers, Adèle?"

"It's not--where I can be happiest, Phil; I don't ask myself that
question; I fear I never can";--and her lips trembled as she said it.

"You can,--you ought," burst out Phil, fired at sight of her emotion,
and would have gone on bravely and gallantly, may be, with the passion
that was surging in him, if a look of hers and a warning finger had not
stayed him.

"We'll talk no more of this, Phil"; and her lips were as firm as iron
now.

Both of them serious and silent for a while; until at length Adèle, in
quite her old manner, says: "Of course, Phil, father may bring me to
America again some day; and if so, I shall certainly beg for a little
visit in Ashfield. It would be very ungrateful in me not to remember the
pleasant times I've had here."

But Phil cannot so deftly change the color of his talk; his chattiness
has all gone from him. Nor does it revive on reaching home. Good Mrs.
Elderkin says, "What makes you so crusty, Phil?"


LX.

Maverick arrives, as he had promised to do, some time in early July;
comes up from the city without announcing himself in advance; and,
leaving the old coach, which still makes its periodical trips from the
river, a mile out from the town, strolls along the highway. He remembers
well the old outline of the hills; and the straggling hedge-rows, the
scattered granite boulders, the whistling of a quail from a near fence
in the meadow, all recall the old scenes which he knew in boyhood. At a
solitary house by the wayside a flaxen-haired youngster is blowing off
soap-bubbles into the air,--with obstreperous glee whenever one rises
above the house-tops,--while the mother, with arms akimbo, looks
admiringly from the open window. It was the home to which the feet of
Adèle had latterly so often wandered.

Maverick is anxious for a word with the Doctor before his interview with
Adèle even. He does not know her present home; but he is sure he can
recall the old parsonage, in whose exterior, indeed, there have been no
changes for years. The shade of the embowering elms is grateful as he
strolls on into the main street of the town. It is early afternoon, and
there are few passers-by. Here and there a blind is coyly turned, and a
sly glance cast upon the stranger. A trio of school-boys look
wonderingly at his foreign air and dress. A few loiterers upon the
tavern steps--instructed, doubtless, by the stage-driver, who has duly
delivered his portmanteau--remark upon him as he passes.

And now at last he sees the old porch,--the diamond lights in the door.
Twenty and more years ago, and he had lounged there, as the pretty
Rachel drove up in the parson's chaise. The same rose-brier is nodding
its untrimmed boughs by the door. From the open window above he catches
a glimpse of a hard, thin face, with spectacles on nose, that scans him
curiously. The Doctor's hat and cane are upon the table at the foot of
the stairs within. He taps with his knuckles upon the study-door,--and
again the two college mates are met together. At sight of the visitor,
whom he recognizes at a glance, the heart of the old man is stirred by a
little of the old youthful feeling.

"Maverick!" and he greets him with open hand.

"Johns, God bless you!"

The parson was white-haired, and was feeble to a degree that shocked
Maverick; while the latter was still erect and prim, and, with his gray
hair carefully brushed to conceal his growing baldness, appeared in
excellent preservation. His coquettings for sixty years with the world,
the flesh, and the Devil had not yet reduced his _phisique_ to that
degree of weakness which the multiplied spiritual wrestlings had
entailed upon the good Doctor. The minister recognized this with a look
rather of pity than of envy, and may possibly have bethought himself of
that Dives who "in his lifetime received good things," but "now is
tormented."

Yet he ventured upon no warning; there is, indeed, a certain assured
manner about the man of the world who has passed middle age, which a
country parson, however good or earnest he may be, would no more attempt
to pierce than he would attempt a thrust of his pen through ice.

Their conversation, after the first greetings, naturally centres upon
Adèle. Maverick is relieved to find that she knows, even now, the worst;
but he is grievously pained to learn that she is still in doubt, by
reason of that strange episode which had grown out of the presence and
death of Madame Arles,--an episode which, even now, he is at a loss to
explain.

"She will be unwilling to return with me then," said Maverick, in a
troubled manner.

"No," said the Doctor, "she expects that. You will find in her,
Maverick, a beautiful respect for your authority; and, I think, a still
higher respect for the truth."

So it was with disturbed and conflicting feelings that Maverick made his
way to the present home of Adèle.

The windows and doors of the Elderkin mansion were all open upon that
July day. Adèle had seen him, even as he entered the little gate, and,
recognizing him on the instant, had rushed down to meet him in the hall.

"Papa! papa!" and she had buried her face upon his bosom.

"Adèle, darling! you are glad to welcome me then?"

"Delighted, papa."

And Maverick kissed, again and again, that fair face of which he was so
proud.

We recoil from the attempt to transcribe the glowing intimacy of their
first talk.

After a time, Maverick says, "You will be glad to return with me,--glad
to embrace again your mother?"

"My own, true mother?" said Adèle, the blood running now swift over
cheek and brow.

"Your own, Adèle,--your own! As God is true!"

Adèle grows calm,--an unwonted calmness. "Tell me how she looks, papa,"
said she.

"Your figure, Adèle; not so tall, perhaps, but slight like you; and her
hair,--you have her hair, darling (and he kissed it). Your eye too, for
color, with a slight, hardly noticeable cast in it." And as Adèle turned
an inquiring glance upon him, he exclaimed: "You have that too, my
darling, as you look at me now."

Adèle, still calm, says: "I know it, papa; I have seen her. Do not
deceive me. She died in these arms, papa!"--and with that her calmness
is gone. She can only weep upon his shoulder.

"But, Adèle, child, this cannot be; do not trust to so wild a fancy. You
surely believe me, darling!"

Had she argued the matter, he would have been better satisfied. She did
not, however. Her old tranquillity came again.

"I will go with you, papa, cheerfully," said she.

It was only too evident to Maverick that there was a cause of distrust
between them. Under all of Adèle's earnest demonstrations of affection,
which were intensely grateful to him, there was still a certain apparent
reserve of confidence, as if some great inward leaning of her heart
found no support in him or his. This touched him to the quick. The
Doctor--had he unfolded the matter to him fully--would have called it,
may be, the sting of retribution. Nor was Maverick at all certain that
the shadowy doubt which seemed to rest upon the mind of Adèle with
respect to the identity of her mother was the sole cause of this secret
reserve of confidence. It might be, he thought, that her affections were
otherwise engaged, and that the change to which she assented with so
little fervor would be at the cost of other ties to which he was a
stranger.

On this score he consulted with the Doctor. As regarded Reuben, there
could be no doubt. Whatever tie may have existed there was long since
broken. With respect to Phil Elderkin the parson was not so certain.
Maverick had been attracted by his fine, frank manner, and was not blind
to his capital business capacities and prospects. If the happiness of
Adèle were in question, he could entertain the affair. He even ventured
to approach the topic--coyly as he could--in a talk with Adèle; and she,
as the first glimmer of his meaning dawned upon her, says, "Don't
whisper it, papa. It can never be."

And so Maverick--not a little disconcerted at the thought that he cannot
now, as once, fathom all the depths of his child's sensibilities--sets
himself resolutely to the work of preparation for departure. His
_affaires_ may keep him a month, and involve a visit to one or two of
the principal cities; then, ho for _la belle France_! Adèle certainly
lends a cheerful assent. He cannot doubt--with those repeated kisses on
his cheek and brow--her earnest filial affection; and if her sentiment
slips beyond his control, or parries all his keenness of vision, what
else has a father, verging upon sixty, to expect in a daughter, tenderly
affectionate as she may be? Maverick's philosophy taught him to "take
the world as it is." Only one serious apprehension of disquietude
oppressed him; the doubts and vagaries of Adèle would clear themselves
under the embrace of Julie; but in respect to the harmony of their
religious beliefs he had grave doubts. There had grown upon Adèle, since
he had last seen her, a womanly dignity, which even a mother must
respect; and into that dignity--into the woof and warp of it--were
inwrought all her religious sympathies. Was his home yonder, across the
seas, to become the scene of struggles about creeds? It certainly was
not the sort of domestic picture he had foreshadowed to himself at
twenty-five. But at sixty a man blows bubbles no longer--except that of
his own conceit. The heart of Maverick was not dead in him; a kiss of
Adèle wakened a thrilling, delicious sensation there, of which he had
forgotten his capability. He followed her graceful step and figure with
an eye that looked beyond and haunted the past--vainly, vainly! Her
"Papa!"--sweetly uttered--stirred sensibilities in him that amazed
himself, and seemed like the phantoms of dreams he dreamed long ago.

But in the midst of Maverick's preparations for departure a letter came
to hand from Mrs. Maverick, which complicated once more the situation.


LXI.

The mother has read the letter of her child,--the letter in which appeal
had been made to the father in behalf of the "unworthy" one whom the
daughter believed to be sleeping in her grave. The tenderness of the
appeal smote the poor woman to the heart. It bound her to the child she
scarce had seen by bonds into which her whole moral being was knitted
anew. But we must give the letter entire, as offering explanations which
can in no way be better set forth. The very language kindles the ardor
of Adèle. Her own old speech again, with the French echo of her
childhood in every line.

"_Mon cher Monsieur_,"--in this way she begins; for her religious
severities, if not her years, have curbed any disposition to explosive
tenderness,--"I have received the letter of our child, which was
addressed to you. I cannot tell you the feelings with which I have read
it. I long to clasp her to my heart. And she appeals to you, for
me,--the dear child! Yes, you have well done in telling her that I was
unworthy (_méchante_). It is true,--unworthy in forgetting
duty,--unworthy in loving too well. O Monsieur! if I could live over
again that life,--that dear young life among the olive orchards! But the
good Christ (thank Him!) leads back the repentant wanderers into the
fold of His Church.

    'Laus tibi, Christe!'

"And the poor child believes that I am in my grave! May be that were
better for her and better for me. But no, I shall clasp her to my heart
once more,--she, the poor babe! But I forget myself; it is a woman's
letter I have been reading. What earnestness! what maturity! what
dignity! what tenderness! And will she be as tender to the living as to
the erring one whom she believes dead? My heart stops when I ask myself.
Yes, I know she will. The Blessed Virgin whispers me that she will, and
I fly to greet her! A month, two months, three months, four months?--It
is an age.

"Monsieur! I cannot wait. I must take ship--sail--wings (if I could find
them), and go to meet my child. Until I do there is a tempest in my
brain--heart--everywhere. You are surprised, Monsieur, but there is
another reason why I should go to this land where Adèle has lived. Do
you wish to know it? Listen, then, Monsieur!

"Do you know who this poor sufferer was whom our child had learned so to
love, who died in her arms, who sleeps in the graveyard there, and of
whom Adèle thinks as of a mother? I have inquired, I have searched high
and low, I have fathomed all. Ah, my poor, good sister Marie! Only
Marie! You have never known her. In those other days at dear Arles she
was too good for you to know her. Yet even then she was a guardian
angel,--a guardian too late. _Mea culpa! Mea culpa!_

"I know it can be only Marie; I know it can be only she, who sleeps
under the sod in Ash----(_ce nom m'échappe_).

"Listen again: in those early, bitter charming days, when you, Monsieur,
knew the hillsides and the drives about our dear old town of Arles, poor
Marie was away; had she been there, I had never listened, as I did
listen, to the words you whispered in my ear. Only when it was too late,
she came. Poor, good Marie! how she pleaded with me! How her tender,
good face spoke reproaches to me! If I was the pride of our household,
she was the angel. She it was, who, knowing the worst, said, 'Julie,
this must end!' She it was who labored day and night to set me free from
the wicked web that bound me. I reproached her, the poor, good Marie, in
saying that she was the plainer, that she had no beauty, that she was
devoured with envy. But the Blessed Virgin was working ever by her side.
Whatever doubts you may have entertained of me, Monsieur,--she created
them; whatever suspicions tortured you,--she fed them, but always with
the holiest of motives. And when shame came, as it did come, the poor
Marie would have screened me,--would have carried the odium herself.
Good Marie! the angels have her in keeping!

"Listen again, Monsieur! When that story, that false story, of the death
of my poor child, came to light in the journals, who but Marie should
come to me--deceived herself as I was deceived--and say, 'Julie, dear
one, God has taken the child in mercy; there is no stigma can rest upon
you in the eyes of the world. Live now as the Blessed Magdalen lived
when Christ had befriended her.' And by her strength I was made strong;
the Blessed Virgin be thanked!

"Finally, it came to her knowledge one day,--the dear Marie!--that the
rumor of the death was untrue,--that the babe was living,--that the poor
child had been sent over the seas to your home, Monsieur. Well, I was
far away in the East. Does Marie tell me? No, the dear one! She writes
me, that she is going 'over seas,'--tired of _la belle France_,--she who
loved it so dearly! And she went,--to watch, to pray, to console. And I,
the mother!--_Mon Dieu, Monsieur_, the words fail me. No wonder our
child loved her; no wonder she seems a mother to her!

"Listen yet again, Monsieur. My poor sister died yonder, in that
heretical land,--may be without absolution.

    'Ave Martha margarita
    In corona Jesu sita,
    Tam in morte quam in vita
    Sis nobis propitia!'

I must go, if it be only to find her grave, and to secure her burial in
some consecrated spot. She waits for me,--her ghost, her spirit,--I must
go; the holy water must be sprinkled; the priestly rites be said. Marie,
poor Marie, I will not fail you.

"Monsieur, I must go!--not alone to greet our child, but to do justice
to my sainted sister! Listen well! All that has been devotional in my
poor life centres here! I must go,--I must do what I may to hallow my
poor sister's grave. Adèle will not give up her welcome surely, if I am
moved by such religious purpose. She, too, must join me in an _Ave
Maria_ over that resting-place of the departed.

"I shall send this letter by the overland and British mail, that it may
come to you very swiftly. It will come to you while you are with the
poor child,--our Adèle. Greet her for me as warmly as you can. Tell her
I shall hope, God willing, to bring her into the bosom of his Holy
Church Catholic. I shall try and love her, though she remain a heretic;
but this will not be.

"If I can enough curb myself, I shall wait for your answer, Monsieur;
but it is necessary that I go yonder. Look for me; kiss our child for
me. And if you ever prayed, Monsieur, I should say, pray for

    "_Votre amie_,

    "JULIE."

The letter is of the nature of a revelation to Adèle; her doubts
respecting Madame Arles vanish on the instant. The truth, as set forth
in her mother's language, blazes upon her mind like a flame. She loves
the grave none the less, but the mother by far the more. She, too,
wishes to greet her amid the scenes which she has known so long. Nor is
Maverick himself averse to this new disposition of affairs, if indeed he
possessed any power (which he somewhat doubts) of readjusting it. Seeing
the kindly intentions toward Adèle, and the tolerant feeling (to say the
least) with which Mrs. Maverick will be met by these friends of the
daughter, he trusts that the mother's interviews with the Doctor, and a
knowledge of the kindly influences under which Adèle has grown up, may
lessen the danger of a religious altercation between mother and child,
which has been his great bugbear in view of their future association.

A man of the world, like Maverick, naturally takes this common-sense
view of religious differences; why not compound matters, he thinks; and
he hints as much quietly to the parson. The old gentleman's spirit is
stirred to its depths by the intimation; like all earnest zealots, he
recognizes one only unswerving rule of faith, and that the faith in
which he has been reared. They who hold conflicting doctrines must
yield,--yield absolutely,--or there is no safety for them. In his eye
there was but one strait gate to the Celestial City, and that any
wearing the furbelows of Rome should ever enter thereat could only come
of God's exceeding mercy; for himself, it must always be a duty to cry
aloud to such to strip themselves clean of their mummery, and do works
"meet for repentance."

Adèle, after her first period of exultation over the recent news is
passed, relapses--perhaps by reason of its excess--into something of her
old vague doubt and apprehension of coming evil. The truth--if it be
truth--is so strange!--so mysteriously strange that she shall indeed
clasp her mother to her heart; the grave yonder is so real! and that
fearful embrace in death so present to her! Or it may be an anticipation
of the fearful spiritual estrangement that must ensue, and of which she
seems to find confirmation in the earnest talk and gloomy forebodings of
the Doctor.

Maverick effects a diversion by proposing a jaunt of travel, in which
Rose shall be their companion. Adèle accepts the scheme with delight,--a
delight, after all, which lies as much in the thought of watching the
eager enjoyment of Rose as in any pleasant distractions of her own. The
pleasure of Maverick is by no means so great as in that trip of a few
years back. Then he had for companion an enthusiastic girl, to whom life
was fresh, and all the clouds that seemed to rest upon it so shadowy,
that each morning sun lifting among the mountains dispersed them
utterly.

Now, Adèle showed the thoughtfulness of a woman,--her enthusiasms held
in check by a more calm estimate of the life that opened before
her,--her sportiveness overborne by a soberness, which, if it gave
dignity, gave also a womanly gravity. Yet she did not lack filial
devotion; she admired still that easy world-manner of his which had once
called out her enthusiastic regard, but now queried in her secret heart
if its acquisition had not involved cost of purity of conscience. She
loved him too,--yes, she loved him; and her evening and morning kiss and
embrace were reminders to him of a joy he might have won, but had
not,--of a home peace that might have been his, but whose image now only
lifted above his horizon like some splendid mirage crowded with floating
fairy shapes, and like the mirage melted presently into idle vapor.

It was a novel experience for Maverick to find himself (as he did time
and again upon this summer trip in New England) sandwiched, of a Sunday,
between his two blooming companions and some sober-sided deacon, in the
pew of a country meeting-house. How his friend Papiol would have stared!
And the suggestion, coming to him with the buzz of a summer fly through
the open windows, did not add to his devotional sentiment. Yet Maverick
would follow gravely the scramble of the singers through the appointed
hymn with a sober self-denial, counting the self-denial a virtue. We all
make memoranda of the small religious virtues when the large ones are
missing.

Upon the return to Ashfield there is found a new letter from Madam
Maverick. She can restrain herself no longer. Under the advices of her
brother, she will, with her maid, take the first safe ship leaving
Marseilles for New York. She longs to bring Adèle with herself, by
special consecration, under the guardianship of the Holy Virgin.

The Doctor is greatly grieved in view of the speedy departure of Adèle,
and tenfold grieved when Maverick lays before him the letter of the
mother, and he sees the fiery zeal which the poor child must confront.

Over and over in those last interviews he seeks to fortify her faith; he
warns her against the delusions, the falsities, the idolatries of Rome;
he warns her to distrust a religion of creeds, of human authority, of
traditions. Christ, the Bible,--these are the true monitors; and "Mind,
Adaly," says he, "hold fast always to the Doctrine of the Westminster
Divines. That is sound,--that is sound!"


LXII.

Reuben went with a light heart upon his voyage. The tender memories of
Ashfield were mostly lived down. (Had the letter of Adèle ever reached
him, it might have been far different.) Rose, Phil, the Tourtelots, the
Tew partners (still worrying through a green old age), the
meeting-house, even the Doctor himself and Adèle, seemed to belong to a
sphere whose interests were widely separate from his own, and in which
he should appear henceforth only as a casual spectator. The fascinations
of his brilliant business successes had a firm grip upon him. He
indulges himself, indeed, from time to time, with the fancy that some
day, far off now, he will return to the scenes of his boyhood, and
astonish some of the old landholders by buying them out at a fabulous
price, and by erecting a "castle" of his own, to be enlivened by the
fairy graces of some sylph not yet fairly determined upon. Surely not
Rose, who would hardly be equal to the grandeur of his proposed
establishment, if she were not already engrossed by that "noodle" (his
thought expressing itself thus wrathfully) of an assistant minister.
Adèle,--and the name has something in it that electrifies, in spite of
himself,--Adèle, if she ever overcomes her qualms of conscience, will
yield to the tender persuasions of Phil. "Good luck to him!"--and he
says this, too, with a kind of wrathful glee.

Still, he builds his cloud castles; some one must needs inhabit them.
Some paragon of refinement and of beauty will one day appear, for whose
tripping feet his wealth will lay down a path of pearls and gold. The
lonely, star-lit nights at sea encourage such phantasms; and the break
of the waves upon the bow, with their myriad of phosphorescent sparkles,
cheats and illumines the fancy. We will not follow him throughout his
voyage. On a balmy morning of July he wakes with the great cliff of
Gibraltar frowning on him. After this come light, baffling winds, and
for a week he looks southward upon the mysterious, violet lift of the
Barbary shores, and pushes slowly eastward into the blue expanse of the
Mediterranean. In the Sicilian ports he is abundantly successful. He has
ample time to cross over to Naples, to ascend Vesuvius, and to explore
Herculaneum and Pompeii. But he does not forget the other side of the
beautiful bay, Baiæ and Pozzuoli. He takes, indeed, a healthful pleasure
in writing to the Doctor a description of this latter, and of his walk
in the vicinity of the great seaport where St. Paul must have landed
from his ship of the Castor and Pollux, on his way from Syracuse. But he
does not tell the Doctor that, on the same evening, he attended an opera
at the San Carlo in Naples, of which the ballet, if nothing else, would
have called down the good man's anathema.

An American of twenty-five, placed for the first time upon the sunny
pavements of Naples, takes a new lease of life,--at least of its
imaginative part. The beautiful blue stretch of sea, the lava streets,
the buried towns and cities, the baths and ruins of Baiæ, the burning
mountain, piling its smoke and fire into the serene sky, the memories of
Tiberius, of Cicero, of Virgil,--all these enchant him. And beside these
are the things of to-day,--the luscious melons, the oranges, the figs,
the war-ships lying on the bay, the bloody miracle of St. Januarius, the
Lazzaroni upon the church steps, the processions of friars, and always
the window of his chamber, looking one way upon blue Capri, and the
other upon smouldering Vesuvius.

At Naples Reuben hears from the captain of the Meteor--in which good
ship he has made his voyage, and counts upon making his return--that the
vessel can take up half her cargo at a better freight by touching at
Marseilles. Whereupon Reuben orders him to go thither, promising to join
him at that port in a fortnight. A fortnight only for Rome, for
Florence, for Pisa, for the City of Palaces, and then the marvellous
Cornice road along the shores of the sea. Terracina brought back to him
the story of Mr. Alderman Popkins and the Principessa, and the bandits;
after this came the heights of Albano and Soracte, and there, at last,
the Tiber, the pyramid tomb, the great church dome, the stone pines of
the Janiculan hill,--Rome itself. Reuben was not strong or curious in
his classics; the galleries and the churches took a deeper hold upon him
than the Forum and the ruins. He wandered for hours together under the
arches of St. Peter's. He wished he might have led the Doctor along its
pavement into the very presence of the mysteries of the Scarlet Woman of
Babylon. He wished Miss Almira, with her saffron ribbons, might be
there, sniffing at her little vial of salts, and may be singing treble.
The very meeting-house upon the green, that was so held in reverence,
with its belfry and spire atop, would hardly make a scaffolding from
which to brush the cobwebs from the frieze below the vaulting of this
grandest of temples. Oddly enough, he fancies Deacon Tourtelot, in his
snuff-colored surtout, pacing down the nave with him, and saying,--as he
would be like to say,--"Must ha' been a smart man that built it; but I
guess they don't have better preachin', as a gineral thing, than the old
Doctor gives us on Fast-Days or in 'protracted' meetin's."

Such queer humors and droll comparisons flash into the mind of Reuben,
even under all his sense of awe,--a swift, disorderly mingling of the
themes and offices which kindled his first sense of religious awe under
a home atmosphere with the wondrous forms and splendor which kindle a
new awe now. The great dome enwalling with glittering mosaics a heaven
of its own, and blazing with figured saints, and the golden distich,
"Thou art Peter,--to thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of
heaven,"--all this seems too grand to be untrue. Are not the keys verily
here? Can falsehood build up so august a lie? A couple of friars shuffle
past him, and go to their prayers at some near altar; he does not even
smile at their shaven pates and their dowdy, coarse gowns of serge. Low
music from some far-away chapel comes floating under the panelled
vaultings, and loses itself under the great dome, with a sound so
gentle, so full of entreaty, that it seems to him the dove on the high
altar might have made it with a cooing and a flutter of her white wings.
A mother and two daughters, in black, glide past him, and drop upon
their knees before some saintly shrine, and murmur their thanksgivings,
or their entreaty. And he, with no aim of worship, yet somehow shocked
out of his unbelief by the very material influences around him.

Reuben's old wranglings and struggles with doubt had ended--where so
many are apt to end, when the world is sunny and success weaves its
silken meshes for the disport of self--in a quiet disbelief that angered
him no longer, because he had given over all fight with it. But the
great dome, flaming with its letters, _Ædificabo meam Ecclesiam_,
shining there for ages, kindled the fight anew. And strange as it may
seem, and perplexing as it was to the Doctor (when he received Reuben's
story of it), he came out from his first visit to the great Romish
temple with his religious nature more deeply stirred than it had been
for years.

_Ædificabo meam Ecclesiam._ _HE_ had uttered it. There was then
something to build,--something that had been built, at whose shrine
millions worshipped trustingly.

Under the sombre vaultings of the great Florentine Cathedral, the
impression was not weakened. The austere gloom of it chimed more nearly
with his state of unrest. Then there are the galleries, the painted
ceilings,--angels, saints, martyrs, holy families,--can art have been
leashed through so many ages with a pleasant fiction? Is there not
somewhere at bottom an earnest, vital truth, which men must needs cling
by if they be healthful and earnest themselves? Even the meretricious
adornments of the churches of Genoa afford new evidence of the way in
which the heart of a people has lavished itself upon belief; and if
belief, why, then, hope.

Upon the Cornice road, with Italy behind him and home before (such home
as he knows), he thinks once more of those he has left. Not that he has
forgotten them altogether; he has purchased a rich coral necklace in
Naples, which will be the very thing for his old friend Rose; and, in
Rome, the richest cameos to be found in the Via Condotti he has secured
for Adèle; even for Aunt Eliza he has brought away from Florence a bit
of the _pietra dura_, a few olive-leaves upon a black ground. Nor has he
forgotten a rich piece of the Genoese velvet for Mrs. Brindlock; and,
for his father, an old missal, which, he trusts, dates back far enough
to save it from the odium he attaches to the present Church, and to give
it an early Christian sanctity. He has counted upon seeing Mr. Maverick
at Marseilles, but learns, with surprise, upon his arrival there, that
this gentleman had sailed for America some months previously. The ship
is making a capital freight, and the captain informs him that
application has been made for the only vacant state-room in their little
cabin by a lady attended by her maid. Reuben assents cheerfully to this
accession of companionship; and, running off for a sight of the ruins at
Nismes and Arles, returns only in time to catch the ship upon the day of
its departure. As they pass out of harbor, the lady passenger, in deep
black, (the face seems half familiar to him,) watches wistfully the
receding shores, and, as they run abreast the chapel of Nôtre Dame de la
Garde, she devoutly crosses herself and tells her beads.

Reuben is to make the voyage with the mother of Adèle. Both bound to the
same quiet township of New England; he, to reach Ashfield once more,
there to undergo swiftly a new experience,--an experience that can come
to no man but once; she, to be clasped in the arms of Adèle,--a cold
embrace and the last!




PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.


V.

Brook Farm, _Sept. 26, 1841._--A walk this morning along the Needham
road. A clear, breezy morning, after nearly a week of cloudy and showery
weather. The grass is much more fresh and vivid than it was last month,
and trees still retain much of their verdure, though here and there is a
shrub or a bough arrayed in scarlet and gold. Along the road, in the
midst of a beaten track, I saw mushrooms or toadstools, which had sprung
up probably during the night.

The houses in this vicinity are, many of them, quite antique, with long,
sloping roofs, commencing at a few feet from the ground, and ending in a
lofty peak. Some of them have huge, old elms overshadowing the yard. One
may see the family sleigh near the door, it having stood there all
through the summer sunshine, and perhaps with weeds sprouting through
the crevices of its bottom, the growth of the months since snow
departed. Old barns, patched and supported by timbers leaning against
the sides, and stained with the excrement of past ages.

In the forenoon, I walked along the edge of the meadow, towards Cow
Island. Large trees, almost a wood, principally of pine with the green
pasture-glades intermixed, and cattle feeding. They cease grazing when
an intruder appears, and look at him with long and wary observation,
then bend their heads to the pasture again. Where the firm ground of the
pasture ceases, the meadow begins,--loose, spongy, yielding to the
tread, sometimes permitting the foot to sink into black mud, or perhaps
over ankles in water. Cattle paths, somewhat firmer than the general
surface, traverse the dense shrubbery which has overgrown the meadow.
This shrubbery consists of small birch, elders, maples, and other trees,
with here and there white pines of larger growth. The whole is tangled
and wild and thick-set, so that it is necessary to part the nestling
stems and branches, and go crashing through. There are creeping plants
of various sorts, which clamber up the trees, and some of them have
changed color in the slight frosts which already have befallen these low
grounds, so that one sees a spiral wreath of scarlet leaves twining up
to the top of a green tree, intermingling its bright hues with their
verdure, as if all were of one piece. Sometimes, instead of scarlet, the
spiral wreath is of a golden yellow.

Within the verge of the meadow, mostly near the firm shore of pasture
ground, I found several grape-vines, hung with an abundance of large
purple grapes. The vines had caught hold of maples and alders, and
climbed to the summit, curling round about and interwreathing their
twisted folds in so intimate a manner that it was not easy to tell the
parasite from the supporting tree or shrub. Sometimes the same vine had
enveloped several shrubs, and caused a strange, tangled confusion,
converting all these poor plants to the purpose of its own support, and
hindering their growing to their own benefit and convenience. The broad
vine-leaves, some of them yellow or yellowish-tinged, were seen
apparently glowing on the same stems with the silver-maple leaves, and
those of the other shrubs, thus married against their will by the
conjugal twine; and the purple clusters of grapes hung down from above
and in the midst, so that one might "gather grapes," if not "of thorns,"
yet of as alien bushes.

One vine had ascended almost to the tip of a large white pine, spreading
its leaves, and hanging its purple clusters among all its
boughs,--still climbing and clambering, as if it would not be content
till it had crowned the very summit with a wreath of its own foliage and
bunches of grapes. I mounted high into the tree and ate the fruit there,
while the vine wreathed still higher into the depths above my head. The
grapes were sour, being not yet fully ripe. Some of them, however, were
sweet and pleasant.

       *       *       *       *       *

_September 27._--A ride to Brighton yesterday morning, it being the day
of the weekly Cattle Fair. William Allen and myself went in a wagon,
carrying a calf to be sold at the fair. The calf had not had his
breakfast, as his mother had preceded him to Brighton, and he kept
expressing his hunger and discomfort by loud, sonorous baas, especially
when we passed any cattle in the fields or in the road. The cows,
grazing within hearing, expressed great interest, and some of them came
galloping to the roadside to behold the calf. Little children, also, on
their way to school, stopped to laugh and point at poor little Bossie.
He was a prettily behaved urchin, and kept thrusting his hairy muzzle
between William and myself, apparently wishing to be stroked and patted.
It was an ugly thought that his confidence in human nature, and nature
in general, was to be so ill-rewarded as by cutting his throat, and
selling him in quarters. This, I suppose, has been his fate before now!

It was a beautiful morning, clear as crystal, with an invigorating, but
not disagreeable coolness. The general aspect of the country was as
green as summer,--greener indeed than mid or latter summer,--and there
were occasional interminglings of the brilliant hues of autumn, which
made the scenery more beautiful, both visibly and in sentiment. We saw
no absolutely mean nor poor-looking abodes along the road. There were
warm and comfortable farm-houses, ancient, with the porch, the sloping
roof, the antique peak, the clustered chimney, of old times; and modern
cottages, smart and tasteful; and villas, with terraces before them, and
dense shade, and wooden urns on pillars, and other such tokens of
gentility. Pleasant groves of oak and walnut, also, there were,
sometimes stretching along valleys, sometimes ascending a hill and
clothing it all round, so as to make it a great clump of verdure.
Frequently we passed people with cows, oxen, sheep, or pigs for Brighton
Fair.

On arriving at Brighton, we found the village thronged with people,
horses, and vehicles. Probably there is no place in New England where
the character of an agricultural population may be so well studied.
Almost all the farmers within a reasonable distance make it a point, I
suppose, to attend Brighton Fair pretty frequently, if not on business,
yet as amateurs. Then there are all the cattle-people and butchers who
supply the Boston market, and dealers from far and near; and every man
who has a cow or a yoke of oxen, whether to sell or buy, goes to
Brighton on Monday. There were a thousand or two of cattle in the
extensive pens belonging to the tavern-keeper, besides many that were
standing about. One could hardly stir a step without running upon the
horns of one dilemma or another, in the shape of ox, cow, bull, or ram.
The yeomen appeared to be more in their element than I have ever seen
them anywhere else, except, indeed, at labor;--more so than at
musterings and such gatherings of amusement. And yet this was a sort of
festal day, as well as a day of business. Most of the people were of a
bulky make, with much bone and muscle, and some good store of fat, as if
they had lived on flesh-diet;--with mottled faces too, hard and red,
like those of persons who adhered to the old fashion of spirit-drinking.
Great, round-paunched country squires were there too, sitting under the
porch of the tavern, or waddling about, whip in hand, discussing the
points of the cattle. There were also gentlemen-farmers, neatly, trimly,
and fashionably dressed, in handsome surtouts and trousers, strapped
under their boots. Yeomen, too, in their black or blue Sunday suits,
cut by country tailors, and awkwardly worn. Others (like myself) had on
the blue, stuff frocks which they wear in the fields, the most
comfortable garments that ever were invented. Country loafers were among
the throng,--men who looked wistfully at the liquors in the bar, and
waited for some friend to invite them to drink,--poor, shabby,
out-at-elbowed devils. Also, dandies from the city, corseted and
buckramed, who had come to see the humors of Brighton Fair. All these,
and other varieties of mankind, either thronged the spacious bar-room of
the hotel, drinking, smoking, talking, bargaining, or walked about among
the cattle-pens, looking with knowing eyes at the horned people. The
owners of the cattle stood near at hand, waiting for offers. There was
something indescribable in their aspect, that showed them to be the
owners, though they mixed among the crowd. The cattle, brought from a
hundred separate farms, or rather from a thousand, seemed to agree very
well together, not quarrelling in the least. They almost all had a
history, no doubt, if they could but have told it. The cows had each
given her milk to support families,--had roamed the pastures, and come
home to the barn-yard,--had been looked upon as a sort of member of the
domestic circle, and was known by a name, as Brindle or Cherry. The
oxen, with their necks bent by the heavy yoke, had toiled in the
plough-field and in haying-time for many years, and knew their master's
stall as well as the master himself knew his own table. Even the young
steers and the little calves had something of domestic sacredness about
them; for children had watched their growth, and petted them, and played
with them. And here they all were, old and young, gathered from their
thousand homes to Brighton Fair; whence the great chance was that they
would go to the slaughter-house, and thence be transmitted, in sirloins,
joints, and such pieces, to the tables of the Boston folk.

William Allen had come to buy four little pigs to take the places of
four who have now grown large at our farm, and are to be fatted and
killed within a few weeks. There were several hundreds, in pens
appropriated to their use, grunting discordantly, and apparently in no
very good humor with their companions or the world at large. Most or
many of these pigs had been imported from the State of New York. The
drovers set out with a large number, and peddle them along the road till
they arrive at Brighton with the remainder. William selected four, and
bought them at five cents per pound. These poor little porkers were
forthwith seized by the tails, their legs tied, and then thrown into our
wagon, where they kept up a continual grunt and squeal till we got home.
Two of them were yellowish, or light gold-color, the other two were
black and white, speckled; and all four of very piggish aspect and
deportment. One of them snapped at William's finger most spitefully, and
bit it to the bone.

All the scene of the Fair was very characteristic and
peculiar,--cheerful and lively, too, in the bright, warm sun. I must see
it again; for it ought to be studied.

       *       *       *       *       *

_September 28._--A picnic party in the woods, yesterday, in honor of
little Frank Dana's birthday, he being six years old. I strolled out,
after dinner, with Mr. Bradford, and in a lonesome glade we met the
apparition of an Indian chief, dressed in appropriate costume of
blanket, feathers, and paint, and armed with a musket. Almost at the
same time, a young gypsy fortune-teller came from among the trees, and
proposed to tell my fortune. While she was doing this, the goddess Diana
let fly an arrow, and hit me smartly in the hand. The fortune-teller and
goddess were in fine contrast, Diana being a blonde, fair, quiet, with a
moderate composure; and the gypsy (O. G.) a bright, vivacious,
dark-haired, rich-complexioned damsel,--both of them very pretty, at
least pretty enough to make fifteen years enchanting. Accompanied by
these denizens of the wild wood, we went onward, and came to a company
of fantastic figures, arranged in a ring for a dance or a game. There
was a Swiss girl, an Indian squaw, a negro of the Jim Crow order, one or
two foresters, and several people in Christian attire, besides children
of all ages. Then followed childish games, in which the grown people
took part with mirth enough,--while I, whose nature it is to be a mere
spectator both of sport and serious business, lay under the trees and
looked on. Meanwhile, Mr. Emerson and Miss Fuller, who arrived an hour
or two before, came forth into the little glade where we were assembled.
Here followed much talk. The ceremonies of the day concluded with a cold
collation of cakes and fruit. All was pleasant enough,--an excellent
piece of work,--"would 't were done!" It has left a fantastic impression
on my memory, this intermingling of wild and fabulous characters with
real and homely ones, in the secluded nook of the woods. I remember
them, with the sunlight breaking through overshadowing branches, and
they appearing and disappearing confusedly,--perhaps starting out of the
earth; as if the everyday laws of Nature were suspended for this
particular occasion. There were the children, too, laughing and sporting
about, as if they were at home among such strange shapes,--and anon
bursting into loud uproar of lamentation, when the rude gambols of the
merry archers chanced to overturn them. And apart, with a shrewd, Yankee
observation of the scene, stands our friend Orange, a thick-set, sturdy
figure, enjoying the fun well enough, yet rather laughing with a
perception of its nonsensicalness than at all entering into the spirit
of the thing.

This morning I have been helping to gather apples. The principal farm
labors at this time are ploughing for winter rye, and breaking up the
greensward for next year's crop of potatoes, gathering squashes, and not
much else, except such year-round employments as milking. The crop of
rye, to be sure, is in process of being thrashed, at odd intervals.

I ought to have mentioned among the diverse and incongruous growths of
the picnic party our two Spanish boys from Manilla;--Lucas, with his
heavy features and almost mulatto complexion; and José, slighter, with
rather a feminine face,--not a gay, girlish one, but grave, reserved,
eying you sometimes with an earnest but secret expression, and causing
you to question what sort of person he is.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Friday, October 1._--I have been looking at our four swine,--not of the
last lot, but those in process of fattening. They lie among the clean
rye straw in the sty, nestling close together; for they seem to be
beasts sensitive to the cold, and this is a clear, bright, crystal
morning, with a cool, northwest wind. So there lie these four black
swine, as deep among the straw as they can burrow, the very symbols of
slothful ease and sensuous comfort. They seem to be actually oppressed
and overburdened with comfort. They are quick to notice any one's
approach, and utter a low grunt thereupon,--not drawing a breath for
that particular purpose, but grunting with their ordinary breath,--at
the same time turning an observant, though dull and sluggish, eye upon
the visitor. They seem to be involved and buried in their own corporeal
substance, and to look dimly forth at the outer world. They breathe not
easily, and yet not with difficulty nor discomfort; for the very
unreadiness and oppression with which their breath comes appears to make
them sensible of the deep sensual satisfaction which they feel. Swill,
the remnant of their last meal, remains in the trough, denoting that
their food is more abundant than even a hog can demand. Anon, they fall
asleep, drawing short and heavy breaths, which heave their huge sides up
and down; but at the slightest noise they sluggishly unclose their eyes,
and give another gentle grunt. They also grunt among themselves, without
any external cause; but merely to express their swinish sympathy. I
suppose it is the knowledge that these four grunters are doomed to die
within two or three weeks that gives them a sort of awfulness in my
conception. It makes me contrast their present gross substance of
fleshly life with the nothingness speedily to come. Meantime the four
newly-bought pigs are running about the cow-yard, lean, active, shrewd,
investigating everything, as their nature is. When I throw an apple
among them, they scramble with one another for the prize, and the
successful one scampers away to eat it at leisure. They thrust their
snouts into the mud, and pick a grain of corn out of the rubbish.
Nothing within their sphere do they leave unexamined, grunting all the
time with infinite variety of expression. Their language is the most
copious of that of any quadruped, and, indeed, there is something deeply
and indefinably interesting in the swinish race. They appear the more a
mystery the longer one gazes at them. It seems as if there were an
important meaning to them, if one could but find it out. One interesting
trait in them is their perfect independence of character. They care not
for man, and will not adapt themselves to his notions, as other beasts
do; but are true to themselves, and act out their hoggish nature.

       *       *       *       *       *

_October 7._--Since Saturday last, (it being now Thursday,) I have been
in Boston and Salem, and there has been a violent storm and rain during
the whole time. This morning shone as bright as if it meant to make up
for all the dismalness of the past days. Our brook, which in the summer
was no longer a running stream, but stood in pools along its pebbly
course, is now full from one grassy verge to the other, and hurries
along with a murmuring rush. It will continue to swell, I suppose, and
in the winter and spring it will flood all the broad meadows through
which it flows.

I have taken a long walk this forenoon along the Needham road, and
across the bridge, thence pursuing a cross-road through the woods,
parallel with the river, which I crossed again at Dedham. Most of the
road lay through a growth of young oaks principally. They still retain
their verdure, though, looking closely in among them, one perceives the
broken sunshine falling on a few sere or bright-hued tufts of shrubbery.
In low, marshy spots, on the verge of the meadows or along the
river-side, there is a much more marked autumnal change. Whole ranges of
bushes are there painted with many variegated hues, not of the brightest
tint, but of a sober cheerfulness. I suppose this is owing more to the
late rains than to the frost; for a heavy rain changes the foliage
somewhat at this season. The first marked frost was seen last Saturday
morning. Soon after sunrise it lay, white as snow, over all the grass,
and on the tops of the fences, and in the yard, on the heap of firewood.
On Sunday, I think, there was a fall of snow, which, however, did not
lie on the ground a moment.

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on,
and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
The sunshine is peculiarly genial; and in sheltered places, as on the
side of a bank, or of a barn or house, one becomes acquainted and
friendly with the sunshine. It seems to be of a kindly and homely
nature. And the green grass, strewn with a few withered leaves, looks
the more green and beautiful for them. In summer or spring Nature is
farther from one's sympathies.

       *       *       *       *       *

_October 8._--Another gloomy day, lowering with portents of rain close
at hand. I have walked up into the pastures this morning, and looked
about me a little. The woods present a very diversified appearance just
now, with perhaps more varieties of tint than they are destined to wear
at a somewhat later period. There are some strong yellow hues, and some
deep red; there are innumerable shades of green, some few having the
depth of summer; others, partially changed towards yellow, look freshly
verdant with the delicate tinge of early summer or of May. Then there is
the solemn and dark green of the pines. The effect is, that every tree
in the wood and every bush among the shrubbery has a separate existence,
since, confusedly intermingled, each wears its peculiar color, instead
of being lost in the universal emerald of summer. And yet there is a
oneness of effect likewise, when we choose to look at a whole sweep of
woodland instead of analyzing its component trees. Scattered over the
pasture, which the late rains have kept tolerably green, there are spots
or islands of dusky red,--a deep, substantial hue, very well fit to be
close to the ground,--while the yellow, and light, fantastic shades of
green soar upward to the sky. These red spots are the blueberry and
whortleberry bushes. The sweet-fern is changed mostly to russet, but
still retains its wild and delightful fragrance when pressed in the
hand. Wild China-asters are scattered about, but beginning to wither. A
little while ago, mushrooms or toadstools were very numerous along the
wood-paths and by the roadsides, especially after rain. Some were of
spotless white, some yellow, and some scarlet. They are always mysteries
and objects of interest to me, springing as they do so suddenly from no
root or seed, and growing one wonders why. I think, too, that some
varieties are pretty objects, little fairy tables, centre-tables,
standing on one leg. But their growth appears to be checked now, and
they are of a brown tint and decayed.

The farm business to-day is to dig potatoes. I worked a little at it.
The process is to grasp all the stems of a hill and pull them up. A
great many of the potatoes are thus pulled, clinging to the stems and to
one another in curious shapes,--long red things, and little round ones,
imbedded in the earth which clings to the roots. These being plucked
off, the rest of the potatoes are dug out of the hill with a hoe, the
tops being flung into a heap for the cow-yard. On my way home I paused
to inspect the squash-field. Some of the squashes lay in heaps as they
were gathered, presenting much variety of shape and hue,--as golden
yellow, like great lumps of gold, dark green, striped and variegated;
and some were round, and some lay curling their long necks, nestling, as
it were, and seeming as if they had life.

In my walk yesterday forenoon I passed an old house which seemed to be
quite deserted. It was a two-story, wooden house, dark and
weather-beaten. The front windows, some of them, were shattered and
open, and others were boarded up. Trees and shrubbery were growing
neglected, so as quite to block up the lower part. There was an aged
barn near at hand, so ruinous that it had been necessary to prop it up.
There were two old carts, both of which had lost a wheel. Everything was
in keeping. At first I supposed that there would be no inhabitants in
such a dilapidated place; but, passing on, I looked back, and saw a
decrepit and infirm old man at the angle of the house, its fit occupant.
The grass, however, was very green and beautiful around this dwelling,
and, the sunshine falling brightly on it, the whole effect was cheerful
and pleasant. It seemed as if the world was so glad that this desolate
old place, where there was never to be any more hope and happiness,
could not at all lessen the general effect of joy.

I found a small turtle by the roadside, where he had crept to warm
himself in the genial sunshine. He had a sable back, and underneath his
shell was yellow, and at the edges bright scarlet. His head, tail, and
claws were striped yellow, black, and red. He withdrew himself, as far
as he possibly could, into his shell, and absolutely refused to peep
out, even when I put him into the water. Finally, I threw him into a
deep pool and left him. These mailed gentlemen, from the size of a foot
or more down to an inch, were very numerous in the spring; and now the
smaller kind appear again.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Saturday, October 9._--Still dismal weather. Our household, being
composed in great measure of children and young people, is generally a
cheerful one enough, even in gloomy weather. For a week past we have
been especially gladdened with a little seamstress from Boston, about
seventeen years old; but of such a _petite_ figure, that, at first view,
one would take her to be hardly in her teens. She is very vivacious and
smart, laughing and singing and talking all the time,--talking sensibly;
but still, taking the view of matters that a city girl naturally would.
If she were larger than she is, and of less pleasing aspect, I think she
might be intolerable; but being so small, and with a fair skin, and as
healthy as a wildflower, she is really very agreeable; and to look at
her face is like being shone upon by a ray of the sun. She never walks,
but bounds and dances along, and this motion, in her diminutive person,
does not give the idea of violence. It is like a bird, hopping from twig
to twig, and chirping merrily all the time. Sometimes she is rather
vulgar, but even that works well enough into her character, and accords
with it. On continued observation, one discovers that she is not a
little girl, but really a little woman, with all the prerogatives and
liabilities of a woman. This gives a new aspect to her, while the
girlish impression still remains, and is strangely combined with the
sense that this frolicsome maiden has the material for the sober bearing
of a wife. She romps with the boys, runs races with them in the yard,
and up and down the stairs, and is heard scolding laughingly at their
rough play. She asks William Allen to place her "on top of that horse,"
whereupon he puts his large brown hands about her waist, and, swinging
her to and fro, lifts her on horseback. William threatens to rivet two
horse-shoes round her neck, for having clambered, with the other girls
and boys, upon a load of hay, whereby the said load lost its balance and
slid off the cart. She strings the seed-berries of roses together,
making a scarlet necklace of them, which she fastens about her throat.
She gathers flowers of everlasting to wear in her bonnet, arranging them
with the skill of a dressmaker. In the evening, she sits singing by the
hour, with the musical part of the establishment, often breaking into
laughter, whereto she is incited by the tricks of the boys. The last
thing one hears of her, she is tripping up stairs to bed, talking
lightsomely or warbling; and one meets her in the morning, the very
image of bright morn itself, smiling briskly at you, so that one takes
her for a promise of cheerfulness through the day. Be it said, with all
the rest, that there is a perfect maiden modesty in her deportment. She
has just gone away, and the last I saw of her was her vivacious face
peeping through the curtain of the cariole, and nodding a gay farewell
to the family, who were shouting their adieux at the door. With her
other merits, she is an excellent daughter, and supports her mother by
the labor of her hands. It would be difficult to conceive beforehand how
much can be added to the enjoyment of a household by mere sunniness of
temper and liveliness of disposition; for her intellect is very
ordinary, and she never says anything worth hearing, or even laughing
at, in itself. But she herself is an expression well worth studying.




THE FENIAN "IDEA."


It was a great truth Shelley uttered when he said that slavery would not
be the enormous wrong and evil which it is, if men who had long suffered
under it could rise at once to freedom and self-government. We see this
fact everywhere proved by races, nations, sexes, long held in bondage,
and, when at last set free, displaying for years, perhaps for
generations, the vices of cowardice, deceit, and cruelty engendered by
slavery. Chains leave ugly scars on the flesh, but deeper scars by far
on the soul. Even where the exercise of oppression has stopped short of
actual serfdom,--where a race has been merely excluded from some natural
rights, and burdened with some unrighteous restrictions,--the same
result, in a mitigated degree, may be traced in moral degradation,
surviving the injustice itself and almost its very memory. Ages pass
away, and "Revenge and Wrong" still "bring forth their kind." The evil
is not dead, though they who wrought it have long mouldered in their
forgotten graves.

In a very remarkable manner this sad law of our nature applies to the
condition of the Irish race. Doubtless the isolated position of Ireland,
the small share it has had in the life and movement of our century, has
allowed the old wrongs to fester in memory, and the old feelings of
rancor to perpetuate themselves, as they could never have done in a
country more in the highway of nations. Vendettas personal and political
are ever to be found in islands, like Corsica, Sicily, Ireland; or in
remote glens and mountains, such as those of Scotland or Greece. Men who
live in New York, London, or Paris must be singularly retentive of
passion to keep up even their own hatreds, not to speak of the hatreds
of their ancestors. But it is alike the bane and blessing of lives spent
in retirement and monotony to retain impressions for years, and live in
the past almost more vividly than in the tame and uninteresting present.
Ireland, at all events, has had nothing to divert her from her old
traditions; and there is probably no man, woman, or child of Celtic race
living in the country in whose mind a certain "historical element,"
compounded strangely of truth and falsehood, does not occupy a place
such as no analogous impression takes in the thought of an ordinary
Englishman or Frenchman. We shall endeavor in this paper to give a
little idea of the nature of these Irish traditions and feelings; and if
we succeed in doing so, we shall at the same time afford to our readers
a clew to some of the supposed mysteries of the recent outbreak of
Fenianism. In sober truth, Fenianism is not, to Anglo-Irish observers, a
startling apparition, an outburst of insane folly, an epidemic of
national hate, but, on the contrary, a most familiar phenomenon, the
mere appearance on the surface of what we always knew lay beneath,--an
endemic as natural to the soil as the ague and fever which haunt the
undrained bogs. Those who understand what Irishmen are always _thinking_
will find no difficulty in understanding also what things they
occasionally _do_.

The real wrongs inflicted by England upon Ireland are probably as bad as
ever disgraced the history of a conquest--in itself without excuse. Not
to speak of confiscations, and executions often taking the form of
murderous raids into suspected districts, there were laws passed one
after another, from the time of Edward I. even to the present century, a
collection of which would be a sad commentary on the boasted justice of
English Parliaments. Irishmen lay under disabilities, political, social,
and ecclesiastical, so severe and numerous that it really seems to have
been a question what they were expected to do _except_ to break some of
these arbitrary laws, and so incur some cruel penalty. Down to our own
century, and for the avowed purpose of injuring the only flourishing
trade of the country (that of linen), the English cotton and woollen
manufacturers procured the passing of acts better called destructive
than protective; and in sober truth, if England now deplores the low
industrial and commercial state of Ireland, she has only to look over
her own statute-book, and see if ingenuity could have further gone in
the way of discouragement and depression. When we add to these wrongs
the bitter drop of the Irish Church Establishment, it is doubtless clear
that an able advocate could make out a very telling case for the
plaintiff, in that great case of Ireland _vs._ England on which Europe
and America sit as jury.

But it is a singularly inexact notion of the real historical wrongs of
his country which an ordinary Irishman treasures in his heart; in fact,
he has no idea of the real wrongs at all, but of other and quite
imaginary ones. He sets out with the great fallacy that Ireland was at
some indefinite epoch (described as "former times") a wealthy,
prosperous, and united country, and that every declension from those
characteristics is to be laid at the door of English tyranny and
jealousy. When Moore wrote,

    "Let Erin remember the days of old,
      Ere her faithless sons betrayed her,
    When Malachi wore the collar of gold
      Which he won from her proud invader,

    "When her kings, with their standards of green unfurled,
      Led the Red Branch knights to danger,
    Ere the emerald gem of the Western world
      Was set in the crown of a stranger,"--

when, we say, a man of the world, who afterwards wrote a remarkably
moderate and sensible History of Ireland, wrote nonsense like this, he
was doubtless well aware he was only by poetic license describing what
Irishmen commonly believed about "days of old," and their glorified
circumstances. We once saw an Irish schoolmaster, just one of those who
mould the ideas of the humbler classes, shown into a room furnished with
the usual luxury of a handsome English drawing-room,--books, pictures,
flowers, and china, "an earthly paradise of ormolu." The good man looked
round with great admiration, and then innocently remarked, "Why, this
must be like one of the palaces of our ancient kings!" Here was
precisely the popular Irish idea. Her "ancient king"--who actually lived
in the _wattled_ walls of Tara, enjoying barbarian feasts of beer and
hecatombs of lean kine and sheep--is supposed to have been a refined and
splendid prince, dwelling in ideal "halls," (doubtless compounded out of
the Dublin Bank and Rotunda,) and enjoying the finest music on a
double-action harp. As a fact, there is no evidence whatever that the
old Irish Pentarchy was much better than any five chieftainships of the
Sandwich Islands. Even the historians who laud it in most pompous
phrases, like Keatinge, give nothing but details of wars and massacres,
disorders and rebellions without end. Out of one hundred and sixty-eight
kings who by this (of course) half-fabulous story reigned from the
Milesian Conquest to Roderick O'Connor, vanquished by Henry II. in 1172,
no less than seventy-nine are said to have acquired the throne by the
murder of their predecessors. The contests between the five kings for
the supremacy, or for the acquisition of each other's territories, offer
a spectacle which can only be compared to a sanguinary game of
puss-in-the-corner lasting for a thousand years. As to any monuments of
civilization, it would indeed be wonderful if they were found in a
country so circumstanced. Such existing architecture as can be
attributed to a Celtic origin is confined to the simple round towers,
Cormac's Chapel at Cashel, and a few humble little stone-roofed edifices
like the one known as "St. Kevin's Kitchen," and made, with true Irish
magniloquence, to stand wellnigh alone for the "Seven Churches of
Glendalough." For literature, ancient Ireland can show the respectable
"Annals of the Four Masters," and a few minor chronicles in prose and
verse, but not a single work deserving a place in European history.
Literally the fame of a few nomad saints, and a collection of torques
and brooches (of great beauty, but possible Byzantine workmanship) in
the Irish Academy, are the chief grounds on which rest the claims of
Ireland to ancient civilization. Yet not merely civilization, but the
extreme grandeur and magnificence of Ireland in "former times," is the
first postulate of all Irish discontent. It is because England has
dimmed her glory and overthrown her royal state that Irishmen burn with
patriot indignation, and not by any means because she has merely left
barbarism and disunion still barbarous and disunited after seven
centuries, and has checked, instead of encouraging, the industry and
commerce of the land.

Proceeding on this false ground, the Celtic Irishman, with his fervid
imagination, easily builds for himself a whole edifice of local and
personal grievances on the pattern of the supposed national one. Was
Ireland once a rich and splendid country? So was every town and
neighborhood once full of gayety and prosperity, when "the family" lived
at home and did not travel or spend the season in London. Full of
extravagant reverence for birth and rank, it is always, in the
Irishman's mind, not _his_ fault, nor that of his compeers of the
working and middle classes, that trade and agriculture do not flourish
in the land; but the fault of some lord or squire who ought to come and
spend money there, or some king or queen who should hold court in Dublin
and waste as much treasure as possible upon state ceremonials. Nay,
every man for himself, almost, has at the bottom of his heart a belief
that _he_ ought to be, not a laborer or carter, shoemaker or tailor, but
the head of some ancient house,--some O' or Mac,--living not in his own
mud cabin, but in the handsome residence of some English gentleman whose
estate was wrongfully taken in "former times" from his--the laborer's or
shoemaker's--ancestors.

Fenians talk of an Irish Republic, and the brave and honest men who led
the rising of '98 undoubtedly heartily desired to establish one on the
American model. But to any one really acquainted with Irish character,
to dream of such institutions for ages to come seems utterly vain. All
the qualities which go to make a republican, in the true sense of the
term, are wanting in the Irish nature; and, on the other hand, there is
a superabundance of all the opposite qualities which go to make a loyal
subject of a king,--not _too_ despotic, but still a strong-handed,
visible, audible, tangible ruler of men. Devotion to an idea, to a
constitution, to a flag; respect for law _as_ law; sturdy independence
and self-reliance; regard for others' rights and jealousy of a man's
own,--all these true republican characteristics are most rarely to be
found in Irishmen. Nay, the most important of all--the reverence for
law--is almost, we might say, reversed in his nature. The true Irishman
detests law. He loves, indeed, mercy, retribution, many fine things
which law may or may not produce. But the simple fact that a certain
proceeding has been by proper authorities constituted a law or rule of
any kind, in public matters or private, is reason enough, in high or
low, to make it secretly distasteful. As Coleridge used to say, that,
"when anything was presented to him as a duty, he instantly felt himself
seized by a sense of inability to perform it," so, to the Celtic mind,
when anything comes in the guise of a law, there is an accompanying
seizure of moral paralysis. Even if the law or rule be made by the
offender himself, it is all the same. Having given it utterance, it is a
law, and he hates it accordingly. On the other hand, nothing can exceed
the generous, chivalrous personal and family loyalty of the Irish
nature. But it is a person he wants, not a constitution or a flag.

Of course, how far all these characteristics may be altered by
residence in America we are unable to say. We write of the Irishman in
Ireland, from lifelong acquaintance. What dreams the Fenians in America
may indulge, we are also in no position to know. But this we may safely
aver: The Irishmen in Ireland who are caught by such schemes of
rebellion and revolution are not, as might be thought, mere vulgar
agitators, eager for notoriety or perhaps plunder. They are (such of
them as are the dupes, not the dupers) men whose minds from childhood
have been filled with anti-historic visions of Ireland's former
grandeur, and who cherish patriotic indignation for her supposed wrongs,
and patriotic hopes of her future glory. In a word, they live in a world
of unrealities almost inconceivable to a cool Saxon brain,--unreal
splendors of the past and utterly unreal and impossible future hopes.
They neither see where England has actually wronged Ireland heretofore,
nor how her Constitution opens to them now (were they but once united)
the lawful means of obtaining all just redress and beneficial
legislation they can desire. Instead of this, they are still talking of
Tara and Kincora, of Ollamh Fodhla and Brien Boiromhe, and dream in the
year of grace 1866 to set England at naught with a few thousand
undisciplined troops, and then burn down the hundred or two of handsome
houses and banish all the cultivated men and women in the country (even
including the priests!), to inaugurate a grand era of universal
prosperity and civilization.

But however delusive the indignation and the hopes of the Fenians must
be accounted, the sad fact remains that old misgovernment and oppression
have left behind a train of evil feelings, whose existence is only too
real, however fantastic may be the shapes they assume. While three or
four centuries sufficed to obliterate all trace of the Norman Conquest,
and unite in indissoluble bonds of blood and language the two races who
contended for mastery at Hastings, in Ireland, on the contrary, seven
centuries have failed, not merely to efface, but even essentially to
diminish the sharpness of the distinction between the conquerors and the
conquered. Still, to this day, the two nations dwell in the same land,
but not united. Still each member of each race learns as his first
lesson to which of the two he belongs, and recognizes, by some occult,
but well-known tokens, the race and creed of every man with whom he has
dealings. Religious differences, of course, have come in to swell the
tide of mistrust, and to nullify the most strenuous efforts of the
Anglo-Irish to gain the confidence of the Celts. In the books circulated
in the baskets of the strolling pedlers, which constitute almost the
sole literature of the laboring class, we have constantly seen the
favorite tract entitled "A Father's Advice to his Son," in which the
Catholic peasant is warned to put no faith in the desire of his
Protestant neighbor to help him, and advised, _not_, indeed, to refuse
his charity, but to return for it no gratitude, since a Protestant can
have no real feeling for a Catholic. We have heard with our own ears
O'Connell say almost the same thing in Conciliation Hall, and tell his
hearers that English subscriptions at the time of the famine were given
from _fear_, not kindness. But even were all these false teachers
silenced, were the enormous insult of the Irish Establishment retracted
to-morrow, even then the root of national bitterness would not be
killed. It would take generations to kill it.

Between fifty and a hundred years ago the Anglo-Irish gentry, as all the
world knows, were a wild and extravagant race. Duelling and drinking
were the two great duties of a gentleman. A young man was instructed how
to "make his head" early in life, and to acquire the gentle art of
pistolling his friends, when now he would be studying Greek under
Professor Jowett, or "coaching" for a civil-service examination. It was
in bad taste in those halcyon days for a man to leave a pleasant social
party in a state of sobriety, and he was liable to be challenged by his
aggrieved companions if he did it frequently. The custom of locking the
dining-room door and putting the key in the fire, so as to secure a
comfortable night (on the floor), was so common as hardly to deserve
notice; and in many old houses are still preserved the huge glasses
bearing the toast of the Immortal Memory of William III., and calculated
to hold three bottles of claret, all to be drunk at once by one member
of the company, who then won the prize of a seven-guinea piece deposited
at the bottom. Gambling was not a pastime, but a business; and a
business shared by the ladies. On rainy days it was customary to lay the
card-tables at ten o'clock in the morning, and on all days the work
began immediately after the four-o'clock dinner. Of all field-sports
hunting was the favorite; and, of course, horses and hounds helped to
run away with estates as well as cards and claret. Great pomp, however,
of a certain semi-barbaric kind was the crowning extravagance. Everybody
drove four horses,--the loftier grandees invariably six,--with due
accompaniment of outriders and running footmen. Dresses, jewels, and
lace were of course in keeping with the equipage, albeit the furniture
of the finest houses was what we should deem a strange mixture of
magnificence and bareness,--beautiful pictures on the walls, and no
curtains to the windows,--tapestry _fauteuils_, and a small square of
carpet in the midst of a Sahara of plain deal floor. But the kitchen was
the true scene of that Wilful Waste which assuredly brought Woful Want
often enough in its train. Every gentleman's house served as a sort of
free tavern for tenants, servants, laborers, and the relatives, friends,
and acquaintances of tenants, servants, and laborers without end. Up
stairs there was endless dinner-giving and claret-drinking; down stairs
there was breakfasting, dining, and supping,--only substituting beef for
venison and whiskey for claret. One famous countess, coming into an
estate of twenty thousand a year, with a reserve of one hundred thousand
pounds, spent the whole, and left a debt of another hundred thousand,
after Garter-King-at-Arms had been summoned from England to see her in
state to her mausoleum as a descendant of the Plantagenets. An earl in
the North, of no great wealth, was carried to his grave by a procession
of five thousand people, all of whom were entertained, and three
thousand clothed in mourning, for the occasion. But there is no need to
go further into such traditions.

Were _these_, then, the people who earned the hoarded hate of the
Fenian? Was it this coarse and stupid extravagance, contrasted with the
abject penury of the peasantry, (far greater then than now,) which has
left such indelible, bitter memories? Very far indeed is this from being
the case. That age of lavish waste is looked back upon universally in
Ireland as one of those "former times" which are to be forever
contrasted with the present,--an age of gold compared to an age of iron.
True, the old landlords were harder on their tenants than any _dare_ now
to be;--true, they neither improved land, nor built cottages, nor
endowed schools, nor did one earthly thing to help the wretched and
starving people in the face of whose misery they flaunted their
splendor. But there was little or no bitterness of feeling toward them;
for their faults were those with which the people sympathized, and their
free-handed hospitality would have covered more sins even than they
committed. Perhaps one of the very reasons why, in these last years, the
never wholly quieted ground-swell of discontent has risen up in
Fenianism is this, that the whole generation of which we have spoken has
now utterly died out, and, since the Encumbered Estates Courts has done
its work, the families of landholders have undergone great changes, and,
where not changed in race, have wholly changed in habits and mode of
life. "Castle Rackrent" exists no more. Irish landlords have now neither
power nor inclination to hold free quarters for all comers. On the other
hand, (we speak it advisedly,) no class of men in Europe strive more
earnestly and self-denyingly to improve the condition of those dependent
on them, to build good houses for their tenants, open schools for the
children, and drain and fertilize the land. Let us hope that, as years
roll on, and generations pass, the tradition of imaginary wrongs, and
the unseen but too real results of actual ones, will both pass away, and
there may yet come a day in which it will not seem a satire to speak of
the land of the Fenian and the _Agrarian_ murderer as "The Isle of
Saints."




THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.


V.

WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS.

The conversation on dress which I had held with Jennie and her little
covey of Birds of Paradise appeared to have worked in the minds of the
fair council, for it was not long before they invaded my study again in
a body. They were going out to a party, but called for Jennie, and of
course gave me and Mrs. Crowfield the privilege of seeing them equipped
for conquest.

Latterly, I must confess, the mysteries of the toilet rites have
impressed me with a kind of superstitious awe. Only a year ago my
daughter Jennie had smooth dark hair, which she wreathed in various
soft, flowing lines about her face, and confined in a classical knot on
the back of her head. Jennie had rather a talent for _coiffure_, and the
arrangement of her hair was one of my little artistic delights. She
always had something there,--a leaf, a spray, a bud or blossom, that
looked fresh, and had a sort of poetical grace of its own.

But in a gradual way all this has been changing. Jennie's hair first
became slightly wavy, then curly, finally frizzy, presenting a tumbled
and twisted appearance, which gave me great inward concern; but when I
spoke upon the subject I was always laughingly silenced with the
definitive settling remark: "O, it's the fashion, papa! Everybody wears
it so."

I particularly objected to the change on my own small account, because
the smooth, breakfast-table _coiffure_, which I had always so much
enjoyed, was now often exchanged for a peculiarly bristling appearance;
the hair being variously twisted, tortured, woven, and wound, without
the least view to immediate beauty or grace. But all this, I was
informed, was the necessary means towards crimping for some evening
display of a more elaborate nature than usual.

Mrs. Crowfield and myself are not party-goers by profession, but Jennie
insists on our going out at least once or twice in a season, just, as
she says, to keep up with the progress of society; and at these times I
have been struck with frequent surprise by the general untidiness which
appeared to have come over the heads of all my female friends. I know,
of course, that I am only a poor, ignorant, bewildered man-creature; but
to my uninitiated eyes they looked as if they had all, after a very
restless and perturbed sleep, come out of bed without smoothing their
tumbled and disordered locks. Then, every young lady, without exception,
seemed to have one kind of hair, and that the kind which was rather
suggestive of the term _woolly_. Every sort of wild _abandon_ of frowzy
locks seemed to be in vogue; in some cases the hair appearing to my
vision nothing but a confused snarl, in which glittered tinklers,
spangles, and bits of tinsel, and from which waved long pennants and
streamers of different-colored ribbons.

I was in fact very greatly embarrassed by my first meeting with some
very charming girls, whom I thought I knew as familiarly as my own
daughter Jennie, and whose soft, pretty hair had often formed the object
of my admiration. Now, however, they revealed themselves to me in
_coiffures_ which forcibly reminded me of the electrical experiments
which used to entertain us in college, when the subject stood on the
insulated stool, and each particular hair of his head bristled and rose,
and set up, as it were, on its own account. This high-flying condition
of the tresses, and the singularity of the ornaments which appeared to
be thrown at hap-hazard into them, suggested so oddly the idea of a
bewitched person, that I could scarcely converse with any presence of
mind, or realize that these really were the nice, well-informed,
sensible little girls of my own neighborhood,--the good daughters, good
sisters, Sunday-school teachers, and other familiar members of our best
educated circles; and I came away from the party in a sort of blue maze,
and hardly in a state to conduct myself with credit in the examination
through which I knew Jennie would put me as to the appearance of her
different friends.

I know not how it is, but the glamour of fashion in the eyes of girlhood
is so complete, that the oddest, wildest, most uncouth devices find
grace and favor in the eyes of even well-bred girls, when once that
invisible, ineffable _aura_ has breathed over them which declares them
to be fashionable. They may defy them for a time,--they may pronounce
them horrid; but it is with a secretly melting heart, and with a mental
reservation to look as nearly like the abhorred spectacle as they
possibly can on the first favorable opportunity.

On the occasion of the visit referred to, Jennie ushered her three
friends in triumph into my study; and, in truth, the little room seemed
to be perfectly transformed by their brightness. My honest, nice,
lovable little Yankee-fireside girls were, to be sure, got up in a style
that would have done credit to Madame Pompadour, or any of the most
questionable characters of the time of Louis XIV. or XV. They were
frizzled and powdered, and built up in elaborate devices; they wore on
their hair flowers, gems, streamers, tinklers, humming-birds,
butterflies, South American beetles, beads, bugles, and all imaginable
rattle-traps, which jingled and clinked with every motion; and yet, as
they were three or four fresh, handsome, intelligent, bright-eyed girls,
there was no denying the fact that they _did look extremely pretty_; and
as they sailed hither and thither before me, and gazed down upon me in
the saucy might of their rosy girlhood, there was a gay defiance in
Jennie's demand, "Now, papa, how do you like us?"

"Very charming," answered I, surrendering at discretion.

"I told you, girls, that you could convert him to the fashions, if he
should once see you in party trim."

"I beg pardon, my dear; I am not converted to the fashion, but to you,
and that is a point on which I didn't need conversion; but the present
fashions, even so fairly represented as I see them, I humbly confess I
dislike."

"O Mr. Crowfield!"

"Yes, my dears, I do. But then, I protest, I'm not fairly treated. I
think, for a young American girl, who looks as most of my fair friends
do look, to come down with her bright eyes and all her little panoply of
graces upon an old fellow like me, and expect him to like a fashion
merely because _she_ looks well in it, is all sheer nonsense. Why,
girls, if you wore rings in your noses, and bangles on your arms up to
your elbows, if you tied your hair in a war-knot on the top of your
heads like the Sioux Indians, you would look pretty still. The question
isn't, as I view it, whether you look pretty,--for that you do and that
you will, do what you please and dress how you will. The question is
whether you might not look prettier, whether another style of dress, and
another mode of getting up, would not be far more becoming. I am one who
thinks that it would."

"Now, Mr. Crowfield, you positively are too bad," said
Humming-Bird,--whose delicate head was encircled by a sort of crapy
cloud of bright hair, sparkling with gold-dust and spangles, in the
midst of which, just over her forehead, a gorgeous blue butterfly was
perched, while a confused mixture of hairs, gold-powder, spangles,
stars, and tinkling ornaments fell in a sort of cataract down her pretty
neck. "You see, we girls think everything of you; and now we don't like
it that you don't like our fashions."

"Why, my little princess, so long as I like _you_ better than your
fashions, and merely think they are not worthy of you, what's the harm?"

"O yes, to be sure. You sweeten the dose to us babies with that
sugar-plum. But really, Mr. Crowfield, why don't you like the fashions?"

"Because, to my view, they are in great part in false taste, and injure
the beauty of the girls," said I. "They are inappropriate to their
characters, and make them look like a kind and class of women whom they
do not, and I trust never will, resemble internally, and whose mark
therefore they ought not to bear externally. But there you are,
beguiling me into a sermon which you will only hate me in your hearts
for preaching. Go along, children! You certainly look as well as anybody
can in that style of getting up; so go to your party, and to-morrow
night, when you are tired and sleepy, if you'll come with your crochet,
and sit in my study, I will read you Christopher Crowfield's
dissertation on dress."

"That will be amusing, to say the least," said Humming-Bird; "and, be
sure, we will all be here. And mind, you have to show good reasons for
disliking the present fashion."

So the next evening there was a worsted party in my study, sitting in
the midst of which I read as follows.


"WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS.

"The first one is _appropriateness_. Colors and forms and modes, in
themselves graceful or beautiful, can become ungraceful and ridiculous
simply through inappropriateness. The most lovely bonnet that the most
approved _modiste_ can invent, if worn on the head of a coarse-faced
Irishwoman bearing a market-basket on her arm, excites no emotion but
that of the ludicrous. The most elegant and brilliant evening dress, if
worn in the daytime in a railroad car, strikes every one with a sense of
absurdity; whereas both these objects in appropriate associations would
excite only the idea of beauty. So, a mode of dress obviously intended
for driving strikes us as _outré_ in a parlor; and a parlor dress would
no less shock our eyes on horseback. In short, the course of this
principle through all varieties of form can easily be perceived. Besides
appropriateness to time, place, and circumstances, there is
appropriateness to age, position, and character. This is the foundation
of all our ideas of professional propriety in costume. One would not
like to see a clergyman in his external air and appointments resembling
a gentleman of the turf; one would not wish a refined and modest scholar
to wear the outward air of a fast fellow, or an aged and venerable
statesman to appear with all the peculiarities of a young dandy. The
flowers, feathers, and furbelows which a light-hearted young girl of
seventeen embellishes by the airy grace with which she wears them, are
simply ridiculous when transferred to the toilet of her serious,
well-meaning mamma, who bears them about with an anxious face, merely
because a loquacious milliner has assured her, with many protestations,
that it is the fashion, and the only thing remaining for her to do.

"There are, again, modes of dress in themselves very beautiful and very
striking, which are peculiarly adapted to theatrical representation and
to pictures, but the adoption of which as a part of unprofessional
toilet produces a sense of incongruity. A mode of dress may be in
perfect taste on the stage, that would be absurd in an evening party,
absurd in the street, absurd, in short, everywhere else.

"Now you come to my first objection to our present American toilet,--its
being to a very great extent _inappropriate_ to our climate, to our
habits of life and thought, and to the whole structure of ideas on which
our life is built. What we want, apparently, is some court of inquiry
and adaptation that shall pass judgment on the fashions of other
countries, and modify them to make them a graceful expression of our own
national character, and modes of thinking and living. A certain class of
women in Paris at this present hour makes the fashions that rule the
feminine world. They are women who live only for the senses, with as
utter and obvious disregard of any moral or intellectual purpose to be
answered in living as a paroquet or a macaw. They have no family ties;
love, in its pure domestic sense, is an impossibility in their lot;
religion in any sense is another impossibility; and their whole
intensity of existence, therefore, is concentrated on the question of
sensuous enjoyment, and that personal adornment which is necessary to
secure it. When the great, ruling country in the world of taste and
fashion has fallen into such a state that the virtual leaders of fashion
are women of this character, it is not to be supposed that the fashions
emanating from them will be of a kind well adapted to express the ideas,
the thoughts, the state of society, of a great Christian democracy such
as ours ought to be.

"What is called, for example, the Pompadour style of dress, so much in
vogue of late, we can see to be perfectly adapted to the kind of
existence led by dissipated women, whose life is one revel of
excitement; and who, never proposing to themselves any intellectual
employment or any domestic duty, can afford to spend three or four hours
every day under the hands of a waiting-maid, in alternately tangling and
untangling their hair. Powder, paint, gold-dust and silver-dust,
pomatums, cosmetics, are all perfectly appropriate where the ideal of
life is to keep up a false show of beauty after the true bloom is wasted
by dissipation. The woman who never goes to bed till morning, who never
even dresses herself, who never takes a needle in her hand, who never
goes to church, and never entertains one serious idea of duty of any
kind, when got up in Pompadour style, has, to say the truth, the good
taste and merit of appropriateness. Her dress expresses just what she
is,--all false, all artificial, all meretricious and unnatural; no part
or portion of her from which it might be inferred what her Creator
originally designed her to be.

"But when a nice little American girl, who has been brought up to
cultivate her mind, to refine her taste, to care for her health, to be a
helpful daughter and a good sister, to visit the poor and teach in
Sunday schools; when a good, sweet, modest little puss of this kind
combs all her pretty hair backward till it is one mass of frowzy
confusion; when she powders, and paints under her eyes; when she adopts,
with eager enthusiasm, every _outré_, unnatural fashion that comes from
the most dissipated foreign circles,--she is in bad taste, because she
does not represent either her character, her education, or her good
points. She looks like a second-rate actress, when she is, in fact, a
most thoroughly respectable, estimable, lovable little girl, and on the
way, as we poor fellows fondly hope, to bless some one of us with her
tenderness and care in some nice home in the future.

"It is not the fashion in America for young girls to have
waiting-maids,--in foreign countries it is the fashion. All this
meretricious toilet--so elaborate, so complicated, and so contrary to
nature--must be accomplished, and is accomplished, by the busy little
fingers of each girl for herself; and so it seems to be very evident
that a style of hair-dressing which it will require hours to
disentangle, which must injure and in time ruin the natural beauty of
the hair, ought to be one thing which a well-regulated court of inquiry
would reject in our American fashions.

"Again, the genius of American life is for simplicity and absence of
ostentation. We have no parade of office; our public men wear no robes,
no stars, garters, collars, &c.; and it would, therefore, be in good
taste in our women to cultivate simple styles of dress. Now I object to
the present fashions, as adopted from France, that they are flashy and
theatrical. Having their origin with a community whose senses are
blunted, drugged, and deadened with dissipation and ostentation, they
reject the simpler forms of beauty, and seek for startling effects, for
odd and unexpected results. The contemplation of one of our fashionable
churches, at the hour when its fair occupants pour forth, gives one a
great deal of surprise. The toilet there displayed might have been in
good keeping among showy Parisian women in an opera-house; but even
their original inventors would have been shocked at the idea of carrying
them into a church. The rawness of our American mind as to the subject
of propriety in dress is nowhere more shown than in the fact that no
apparent distinction is made between church and opera-house in the
adaptation of attire. Very estimable, and, we trust, very religious
young women sometimes enter the house of God in a costume which makes
their utterance of the words of the litany and the acts of prostrate
devotion in the service seem almost burlesque. When a brisk little
creature comes into a pew with hair frizzed till it stands on end in a
most startling manner, rattling strings of beads and bits of tinsel,
mounting over all some pert little hat with a red or green feather
standing saucily upright in front, she may look exceedingly pretty and
_piquante_; and, if she came there for a game of croquet or a
tableau-party, would be all in very good taste; but as she comes to
confess that she is a miserable sinner, that she has done the things she
ought not to have done and left undone the things she ought to have
done,--as she takes upon her lips most solemn and tremendous words,
whose meaning runs far beyond life into a sublime eternity,--there is a
discrepancy which would be ludicrous if it were not melancholy.

"One is apt to think, at first view, that St. Jerome was right in
saying,

    'She who comes in glittering veil
    To mourn her frailty, still is frail.'

But St. Jerome was in the wrong, after all; for a flashy, unsuitable
attire in church is not always a mark of an undevout or entirely worldly
mind; it is simply a mark of a raw, uncultivated taste. In Italy, the
ecclesiastical law prescribing a uniform black dress for the churches
gives a sort of education to European ideas of propriety in toilet,
which prevents churches from being made theatres for the same kind of
display which is held to be in good taste at places of public amusement.
It is but justice to the inventors of Parisian fashions to say, that,
had they ever had the smallest idea of going to church and Sunday
school, as our good girls do, they would immediately have devised
toilets appropriate to such exigencies. If it were any part of their
plan of life to appear statedly in public to confess themselves
'miserable sinners,' we should doubtless have sent over here the design
of some graceful penitential habit, which would give our places of
worship a much more appropriate air than they now have. As it is, it
would form a subject for such a court of inquiry and adaptation as we
have supposed, to draw a line between the costume of the theatre and the
church.

"In the same manner, there is a want of appropriateness in the costume
of our American women, who display in the street promenade a style of
dress and adornment originally intended for showy carriage drives in
such great exhibition g

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/21902