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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866

Author: Various


        
Release date: December 5, 2007 [eBook #23743]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 18, NO. 107, SEPTEMBER, 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. XVIII.--SEPTEMBER, 1866.--NO. CVII.

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 SURGEON'S ASSISTANT.


I.

The sickness of the nation not being unto death, we now begin to number
its advantages. They will not all be numbered by this generation; and as
for story-tellers, essayists, letter-writers, historians, and
philosophers, if their "genius" flags in half a century with such
material as hearts, homes, and battle-fields beyond counting afford
them, they deserve to be drummed out of their respective regiments, and
banished into the dominion of silence and darkness, forever to sit on
the borders of unfathomable ink-pools, minus pen and paper, with
fool's-caps on their heads.

I know of a place which you may call Dalton, if it must have a name. At
the beginning of our war,--for which some true spirits thank Almighty
God,--a family as wretched as Satan wandering up and down the earth
could wish to find lived there, close beside the borders of a lake which
the Indians once called--but why should not your fancy build the lowly
cottage on whatsoever green and sloping bank it will? Fair as you please
the outside world may be,--waters pure as those of Lake St. Sacrament,
with islands on their bosom like those of Horicon, and shores
beautifully wooded as those of Lake George,--but what delight will you
find in all the heavenly mansions, if love be not there?

"I'll enlist," said the master of this mansion of misery in the midst of
the garden of delight, one day.

"I would," replied his wife.

They spoke with equal vigor, but neither believed in the other. The
instant the man dropped the book he had been reading, he was like Samson
with his hair shorn, for his wife couldn't tell one letter from another;
and when she saw him sit down on the stone wall which surrounded their
potato-field, overgrown with weeds, she marched out boldly to the corner
of the wood-shed, where never any wood was, and attacked him thus:--

"S'pose you show fight awhile in that potato-patch afore you go to fight
Ribils. Gov'ment don't need you any more than I do. May be it'll find
out getting ain't gaining!"

She had no answer. The man was thinking, when she interrupted him, as
she was always doing, that, if he could secure the State and town
bounty, that would be some provision for the woman and child. As for
himself, he was indifferent as to where he was sent, or how soon. But if
he went away, they might look for him to come again. Gabriel's trumpet,
he thought, would be a more welcome sound than his wife's voice.

He enlisted. The bounties paid him were left in the hands of a trusty
neighbor, and were to be appropriated to the supply of his family's
needs; and he went away along with a boat-load of recruits,--his own man
no longer. Even his wife noticed the change in him, from the morning
when he put on his uniform and began to obey orders, for she had time to
notice. Several days elapsed after enlistment before the company's ranks
were complete, and the captain would not report at head-quarters, he
said, until his own townsfolk had supplied the number requisite.

_Even_ his wife noticed the change, I said; for, contrary to what is
usual and expected, she was not the first to perceive that the slow and
heavy step had now a spring in it, and that there was a light in his
clouded eyes. She supposed the new clothes made the difference.

Nearly a year had passed away, and this woman was leaning over the rail
fence which surrounded a barren field, and listening, while she leaned,
to the story of Ezra Cramer, just home from the war. She listened well,
even eagerly, to what he had to tell, and seemed moved by the account in
ways various as pride and indignation.

"I wish I had him here!" she said, when he had come to the end of his
story,--the story of her husband's promotion.

Ezra looked at her, and thought of the pretty girl she used to be, and
wondered how it happened that such a one could grow into a woman like
this. The vindictiveness of her voice accorded well with her
person,--expressed it. Where were her red cheeks? What had become of her
brown hair? She was once a free one at joking with, and rallying the
young men about; but now how like a virago she looked! and her tongue
was sharp as a two-edged sword.

Ezra was sorry that he had taken the trouble to ascertain in the village
where Nancy Elkins lived. Poor fellow! While enduring the hardships of
the past year, his imagination had transformed all the Dalton women into
angels, and the circuit of that small hamlet had become to his loving
thought as the circuit of Paradise.

Some degree of comprehension seemed to break upon him while he stood
gazing upon her, and he said: "O well, Miss Nancy, he's got his hands
full, and besides he didn't know I was coming home so quick. I didn't
know it myself till the last minute. He would 'a' sent some
message,--course he would!"

"I guess there ain't anything to hender his _writing_ home to his
folks," she answered, unappeased and unconvinced. "Other people hear
from the war. There's Mynders always a-writing and sending money to the
old folks, and that's the difference."

"We've been slow to get our pay down where we was," said Ezra. "It's
been a trouble to me all the while, having nothing to show for the time
I was taking from father."

The woman looked at the young fellow who had spoken so seriously, and
her eyes and her voice softened.

"Nobody would mind about your not sending money hum, Ezra. They'd know
_you_ was all right. Such a hard-working set as you belong to! You're
looking as if you wondered what I was doing here 'n this lot. I'm living
in that shanty! Like as not I'll have its pictur' taken, and sent to my
man. Old Uncle Torry said we might have it for the summer; and I expect
the town was glad enough to turn me and my girl out anywhere. They won't
do a thing towards fixing the old hut up. Say 't ain't worth it. We
can't stay there in cold weather. Roof leaks like a sieve. If he don't
send me some money pretty quick, I'll list myself, and serve long enough
to find _him_ out, see 'f I don't."

At this threat, the soldier, who knew something about WAR, straightened
himself, and with a cheery laugh limped off towards the road. "I'll see
ye ag'in, Miss Nancy, afore you start," said he, looking back and
nodding gayly at her. Things weren't so bad as they seemed about her, he
guessed. He was going home, and his heart was soft. Happiness is very
kind; but let it do its best it cannot come very near to misery.

Nancy stood and watched the young man as he went, commenting thus:
"Well, _he_'s made a good deal out of 'listing, any way." His pale face
and his hurt did not make him sacred in her sight.

She was speaking to herself, and not to her little daughter, who, when
she saw her mother talking to a soldier, ran up to hear the
conversation. A change that was wonderful to see had passed over the
child's face, when she heard that her father had been promoted from the
ranks. The bald fact, unilluminated by a single particular, seemed to
satisfy her. She hadn't a question to ask. Her first thought was to run
down to the village and tell Miss Ellen Holmes, who told _her_, not long
ago, so proud and wonderful a story about her brother's promotion.

If it were not for this Jenny, my story would be short. Is it not for
the future we live? For the children the world goes on.

Does this little girl--she might be styled a beauty by a true catholic
taste, but oh! I fear that the Boston Convention "ORTHODOX," lately
convened to settle all great questions concerning the past, present, and
future, would never recognize her, on any showing, as a babe of
grace!--does she, as she runs down the hill and along the crooked street
of Dalton, look anything like a messenger of Heaven to your eyes? Must,
the angels show their wings before they shall have recognition?

Going past the blacksmith's shop she was hailed by the blacksmith's
self, with the blacksmith's own authority. "See here, Jenny!" At the
call, she stood at bay like a fair little fawn in the woods.

"I'm writing a letter to my boy," he continued. "Step in here. Did you
know Ezra Cramer had come back?"

"I saw him just now," she answered. "He told us about father." She said
it with a pride that made her young face shine.

"So! what about him, I wonder?" asked the blacksmith.

And that he really did wonder, Jenny could not doubt. She heard more in
his words than she liked to hear, and answered with a tremulous voice,
in spite of pride, "O, he's been promoted."

"The deuse! what's _he_ permoted to?"

"I don't know," she said, and for the first time she wondered.

"Where is he, though?" asked the blacksmith.

"I don't know,--in the war."

"That's 'cute. Well, see here, sis, we'll find that out,--you and me
will." The angry voice of the blacksmith became tender. "You sit down
there and write him a letter. My son, he'll find out if your pa is
alive. As for Ezra, he don't know any more 'n he did when he went away;
but, poor fellow, he's been mostually in the hospertal, instead of
fighting Ribils, so p'r'aps he ain't to blame. You write to yer pa, and
I'll wage you get an answer back, and he'll tell you all about his
permotion quick enough."

Jenny stood looking at the blacksmith for a moment, with mouth and eyes
wide open, so much astonished by the proposition as not to know what
answer should be made to it. She had never written a line in her life,
except in her old copy-book. If her hand could be made to express what
she was thinking of, it would be the greatest work and wonder in the
world. But then, it never could!

That decisive _never_ seemed to settle the point. She turned forthwith
to the blacksmith, smiling very seriously. At the same time she took
three decided steps, which led her into his dingy shop, as awed as
though she were about to have some wonderful exhibition there. But she
must be her own astrologer.

The blacksmith, elated by his own success that morning in the very
difficult business of letter-writing, was mightily pleased to have under
direction this little disciple in the work of love, and forthwith laid
his strong hands on the bench and brought it out into the light, setting
it down with a force that said something for the earnestness of his
purpose in regard to Miss Jenny.

When he wrote his own letter, he did it in retirement and solitude,
having sought out the darkest corner of his shop for the purpose. A
mighty man in the shoeing of horses and the handling of hammers, he
shrank from exposing his incompetence in the management of a miserable
pen, even to the daylight and himself.

His big account-book placed against his forge, with a small sheet of
paper spread thereon, his pen in Jenny's hands, and the inkstand near
by, there was nothing for him to do but to go away and let her do her
work.

"Give him a tall letter!" said he. "And you must be spry about it. He'll
be glad to hear from his little girl, I reckon. See, the stage 'll be
along by four o'clock, and now it's----"--he stepped to the door and
looked out on the tall pine-tree across the road,--that was his
sun-dial,--"it's just two o'clock now, Jenny. Work away!" So saying, he
went off as tired, after the exertion he had made, as if he had shod all
the Dalton horses since daybreak.

She had just two hours for doing the greatest piece of work she had done
in her short life. And consciously it was the greatest work. Every
stroke of that pen, every straight line and curve and capital, seemed to
require as much deliberation as the building of a house; and how her
brain worked! Fly to and fro, O swallows, from your homes beneath the
eaves of the blacksmith's old stone shop in the shade of the
far-spreading walnut,--stretch forth your importunate necks and lift
aloft your greedy voices, O young ones in the nests!--the little girl
who has so often stood to watch you is sitting in the shadow within
there, blind and deaf to you, and unaware of everything in the great
world except the promotion of her father "in the war," and the letter he
will be sure to get, because the blacksmith is going to send it along
with _his_ letter to his son.

She was doing her work well. Any one who had ever seen the girl before
must have asked with wonder what had happened to her,--it was so evident
that something had happened which stirred heart and soul to the depths.

So, even so, unconsciously, love sometimes works out the work of a
lifetime, touches the key-note of an anthem of everlasting praise,--does
it with as little ostentation as the son of science draws yellow gold
from the quartz rock which tells no tale on the face of it concerning
its "hid treasure." So, wisely and without ostentation, work the true
agents, the apostles of liberty in this world.

"O dear papa! my dear papa!" she wrote, "Ezra has come home, and he says
you are promoted! But he couldn't tell for what it was, or where you
were, or anything. And O, it seems as if I couldn't wait a minute, I
want to hear so all about it." When she had written thus far the spirit
of the mother seemed to stir in the child. She sat and mused for a
moment. Her eyes flashed. Her right hand moved nervously. Strange that
her father had not sent some word by Ezra; but then he didn't know, of
course, that Ezra was coming. Ay! that was a lucky thought. What she had
written seemed to imply some blame. So, with many a blot and erasure,
her loving belief that all was right must make itself evident.

At the end of the two hours she found herself at the bottom of the page
the blacksmith had spread before her. Twice he had come into the shop
and assured himself that the work was going on, and smiled to see the
progress she was making. The third time he came he was under
considerable excitement.

"Ready!" he shouted. "The stage 'll be along now in ten minutes."

She did not answer, she was so busy, and so _hard_ at work, signing her
name to the sheet that was covered with what looked like hieroglyphics.

When she had made the last emphatic pen-stroke, she turned towards him,
flushed and smiling. "There!" she said.

He looked over her shoulder.

"Good!" said he. "But you haven't writ his name out. Give me the pen
here, quick!" Then he took the quill and wrote her father's name up in
one blank corner, and dried the ink with a little sand, and put the note
into the envelope containing his own, and the great work was done.

Do you know how great a work, you dingy old Dalton blacksmith?

Do _you_ know, fair child,--who must fight till the day of your death
with alien, opposite forces, because the blood-vessels of Nancy Elkins,
as they sail through the grand canals of the city of your life, so often
hang out piratical banners, and bear down on better craft as they near
the dangerous places, or put out, like wreckers after a storm, seeking
for treasure the owners somehow lost the power to hold?

In a few minutes after the letter was inscribed and sealed, the stage
came rattling along, and Jenny stood by and saw the blacksmith give it
to the driver, and heard him say: "Now be kerful about that ere letter.
It's got two inside. One's my boy's, as ye'll see by the facing on it;
t' other's this little girl's. She's been writin' to her pa. So be
kerful."

They stood together watching the stage till it was out of sight, then
the blacksmith nodded at Jenny as if they had done a good day's work,
and proceeded to light his pipe. That was not her way of celebrating the
event. She remembered now that she had promised a little girl, Miss
Ellen Holmes indeed, that she would some time show her where the
red-caps and fairy-cups grew, and there was yet time, before sunset, for
a long walk in the woods.

The little town-bred lady happened to come along just then, while Jenny
stood hesitating whether to go home first and tell her mother of this
great thing she had done. The question was therefore settled; and now
let them go seeking red-caps. Good luck attend the children! Jenny will
be sure to say something about promotions before they separate. She will
say that something with a genuine human pride; and the end of the hunt
for red-caps may be, conspicuously, success in finding them; but still
more to the purpose, it will be the child's establishment on a better
basis--a securer basis of equality--than she has occupied before. She
forgets about Dalton and poverty. She thinks about camps and honor. She
has something to claim of all the world. She is the citizen of a great
nation. She bears the name of one who is fighting for the Union, who
_has_ fought, and fought so well that those in authority have beckoned
him up higher. Why, it is as though a crown were placed on her dear
father's head.


II.

Going out of quiet and beautiful green Dalton, and into the hospital of
Frere's Landing, 't is a wonderful change we make.

The silence of one place is as remarkable as the silence of the other,
perhaps. That of the hospital does not resemble that of the hamlet,
however. At times it grows oppressive and appalling, being the silence
of anguish or of death. A stranger reaching Dalton in the night might
wonder in the morning if there were in reality any passage out of it,
for there the lake, on one of whose western slopes is the
"neighborhood," seems locked in completely by the hills, and an ascent
towards heaven is apparently the only way of egress. Yet there's
another way; for I am not writing this true story among celestial
altitudes for you. I returned from Dalton by a mundane road.

Out of Frere's Hospital, however, _its_ silence and seclusion, many a
stranger never found his way except by the high mountains of
transfiguration, in the chariots of fire, driven by the horsemen of
Heaven, covered with whose glory they departed.

Through the wards of this well-ordered hospital a lady passed one night,
and, entering a small apartment separated from the others, advanced with
noiseless step to a bedside, and there sat down. You may guess if her
heart was beating fast, and whether it was with difficulty that she kept
her gray eyes clear of tears. There were about her traces of long and
hurried journeying.

Under no limitations of caution had she passed so noiselessly through
the wards. Involuntary was that noiselessness,--involuntary also the
surprise with which one and another of the more wakeful patients turned
to follow her, with hopeless, weary eyes, as she passed on. Now and then
some feeble effort was made to attract her attention and arrest her
progress, but she went, absorbed beyond observation by the errand that
constrained her steps and thoughts.

When she reached the door of the apartment to which the surgeon had
directed her, she seemed for an instant to hesitate; then she pushed the
door open and passed into the room. The next instant she sank into a
chair by the bedside of a man who was lying there asleep. It seemed as
if the silent room had a profounder stillness added to it since she
entered.

It was Colonel Ames whom she saw lying on the cot before her with a
bandage round his forehead, so evidently asleep. He was smiling in a
dream. He was not going to give up the ghost, it seemed, though he had
given up so much--how much!--with that passion of giving which possessed
this nation, North and South, during four awful, glorious years. _He_
had given up the splendor and the beauty of this world. All its radiance
was blotted out in that moment of fury and of death when the shot struck
him, and left him blind upon the field.

Never on earth would it be said to him, "Receive thy sight." The lady
knew this who sat down by his bedside to wait for his awaking. The
surgeon had told her this, when at last, after having searched for her
brother long among the dead, she came to Frere's Hospital and found him
alive.

She sat so close beside him it seemed that he could not remain a moment
unconscious of her immediate presence after waking. Her hand lay just
where his hand, moving when he wakened, must touch it. She had rightly
calculated the chances; he did touch it, and started and said: "Who's
here? Doctor!" Then with a firmer grasp he seized the unresisting
fingers, and exclaimed, "My God, am I dreaming? it ought to be Lizzie's
hand."

"The doctor told me I should find you here, and might come," she
answered; and, disguised as the voice was by the feeling that tore her
heart, the Colonel, poor young fellow, listening as if for life, knew
it, and said, "O Lizzie, my child, I don't know about this,--why
couldn't you wait?"

"I waited and waited forever," she answered. "You're not sorry that I've
found you out after such a hunt? Of course you'll make believe, but
then--you needn't; I'm here, any way!"

Just then the surgeon came in. The Colonel knew his step, and said,
"Doctor, look here; is this Lizzie?"

"I believe you're right," said the doctor. "She said she had a hero for
a brother, and I have no doubt about that myself."

"O Dan, we had given you up! Though I knew all the time we shouldn't. I
could not believe--"

"Must come to that Lizzie,--do it over again; for what you have here
isn't your old Dan."

"My old Dan!" she exclaimed, and then there was a little break in the
conversation the two heroes were endeavoring to maintain.

Meanwhile the surgeon had seated himself on the edge of the bed waiting
the moment when there should be a positive need of him. He saw when it
arrived.

"Colonel," said he, in his hearty, cheery voice, which alone had lifted
many a poor fellow from the slough of misery, and put new heart and soul
in him, since his ministrations began in the hospital,--"Colonel, your
aids are in waiting."

The soldier smiled; his face flushed. "My aids can wait," said he.

"That is a fine thing to say. Here he has been bothering me, madam, not
to say browbeating me, and I've been moving heaven and earth for my
part, and at last have secured the aids, and now hear him dismiss them!"

"Bring them round here," said the patient suddenly.

The surgeon quietly lifted from the floor a pair of crutches, and placed
them in his patient's hands.

"How many years must I rely on my aids?" he asked quietly.

"Perhaps three months. By that time you will be as good as ever."

A change passed over the young man's face at this. Whatever the emotion
so expressed, it had otherwise no demonstration. He turned now abruptly
toward his sister, and said: "They can wait. I've got another kind of
aid now. Come, Lizzie, say something."

A sudden radiance flashed across his face when he ceased to speak, and
waited for that voice.

"I shall be round again in an hour," said the surgeon.

He could well be spared. The brother and sister had now neither eye nor
thought except for each other.

The surgeon's face changed as he closed the door. Every one of their
faces changed. As for the gentleman whose duty took him now from ward to
ward, from one sick-bed to another, it was only by an effort that he
gave his cheerful words and courageous looks to the men who had found
day after day a tonic in his presence.

The brother and sister clasped each other's hands. Few were the words
they spoke. He was looking forward to the years before him, endeavoring
to steady himself, in a moment of weakness, by the remembrance of past
months of active service.

She was thinking of the days when she walked with her hero out of
delightsomeness and ease into danger and anxiety, all for the nation's
succor, in the nation's time of need. Some had deemed it a needless
sacrifice. Of old, when sacrifice was to be offered, it was not the
worthless and the worst men dared or cared to bring. The spotless, the
pure, the beautiful, these were no vain oblations. These two said in
solemn conference, "We will make an offering of our all." And their all
they offered. See how much had been accepted!

Having offered, having sacrificed, it was not in either of these to
repent the doing, or despise the honor that was put upon them. No going
back for them! No looking back! No secret repining! The Colonel had done
his work. As for the Colonel's sister, there was no place on earth where
she would not find work to do.

And here in this hospital, in her brother's room, she found a sphere.
Going and coming through the various wards, singing hymns of heavenly
love and purest patriotism, scattering comforts with ministering hands,
which found brothers on all those beds of languishing, how many learned
to look for her appearing, and to bless her when she came! But
concerning her work there, and that of other women, some of whom will go
crippled to the grave from their service,--soldiers and veterans of the
army of the Union,--enough has everywhere been said.

Among all these patients there was one, a sick man, to whom her coming
and her going, her speech and her silence, became most notable events.
Living within the influence of such manner and degree of social life as
her presence in the hospital established, he was like a returned exile,
who, yet under ban, felt all the awkwardness, constraint, and danger of
his position. This man, who discovered in himself merely helplessness,
was not accounted helpless, but the helper of many. He was, in short,
the surgeon of the hospital.

One day the Colonel said to him, "You don't like to have my sister here.
Are the hired nurses making a row?"

The surgeon's face betrayed so much interest in this subject, and so
much embarrassment, it seemed probable he would come out with an
absolute "Yes"; but his speech contradicted him, for he said with
indifference, "Where did you get that pretty notion?"

"Out of you, and nowhere else. What puzzles me, though, is, she seems to
think she is doing some good here. And didn't you say you'd no objection
to her visiting the wards?"

"I should think it a positive loss if she were called or sent away from
the hospital," said the surgeon, speaking now seriously enough. "She is
of the greatest service, out of this room as well as in it."

"Why do I feel then as if something had happened,--something
disagreeable? We don't have such good times as we used to have when you
sat here and told stories, and let me run on like a school-boy."

"You have better company, that's all. I'm not such a fool that I can't
see it. You have better times, lad,--if I don't."

"Then all you did for me before she came was for pity's sake! Who's in
the ditch now, getting all the favor you used to show to me?"

The voice and manner with which these words were spoken produced an
effect not readily yielded to, though the surgeon was perfectly aware
that his emotion was unperceived and unguessed by the man on the bed
there, who was investigating a difficulty which had puzzled him.

       *       *       *       *       *

So we have come to _this_ point. Away down at Frere's Landing, amid
scenes of anguish, tribulation, and death, where elect souls did
minister, there was found ministration by these elect souls in their own
behalf.

They had gained a "Landing-Place" that was sacred ground, and if
Philosophy and Science would also stand there they must put their shoes
from off their feet, for the ground was holy. Priests whose right it was
to stand within the veil were servants there; and day by day, as they
discerned each other's work, it was not required of them always to dwell
upon the nature of sacrifice.

Each, in such work as now was occupying the doctor and Miss Ames, had
need of the other's strengthening sympathy, day by day, and of all the
consolations of friendship, such as royal souls are permitted to bestow
on one another.

With the surgeon, not a young man in anything except happiness, it was
as if there were broad openings, not _rents_, in the heavy leaden skies.
Pure, bright lights shone along the horizon, warmth overspread the cold.

With her, perpetual and sufficient are the compensations of love. To him
who plants of this it is returned out of earth, and out of heaven, in
good measure, pressed down, and running over. Nay, let us not argue.

The sick man lying on his cot, the convalescent guided by her to balcony
or garden, the crippled and the dying, had all to give her of their
hearts' best bloom. And if it proved that there was one among these who,
to her apprehension, walked in white, like an angel, of whom she asked
no thanks, no praise, only aid and sympathy, what mortal should look
surprise? The constant, the pure, the alive through all generations, the
Alive Forever, will not. And the rest may apologize for overhearing a
story not intended for their ears.

It happened one evening that the surgeon and Miss Ames met outside the
hospital doors, near the old sea-wall. They were walking in no haste,
watching, it seemed, the flight of the brave little sea-birds, as they
made their way now above and now among the breakers. After the
heart-trying labors of the day, an hour like this was full of balm to
those who were now entered on its rest. But it was not secure from
invasion. Even now a voice was shouting to the surgeon, and he heard it,
though he walked on as if he were determined not to hear. He had taken
to himself this hour; he had earned it, he needed it; surely the world
could go on for one hour without him!

But the importunity of the call was not to be resisted. So, because the
irresistible must be met, the surgeon stood still and looked around. A
poor little fellow was making toward him with all speed.

"Mail for you, sir," he said, as he came nearer, and he gave a package
of newspapers, and one little letter, into the surgeon's hands.

So Miss Ames and he sat down on the stone wall to scan those newspapers,
and the surgeon opened his note.

Obviously a scrawl from some poor fellow who had obtained a discharge on
account of sickness, and gone home. It was not rare for the surgeon to
receive such missives from the men who had been under his charge.
Wonderful was the influence he gained over the majority of his patients.
Wonderful? No. The man of meanest talents, who gives himself body and
spirit to a noble work, can no more fail of his great reward, than the
seasons of their glory. Never man on this Landing thought meanly of the
hospital surgeon's skill, or questioned his right to rank among the
ablest of his tribe,--no man, and certainly not the woman who was making
a hero out of him, to her heart's great content.

While Miss Ames looked at the papers, he proceeded, without much
interest in the business, to open and read his note.

One glance down the blurred and blotted page served to arrest his
attention, in a way that letters could not always do. Here was not a cup
of cold water to sip and put aside. He glanced at Miss Ames. She was
absorbed in a report of "the situation," getting items of renown out of
one column and another, which should ease many an aching body, smooth
many a sick man's pillow, ere the night-lamps were lighted in the wards.

If she had chanced to look up at him just then, while he, with scared,
astonished eyes, was glancing at her, it is impossible to say what words
might have escaped him, or what might have forever been prevented
utterance. But she was not looking. What heavenly angel turned her eyes
away?

And now, before him whose prerogative was Victory, what vision did
arise? An apocalyptic vision: blackness of darkness forever, and side by
side with chaos, fair fields of living green, through which a young girl
walked towards a womanhood as fair as hers who sat beside him.
Unconscious of wrong that child, and yet how deeply, how variously
wronged! If he had meditated a great robbery, he could not have quailed
in the light of the discovered enormity as he did now before the vision
of his Janet.

Years upon years of struggle and of conquest could hardly give to the
surgeon of Frere's a more notable victory, one which could fill his soul
with a serener sense of triumph, than this hour gave, when he sat on the
old stone wall that guarded shore from sea, with the child's letter in
his hands, which had not miscarried, but had moved straight,
straight--do not Divine providences always?--as an arrow to its mark.

       *       *       *       *       *

Out of the secret place of strength he came, and he held that letter
open towards Miss Ames.

"Here's something to be thought of," said he, endeavoring to speak in a
natural and easy tone of voice. "I don't know that I could ask for
better counsel than yours. My little girl has written me a letter. I
didn't know that she could write. See what work she has made of it. But
what sort of parents can she have, do you think, twelve years old, and
writing a thing like that?"

Miss Ames laid aside, or rather, to speak correctly, she _dropped_ the
newspapers. There was nothing in all their printed columns to compare
with this item of intelligence,--that the surgeon had a living wife and
a living daughter. She took the letter he was holding towards her, and
said, "Indeed, Doctor," quite as naturally as he had spoken. But she did
not look at him. She read the letter,--every misspelled word of
it,--then she said: "Perhaps it doesn't say much for the parents. But
something--I should think a great deal--for the child. Strange you
didn't tell me about her before. But I like to have her introduce
herself."

"You do!"

"Promotion, eh!" she was looking the scrawl over again.

The word, as she pronounced it, was not an interrogation. Miss Ames
seemed to be musing, yet with no activity of curiosity, on the one idea
which had evidently possessed the child's mind in writing.

There was silence for a moment after this ejaculation; then the surgeon
spoke.

"I enlisted as a private," said he, speaking with a difficulty that
might not have been manifest to any ordinary hearer. "My daughter did
not know that I had a profession; but my diploma satisfied the
Department when my promotion was spoken of. When I became a live man in
the service, I wished to serve where I could bring the most to pass, and
it was not in camp, or on the field,--except as a healer." He looked at
his watch as he uttered these last words, and arose as if his hour of
rest had expired; but then, instead of taking one step forward, he
turned and looked at Miss Ames, and she seemed to hear him saying, "Is
this a time for flight?"

He answered that question, for he had asked it of himself, by sitting
down again.

"I _ought_ to take a few minutes to myself," he said, with grave
deliberation, "I shall have no time like this to speak of my child,--for
her, I mean"; and if, while he spoke thus, he lacked perfect composure,
the hour was his, and he knew it. "More than a dozen years ago," he
continued, "I went to Dalton. I was sick and dying, as I thought.
Janet's mother nursed me through a fever, and was the means of saving my
life. I married her. I was grateful for the care she had taken of me;
and while regaining my strength, during that September and October, I
fell into the mistake of thinking that it was she who made the world
seem beautiful to me again, and life worth keeping. But you have seen
enough since you have been in this hospital to understand that this war
has been salvation to a good many men, as it will prove to the nation. I
enlisted as much as anything to get away from--where I was. The Devil
himself couldn't hold me there any longer. He had managed things long
enough. The child is capable of love, you see. Can you help us? I don't
know, but I think you were sent from above to do it, somehow. I see--I
must live for Janet. When I think that she might live in the same world
where you do, that I have no right to surround her with any other
conditions--does God take me for a robber? No! for he managed to get
this letter to me when--" He stopped speaking,--it seemed as if he were
about to look at his watch again; but instead of that, he said "Good
evening" to Miss Ames, and bowed, and walked back towards the hospital.

His assistant gathered up the newspapers, and then sat down again and
looked out towards the sea. The tide was coming in. She sat awhile and
watched the great waves lift aloft the graceful branches of green and
purple sea-weed, and saw the stormy petrels going to and fro, and
listened to the ocean's roar. She was sounding deeper depths than those
awful caverns which were hidden by the green and shining water from her
eyes.

If Janet Saunders, child of Nancy Elkins, at that moment felt a thrill
of joy, and broke forth into singing, would you deem the fact
inconsequent, not to be classed among the wonders of telegraphic
achievement?

I think her little cold, pinched, meagre life--nay, _lot_--was
brightened consciously on that great day of being,--that the sun felt
warmer, and the skies looked fairer than they ever had before. The
destiny which had seemed to be in the hands or charge of no one on earth
was in the hands of two as capable as any in this world for services of
love.

       *       *       *       *       *

But now what was to be done by Dr. Saunders? Every man and woman sees
the "situation." For the present, of course, he was sufficiently
occupied; he was in the service of his country. But when these urgent
demands on his time, patience, and humanity, which were now incessant,
should no longer be made, because the country had need of him no
longer,--what then? Men mustered out of service generally went home;
family and neighborhood claimed them. What family, what neighborhood,
claimed him? His very soul abhorred the thought of Dalton, where he had
died to life; where he had buried his manhood. The very thought that the
neighbors would not be able to recognize him was a thought which made
him say to himself they never _should_ recognize him. He would _not_ be
identified as the poor creature who went out of Dalton with one hope,
and only one,--that the first day's engagement might see him lying among
the unnamed and unknown dead. But if the neighbors and his wife exposed
to him relations which he swore he would not degrade himself so far as
to resume, what was to become of his daughter? That was more easily
managed. He could send her away from home to school, if he could find a
lady in the land who would compassionate that neglected little girl, and
teach her, and train her, and be a mother to her.

Miss Ames knew such a one. Let the little girl be sent to Charlestown to
Miss Hall, Miss Ames's dear friend, and no better training than she
would have in her school could be found for her throughout the land.
Miss Ames gave this advice the day she went away from Frere's, for she
had decided, for her brother, that he never would recover his strength
until he was removed to a cooler climate. So they were going on a
government transport, which would sail for Charlestown direct. This
little business in regard to Janet Saunders could be managed by her
immediately on arrival home. And so the surgeon wrote a letter, which he
sent by his assistant, to Miss Hall, and another to the minister of
Dalton, and another still to Janet and her mother. And all these
concerned little Jenny; and all this grew out of the letter written in
the blacksmith's shop, and the doctor's recovered integrity.

But the question yet remained, What could be done for Nancy? If
education in that direction were possible,--to what purpose? That she
might become his equal when the strength of his hope that he had done
with her was lying merely in this, that they were unequal? But
hope,--what had he to do with hope, especially with such a hope as this?
What had he to do with hope, who had come forth from Dalton as from a
pit of despair? There were no foes like those of his own household; he
was hoping that for all time he had rid himself of them. That would have
been desertion, in point of fact. Well; but all that a man hath will he
give for his life. He was safely distant from that place of disaster and
death; but he must recognize his home duties, at least by the
maintenance of his family. Yes, that he would do. He began to consider
how much was due to him for services rendered to the government,--for
the first time to consider.

So, long before winter came, Nancy Saunders found herself on intimate
terms with the minister and his wife,--for the minister had received his
letters from the surgeon, and promptly accepted his commission, securing
comfortable winter quarters for Nancy, and escorting Janet to
Charlestown, after his wife had aided the doctor's wife in preparing the
child for boarding-school. All these changes and transactions excited
talk in Dalton. Every kind of rumor went abroad that you can imagine;
and it was currently believed at last that the doctor had made a fortune
by some army contract. So well persuaded of this fact was his wife,
that, as time wore on, she began to think, and to say, that, if such was
the case, she didn't know why she should be kept on short allowance, and
to inquire among the neighbors the easiest and the shortest route from
Dalton to Frere's Landing. Nobody seemed able to answer the question so
well as Ezra Cramer; and he assured her that she would lose her head
before she got half through the army lines which stretched between her
and the hospital. But then Ezra was a born know-nothing, said
Nancy,--that everybody knew.

Walking up and down the sea-wall, night after night, during the hour of
rest he appropriated to himself,--knowing that these things were
accomplished, for in due time letters came informing him of the
fulfilment of his wishes,--the surgeon had ample leisure for considering
and reconsidering this case. It was one that would not stay disposed of.
What adjournments were made! what exceptions were taken! and what
appeals to higher courts were constantly being made!

As often as a scrawl came from Colonel Ames reporting progress, and the
plans he and his sister were making, the deeds they were doing, the
grand-jury was sworn and the surgeon arraigned before it; the chief
justice came into court, and all the witnesses, and the accusation was
read. Then the counsel for the defendant and the counsel for the
plaintiff appeared. But, with every new trial of the case, new charges
and new specifications were brought forward and made, and it was equal
to being in chancery. If the war lasted through a generation, it was
likely that the surgeon's suit would last as long.

This was as notable a divorce case as ever was made public.

On the plaintiff's behalf the argument ran thus: Here was a man, a
gentleman by birth, education, and profession, legally united to a woman
low-born, low-bred, and so ignorant that she could neither read nor
write. He had come to the neighborhood where she lived, to the door of
the very house she occupied, sick in body and in mind. Disappointments
and ill-health had reduced him to the shadow of himself in person, and
his mind, of course, shared his body's disaffection.

A sick person, as all experience in practice has proved over and over
again, is hardly to be called a responsible being. Invalids love and
hate without reason,--which is contrary, he said, as he stood in the
presence of the court,--contrary to what is done among persons in sound
health.

Under the shelter of her uncle's roof he had lain for weeks, sick of a
fever. He was saved alive, but so as by fire. This girl waited on him
through that time as a servant. He was thrown chiefly on her hands,--no
other person could be spared to wait on the poor stranger. She comforted
him. Her ways were not refined and gentle as if she had been taught
refinement and tenderness by precept or example. She had strong
good-sense. So far as she understood his orders, she obeyed them. When
he could not give any, she made use of her own judgment, and sought
first of all his comfort. She was kind. In her rough honesty and
unwearied attention he found cause for gratitude.

Rising for the first time from his bed of sickness, he would have fallen
if she had not lifted him and laid him back upon his bed. When he became
strong enough to stand, but not without support, she gave him that
support. She assisted him from the little room, and the little house
when the walls became intolerable to him, and it happened to be in the
early morning of a day so magnificent that it seemed another could never
be made like it. He could not forget how the world looked that morning;
how the waters shone; how the islands stood about; how the surrounding
hills were arrayed in purple glory; how the birds sang. This land to
which he was a stranger, which he had seen before only on that night
when he came in the dark to her uncle's door, looked like Paradise to
him; he gazed and gazed, and silent tears ran down his pale face through
the furrows of his wasted cheeks. She saw them shining in his beard, and
said something to soothe him in a comforting way, as any woman would
have spoken who saw any creature in weakness and pain. The manner or the
word, whatever it was, expressed a superiority of health, if of no other
kind, and he was in no condition to investigate either its quality or
its degree.

When, with voice feeble and broken as a sick child's, he thanked her for
all she had done, and she answered that it was nothing but a pleasure,
and he need not thank her, he did not forthwith forget that she had
watched day and night over him for nearly two months; that many a time
weariness so overpowered her that she sat and slept in the broad
daylight, and looked paler than when he lay like a dead weight on her
hands.

He remembered in court, and could not deny it, that when, believing that
this was destiny as it was also pleasure, he asked the girl to marry
him, she answered, "No,"--as if she did not trust what he said, that she
was necessary to his happiness. She told him that he did not belong in
Dalton, and that he would not be happy there with her and her people. He
answered that all he desired to know was whether she loved him. By and
by he was able to gather from the answers she gave, as well as failed to
give, all he desired to know, and they were married.

And, since he was beginning life anew, it was shown in court, nothing of
the old life should enter into this of Dalton. He buried his profession
in the past, and undertook other labors,--labors like those of Uncle
Elkins; he would abide on that level where he found himself on his
recovery, and make no effort to lift his wife to that he had renounced.
She was a child of Nature. He would learn life anew of her; but he
failed of success in all his undertakings. Shall a man attempt to
extenuate his failures? It seemed new to him; he acknowledged it in open
court, that from the day of his entrance into Dalton to the day he left
it, he was under some enchantment there. And if an insane man is not to
be held responsible in law for his offences, he had the amplest title to
a quitclaim deed from that which had grown out of the Dalton experience.

So the lower courts disposed of the case. He was free. But after a time
the suit was carried up before superior powers, and thus the advocate
for the defendant showed cause on the new trial.

She was living among the people of whom she had been born. In person she
was attractive as any girl to be found on all the lake or hillside; a
rosy-cheeked, fair-faced, fair-haired blue-eyed girl, with a frank voice
and easy address. She had a "Hail fellow! well met!" for every man,
woman, and child of the vicinity. She had lovers, all the way up from
her childhood, rustic admirers, and one who looked at her from a not far
distance, who dressed himself in his best and went to her uncle's house
on Sundays and other holidays, and who was courting Nancy after his
fashion, with all plans for their future marked out fully in his
mind,--and these would have fulfilment if his suit were only successful;
and in regard to that he had no fears or doubts.

Until this stranger came to Uncle Elkins's house! During his long
sickness the young lover was helpful in many ways to Nancy. But he
began to be suspicious by and by of the results of this much waiting. At
last, before he was himself ready to do it, he asked Nancy to be his
wife; but he was too late. She had "given her word" to the poor fellow
whom she had lured back from Death's door.

The court was admonished to take cognizance of this fact, that, if Nancy
had married the man in whom her heart had been interested up to the time
when the stranger came, she would have married in her own sphere, a man
of her own rank, and would have loved him as he did her, with an equal
love; they would have lived out their lives, animating them with
skirmishes and small warfare, and winning victories over each other,
which would have proved disastrous as defeats to neither.

It would have been no high crime to such a man that Nancy was ignorant
up and down through the range of knowledge; he would not have turned
away in disgust from his endeavors to teach her, if she took it into her
head to learn, though she dropped and regained the ambition through
every winter of her life. He would have plodded on in his accustomed
ways, would have protected his wife and child from starvation and cold,
without imagining that a husband and father could retire from his
position as such, or abrogate his duties. No vague expectations in
regard to herself, no bitter disappointment in regard to him, would have
attended her. The very changes in her character, which had made her not
to be endured,--how far was he whose name she bore responsible for them?
She had been accustomed to thrift and labor, she saw in him idleness and
waste of power and life. She had exhausted the resources readiest to her
hand in vain, and had only then given up her expectation.

It was not be denied that it was humiliation and wrath to live with her;
but her husband had sought her,--she had not sought him! If he could
plead for himself the force and constraint of circumstances, should not
the same defence be set up for her? And what might not patience, and
better management, and gentler and more noble demeanor towards her, have
done for her? Was _he_ the same man he was when he went away from
Dalton? Was he the same man in Dalton that he had been in his youth? Was
it not out of the pit that he himself had been digged? It became evident
that the arguments for the defendant were producing a result in court.
The judge on his throne, as well as the grand-jury, listened to the
argument in favor of the woman. And at last the case was decided; for
the judge charged the jury, that, if it could be shown that there was
mere incompatibility, it was the business of the superior mind to make
straight a highway for the Lord across those lives. Let every valley be
exalted, every hill be brought low.

Dr. Saunders _acquiesced_ in this verdict, and wrote a letter to his
wife. He knew she could not read it, but he knew also that she could
procure it to be read to her. He filled it with accounts of his
situation, occupation, expectation; and he sent her money. He said that,
if he could get a furlough, he might run up North for a few days, as
other men went home who could get leave of absence, to see that those
whom he had left behind him were doing well; and they would both perhaps
be able to go and see their daughter Jenny, or else they might have her
home for a holiday. He wrote a letter saying these things and others,
and any wife might have been proud to receive such from her husband, "in
the war."

And when he had sent it, he looked for no answer. This was a kind of
giving which must look for no return. And yet an answer was sent him. He
did not receive it, however, it was sent at so late a date; he was then
on his way to Dalton.

When the whistle of the miniature boat which plied the lake sent a
warning along the hillside that a passenger was on board who wished to
land, or that mail was to be sent ashore, a small boat was rowed from
the Point by a lad who was lingering about, waiting to know if any such
signal were to come, and one passenger stood at the head of the ladder,
waiting for him to come alongside. This was Dr. Saunders, who, having
been rowed ashore, walked three miles down the road, and up along the
mountain, to the Dalton neighborhood.

The first man whom he met as he walked on was the blacksmith, who had
been instrumental in getting Jenny's letter written. He was sitting in
front of his shop, alone. There was nothing about this man who was
walking into Dalton to excite a suspicion in the mind of the shrewdest
old inhabitant who should meet him that his personality was familiar to
Dalton eyes. He might safely ask what questions he would, and pursue his
way if he chose to do it. Nobody would recognize him.

The doctor lingered as he went past the shop; but the blacksmith did not
speak, and he walked on; and he passed others, his old neighbors, as he
went. This was hardly pleasant, though it might be the thing he desired.

He walked on until he came to the red farm-gate of Farmer Elkins,
Nancy's uncle. There he stopped. Under the chestnut-trees, before the
door, the farmer sat. The doctor walked in, and towards him like a man
at home, and said, "Good evening, Uncle."

The wrinkled old farmer looked up from his drowse. He had hardly heard
the words spoken; but the voice that spoke had in it a tone that was
familiar, were it not for the cheeriness of it; and--but no! one glance
at the figure before him assured him of anything rather than Saunders!
Yet the old man, either because of his vague expectation or because of
the confusion of his half-awake condition, said something audibly, of
which the name of Nancy, and her name alone, was intelligible.

"Well, where _is_ Nancy," said the other, laying his hand on the
farmer's shoulder in a manner calculated to dissipate his dream.

The old man looked at the doctor with serious, suspicious eyes, scanned
him from head to foot, and there was a dash of anger, of unbelief, of
awe, and of deference in the spirit with which he said, "If you're
Saunders, I'm glad you've come, but you might 'a' come sooner."

"You're right, and you're wrong, Uncle. I'm Saunders, true enough. But I
couldn't come before,--this is my first furlough."

"Did you get the letter?"

"No, what letter? Who wrote to me?"

The judge and the jury looked down from the awful circle, in the midst
of which stood Saunders, and surveyed the little hard-faced,
yellow-haired farmer, with eyes which seemed intent on searching him
through all his shadowy ambiguity. If only he would make such answer as
any other man in all the land might expect,--thought the
prisoner,--"Why, your wife, of course." The doctor was prepared to
believe in a miracle. Since he went away his wife might have been
spurred on by the ambition to rival her daughter, who was being
educated. She perhaps had learned to write, and in her pride had written
to her husband!

The answer Elkins gave was the only one of which the doctor's mind had
taken no thought.

"Nancy died a month ago." There the old man paused. But as the doctor
made no answer, merely stood looking at him, he went on. "She got your
letter first, though, Nancy did. I think, if anything could a-hindered
her dying, that would. She came out here to read your letter," (he did
not say to hear it read, and Saunders noticed that,) "and my folks, she
found, was busy, and nobody was round to talk it over with her, so
nothing could stop her, but she put right in and worked till night, and
on top o' that she would go back to the village, and it was raining, and
so dark you could scurce see the road; but she'd made up her mind to go
South and find you, and so we couldn't persuade her to stop over night.
But the next day, when she come back to tell us when she was going to
start for Dixie, she was took down right here, that suddin. There's been
a good deal of that sickness round here sense, and fatalish, most
always. But I tell 'em it took the smartest of the lot off first, when
it took Nancy."

The doctor stood there when the teller of this story had stopped
speaking. He was not looking at _him_,--of that the old man was certain.
He seemed to be looking nowhere, and to see nothing that was near or
visible.

"Come into the house and take something," said Uncle Elkins, for he
began to be alarmed.

"Was Janet here?" asked the doctor, as if he had not heard the
invitation.

"We had to send for her. Nancy was calling for her all the time," said
Farmer Elkins, as if he doubted how far this story ought to be
continued, for he did not understand the man before him. He only knew
that once he had fallen down on his door-step, and lain helpless beneath
his roof hard on to two months; and he watched him now as if he
anticipated some renewal of that old attack,--and there was no Nancy now
to nurse, and watch, and slave herself to death for him; for that was
the way folk in the house were talking about Nancy and her husband in
these days.

"Did she get here in time? Who went after her?"

"The minister went. We had 'em here a fortnight,--well on to 't."

"What, the minister, too?"

"No, I mean the young woman who come from Charlestown with Jenny. Her
name was--" He paused long, endeavoring to recall that name. It trembled
on the doctor's lips, but he did not utter it. At last said Farmer
Elkins, "There! it was Miss Amey,--Amey? Yes. She took the little girl
back hum with her. It was right in there, in the room where you had that
spell of fever of yourn. She got you well through that! Ef anything
could 'a' brought her through that turn, your letter would. It came
across my mind once that, as she'd saved _your_ life, may be you was
going to save hern by that are letter! And she was so determined to get
to your hospital!"

"Thank God she got the letter, any way!" exclaimed the doctor.

At that the old man walked into the house to set its best cheer before
Nancy's husband, who looked so much like a mourner as he stood there
under the trees, with the bitter recollections of the past overwhelming
every other thought and feeling of the present.

Because it seemed to him that he could not sleep under old Elkins's roof
that night, he remained there and slept there,--in the room where his
fever ran its course,--in the room where Nancy died.

Because this story of the last months of her life was as gall and
wormwood to him, he refused it not, but went over it with his wife's
relations, and helped them spread a decent pall, according to the custom
of mourners; over what had been.

Was he endeavoring to deceive himself and others into the belief that he
was a mourning man? He was but accepting the varied humiliations of
death; for they do not all pertain to the surrendering life. He was not
thinking at all of his loss through her, nor of his gain by her. He was
thinking, as he stood above the grave of fifteen years, how high
Disgrace and Misery had heaped the mound. So bitterly he was thinking of
the past, it was without desire that he at last arose and faced the
future.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he went to Charlestown--for a man on furlough had no time to
lose--and saw his Janet in the Colonel's house,--Miss Ames took Janet
home with her after that death and funeral,--when he saw how fair and
beautiful a promise of girlhood was budding on the poor neglected
branch, he said to his assistant, "Will you keep this child with you
until the war is over? I am afraid to touch her, or interfere with her
destiny. It has been so easy for me to mar, so hard to mend."

       *       *       *       *       *

Miss Ames kept the child; the war ended. The surgeon then, like other
men, returned home; his regiments were disbanded, and now, one duty, to
mankind and the ages, well discharged, another, less conspicuous, but as
urgent, claimed him. There was Janet, and Janet's mother,--she who had
risen, not from the grave indeed, but from the midst of dangers,
sacredly to guard and guide the child.

On his way to them he asked himself this question, "How many times must
a man be born before he is fit to live?"

He did not answer that question; neither can I.

He informed his assistant of the court's decision in reference to the
plea of "incompatibility," and she said that the justice of the sentence
was not to be controverted with success by any counsellor on earth; but
the reader may smile, and say that it was not difficult to come to this
decision under the circumstances.

We will not argue that point. I had only the story to tell, and have
told it.




ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.

THIRD SONNET.


    I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze
        With forms of Saints and holy men who died,
        Here martyred and hereafter glorified;
        And the great Rose upon its leaves displays
    Christ's Triumph, and the angelic roundelays,
        With splendor upon splendor multiplied;
        And Beatrice, again at Dante's side,
        No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.
    And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs
        Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love
        And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;
    And the melodious bells among the spires
        O'er all the house-tops and through heaven above
        Proclaim the elevation of the Host!




WOMAN'S WORK IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

              "King Arthur's sword, Excalibur,
    Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake.
    Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps
    Upon the hidden bases of the hills."


Sir Bedivere's heart misgave him twice ere he could obey the dying
commands of King Arthur, and fling away so precious a relic. The lonely
maiden's industry has been equalled by many of her mortal sisters,
sitting, not indeed "upon the hidden bases of the hills," but in all the
varied human habitations built above them since the days of King Arthur.

The richness, beauty, and skill displayed in the needle-work of the
Middle Ages demonstrate the perfection that art had attained; while
church inventories, wills, and costumes represented in the miniatures of
illuminated manuscripts and elsewhere, amaze us by the quantity as well
as the quality of this department of woman's work. Though regal robes
and heavy church vestments were sometimes wrought by monks, yet to
woman's taste and skill the greater share of the result must be
attributed, the professional hands being those of nuns and their pupils
in convents. The life of woman in those days was extremely monotonous.
For the mass of the people, there hardly existed any means of
locomotion, the swampy state of the land in England and on the Continent
allowing few roads to be made, except such as were traversed by
pack-horses. Ladies of rank who wished to journey were borne on litters
carried upon men's shoulders, and, until the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, few representations of carriages appear. Such a conveyance is
depicted in an illustration of the Romance of the Rose, where Venus,
attired in the fashionable costume of the fifteenth century, is seated
in a _chare_, by courtesy a chariot, but in fact a clumsy covered wagon
without springs. Six doves are perched upon the shafts, and fastened by
mediaeval harness. The goddess of course possessed superhuman powers for
guiding this extraordinary equipage, but to mere mortals it must have
been a slow coach, and a horribly uncomfortable conveyance even when
horses were substituted for doves. An ordinance of Philip le Bel, in
1294, forbids any wheel carriages to be used by the wives of citizens,
as too great a luxury. As the date of the coach which Venus guides is
two hundred years later, it is difficult to imagine what style of
equipage belonged to those ladies over whom Philip le Bel tyrannized.

With so little means of going about, our sisters of the Middle Ages were
perforce domestic; no wonder they excelled in needle-work. To women of
any culture it was almost the only tangible form of creative art they
could command, and the love of the beautiful implanted in their souls
must find some expression. The great pattern-book of nature, filled with
graceful forms, in ever-varied arrangement, and illuminated by delicate
tints or gorgeous hues, suggested the beauty they endeavored to
represent. Whether religious devotion, human affection, or a taste for
dress prompted them, the needle was the instrument to effect their
purpose. The monogram of the blessed Mary's name, intertwined with pure
white lilies on the deep blue ground, was designed and embroidered with
holy reverence, and laid on the altar of the Lady-chapel by the
trembling hand of one whose sorrows had there found solace, or by
another in token of gratitude for joys which were heightened by a
conviction of celestial sympathy. The pennon of the knight--a silken
streamer affixed to the top of the lance--bore his crest, or an
emblematic allusion to some event in his career, embroidered, it was
supposed, by the hand of his lady-love. A yet more sacred gift was the
scarf worn across the shoulder, an indispensable appendage to a knight
fully equipped. The emotions of the human soul send an electric current
through the ages, and women who during four years of war toiled to aid
our soldiers in the great struggle of the nineteenth century felt their
hearts beat in unison with hers who gave, with tears and prayers, pennon
and scarf to the knightly and beloved hero seven hundred years ago.

Not only were the appointments of the warriors adorned by needle-work,
but the ladies must have found ample scope for industry and taste in
their own toilets. The Anglo-Saxon women as far back as the eighth
century excelled in needle-work, although, judging from the
representations which have come down to us, their dress was much less
ornamented than that of the gentlemen. During the eighth, ninth, and
tenth centuries there were few changes in fashion. A purple gown or
robe, with long yellow sleeves, and coverchief wrapt round the head and
neck, frequently appears, the edges of the long gown and sleeves being
slightly ornamented by the needle. How the ladies dressed their hair in
those days is more difficult to decide, as the coverchief conceals it.
Crisping-needles to curl and plat the hair, and golden hair-cauls, are
mentioned in Saxon writings, and give us reason to suppose that the
locks of the fair damsels were not neglected. In the eleventh century
the embroidery upon the long gowns becomes more elaborate, and other
changes of the mode appear.

From the report of an ancient Spanish ballad, the art of needle-work and
taste in dress must have attained great perfection in that country while
our Anglo-Saxon sisters were wearing their plain long gowns. The fair
Sybilla is described as changing her dress seven times in one evening,
on the arrival of that successful and victorious knight, Prince Baldwin.
First, she dazzles him in blue and silver, with a rich turban; then
appears in purple satin, fringed and looped with gold, with white
feathers in her hair; next, in green silk and emeralds; anon, in pale
straw-color, with a tuft of flowers; next, in pink and silver, with
varied plumes, white, carnation, and blue; then, in brown, with a
splendid crescent. As the fortunate Prince beholds each transformation,
he is bewildered (as well he may be) to choose which array becomes her
best; but when

    "Lastly in white she comes, and loosely
      Down in ringlets floats her hair,
    'O,' exclaimed the Prince, 'what beauty!
      Ne'er was princess half so fair.'"

Simplicity and natural grace carried the day after all, as they
generally do with men of true taste. "Woman is fine for her own
satisfaction alone," says that nice observer of human nature, Jane
Austen. "Man only knows man's insensibility to a new gown." We hope,
however, that the dressmakers and tirewomen of the fair Sybilla, who had
expended so much time and invention, were handsomely rewarded by the
Prince, since they must have been most accomplished needle-women and
handmaids to have got up their young lady in so many costumes and in
such rapid succession.

A very odd fashion appears in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
of embroidering heraldic devices on the long gowns of the ladies of
rank. In one of the illuminations of a famous psalter, executed for Sir
Geoffery Loutterell, who died in 1345, that nobleman is represented
armed at all points, receiving from the ladies of his family his tilting
helmet, shield, and _pavon_. His coat of arms is repeated on every part
of his own dress, and is embroidered on that of his wife, who wears also
the crest of her own family.

Marie de Hainault, wife of the first Duke of Bourbon, 1354, appears in a
corsage and train of ermine, with a very fierce-looking lion rampant
embroidered twice on her long gown. Her jewels are magnificent. Anne,
Dauphine d'Auvergne, wife of Louis, second Duke of Bourbon, married in
1371, displays an heraldic dolphin of very sinister aspect upon one side
of her corsage, and on the skirt of her long gown,--which, divided in
the centre, seems to be composed of two different stuffs, that opposite
to the dolphin being powdered with _fleurs de lis_. Her circlet of
jewels is very elegant, and is worn just above her brow, while the hair
is braided close to the face. An attendant lady wears neither train nor
jewels, but her dress is likewise formed of different material, divided
like that of the Dauphine. Six little parrots are emblazoned on the
right side, one on her sleeve, two on her corsage, and three on her
skirt. The fashion of embroidering armorial bearings on ladies' dresses
must have given needle-women a vast deal of work. It died out in the
fifteenth century.

It was the custom in feudal times for knightly families to send their
daughters to the castles of their suzerain lords, to be trained to weave
and embroider. The young ladies on their return home instructed the more
intelligent of their female servants in these arts. Ladies of rank in
all countries prided themselves upon the number of these attendants, and
were in the habit of passing the morning surrounded by their workwomen,
singing the _chansons a toile_, as ballads composed for these hours were
called.

Estienne Jodelle, a French poet, 1573, addressed a fair lady whose
cunning fingers plied the needle in words thus translated:--

    "I saw thee weave a web with care,
    Where at thy touch fresh roses grew,
    And marvelled they were formed so fair,
    And that thy heart such nature knew.
    Alas! how idle my surprise,
    Since naught so plain can be:
    Thy cheek their richest hue supplies,
    And in thy breath their perfume lies;
    Their grace and beauty all are drawn from thee."

If needle-work had its poetry, it had also its reckonings. Old
account-books bear many entries of heavy payments for working materials
used by industrious queens and indefatigable ladies of rank. Good
authorities state that, before the sixth century, all silk materials
were brought to Europe by the Seres, ancestors of the ancient
Bokharians, whence it derived its name of Serica. In 551, silk-worms
were introduced by two monks into Constantinople, but the Greeks
monopolized the manufacture until 1130, when Roger, king of Sicily,
returning from a crusade, collected some Greek manufacturers, and
established them at Palermo, whence the trade was disseminated over
Italy.

In the thirteenth century, Bruges was the great mart for silk. The
stuffs then known were velvet, satin (called samite), and taffeta,--all
of which were stitched with gold or silver thread. The expense of
working materials was therefore very great, and royal ladies
condescended to superintend sewing-schools.

Editha, consort of Edward the Confessor, was a highly accomplished lady,
who sometimes intercepted the master of Westminster School and his
scholars in their walks, questioning them in Latin. She was also skilled
in all feminine works, embroidering the robes of her royal husband with
her own hands.

Of all the fair ones, however, who have wrought for the service of a
king, since the manufacture of Excalibur, let the name of Matilda of
Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror, stand at the head of the
record, in spite of historians' doubts. Matilda, born about the year
1031, was carefully educated. She had beauty, learning, industry; and
the Bayeux tapestry connected with her name still exists, a monument of
her achievements in the art of needle-work. It is, as everybody knows, a
pictured chronicle of the conquest of England,--a wife's tribute to the
glory of her husband.

As a specimen of ancient stitchery and feminine industry, this work is
extremely curious. The tapestry is two hundred and twenty-two feet in
length and twenty in width. It is worked in different-colored worsteds
on white cloth, now brown with age. The attempts to represent the human
figure are very rude, and it is merely given in outline. Matilda
evidently had very few colors at her disposal, as the horses are
depicted of any hue,--blue, green, or yellow; the arabesque patterns
introduced are rich and varied.

During the French Revolution, this tapestry was demanded by the
insurgents to cover their guns; but a priest succeeded in concealing it
until the storm had passed. Bonaparte knew its value. He caused it to be
brought to Paris and displayed, after which he restored the precious
relic to Bayeux.

We have many records of royal ladies who practised and patronized
needle-work. Anne of Brittany, first wife of Louis XII. of France,
caused three hundred girls, daughters of the nobility, to be instructed
in that art under her personal supervision. Her daughter Claude pursued
the same laudable plan. Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, and mother of
Henry IV. of France, a woman of vigorous mind, was skilled also in the
handicraft of the needle, and wrought a set of hangings called "The
Prison Opened," meaning that she had broken the bonds of the Pope.

The practice of teaching needle-work continued long at the French court,
and it was there that Mary of Scotland learned the art in which she so
much excelled. When cast into prison, she beguiled the time, and soothed
the repentant anxieties of her mind, with the companionship of her
needle. The specimens of her work yet existing are principally
bed-trimmings, hangings, and coverlets, composed of dark satin, upon
which flowers, separately embroidered, are transferred.

The romances and lays of chivalry contain many descriptions of the
ornamental needle-work of those early days. In one of the ancient
ballads, a knight, after describing a fair damsel whom he had rescued
and carried to his castle, adds that she "knewe how to sewe and marke
all manner of silken worke," and no doubt he made her repair many of his
mantles and scarfs frayed and torn by time and tourney.

The beautiful Elaine covered the shield of Sir Launcelot with a case of
silk, upon which devices were braided by her fair hands, and added, from
her own design,

    "A border fantasy of branch and flower,
    And yellow-throated nestling in the nest."

When he went to the tourney she gave him a red sleeve "broidered with
great pearls," which he bound upon his helmet. It is recorded that, in a
tournament at the court of Burgundy in 1445, one of the knights received
from his lady a sleeve of delicate dove-color, which he fastened on his
left arm. These sleeves were made of a different material from the
dress, and generally of a richer fabric elaborately ornamented; so they
were considered valuable enough to form a separate legacy in wills of
those centuries. Maddalena Doni, in her portrait, painted by Raphael,
which hangs in the Pitti Palace at Florence, wears a pair of these rich,
heavy sleeves, fastened slightly at the shoulder, and worn over a
shorter sleeve belonging to her dress. Thus we see how it was that a
lady could disengage her sleeve at the right moment, and give it to the
fortunate knight.

The art of adorning linen was practised from the earliest times. Threads
were drawn and fashioned with the needle, or the ends of the cloth
unravelled and plaited into geometrical patterns. St. Cuthbert's curious
grave-clothes, as described by an eyewitness to his disinterment in the
twelfth century, were ornamented with cut-work, which was used
principally for ecclesiastical purposes, and was looked upon in England
till the dissolution of the monasteries as a church secret. The
open-work embroidery, which went under the general name of cut-work, is
the origin of lace.

The history of lace by Mrs. Bury Palliser, recently published in London,
is worthy of the exquisite fabric of which it treats. The author has
woven valuable facts, historical associations, and curious anecdotes
into the web of her narrative, with an industry and skill rivalling the
work of her mediaeval sisters. The illustrations of this beautiful volume
are taken from rare specimens of ancient and modern lace, so perfectly
executed as quite to deceive the eye, and almost the touch.

Italy and Flanders dispute the invention of point or needle-made lace.
The Italians probably derived the art of needle-work from the Greeks who
took refuge in Italy during the troubles of the Lower Empire. Its origin
was undoubtedly Byzantine, as the places which were in constant
intercourse with the Greek Empire were the cities where point-lace was
earliest made. The traditions of the Low Countries also ascribe it to an
Eastern origin, assigning the introduction of lace-making to the
Crusaders on their return from the Holy Land. A modern writer, Francis
North, asserts that the Italians learned embroidery from the Saracens,
as Spaniards learned the same art from the Moors, and, in proof of his
theory, states that the word _embroider_ is derived from the Arabic, and
does not belong to any European language. In the opinion of some
authorities, the English word _lace_ comes from the Latin word _licina_,
signifying the hem or fringe of a garment; others suppose it derived
from the word _laces_, which appears in Anglo-Norman statutes, meaning
braids which were used to unite different parts of the dress. In England
the earliest lace was called _passament_, from the fact that the threads
were passed over each other in its formation; and it is not until the
reign of Richard III. that the word _lace_ appears in royal accounts.
The French term _dentelle_ is also of modern date, and was not used
until fashion caused _passament_ to be made with a toothed edge, when
the designation _passament dentele_ appears.

But whatever the origin of the name, lace-making and embroidery have
employed many fingers, and worn out many eyes, and even created
revolutions. In England, until the time of Henry VIII., shirts,
handkerchiefs, sheets, and pillow-cases were embroidered in silks of
different colors, until the fashion gave way to cut-work and lace. Italy
produced lace fabrics early in the fifteenth century; and the Florentine
poet, Firenzuola, who flourished about 1520, composed an elegy upon a
collar of raised point lace made by the hand of his mistress. Portraits
of Venetian ladies dated as early as 1500 reveal white lace trimmings;
but at that period lace was, professedly, only made by nuns for the
service of the Church, and the term _nuns' work_ has been the
designation of lace in many places to a very modern date. Venice was
famed for point, Genoa for pillow laces. English Parliamentary records
have statutes on the subject of Venice laces; at the coronation of
Richard III., fringes of Venice and mantle laces of gold and white silk
appear.

    "To know the age and pedigrees
    Of points of Flanders and Venise,"

depends much upon the ancient pattern-books yet in existence. Parchment
patterns, drawn and pricked for pillow lace, bearing the date of 1577,
were lately found covering old law-books, in Albisola, a town near
Savona, which was a place celebrated for its laces, as we infer from the
fact that it was long the custom of the daughters of the nobles to
select these laces for their wedding shawls and veils. There is a pretty
tradition at Venice, handed down among the inhabitants of the Lagoons,
which says that a sailor brought home to his betrothed a branch of the
delicate coralline known as "mermaids' lace." The girl, a worker in
points, attracted by the grace of the coral, imitated it with her
needle, and after much toil produced the exquisite fabric which, as
Venice point, soon became the mode in all Europe. Lace-making in Italy
formed the occupation of many women of the higher classes, who wished to
add to their incomes. Each lady had a number of workers, to whom she
supplied patterns, pricked by herself, paying her workwomen at the end
of every week, each day being notched on a tally.

In the convent of Gesu Bambino, at Rome, curious specimens of old
Spanish conventual work--parchment patterns with lace in progress--have
been found. They belonged to Spanish nuns, who long ago taught the art
of lace-making to novices. Like all point lace, this appears to be
executed in separate pieces, given out by the nuns, and then joined
together by a skilful hand. We see the pattern traced, the work partly
finished, and the very thread left, as when "Sister Felice Vittoria"
laid down her work, centuries ago. Mrs. Palliser received from Rome
photographs of these valuable relics, engravings from which she has
inserted in her history of lace. Aloe-thread was then used for
lace-making, as it is now in Florence for sewing straw-plait. Spanish
point has been as celebrated as that of Flanders or Italy. Some
traditions aver that Spain taught the art to Flanders. Spain had no
cause to import laces: they were extensively made at home, and were less
known than the manufacture of other countries, because very little was
exported. The numberless images of the Madonna and patron saints dressed
and undressed daily, together with the albs of the priests and
decorations of the altars, caused an immense consumption for
ecclesiastical uses. Thread lace was manufactured in Spain in 1492, and
in the Cathedral of Granada is a lace alb presented to the church by
Ferdinand and Isabella,--one of the few relics of ecclesiastical
grandeur preserved in the country. Cardinal Wiseman, in a letter to Mrs.
Palliser, states that he had himself officiated in this vestment, which
was valued at ten thousand crowns. The fine church lace of Spain was
little known in Europe until the revolution of 1830, when splendid
specimens were suddenly thrown into the market,--not merely the heavy
lace known as Spanish point, but pieces of the most exquisite
description, which could only have been made, says Mrs. Palliser, by
those whose time was not money.

Among the Saxon Hartz Mountains is the old town of Annaburg, and beneath
a lime-tree in its ancient burial-ground stands a simple monument with
this inscription:--

"Here lies Barbara Uttman, died on the 14th of January, 1576, whose
invention of lace in the year 1561 made her the benefactress of the
Hartz Mountains.

    'An active mind, a skilful hand,
    Bring blessings down on Fatherland.'"

Barbara was born in 1514. Her parents, burghers of Nuremberg, removed to
the Hartz Mountains for the purpose of working a mine in that
neighborhood. It is said that Barbara learned the art of lace-making
from a native of Brabant, a Protestant, whom the cruelties of the Duke
of Alva had driven from her country. Barbara, observing the mountain
girls making nets for the miners to wear over their hair, took great
interest in the improvement of their work, and succeeded in teaching
them a fine knitted _tricot_, and afterwards a lace ground. In 1561,
having procured aid from Flanders, she set up a work-shop in Annaburg
for lace-making. This branch of industry spread beyond Bavaria, giving
employment to thirty thousand persons, and producing a revenue of one
million thalers.

Italy and Flanders dispute the invention of lace, but it was probably
introduced into both countries about the same time. The Emperor Charles
V. commanded lace-making to be taught in schools and convents. A
specimen of the manufacture of his day may be seen in his cap, now
preserved in the museum at Hotel Cluny, Paris. It is of fine linen, with
the Emperor's arms embroidered in relief, with designs in lace, of
exquisite workmanship. The old Flemish laces are of great beauty and
world-wide fame.

Many passages in the history of lace show how severely the manufacture
of this beautiful fabric has strained the nerves of eye and brain. The
fishermen's wives on the Scottish coast apostrophize the fish they sell,
after their husbands' perilous voyages, and sing,

    "Call them lives o' men."

Not more fatal to life are the blasts from ocean winds than the tasks
of laborious lace-makers; and this thought cannot but mingle with our
admiration for the skill displayed in this branch of woman's endless
toil and endeavor to supply her own wants and aid those who are dear to
her, in the present as well as in the past centuries.

In the British Museum there is a curious manuscript of the fourteenth
century, afterwards translated "into our maternall englisshe by me
William Caxton, and emprynted at Westminstre the last day of Januer, the
first yere of the regne of King Richard the thyrd," called "the booke
which the Knight of the Towere made for the enseygnement and teching of
his doughtres."

The Knight of the Tower was Geoffory Landry, surnamed De la Tour, of a
noble family of Anjou. In the month of April, 1371, he was one day
reflecting beneath the shade of some trees on various passages in his
life, and upon the memory of his wife, whose early death had caused him
sorrow, when his three daughters walked into the garden. The sight of
these motherless girls naturally turned his thoughts to the condition of
woman in society, and he resolved to write a treatise, enforced by
examples of both good and evil, for their instruction. The state of
society which the "evil" examples portray might well cause a father's
heart to tremble.

The education of young ladies, as we have before stated, was in that age
usually assigned to convents or to families of higher rank. It consisted
of instruction in needle-work, confectionery, surgery, and the rudiments
of church music. Men were strongly opposed to any high degree of mental
culture for women; and although the Knight of the Tower thinks it good
for women to be taught to read their Bibles, yet the pen is too
dangerous an instrument to trust to their hands. The art of writing he
disapproves,--"Better women can naught of it." Religious observances he
strictly recommends; but we shudder at some of the stories which even
this well-meaning father relates as illustrations of the efficacy of
religious austerities. Extravagance in dress prevailed at that time
among men and women to such a degree that Parliament was appealed to on
the subject in 1363. From the Knight's exhortations on the subject, this
mania seems to have affected the women alarmingly, and the examples
given of the passion for dress appear to surpass what is acknowledged in
our day. Yet the vast increase of materials, as well as the extended
interests and objects opened to woman now, renders the extravagance of
dress in the Middle Ages far less reprehensible.

The record of woman's work in the Middle Ages includes far more than the
account of what her needle accomplished. The position of the mistress of
a family in those centuries was no sinecure. When we look up at castles
perched on rocks, or walk through the echoing apartments of baronial
halls, we know that woman must have worked there with brain and fingers.
The household and its dependencies, in such mansions, consisted of more
than a score of persons, and provisions must be laid in during the
autumn for many months. As we glance at the enormous fireplaces and
ovens in the kitchens of those castles and halls, and remember the
weight of the armor men wore, we can readily imagine that no trifling
supply of brawn and beef was needed for their meals; and the sight of a
husband frowning out of one of those old helmets because the dinner was
scanty, must have been a fearful trial to feminine nerves. The title of
"Lady" means the "Giver of bread" in Saxon, and the lady of the castle
dispensed food to many beyond her own household.

The task of preparing the raiment of the family devolved upon the women;
for there were no travelling dealers except for the richest and most
expensive articles. Wool, the produce of the flock, was carded and spun;
flax was grown, and woven into coarse linen; and both materials were
prepared and fashioned into garments at home. Glimpses of domestic life
come down to us through early legends and records, some of which modern
genius has melodized. Authentic history and romantic story often show us
that women of all ranks were little better, in fact, than household
drudges to these splendid knights and courtly old barons. The fair Enid
sang a charming song as she turned her wheel; but when Geraint arrived,
she not only assisted her mother to receive him, but, by her father's
order, led the knight's charger to the stall, and gave him corn. If she
also relieved the noble animal of his heavy saddle and horse-furniture,
gave him water as well as corn, and shook down the dry furze for his
bed, she must have had the courage and skill of a feminine Rarey; and we
fear her dress of faded silk came out of the stable in a very
dilapidated condition. After the horse was cared for, Enid put her wits
and hands to work to prepare the evening meal, and spread it before her
father and his guest. The knight, indeed, condescended to think her
"sweet and serviceable"!

The women of those days are often described only as they appeared at
festivals and tournaments,--Ladies of Beauty, to whom knights lowered
their lances, and of whom troubadours sang. They had their amusements
and their triumphs, doubtless; but they also had their work, domestic,
industrial, and sanitary. They knew how to bind up wounds and care for
the sick, and we read many records of their knowledge in this
department. Elaine, when she found Sir Launcelot terribly wounded in the
cave, so skilfully aided him that, when the old hermit came who was
learned in all the simples and science of the times, he told the knight
that "her fine care had saved his life,"--a pleasing assurance that
there were medical men in those days, as well as in our own, who
expressed no unwillingness to allow a woman credit for success in their
own profession.

Illuminated books sometimes show us pictures of women of the humbler
ranks of life at their work. On the border of a fine manuscript of the
time of Edward IV. there is the figure of a woman employed with her
distaff, her head and neck enveloped in a coverchief. The figure rises
out of a flower. In a manuscript of 1316, a country-woman is engaged in
churning, dressed in a comfortable gown and apron, the gown tidily
pinned up, and her head and neck in a coverchief. The churn is of
considerable height, and of very clumsy construction. A blind beggar
approaches her, led by his dog, who holds apparently a cup in his mouth
to receive donations. In another part of the same volume is a beautiful
damsel with her hair spread over her shoulders, while her maid arranges
her tresses with a comb of ivory set in gold. The young lady holds a
small mirror, probably of polished steel, in her hand. Specimens of
these curious combs and mirrors yet exist in collections. A century
later we see a pretty laundress, holding in her hands a number of
delicately woven napkins, which look as if they might have come out of
the elaborately carved napkin press of the same period in the collection
of Sir Samuel Myrick at Goodrich Court.

Although the Knight of the Tower disapproved of young ladies being
taught to write, there were women whose employment writing seems to have
been; but these were nuns safely shut up from the risk of
_billets-doux_. In Dr. Maitland's Essays on the Dark Ages, he quotes
from the biography of Diemudis, a devout nun of the eleventh century, a
list of the volumes which she prepared with her own hand, written in
beautiful and legible characters, to the praise of God, and of the holy
Apostles Peter and Paul, the patrons of the monastery, which was that of
Wessobrunn in Bavaria. The list comprises thirty-one works, many of them
in three or four volumes; and although Diemudis is not supposed to have
been an authoress, she is certainly worthy of having her name handed
down through eight centuries in witness of woman's indefatigable work in
the scriptorium. One missal prepared by Diemudis was given to the
Bishop of Treves, another to the Bishop of Augsburg, and one Bible in
two volumes is mentioned, which was exchanged by the monastery for an
estate.

We can picture to ourselves Diemudis in her conventual dress, seated in
the scriptorium, with her materials for chirography. The sun, as it
streams through the window, throws a golden light over the vellum page,
suggesting the rich hue of the gilded nimbus, while in the convent
garden she sees the white lily or the modest violet, which, typical of
the Madonna, she transfers to her illuminated borders. Thus has God ever
interwoven truth and love with their correspondences of beauty and
development in the natural world, which were open to the eyes of
Diemudis eight hundred years ago, perhaps as clearly as to our own in
these latter days. That women of even an earlier century than that of
Diemudis were permitted to read, if not to write, is proved by the
description of a private library, given in the letters of C. S. Sidonius
Apollinaris, and quoted in Edwards's "History of Libraries." This
book-collection was the property of a gentleman of the fifth century,
residing at his castle of Prusiana. It was divided into three
departments, the first of which was expressly intended for the ladies of
the family, and contained books of piety and devotion. The second
department was for men, and is rather ungallantly stated to have been of
a higher order; yet, as the third department was intended for the whole
family, and contained such works as Augustine, Origen, Varro,
Prudentius, and Horace, the literary tastes of the ladies should have
been satisfied. We are also told that it was the custom at the castle of
Prusiana to discuss at dinner the books read in the morning,--which
would tend to a belief that conversation at the dinner-tables of the
fifth century might be quite as edifying as at those of the nineteenth.

A few feminine names connected with the literature of the Middle Ages
have come down to us. The lays of Marie de France are among the
manuscripts in the British Museum. Marie's personal history, as well as
the period when she flourished, is uncertain. Her style is extremely
obscure; but in her Preface she seems aware of this defect, yet defends
it by the example of the ancients. She considers it the duty of all
persons to employ their talents; and as her gifts were intellectual, she
cast her thoughts in various directions ere she determined upon her
peculiar mission. She had intended translating from the Latin a good
history, but some one else unluckily anticipated her; and she finally
settled herself down to poetry, and to the translation of numerous lays
she had treasured in her memory, as these would be new to many of her
readers. Like other literary ladies, she complains of envy and
persecution, but she perseveres through all difficulties, and dedicates
her book "to the King."

Marie was born in France. Some authorities suppose she wrote in England
during the reign of Henry III., and that the patron she names was
William Langue-espee, who died in 1226; others, that this _plus
vaillant_ patron was William, Count of Flanders, who accompanied St.
Louis on his first crusade in 1248, and was killed at a tournament in
1251. A later surmise is that the book was dedicated to Stephen, French
being his native language. Among the manuscripts of the Bibliotheque
Royale at Paris, is Marie's translation of the fables which Henry
Beauclerc translated from Latin into English, and which Marie renders
into French. A proof that Marie's poems are extremely ancient is deduced
from the names in one of these fables applied to the wolf and the fox.
She uses other names than those of Ysengrin and Renard, which were
introduced as early as the reign of Coeur de Lion, and it would seem
that she could not have failed to notice these remarkable names, had
they existed in her time. A complete collection of the works of Marie de
France was published in Paris in 1820, by M. de Roquefort, who speaks
of her in the following terms: "She possessed that penetration which
distinguishes at first sight the different passions of mankind, which
seizes upon the different forms they assume, and, remarking the objects
of their notice, discovers at the same time the means by which they are
attained." If this be a true statement, the acuteness of feminine
observation has gained but little in the progress of the centuries, and
her literary sisters of the present era can hardly hope to eclipse the
penetration of Marie de France.

The Countesses de Die, supposed to be mother and daughter, were both
poetesses. The elder lady was beloved by Rabaud d'Orange, who died in
1173, and the younger is celebrated by William Adhemar, a distinguished
troubadour. He was visited on his death-bed by both these ladies, who
afterwards erected a monument to his memory. The younger countess
retired to a convent, and died soon after Adhemar.

In the Harleian Collection is a fine manuscript containing the writings
of Christine de Pisan, a distinguished woman of the fourteenth century.
Her father, Thomas de Pisan, a celebrated _savant_ of Bologna, had
married a daughter of a member of the Grand Council of Venice. So
renowned was Thomas de Pisan that the kings of Hungary and France
determined to win him away from Bologna. Charles V. of France, surnamed
the Wise, was successful, and Thomas de Pisan went to Paris in 1368; his
transfer to the French court making a great sensation among learned and
scientific circles of that day. Charles loaded him with wealth and
honors, and chose him Astrologer Royal. According to the history, as
told by Louisa Stuart Costello, in her "Specimens of the Early Poetry of
France," Christine was but five years old when she accompanied her
parents to Paris, where she received every advantage of education, and,
inheriting her father's literary tastes, early became learned in
languages and science. Her personal charms, together with her father's
high favor at court, attracted many admirers. She married Stephen
Castel, a young gentleman of Picardy, to whom she was tenderly attached,
and whose character she has drawn in most favorable colors. A few years
passed happily, but, alas! changes came. The king died, the pension and
offices bestowed upon Thomas de Pisan were suspended, and the Astrologer
Royal soon followed his patron beyond the stars. Castel was also
deprived of his preferments; and though he maintained his wife and
family for a time, he was cut off by death at thirty-four years of age.

Christine had need of all her energies to meet such a succession of
calamities, following close on so brilliant a career. Devoting herself
anew to study, she determined to improve her talents for composition,
and to make her literary attainments a means of support for her
children. The illustrations in the manuscript volume of her works
picture to us several scenes in Christine's life. In one, the artist has
sliced off the side of a house to allow us to see Christine in her
study, giving us also the exterior, roof, and dormer-windows, with
points finished by gilt balls. The room is very small, with a crimson
and white tapestry hanging. Christine wears what may be called the
regulation color for literary ladies,--blue, with the extraordinary
two-peaked head-dress of the period, put on in a decidedly strong-minded
manner. At her feet sits a white dog, small, but wise-looking, with a
collar of gold bells round his neck. Before Christine stands a plain
table, covered with green cloth; her book, bound in crimson and gold, in
which she is writing, lies before her.

Christine's style of holding the implements,--one in each hand,--and the
case of materials for her work which lies beside her, are according to
representations of the _miniatori caligrafi_ at their labors; and, as
the art of caligraphy was well known at Bologna, so learned a man as
Thomas de Pisan must have been acquainted with it, and would have caused
his talented daughter to be instructed in so rare an accomplishment. It
is not therefore unreasonable to believe that, in the beautiful volume
now in the British Museum, the work of Christine's hand, as well as the
result of her genius, is preserved. The next picture shows us Christine
presenting her book to Charles VII. of France, who is dressed in a black
robe edged with ermine; he wears a golden belt, order, and crown. The
king is seated beneath a canopy, blue, powdered with _fleurs de lis_.
Four courtiers stand beside him, dressed in robes of different
colors,--one in pink, and wearing a large white hat of Quaker-like
fashion. Christine has put on a white robe over her blue dress, perhaps
as a sign of mourning,--she being then a widow. A white veil depends
from the peaks of her head-dress. She kneels before the king, and
presents her book.

Another and more elaborate picture represents the repetition of the same
ceremony before Isabelle of Bavaria, queen of Charles VI. We are here
admitted into the private royal apartments of the fourteenth century.
The hangings of the apartment consist of strips, upon which are
alternately emblazoned the armorial devices of France and Bavaria. A
couch or bed, with a square canopy covered with red and blue, having the
royal arms embroidered in the centre, stands on one side of the room.
The queen is seated upon a lounge of modern shape, covered to correspond
with the couch. She is dressed in a splendid robe of purple and gold,
with long sleeves sweeping the ground, lined with ermine; upon her head
arises a structure of stuffed rolls, heavy in material and covered with
jewels, which shoots up into two high peaks above her forehead. Six
ladies are in waiting, two in black and gold, with the same enormous
head-gears. They sit on the edge of her Majesty's sofa, while four
ladies of inferior rank and plainer garments are contented with low
benches. Christine reappears in her blue dress, and white-veiled, peaked
cap. She kneels before the queen, on a square carpet with a
geometrical-patterned border, and presents her book. A white Italian
hound lies at the foot of the couch, while beside Isabelle sits a small
white dog, resembling the one we saw in Christine's study. As we can
hardly suppose Christine would bring her pet on so solemn an
occasion,--far less allow him to jump up beside the queen,--and as this
little animal wears no gold bells, we are led to suppose that little
white dogs were in fashion in the fourteenth century.

We cannot say that the portrait of Isabelle gives us any idea of her
splendid beauty; but "handsome is that handsome does," and as Isabelle's
work was a very bad one in the Middle Ages, we will say no more about
her.

Christine was but twenty-five years of age when she became a widow, and
her personal charms captivated the heart of no less a personage than the
Earl of Salisbury, who came ambassador from England to demand the hand
of the very youthful princess, Isabelle, for his master.

They exchanged verses; and although Salisbury spoke by no means
mysteriously, the sage Christine affected to view his declarations only
in the light of complimentary speeches from a gallant knight. The Earl
considered himself as rejected, bade adieu to love, and renounced
marriage. To Christine he made a very singular proposal for a rejected
lover,--that of taking with him to England her eldest son, promising to
devote himself to his education and preferment. The offer was too
valuable to be declined by a poor widow, whose pen was her only means of
supporting her family. That such a proof of devotion argued a tenderer
feeling than that of knightly gallantry must have been apparent to
Christine; but for reasons best understood by herself,--and shall we not
believe with a heart yet true to her husband's memory?--she merely
acknowledged the kindness shown to her son; and the Earl and his
adopted boy left France together. When Richard II. was deposed, Henry
Bolingbroke struck off the head of the Earl of Salisbury. Among the
papers of the murdered man the lays of Christine were found by King
Henry, who was so much struck with their purity and beauty, that he
wrote to the fair authoress of her son's safety, under his protection,
and invited her to his court.

This invitation was at once a compliment and an insult, for the hand
that sent it was stained with the blood of her friend. Christine,
however, had worldly wisdom enough to send a respectful, though firm
refusal, to a crowned head, a successful soldier, and one, moreover, who
held her son in his power. Feminine tact must have guided her pen, for
Henry was not offended, and twice despatched a herald to renew the
invitation to his court. She steadily declined to leave France, but
managed the affair so admirably that she at last obtained the return of
her son from England.

Like her father, Thomas de Pisan, Christine seems to have been sought as
an ornament of their courts by several rulers. Henry Bolingbroke could
not gain her for England, and the Duke of Milan in vain urged her to
reside in that city. Seldom has a literary lady in any age received such
tempting invitations; yet Christine refused to leave France, although
her own fortunes were anything but certain. The Duke of Burgundy took
her son under his protection, and urged Christine to write the history
of her patron, Charles V. of France. This was a work grateful to her
feelings, and she had commenced the memoir when the death of the Duke
deprived her of his patronage, and threw her son again upon her care,
involving her in many anxieties. But Christine bore herself through all
her trials with firmness and prudence, and her latter days were more
tranquil. She took a deep interest in the affairs of her adopted
country, and welcomed in her writings the appearance of the Maid of
Orleans. We believe, however, that she was spared the pain of witnessing
the last act in that drama of history, where an innocent victim was
given up by French perfidy to English cruelty.

The deeds of Joan of Arc need no recital here. A daughter of France in
the nineteenth century had a soul pure enough to reflect the image of
the Maid of Orleans, and with a skilful hand she embodied the vision in
marble. The statue of Joan of Arc, modelled by the Princess Marie,
adorns--or rather sanctifies--the halls of Versailles.

Of woman's work as an artist in the early centuries we have a curious
illustration in a manuscript belonging to the Bibliotheque Royale at
Paris, which exhibits a female figure painting the statue of the
Madonna. The artist holds in her left hand a palette, which is the
earliest notice of the use of that implement with which antiquarians are
acquainted. The fashion of painting figures cut in wood was once much
practised, and we see here the representation of a female artist of very
ancient date. Painting, music, and dancing come under the designation of
accomplishments; yet to obtain distinction in any of these branches
implies a vast amount of work. An illustration of Lygate's Pilgrim shows
us a young lady playing upon a species of organ with one hand; in the
other she holds to her lips a mellow horn, through which she pours her
breath, if not her soul; lying beside her is a stringed instrument
called a sawtry. Such varied musical acquirements certainly argue both
industry and devotion to art. Charlemagne's daughters were distinguished
for their skill in dancing; and we read of many instances in the Middle
Ages of women excelling in these fine arts.

The period of time generally denominated the Middle Ages commences with
the fifth century, and ends with the fifteenth. We have in several
instances ventured to extend the limits as far as a part of the
sixteenth century, and therefore include among female artists the name
of Sofonisba Anguisciola, who was born about 1540. She was a noble lady
of Cremona, whose fame spread early throughout Italy. In 1559, Philip
II. of Spain invited her to his court at Madrid, where on her arrival
she was treated with great distinction. Her chief study was portraiture,
and her pictures became objects of great value to kings and popes.

Her royal patrons of Spain married their artist to a noble Sicilian,
giving her a dowry of twelve thousand ducats and a pension of one
thousand ducats, beside rich presents in tapestries and jewels. She went
with her husband to Palermo, where they resided several years. On the
death of her husband the king and queen of Spain urged her to return to
their court; but she excused herself on account of her wish to visit
Cremona. Embarking on board a galley for this purpose, bound to Genoa,
she was entertained with such gallantry by the captain, Orazio
Lomellini, one of the merchant princes of that city, that the heart of
the distinguished artist was won, and she gave him her hand on their
arrival at Genoa.

History does not tell us whether she ever revisited Cremona, but she
dwelt in Genoa during the remainder of her long life, pursuing her art
with great success. On her second marriage, her faithful friends in the
royal family of Spain added four hundred crowns to her pension. The
Empress of Germany visited Sofonisba on the way to Spain, and accepted
from her hand a little picture. Sofonisba became blind in her old age,
but lost no other faculty. Vandyck was her guest when at Genoa, and said
that he had learned more of his art from one blind old woman than from
any other teacher. A medal was struck in her honor at Bologna. The
Academy of Fine Arts at Edinburgh contains a noble picture by Vandyck,
painted in his Italian manner. It represents individuals of the
Lomellini family, and was probably in progress when he visited this
illustrious woman, who had become a member of that house.

Stirling in his "Artists of Spain" states that few of Sofonisba's
pictures are now known to exist, and that the beautiful portrait of
herself, probably the one mentioned by Vasari in the wardrobe of the
Cardinal di Monte at Rome, or that noticed by Soprani in the palace of
Giovanni Lomellini at Genoa, is now in the possession of Earl Spencer at
Althorp. The engraving from this picture, in Dibdin's _AEdes
Althorpianae_, lies before us. We think the better of kings and queens
who prized a woman with eyes so clear, and an expression of such honesty
and truth. The original is said to be masterly in its drawing and
execution. Sofonisba is represented in a simple black dress, and wears
no jewels. She touches the keys of a harpsichord with her beautiful
hands; a duenna-like figure of an old woman stands behind the
instrument, apparently listening to the melody.

       *       *       *       *       *

Whatever of skill or fame women have acquired through the ages in other
departments, the nursery has ever been an undisputed sphere for woman's
work. Nor have we reason to think that, in the centuries we have been
considering, she was not faithful to this her especial province. The
cradle of Henry V., yet in existence, is one of the best specimens of
nursery furniture in the fourteenth century which have come down to us.
Beautifully carved foliage fills the space between the uprights and
stays and stand of the cradle, which is not upon rockers, but apparently
swings like the modern crib. On each of these uprights is perched a
dove, carefully carved, whose quiet influences had not much effect on
the infant dreams of Prince Hal.

Henry was born at Monmouth, 1388, and sent to Courtfield, about seven
miles distant, where the air was considered more salubrious. There he
was nursed under the superintendence of Lady Montacute, and in that
place this cradle was preserved for many years. It was sold by a steward
of the Montacute property, and, after passing through several hands,
was in the possession of a gentleman near Bristol when engraved for
Shaw's "Ancient Furniture," in 1836.

In the Douce Collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, there is
figured in a manuscript of the fifteenth century a cradle, with the baby
very nicely tucked up in it. The cradle resembles those of modern date,
and is upon rockers. Another illustration of the same period shows us a
cradle of similar form, the "cradle, baby, and all" carried on the head
of the nursery-maid,--a caryatid style of baby-tending which we cannot
suppose to have been universal. The inventories of household furniture
belonging to Reginald de la Pole, after enumerating some bed-hangings of
costly stuff, describe: "Item, a pane" (piece of cloth which we now call
counterpane) "and head-shete for y'e cradell, of same sute, bothe furred
with mynever,"--giving us a comfortable idea of the nursery
establishment in the De la Pole family. The recent discovery in England
of that which tradition avers to be the tomb of Canute's little
daughter, speaks of another phase in nursery experience. The relics,
both of the cradle and the grave, bear their own record of the joys,
cares, and sorrows of the nursery in vanished years, and bring near to
every mother's heart the baby that was rocked in the one, and the grief
which came when that little form was given to the solemn keeping of the
other.

A miniature in an early manuscript, called "The Birth of St. Edmund,"
gives us a picture of a bedroom and baby in the fifteenth century. St.
Edmund himself was born five hundred years previous to that date; but as
saints and sinners look very much alike when they are an hour old, we
can imagine that, as far as the baby is concerned, it may be considered
a portrait. A pretty young woman, in a long white gown, whose cap looks
like magnified butterflies' wings turned upside down, sits on a low seat
before the blazing wood-fire burning on great andirons in a wide
fireplace, which, instead of a mantelpiece, has three niches for
ornamental vases. She holds the baby very nicely, and, having warmed his
feet, has wrapt him in a long white garment, so that we see only his
little head in a plain night-cap, surrounded indeed by the gilded nimbus
of his saintship, which we hope was not of tangible substance, as it
would have been an appendage very inconvenient to all parties concerned.
The mother reposes in a bed with high posts and long curtains. She must
have been a woman of strong nerves to have borne the sight of such
stupendous head-gears as those in which her attendants are nid-nodding
over herself and baby, or to have supported the weight of that which she
wears by way of night-cap. One nurse raises the lady, while another,
who, from her showy dress, appears to be the head of the department,
offers a tall, elegant, but very inconveniently-shaped goblet, which
contains, we presume, mediaeval gruel. The room has a very comfortable
aspect, from which we judge that some babies in those times were
carefully attended.

Many centuries ago, a young woman sat one day among the boys to whom she
had come, as their father's bride, from a foreign land, to take the name
and place of their mother. She showed to them a beautiful volume of
Saxon poems, one of her wedding-gifts,--perhaps offered by the artists
of the court of Charles le Chauve, of whose skill such magnificent
specimens yet exist. As the attention of the boys was arrested by the
brilliant external decorations, Judith, with that quick instinct for the
extension of knowledge which showed her a true descendant of
Charlemagne, promised that the book should be given to him who first
learned to read it. Young Alfred won the prize, and became Alfred the
Great.

We are brought near to the presence of a woman of the Middle Ages when
we stand beside the monument of Eleanor of Castile, queen of Edward I.,
in Westminster Abbey. The figure is lifelike and beautiful, with flowing
drapery folded simply around it. The countenance, with its delicate
features, wears a look of sweetness and dignity as fresh to-day as when
sculptured seven hundred years ago. The hair, confined by a coronet,
falls on each side of her face in ringlets; one hand lies by her side,
and once held a sceptre; the other is brought gracefully upward; the
slender fingers, with trusting touch, are laid upon a cross suspended
from her neck.

Historians have done their best, or their worst, to throw doubt upon the
story of Eleanor's sucking the poison with her lips from the arm of her
husband when a dastardly assassin of those days struck at the life of
Edward. But such a tradition, whether actually a fact or not, is a
tribute to the affection and strength of Eleanor's character; and all
historians agree that she instilled no poison into the life of king or
country. As a wife, a mother, and a queen, Eleanor of Castile stands
high on the record of the women of the Middle Ages.

Coming from Westminster Abbey, in the spring of 1856, we stood one day
at a window in the Strand, and watched a multitude which no man could
number, pulsing through that great artery of the mighty heart of London.
It was the day of the great Peace celebration, and a holiday. Hour after
hour the mighty host swept on, in undiminished numbers. The place where
we stood was Charing Cross, and our thoughts went back seven hundred
years, when Edward, following the mortal remains of his beloved Eleanor,
erected on this spot, then a country suburb of London, the last of that
line of crosses which marked those places where the mournful procession
paused on its way from Hereby to Westminster. It was the cross of the
dear queen, _la chere reine_, which time and changes of language have
since corrupted into Charing Cross. Through this pathway crowds have
trodden for many centuries, and few remember that its name is linked
with the queenly dead or with a kingly sorrow. Thus it is, as we hasten
on through the busy thoroughfares of life from age to age, even as one
of our own poets hath said,--

    "We pass, and heed each other not."

In these pages we have made some record of woman's work in past
centuries, and also caught glimpses of duties, loves, hopes, fears, and
sorrows not unlike our own. A wider sphere is now accorded, and a deeper
responsibility devolves upon woman to fill it wisely and well. We should
never forget that, as far as they were faithful to the duties appointed
to them, they elevated their sex to a higher and nobler position, and
therein performed the best work of the women of the Middle Ages.




PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.


IX.

Concord, _Thursday, Sept. 1, 1842._--Mr. Thoreau dined with us
yesterday.... He is a keen and delicate observer of nature,--a genuine
observer,--which, I suspect, is almost as rare a character as even an
original poet; and Nature, in return for his love, seems to adopt him as
her especial child, and shows him secrets which few others are allowed
to witness. He is familiar with beast, fish, fowl, and reptile, and has
strange stories to tell of adventures and friendly passages with these
lower brethren of mortality. Herb and flower, likewise, wherever they
grow, whether in garden or wild wood, are his familiar friends. He is
also on intimate terms with the clouds, and can tell the portents of
storms. It is a characteristic trait, that he has a great regard for the
memory of the Indian tribes, whose wild life would have suited him so
well; and, strange to say, he seldom walks over a ploughed field without
picking up an arrow-point, spear-head, or other relic of the red man, as
if their spirits willed him to be the inheritor of their simple wealth.

With all this he has more than a tincture of literature,--a deep and
true taste for poetry, especially for the elder poets, and he is a good
writer,--at least he has written a good article, a rambling disquisition
on Natural History, in the last Dial, which, he says, was chiefly made
up from journals of his own observations. Methinks this article gives a
very fair image of his mind and character,--so true, innate, and literal
in observation, yet giving the spirit as well as letter of what he sees,
even as a lake reflects its wooded banks, showing every leaf, yet giving
the wild beauty of the whole scene. Then there are in the article
passages of cloudy and dreamy metaphysics, and also passages where his
thoughts seem to measure and attune themselves into spontaneous verse,
as they rightfully may, since there is real poetry in them. There is a
basis of good sense and of moral truth, too, throughout the article,
which also is a reflection of his character; for he is not unwise to
think and feel, and I find him a healthy and wholesome man to know.

After dinner, (at which we cut the first watermelon and muskmelon that
our garden has grown,) Mr. Thoreau and I walked up the bank of the
river, and at a certain point he shouted for his boat. Forthwith a young
man paddled it across, and Mr. Thoreau and I voyaged farther up the
stream, which soon became more beautiful than any picture, with its dark
and quiet sheet of water, half shaded, half sunny, between high and
wooded banks. The late rains have swollen the stream so much that many
trees are standing up to their knees, as it were, in the water, and
boughs, which lately swung high in air, now dip and drink deep of the
passing wave. As to the poor cardinals which glowed upon the bank a few
days since, I could see only a few of their scarlet hats, peeping above
the tide. Mr. Thoreau managed the boat so perfectly, either with two
paddles or with one, that it seemed instinct with his own will, and to
require no physical effort to guide it. He said that, when some Indians
visited Concord a few years ago, he found that he had acquired, without
a teacher, their precise method of propelling and steering a canoe.
Nevertheless he was desirous of selling the boat of which he was so fit
a pilot, and which was built by his own hands; so I agreed to take it,
and accordingly became possessor of the Musketaquid. I wish I could
acquire the aquatic skill of the original owner.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Sept. 2._--Yesterday afternoon Mr. Thoreau arrived with the boat. The
adjacent meadow being overflowed by the rise of the stream, he had rowed
directly to the foot of the orchard, and landed at the bars, after
floating over forty or fifty yards of water where people were lately
making hay. I entered the boat with him, in order to have the benefit of
a lesson in rowing and paddling.... I managed, indeed, to propel the
boat by rowing with two oars, but the use of the single paddle is quite
beyond my present skill. Mr. Thoreau had assured me that it was only
necessary to will the boat to go in any particular direction, and she
would immediately take that course, as if imbued with the spirit of the
steersman. It may be so with him, but it is certainly not so with me.
The boat seemed to be bewitched, and turned its head to every point of
the compass except the right one. He then took the paddle himself, and
though I could observe nothing peculiar in his management of it, the
Musketaquid immediately became as docile as a trained steed. I suspect
that she has not yet transferred her affections from her old master to
her new one. By and by, when we are better acquainted, she will grow
more tractable.... We propose to change her name from Musketaquid (the
Indian name of the Concord River, meaning the river of meadows) to the
Pond-Lily, which will be very beautiful and appropriate, as, during the
summer season, she will bring home many a cargo of pond-lilies from
along the river's weedy shore. It is not very likely that I shall make
such long voyages in her as Mr. Thoreau has made. He once followed our
river down to the Merrimack, and thence, I believe, to Newburyport, in
this little craft.

In the evening, ---- ---- called to see us, wishing to talk with me
about a Boston periodical, of which he had heard that I was to be
editor, and to which he desired to contribute. He is an odd and clever
young man, with nothing very peculiar about him,--some originality and
self-inspiration in his character, but none, or very little, in his
intellect. Nevertheless, the lad himself seems to feel as if he were a
genius. I like him well enough, however; but, after all, these originals
in a small way, after one has seen a few of them, become more dull and
commonplace than even those who keep the ordinary pathway of life. They
have a rule and a routine, which they follow with as little variety as
other people do their rule and routine, and when once we have fathomed
their mystery, nothing can be more wearisome. An innate perception and
reflection of truth give the only sort of originality that does not
finally grow intolerable.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Sept. 4._--I made a voyage in the Pond-Lily all by myself yesterday
morning, and was much encouraged by my success in causing the boat to go
whither I would. I have always liked to be afloat, but I think I have
never adequately conceived of the enjoyment till now, when I begin to
feel a power over that which supports me. I suppose I must have felt
something like this sense of triumph when I first learned to swim; but I
have forgotten it. O that I could run wild!--that is, that I could put
myself into a true relation with Nature, and be on friendly terms with
all congenial elements.

We had a thunder-storm last evening; and to-day has been a cool, breezy
autumnal day, such as my soul and body love.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Sept. 18._--How the summer-time flits away, even while it seems to be
loitering onward, arm in arm with autumn! Of late I have walked but
little over the hills and through the woods, my leisure being chiefly
occupied with my boat, which I have now learned to manage with tolerable
skill. Yesterday afternoon I made a voyage alone up the North Branch of
Concord River. There was a strong west wind blowing dead against me,
which, together with the current, increased by the height of the water,
made the first part of the passage pretty toilsome. The black river was
all dimpled over with little eddies and whirlpools; and the breeze,
moreover, caused the billows to beat against the bow of the boat, with a
sound like the flapping of a bird's wing. The water-weeds, where they
were discernible through the tawny water, were straight outstretched by
the force of the current, looking as if they were forced to hold on to
their roots with all their might. If for a moment I desisted from
paddling, the head of the boat was swept round by the combined might of
wind and tide. However, I toiled onward stoutly, and, entering the North
Branch, soon found myself floating quietly along a tranquil stream,
sheltered from the breeze by the woods and a lofty hill. The current,
likewise, lingered along so gently that it was merely a pleasure to
propel the boat against it. I never could have conceived that there was
so beautiful a river-scene in Concord as this of the North Branch. The
stream flows through the midmost privacy and deepest heart of a wood,
which, as if but half satisfied with its presence, calm, gentle, and
unobtrusive as it is, seems to crowd upon it, and barely to allow it
passage; for the trees are rooted on the very verge of the water, and
dip their pendent branches into it. On one side there is a high bank,
forming the side of a hill, the Indian name of which I have forgotten,
though Mr. Thoreau told it to me; and here, in some instances, the trees
stand leaning over the river, stretching out their arms as if about to
plunge in headlong. On the other side, the bank is almost on a level
with the water; and there the quiet congregation of trees stood with
feet in the flood, and fringed with foliage down to its very surface.
Vines here and there twine themselves about bushes or aspens or
alder-trees, and hang their clusters (though scanty and infrequent this
season) so that I can reach them from my boat. I scarcely remember a
scene of more complete and lovely seclusion than the passage of the
river through this wood. Even an Indian canoe, in olden times, could not
have floated onward in deeper solitude than my boat. I have never
elsewhere had such an opportunity to observe how much more beautiful
reflection is than what we call reality. The sky, and the clustering
foliage on either hand, and the effect of sunlight as it found its way
through the shade, giving lightsome hues in contrast with the quiet
depth of the prevailing tints,--all these seemed unsurpassably beautiful
when beheld in upper air. But on gazing downward, there they were, the
same even to the minutest particular, yet arrayed in ideal beauty, which
satisfied the spirit incomparably more than the actual scene. I am half
convinced that the reflection is indeed the reality, the real thing
which Nature imperfectly images to our grosser sense. At any rate, the
disembodied shadow is nearest to the soul.

There were many tokens of autumn in this beautiful picture. Two or three
of the trees were actually dressed in their coats of many colors,--the
real scarlet and gold which they wear before they put on mourning. These
stood on low, marshy spots, where a frost has probably touched them
already. Others were of a light, fresh green, resembling the hues of
spring, though this, likewise, is a token of decay. The great mass of
the foliage, however, appears unchanged; but ever and anon down came a
yellow leaf, half flitting upon the air, half falling through it, and
finally settling upon the water. A multitude of these were floating here
and there along the river, many of them curling upward, so as to form
little boats, fit for fairies to voyage in. They looked strangely
pretty, with yet a melancholy prettiness, as they floated along. The
general aspect of the river, however, differed but little from that of
summer,--at least the difference defies expression. It is more in the
character of the rich yellow sunlight than in aught else. The water of
the stream has now a thrill of autumnal coolness; yet whenever a broad
gleam fell across it, through an interstice of the foliage, multitudes
of insects were darting to and fro upon its surface. The sunshine, thus
falling across the dark river, has a most beautiful effect. It burnishes
it, as it were, and yet leaves it as dark as ever.

On my return, I suffered the boat to float almost of its own will down
the stream, and caught fish enough for this morning's breakfast. But,
partly from a qualm of conscience, I finally put them all into the water
again, and saw them swim away as if nothing had happened.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Monday, October 10, 1842._--A long while, indeed, since my last date.
But the weather has been generally sunny and pleasant, though often very
cold; and I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal
sunshine by staying in the house. So I have spent almost all the
daylight hours in the open air. My chief amusement has been boating up
and down the river. A week or two ago (September 27 and 28) I went on a
pedestrian excursion with Mr. Emerson, and was gone two days and one
night, it being the first and only night that I have spent away from
home. We were that night at the village of Harvard, and the next morning
walked three miles farther, to the Shaker village, where we breakfasted.
Mr. Emerson had a theological discussion with two of the Shaker
brethren; but the particulars of it have faded from my memory; and all
the other adventures of the tour have now so lost their freshness that I
cannot adequately recall them. Wherefore let them rest untold. I
recollect nothing so well as the aspect of some fringed gentians, which
we saw growing by the roadside, and which were so beautiful that I
longed to turn back and pluck them. After an arduous journey, we arrived
safe home in the afternoon of the second day,--the first time that I
ever came home in my life; for I never had a home before. On Saturday of
the same week, my friend D. R---- came to see us, and stayed till
Tuesday morning. On Wednesday there was a cattle-show in the village, of
which I would give a description, if it had possessed any picturesque
points. The foregoing are the chief outward events of our life.

In the mean time autumn has been advancing, and is said to be a month
earlier than usual. We had frosts, sufficient to kill the bean and
squash vines, more than a fortnight ago; but there has since been some
of the most delicious Indian-summer weather that I ever
experienced,--mild, sweet, perfect days, in which the warm sunshine
seemed to embrace the earth and all earth's children with love and
tenderness. Generally, however, the bright days have been vexed with
winds from the northwest, somewhat too keen and high for comfort. These
winds have strewn our avenue with withered leaves, although the trees
still retain some density of foliage, which is now embrowned or
otherwise variegated by autumn. Our apples, too, have been falling,
falling, falling; and we have picked the fairest of them from the dewy
grass, and put them in our store-room and elsewhere. On Thursday, John
Flint began to gather those which remained on the trees; and I suppose
they will amount to nearly twenty barrels, or perhaps more. As usual
when I have anything to sell, apples are very low indeed in price, and
will not fetch me more than a dollar a barrel. I have sold my share of
the potato-field for twenty dollars and ten bushels of potatoes for my
own use. This may suffice for the economical history of our recent life.

_12 o'clock_, A. M.--Just now I heard a sharp tapping at the window of
my study, and, looking up from my book (a volume of Rabelais), behold!
the head of a little bird, who seemed to demand admittance! He was
probably attempting to get a fly, which was on the pane of glass against
which he rapped; and on my first motion the feathered visitor took wing.
This incident had a curious effect on me. It impressed me as if the bird
had been a spiritual visitant, so strange was it that this little wild
thing should seem to ask our hospitality.

       *       *       *       *       *

_November 8._--I am sorry that our journal has fallen so into neglect;
but I see no chance of amendment. All my scribbling propensities will be
far more than gratified in writing nonsense for the press; so that any
gratuitous labor of the pen becomes peculiarly distasteful. Since the
last date, we have paid a visit of nine days to Boston and Salem, whence
we returned a week ago yesterday. Thus we lost above a week of delicious
autumnal weather, which should have been spent in the woods or upon the
river. Ever since our return, however, until to-day, there has been a
succession of genuine Indian-summer days, with gentle winds or none at
all, and a misty atmosphere, which idealizes all nature, and a mild,
beneficent sunshine, inviting one to lie down in a nook and forget all
earthly care. To-day the sky is dark and lowering, and occasionally lets
fall a few sullen tears. I suppose we must bid farewell to Indian summer
now, and expect no more love and tenderness from Mother Nature till next
spring be well advanced. She has already made herself as unlovely in
outward aspect as can well be. We took a walk to Sleepy Hollow
yesterday, and beheld scarcely a green thing, except the everlasting
verdure of the family of pines, which, indeed, are trees to thank God
for at this season. A range of young birches had retained a pretty
liberal coloring of yellow or tawny leaves, which became very cheerful
in the sunshine. There were one or two oak-trees whose foliage still
retained a deep, dusky red, which looked rich and warm; but most of the
oaks had reached the last stage of autumnal decay,--the dusky brown hue.
Millions of their leaves strew the woods, and rustle underneath the
foot; but enough remain upon the boughs to make a melancholy harping
when the wind sweeps over them. We found some fringed gentians in the
meadow, most of them blighted and withered; but a few were quite
perfect. The other day, since our return from Salem, I found a violet;
yet it was so cold that day, that a large pool of water, under the
shadow of some trees, had remained frozen from morning till afternoon.
The ice was so thick as not to be broken by some sticks and small stones
which I threw upon it. But ice and snow too will soon be no
extraordinary matters with us.

During the last week we have had three stoves put up, and henceforth no
light of a cheerful fire will gladden us at eventide. Stoves are
detestable in every respect, except that they keep us perfectly
comfortable.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Thursday, November 24._--This is Thanksgiving Day, a good old festival,
and we have kept it with our hearts, and, besides, have made good cheer
upon our turkey and pudding, and pies and custards, although none sat at
our board but our two selves. There was a new and livelier sense, I
think, that we have at last found a home, and that a new family has been
gathered since the last Thanksgiving Day. There have been many bright,
cold days latterly, so cold that it has required a pretty rapid pace to
keep one's self warm a-walking. Day before yesterday I saw a party of
boys skating on a pond of water that has overflowed a neighboring
meadow. Running water has not yet frozen. Vegetation has quite come to a
stand, except in a few sheltered spots. In a deep ditch we found a tall
plant of the freshest and healthiest green, which looked as if it must
have grown within the last few weeks. We wander among the wood-paths,
which are very pleasant in the sunshine of the afternoons, the trees
looking rich and warm,--such of them, I mean, as have retained their
russet leaves; and where the leaves are strewn along the paths, or
heaped plentifully in some hollow of the hills, the effect is not
without a charm. To-day the morning rose with rain, which has since
changed to snow and sleet; and now the landscape is as dreary as can
well be imagined,--white, with the brownness of the soil and withered
grass everywhere peeping out. The swollen river, of a leaden hue, drags
itself sullenly along; and this may be termed the first winter's day.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Friday, March 31, 1843._--The first month of spring is already gone;
and still the snow lies deep on hill and valley, and the river is still
frozen from bank to bank, although a late rain has caused pools of water
to stand on the surface of the ice, and the meadows are overflowed into
broad lakes. Such a protracted winter has not been known for twenty
years, at least. I have almost forgotten the wood-paths and shady places
which I used to know so well last summer; and my views are so much
confined to the interior of our mansion, that sometimes, looking out of
the window, I am surprised to catch a glimpse of houses at no great
distance which had quite passed out of my recollection. From present
appearances, another month may scarcely suffice to wash away all the
snow from the open country; and in the woods and hollows it may linger
yet longer. The winter will not have been a day less than five months
long; and it would not be unfair to call it seven. A great space,
indeed, to miss the smile of Nature, in a single year of human life.
Even out of the midst of happiness I have sometimes sighed and groaned;
for I love the sunshine and the green woods, and the sparkling blue
water; and it seems as if the picture of our inward bliss should be set
in a beautiful frame of outward nature.... As to the daily course of our
life, I have written with pretty commendable diligence, averaging from
two to four hours a day; and the result is seen in various magazines. I
might have written more, if it had seemed worth while; but I was content
to earn only so much gold as might suffice for our immediate wants,
having prospect of official station and emolument which would do away
with the necessity of writing for bread. Those prospects have not yet
had their fulfilment; and we are well content to wait, because an office
would inevitably remove us from our present happy home,--at least from
an outward home; for there is an inner one that will accompany us
wherever we go. Meantime, the magazine people do not pay their debts; so
that we taste some of the inconveniences of poverty. It is an annoyance,
not a trouble.

Every day, I trudge through snow and slosh to the village, look into the
post-office, and spend an hour at the reading-room; and then return
home, generally without having spoken a word to a human being.... In the
way of exercise I saw and split wood, and, physically, I never was in a
better condition than now. This is chiefly owing, doubtless, to a
satisfied heart, in aid of which comes the exercise above mentioned, and
about a fair proportion of intellectual labor.

On the 9th of this month, we left home again on a visit to Boston and
Salem. I alone went to Salem, where I resumed all my bachelor habits for
nearly a fortnight, leading the same life in which ten years of my youth
flitted away like a dream. But how much changed was I! At last I had
caught hold of a reality which never could be taken from me. It was good
thus to get apart from my happiness, for the sake of contemplating it.
On the 21st, I returned to Boston, and went out to Cambridge to dine
with Longfellow, whom I had not seen since his return from Europe. The
next day we came back to our old house, which had been deserted all this
time; for our servant had gone with us to Boston.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Friday, April 7._--My wife has gone to Boston to see her sister M----,
who is to be married in two or three weeks, and then immediately to
visit Europe for six months.... I betook myself to sawing and splitting
wood; there being an inward unquietness which demanded active exercise,
and I sawed, I think, more briskly than ever before. When I re-entered
the house, it was with somewhat of a desolate feeling; yet not without
an intermingled pleasure, as being the more conscious that all
separation was temporary, and scarcely real, even for the little time
that it may last. After my solitary dinner, I lay down, with the Dial in
my hand, and attempted to sleep; but sleep would not come.... So I
arose, and began this record in the journal, almost at the commencement
of which I was interrupted by a visit from Mr. Thoreau, who came to
return a book, and to announce his purpose of going to reside at Staten
Island, as private tutor in the family of Mr. Emerson's brother. We had
some conversation upon this subject, and upon the spiritual advantages
of change of place, and upon the Dial, and upon Mr. Alcott, and other
kindred or concatenated subjects. I am glad, on Mr. Thoreau's own
account, that he is going away, as he is out of health and may be
benefited by his removal; but, on my account, I should like to have him
remain here, he being one of the few persons, I think, with whom to hold
intercourse is like hearing the wind among the boughs of a forest-tree;
and with all this wild freedom, there is high and classic cultivation
in him too....

I had a purpose, if circumstances would permit, of passing the whole
term of my wife's absence without speaking a word to any human being;
but now my Pythagorean vow has been broken, within three or four hours
after her departure.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Saturday, April 8._--After journalizing yesterday afternoon, I went out
and sawed and split wood till tea-time, then studied German,
(translating Lenore,) with an occasional glance at a beautiful sunset,
which I could not enjoy sufficiently by myself to induce me to lay aside
the book. After lamp-light, finished Lenore, and drowsed over Voltaire's
Candide, occasionally refreshing myself with a tune from Mr. Thoreau's
musical box, which he had left in my keeping. The evening was but a dull
one.

I retired soon after nine, and felt some apprehension that the old
Doctor's ghost would take this opportunity to visit me; but I rather
think his former visitations have not been intended for me, and that I
am not sufficiently spiritual for ghostly communication. At all events,
I met with no disturbance of the kind, and slept soundly enough till six
o'clock or thereabouts. The forenoon was spent with the pen in my hand,
and sometimes I had the glimmering of an idea, and endeavored to
materialize it in words; but on the whole my mind was idly vagrant, and
refused to work to any systematic purpose. Between eleven and twelve I
went to the post-office, but found no letter; then spent above an hour
reading at the Athenaeum. On my way home, I encountered Mr. Flint, for
the first time these many weeks, although he is our next neighbor in one
direction. I inquired if he could sell us some potatoes, and he promised
to send half a bushel for trial. Also, he encouraged me to hope that he
might buy a barrel of our apples. After my encounter with Mr. Flint, I
returned to our lonely old abbey, opened the door without the usual
heart-spring, ascended to my study, and began to read a tale of Tieck.
Slow work, and dull work too! Anon, Molly, the cook, rang the bell for
dinner,--a sumptuous banquet of stewed veal and macaroni, to which I sat
down in solitary state. My appetite served me sufficiently to eat with,
but not for enjoyment. Nothing has a zest in my present widowed state.
[Thus far I had written, when Mr. Emerson called.] After dinner, I lay
down on the couch, with the Dial in my hand as a soporific, and had a
short nap; then began to journalize.

Mr. Emerson came, with a sunbeam in his face; and we had as good a talk
as I ever remember to have had with him. He spoke of Margaret Fuller,
who, he says, has risen perceptibly into a higher state since their last
meeting. [There rings the tea-bell.] Then we discoursed of Ellery
Channing, a volume of whose poems is to be immediately published, with
revisions by Mr. Emerson himself and Mr. Sam G. Ward.... He calls them
"poetry for poets." Next Mr. Thoreau was discussed, and his approaching
departure; in respect to which we agreed pretty well.... We talked of
Brook Farm, and the singular moral aspects which it presents, and the
great desirability that its progress and developments should be observed
and its history written; also of C. N----, who, it appears, is passing
through a new moral phasis. He is silent, inexpressive, talks little or
none, and listens without response, except a sardonic laugh; and some of
his friends think that he is passing into permanent eclipse. Various
other matters were considered or glanced at, and finally, between five
and six o'clock, Mr. Emerson took his leave. I then went out to chop
wood, my allotted space for which had been very much abridged by his
visit; but I was not sorry. I went on with the journal for a few minutes
before tea, and have finished the present record in the setting sunshine
and gathering dusk....




UNIVERSITY REFORM.

AN ADDRESS TO THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD, AT THEIR TRIENNIAL FESTIVAL, JULY
19, 1866.


We meet to-day under auspices how different from those which attended
our last triennial assembling! We were then in the midst of a civil war,
without sight of the end, though not without hope of final success to
the cause of national integrity. The three days' agony at Gettysburg had
issued in the triumph of the loyal arms, repelling the threatened
invasion of the North. The surrender of Vicksburg had just reopened the
trade of the Mississippi. The capture of Port Hudson was yet fresh in
our ears, when suddenly tidings of armed resistance to conscription in
the city of New York gave ominous note of danger lurking at the very
heart of the Union. In the shadow of that omen, we celebrated our
academic festival of 1863.

The shadow passed. With varying fortunes, but unvarying purpose, the
loyal States pursued the contest. And when, in the autumn of 1864, by a
solemn act of self-interrogation, they had certified their will and
their power to maintain that contest to the end of disunion, and when a
popular election expressing that intent had overcome the land like a
summer-cloud without a bolt in its bosom, the victory was sown with the
ballot which Grant and Sherman reaped with the sword.

Secession collapsed. Its last and most illustrious victim, borne to his
rest through territories draped in mourning, through sobbing
commonwealths, through populations of uncovered heads, revealed to all
time the spirit that was in it and the spirit that subdued it. And
to-day, as we meet our Reverend Mother in this scene of old affections,
the stupendous struggle has already receded into the shadow-land of
History. The war is a thing of the past. If hatred still rankles, open
hostilities have ceased. If rumblings of the recent tempest still mutter
along the track of its former desolation, the storm is over. The
conflict is ended. No more conscription of husbands, sons, and brothers
for the weary work of destruction; no more the forced march by day, the
bivouac at night, and to-morrow the delirium of carnage. No more anxious
waiting in distant homes for tidings from the front, and breathless
conning of the death-list to know if the loved ones are among the slain.
No more the fresh grief-agony over the unreturning brave. All that is
past,--

    "For the terrible work is done,
    And the good fight is won
        For God and for Fatherland."

The sword has returned to its sheath. The symbol-flags that shed their
starry pomp on the field of death hang idly drooping in the halls of
state. And before new armies in hostile encounter on American soil shall
unfurl new banners to the breeze, may every thread and thrum of their
texture ravel and rot and resolve itself into dust!

Another and nearer interest distinguishes this occasion and suggests its
appropriate theme,--our Alma Mater.

The General Court of Massachusetts, which has hitherto elected the Board
of Overseers of Harvard College, after so many years of fitful and
experimental legislation, has finally enacted, that "the places of the
successive classes in the Board of Overseers of Harvard College, and the
vacancies in such classes, shall hereafter be annually supplied by
ballot of such persons as have received from the College a degree of
Bachelor of Arts, or Master of Arts, or any honorary degree, voting on
Commencement-day in the city of Cambridge; such election to be first
held in the year 1866."

This act initiates a radical change in the organization of this
University. It establishes for one of its legislative Houses a new
electorate. The State hereby discharges itself of all active
participation in the conduct of the College, and devolves on the body of
the Alumni responsibilities assumed in former enactments extending
through a period of more than two hundred years. The wisdom or justice
of this measure I am not inclined to discuss. Certainly there is nothing
in the history of past relations between the Commonwealth and the
University that should make us regret the change. That history has not
been one of mere benefactions on one side, and pure indebtedness on the
other. Whatever the University may owe to the State, the balance of
obligation falls heavily on the other side. In the days of Provincial
rule the Colony of Massachusetts Bay appears to have exhausted its zeal
for collegiate education in the much-lauded promissory act by which the
General Court, in 1636, "agree to give four hundred pounds towards a
school or college, whereof two hundred pounds shall be paid next year."
The promise was not fulfilled, and the record of those years leaves it
doubtful whether legislative action alone would during that or the next
generation have accomplished the work, had not a graduate of Emanuel
College in English Cambridge, who seems providentially enough to have
dropped on these shores, where he lived but a year, for that express
purpose, supplied the requisite funds.

The College once started and got under way, the fathers of the Province
assumed a vigilant oversight of its orthodoxy, but discharged with a lax
and grudging service the responsibility of its maintenance. They ejected
the first President, the protomartyr of American learning, the man who
sacrificed more to the College than any one individual in the whole
course of its history, on account of certain scruples about infant
baptism, of which, in the language of the time, "it was not hard to
discover that they came from the Evil One," and for which poor Dunster
was indicted by the grand-jury, sentenced to a public admonition, and
laid under bonds for good behavior.

They starved the second President for eighteen years on a salary payable
in Indian corn; and in answer to his earnest prayer for relief, alleging
instant necessity, the sacrifice of personal property, and the custom of
English universities, a committee of the General Court reported that
"they conceive the country to have done honorably toward the petitioner,
and that his parity with English colleges is not pertinent."

The third President, by their connivance and co-operation, was
sacrificed to the machinations of the students, egged on, it is thought,
by members of the Corporation, and died, "as was said, with a broken
heart."

Meanwhile, through neglect of the Province to provide for its support,
the material fortunes of the College, in the course of thirty years, had
fallen into such decay that extinction was inevitable, had not the
people of another Colony come to the rescue. The town of Portsmouth, in
New Hampshire, hearing, says their address, "the loud groans of the
sinking College,... and hoping that their example might provoke ... the
General Court vigorously to act for the diverting of the omen of
calamity which its destruction would be to New England," pledged
themselves to an annual contribution of sixty pounds for seven years.
This act of chivalrous generosity fairly shamed our lagging Commonwealth
into measures for the resuscitation of an institution especially
committed to its care.

The most remarkable feature of this business is that the Province all
this while was drawing, not only moral support, but pecuniary aid, from
the College. "It is manifest," says Quincy,[A] "that the treasury of
the Colony, having been the recipient of many of the early donations to
the College, was not a little aided by the convenience which these
available funds afforded to its pecuniary necessities. Some of these
funds, although received in 1647, were not paid over to the treasury of
the College until 1713; then, indeed, the College received an allowance
of simple interest for the delay. With regard, therefore, to the annual
allowance of L100, whereby," during the first seventy years, "they
enabled the President of the College simply to exist, it is proper to
observe, that there was not probably one year in the whole seventy in
which, by moneys collected from friends of the institution in foreign
countries, by donations of its friends in this country, by moneys
brought by students from other Colonies, and above all by furnishing the
means of education at home, and thus preventing the outgoing of domestic
wealth for education abroad, the College did not remunerate the Colony
for that poor annual stipend five hundred fold."

The patronage extended to the College after the Revolution was not more
cordial and not more adequate than the meagre succors of Colonial
legislation. The first Governor of independent Massachusetts, from the
height of his impregnable popularity, for more than twelve years defied
the repeated attempts of the Corporation, backed by the Overseers, to
obtain the balance of his account as former Treasurer of the College,
and died its debtor in a sum exceeding a thousand pounds. The debt was
finally paid by his heirs, but not without a loss of some hundreds of
dollars to the College.

At the commencement of hostilities between the Colonies and the mother
country, the Revolutionary authorities had taken possession of these
grounds. Reversing the old order, "Cedant arma togae," they drove out the
_togae_ and brought in the arms. The books went one way, the boys
another,--the books to Andover, the boys to Concord. The dawn of
American liberty was not an "Aurora musis amica." The Muse of History
alone remained with Brigadier Putnam and General Ward. The College was
turned into a camp,--a measure abundantly justified by public necessity,
but causing much damage to the buildings occupied as barracks by the
Continentals. This damage was nominally allowed by the General Court,
but was reckoned in the currency of that day, whereby the College
received but a quarter of the cost.

In 1786, the State saw fit to discontinue the small pittance which till
then had been annually granted toward the support of the President; and
from that time to this, with the exception of the proceeds of a
bank-tax, granted for ten years in 1814, and the recent large
appropriation from the School Fund for the use of the Museum of Natural
History, the College has received no substantial aid from the State. The
State has, during the last ten years, expended two millions of dollars
in a vain attempt to bore a hole through one of her hills: in the whole
two hundred and thirty years of our academic history she has not
expended a quarter of that sum in filling up this hole in her
educational system.

I intend no disrespect to the noble Commonwealth of which no native can
be insensible to the glory of his birthright. No State has done more for
popular education than the State of Massachusetts. But for reasons
satisfactory, no doubt, to themselves, her successive legislators have
not seen fit to extend to her colleges the fostering care bestowed on
her schools. And certainly, if one or the other must be neglected, we
shall all agree in saying, Let the schools be cherished, and let the
colleges take care of themselves. Let due provision be made for popular
instruction in the rudiments of knowledge, which are also rudiments of
good citizenship; let every citizen be taxed for that prime exigency,
and let literature and science find patrons where they can. Literature
and science will find patrons, and here in Massachusetts have always
found them. If the legislators of the State have been sparing of their
benefactions, the wealthy sons of the State have been prodigal of
theirs. In no country has the private patronage of science been more
liberal and prompt than in Massachusetts. Seldom, in the history of
science, has there been a nobler instance of that patronage than this
University is now experiencing, in the mission of one of her professors
on an enterprise of scientific exploration, started and maintained by a
private citizen of Boston. When our Agassiz shall return to us
reinforced with the lore of the Andes, and replenished with the spoils
of the Amazon,--_tot millia squamigerae gentis_,--the discoveries he
shall add to science, and the treasures he shall add to his Museum,
whilst they splendidly illustrate his own qualifications for such a
mission, will forever attest the liberality of a son of Massachusetts.

The rich men of the State have not been wanting to literature and
science. They have not been wanting to this University. Let their names
be held in everlasting remembrance. When the Memorial Hall, which your
committee have in charge, shall stand complete, let its mural records
present, together with the names of those who have deserved well of the
country by their patriotism, the names of those who have deserved well
of the College by their benefactions. Let these fautors of science, the
heroes of peace, have their place side by side with the heroes of war.

Individuals have done their part, but slow is the growth of institutions
which depend on individual charity for their support. As an illustration
of what may be done by public patronage, when States are in earnest with
their universities, and as strangely contrasting the sluggish fortunes
of our own _Alma_, look at the State University of Michigan. Here is an
institution but twenty-five years old, already numbering thirty-two
professors and over twelve hundred students, having public buildings
equal in extent to those which two centuries have given to Cambridge,
and all the apparatus of a well-constituted, thoroughly furnished
university. All this within twenty-five years! The State itself which
has generated this wonderful growth had no place in the Union until
after Harvard had celebrated her two hundredth birthday. In twenty-five
years, in a country five hundred miles from the seaboard,--a country
which fifty years ago was known only to the fur trade,--a University has
sprung up, to which students flock from all parts of the land, and which
offers to thousands, free of expense, the best education this continent
affords. Such is the difference between public and private patronage,
between individual effort and the action of a State.

A proof of the broad intent and oecumenical consciousness of this
infant College appears in the fact that its Medical Department, which
alone numbers ten professors and five hundred students, allows the
option of one of four languages in the thesis required for the medical
degree. It is the only seminary in the country whose liberal scope and
cosmopolitan outlook satisfy the idea of a great university. Compared
with this, our other colleges are all provincial; and unless the State
of Massachusetts shall see fit to adopt us, and to foster our interest
with something of the zeal and liberality which the State of Michigan
bestows on her academic masterpiece, Harvard cannot hope to compete with
this precocious child of the West.

Meanwhile, Alumni, the State has devolved upon us, as electors of the
Board of Overseers, an important trust. This trust conveys no right of
immediate jurisdiction, but it may become the channel of an influence
which shall make itself felt in the conduct of this University. It
invites us to take counsel concerning her wants and her weal. I
therefore pursue the theme which this crisis in our history suggests.

Of existing universities the greater part are the product of an age
whose intellectual fashion differed as widely from the present as it did
from that of Greek and Roman antiquity. Our own must be reckoned with
that majority, dating, as it does, from a period antecedent, not only to
all other American colleges, but to some of the most eminent of other
lands. Half of the better known and most influential of German
universities are of later origin than ours. The University of Goettingen,
once the most flourishing in Germany, is younger than Harvard by a
hundred years. Halle is younger, and Erlangen, and Munich with its vast
library, and Bonn, and Berlin, by nearly two hundred years.

When this College was founded, two of the main forces of the
intellectual world of our time had scarcely come into play,--modern
literature and modern science. Science knew nothing as yet of chemistry,
nothing of electricity, of geology, scarce anything of botany. In
astronomy, the Copernican system was just struggling into notice, and
far from being universally received. Lord Bacon, I think, was the latest
author of note in the library bequeathed by John Harvard; and Lord Bacon
rejected the Copernican system. English literature had had its great
Elizabethan age; but little of the genius of that literature had
penetrated the Puritan mind. It is doubtful if a copy of Shakespeare had
found its way to these shores in 1636. Milton's star was just climbing
its native horizon, invisible as yet to the Western world.

The College was founded for the special and avowed purpose of training
young men for the service of the Church. All its studies were arranged
with reference to that object: endless expositions of Scripture,
catechetical divinity, "commonplacing" of sermons,--already, one
fancies, sufficiently commonplace,--Chaldee, Syriac, Hebrew without
points, and other Semitic exasperations. Latin, as the language of
theology, was indispensable, and within certain limits was practically
better understood, perhaps, in Cambridge of the seventeenth century,
than in Cambridge of the nineteenth. It was the language of official
intercourse. Indeed, the use of the English was forbidden to the
students within the College walls. _Scholares vernacula lingua intra
Collegii limites nullo praetextu utuntor_, was the law,--a law which
Cotton Mather complains was so neglected in his day "as to render our
scholars very unfit for a conversation with strangers." But the purpose
for which chiefly the study of Latin is now pursued--acquaintance with
the Roman classics--was no recognized object of Puritan learning. Cicero
appears to have been for a long time the only classic of whom the
students were supposed to have any knowledge. The reading of Virgil was
a daring innovation of the eighteenth century. The only Greek required
was that of the New Testament and the Greek Catechism. The whole rich
domain of ancient Greek literature, from Homer to Theokritos, was as
much an unexplored territory as the Baghavad-Gita or the Mababharata.
Logic and metaphysic and scholastic disputations occupied a prominent
place. As late as 1726, the books most conspicuous in Tutor Flynt's
official report of the College exercises, next to Cicero and Virgil, are
such as convey to the modern scholar no idea but that of intense
obsoleteness,--Ramus's Definitions, Burgersdicius's Logic, Heereboord's
Meletemata; and for Seniors, on Saturday, Ames's Medulla. This is such a
curriculum as Mephistopheles, in his character of Magister, might have
recommended in irony to the student who sought his counsel.

With the multiplication of religious sects, with the progress of secular
culture, with the mental emancipation which followed the great
convulsions of the eighteenth century, the maintenance of the
ecclesiastical type originally impressed on the College ceased to be
practicable,--ceased to be desirable. The preparation of young men for
the service of the Church is still a recognized part of the general
scheme of University education, but is only one in the multiplicity of
objects which that scheme embraces, and can never again have the
prominence once assigned to it. This secularization, however it might
seem to compromise the design of the founders of the College, was
inevitable,--a wise and needful concession to the exigencies of the
altered time. Nor is there, in a larger view, any real contravention
here of the purpose of the founders. The secularization of the College
is no violation of its motto, "_Christo et Ecclesiae_." For, as I
interpret those sacred ideas, the cause of Christ and the Church is
advanced by whatever liberalizes and enriches and enlarges the mind. All
study, scientifically pursued, is at bottom a study of theology; for all
scientific study is the study of Law; and "of Law nothing less can be
acknowledged than that her seat is in the bosom of God."

But something more than secularization of the course of study is
required to satisfy the idea of a university. What is a university? Dr.
Newman answers this question with the ancient designation of a _Studium
Generale_,--a school of universal learning. "Such a university," he
says, "is in its essence a place for the communication and circulation
of thought by means of personal intercourse over a wide tract of
country."[B] Accepting this definition, can we say that Harvard College,
as at present constituted, is a University? Must we not rather describe
it as a place where boys are made to recite lessons from text-books, and
to write compulsory exercises, and are marked according to their
proficiency and fidelity in these performances, with a view to a
somewhat protracted exhibition of themselves at the close of their
college course, which, according to a pleasant academic fiction, is
termed their "Commencement"? This description applies only, it is true,
to what is called the Undergraduate Department. But that department
stands for the College, constitutes the College, in the public
estimation. The professional schools which have gathered about it are
scarcely regarded as a part of the College. They are incidental
appendages, of which, indeed, one has its seat in another city. The
College proper is simply a more advanced school for boys, not differing
essentially in principle and theory from the public schools in all our
towns. In this, as in those, the principle is coercion. Hold your
subject fast with one hand, and pour knowledge into him with the other.
The professors are task-masters and police-officers, the President the
chief of the College police.

Now, considering the great advance of our higher town schools, which
carry their pupils as far as the College carried them fifty years ago,
and which might, if necessary, have classes still more advanced of such
as are destined for the university, I venture to suggest that the time
has come when this whole system of coercion might, with safety and
profit, be done away. Abolish, I would say, your whole system of marks,
and college rank, and compulsory tasks. I anticipate an objection drawn
from the real or supposed danger of abandoning to their own devices and
optional employment boys of the average age of college students. In
answer, I say, advance that average by fixing a limit of admissible age.
Advance the qualifications for admission; make them equal to the studies
of the Freshman year, and reduce the college career from four years to
three; or else make the Freshman year a year of probation, and its
closing examination the condition of full matriculation. Only give the
young men, when once a sufficient foundation has been laid, and the
rudiments acquired, the freedom of a true University,--freedom to select
their own studies and their own teachers from such material, and such
_personnel_, as the place supplies. It is to be expected that a portion
will abuse this liberty, and waste their years. They do it at their
peril. At the peril, among other disadvantages, of losing their degree,
which should be conditioned on satisfactory proof that the student has
not wholly misspent his time.

An indispensable condition of intellectual growth is liberty. That
liberty the present system denies. More and more it is straitened by
imposed tasks. And this I conceive to be the reason why, with increased
requirements, the College turns out a decreasing proportion of
first-class men. If the theory of college rank were correct, the highest
marks should indicate the men who are to be hereafter most conspicuous,
and leaders in the various walks of life. This is not the case,--not so
much so now as in former years. Of the present chief lights of American
literature and science, how many, if graduates of Harvard, took the
first honors of the University here? Or, to put the question in another
form, Of those who took the first honors at Harvard, within the last
thirty years, how many are now conspicuous among the great lights of
American literature and science?

Carlyle, in his recent talk to the students at Edinburgh, remarks that,
"since the time of Bentley, you cannot name anybody that has gained a
great name for scholarship among the English, or constituted a point of
revolution in the pursuits of men, in that way." The reason perhaps is,
that the system of the English universities, though allowing greater
liberty than ours, is still a struggle for college honors, in which
renown, not learning for the sake of learning, is the aim. The seeming
proficiency achieved through the influence of such motives--knowledge
acquired for the nonce, not assimilated--is often delusive, and is apt
to vanish when the stimulus is withdrawn. The students themselves have
recorded their judgment of the value of this sort of learning in the
word "cramming," a phrase which originated in one of the English
universities.

The rudiments of knowledge may be instilled by compulsory tasks; but to
form the scholar, to really educate the man, there should intervene
between the years of compulsory study and the active duties of life a
season of comparative leisure. By leisure I mean, not cessation of
activity, but self-determined activity,--command of one's time for
voluntary study.

There are two things which unless a university can give, it fails of its
legitimate end. One is opportunity, the other inspiration. But
opportunity is marred, not made, and inspiration quenched, not kindled,
by coercion. Few, I suspect, in recent years, have had the love of
knowledge awakened by their college life at Harvard,--more often
quenched by the rivalries and penalties with which learning here is
associated. Give the student, first of all, opportunity; place before
him the best apparatus of instruction; tempt him with the best of
teachers and books; lead him to the fountains of intellectual life. His
use of those fountains must depend on himself. There is a homely proverb
touching the impossibility of compelling a horse to drink, which applies
to human animals and intellectual draughts as well. The student has been
defined by a German pedagogue as an animal that cannot be forced, but
must be persuaded. If, beside opportunity, the college can furnish also
the inspiration which shall make opportunity precious and fruitful, its
work is accomplished. The college that fulfils these two
conditions--opportunity and inspiration--will be a success, will draw to
itself the frequency of youth, the patronage of wealth, the consensus of
all the good. Such a university, and no other, will be a power in the
land.

Nothing so fatal to inspiration as excessive legislation. It creates two
parties, the governors and the governed, with efforts and interests
mutually opposed; the governors seeking to establish an artificial
order, the governed bent on maintaining their natural liberty. I need
not ask you, Alumni, if these two parties exist at Cambridge. They have
always existed within the memory of "the oldest graduate."

Professors should not be responsible for the manners of students, beyond
the legitimate operation of their personal influence. Academic
jurisdiction should have no criminal code, should inflict no penalty
but that of expulsion, and that only in the way of self-defence against
positively noxious and dangerous members. Let the civil law take care of
civil offences. The American citizen should early learn to govern
himself, and to re-enact the civil law by free consent. Let easy and
familiar relations be established between teachers and taught, and
personal influence will do more for the maintenance of order than the
most elaborate code. Experience has shown that great reliance may be
placed on the sense of honor in young men, when properly appealed to and
fairly brought into play. Raumer, in his "History of German
Universities," testifies that the Burschenschaften abolished there the
last vestige of that system of hazing practised on new-comers, which
seems to be an indigenous weed of the college soil. It infested the
ancient universities of Athens, Berytus, Carthage,[C] as well as the
mediaeval and the modern. Our ancestors provided a natural outlet for it
when they ordained that the Freshmen should be subject to the Seniors,
should take off their hats in their presence, and run of their errands.
This system, under the name of "Pennalism," had developed, in the German
universities, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a degree of
oppression and tyrannous abuse of the new-comer unknown to American
colleges, and altogether incredible were it not sufficiently vouched by
contemporary writers, and by the acts of the various governments which
labored to suppress it. A certain German worthy writes to his son, who
is about to enter the university: "You think, perhaps, that in the
universities they sup pure wisdom by spoonfuls,... but when you are
arrived there, you will find that you must be made a fool of for the
first year.... Consent to be a fool for this one year; let yourself be
plagued and abused; and when an old veteran steps up to you and tweaks
your nose, let it not appear singular; endure it, harden yourself to it.
_Olim meminisse juvabit._"[D] The universities legislated against this
barbarism; all the governments of Germany conspired to crush it; but in
spite of all their efforts, which were only partially successful, traces
of it still lingered in the early years of this century. It was not
completely abolished until, in 1818, there was formed at Jena by
delegates from fourteen universities a voluntary association of students
on a moral basis, known as "The General German Burschenschaft," the
first principle in whose constitution was, "Unity, freedom, and equality
of all students among themselves,--equality of all rights and
duties,"--and whose second principle was "Christian German education of
every mental and bodily faculty for the service of the Fatherland."
This, according to Raumer, was the end of Pennalism in Germany. What the
governments, with their stringent enactments and formidable penalties,
failed to accomplish, was accomplished at last by a voluntary
association of students, organizing that sense of honor which, in youth
and societies of youth, if rightly touched, is never appealed to in
vain.

       *       *       *       *       *

The question has been newly agitated in these days, whether knowledge of
Greek and Latin is a necessary part of polite education, and whether it
should constitute one of the requirements of the academic course. It has
seemed to me that those who take the affirmative in this discussion give
undue weight to the literary argument, and not enough to the
glossological. The literary argument fails to establish the supreme
importance of a knowledge of these languages as a part of polite
education. The place which the Greek and Latin authors have come to
occupy in the estimation of European scholars is due, not entirely to
their intrinsic merits, great as those merits unquestionably are, but in
part to traditional prepossessions. When after a millennial occultation
the classics, and especially, with the fall of the Palaeologi, the Greek
classics burst upon Western Europe, there was no literature with which
to compare them. The Jewish Scriptures were not regarded as literature
by readers of the Vulgate. Dante, it is true, had given to the world his
immortal vision, and Boccaccio, its first expounder, had shown the
capabilities of Italian prose. But the light of Florentine culture was
even for Italy a partial illumination. On the whole, we may say that
modern literature did not exist, and the Oriental had not yet come to
light. What wonder that the classics were received with boundless
enthusiasm! It was through the influence of that enthusiasm that the
study of Greek was introduced into schools and universities with the
close of the fifteenth century. It was through that influence that
Latin, still a living language in the clerical world, was perpetuated,
instead of becoming an obsolete ecclesiasticism. The language of Livy
and Ovid derived fresh impulse from the reappearing stars of secular
Rome.

It is in vain to deny that those literatures have lost something of the
relative value they once possessed, and which made it a literary
necessity to study Greek and Latin for their sakes. The literary
necessity is in a measure superseded by translations, which, though they
may fail to communicate the aroma and the verbal felicities of the
original, reproduce its form and substance. It is furthermore superseded
by the rise of new literatures, and by introduction to those of other
and elder lands. The Greeks were masters of literary form, but other
nations have surpassed them in some particulars. There is but one Iliad,
and but one Odyssee; but also there is but one Job, but one Sakoontala,
but one Hafiz-Nameh, but one Gulistan, but one Divina Commedia, but one
Don Quixote, but one Faust. If the argument for the study of Greek and
Latin is grounded on the value of the literary treasures contained in
those tongues, the same argument applies to the Hebrew, to the Sanscrit,
to the Persian, to say nothing of the modern languages, to which the
College assigns a subordinate place.

But, above all, the literary importance of Greek and Latin for the
British and American scholar is greatly qualified by the richness and
superiority of the English literature which has come into being since
the Graecomania of the time of the Tudors, when court ladies of a
morning, by way of amusement, read Plato's Dialogues in the original. If
literary edification is the object intended in the study of those
languages, that end is more easily and more effectually accomplished by
a thorough acquaintance with English literature, than by the very
imperfect knowledge which college exercises give of the classics.
Tugging at the Chained Prometheus, with the aid of grammar and lexicon,
may be good intellectual discipline, but how many of the subjects of
that discipline ever divine the secret of AEschylus's wonderful creation,
or receive any other impression from it than the feeling perhaps that
the worthy Titan's sense of constraint could hardly have been more
galling than their own.

Give them Shakespeare's Tempest to read, and with no other pony than
their own good will, though they may not penetrate the deeper meaning of
that composition, they will gain more ideas, more nourishment from it,
than they will from compulsory study of the whole trio of Greek
tragedians. And if this be their first introduction to the great
magician, they will say, with Miranda,

            "O, wonder!
    How many goodly creatures are there here!
    ... O brave new world,
    That has such people in it!"

The literary argument for enforced study of Greek and Latin in our day
has not much weight. What I call the glossological argument has more.
Every well-educated person should have a thorough understanding of his
own language, and no one can thoroughly understand the English without
some knowledge of languages which touch it so nearly as the Latin and
the Greek. Some knowledge of those languages should constitute, I think,
a condition of matriculation. But the further prosecution of them should
not be obligatory on the student once matriculated, though every
encouragement be given and every facility afforded to those whose genius
leans in that direction. The College should make ample provision for the
study of ancient languages, and also for the study of the mathematics,
but should not enforce those studies on minds that have no vocation for
such pursuits. There is now and then a born philologer, one who studies
language for its own sake,--studies it perhaps in the spirit of "the
scholar who regretted that he had not concentrated his life on the
dative case." There are also exceptional natures that delight in
mathematics, minds whose young affections run to angles and logarithms,
and with whom the computation of values is itself the chief value in
life. The College should accommodate either bias, to the top of its
bent, but should not enforce either with compulsory twist. It should not
insist on making every alumnus a linguist or a mathematician. If mastery
of dead languages is not an indispensable part of polite education,
mathematical learning is still less so. Excessive requirements in that
department have not even the excuse of intellectual discipline. More
important than mathematics to the general scholar is the knowledge of
history, in which American scholars are so commonly deficient. More
important is the knowledge of modern languages and of English
literature. More important the knowledge of Nature and Art. May the
science of sciences never want representatives as able as the learned
gentlemen who now preside over that department in the mathematical and
presidential chairs. Happy will it be for the University if they can
inspire a love for the science in the pupils committed to their charge.
But where inspiration fails, coercion can never supply its place. If the
mathematics shall continue to reign at Harvard, may their empire become
a law of liberty.

I have ventured, fellow-graduates, to throw out these hints of
University Reform, well aware of the opposition such views must
encounter in deep-rooted prejudice and fixed routine; aware also of the
rashness of attempting, within the limits of such an occasion, to
grapple with such a theme; but strong in my conviction of the pressing
need of a more emancipated scheme of instruction and discipline, based
on the facts of the present and the real wants of American life. It is
time that the oldest college in the land should lay off the _praetexta_
of its long minority, and take its place among the universities,
properly so called, of modern time.

       *       *       *       *       *

One thing more I have to say while standing in this presence. The
College has a duty beyond its literary and scientific functions,--a duty
to the nation,--a patriotic, I do not scruple to say a political duty.

Time was when universities were joint estates of the realms they
enlightened. The University of Paris was, in its best days, an
association possessing authority second only to that of the Church. The
faithful ally of the sovereigns of France against the ambition of the
nobles and against the usurpations of Papal Rome, she bore the proud
title of "The eldest Daughter of the King,"--_La Fille ainee du Roi_.
She upheld the Oriflamme against the feudal gonfalons, and was largely
instrumental in establishing the central power of the crown.[E] In the
terrible struggle of Philip the Fair with Boniface VIII., she furnished
the legal weapons of the contest. She furnished, in her Chancellor
Gerson, the leading spirit of the Council of Constance. In the Council
of Bale she obtained for France the "Pragmatic Sanction." Her voice was
consulted on the question of the Salic Law; unhappily, also in the trial
of Jeanne d'Arc; and when Louis XI. concluded a treaty of peace with
Maximilian of Austria, the University of Paris was the guaranty on the
part of France.

Universities are no longer political bodies, but they may be still
political powers,--centres and sources of political influence. Our own
College in the time of the Revolution was a manifest power on the side
of liberty, the political as well as academic mother of Otis and the
Adamses. In 1768, "when the patronage of American manufactures was the
test of patriotism," the Senior Class voted unanimously to take their
degrees apparelled in the coarse cloths of American manufacture. In
1776, the Overseers required of the professors a satisfactory account of
their political faith. So much was then thought of the influence on
young minds of the right or wrong views of political questions
entertained by their instructors. The fathers were right. When the life
of the nation is concerned,--in the struggle with foreign or domestic
foes,--there is a right and a wrong in politics which casuistry may seek
to confuse, but which sound moral sentiment cannot mistake, and which
those who have schools of learning in charge should be held to respect.
Better the College should be disbanded than be a nursery of treason.
Better these halls even now should be levelled with the ground, than
that any influence should prevail in them unfriendly to American
nationality. No amount of intellectual acquirements can atone for
defective patriotism. Intellectual supremacy alone will not avert the
downfall of states. The subtlest intellect of Greece, the sage who could
plan an ideal republic of austere virtue and perfect proportions, could
not preserve his own; but the love of country inspired by Lycurgus kept
the descendants of the Dorians free two thousand years after the
disgrace of Chaeronea had sealed the fate of the rest of Greece.

In my college days it was the fashion with some to think lightly of our
American birthright, to talk disparagingly of republics, and to sigh for
the dispositions and pomps of royalty.

    "Sad fancies did we then affect
    In luxury of disrespect
    To our own prodigal excess
    Of too familiar happiness."

All such nonsense, if it had not already yielded to riper reason, would
ere this have been washed out of us by the blood of a hundred thousand
martyrs. The events of recent years have enkindled, let us hope, quite
other sentiments in the youth of this generation. May those sentiments
find ample nutriment within these precincts evermore.

Soon after the conquest of American independence, Governor Hancock, in
his speech at the inauguration of President Willard, eulogized the
College as having "been in some sense the parent and nurse of the late
happy Revolution in this Commonwealth." Parent and nurse of American
nationality,--such was the praise accorded to Harvard by one of the
foremost patriots of the Revolution! Never may she cease to deserve that
praise! Never may the Mother refuse to acknowledge the seed herself has
propagated! Never may her seed be repelled by the Mother's altered mind!

    "Mutatam ignorent subito ne semina matrem."

When Protagoras came to Athens to teach in the university as
self-appointed professor, or sophist, according to the fashion of that
time, it was not to instruct Athenian youth in music or geometry or
astronomy, but to teach them the art of being good citizens,--[Greek:
Ten politiken technen, kai poiein andras agathous politas.] That was his
profession. With which, as we read, Hippocrates was so well pleased,
that he called up Socrates in the middle of the night to inform him of
the happy arrival. We have no professorship at Cambridge founded for the
express purpose of making good citizens. In the absence of such, may all
the professorships work together for that end. The youth intrusted to
their tutelage are soon to take part, if not as legislators, at least
as freemen, in the government of our common land. May the dignity and
duty and exceeding privilege of an American citizen be impressed upon
their minds by all the influences that rule this place! Trust me,
Alumni, the country will thank the University more for the loyalty her
influences shall foster, than for all the knowledge her schools may
impart. Learning is the costly ornament of states, but patriotism is the
life of a nation.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] The History of Harvard University, by Josiah Quincy, LL. D., Vol. I.
pp. 42, 43. All the facts relating to the history of the College are
taken from this work.

[B] The Office and Work of Universities, by John Henry Newman.

[C] St. Augustine records his connection, when a student at Carthage,
with the "Eversores" (Destructives), an association which flourished at
that university.

[D] Raumer's "History of German Universities." Translated by Frederic B.
Perkins.

[E] "C'est ainsi que peu a peu ils [that is, "les lettres"] parvinrent a
sapper les fondements du pouvoir feodal et a elever l'etendard royal la
ou flottait la banniere du baron."--_Histoire de l'Universite_, par M.
Eugene Dubarle, Vol. I. p. 135.




THE VOICE.


    A saintly Voice fell on my ear,
    Out of the dewy atmosphere:--
    "O hush, dear Bird of Night, be mute,--
    Be still, O throbbing heart and lute!"
    The Night-Bird shook the sparkling dew
    Upon me as he ruffed and flew:
    My heart was still, almost as soon,
    My lute as silent as the moon:
    I hushed my heart, and held my breath,
    And would have died the death of death,
    To hear--but just once more--to hear
    That Voice within the atmosphere.

    Again The Voice fell on my ear,
    Out of the dewy atmosphere!--
    The same words, but half heard at first,--
    I listened with a quenchless thirst;
    And drank as of that heavenly balm,
    The Silence that succeeds a psalm:
    My soul to ecstasy was stirred:--
    It was a Voice that I had heard
    A thousand blissful times before;
    But deemed that I should hear no more
    Till I should have a spirit's ear,
    And breathe another atmosphere!

    Then there was Silence in my ear,
    And Silence in the atmosphere,
    And silent moonshine on the mart,
    And Peace and Silence in my heart:
    But suddenly a dark Doubt said,
    "The fancy of a fevered head!"
    A wild, quick whirlwind of desire
    Then wrapt me as in folds of fire.
    I ran the strange words o'er and o'er,
    And listened breathlessly once more:
    And lo, the third time I did hear
    The same words in the atmosphere!

    They fell and died upon my ear,
    As dew dies on the atmosphere;
    And then an intense yearning thrilled
    My Soul, that all might be fulfilled:
    "Where art thou, Blessed Spirit, where?--
    Whose Voice is dew upon the air!"
    I looked, around me, and above,
    And cried aloud: "Where art thou, Love?
    O let me see thy living eye,
    And clasp thy living hand, or die!"--
    Again upon the atmosphere
    The self-same words fell: "_I Am Here._"

    "Here? Thou art here, Love!"--"_I Am Here._"
    The echo died upon my ear!
    I looked around me--everywhere,--
    But ah! there was no mortal there!
    The moonlight was upon the mart,
    And awe and wonder in my heart.
    I saw no form!--I only felt
    Heaven's Peace upon me as I knelt,
    And knew a Soul Beatified
    Was at that moment by my side:--
    And there was Silence in my ear,
    And Silence in the atmosphere!




LIFE ASSURANCE.


One of the subjects which for some time has commanded the public
attention is that of Life Assurance: the means by which a man may,
through a moderate annual expenditure, make provision for his family
when death shall have deprived them of his protection.

The number of companies organized for this purpose, their annual
increase, the assiduity with which their agents press their respective
claims, the books, pamphlets, and circulars which are disseminated, and
the large space occupied by their announcements in the issues of the
press, all unite in creating a spirit of inquiry on this interesting
subject. We propose in this article to submit a few statements, the
collection of which has been greatly furthered by recourse to the
treatises of Babbage, Park, Duer, Ellis, Angell, Bunyon, Blayney, and
other writers on insurance.

In the early history of insurance, objection was continually made that
it was of the nature of a wager, and consequently not only unlawful, but
_contra bonos mores_; yet the courts of law in England from the first
drew a distinction between a wager and a contract founded on the
principle of indemnity, which principle runs through and underlies the
whole subject of insurance. Lord Mansfield denominated insurance "a
contract upon speculation," and it has universally been considered as a
contract of indemnity against loss or damage arising from some uncertain
and future events.

Insurance may be defined generally as "a contract by which one of the
parties binds himself to the other to pay him a sum of money, or
otherwise indemnify him, in the case of the happening of a fortuitous
event provided for in a general or special manner in the contract, in
consideration of the sum of money which the latter party pays or binds
himself to pay"; or, in the words of an eminent English judge, "It is a
contract to protect men against uncertain events which in any wise may
be a disadvantage to them."

The contract securing this indemnity is called a policy, from the
Italian _polizza d' assicurazione_, or _di sicurta_, which signifies a
memorandum in writing, or bill of security. The sum paid for the
indemnity is called a premium, or price; the party taking upon himself
the risk being termed the underwriter, because his name is written at
the bottom of the policy, while the person protected by the instrument
is called the assured. Says one, "The premium paid by the latter and the
peril assumed by the former are two correlatives inseparable from each
other, and the union constitutes the essence of the contract."

Some writers, Mr. Babbage among others, use the words "assurance" and
"insurance" as having distinct meanings; but with all underwriters at
this day they are considered synonymous.

Insurance in the first instance was exclusively maritime, and great
efforts have been made to prove its antiquity. Some have endeavored, by
appeals to Livy, Suetonius, Ulpian, and Cicero, to show that insurance
was in use in ancient Rome, and that it was invented at Rhodes a
thousand years before the Christian era; while others claim that it
existed at Tyre, Carthage, Corinth, Athens, and Alexandria.

There is little doubt, however, that it was first practised by the
Lombards, and was introduced into England by a Lombard colony, which in
the thirteenth century settled in London, and controlled entirely the
foreign trade of the kingdom. After the great fire in London, in 1666,
the protection hitherto afforded by insurance to ships only was extended
to goods and houses; and insurance as a contract of indemnity was
subsequently extended to human life.

It is a singular fact that the subject of effecting insurance on lives
was largely and excitingly discussed on the continent of Europe before
it had attracted the slightest attention in England; yet at this day it
prevails throughout Great Britain, while upon the Continent it is
comparatively unknown; its operations there being chiefly confined to
France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark.

In Holland, as early as 1681, Van Hadden and De Witt produced elaborate
works upon the subject, while no publication appeared in England until
twenty years after. These writers were followed by Struyck, in 1740, and
by Kirseboon, in 1743; while Parcieux, father and son, St. Cyran, and
Duvillard, in France, with Euler, Suchmilch, and Wargentin, in Germany,
were with great ability pressing the subject upon the notice of their
countrymen. But these efforts led to no practical results, and it was
reserved for England at a later day to illustrate the principles of life
assurance, and enable the public to enjoy extensively its privileges.

Policies of life assurance were issued in England

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