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The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864

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Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864

Author: Various


        
Release date: February 2, 2008 [eBook #24491]

Language: English

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











THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.


VOL. VI.--DECEMBER, 1864--NO. VI.


AN ARMY: ITS ORGANIZATION AND MOVEMENTS

_FIFTH PAPER._


Before the enlightenment derived from the sad experiences of our present
civil contest, upon the incidents of protracted warfare, probably most
persons conceived of war as a scene of constant activity--a series of
marches, battles, and sieges, with but few intervals of repose. History
records only the active portions of war, taking but little account of
the long periods consumed in the preliminary processes of organization
and discipline, in the occupation of camps and cantonments, in the
stationary watches of opposing armies, lying in the front of each other,
both too weak for aggressive movements, but each strong enough to
prevent such movements on the part of its opponent. Such matters, if
noticed at all, are recorded in a few sentences, making no impression on
the reader. Novels of the 'Charles O'Malley' class have also given
incorrect ideas. Every page relates some adventure--every scene gleams
with sabres and bayonets. Our three years' experience has taught us that
the greater portion of an army's existence is spent in inactivity; that
campaigning is performed only through one half of the year, and of that
time probably not over one third is occupied in progressive movements.
In the campaign of 1861, the only marches of the Army of the Potomac
were to the battle field of Bull Run and the retreat. In 1862, after a
march of fifteen miles to Fairfax Court House and returning, the army
was transferred to Fortress Monroe and moved to Yorktown, where some
weeks were passed in the trenches; it then proceeded up the Peninsula,
and laid a month before Richmond; retreated to Harrison's Landing, and
laid another month; returned to Fortress Monroe, and was shipped to the
vicinity of Washington, marched for about a month, fought at Antietam,
and then laid in camp a month; moved to Warrenton and remained a
fortnight; proceeded to Fredericksburg and continued in camp all winter,
except making the short movements which led to the battle of December,
and the ineffective attempt to turn the rebel left, known as the 'mud
march.' In all this long campaign, from March to December, a period of
nearly nine months, spent in various operations, more than five months
were passed in stationary camps--most of the time occupied, it is true,
in picketing, entrenching, and other duties incident to positive
military operations in proximity to an enemy, but very different from
the duties connected with marching and fighting. The campaign of 1863
comprised a still smaller period of active movements. Commencing in
April with the battle of Chancellorsville, it continued till the march
to Mine Run in October--seven months; but considerable more than half
the time was spent in camps at Falmouth, Warrenton, and Culpepper. The
great campaign now in progress has consumed (at the time this article is
written) three months, commencing after a six-months' interval of
inaction, and already half the time has been spent in the trenches at
Petersburg.

Since so large a portion of the time of an army is passed in camps, that
branch of military science which governs the arrangement of forces when
stationary, is one of considerable importance. It is in camps that
armies are educated, that all the details of organization are
systematized, that the _morale_ of troops is cultivated, that a round of
laborious though monotonous duties is performed. Nothing is so trying to
the temper of the individuals composing an army as a long season in a
stationary camp; nothing has more effect for good or for evil upon the
army in the aggregate, than the mode in which the time, at such a
season, is occupied. The commander who does not exercise care to have
his camps pitched in the proper localities, to insure the observance of
hygienic rules, and to keep his men employed sufficiently in military
exercises, will have discontented, unhealthy, and indolent troops.

The words 'camps' and 'cantonments' are frequently used in the
newspapers without any discrimination; but they denote two entirely
different methods of sheltering troops. A camp is defined to be the
place where troops are established in tents, in huts, or in bivouac;
while cantonments are inhabited places which troops occupy for shelter
when not put in barracks. Of camps there are several kinds, according to
the purposes to be effected by their establishment, such as the nightly
camps while upon the march, camps of occupation, camps in line of
battle, &c. Cantonments are most frequently used when, during the
winter, or other considerable period of inactivity, it is necessary to
distribute an army over a large district of country, so as to guard a
number of points. We have not had any instance of cantonment, properly
speaking, during the present war; but in Europe this method of disposing
troops is frequently adopted.

The scenes ensuing upon the arrival of an army corps at its camping
ground for a night, after a day's march, are very lively, often amusing,
and sometimes present picturesque effects. Where the country traversed
by the army is known to the commander, he is able to designate the
nightly camps of the different corps with precision; if, on account of
ignorance of the country, this cannot be done, places are approximately
indicated upon the information given by maps or extracted from the
inhabitants, or procured by reconnoitring parties. Usually, however, the
commander possesses considerable topographical information, procured by
his officers in the advance with the cavalry and light troops, so that
he can fix the nightly camps in such a manner that the various corps
shall all be upon the same line, and lie within supporting distances.
The vicinity of streams is invariably selected for a camp, if other
circumstances permit. When a corps arrives within a mile or two of its
destination, the commander sends forward some of his staff officers
(accompanied by a cavalry guard, if the country is suspicious), and
these officers select the different localities for the camps of the
divisions, of the artillery, the cavalry, and the trains, care being
taken to give all equal facilities for wood and water, and at the same
time to take advantage of the features of the country for military
purposes, such as the guarding of roads in all directions, the
establishment of the picket line, &c. The leading division arrives
perhaps at 5 P.M., and its commander is shown to the locality assigned
him. He immediately distributes the ground to the brigades, and the
troops, as fast as they arrive, filing into the designated spots, occupy
but a few moments in the necessary formalities by which disorder is
prevented; then each man quickly spreads his little tent upon the place
which in the military order belongs to him, a general din of cheerful
voices arises, a unanimous rush is made to the water, cooking fires are
kindled in all directions, and in ten minutes a scene of (it may be)
utter desolation becomes full of life and activity. For a couple of
hours the columns continue to file in, until all the hillsides are
covered with tents. Then, far into the night, is heard the braying of
mules, the shouts of drivers, and the rattling of wheels, as the heavy
wagon trains toil to the place of rest. All through the evening prevails
that peculiar, cheerful din of a camp, as peculiar and characteristic as
the roar of a great city; gradually the noises decline, the bugles and
drums sound the tattoo, the fires grow dim, and the vast mass of hardy,
resolute humanity is asleep--all except the two or three score of sick
and dying men, wasted by fever, who have been jolted all day over the
rough roads in the ambulances, and now groan and writhe in delirium upon
their narrow stretchers in the camp hospitals.

Camps designed to cover and guard a country, are constructed when the
army has not sufficient strength to advance, or when the season
prevents, or some other cause interferes with the prosecution of
hostilities, while at the same time it is necessary to occupy a portion
of the hostile territory. We have had numerous examples of this kind of
camps--indeed, our armies occupy them generally while lying inactive
during the winter. The character of the ground must always determine the
shape and features of such a camp, but unless peculiar modifying
circumstances dictate otherwise, the general form is that of the arc of
a circle. This, with extensions at the sides to cover the flanks, and a
rear guard, is the best for protection. The extent of this kind of camp
is governed by circumstances, but is much greater, generally, than would
be supposed. The camp of an army of 100,000 men, designed to cover any
considerable district of territory, in a country where hills and rivers
assist in giving protection, might have a front (including flanking
parties of cavalry) of from 30 to 50 miles, and a depth of from 10 to
20; besides a continuous chain of forces in the rear, guarding
communications with the base of supplies, from 10 to 50 miles distant.

Camps in line of battle are generally established when opposing armies,
lying in proximity, must be on the alert for attacks. They cover but
little more ground than is required for the manoeuvres of the force,
and are so arranged that, in case of probable conflict, the troops can
assume immediately the formations of battle. Such camps are arranged in
two or three lines, adapted to the natural features of the country for
defence. The approach of the enemy having been communicated from the
outposts, the tents are rapidly struck, the baggage loaded and sent to
the rear, and in an hour the army is free from all encumbrances, and
ready to meet the advancing foe. Usually, when armies lie in contact,
expecting battle, the troops bivouac--no tents being pitched except at
the headquarters of superior commanders, and at other places
sufficiently in the rear to be free from immediate danger. The troops
may be obliged to remain thus for a day or two, no fires being permitted
in the advanced lines, so that their positions may not be indicated.

The season for the suspension of active hostilities having arrived, it
is necessary for the commander of an army to select some place in which
his forces can remain for the winter--where they will have sufficient
facilities for fuel and water, where their health can be preserved,
where they can be protected against surprises or annoyance, where the
country can be covered and guarded, and where the supplies can be drawn
with security from the base of operations. After a due consideration of
all the intelligence that can be obtained upon these points, the
commander issues his general directions, the various corps move to their
designated positions, and preparations for the habitations of the winter
are made. Each corps commander, either personally or by his staff
officers, makes a survey of his ground, and assigns the positions of his
divisions. If within a few miles of the enemy, he throws detachments of
observation toward the front, and then proceeds to establish his picket
line, usually some three or five miles in advance of his main line.
Precautions for security being thus adopted, more minute inspections of
the ground are made, so that unhealthy positions may be avoided. The
troops, being placed, immediately proceed to clear the sites of their
respective encampments, and wagons are set to work to bring in logs with
which huts may be constructed. In about a week thousands of diminutive
log houses arise, roofed with the shelter tents of the soldiers, or,
when the occupants have sufficient handicraft ability, with rough
shingles. Shelters are erected, as far as possible, for the animals,
generally being nothing more than frameworks covered with pine brush. If
there are lumber mills in the vicinity, they are set to work, and boards
sawed for floors to the tents and hospitals. The adjacent forests now
begin to disappear rapidly, leaving nothing but an unsightly array of
stumps; for a regiment is entitled to about two hundred cords of wood
per month as fuel, and in a well-wooded country, where the men can
conveniently cut for themselves, much more is consumed. Every regiment
requires, therefore, about eight or ten acres of woodland per month. An
army of a hundred regiments will, in the course of a winter, denude
several square miles of trees, so that (in the proportion which woodland
generally bears to that which is cleared) a space of country equal to a
county may be stripped of its timber. The men, having made themselves
comfortable, are now called on to form working parties, and put the
roads leading to the depots and the various camps in good order,
generally corduroying them, so as to be passable during the winter;
bridges are made over streams, drainage perfected, &c. In a few weeks,
the chief portion of the labor of preparing a winter's camp is
completed.

The sanitary regulations for camps are very stringent and comprehensive.
The suggestions of experience as to the details by which the diseases
incident to camp life can be prevented, are embodied in orders, and it
is the duty of the medical officers and of the inspectors to see that
they are observed. For instance, it is not permitted to have the floors
of the huts lower than the external ground, and the men are required to
keep pine boughs between their blankets and the earth. The method in
which a camp shall be drained, and the offal disposed of, is prescribed.
The cleanliness of the men is enforced. A rigorous system of reports
upon these and many other particulars exists, so that negligences are
corrected.

The military occupations which relieve the monotony of camp life are
drilling and picketing. It is in the latter that officers and men find
change and freedom, though it often involves severe exposure. The
ordinary detail for this duty in a corps averages perhaps eight hundred
to one thousand men, who are changed usually every three days. If the
country be well settled, some opportunities are presented during that
interval for intercourse with the 'natives;' but in Virginia, it must be
confessed, the attractions of this kind are few. The secession ladies
are not over well disposed to any wearers of Yankee uniforms, and though
many of them are willing to bestow a few soft words in exchange for tea,
coffee, and sugar, they are not liberal of social courtesies. The young
man who joins our armies expecting to realize for himself the love
adventures he has seen recorded in novels, will find the Southern ladies
less given to romance than the damsels of Spain or Mexico. They are
inclined, also, to be treacherous, as the fate of several gallant
officers, who have gone stealthily beyond the lines to spend an evening
with fair rebel sirens, and found themselves delivered to guerillas, has
shown. Nevertheless, the experience of others never warns an adventurous
youth, and opportunities frequently arise for practical jokes. During
the winter of 1862-'3, while the army was encamped on the Rappahannock,
an officer was fascinated by the charms of a fair widow who resided just
beyond the lines, and frequently made evening visits to her. His
companions, being aware of this, formed a party, on a bitter January
night, and proceeding to the widow's house, surrounded it, and sending
within some who were strangers to him, they announced themselves as
belonging to the rebel army, and captured the enamored lover,
blindfolded, led him out, and mounted him. Crestfallen and moody with,
thoughts of his disgraceful situation, cursing, perhaps, the wiles of
the enchantress, to whom he attributed it, he was made to ride many
weary miles, and then, being dismounted, and the bandage removed from
his eyes, he found himself at his own camp, where he was greeted with
uproarious laughter.

The duties incident to picketing and outpost stations are so important
that several works by distinguished authors have been written concerning
them, but most of the rules are of too technical a character for recital
in these papers. The friends of soldiers will, however, take interest in
some general statements. The picket line consists of three
portions--first, the stations of the main guard; second, some distance
in advance of these, the picket stations; and third, some two hundred
yards in advance of these, the stations of the sentinels. If the country
is open and hilly, the latter need not be posted closely together, but
in a wooded country they must be quite numerous. It is their duty not to
allow any person to pass their line; and if a force of the enemy, too
strong to be resisted, approaches, they fall back on the pickets. These
should be stationed where they can command the main avenues of approach,
and offer resistance to the advanced parties of the enemy. After such
resistance becomes useless, the various pickets fall back on the grand
guard, which offers a more determined contest. The advance of the enemy
should by these means have been delayed for a couple of hours, affording
time for the troops to get under arms and take the order of battle.

The following diagram exhibits the general arrangement of picketing:

[Illustration]

Let the line A B represent a chain of sentinels on a mile of picket
front, C D a line of picket stations, and E the grand guard. The whole
force of men may perhaps be three hundred, of whom two thirds will
remain at E, posted advantageously upon some eminence protected in part
by a stream and commanding an open country. The remaining one hundred
will be distributed among the picket stations and thrown forward as
sentinels. The whole arrangement is supervised by an officer of
rank--usually a colonel. With a disposition like the above in front of
every division in an army, it is obviously impossible for any
considerable force of an enemy to approach without detection.

One of the greatest practical difficulties our armies have experienced
has been connected with the system of picketing. The South having been
greatly impoverished in those portions traversed by the contending
armies, and the people entirely destitute of luxuries, there are
innumerable applications from residents outside of the pickets for
admission within the lines, in order to trade with officers, for the
purpose of procuring in return articles from our well-supplied
commissariat. Various other necessities of the people appeal for a
modified degree of rigor in regard to picket arrangements, so that our
armies are never free from the presence of rebel inhabitants, traversing
them in all directions. Perfectly familiar with the country, they are
able to detect any weakly guarded places, and undoubtedly, in frequent
instances, after receiving the kindest treatment, return to their homes
conveying such information to guerillas as enables these prowlers to
penetrate through by-roads and seize animals and straggling soldiers. As
a precaution against such annoyances, a very judicious arrangement was
made last winter by the provost marshal general of the Army of the
Potomac. He established certain points on the picket line at which
traffic might be conducted, and forbade admission to citizens. Some
rigorous system like this is very necessary.

The social life of camps is, however, the topic of chief interest. The
question is often asked, Is the life of a soldier demoralizing? The
answer must be, 'Yes,' but not for the reasons generally supposed. The
opportunities for vice and dissoluteness are really less than at home.
The hundred thousand men in an army use less liquor than the same number
of men in a city. In fact, liquor is nearly inaccessible to the soldier
when on the march. For other kinds of vice the temptations are few. The
demoralization arises from the terrible monotony of a prolonged camp,
which produces listlessness, indolence, and a devotion to small
amusements; deranges and reverses the whole system of active life, as it
is seen at home; renders a man uncouth; disqualifies soldiers for
anything else than the trade of war. To the officer in his tent and to
the soldier in his log hut, while the cold rains are beating without,
and the ground is knee deep with mud, there is a constant temptation to
find amusement in cards. Gambling thus becomes a pastime too generally
adopted. The books sent to the army are not always of the character best
adapted to the circumstances. Moral essays and tracts will not be very
eagerly sought for by men whose principal object is to kill time. The
reading matter needed is the kind afforded by the periodicals of the
day, unobjectionable novels, biographies, works of travel, etc.

Camp life has, however, its pleasures, and it must not be supposed that
all succumb to its enervating influences, or that any great number yield
themselves entirely to its demoralizing effects. The period of military
service among our volunteers is too short to permit its full influence
to be experienced, and the connections of our soldiers with their homes
too intimate to allow them to subside completely into the routine
veterans, whose social, mental, and moral nature is altogether lost and
absorbed in the new and artificial military nature imposed on them.

War collects many characters of peculiar idiosyncrasies, and jumbles
them strangely together, so that curious associations are produced. In
any collection of men upon a staff or in a regiment, gathered from
different localities, will be found characters of the most opposite and
incongruous elements. There will be the youth who has never before
travelled beyond his own village, and is full of small anecdotes of the
persons who have figured in his little world; and the silent and
reserved man of middle age, who, if he can be induced to talk, can tell
of many a wild scene in all quarters of the world in which he has been a
participant, since he stealthily left his native home, a boy of sixteen.
There are men who have passed through all the hardships of life, who
have been soldiers in half a dozen European armies, or miners in
California and Australia, or sailors; and men who have always had wealth
at their disposal, and spent years in foreign travel, viewing the world
only under its sunniest aspects. There are many officers grown gray
while filling subordinate capacities at posts on the Western prairies
and mountains, who can relate many interesting anecdotes of their
companions--the men now prominent in military affairs; and there are
officers of high rank, recently emerged from civil life, who nourish
prodigiously in self-glorification upon their brief warlike experience.
There are brave men, and men whose courage is suspected; quiet men, and
men of opinionated perversity; quick-witted men, and men whose profound
stupidity makes them continual butts for all kinds of practical jokes;
refined, educated, poetical men, and men of boorish habits. In short,
any camp presents such specimens of humanity as would be furnished if
all the ingredients of character and experience that compose the world
had been collected in a huge pepper box and sprinkled miscellaneously
throughout the army.

In such associations there are of course many occasions for extracting
interesting and comical conversation and incident. Jokes of all kinds
are constantly on the wing, and no one can consider himself safe from
collision with them. Ridiculous nicknames become attached--no one knows
how--to the most dignified characters, and altogether usurp the places
of the genuine cognomens. No person possesses the art of concealment to
such a degree that all his foibles and weaknesses will escape
observation in the companionship of a camp; and when discovered, the
treatment of them is merciless just in proportion to the care with which
they had been hidden. All pretensions will be penetrated, all disguises
unmasked. Every man finds himself placed according to his exact status,
no matter how well contrived his arrangements for passing himself off
for more than his par value. Many an officer, whom the newspapers
delight to praise, because he is over courteous to correspondents, and
takes precautions to have all his achievements published, has a camp
reputation far different from that by which he is known to the public.

Opinions of all kinds flourish in the army as vigorously as in the outer
world. There are ardent theorists of the progressive order, full of
schemes for radical reforms, and old fogies believing in nothing except
what they lament to see is fast becoming obsolete. There are students
and practical men, authors and mechanics, editors, lawyers, doctors,
clergymen, school teachers, actors, artists, singers, and
representatives of all kinds of trades and avocations. All are now on
the same platform, and, for a time, class distinctions disappear beneath
the assimilating conditions of the new profession. Political strifes
occur, but are rarely virulent. Generally the association together of
men holding different political views, in a common cause, and subject to
the same dangers, is tacitly accepted as the occasion for an armistice.
But politics of all kinds are represented. There are of course
Abolitionists, Republicans, Unionists, and War Democrats; but, strangely
enough, there are also Copperheads, Peace Democrats, peace-at-any-price
men, and even secession sympathizers. Why extremists of the latter
classes should have joined the army voluntarily cannot be surmised; but
there they are, and, moreover, they do their duty. There are some traits
of original manhood so strong that even the poison of treasonable
politics cannot overcome them.

The daily routine of camp life in a regiment can be told in a few words.
The plan of a regimental camp as laid down in the army regulations is
generally conformed to, with some variations recommended by the
character of the camping ground. The following diagram exhibits the
plan:

[Illustration]

REFERENCE.

  N.C.S. Non-commissioned staff.
  AST. SURG. Assistant surgeon.
  M. Major.
  Q.M. Quartermaster.
  LT. CL. Lieutenant-colonel.
  CL. Colonel.
  ADJT. Adjutant.
  SURG. Surgeon.

In our armies the full allowances of camp equipage are not permitted.
Field and staff officers have only three wall tents, and company
officers only the same shelter tents as the men. The trains very rarely
encamp with the regiments. The tents of the men front on streets from
fifteen to twenty feet wide, each company having a street of its own,
and there is much competition as to the adornment of these. Many
regimental camps are decorated with evergreens in an exceedingly
tasteful manner--particularly during warm weather--chapels, arches,
colonnades, etc., being constructed of rude frameworks, so interwoven
with pine boughs that they present a very elegant appearance.

The daily life of a camp is as follows: At an hour appointed by orders,
varying according to the season of the year, the camp is roused by the
reveille. The old notion that soldiers should be waked before daybreak
in all seasons and all weathers has fortunately been exploded, and the
reveille is not generally sounded in winter till six o'clock. In
pleasant weather the men are formed upon the color line, where they
stack their arms. Breakfast is the next matter in order: after that the
mounting of the guard for the day and the detail of detachments for
picket and other duties. The prisoners are put to work in cleaning up
the camp, and squad drills occupy the morning. About noon the dinner
call is sounded; then come more drills and in the latter part of the
afternoon the dress parade of the regiment. This closes the military
labors of the day. In the evening there are schools for instructions in
tactics, and the time is passed in any amusements that may offer
themselves. About half past eight the tattoo is beaten, when every one,
not absent on duty, must be in camp ready to answer to his name; and
shortly after, the beat of taps proclaims that the military day is
ended, and lights must be extinguished--a regulation not very strictly
enforced. Thus pass the days of camp life.

Very different are those assemblages of huts down among the pine forests
of Virginia from the pleasant villages, the thriving towns, and the
prosperous cities of the North--very different the life of the soldier
from that which he enjoyed before rebellion sought to sever the country
which from his cradle he had been taught to consider 'one and
inseparable.'




APHORISMS.--NO. XIV.


A Query for the Thoughtful.--May we not justly say that _spirit_,
everywhere, in its various degrees, rules over matter, setting its
forces at defiance for the time, and yet never interfering with their
continued operations?

This seems a great law of the universe. The power of life, wherever
guided by _will_, whether in beast or man, or even where we can only
venture to speak of instinct, thus asserts its superiority. Within its
appointed range, the laws of the material world are evidently subject to
its control. Iron may be firmly held together by the attraction of
cohesion: but man wills its severance, and it is effected.

Nor does it contravene the general assertion here made, that we act by
opposing one natural force to another. The rising of the sledge hammer,
to fall with a force more than its own, is just as much against the laws
of matter as the breaking of the iron beneath its blows.

All _power_, so far as we can judge, is spiritual--_i.e._, originates in
spirit, and is exerted in obedience to _will_, or to something
equivalent.

Nor, again, will it avail an objector to say that _spirit_ is also under
law as well as matter. The laws of the one sphere, at all events, are
not those of the other. They may have their relations, but they are not
those of equality. Spirit is sovereign--matter subject; or, if in any
case it should be otherwise, it is from some weak refusal of the spirit
to assert its own power.




ÆNONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.

CHAPTER XVI.


Gliding softly beneath the shrubbery, and beneath one of the side
colonnades, Leta gained the house unperceived, passing Sergius, who
loitered where she had been sitting, upon the coping of the fountain
basin. His friends had departed, bearing away with them his gold and
much else that was of value; and he, with the consciousness of evil
besetting him on every side, had morbidly wandered out to try if in the
cool air he could compose his thoughts to sobriety. As he sat rocking to
and fro, and humming to himself broken snatches of song, Leta stood
under one of the arches of the court, glowering at him, and half hoping
that he would lose his balance and fall into the water behind. It was
not deep enough to drown him, but if it had been, she felt in no mood to
rescue him. In a few moments, however, the fresh breeze, partially
dissipating the fumes of the wine which he had drunk, somewhat revived
him; making him more clearly conscious of his misfortunes, indeed, but
engendering in him, for the instant, a new and calmer state of feeling,
which was not sobriety, but which differed from either his former
careless recklessness or maddening ferocity. And in this new phase of
mind, he sat and revolved and re-revolved, in ever-recurring sequence,
the things that had befallen him, and his changed position in the world.

Alone now, for she, Ænone, had left him. Left him for a stripling of a
slave--a mere creature from the public market. What was the loss of gold
and jewels and quarries to this! And how could he ever hold up his head
again, with this heavy shame upon it! For there could be no
doubt;--alas! no. Had he not seen her press a kiss upon the slave's
forehead? Had she not tenderly raised the menial's head upon her knee
with caressing pity? And, throughout all, had she attempted one word of
justification? Yes, alone in the world now, with no one to love or care
for him! For she must be put away from him forever; she must never call
him husband more. That was a certain thing. But yet--and a kindly gleam
came into his face for the moment--even though guilty, she might not be
thoroughly and utterly corrupt. If he could, at least, believe that she
had been sorely tempted--if he could only, for the sake of past
memories, learn to pity her, rather than to hate! And this became now
the tenor of his thoughts. In his deep reflection of a few hours before,
he had tried to believe that she was innocent. Now, circumstances of
suspicion had so overwhelmed her, that he could not think her innocent;
but he could have wished to believe her less guilty, and thereby have
cherished a kindly feeling toward her.

Rising up, and now for the first time seeing Leta, as she still stood
under the archway and watched him, he tottered toward her; and, incited
by this new impulse of generous feeling, he pleaded to her--humbling his
pride, indeed, but in all else, whether in word or action, clothing
himself with the graceful dignity of true and earnest manliness.

'Tell me,' he said, 'whether you know aught about her which can calm my
soul and give me the right to think better of her. You cannot make me
believe that she is innocent--I do not ask it of you. That hope is past
forever. But it may be that you can reveal more than you have yet
mentioned to me. You have watched her, I know. Perhaps, therefore, you
can tell me that she struggled long with herself before she abandoned
me. Even that assurance will help me to think more pityingly of her.
Remember that there was a time when I loved her; and, for the sake of
that time, help me to feel and act generously toward her.'

As Leta gazed upon him, and saw how his late imperiousness had given
place to earnest, sorrowful entreaty, she hesitated for the moment how
to answer him. There is, perhaps, a latent sympathy in the hardest
heart; and despite her resolve to become at once lost and unpitying,
some sparks of tender feeling, kindled into life by her parting with
Cleotos, yet glimmered in her breast. Cleotos having gone away, she felt
strangely lonesome. Little as she had regarded him when present, it now
seemed as though, in separating from him, she had lost a portion of her
own being. Certainly with him had departed the last link that bound her
to her native land; and though she never expected to return thither, yet
it was not pleasant to feel that she had been cut asunder from all
possibility of it. Now, for the moment, she was in the mood to look
around her for a friend to lean upon; and it might be that she could
find that friend in Sergius, if she would consent to let her vengeance
sleep, and would forbear to pursue him with further machinations. His
love, to be sure, was gone from her, never to be restored; but, after
all, might it not be better to retain his friendship than to incur his
hate? And if she were now to make full disclosure of the past, and ask
his pardon, who could estimate the possible limits of the forgiveness
and generosity which, in his newly found happiness, he might extend to
her? And then, now that her plans had failed, what need of inflicting
further misery upon those who, in their former trust, had lavished
kindnesses upon her? And once more her thoughts reverted to Cleotos; and
with that feeling of utter loneliness sinking into her heart, and making
her crave even to be thought well of by another, she reflected how that
friend of her youth would not fail to ask the blessing of the gods upon
her, if ever, in his native home, he were to hear that she had acted a
generous part, and, by a few simple and easily spoken words, had swept
away the web of mischief which her arts had woven.

'What can I say?' she exclaimed, hesitatingly, as she met the pleading
look which Sergius fastened upon her.

'Say the best you can; so that, though I can never forgive her, I may
not think more harshly of her than I ought. Can I forget that I loved
her for years before I ever met yourself; and that, but for you, I might
be loving her still? Can I forget that it was not for my own glory, but
for hers, that I tore myself away from her and went to these late wars,
hoping to win new honors, only that I might lay them at her feet? Night
after night, as I lay in my tent and gazed up at the sky, I thought of
her alone, and how that the stars shone with equal light upon us both;
and I nerved my soul with new strength, to finish my task with
diligence, so that I might the more quickly return to her side. And
then, Leta, then it was that I met yourself; and how sadly and basely I
yielded to the fascinations you threw about me, you too well know. It
was not love I felt for you; think it not. My passion for you was no
more like the calm affection with which I had cherished her, than is the
flame which devours the village like the moonlight which so softly falls
upon and silvers yonder fountain. But, for all that, it has brought
destruction upon me. And now--'

'And now, Sergius?'

'Now I am undone by reason of it. From the first moment your ensnaring
glance met mine, I was undone, though I then knew it not. Then was my
pure love for her obscured. Then, impelled by I know not what infernal
spirit, began my downward course of deceit, until at last I almost
learned to hate her whom I had so much loved, and met her, at the end,
with but a simulated affection; caring but little for her, indeed, but
not--the gods be thanked!--so far gone in my selfish cruelty as to be
able to wound her heart by open neglect in that hour of her joy.
Whatever I may have done since then, that day, at least, her happiness
was undimmed. How gladly would I now give up all the honors I have
gained, if I could but restore the peace and quiet of the past!
Remembering all this, Leta, and how much of this cruel wrong is due to
you, can you not have pity? I know that she would never have been
exposed to this temptation but for my own neglect of her, and but for
the fact that you had ambitious purposes of your own to work out. Nay, I
chide you not. Let all that pass and be forgotten. I will be generous,
and never mention it again, if you will only tell me how far your arts,
rather than her own will, have led her astray. It cannot harm you now to
freely utter everything. The time for me to resent it is past. I have no
further power over you, or the will to exercise it if I had.'

A moment before, and she had been on the point of yielding to the
unaccustomed pity that she began to feel, and so make full disclosure.
But now, as, almost unconsciously to himself, Sergius spoke of her
baffled hopes and vaguely hinted at her altered position toward
himself--a change of which he believed her to be yet ignorant--her fount
of mercy became instantly scaled up, and her nearly melted heart again
turned to flint. Yes, she had almost forgotten her new destiny. But now
at once appeared before her, with all the vividness of reality, the
banquet hall, ringing with the shrill laughter of the heated revellers,
as, with the dice box, they decided her future fate. Like a flash the
softened smile fled from her face, leaving only cold, vindictive
defiance pictured there. And as Sergius, who had been led on from
utterance to utterance by the increasing signs of compassion he read in
her, saw the sudden and unaccountable change, he paused, in mingled
wonderment and dismay; and, with the conviction that his hopes had
failed him, he put off, in turn, his own softened mien, and glaring back
defiance upon her, prepared for desperate struggle.

'You speak of my new ownership--of the actor Bassus?' she exclaimed.

'You know it, then?' cried he. 'You have played the spy upon us?'

'Know it?' she repeated. 'When, in your wild revelling, your raised
voices told me how heedlessly you were bringing ruin upon yourself with
the dice, would I have been anything but a fool not to have remembered
that I, too, being your property, might pass away with the rest? Was it
not fit, then, that I should have stolen to the screen and listened? You
thought to keep it secret, perhaps, until Bassus should send to take me
away from here; for you imagined that I might attempt escape. But you do
not know me yet. Am I a child, to kick and scream, and waste my strength
in unavailing strife against a fate that, in my heart, I feel must
sooner or later be submitted to? Not long ago--it matters not how or
when--I could have avoided it all, but would not. Now that I have
sacrificed that chance, I will go to my doom with a smile upon my lips,
whatever heaviness may be in my heart; for, having chosen my path, I
will not shrink from following it. Thus much for myself. And as for you,
who have tossed me one side to the first poor brute who has begged for
me, and even at this instant have taunted me with the story of baffled
hopes, does it seem becoming in you to appeal longer to me, as you have
done, for comfort?'

No answer; but in the angry, heated glare with which he faced her,
could be seen the new fury which was rising within him--all the more
violent, perhaps, from the late calm that had possessed him.

'And yet, for the sake of the past, I might even be willing to comfort
you, if it were possible,' she continued, casting about in her mind for
new tortures with which to rack him, and now suddenly struck with an
inward joy, as her ever-ready invention came to her aid. 'Yes, if I knew
aught of good to tell, I would mention it, for the memory of other days.
But how can I speak with truth, unless to recapitulate new deceits and
wiles which she has practised upon you, and of which, may the gods be my
witness! I would have told you before, but dared not? You say that you
have never loved me, Sergius Vanno. It is well. But if you had done so,
I would have been faithful to you to the end. You say that you loved
her, and that, but for your own falsehood, she would not have strayed
from you. Poor dupe! to believe that, for all that meek, pale face of
hers, she cannot resolve, and act, and mask her purposes as cunningly as
any of the rest of her sex! Shall I tell you more? Do you dream that,
while you have been revelling, she has been idly whimpering in her
chamber? Had you watched outside with me, you might have known better.
Look above your head, Sergius, to where the prison keys are wont to
hang, and tell me where they are now!'

More from mechanical instinct than from any actual purpose of mind--for
he did not, at the first instant, fully comprehend her meaning--Sergius
followed the motion of her hand, and gazed at the wall above his head;
then passed his fingers along until he touched the empty nail--then
looked back inquiringly at her.

'The keys are gone, are they not?' she said. 'Fool! to lock up one party
to a fault, and yet let the other one go free! Do you suppose that
during your carousing with your boon companions, she would fail to
succor him for whose sake she has already lost so much?'

Still he gazed at Leta with a look of puzzled inquiry, which now began,
however, to be disturbed by an expression of painful doubt. Then
suddenly, ascertaining that the keys were really gone, her meaning
flashed upon him; and dropping his hand with a wrathful exclamation, he
turned and strode into the palace. Not, perhaps, with full conviction of
the truth of the suggestion so artfully arrayed before him. But he would
at least prove its truth or falsity; and, with that suspicion fastened
upon his bewildered and unreasoning mind, to doubt was almost to
believe, and crossing the ante-chamber to Ænone's room, he burst in upon
her.

She had fallen into a troubled sleep--lying dressed upon the outside of
her couch, as, in her agony of mind, she had first thrown herself down.
The unspent tears still trembled upon her eyelids. Beside her lay the
little folded parchment which Cleotos had given her. She had taken it
out to read, hoping, but scarcely believing, that she would now be able
to experience the truth of what she had been told about the earnest
words there written being divinely adapted to give peace to a troubled
heart. But her sorrow was too deep to be healed by phrases whose spirit
could, of necessity, be so imperfectly comprehended by her; and the
writing had slipped unheeded from her light grasp.

As her husband now entered, she awoke and sat upright, in frightened
attitude, not knowing what fate was about to befall her.

'Where is he? What have you done with him?' Sergius cried, seizing her
by the arm.

She did not answer, not knowing, of course, wherefore the question was
put to her, or what it concerned. Yet, perceiving that she was again
suspected of some act of which she was innocent, she would have asked
for mercy and pardon, if time had been given her. But even that was
denied her. Hardly, indeed, could she draw a breath, when she felt that
a new thread was woven in the web of misconception which surrounded her.
For, at that moment, her husband's eye fell upon the forgotten
parchment; and picking it up, he opened it, gave one hasty look, and
then tossed it aside. What need, now, of further proof? Was not that the
slave's writing, recognizable at a glance? Words of love, of course! And
she had gone to sleep fondly holding them in her hand, as a treasure
from which she could not be parted for an instant. Words not freshly
written, either, for the parchment was yellow and discolored. So much
the worse, therefore; for did it not prove a course of long-continued
deception? Could there be any doubt now? Yes, a long deceit. And this
was she for whom, in his simplicity, he had but a moment before been
framing excuses, in the effort to convince himself that her fault had
been one of impulse, rather than of cool deliberation! This was she in
whose behalf he had weakly lowered himself to plead to his own cast-off
slave for extenuating evidences! And once more grasping her by the arm,
he lifted her from the couch, and, followed by Leta, hurried her across
the room into the outer hall, into the court yard, past the fountain,
and so onward until they stood before the prison house. There, seeing
the inner door open, the outer door swinging loosely inward, with the
key yet remaining in its lock, and the captive fled, Sergius deemed her
new crime fully proved, and again turned madly upon her.

'Where is he? What have you done with him? Am I to be thus balked of my
vengeance? Is it to be endured that, while I entertain my friends, you
should steal off so treacherously, and thus complete the dishonor you
have brought upon me?'

'I have not--done dishonor--to my lord!' she gasped with difficulty, for
she was almost speechless from the rapidity with which he had hurried
her along, and his close grasp upon her arm pained her. 'Let me but
speak--I will explain--I know not how--'

'No falsehoods--no pleadings to me!' he cried. 'It will avail you
nothing now. What more proof do I need? Is not the whole story written
out plainly before my eyes? Have you not stolen away to release him,
preferring his safety and favor to my honor or your own? If not, where
is he? Escaped me, by the gods! Escaped me, after all! Fool that I have
been, to leave that key within your meddling reach!'

Overborne by his violence, not of words merely, but of gesture, Ænone
had, little by little, shrunk from before him as he spoke, until she had
unconsciously passed through the open doorway, and into the narrow
street beyond. Leta and he still remained within the building, standing
beside the swinging door. There was even now but a single pace between
Ænone and himself, and it was scarcely likely that such a trifling
distance could reassure her. It was more probably something in his tone
or action which now gave her courage to meet his imputation. Whatever
the nature of the inspiration, she now suddenly drew herself up, as
though indued with new strength, and answered him with something of the
same recklessness of spirit with which once before during that day she
had cast aside all fear of misconstruction, and, with the sustaining
consciousness of innocence and justice, had defied him.

'Escaped you?' she cried; 'I thank the gods for it! I did not set him
free, but I would have done so, had I known how. He was my friend--my
brother. Would I have left him, do you think, to suffer torture and
death for simple kindnesses to me, when, with one turn of a key,
I--could have released him? Would I let the memory of other days so
completely pass from my mind as to--'

How, at that instant, happened the door to close? Was it owing to the
wind, or to a skilful and concealed touch of Leta's hand, or to some
unconscious pressure of Sergius against it? The cause matters little. It
was enough that, of a sudden, the loosely hanging door swung round on
its creaking hinges into its place, fastening itself securely with a
spring bolt as its edge touched the lintel, and leaving Ænone shut out
alone in the dark street upon the other side.

Upon the instant, Sergius sprang forward to reopen the door. Convinced
of her perfidy, and madly lashing himself into yet further fury with the
consciousness of his wrongs, it was as yet not in his mind that even by
accident such a forced separation as this should befall her. His hand
was upon the bolt--in another second it would have been drawn back--when
his further action was arrested by a few lowly uttered words of Leta.

Not spoken to him, for, in his present state of mind, he was more than
ever morbidly jealous of any interference or attempted control, and
would most surely have disregarded them. But spoken as though to
herself, in a kind of whispered soliloquy, softly muttered, but yet with
utterance sufficiently distinct to reach his watchful ear.

'Ah, she will not regard that,' were the words, 'for of course she will
know where to rejoin him.'

Sergius started as the new idea impressed itself upon him. Could this be
true, indeed? Why not? Was it likely that the wife would have released
the slave whom she loved, and not have told him where they could meet
again? That, surely, would be too foolish an oversight, for it would be
throwing away all the benefits attending the escape. It were hardly
possible that any trust could have been reposed in the prospect of
future chance interviews, for that would be but a slender hope to lean
upon. In that boiling, seething world of Rome, now more than ever
disturbed by the inroads of strangers eagerly looking forward to the
excitements of the amphitheatre, it would be in vain to make even
deliberate and careful search for a lost slave, unless some clew should
be left behind. Yes, she must surely have that clew; and doubtless she
purposed to use it as soon as daylight came. Let her go now, therefore.
It were idle to call her back only for new flight in a few hours hence.

Still with his hand resting upon the bolt as these reflections passed
through his mind, Sergius glanced keenly at Leta, as though possessed
with some dim suspicion that she had meant her words to be overheard.
Then, feeling reassured by her composed attitude, he turned away,
muttered something to himself the import of which she could not catch,
dropped his hand from the undrawn bolt to his side, stood for a moment
in a kind of maze of confusion, and finally left the prison, and
staggered through the garden to the house.


CHAPTER XVII.

Stunned and confused by her sudden exclusion, and naturally believing
that it was the result of deliberate action upon her husband's part,
Ænone now felt all her sudden inspiration of courage deserting her, and
sank half fainting against the outside wall. For a moment it seemed to
her like a dream. She could realize suspicion, harsh language, and even
cruel treatment within a certain limit, for these were all within the
scope of her late experience; but it was hard to comprehend this
unlooked-for and apparently deliberate excess of degradation. But
gradually the mist cleared away from her bewildered mind, and she
recognized the reality of what had befallen her. Still, however, her
thoughts could not at once grapple with the overwhelming sense of the
indignity and suffering cast upon her. She could not doubt that she had
been expelled from her lord's house--cast out unprotected and friendless
in the midst of night, with undeserved reproaches. But, for all that, a
delusive hope clung to her. He could not mean that this should last. It
was but an impulse of sudden anger. He would repent of it in a moment,
and would call upon her to return to him. He would shed tears of bitter
shame, perhaps, and would beg that she would forgive him. And she would
be foolish enough to do so, she felt, at the very first pleading word
from him; though at the same time feeling that her own self-respect
should prompt her to show more lasting resentment. If thus easily forgot
the past, what security could she feel that, in some future transport of
rage, he might not repeat the act? But for all that, she felt that she
would weakly too soon forgive him.

Sliding her trembling hand down the damp wall, she found along its foot
a ledge of stone more or less projecting in different sections, in
accordance with the architectural requirements of the building. Seating
herself upon the widest portion of this ledge, she now waited to hear
the key again turned in the lock and the door swung open upon its
creaking hinges, and to see loving arms extended with repentant words of
self-reproach. Once or twice she fancied that she heard the key softly
fitted into its place, but it was only the abrasion of two contiguous
branches of a plane tree overhead. Once again she felt certain that she
heard the sound of persons approaching through the garden, but it was
the voice of men in the street--two slaves coming around the corner and
drawing near, speaking some harsh northern dialect which she knew not.
As the men approached, she endeavored to shrink out of sight behind a
perpendicular projection of the wall, and nearly succeeded. They had
passed, indeed, before they noticed her. Then they turned and gazed
curiously at her; and one of them made some remark, apparently of a
jesting nature, for they both laughed. Then again they turned and moved
on out of sight without attempting further molestation.

But the incident alarmed her, and caused her to realize yet more vividly
than before the exceeding unprotectedness of her situation. These men
had not sought to injure her, but how could she answer for the next who
might approach? It was a lonely, dark street, narrow, and comparatively
seldom used, and but little built upon, being mainly flanked by garden
walls. Upon the side where she sat there were no buildings at all,
excepting low prison houses for slaves, similar to that belonging to the
Vanno palace--for the street ran along an inner slope of the Coelian
Mount and parallel to the Triumphal Way, and thus naturally served as a
rear boundary to the gardens of the palaces and villas which fronted
upon the latter avenue. This very loneliness, therefore, added to her
insecurity; for though it was possible that no one else might pass by
for hours, there was the equal chance that if any one came with evil
intent, she might be murdered before help could be summoned. And at a
time when the broadest streets were never entirely safe even for armed
men, a weak woman, with tempting jewelry upon her person, might well
shudder at being left alone in a narrow alley.

Slowly and painfully--for the night was cool, and she had now been
sitting long in one position--Ænone raised herself and stood up, looking
hither and thither for some place of refuge. She had now waited more
than an hour, and if her husband had been inclined to recall her from
her exclusion, his repentance would scarcely have tarried so long. His
anger was generally fierce, but of short duration; could it be that in
this case his sense of injury was so great as to make him more
unreasoning than usual? Her heart sank yet lower with a new weight of
despair; but again hope whispered alleviation. He had been drinking
deeply--she said to herself--and had not clearly comprehended what he
had done. And afterward he had probably forgotten all about it, and had
fallen off into sleep. Upon the morrow he would be himself again.
Perhaps he would not then remember the outrage he had committed against
her. Certainly his anger would not still burn when corrected by
returning reason. She must therefore endeavor to gain access again to
the palace, and there avoid his presence, until the morrow brought to
him fresher reflection and a better inclination to listen to
explanation.

And accordingly she commenced her departure from her hiding place, and
slowly crept along the blank flanking wall of the little street, hoping
soon to gain the palace front. At first it seemed a very easy thing to
do so. Though she had never before been in that portion of the city, she
knew enough of its geography to feel certain that if she followed the
street in either direction, she could not fail to come to some
intersecting alley, through which she could reach the Triumphal Way.
Once there, the route was familiar to her, and she could arrive at her
home in a few minutes. But as she advanced, she found that what had
appeared to be an easy stroll, seemed converted into a toilsome and
perplexing journey. Confused and terrified, the coolness necessary to
pursue in safety even so short a route began to fail her. At times she
imagined that she heard strangers approaching, and then it became
needful to conceal herself again, as well as she could, behind
projections or in recesses of the wall. Then, when once more venturing
out, the shadows of the wall itself or of neighboring buildings would
terrify her into seeking other concealments. And once, after having
resumed her course, she discovered that she had mistaken the direction,
and was retracing her steps.

At last, after a journey of nearly an hour, during which she had only
advanced as far as a resolute person might have gone in a few minutes,
she reached an intersecting street leading to the Triumphal Way. It was
a wider passage than that which she was leaving, and this fact added to
her dismay. For though she had at first feared the narrower street for
its loneliness, yet now that she had so far glided through it in safety,
she had begun to feel somewhat reassured, and in turn dreaded the more
open channels, since they would naturally be more frequented. It was,
therefore, with new trepidation that, upon turning the corner, she saw,
in the broader street before her, signs of movement and life. The street
happened to be a favorite thoroughfare from the Triumphal Way, across
the Coelian Mount, and, in consequence, was never, perhaps, entirely
deserted. Now that the whole city was throbbing with anticipations of
the morrow's festivities, there were more persons wakeful and wandering
about with feverish expectation than usual. Moreover, it was a street
which abounded with drinking shops, and these were now all open, in
spite of the lateness of the hour, and appeared to be thronged with
customers. One of these shops stood upon the corner where Ænone had
halted. A faint light burned over the doorway to mark the locality; and
through the open passage she could see a crowd of ill-conditioned,
rough-looking men, appearing, in the dim light, more rough and uncouth
than they really were. Here were mingled together artisans of the lower
orders, slaves and professional gladiators, all drinking and singing
together in close fraternity. For a moment Ænone paused and hesitated,
not daring to pass on. If she could reach the farther side without
attracting observation, it would be but one step gained, for there were
many other drinking shops glimmering in the distance along the whole
street, and each one had its special crowd of noisy customers. To escape
one peril seemed only to run into another. Then, as she deliberated and
alternately put her foot forward and withdrew it again in a fruitless
attempt to muster courage to run the gauntlet, two men emerged from the
wine shop, and staggered toward her--a slave and a gladiator, linked arm
in arm, and singing a wild song in discordant keys. Both appeared to be
under the influence of wine, though in different degrees; for while the
former had set no bounds to his license, the latter had somewhat
restrained his propensities, in view of the demands upon his strength
which the morrow's work would surely make. Seeing these men reel toward
her, Ænone turned and fled, without knowing, or, for the moment, caring,
in which direction she went. The men had not at first seen her, but, as
they now caught sight of her flying figure, they set up a drunken whoop,
and attempted to follow. All in vain; for ere they had advanced many
paces, their weakened limbs betrayed them, and they sank powerless upon
the ground, and, forgetting the pursuit, rolled over lovingly in each
other's arms. Meanwhile, Ænone, not daring to look back, and not knowing
that the chase had ended, still fled in wild terror, until at last her
breath failed her, and she tottered helpless into the shade of the
nearest wall.

She was now lost indeed. How long she had been running, or in which
direction, how many divergences she had taken, or how many narrow alleys
threaded, she knew not. She simply realized that she was in a portion of
the city where she had never been before, and from which extrication
seemed impossible, so dark and narrow and winding seemed the passages in
every direction. Far narrower and darker, indeed, than the lane behind
the palace, and without its protecting solitude. In place of high garden
walls, the whole route seemed lined with miserable tenements, the refuge
of the lowest of the Roman population. There, crowded together in close
communication, were the rabble of poorer slaves and beggars, all equally
marked with rags and filth.

In all this there was one comfort. However thronged the tenements along
the side might be, the street itself seemed deserted, nor could Ænone
any longer hear the sound of pursuit. That, at least, she had escaped,
and now again she took partial courage as she reflected that with
moderate caution she might yet be able to extricate herself. There must
be some outlet to that neighborhood of squalid misery; and take
whichever way she might, she could scarcely fail, at the end, to emerge
into some more reputable region.

Again the sound of two persons approaching restrained her, and caused
her to shrink into a corner until they might pass. Unlike the others,
these men had not been drinking, but advanced gravely and steadily, with
a slow, deliberate pace, indicative of weighty reflection. These, also,
were slaves; and before they emerged into sight from the surrounding
darkness, Ænone could distinctly mark the low, plotting whisper with
which they spoke, occasionally rising, from excess of emotion, into a
louder key. As they came opposite to her, they paused--not seeing her,
but simply seeming to be arrested by the vehemence of their debate; and
again their words sank nearly into a whisper.

'Tell me why I should not do so?' hissed the nearest, a man of gigantic
proportions and development of strength. 'Why should I not leap out of
the arena where these men place me to play a fool's part; and scrambling
over the ranges of seats, plunge this dagger into his heart? Ye gods!
were I once to begin to clamber up, no force could stop me from reaching
him, were he at the very topmost range! And I will--why not?'

'You would gain but an instant's revenge,' said the other, striving to
soothe him, 'and you would lose--'

'What? My life, would you say?' retorted the first. 'I know it. I know
well, that before I could strike him thrice, I would myself be beaten
down, a corpse. But one blow from me would be sufficient for him. Ay,
though I used not my knife at all, but only my hardened fist. Would it
not be a fine revenge, say you, thus to kill him? It was on account of
my strength of arm that he laid toils for my capture, and for that alone
he most valued me. Why not, then, prove its quality upon himself? With a
single blow I could crush in his proud head like an egg shell. Then let
them kill me--I care not.'

'And yet the life once lost by you cannot be gained again,' responded
the other.

'O feeble-minded!' said the first, with disdain. 'Have I ever so dearly
cared for life that I should thus guard it at the expense of honor?
While I was a free man, in my native Rhodes, with my wife and children
around me, did I not then risk my life among the very first? And am I
likely to value it the more now that I am a slave, with wife torn from
me and sent I know not where, with children slain one by one, as the
only means of capturing me, with the accursed livery of the arena placed
upon me that I may administer to their gaping appetite for blood? Can
all this make me love my life more than I have ever loved it before?'

'But wait--only wait. There will come a time--'

'Ay, ay; there will come a time is what all say, and will continue to
say, and yet the time comes not. There is never any time like the
present. All around me are thousands of men, once free and now chained
into slavery--and chained, perhaps, more through their own indolence
than by the power of their masters; and yet they lie supine, and call
upon each other to wait! And to-morrow there will be a thousand such in
the arena, and instead of rising up together in their strength, they
will fight only with each other. What might not that thousand
accomplish, were they to act together in brave and earnest revolt? What
chance would a few hundred pampered pretorians have of staying the
flood? There, seated in fancied security upon their benches, will be the
emperor, the court, the nobles, and the most wealthy of the empire. In
one hour of action, we could sweep these away like chaff, together with
all else that is held most worthy of place and power in the whole
empire! And yet these thousand slaves will not rise up together with me,
and it will not be done!'

The head of the Hercules dropped upon his chest with a gesture of
despair.

'You say truly,' responded the other. 'It will not be done, for they
will not act with you. And what can you do alone?'

'Nothing--nothing; I see it all. I am powerless,' murmured the first.
'Well, I will be patient, and dissimulate. I will do as you request,
Gorgo. I will restrain myself. As for this man--this imperator--why
should I there wreak my vengeance upon him? It would only be giving to
the rest of the people an unlooked-for sight--a newer pleasure, that is
all. I will therefore act the part of a good and faithful slave--will
kiss the rod held over me--and will duly serve my master by slaying my
adversary, whoever he may be, and thus winning that store of gold pieces
which have been laid out as the stake of my life. And then--then I will
go home to my kennel and my bones. But this I swear, by the immortal
gods! that I will follow this man from house to forum, wherever he may
go, until I find a proper chance to strike him down in secret like a
dog. You were right. I must not lose my life to kill him, when I can so
easily slay him and yet live to slay other men as bad as he. My life is
for other things. And when the time comes that I can raise the standard
of insurrection, will you then--'

'Then I will be with you heart and soul forever, until our freedom is
built up on the ruins of this accursed Rome!' cried the other, striking
his hand responsively into the outstretched palm before him. And the two
men again took up their walk, and passed on until they were swallowed up
in the darkness and their voices, growing more and more indistinct, were
finally hushed.




THE VISION.

INSCRIBED TO TEACHERS TO CONTRABANDS IN THE SOUTH.


  Lo! a picture came before me
    Of a million broken chains,
  Lying cankered with old blood-drops
    Which had oozed from tortured veins,
  Reddening the fleecy cotton
    Snowed upon the Southern plains.

  And the picture's tints grew deeper,
    Redder, blacker, as I gazed,
  And my weak knees smote together,
    And my eyes grew dim and glazed,
  At the vision's spectred horrors
    From the graves of vengeance raised.

  For, where liveoaks and magnolias
    Gloom the earth with densest shades,
  Where the snake and alligator
    Lurk in endless everglades,
  Where the cloud-lace-fretted sunset
    Lingering, longest night evades,

  Where the eagle builds his eyrie
    Nearest to the fervid skies,
  Where the buzzard swoops to fatten
    On the prey that lingering dies,
  Where the bloodhound's hellish baying
    Stills the hunted bondman's cries,

  There uprose, all ghostly shadowed,
    Hosts of wasted, haggard forms;
  And their wild eyes glared and glittered
    Like heaven's fire in dark-browed storms,
  And with outstretched arms toward me
    They came rushing in thick swarms.

  And I saw upon their foreheads
    Letters where the irons burned,
  And their backs left gashed and harrowed
    Where the lash for life-blood yearned,
  And their lank limbs, fester-eaten,
    Showed where gnawing shackles turned.

  There were gaunt and frenzied mothers
    With wan children in their arms,
  There were youths, and there were maidens,
    Curses, tears, and wild alarms,
  There were auction blocks and hammers
    Where were bartered beauty's charms.

  Ah! my heart grew chill within me,
    And my 'frighted blood congealed,
  As my soul's eye raised the shadows
    Which like curtains half concealed
  Deeper horrors, depths of anguish
    Left till God's day unrevealed!

  And my soul went up in sighing
    To God's ear: 'And _Thou_ dost know,
  High and Holy! men are devils,
    Earth, like hell, is drowned in woe?'
  Came an answer: 'Hark! my war-blast
    Dealing sin a staggering blow!'

  'Father! though the chains be broken,'
    Cried my soul, 'the wounds remain,
  Deeper than the irons wore them,
    'Neath the brow within the brain,
  'Neath the body in the spirit!
    Peals Thy war-blast not in vain?

  'How shall knowledge, how shall virtue
    Dwell with ignorance and sin?
  Where is found that earthly saintship
    Can consort with devils' din?
  Who the saintly self-denying
    Through bell's door would look within

  'E'en to save the devil's victims,
    Snatch them from the cooling flames,
  Kiss with love their long-charred spirits,
    Breathe new souls into their names,
  Wing them to the climes supernal,
    And to angels' loud acclaims?'

  Then came answer: 'Lo! I call them,
    Ministers of love, I call!'
  Then I waited in the silence,
    With God waited over all,
  Till I knew how He forgetteth
    No one worthy, great or small.

  For I saw from where the ocean
    Drifts its rhythms to the beach,
  From where mountain snows eternal
    Far toward heaven as stainless reach,
  From where gold and russet harvests
    Of God's 'whelming bounty teach,

  From where all are always freemen,
    From where colleges and schools
  Free the mind from Old-World trammels,
    Unfit men for tyrants' tools,
  From where firesides and altars
    Govern hearts with golden rules,

  Came, as flowers come in spring-time
    Dropt from Winter's icy hand,
  Came to cheer, to teach, to brighten--
    God's commissioned, shining band;
  Came with hands and hearts o'erflowing
    To renew the Southern land!

  And I watched how spirit-anguish
    Songs and smiles soon soothed, allayed,
  And how soul-wounds touched by kindness,
    As by Christ, could heal and fade,
  And how darkness fled affrighted
    Where these angels wept and prayed.

  And my soul went up in praising
    To God's ear: 'Yea, Thou dost know,
  High and Holy! men are devils,
    Earth, like hell, is drowned in woe;
  But Thy war-blast, in Thy mercy,
    Hath dealt sin a staggering blow!'




THE UNDIVINE COMEDY--A POLISH DRAMA.

Dedicated to Mary.


PART IV.

'Bottomless perdition.'--_Milton._

Fog and cloud! Nothing can be seen from the bastions of the castle of
the Holy Trinity, to the right or to the left, in front or in the rear,
but dense, motionless, snowy mist; a spectral image of that deluge-wrath
which, as it rose to sweep o'er earth, once broke against these stern,
steep cliffs and beetling peaks of rock: no trace is to be seen of the
buried valley, for the ghostly waves of the cold, white sea of foam
shroud it closely in their stifling veils; the glowing face of the
crimson sun shines not as yet upon earth's winding sheet of silent,
clinging, pallid vapor.

The tower of the castle stands upon a bold and naked granite peak. Built
of the strong rock from which it soars by the giant labor of the now
dying Past, it seems during the lapse of centuries to have grown up from
its stony heart, as the human breast grows from the broad back of the
Centaur. A single banner streams above its lofty turret, the only banner
of the Cross now raised on earth; the symbol of God's mystic love alone
floats high enough to pierce into the unclouded blue of the stormy sky!

The white and sleeping mist gradually awakens; the sighing and howling
of the bleak winds are heard above; the vapor palpitates in the first
rays of the coming sun, and a drifting ice-floe of curdling clouds
drives wildly o'er this quickening sea of fog and foam.

Other voices, human voices, mingle with the wails and sobs of the
passing storm: borne upward on the ghastly waves of the spectral cloud
sea, they break against the walls of the granite castle.

The pallid shroud of mist is suddenly riven, and through the walls of
the chasm torn through the heart of the white foam, glimpses are seen of
the abyss below.

How dark it looks in the depths! A sea of heads in wild commotion surges
there; the valley swarms with human life as ocean's slimy sands with
creeping things that writhe and sting.

The sun! the sun! He mounts above the rocky peaks; the pallid vapors
rise in blood and melt in gold, and as they roll and lift into the sky,
more and more distinctly grow upon the view the threatening swarms of
men still gathering below.

The quivering mist rolls into crimson clouds and scales the craggy
cliffs; it dies softly away into the blue depths of the infinite sky.
The valley glitters like a sea of light, throws back the dewy sunshine
in a dazzling glare, for every hand is armed with sharp and sparkling
blades and points of steel--and millions are seen pouring into its
depths, numberless as they will pour into the vale of the Last Judgment.

       *       *       *       *       *

     A cathedral church in the castle of the Holy Trinity.

     Lords, senators, dignitaries are seen seated on either side, each
     under the banner of a king or knight. Bands of nobles stand behind
     the banners. The Archbishop is in front of the high altar, a choir
     of stoled Priests kneel behind and around it. The Man appears,
     pauses a few moments on the threshold of the church, then advances
     slowly up the aisle to the Archbishop, holding a banner in his
     hand.

CHORUS OF PRIESTS. O God of our fathers! we, Thy last priests, pray in
the last church of Thy Son now standing upon earth for the faith of our
ancestors! Deliver us from our enemies, O Lord our God!

FIRST COUNT. See with what pride Count Henry regards us.

SECOND COUNT. As if the whole universe were at his feet.

THIRD COUNT. And yet he has done nothing but cut his way through the
camp of the peasants at night!

FIRST COUNT. He left one hundred, nay, it is reported, two hundred of
their men dead upon the place of combat.

SECOND COUNT. Let us object to his appointment as general-in-chief.

THE MAN (_kneeling at the feet of the Archbishop_). I lay my trophy at
thy feet!

ARCHBISHOP (_giving him a sword_). Gird this sword upon thee; it was
once consecrated to Saint Florian!

MANY VOICES. Long live Count Henry! Vivat! vivat!

ARCHBISHOP. And thus sealing thee with the sign of the cross, I commit
to thy hands the sole command of this, our last fortress and refuge upon
earth.

It is the universal wish that thou shouldst assume the rank of
general-in-chief.

MANY VOICES. Long live our general! Vivat! vivat!

A VOICE. I will not give my consent to the appointment!

MANY VOICES. Away with the objector! Long live Count Henry!

THE MAN. If any one present have just cause to reproach me, let him
proclaim it openly, and not hide himself in the crowd!

     He pauses; no one responds.

I accept this sword from thy hands, most reverend father; and may God
send me an early and sudden death if I fail to deliver thee!

CHORUS OF PRIESTS. Gift him with power, O God; and let Thy Holy Spirit
descend upon him! Deliver us from our enemies, O Lord!

THE MAN. Let us all, princes, knights, and nobles, take a solemn oath to
defend the glory and fame of our fathers!

Let us swear that though hunger and thirst may lead us to death, they
shall not force us to dishonor!

Let us vow that no suffering shall induct us to capitulate, to yield one
of our just rights, or to sacrifice any of the duties due to our
Creator! Swear!

MANY VOICES. We swear.

     The Archbishop elevates the Cross, they kneel and pledge their
     faith.

CHORUS OF PRIESTS. The perjured Thou wilt punish in Thy wrath, O God!

The faint-hearted Thou wilt punish in Thy wrath, O God!

The traitor Thou wilt punish in Thy wrath O God!

THE MAN (_drawing his sword_). Keep the oath, and I promise glory--for
victory, pray to God!

     He leaves the church, surrounded and followed by bands of knights,
     nobles, etc.

       *       *       *       *       *

     A courtyard in the castle of the Holy Trinity. The Man, counts,
     barons, princes, noblemen.

A COUNT (_leading the Man aside_). What--is all irretrievably lost?

THE MAN. Not all, unless your courage fail before the time.

THE COUNT. Before what time?

THE MAN. Before death!

A BARON (_leading him off on the other side_). It is reported that you
have seen and spoken with our dreadful foe, Count Henry. If we should
fall into his hands, will he have the least compassion upon us?

THE MAN. To tell you the truth, such compassion as our fathers never
dreamed could be shown to them: '_the gallows_!'

THE BARON. We must guard against that to the utmost of our power!

THE MAN. What says your excellency?

PRINCE. I must speak a few words alone with you, (_He draws Count Henry
aside_.) It is all very well to encourage our people, but you must
surely be aware that we can hold out no longer.

THE MAN. What else is left us, prince?

PRINCE. As you have been appointed chief, it is for you to propose the
terms of _capitulation_.

THE MAN. Not so loud....

PRINCE. Why not?

THE MAN. Because your excellency would thus forfeit your own life! (_He
turns to the men thronging around him._) He who speaks of surrender will
be punished with death!

BARON, COUNT, AND PRINCE (_together_.) He who speaks of surrender will
be punished with death!

ALL. With death! With death! Vivat! vivat!

  EXEUNT.

       *       *       *       *       *

     The gallery of the tower. The Man. Jacob.

THE MAN. Where is my son, Jacob?

JACOB. He is in the north tower, seated on the threshold of the old
vault and dungeon, singing strange songs of prophecy.

THE MAN. Man the Leonoren bastion as strongly as possible, stir not from
the spot, and make constant use of the best glass to observe what
movements are going on among the forces of the besiegers.

JACOB. So help me God the Lord!

It were well to give a glass of brandy to our troops to keep up their
sinking courage.

THE MAN. If necessary, open the cellars of our counts and princes.

  Exit Jacob.

THE MAN (_mounting some feet higher, and standing wider the banner upon
a small terrace_). With the whole power of my eyes I trace your plans;
with the concentrated hatred of my soul I surround you, my enemies! No
longer with a single voice, or with a vain enthusiasm, am I to meet you;
but with the sharp swords and strength of men governed by my will I seek
our last encounter!

It is a noble thing to be the leader in this contest; to look even from
the bed of death, if so it must be, upon the strange power added to my
own single arm through the many wills subjected to my rule; and glorious
to gaze thus down upon you, my enemies, lying far below in the abyss and
crying up to me from the depths, as the damned cry up to heaven!

Yet a few hours more of time, and then I, with thousands of the
miserable wretches who have forgotten and renounced their God, will be
no more forever--but come what will, one day of life at least is left
me--I will enjoy it to the utmost--I will rule--combat--live! Is this my
last song?

The sun sets behind the cliffs; sinks in a long, dark shroud of
vapor--on every side his rays pour blood into the valley. Foreshadow of
my bloody death, I greet thee with a more sincere and faithful heart
than I was wont to salute the allurements of pleasure, deception,
enchantment, love, in the past days of my youth!

Not through low intrigue, through cunning skill, through laborious
effort, have I attained the fulfilment of my wishes; but suddenly and
unlocked for, as I have ever dreamed I would!

Ruler over those who were but yesterday my equals, I have reached the
aim of my ambition: I stand on the very threshold of the eternal sleep!

       *       *       *       *       *

     A hall in the castle lighted with torches; George reclining upon a
     bed; the Man enters, and places his weapons upon a table.

THE MAN. Let a hundred men keep guard upon the bulwarks, the remainder
may repose after our long and exhausting combat!

VOICE (_without_). So help me God the Lord!

THE MAN. You must have been frightened, George, with the noise of our
attack, the firing of musketry, the cries of the soldiers!

But keep up your courage, my child; we shall not be taken to-day, nor
to-morrow.

GEORGE. I have indeed heard it all distinctly, but it is not that which
strikes terror to my heart; the thunder of the cannon flies on and is
here no longer--it is something else that haunts me, that appals me,
father!

THE MAN. You fear for me, George?

GEORGE. No. I know your hour has not yet struck.

THE MAN. A heavy weight has fallen from my heart to-day, for in the
plain below, scattered like autumn leaves, lie the corpses of our foes,
foiled in their fierce attack.

Come, George, we are alone, come! tell me all thy thronging thoughts; I
will listen to thee once more as of old in our own home!

GEORGE (_hurriedly_). Follow me, then--follow me, father! A dreadful
trial--sentence--is reëchoed here every night. Oh come with me!

     He goes to a door in the wall hidden by a heavy fall of tapestry,
     and opens it.

THE MAN. George! where art thou going? Who has made known to thee this
secret passage into endless vaults covered with eternal darkness? to
this black charnel house, where moulder the bones of earlier and
countless victims?

GEORGE. Where thine eye, accustomed to the sunshine, has no power to
pierce, my spirit presses forward.

Gloom roll on to gloom--and darkness gather unto darkness!

     He enters the door, followed by his father, and rapidly descends
     into the vault.

       *       *       *       *       *

     A long, vaulted, subterranean dungeon. Grates, bars, chains, and
     broken instruments of torture. The Man, with a torch in his hand,
     stands at the base of a great block of granite, on the top of which
     stands George.

THE MAN. Come down to me, George, I implore!

GEORGE. Hearest thou not these voices? Seest thou not these forms?

THE MAN. All is still as the grave--and almost as dark. The light of the
torch is instantly swallowed up by the damp chill gloom around us!

GEORGE. Listen! Ever nearer! ever clearer! One after another they are
slowly filing on from the depths of the narrow vaults--they are solemnly
seating themselves below, far in the background; behind thee, father!

THE MAN. Thy madness is my damnation! Thy mind is wandering, my poor
child; thou art destroying the strength which I now so sorely need!

GEORGE. I see their pale and stately forms as they collect for fearful
judgment! I see the prisoner approach the dreadful bar, his tall form
seems.... I cannot discern his features--they float and flow like
morning mist! Hark!

CHORUS OF VOICES. We, once chained, beaten, tormented, choked with dust
and broken with stones, through the Power now given to our hands,
proceed in our turn to sentence!

We too will judge and torture; try and condemn; Satan himself will
delight to assume the execution of our sentence.

THE MAN. George, what dost thou see?

George. The prisoner! the prisoner, father! He wring his hands--O
father! father!

A VOICE. With thee dies out the accursed race; all its power, all its
passions, all its pride, have joined in thee to perish!

CHORUS OF VOICES. _Because thou hast loved nothing--revered nothing save
thyself and thine own thoughts--thou art condemned--art damned to all
eternity!_

THE MAN. I see nothing, but I hear from every side--above--below--sighs
and wails--judgment, threatening, and eternal doom!

GEORGE. The prisoner! he raises his haughty head as thou dost, father,
when thou art angered! He answers with proud words, as thou dost, when
thou scornest--father!

CHORUS OF VOICES. In vain! thou plead'st in vain! there is no redemption
for him more, in earth or heaven!

A VOICE. Yet another day of passing earthly glory, of all share in which
thine ancestors have robbed me and my brethren--and then thou fallest
forever--thou, with thy brethren!

Your burials will be, as once were ours, without the toll of holy
knells, without tears, sobs, or wailing mourners, without friends,
without relations, and you will die transfixed upon the same rock of
universal human pain!

THE MAN. I know you, wretched ghosts! wandering stars amid the angelic
hosts!

     He goes forward into the darkness.

GEORGE. Father! go not into that fearful gloom! Father! in the name of
Jesus Christ--I implore--I conjure thee--father!

THE MAN (_turning toward his son_). Whom do you see below? Speak, and
tell me truly, George!

GEORGE. The prisoner--he is thyself, my father!

He is white as snow--gagged--chained--they drag him on--they torture
thee, my father!

I hear thy gasping breath--thy groans--thy sobs! (_He falls upon his
knees._) Forgive me, father! My mother shines through the dark--and
commands me to....

     He falls back in a fainting fit.

THE MAN (_catching the falling boy in his arms_). This alone was
wanting! Ha! my own, my only child has led me to the brink of hell!

Mary--inexorable spirit! God!!

And thou, second Mary, to whom I have so often prayed!

Here then is the beginning of eternal darkness, eternal torture!...

Back! back into life! one day of glory is at least still left me! First
must I combat with my fellow men--and then for my eternal struggle!

CHORUS OF SPIRITS (_dying away in the distance_). _Because thou hast
loved nothing, revered nothing, save thyself and thine own
thoughts--thou art, damned to all eternity!_

       *       *       *       *       *

     A large hall in the castle of the Holy Trinity; arms and armor hang
     upon the walls, with various Gothic ornaments. The Man; women,
     children, some old men, and nobles are kneeling at his feet. The
     Godfather stands in the centre of the hall, and crowds of men are
     in the background.

THE MAN. No, no. By my son--by the memory of my wife--never! never!

VOICES OF WOMEN. Have mercy upon us! Hunger gnaws our bowels; our
children die of famine; fear is upon us day and night; have pity upon
us!

VOICES OF MEN. It still is time! Listen to the herald--dismiss not the
envoy!

GODFATHER. I regard not your reproaches, Count Henry, for my whole life
has been that of a good citizen.

If I have assumed the office of ambassador, which I am at this moment
fulfilling, it is because I understand the age in which we live, and
estimate our times aright.

Pancratius is, if I may so express myself, the representative of the
people....

THE MAN. Out of my sight, old man!--(_Aside to Jacob._) Bring a
detachment of soldiers hither!

  Exit Jacob.

     The women rise from their knees weeping and sobbing, and the men
     draw back a few paces.

A BARON.--We are all lost, and through you alone, Count Henry!

SECOND BARON. We renounce all further obedience.

A PRINCE. Let us arrange for ourselves the terms of the surrender of
this castle with the worthy envoy!

GODFATHER. The great man who sent me here secures life to you all, if
you will enter into a league with him and acknowledge the justice of the
struggle of the century.

MANY VOICES. We acknowledge it.

THE MAN. You have sworn to me, and I have sworn to you, to die upon
these walls; I intend to keep my oath, and you shall be true to yours.
You are all to die with me!

Ha! can you indeed still wish to live?

Ha! ask the spirits of your fathers why, when living, they were guilty
of such continuous oppression, and why they ruled with so much
cruelty!--(_To a Count._) Why have you, count, oppressed your
serfs?--(_To another._) Why have you passed your youth in cards and
dice, and your life in the land of the stranger?--(_To another._) Why
have you crept before the great, and scorned the lowly?-(_To one of the
women._) Why did you not bring up your sons to defend you? As knights
and soldiers, they might then have served you now; but you have
preferred dealings with Jews and lawyers: call upon them, then, for life
and safety.--(_He rises and extends his arms toward them._) Why hasten
ye thus to shame? why wrap your last hours in shrouds of infamy?

On with me, ye knights and nobles! On, where bayonets glitter, swift
balls whistle!

Oh seek not the accursed gallows prepared for you by the New Men;
believe me, the masked and silent hangman stands waiting to throw the
rope of shame around your high-born throats!

A VOICE. He speaks the truth--to our bayonets!

ANOTHER VOICE. We die of hunger; there is no more food!

VOICES OF WOMEN. Our children! Your children! Mercy!

GODFATHER. I promise you safety--safety of life and limb....

THE MAN (_approaching the Godfather, and seizing him y the shoulder_).
Sacred person of the herald, go! Go, and hide thy gray hairs in the
tents of Jews and low mechanics, that I may not dye them in thine own
base blood!

     Jacob enters with a division of armed men.

Take aim at this brow, furrowed with the folds of idle learning! Aim at
this liberty cap, which trembles on the brainless head before every
breath from the lips of a man!

     The Godfather escapes.

ALL _cry, with one breath_: Bind Count Henry! Deliver him up to
Pancratius!

THE MAN. Wait but a single moment, lords! (_He goes from one soldier to
another._) Do you remember when we climbed a mountain's rocky slope, a
savage wild beast closely tracked our steps, and when you, frightened,
fell into a yawning chasm, I rescued you, and saved your life? You
were most grateful then. Have you forgotten it?--Jerome, we once
were cast away upon the Danube's craggy shore; we braved the waves,
and saved our lives; we were bold swimmers, and we helped each other
well!--Christophe, Hieronymus, you sailed with me upon the wild Black
Sea; we were young sailors then!--(_To others._) When the fire destroyed
your homes, who built your cottages anew?--(_To others._) You fled to me
from cruel lords, and I redressed your wrongs.--(_Addressing himself to
the men generally._) Reflect, and choose!... Speak! will you arm with me
to battle for our rights, or will you leave me here to die alone--with
haughty smiles upon my stiffening lips, because, among so many men, I
found no single _man_?

THE MEN. Long live Count Henry! we desert him not--vivat!

THE MAN. Let the remaining meat and brandy be shared among them; then
upon the walls!

SOLDIERS. Meat and brandy, and then upon the walls!

THE MAN. Go with them, Jacob, and in an hour be ready to renew the
fight!

JACOB. So help me God the Lord.

WOMEN. We curse thee, Count Henry, in the name of our innocent children!

OTHER VOICES. We, for our fathers!

OTHER VOICES. We, for our wives!

THE MAN. And I breathe curses on all craven souls!

       *       *       *       *       *

     The wall of the fortress of the Holy Trinity. Troops are lying
     scattered about. Broken rocks and stones strew the ground, mingled
     with pikes and guns; soldiers are running to and fro; the Man leans
     against a bulwark, and Jacob stands beside him.

THE MAN (_putting his sword into its sheath_). There can be no greater
pleasure than to play at danger when we always win; and when the time
comes to lose, one cast of the die, and all is over!

JACOB. Our last broadside has driven them back for the moment, but I see
them below there, gathering to renew the storm; however, all is vain,
for since the world a world was, no one has ever escaped his destiny!

THE MAN. Are there any cartridges left?

JACOB. Neither balls nor grapeshot: everything has its end!

THE MAN. Bring then my son to me; I would embrace him once more!

  Exit Jacob.

The smoke from the powder has dimmed my eyes; it seems to me as if the
valley were swelling up to my feet, and again sinking back to its place;
the socks crack, and cross each other at a thousand angles, and my
thoughts wander, flicker, quiver in the most fantastic forms. (_Seats
himself upon a wall._) It is not worth the trouble to be a man--nor even
an angel; the highest archangel must feel, after some centuries of
existence, as we do after a few years of our fleeting life, utter
weariness in his soul, and long, as we do, for mightier powers! Either
one must be God--or nothing....

     Enter Jacob with George.

Take some of the men with you, go through the castle, and drive all
before you upon the walls!

JACOB. Counts, princes, bankers?

  Exit Jacob.

THE MAN. Come to me, my dearest son! place thy thin hands in mine, while
I press my lips upon thy pure forehead; thy mother's brow was once as
white and smooth!

GEORGE. Before thy men took up their arms to-day, I heard mamma's voice;
her words came floating to me as soft and sweet as perfumed air; she
said to me: '_George, thou wilt come to me this very evening, and sit
down beside me_.'

THE MAN. Did she name me to thee?

GEORGE. She said: '_This very evening I expect my son_.'

THE MAN (_aside_). Is my strength to fail me, when I have almost reached
the end of the weary way? No, God will not permit it! For one moment's
fiery madness, I will be thy prisoner to all eternity!--(_Aloud_). Oh,
my son! forgive--forgive the fatal gift of life! We part; and knowest
thou for how long a time?

GEORGE. Take me with thee, father, and leave me not! I love thee; oh,
leave me not, my father--and I will draw thee on with me!

THE MAN. Our paths are widely sundered. Amid the choirs of happy angels
thou wilt forget thy father--thou wilt bring me down no drop of cooling
dew. O George! George! my son! my son!

GEORGE. What dreadful cries! I tremble, father. Louder and louder,
nearer and nearer comes the thunder of the cannon; the last hour--the
prophesied--draws near!

THE MAN. Jacob! quick--quick--here!

     A band of counts and princes cross the courtyard. Jacob follows
     with the soldiers.

A VOICE. You give us broken arms, and force us to the combat!

ANOTHER VOICE. Henry, have mercy on thyself!

THIRD VOICE. Weak, wearied, famished, drive us not upon the walls!

FOURTH VOICE. Where do they drive us? where?

THE MAN. To death!--(_To George, folding him in his arms._) With this
embrace I would fain bind thee to my heart forever, George! Alas! I know
our paths are widely sundered: it may not be, my son! my son!

     Struck by a ball, George sinks dying in his arms.

VOICE (_from above_). To me! to me! pure spirit! Up to me, my son!

THE MAN. Ha! to my aid, soldiers! (_He draws his sword, and holds it
before the lips of the wounded boy._) The blade is crystal clear; no
moisture dims the cold and glittering steel! Breath and life already
gone! O George, my son!

Ha! they are upon me! On I on! They are at last but a sword's length
from me! Back! Back! into the abyss, ye sons of freedom. Back!

     Rushing on of man, confusion, struggle.

       *       *       *       *       *

     Another part of the wall of the castle. Men in the distance in line
     of battle. Jacob is seen stretched out upon the wall: the Man,
     sprinkled with blood, hastily approaches him.

THE MAN. Faithful old man, what has happened to you?

JACOB. May the devil reward you in hell for your obstinacy, and my dying
agonies!

So help me God the Lord!

     Dies.

THE MAN (_throwing away his sword_). I will need thee no longer, sword
of my fathers! My son is in heaven--the very last of my retainers lies
dead at my feet--the craven nobles have deserted their cause; already
they kneel before the victor, and sue and howl for mercy! (_Looking in
every direction around him._) There still is time; as yet the enemy are
not upon me! I will steal a moment's rest before....

Ha! the New Men scale the northern tower; they shout 'Count Henry'--they
seek him in every direction!

Here I am! here I am! here I am! But you are not to pronounce sentence
upon me; the dead have already given in their verdict. I go to meet the
judgment and justice of my God! (_He clambers up a steep cliff jutting
out over the abyss._) I see thee, my eternity, as thou rapidly floatest
on to meet me, black with the shadows of eternal night! shoreless,
limitless, infinite! And in the midst of thy rayless gloom, like a
burning sun, eternally shining, but illumining nothing, I see my God!
(_He takes some steps forward, and stands on the brink of the
precipice._) Ha! they run, the New Men--they see me now! Jesus! Mary! O
Poetry! be cursed by me, as I shall be to all eternity! Up, ye strong
arms! cut through these waves of air!

     He springs into the abyss.

       *       *       *       *       *

     The courtyard of the castle. Pancratius, Leonard; Bianchetti stands
     at the head of a regiment of soldiers. The remaining princes and
     counts, accompanied by their wives and children, file in before
     Pancratius.

PANCRATIUS. Your name?

A COUNT. Christopher von Volsagen.

PANCRATIUS. You have pronounced it for the last time! And yours?

A PRINCE. Wladislaus, Lord of Schwarzwald.

PANCRATIUS. It shall be heard on earth no more! And yours?

A BARON. Alexander von Godalberg.

PANCRATIUS. It is already erased from the list of the living. Go!

BIANCHETTI (_to Leonard_). They have repulsed us for two long months;
their arms are wretched, and their accoutrements utterly worthless.

LEONARD. Are there many of them left?

PANCRATIUS. They are all given over to you for execution, that their
blood may flow as an example to the world. But if there is one among
them who can tell me where Count Henry hides, he shall have his life for
his information!

MANY VOICES. He vanished from our sight at last.

THE GODFATHER. Great Pancratius, I appear as mediator between you and
your prisoners; spare these citizens of noble birth, because they have
given up to you the keys and strongholds of the castle of the Holy
Trinity!

PANCRATIUS. I have conquered by my own strength, and need no mediator.
You will yourself take charge of their immediate execution!

THE GODFATHER. My whole life has been that of a good citizen. I have
frequently given proof of true patriotism. When I joined your cause,
Pancratius, it was not with the intention of leading my own noble
brethren to--....

PANCRATIUS (_interrupting him_). Seize the old pedant! away with him!
let him join his _noble_ brethren!

     The soldiers surround the Godfather and the prisoners.

Where is Count Henry? Has no one seen him, dead or living? A purse of
gold for Henry, if only for his corpse!

     A division of soldiers descend the wall from above.

THE LEADER OF THE DIVISION. Citizen general! by the command of General
Bianchetti, I stationed myself with my detachment, on the west side of
the bulwark; upon our entrance into the fort on the third bastion to the
left, I observed a man standing, unarmed, but bleeding and wounded, by a
dead body. I cried immediately to my men: 'Hasten your steps, we must
reach him!' but before we could approach him, he ascended a steep cliff
overhanging the valley, stood for a moment on a sharp and jutting point
of rock, and fixed his haggard eyes upon the depths below. I saw him,
then, extend his arms like a swimmer about to make a sudden plunge; he
threw himself forward with all his force; I saw him a moment in the air,
and we all heard the noise made by the fall of the body as it pitched
and fell from rock to rock into the abyss below.

This is the sword which we found but a few steps from the spot on which
we first observed him.

     He hands a sword to Pancratius.

PANCRATIUS (_examining the sword_). Drops of blood stain the handle, but
here are the arms of his house! It is the sword of Count Henry!

He alone among you all has kept his plighted faith; to him be endless
glory--to you, traitors, the guillotine!

General Bianchetti, you will see that the fortress of the Holy Trinity
is razed to the ground, and will also superintend the execution of the
prisoners!

Leonard!

     He withdraws with Leonard.

     A bastion on the north tower. Pancratius, Leonard.

LEONARD. You require repose after so many sleepless nights; you look
wearied and exhausted with ceaseless labor.

PANCRATIUS. The hour of rest has not yet struck for me, and the last
sigh of the last of my enemies marks the completion of but half my task.
Look upon these heavy mists, these swamps, these desert plains; they
stand between me and the realization of my plans. Every waste on earth
must be peopled, rocks removed, lakes and rivers everywhere connected; a
portion of the soil must be awarded to every human being; the teeming
hosts of the living must far outnumber the multitudes who have perished;
life and universal prosperity must fill the place of death and ruin,
before our work of general destruction can be at all atoned for. If we
are not to inaugurate an era of social and widespread happiness, our
work of havoc and devastation will have been worse than vain!

LEONARD. The God of Freedom will give us power for gigantic tasks.

PANCRATIUS. What! _You_ speak of _God!_ Do you not see that it is
crimson and slippery here--that we are standing deep in human gore?

Whose blood is this beneath our feet?

There is nothing behind us save the court of the castle; no one is near
us. I know that we are quite alone, and yet, Leonard, I feel there is
another here!

LEONARD. I see nothing but this bloody corpse.

PANCRATIUS. It is the corpse of his faithful old servant--that is only a
dead body; but a spirit haunts this spot, and stands beside me; this
cap--see, _his_ arms are embroidered upon it; Count Henry's shield;
look, Leonard! there is the jutting rock o'erhanging the abyss--upon
this very spot _his_ great heart broke!

LEONARD. How pale you grow, Pancratius!

PANCRATIUS. Look up! IT is there! above you! Do you not see it?

LEONARD. I see nothing but a broken mass of clouds drifting down, and
surging o'er the top of yonder craggy peak o'erhanging the abyss, which
is turning crimson in the setting sun.

PANCRATIUS. A fearful symbol burns upon it!

LEONARD. Lean upon me! How ghastly pale you grow!

PANCRATIUS. Millions of men obeyed my will; where are they now?

LEONARD. Do you not hear their cries? They ask for you, their saviour.

Look not on yon steep cliff; your eyes are dying in their sockets as you
gaze upon it!

PANCRATIUS. HE stands there, motionless; three nails are driven in HIM;
three stars; His outstretched arms are lightning flashes!

LEONARD. Who? Where! Revive!

PANCRATIUS. GALILÆE VICISTI!

     He falls dead in the arms of Leonard.




SELF-SACRIFICE.


That for which man offers up his blood or his property, must be more
valuable than they. A good man does not fight with half the courage for
his own life that he shows in the protection of another's. The mother,
who will hazard nothing for herself, will hazard all in the defence of
her child; in short, only for the nobility within us--only for
virtue--will man open his veins and offer up his spirit; but this
nobility--this virtue--presents different phases: with the Christian
martyr, it is faith; with the savage, it is honor; with the republican,
it is liberty.--ANALECT.




SHANGHAI: ITS STREETS, SHOPS, AND PEOPLE.


China has always been looked upon by Europeans and described in both
ancient and modern works as 'the unchanging country,' and it is a common
fallacy that the China of to-day is exactly what it was a thousand years
ago; that foreign trade and intercourse have had and can have no effect
upon the manners or ideas of the people, and that the descriptions we
read of Chinese towns and their inhabitants, written twenty years ago,
would answer for the same places to-day. In a measure this is true, but
it is not true of the cities which have been opened to foreign trade, or
in fact of any of the Chinese cities where foreigners have been settled
since the war of 1857 and treaties of 1858.

Since that time the progress of Shanghai, Foo-Chow, Amoy, and Hong-Kong
(which last, however, is purely a British colony) has been amazing, and
men who visited China ten years ago would not recognize these places.
Indeed, it is not unlikely, with the rapid extension of Chinese trade,
and the removal of the prejudices of the people, that the history of
Chinese cities, like those of the Western States and California, will
have to be rewritten every ten years to be at all correct.

This is peculiarly the case in respect to Shanghai, which, from an
insignificant place, almost unknown in the western world, has sprung up
to an importance in trade surpassing that of any city on the China
coast. It has, from its proximity to the tea district, and easy
communication with the vast country watered by the Yang-tze river, taken
almost without an effort the great trade that once centred in Canton,
and every year shows a greater amount of tonnage in the Woosung river,
and larger exports of tea, silk, and cotton.

Approaching the entrance to the Woosung river from the Pacific, the
waters of the Yang-tze are plainly discernible at sixty to seventy miles
from its mouth, and when near the point where the ship's head is turned
from the broad current of the great river into that of the Woosung, a
thick, yellow mud rolls out with the tide, and discolors the water as
far as the eye can reach. It is like the waters of the Nile or the
Mississippi, turbulent in the great tideways, and heavy with the
coloring matter of the soil it has washed for thousands of miles. It is
evident that we are approaching a great commercial city, although for
miles we can see only a low coast, well cultivated, but without signs of
a town. The number of ships and steamers passing in and out on a fine
day would remind a New Yorker of the fleet that is always beating
through the Narrows, or is to be seen from the heights of Neversink. In
the three hours it took us to run from the light-ship to the anchorage
at Woosung, no less than seven large steamers passed us, outward bound.

The tide in the Yang-tze and its branch, the Woosung, runs with
tremendous force, having a rise and fall of eighteen feet at spring
tides, and few ships are able to proceed beyond Woosung with a single
tide, Shanghai lying twelve miles above. They anchor among a fleet of
native junks from the trading places on the Yang-tze, bound to the same
port, and awaiting a change of tide, which the Chinese sailors celebrate
by a great hubbub on the poops of their unwieldy-looking vessels, with
tom-toms and other instruments of the same nature. This fleet of junks
and sampans is a curious sight to the stranger approaching the China
coast for the first time, and, with a ramble through the filthy village
of Woosung, occupies the time which the tides compel him to spend there.

The junks give proof that if there have been great changes in the trade
of China and in the appearance of the cities where foreigners have
established themselves, there certainly has been none in the mode of
ship building, and in the thousand curious and uncouth ways of working,
acting, and living which have been for generations handed down from
father to son, and which are at the present time in no ways altered from
what they were a thousand years ago. No people in the world are slower
in admitting the ideas of foreign nations, or in taking advantage of the
most obvious improvements daily before their eyes; and, although the
improvements introduced by English and Americans in steamers and vessels
adapted for the navigation of their rivers are so far acknowledged by
them as to lead to the discontinuance of junk building to a marked
extent, yet the vessels they now build are of the same uncouth, clumsy,
and expensive shape as the first they ever put on the stocks.

Their anchors are still of wood, and occupy the greater part of the
vessel before the foremast; and, instead of cables, they still have
immense coils of rough rope like a hair lariat. The sails are still of
bamboo mats, although occasionally a piece of good American or English
duck is to be seen, stretched on bamboos in the style of the
old-fashioned square sail, and once, on the river Min, we saw a native
pilot-boat rigged with the regular fore-and-aft cut, her sails having
evidently been fashioned by a foreign hand.

Out of hundreds of junks moored in the Woosung river it was impossible
to find one without the great staring eye under what is called, by
courtesy, the bows, and not a few of them had the open mouth of a
dragon, with ugly teeth, painted under it, near the water-line, the
corners being drawn down, and the eye (from their desire that it should
see 'all ways at once') having a horrid squint. This gave to the boat a
lugubrious expression--if such a term may be allowed--ludicrous in the
extreme; and with fifty or a hundred junks drawn up in squadrons,
squinting and making faces at each other, nothing more thoroughly
Chinese could well be imagined.

Conspicuous among this fleet were the timber vessels, which were so
loaded as to be able to move only with the tide. The art with which
their lading was tied to the vessels, so as to preserve their shape
while stretching far over the water on either side, was admirable; and,
out of fifty timber junks, all seemed to be loaded in precisely the same
manner. This was accomplished by laying the ends of the poles, tied in
fagots, toward the bows, while their smooth, round butts were exposed to
the action of the tide. The sticks being of uniform length and
thickness, tapering evenly, and about twenty feet long, it was easy to
arrange their fagots so as to give them the swelling lines of a ship,
and enable the junk to breast the storms of the coast without damage to
her cargo.

Woosung, itself, is a place of no interest whatever--a filthy village,
with a market place on the river; the remains of old forts in its
neighborhood, and extensive rice and cotton fields about it, presenting
the only points worthy of note.

There is an old Joss house on the outskirts of the village, occupied by
the French as a barracks, or 'garrison of occupation for the protection
of the coast,' as a cadaverous old soldier told us, manned by twenty-six
soldiers, without earthworks or protection of any kind. They constitute
the 'foreign population' of Woosung, and might as well be drafted to
some more healthy locality for any good that they can do. Such as we saw
looked like men just recovering from cholera or yellow fever.

While lying at Woosung waiting for the tide to change, we were
frequently reminded that we could not be far from a great commercial
entrepôt of the world, by seeing five or six large ships, of one
thousand tons each, rush past with the tide in as many hours, tea-laden
and bound to Europe; but none of our company were prepared for what we
saw as we first rounded the point where a good view of Shanghai is
obtained, and saw, in the brilliant light of a harvest moon, the dense
forest of masts that filled the river. I have seen the mass of shipping
in the Pool at London, and in the Mersey at Liverpool, in the East river
at New York, and the Delaware at Philadephia, in Boston and San
Francisco harbors, and in all the other ports of China, and among them
all Shanghai holds no mean rank. The summer of 1863, from peculiar
circumstances, the dullness of freights elsewhere, and the depredations
of the Alabama and other piratical cruisers, called to the China coast,
and especially to Shanghai, as fine a fleet of clippers as was to be
found in any port of the world; and on that bright mid-summer night we
found them anchored in three parallel rows, crossing the channel of a
river half a mile wide, and stretching for a mile and a half, if not two
miles, up and down before Shanghai.

Interspersed among these ships of all nations whose flags are known on
the seas, were steamers of all sizes, from the little tugboat to the
large steamers, like the Poyang of fifteen hundred tons, plying on the
Yang-tze and between the ports on the China sea, the Yellow sea, and in
Japan. Of these, no less than seventy-one belong to or trade with
Shanghai, and at that time there could not have been less than forty in
port.

Beyond the vessels at anchor in the stream, the space to the very banks
of the river was filled up and covered by a cloud of Chinese junks,
sampans, and river boats of every class and name.

We were before one of the great cities of the world, or one that is yet
to be known as among its most flourishing. The moonlight was reflected
from a long row of stately buildings, palaces in extent and noble
proportions, which lined the bank of the river for more than a mile.
These were the residences and mercantile houses of the merchants, the
public buildings, and the 'foreign concessions' in general, as they are
called. Beyond them could be seen the dim, turreted outlines of the
Chinese city, now closed and hushed for the night, but seemingly of vast
extent. The first and overruling impression here, as in all European
settlements on the China coast, except Canton and Swatow, was the grand
scale on which everything was done. The residences or hongs of the
merchants seemed planned by liberal minds, and executed by as liberal
hands. Space and money are not spared, and to obtain coolness and
comfort in so hot a climate, the ceilings of rooms are made very high,
few of the houses having more than two stories. Generally the material
is the small, over-baked and dark-colored brick of the Chinese, overlaid
with stucco; but occasionally a house is seen built of stone, one or two
of the largest and most valuable being entirely of granite. Generally
these hongs stand in spacious enclosures, or _compounds_, filled with
rare tropical trees and the bamboo so common in China.

The finest residences are on the river bank or Bund, as it is commonly
called; but the city stretches for several squares back from the river,
being densest in the English Concession. The American quarter, Hong-Que,
although not as well filled with fine houses, is the next in importance,
while the French Concession, nearest to the great city within the walls,
is meanly built, and has more of the native element than either of the
others. For, although it is contrary to Chinese law for any native to
hold property in any of the foreign possessions, in practice large
numbers of Chinamen rent tenements from their foreign owners, and even
own them, the property standing, for convenience' sake, in the name of
some foreign resident in trust. Thus there has gradually grown up around
and upon the concessions a large Chinese city, believed by many to
contain almost as large a population as the city within the walls. This
is not incredible when we consider that the excesses of the Tae-Pings in
Soo-Chow, a large city about thirty miles from Shanghai, have driven
vast numbers of its inhabitants to the latter place, which, being
already densely crowded, has overflowed its walls, and, as the presence
of Europeans has made Shanghai, as it were, a city of refuge for the
exiles, they have naturally crowded around the foreign settlement. In
this manner the population of Shanghai and its environs has been
prodigiously augmented within the last two years, and from a place of
six hundred thousand inhabitants, it has become one of more than a
million of people. It is extremely difficult to obtain even an
approximate estimate of the population of a Chinese city. The estimates
of the Chinese are totally unreliable, varying sometimes in the most
ridiculous manner, and generally being preposterously exaggerated, while
the estimates of strangers or foreigners, unacquainted with the
marvellous abundance of human life in very small spaces, as it is seen
in China, are very rarely correct. For instance, it is not uncommon to
find that residents of this city differ as much as a million of people
in their views of its population, their estimates ranging from nine
hundred thousand to two million. It is not unlikely that a medium
between these two extremes will prove to be correct, the figure twelve
hundred thousand appearing to be the favorite at present among those
conversant with the great changes of the last year.[1]

Unfortunately this vast increase in so short a period has led to great
mortality among the Chinese, from the dense crowding it has occasioned,
and in the summer months they are severe sufferers from Asiatic cholera,
which rages among them with shocking mortality. The air, even of the
foreign concessions, becomes tainted by the foul miasma rising from the
Chinese city, and no part of Shanghai can be esteemed healthy in the
months of July and August. A more perfect system of drainage in the
foreign concessions will probably lessen the mortality among Europeans,
and it is pleasing to note that this matter is now receiving the
attention which should have been given to it years ago; but no system of
laws or attempts at organizing better sanitary arrangements can
seemingly be successful among the Chinese themselves. Large sums of
money are now appropriated annually for these purposes, according to
their own account, but the mandarins embezzle it, the work is left
undone, and the filth and horrible stench of a Chinese city is
indescribable; it is something monstrous. Europeans and Americans,
accustomed to their own cleanly cities, cannot conceive of it. New York
streets have an unenviable notoriety on the Western continent for their
dirty condition, but New York is a garden of roses compared with a
genuine Chinese city, such as Shanghai within the walls. Even the
Chinese, who might be supposed to be accustomed to it, carry little bags
of musk to their noses as they ride through in their sedans; and half
the Chinese women one meets in Shanghai hold the nostril with the
forefinger and thumb, with a grace and dexterity only acquired by long
practice.

Mr. Fortune, the celebrated botanist[1] and indefatigable Chinese
traveller, gives to Tient-sin the glory of being the filthiest and most
noisome of Chinese cities, although he mentions Shanghai with high
honor. Canton, from which Europeans have mainly derived their ideas of
China, is comparatively a clean and neat place, far superior to the more
northern cities.

To descend from generalities to particulars. The smells are a horrible
compound, worse than in Coleridge's 'City of Cologne.' First and
foremost are the sewers, which are all open, the deposits of the
night-soil of the city, with convenient wells at every corner and in
niches in the walls. At these are to be found, at all hours, men with
buckets slung on bamboos, filling them for transportation in these
primitive open vessels to the farmers, who use the compost on their
fields. These wretches, with their vile burdens, are met at every turn,
and pass through the streets and roads in long files, loading the air
with abominations. No attention is paid to the wells and sewers until
they overflow, and, as chance may direct, the coolies take their loads
from the most convenient.

This is a terrible nuisance, but it is hardly worse than the odors which
arise from the innumerable cook shops, and from the peripatetic bakeries
at every corner. What they are cooking, no man knows, but if not dog
chow-chow, it is sure to be fried in some vegetable oil that sends up a
mighty vapor, hiding the cooks and rolling into the narrow street, where
it scarcely finds vent between the overhanging eaves of the houses. The
sickening smell of the castor bean seems everywhere. Occasionally the
sight and powerful odor of hard-boiled and rotten goose eggs, split open
to show that they are either rotten or half hatched, attract the Chinese
epicure. The oily cakes and crullers that the wandering baker is frying
for a group of children, powerfully offend European olfactories,
although so tempting to the half-naked brats. Many different and
offensive odors come from these greasy cook shops, but the offence in
almost every instance can be traced home to the vegetable oils, greasy
and rancid, which seem to pervade all Chinese cookery, as it is seen in
the streets of the cities. Many of the dishes, but for this oil, would
be quite tempting; and such, as have tasted them in the houses of the
rich, assure us that they are not so bad as they smell. The
much-talked-of edible bird's-nest soup is really a fine dish. The
substance, after it is prepared, all the dirt and feathers being
separated from it, is as clean and pure as isinglass, which it greatly
resembles in appearance. Great care is taken to make it pure before it
is sold for use, and in the shops at Canton it may be seen in every
stage of manufacture. Their ducks and geese are fine birds, and, with
excellent pork, and their never-failing rice, are the favorite dishes of
such as can afford them; which, by the way, they really know how to
cook--an art that is very little understood in England or America.

Dog chow-chow, kittens, rats, and mice, with crickets and locusts, are
only eaten by the vilest of the vile--poor wretches, who must support
themselves and families on a pittance of about fifteen or twenty dollars
a year.

Of course there are many things in their way of cookery, and in their
tastes for such articles as sharks' fins, fish maws, _beche-de-mer_,
etc., which are revolting to an educated stomach; but in their way the
Chinese are quite as dainty as the most fastidious of other lands, and
in fine vegetables, fish, and fruits they enjoy as much variety and
evince as discriminating a taste as any people in the world. Their fish
are sold in the markets alive, and taken from the tanks as selected by
the purchaser. Their way of drinking tea will be found, after
familiarity, superior to ours, for when milk is not used the finer aroma
of the leaf is obtained. Indeed, they are very particular in regard to
the quality and decoction of their tea, totally refusing the poisonous
green teas that are consumed in such quantities in England, and
especially in America.

They know, too, how to draw it, and just at the right moment the boiling
water is poured upon the leaf, and, without allowing it to simmer by the
fire, as we do, long enough to get the flavor of the stalks and stems,
they drink it off as soon as the boiling water has fairly acted upon the
delicate leaves. English tea-drinkers, who like to mix a green and a
black tea, and allow it to steam for a quarter of an hour to make it
strong, complain that Chinese tea is mere dishwater, just as the man
accustomed to get boozy on brandy, made 'fiery' with sulphuric acid, has
no taste for the light French wines. A Chinaman colors his green tea
with Prussian blue for his foreign customers, who like a bright, pretty
color; but he is too wise to drink it. This process of coloring we have
seen, publicly, in the tea factories of Shanghai; and the disgust with
which the manufacturer denied that he ever drank his own wares, was too
strong to be assumed. 'No good,' was his only reply.

Despite the filth and many disagreeable things to be encountered in a
walk or ride through a city like Shanghai, it is one of the most
interesting places imaginable in which to spend an hour or two on a
summer morning.

In the heat of the day, at mid-summer, it is dangerous in China, and
especially to a new comer, to be exposed even to the reflected rays of
the sun, and many a poor fellow has lost his life by neglect or contempt
of the cautions of his more experienced friends not to be in the
sunshine between the hours of 10 A. M. and 4 P. M. More than ordinary
precaution is necessary in times of cholera, owing to the peculiar
electrical condition of the atmosphere, in which any exertion or
exposure is often fatal to one recently arrived on the coast. All
excursions to the city are therefore, of necessity, made in the morning
or late in the afternoon. The gates are opened at daybreak, and the
early visitor is almost certain to be unpleasantly reminded of the
prevalence of cholera by the number of dead bodies lying in the streets.
They are those of coolies, or poor persons, who have died during the
night, and having no friends, the public authorities must take them
wherever they chance to die, and provide for their burial. In August,
1863, at a time when the cholera was not particularly virulent, the
deaths were supposed to be five hundred a day, principally among the
poor, who, from insufficient food, miserable lodging in the streets and
porticoes of temples, and constant exposure in the day to the direct
rays of the sun, to say nothing of the filth and foul air of the city,
were peculiarly exposed to the ravages of disease. Another sign of the
presence of cholera, and an odd one, was the number of persons passing
with necks disfigured by perpendicular parallel bars, as if branded by
hot irons. This curious remedy is applied for any pain in the stomach,
however slight, even for sea sickness, and the marks are made with
strong pincers. By the Chinese it is thought very efficacious, although
on what theory it is difficult to understand.

Entering the city from the north gate, after crossing the ditch that
separates the walls from, the French Concession, we find ourselves in
close and extremely narrow streets, with shops opening upon them,
neither glass nor any partition separating them from passers by. The
same arrangement is quite common in our own streets for fruit-sellers'
shops, toy stores, and newspaper and periodical stands. But instead of
one or two attendants at a stand, in China we find a dozen, in summer
time naked from the waist upward, emaciated by opium smoking, and having
a sickly look painful to see. Most of the shops have a carved railing
and a counter facing the street, the ends of which are ornamented by
grotesque shapes of dogs and gilded idols. A figure of a pug-nosed dog
with bandy legs is very common. At the first glance it would be supposed
that this was one of those nondescripts the Chinese are so fond of
devising, but a closer examination shows that the figure is an admirably
life-like copy of an odd dog, common to Pekin, pug-nosed and
bandy-legged, and no doubt his form will be recognized in many of the
grotesque, awkward-looking figures of which ivory carvings abound in all
countries where Chinese curiosities are to be found.

Standing on the counter is generally a roll of joss-sticks wound
spirally around a wire frame, and always burning to the tutelary idol of
the shop, for the sake of good luck. It is the duty of one of the boys
to see that this coil of joss-stick is always lighted--a very convenient
arrangement for tobacco smokers strolling through the streets. Another
custom which they have, and which is also supposed to bring success to
the shopkeeper, is to encourage the swallows to build under the eaves
and among the bamboo rafters. Three or four of these nests of swallows,
with broods of twittering young ones, may often be observed in a single
shop, neat stretchers of cotton cloth or bamboo being built under the
nests, to prevent any possible damage to the goods. The birds seem quite
at home amid all the hubbub; and the kind care which protects them amid
a semi-barbarous people is one of those traits of a common humanity--of
kindness to the helpless--which marks the common origin of the most
civilized and most barbarous of the human race. The streets of Shanghai
are not divided among the trades, as in Canton, but shops of all kinds
occur in every crooked lane and alley-way. Principal among them are the
cookshops, some of which are evidently restaurants on a large scale, for
they are filled, from morning till night, with half-naked coolies,
eating indescribable dishes, of which rice is the great staple, and
sipping tea. They all sit at little tables, built for two, or at round
tables, seating half a dozen. In the country and in the suburbs these
last are drawn out into the open air at sunset, and are occupied by
parties taking their tea in a social manner. The roads around Shanghai
are fall of such parties on a warm summer's eve.

After the cookshops, the confectioners' attract the traveller's eye. An
immense amount of sweetmeats is consumed by the people, and the
confectioners' shops are proportionally numerous. They are distinguished
by copper caldrons sunk in their counters, which are kept always hot and
full of molasses. With a ladle like a milkman's pint measure, they bring
up the sweet mass for their customers, and their stalls are always
crowded. Not only are these established shops well patronized, but an
immense quantity of candy and preserved fruits is sold by the wandering
peddlers, who manufacture and dispose of their good things wherever they
find customers. Preserved lychee, a fruit that looks like a small prune,
and like it is stewed in sirup, is a great favorite; and the coolies in
the foreign quarters, while resting under their burdens, are not
backward in disposing of a saucer of sweetmeats obtained from the
nearest peddler. These sweetmeats, of all kinds, are esteemed very good
by Europeans, and no doubt are quite the same as we receive from China
put up in big-bellied blue jars; but as sold in the streets, the lack of
cleanliness in the entire outfit of the shop, and the necessity of using
the dishes and China spoons from which one can see the neighboring
coolies gobbling their purchases, holding the dishes up to their very
noses, would deter any man of ordinary fastidiousness from attempting an
immediate experiment to establish their identity.

After eating, we must rank shaving as the second among Chinese
employments. They all wear the cue, even to the infant in arms, whose
mother shaves its head at three months old, and ties up the tiny cue
with a red ribbon, and from that day to the day of his death the child
and man must be periodically shaved; for, of course, no man can shave
his own head. Great is the barber in China, and vast his field of
operations among four hundred millions of people! They shave their
subjects everywhere, even sitting on a stone in an open field, and at
all hours of the day their shops are full. It is in the neatness of his
'shave' and the glossiness of his rich black cue that the Chinese dandy
is distinguishable. Men who cannot afford to shave every day, allow the
hair to grow until the head (always excepting the part which has never
known the razor or the shears) resembles that of a fire zouave just
after enlistment, or a penitentiary prisoner; while the exquisite has
his head shaved with the sharpest razor, giving a bluish cast or frame
for his yellow face. Occasionally the size or thickness of the tail
appears to be unsatisfactory, and a larger surface is spared from the
knife. The refractory hairs growing out in this supplementary patch
surround the genuine cue with a halo an inch or two in height. Lots of
these apostolical-looking Chinese are to be met with in every street,
and, as they rarely wear hats, they have a very comical appearance. This
question of hats is another of curious import among this curious people.
A Chinese gentleman rarely wears one in the streets, his mode of travel
being in a sedan, and his fan or umbrella answering all purposes of
protection from the sun. A mandarin, on the contrary, wears in the ball
of his cap his badge of office, and the time even when he changes his
winter for his summer hat is regulated by the Board of Rites. The poor
coolie is troubled by no such formality, and wears a great umbrella-like
head covering, that he perches on a little bamboo tower, six inches
above his crown, tying down the whole concern by a string that passes
behind his ears. When at leisure, he wears his long cue trailing to his
feet; when busy, it is snugly coiled around his head and out of sight
under his hat. The gentleman and mandarin, on the contrary, never ties
up the cue, its flowing grace, like his long finger nails, being a badge
of his superior condition in being above manual labor. No wonder, then,
that they attach so much importance to the pigtail, and that the man who
dresses it daily is so useful a character in the community. His tools
are unlike anything a civilized barber uses, and his razor, if its uses
were not explained, would hardly be recognized by the name. It is a
thick, broad instrument, shaped more like a cook's cleaver than any
instrument known to other nations; but it does its work well in the
hands of a good operator. After the head is shaved, it is washed with
warm water in an old-fashioned brass barber's basin, such, as was in use
in England two hundred years ago, and, after having had the few
straggling hairs on lip and chin removed, the patient (for truly he
deserves the name) goes through the torture of having all stray hairs
extracted from the inner coating of the nose and ears, an absurd and
barbarous custom that often leads to permanent injury of the latter
organs. If he chances to have ophthalmia, the barber considers that his
eyes need cleaning, and proceeds to wipe out the inner side of the
eyelid with his instrument, of course to their serious injury. In the
ophthalmic hospitals of Chinese cities European physicians have found
this practice a fruitful cause of many diseases of the eyes, but no
remonstrances can induce the people and their barbers to give it up.

The mustache, as well as the pigtail of immoderate length, is a badge of
a certain dignity, for no man is allowed to cultivate it until he
reaches a certain age, and it is an error to suppose that Asiatics are
totally devoid of beard, for the old fellows among them sport grisly
beards and mustaches of respectable length, and altogether have quite a
venerable look. On the stage the emperor and mandarins are represented
as bearded like Turks. Indeed the excessive length of their horse-hair
mustaches, reaching to their girdles, shows what esteem the people
attach to a long, flowing beard.

On first landing in China, the impression given by so many long-tailed
and petticoated men is like the memory of a dream wherein one has seen
animals walking like men; and, although custom makes the sight familiar,
a Chinaman always appears an odd creature, especially when he passes the
end of his pigtail under his left shoulder and gently caresses it or
twists the final braid. A comical sight, to be seen almost every day in
Hong-Kong, is a sepoy policeman leading some Chinese culprit to the
lockup: the sepoy, tall and erect, with fierce mustaches, lean as a
tiger, and with a warlike air, leading along the meek Chinaman by the
end of his pigtail, John Chinaman following at about two paces behind,
just at the end of his natural tether.

We have already alluded to the grotesque appearance of an infant a few
months old, with close-shaved head, and pigtail two inches long, tied up
with a gay ribbon. When the youngster is four years old, and his pigtail
has reached the dignity of seven inches, it is duly braided, and
constitutes his only dress. Then, being armed with a basket, he is sent
out in this primitive and absurd costume to pick chips.

After the barbers, in order of importance among the Chinese shopkeepers,
come the coffin makers, and they are very important men indeed, in a
country where the worship of ancestors is carried to a degree unknown
elsewhere in the world. Their coffins are of all sizes and degrees of
finish, but of one invariable shape. Some of those seen in Shanghai cost
as much as one thousand taels, equal to $1,500 in American gold. They
are extremely massive, more like miniature junks than the shape we are
accustomed to associate with the idea of a coffin, the head being higher
than the foot, and the lines of the sides swelling gently with very
little taper. The boards of the sides and headpiece are at least three
inches thick, elaborately carved, and gilded in Chinese characters. The
colors are various, black and red predominating. As the body is kept in
this massive shell for several months after decease, and in the house of
the nearest relative, the good sense of making the walls of extra
thickness and strength is very apparent. Even after it is laid in the
tomb, in many parts of the country, the style of sepulture allows the
coffin to be seen, and it is even exposed to the weather in some cases.
Customs differ greatly, however, in different parts of the country. In
the flat region about Shanghai, the tombs are found mostly around the
little streams flowing into the Yang-tze, or the ocean. The coffins are
placed in the open fields, a few shovelfuls of earth are thrown around
them, and they are left undisturbed, for the high weeds and the
accumulations of centuries to form mounds around them. A few regularly
constructed tombs are to be found, but they are rare. In the hill
country bordering the China sea, in the province of Foh-Kien, and
elsewhere on the coast, when the nature of the land will allow,
extensive tombs are hollowed out in the sides of the hills, and the
coffins are deposited out of sight. Here a whole family reposes, it may
be, in one of these majestic tombs (for, seen from a distance, they have
a picturesque and imposing appearance). The popular shape is that of a
horseshoe or half moon, the circle being toward the summit of the hill.
This portion of the tomb is raised like a crown, and facing it is an
altar, with Chinese characters engraven on its pillars, where the
offerings of the relatives or worshippers are placed. Before this is a
place like a court, railed off and flanked, it may be, by smaller altars
on either side, facing other entrances, where the less venerated members
of the family are interred. In front of the whole are two high posts,
the meaning or use of which, if they have any at all, we are not
acquainted with.

On these altars are burnt the paper offerings sent to their departed
friends, the manufacture and sale of which occupy a numerous and
important class of shops in the great cities. These offerings are
generally of gilt and silver paper, in the form of clothes, horses,
houses, and other conveniences of which their friends showed their
appreciation on earth, and which, by a subtile process of reasoning,
they imagine that they can transmit to them in this cheap and ingenious
manner--simply by burning these paper effigies at the altars by the
tombs! One of the most ingenious and economical of these contrivances,
whereby, with a subtlety of argument worthy of the great trafficker in
indulgences, Tetzel, who so raised Martin Luther's ire, they manage
cheaply to transmit funds to heaven, is the paper dollar, strings of
which are sold in the shops, looking exceedingly like goodly bunches of
the silvery onion. It is worthy of a people who are so niggardly in all
their transactions, who have a copper currency that would sink any man
with a fortune invested in it, and who cheat all that come in contact
with them, that they should cheat their departed friends with these
remittances, a bundle of which are to be obtained for a few cash, and on
reaching the other world are understood to pass for a little fortune. In
the ordinary affairs of life it is their habit to put three prices on
everything they have to sell, and in their dealings with heaven they put
their own valuations, amounting to an advance of several thousand per
cent., on all their offerings. Could anything be more thoroughly in
character?

There is, however, a certain degree of respect paid to the memory of
departed friends, and an attachment to the soil where lie the bones of
their ancestors, that, in as far as it is harmless, is entitled to our
respectful consideration. It gives a domestic, settled character to the
people, that is worthy of all praise, and should raise them in our
estimation, from whatever cause it may spring. It is well known that
they show the highest respect to the aged, and that those who emigrate
to foreign lands show the greatest anxiety that after death their
remains should be sent back to their own country. Ships from San
Francisco are often largely freighted with the coffins of deceased
Chinamen; and it is worthy of note that few or none of these belong to
men born in Shanghai, the Chinese seen in other lands coming almost
exclusively from Canton, Ningpo, and Amoy. The northern and middle
population of China is not by nature so restless a class as that of the
south, and has borne this character since Europeans have been at all
acquainted with the Chinese.

The three kinds of shops to which allusion has been made, those of the
cooks, the barbers, and the undertakers, comprise more than one half of
all in Shanghai; but besides these are almost as many varieties of
trades as we are accustomed to in other more civilized countries.
Bankers sit behind their counters, keeping watch over tons of copper
cash, neatly threaded in strings of one thousand each, and pay checks
and make loans with the same regularity as in cities boasting their
superior civilization. Nor are the resources of these native bankers to
be despised. On proper security native and foreign merchants have been
known to obtain loans of several hundred thousand dollars from one
banker. Many of their daily operations are for very considerable
amounts, and are adjusted in credits or in silver. Although they are
cursed with as abominable a currency as any nation in the world, they
do not appear to experience any great difficulty in settlements, every
merchant having his balance, and weighing off the proper amount of
silver, larger payments being made in sycee. This want of a currency
arises from their utter lack of confidence in the coinage of their own
country. No currency that the Imperial Government might issue, not like
the copper cash, or tsien, incapable of adulteration, would be above
suspicion; and while the shameless system of mandarin plunder and fraud
continues, it is hopeless to expect a proper currency in China, unless
the foreigners interfere or obtain the control in this part of the
national affairs which they already have over the customs and the army.
A uniform currency, superior to the wretched, worthless cash, is the
crying need of China. The Mexican, or chop dollar, becomes sadly
depreciated after long circulation, by the clippings and innumerable
marks put upon it, so that it will not pass outside of China, nor does
it long remain out of the pot of the sycee melter. The American half
dollar and quarter and the English shilling are daily becoming more
popular for the smaller transactions of the shops, and the notes of the
local banks possess considerable circulation in their respective cities;
but what is needed more than anything else is an abundance of small
silver coinage for the daily ordinary transactions. The Mexican mint is
quite inadequate to supply so vast and insatiable a country as China,
which should have a currency of its own. No doubt much larger quantities
of silver will continue to reach China directly from California, within
the next few years, in the shape of bars. The great impetus which the
late wild speculations in silver shares is likely to give to the
development of the Washoe mines, is almost certain within a very few
years to so largely increase the yield of California silver as to rival
in amount the immense produce of her gold mines. Careful surveys and the
actual yield of mines, such as the Gould & Curry, and Hale & Norcross on
the Comstock lead, prove that the ore is there in large quantities, and
the stimulus has now been applied which will rapidly bring it to light.
With the increasing facilities between San Francisco and Hong-Kong the
bulk of this must go to China direct, instead of the roundabout course
by which it has reached the East through London. But these are questions
that hardly attract attention at present in Shanghai, or among the
Shanghai bankers, whose shops we were talking of as met with here and
there in the open street.

Next to one of these respectable, long-tailed gentlemen we found a
first-class apothecary, whose shop and mode of business were widely
different from those of one of the guild at home. The ceilings were
swarming with swallows, whose chattering rivalled that of the folks
below, conspicuous among whom was a fat, greasy old chap, in the dignity
of a gray mustache and a monstrous pair of colored spectacles, the
glasses of which were an inch and a half in diameter, rimmed with horn,
and tied by a string to his ears. He was gravely busy in compounding a
prescription on a piece of paper large enough to cover the side of a
chest of tea, and closely written over with Chinese characters. We
lounged by his side as he put up packet after packet of dried roots and
simples, tasting many of them with his consent. Calamus and liquorice
were among them, and camphor, too. Each packet was of the size of a
pound paper of Stuart's candy (any child can tell you what size that
has), and when the entire prescription was filled, the unfortunate sick
man became possessed of no less than twenty-three of these packages,
enough to keep famine from his door for a week at least, to judge from
their bulk. They filled a goodly basket. It was not one man alone who
carried away such a heap of medicines; but before each applicant, as the
prescriptions spread on the counter were ticked off, rose a pile of
similar packages, which bid fair to become as high as that which had
excited our curiosity. All these drugs were put up neatly in the
light-yellow paper we are accustomed to see round our packs of
fire-crackers, and as neatly sealed with a little gum arabic. Indeed, it
is shrewdly suspected by Father Hue, from this prodigious liberality of
drugs, that the physicians feel bound to give a man all he pays for, in
the hope that out of a multitude of remedies some may chance to suit his
case. The foreign residents of Shanghai aver that the doctors take
contracts to cure their patients in a certain time, and if unsuccessful
at the stipulated day, their patients relieve their minds by a little
elegant abuse of their physician, and take the contract to the next in
their neighborhood.

It is not uncommon to see their dentists wandering through the streets
with rows of old fangs suspended from their necks like necklaces,
trophies of their skill; and every dead wall in the city has its
vermilion posters, advertising some great quack medicine, so that it is
quite evident that the science of medicine has reached that pitch of
refinement where a host of quacks can ply their arts with as much
success as among the western barbarians.

Heaven save us, though, from a Chinese doctor! Mechanical surgery is his
forte; for a stomach ache he will pinch your neck; for a broken rib he
will nearly crack the bones of your arm, and if you faint under this he
will hang you up by your heels to restore the circulation.

According to the diagrams published in the books on medicine, the
knowledge of anatomy possessed by the faculty in China is very slight,
and entirely erroneous; and in all their cures it is very probable that
nature, unassisted except by rest and fasting for a season, does the
work. They certainly are able to give her very little help.

It is noticeable, however, as a proof of the high esteem in which the
people hold the science, that the shops of the chemists and apothecaries
are kept by a superior class of people, more intelligent in appearance
than their neighbors, and holding a higher rank.

Of the lower trades there are innumerable shops, the variety of which is
almost bewildering. Every art and manufacture has its minute
subdivisions, and one meets, at every step, signs of the superior
civilization of the people in their admirable division of labor. Silk
looms are working in the open streets, shoemakers and tailors are each
plying their art in their narrow shops. In one they manufacture little
paper offerings for the gods, in another the gods themselves, in the
next their worshippers are supplied with joss-sticks or gayly colored
candles of tallow, mounted on slim sticks, that they may be stuck in the
sand before the divinity. Here you will find a printer hard at work
taking impressions on their delicate paper; next a bookbinder, who sews
the leaves with withes of paper, while in the next shop you can procure
the almanac for the year, months before it is required. In August, 1863,
they were selling copies of the almanac for 1864. Probably this work has
the largest circulation of any in the world, hanging, as it does, in
every house. The only exception may be the Bible, which, it is to be
hoped, will yet be as widely circulated in China as it is among the
other nations of the world.

Numbers of the people are engaged in the delicate carving we so much
admire in the ivory toys scattered throughout Europe and America, and a
vast number of people in preparing the hanging screens with curious
devices, quaint pictures, and sentences from Confucius, which are found
in almost every house of the better class. They have a great fondness
for the proverbs and wise sayings which, are thus kept always before
their children, like the very good rules and aphorisms we see on the
walls of our Sunday schools.

A good example of the minute subdivision of the Chinese trades is seen
in the shops devoted exclusively to the sale of camel's-hair pencils,
and others for that of the little squares of red paper, covered with
hieroglyphics, which we receive on a pack of fire-crackers, and which
constitute its 'chop.'

Jewellers' shops contain very little interesting to a foreigner--most of
the rings and brooches are trashy articles of jade-stone, a greenish
stone which resembles agate or cornelian in opaqueness. The armlets are
of silver, and of the same substance are the large thin circles worn by
the women of Foh-Kien in the ear and resting on the shoulder. Pins for
the fantastic pyramid they erect with their rich black hair are rather
pretty, but are generally ornamented with false pearls. For pearls the
Chinese have a passion, but it requires a judge of the article to
purchase any from them, nine tenths of those in the shops being
fictitious. Seed pearls are also used by them as medicines. In the back
streets it is not uncommon to find places where they make them, and
others where artists are engaged in cutting and polishing on the lathe
the few precious stones they possess. Rock crystal is one of their
favorites, and from it they cut beautiful vases and goblets that are
sometimes as clear as glass. In this, however, they are surpassed by the
Japanese, whoso crystal globes cannot be distinguished from the most
perfect glass. They also cut vases and carve odd figures in an arsenical
stone, of reddish color, with a grain like granite, which is little
known in other countries.

In Shanghai the shops for the sale of china and porcelain-ware do not
present as fine an assortment as those of Canton, where vases costing
fabulous sums are to be seen, but they are rich with the peculiar
pottery of Soo-Chow. Just at present the display of this ware is not as
fine as usual, owing to the occupation of that city by the Tae-Pings,
but enough remains on hand to show its beauty and general usefulness.
Chinese porcelain ware is as well known in every civilized country of
the world as in China itself, and has ceased to be a curiosity unless
when intelligently viewed in its historical character, for all these
quaint scenes scattered over the magnificent vases we receive illustrate
some event in Chinese history, or some custom which obtains among the
people.

When evening approaches and the shops are lit up with lanterns, the
numerous and brilliant lantern warehouses attract the attention: some of
the goods they display (and at nightfall they light every lantern in the
shop) are extremely beautiful and costly; all kinds are to be obtained,
from the fine hall-lamp of painted glass to the sixpenny lantern to be
carried in the hand. At night these gay lights give much animation to
the busy streets. Having gone across Shanghai from the south gate to the
French Concession one dark night, after the city gates were closed, a
good opportunity of seeing the interior of a Chinese city after
nightfall (which few foreigners care to avail themselves of) presented
itself. The people were slowly closing their shops for the night. Here
and there a shopkeeper was counting his cash, and calculating at his
counter with the help of the abacus; many of them were sitting at the
doors of their houses, smoking in the evening air; the barbers were
still at work preparing their customers for the night. Like Washington
Irving, these may have considered a good clean shave the best soporific.
Here and there a citizen of the better class was to be seen picking his
way by the light of a lantern, held by a boy, and twice we met sedan
chairs containing women, preceded by a lantern bearer. The passage of
two sedans in these narrow streets is a difficult and unpleasant
process, the bearers generally managing to grind your shins against a
wall. At night it is still more difficult to avoid contact, and the
coolies are incessantly shouting, in a sing-song voice, to prepare the
way. As it was, in the narrower streets we passed between files of dusky
figures and black, inquisitive eyes, ranged on either side to barely
allow passage. The cook-shops were deserted, and the attendants busy in
putting out the fires; only the places where lanterns or candles were
sold seemed to be doing an active trade, although it had scarcely struck
nine. At ten o'clock no doubt all were asleep, for hosts of beggars and
poor wretches were snoring by the roadsides. The most picturesque groups
passed in this evening stroll were those on the bridges, where, by the
light of tallow candles, men and boys were gambling and fighting
crickets. Although probably there was not another European or American
within the walls of the city, the passage was as safe as if made at
noonday, guarded by a file of soldiers.

A visit to Shanghai would be incomplete if the traveller failed to
inspect the numerous and very curious temples, and to contrast them with
the church edifices erected in the heart of the city by the Protestant
missionaries. There is one without the walls, in the French Concession,
where all the instruments of torture, the devilish devices of heathen
cruelty, are to be seen, a horrid spectacle. The largest of the temples,
however, is within the walls, approached through a wide court, with a
fountain (not in use) in the centre. This court is crowded with fortune
tellers, conjurors, and gamblers of every kind. Some of these gentry
play a game very much like thimble-rigging, in which copper cash,
appears under different inverted teacups. Every man who approaches the
idol draws from among the fortune tellers a stick or a piece of paper,
from the figure on which he is supposed to tell whether his prayer will
succeed, or the work he contemplates prove lucky. Entering the shrine,
it is difficult to see for a few moments, so gloomy is the place and so
grimy every object with the smoke of joss offerings from time
immemorial. A kind of altar faces the worshippers, with a box of sand,
in which are stuck the burning joss-sticks. Before this is a cushion, on
which they prostrate themselves, telling their beads, as they recite
their prayers inaudibly, and bowing to the earth at intervals of a few
minutes. Behind the altar are the idols. These hideous figures are twice
the size of life, and of frightful shape and features, the principal god
being in a tent-like shrine, which permits only a glimpse of his grim
features in the background. On his right hand is the figure of a man
with the beak of an eagle, and on his left a very grotesque divinity,
with a third eye, like that of the Cyclops, in the centre of his
forehead. These two figures, again, are supported by gigantic guardians,
one on either side, who have nothing absolutely monstrous about them,
being distinguished by their saturnine expression. That to the right
hand bears a striking likeness to Daniel Webster's stern and well-known
features. The deep-set eye and compressed lip were those of the great
expounder.

A heavy cloud from the burning candles and paper offerings filled the
air, and the smell of candle snuff mingled with that of incense. A high
railing separated the worshippers from the idols, but the priests were
quite indifferent and not at all exclusive; so, passing around and
without removing our hats, we made a close inspection of the respected
carvings. A nearer view did not increase their attractions, so, passing
up a flight of stairs, we entered a room where the bonzes were busy
praying for rain and apparently going through a species of litany with
open books in their hands. Our entrance stopped proceedings for a
minute or two, but they soon resumed, quite indifferently, singing and
drawling as though it were tedious, tiresome work.

They were all good-looking men, in the prime of life, dressed in scarlet
and embroidered robes of much richness. Unlike the rest of the people,
they neither shaved nor wore the cue. We found them drawn in a line
before the altar, from which they were separated by a screen: an open
porch at their back let in light and air. Each priest had before him a
little table with a fancy gilt screen upon it, and as they slowly
proceeded with their drawl, at convenient intervals, each made a slight
bow behind his screen, his head touching it. As they did this with the
regularity of drilled soldiers, and to the pounding of a tom-tom, they
evidently were chanting in chorus, although the ear would have failed to
distinguish it. The tom-toms and wooden drums were beaten at the
pleasure of the parties in charge: nothing like time was apparent to any
but a Chinese ear.

The idol was a little gilt figure, about six inches high, with the body
of a beast and the head of a man. His peculiarity was the possession of
a supplementary eye, which, as his natural pair squinted horribly, no
doubt was very useful. His position was on a little table surrounded by
tall candles; whether they were borrowed from the Roman Catholics or the
Catholics borrowed the custom from them is a question for the student of
church history. Before the idol was placed another table with ten
elegant bowls, scarcely larger than our teacups, filled with the
choicest fruits and grains that the market afforded. Each article was
perfect of its kind. Rice, tea, the nelumbium, and agaric, a species of
fungus, were among them. Just then the country being in great want of
rain, the priests were trying the coaxing process, and tempting the god
with the best chow-chow to be had; but the next day they got out of
patience, and were to be met parading him through the dusty streets,
exposed to a fierce sun, for the purpose of giving him to understand
that the heat was quite as disagreeable as they had represented it.

Their arguments for this proceeding are extremely logical: they say that
Joss, in his cool temple, laughs at them, and is disposed to think that
they are humbugging him; therefore, if they give him two or three hours
of good skin-roasting in the sun, he will be much more likely to come to
terms, to avoid a repetition of the process. As they do this every day
until rain comes, it is of course seen in a short time, if they are
patient, that it never fails in the end.

Indeed, it is quite common to meet in all the large cities processions
of priests, followed by the rabble, who are giving 'Joss an airing.' The
eminently practical object of these mummeries argues very little genuine
respect for the deity, an inference that has often been drawn by
missionaries from other points in their treatment of their idols.

Their worship of them, such as it is, is almost universal. Every house
has its shrine and altar, and even in the porches of foreign residents
in the quarters occupied by the Chinese servants, one sometimes
(although not often) sees a little figure in a niche, with a tiny
joss-stick before it. Every junk and sampan has its tutelary idol. A
little shrine of bamboo of the size of a common birdcage is built for
it, sometimes fixed and sometimes movable. The interior of this was
gilded once, but the gilt is worn and tarnished by smoke and water. It
has doors that open when the joss-sticks are to be burnt before the toy
figure that presides on a miniature throne. A sampan whose owners are
too poor to supply themselves with decent clothing, will be sure to have
its tawdry baby-house and doll idol, and it frequently has in addition
a roll of paper, four feet by one, like a window curtain, with, a gay
picture of Joss, in a scarlet dress, in the act of dancing, and
generally in a very absurd posture for such a respectable character.

Every evening at sunset there is a prodigious hubbub from the junks on
the Woosung, made with tom-toms, drums, and other unmelodious
instruments, which are vigorously beaten for ten or fifteen minutes, to
bring good luck, and propitiate the devils, or frighten them away for
the night. From the shore, the rapid motions of a dozen arms on the high
poop of each junk, tossed aloft in the dusk, and the discordant, harsh
sounds that come from so many vessels at once, arrest the attention of
the stranger, and once seen and heard, are never forgotten.

The pagodas, so often mentioned in accounts of the Chinese empire,
appear to be more numerous in the mountainous districts, where they add
greatly to the picturesque charm of the scenery, and are believed to be
connected with the religious ceremonies of the people. In the flat
country around Shanghai they are not to be met with; at least it was not
our fortune to see any during our brief stay. The only structure like a
tower, if we except the turrets on the city walls and watch towers
erected within the past few years, when the Tae-Pings have threatened
the city, is a tall, white monument, rising to the height of twenty
feet, and without inscription or distinguishing mark of any kind. It
looks like a fine, white tomb, higher and more ambitious than usual, and
truly it is a 'whited sepulchre'! Baby Tower, it is called by the
foreign residents, for it is filled with the bones of infants--not such
as have died a natural death, as Bayard Taylor asserts, but which have
been thrust into this horrid monument of heathen cruelty when but a few
hours old. Humanity shudders at the thought! These dazzling white baby
towers, with their mockery of purity, their object known to all men, and
openly inviting, as it were, the most unnatural and heartless of
murders, are among the most hideous spectacles to be met with in a
heathen land. True, a river or a pond will be pointed out to you in
other parts of China, or in India, where babies are daily drowned like
puppies or kittens; but they do not affect the mind with such a horror
as these palpable structures, erected with the best skill of their
architects for this express purpose. The water closes over the murdered
infant, and no trace of the crime remains; but here is a tower--a high
tower--with deep foundations, filled with the bones of murdered babes
that have been accumulating for generations.

No wonder that Christian mothers, resident in the East, cannot speak of
them or see them without a shudder, and never willingly pass them in
their drives. Who knows but they might hear, if they approached the
tower, the wail of some poor infant just thrown in, or meet its father
returning from his cruel errand!

At Shanghai the Baby Tower stands on the southwest side of the city,
without the walls, but at Foo-Chow, where the crime of infanticide is
still more prevalent, they use no baby towers, but have provided ponds
for this express purpose. It is the saddest part of this great national
crime of the Chinese, that it is sanctioned by the mandarins, and viewed
as a disagreeable necessity, not as a crime.

It has been the fashion of late years to deny the existence of this
abomination; the doubters, wise in their own conceit, insisting that the
crime is too great for human nature.

Human nature, unfortunately, has proved but a frail barrier to crime of
this character in all parts of the world, and the facts of Chinese
infanticide are indisputable. The witnesses are too numerous, the crime
is too public, and the evidences of it too notorious to deny its
existence. The children destroyed are girls; the most common methods of
destroying them are: 1st, by drowning in a tub of water; 2d, by throwing
into some running stream; 3d, by burying alive. The last-named mode is
adopted under the hope and with the superstitious belief that the next
birth will be a boy. The excuse is that it is too expensive to educate a
girl, but if some friend will take the child to bring up as a wife for a
little boy, the parents will sell or give away the infant rather than
destroy it. The regular price is two thousand copper cash, or $2, for
every year of their lives; for sometimes a girl will be saved for a year
or two, and then sold for a wife or slave. Many instances have come to
the notice of missionaries where large families of girls have been
destroyed. There is one woman now employed as a nurse in a missionary's
family at Fuh-Chow, who says that her mother had eight girls and three
boys, and that she was the only girl permitted by her father to live. We
never heard of an instance of a boy's being destroyed at birth. There is
a village about fifteen miles from Fuh-Chow, which is swarming with
boys, but where girls are very scarce. The people account for it
themselves by alleging the common practice of killing the girls at
birth, a practice which is indulged in by the rich as well as by the
poor.[2]

But to enter into all the particularities of Chinese life which attract
the attention at Shanghai as in other cities, would be to compile an
account of China and her customs.

The points of real importance to be considered in connection with
Shanghai, which is fast becoming the commercial centre of Chinese
exports, are the extent to which foreigners have an influence on the
people in modifying their habits, increasing their knowledge, and
dispelling their prejudices. The growth of European influence and the
complete opening of the Chinese empire, in which immense advances have
been made in the last three years, will, in time, it is to be hoped,
lead to the diffusion of the Christian religion, a work attended with
such gigantic difficulties, at the present day, that one cannot
sufficiently admire the courage, patience, and faith which actuate
missionaries to this empire. No representations of these difficulties
which reach the Christian world have done justice to them, for it is
necessary to observe the heartlessness, self-conceit, and prodigious
prejudices of the Chinese to appreciate the noble zeal of the
missionaries. The course of trade and much more correct notions of the
power and objects of the Western nations, and the firmness with which
they use the former to secure the latter, are unquestionably breaking up
with rudeness the ridiculous ideas of the Chinese concerning their own
importance and superior wisdom. If once they can be made learners in
good earnest, the battle is half won, for none doubt their intelligence.
European influence, alone, has effected great changes in five years, and
European and Chinese combined may, in the five years to come, work out
still greater reforms.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Sir Frederick Bruce, in a recent report to the Foreign
Office, says:

'The growth of Shanghai is wonderful; its population is estimated at
1,500,000, and it bids fair to become soon the most important city of
the East. The Chinese flock to it on account of the security it enjoys;
and the silk manufacture, which was destroyed by the Taiping occupation
of Soochow and Hangchow, is taking root at Shanghai.'--Pekin, 30th
April, 1863.

[2] Civilized nations profess to look with abhorrence on the
Chinese crime of infanticide, and to believe that the statements of
travellers and missionaries are incredible; but a careful examination of
the mortuary tables of London, Paris, New York, Dublin, Moscow, and
other cities, will show that infanticide is far more common than
supposed. It is a crime easily hidden and hard to trace. Take the
foundling hospitals as a guide to some approximate estimate of the
amount of infanticide in France. We find that she has upwards of 360
hospitals; that in Paris alone, in five years, from 1819 to 1823, 25,277
children were received, of whom eleven thirteenths died, and that the
annual number of enfans trouvés ranges from 3,800 to 4,500. These
children, but for the hospital, would have been murdered. Who can tell
how many are thrown into the sewers of Paris? A recent writer states the
number at 10,000, but we deem this an exaggeration. It is significant
that the percentage of births and deaths in all France is less far the
births and greater for the deaths than in England. These tables we
annex.

It is still more significant that the returns of foundling hospitals,
from widely different countries, show that these institutions, however
charitable and humane their object, are to be viewed as conveniences for
murdering an infant without the actual violence at which humanity
revolts. The proportion of abandoned children who live is so exceedingly
small, that abandonment of a child to a foundling hospital is scarcely
less than murder. If the child live, it may be viewed, almost, as a
direct act of Providence.

Of 62,000 children brought into the Paris foundling hospitals, 52,500
died.

In Dublin, 19,420 children were received in ten years, of whom 17,440
died.

In Moscow, 37,000 children were received in twenty years, of whom 35,000
died.

         COMPARATIVE VIEW OF MOVEMENT OF POPULATION OF
-------------------------------------++------------------------
                     ENGLAND.        ||         FRANCE.
-----------+------------+------------++------------+-----------
           |    1860.   |   1861.    ||   1860.    |   1861.
-----------+------------+------------++------------+-----------
Population | 19,902,918 | 20,119,496 || 35,597,461 | 36,752,565
Marriages  |    170,156 |    163,706 ||    290,657 |    283,642
Births     |    684,018 |    693,406 ||    953,315 |    987,830
Deaths     |    422,721 |    435,114 ||    782,764 |    848,174
-----------+------------+------------++------------+-----------
           |        Percentage.      ||        Percentage.
-----------+------------+------------++------------+-----------
Marriages  |    .855    |    .814    ||    .794    |    .772
Births     |   3.437    |   3.461    ||   2.605    |   2.688
Deaths     |   2.124    |   2.163    ||   2.139    |   2.308
-----------+------------+------------++------------+-----------




ON HEARING A 'TRIO.


  'All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
    Whatever stirs this mortal frame,'
  Thrilled through the wildering harmonies
    That from the music came.

  All soothing sounds of nature blent,
    In wonderful accord,
  With pleadings, wild and passionate,
    From human hearts outpoured.

  The wailings of the world's sad heart,
    Oppressed with social wrongs,
  In mournful monotones were mixed
    With sounds of angel songs.

  The falling of a nation's tears
    O'er Freedom's prostrate form,
  Dew droppings sweet from starry spheres,
    Swift-rushing wings of storm.

  The voices of Time's children three--
    Past, Present, Future, blent
  In that wild 'trio's' harmony,
    Thrilled each fine instrument.

  And, at the sound, my soul awoke,
    And saw the dawning clear
  Of Freedom's coming day illume
    Earth's clouded atmosphere!




THE IDEAL MAN FOR UNIVERSAL IMITATION; OR, THE SINLESS PERFECTION OF
JESUS.

(A POSITIVE REPLY TO STRAUSS AND RENAN.)


The first impression which we receive from the life of Jesus, is that of
perfect innocency and sinlessness in the midst of a sinful world. He,
and He alone, carried the spotless purity of childhood untarnished
through his youth and manhood. Hence the lamb and the dove are his
appropriate symbols.

He was, indeed, tempted as we are, but he never yielded to temptation.
His sinlessness was at first only the _relative_ sinlessness of Adam
before the fall, which implies the necessity of trial and temptation,
and the peccability, or the possibility of the fall. Had he been endowed
with absolute impeccability from the start, he could not be a true man,
nor our model for imitation; his holiness, instead of being his own
self-acquired act and inherent merit, would be an accidental or outward
gift, and his temptation an unreal show. As a true man, Christ must have
been a free and responsible moral agent; freedom implies the power of
choice between good and evil, and the power of disobedience as well as
obedience, to the law of God. But here is the great fundamental
difference between the first and the second Adam: the first Adam lost
his innocence by the abuse of his freedom, and fell by his own act of
disobedience into the dire necessity of sin; while the second Adam was
innocent in the midst of sinners, and maintained his innocence against
all and every temptation. Christ's _relative_ sinlessness became more
and more _absolute_ sinlessness by his own moral act, or the right use
of his freedom in the perfect active and passive obedience to God. In
other words, Christ's original possibility of _not sinning_, which
includes the opposite possibility of sinning, but excludes the actuality
of sin, was unfolded into the _impossibility of sinning_, which _can_
not sin because it will not. This is the highest stage of freedom, where
it becomes identical with moral necessity, or absolute and unchangeable
self-determination for goodness and holiness. This is the freedom of God
and of the saints in heaven, with this difference: that the saints
attain that position by deliverance and salvation from sin and death,
while Christ acquired it by his own merit.

In vain we look through the entire biography of Jesus for a single stain
or the slightest shadow on his moral character. There never lived a more
harmless being on earth. He injured nobody, he took advantage of nobody,
he never spoke an improper word, he never committed a wrong action. He
exhibited a uniform elevation above the objects, opinions, pleasures,
and passions of this world, and disregard to riches, displays, fame, and
favor of men. 'No vice that has a name can be thought of in connection
with Jesus Christ. Ingenious malignity looks in vain for the faintest
trace of self-seeking in His motives; sensuality shrinks abashed from
His celestial purity; falsehood can leave no stain on Him who is
incarnate truth; injustice is forgotten beside His errorless equity; the
very possibility of avarice is swallowed up in His benignity and love;
the very idea of ambition is lost in His divine wisdom and divine
self-abnegation.'

The apparent outbreak of passion in the expulsion of the profane
traffickers from the temple is the only instance on the record of his
history which might be quoted against his freedom from the faults of
humanity. But the very effect which it produced, shows that, far from
being the outburst of passion, the expulsion was a judicial act of a
religious reformer, vindicating in just and holy zeal the honor of the
Lord of the temple. It was an exhibition, not of weakness, but of
dignity and majesty, which at once silenced the offenders, though
superior in number and physical strength, and made them submit to their
well-deserved punishment without a murmur, and in awe of the presence of
a superhuman power. The cursing of the unfruitful fig tree can still
less be urged, as it evidently was a significant symbolical act,
foreshadowing the fearful doom of the impenitent Jews in the destruction
of Jerusalem.

The perfect innocence of Jesus, however, is based not only, negatively,
on the absence of any recorded word or act to the contrary and his
absolute exemption from every trace of selfishness and worldliness, but,
positively, also on the unanimous testimony of John the Baptist and the
apostles, who bowed before the majesty of his character in unbounded
veneration, and declare him 'just,' 'holy,' and 'without sin.' It is
admitted, moreover, by his enemies: the heathen judge Pilate, and his
wife, representing, as it were, the Roman law and justice, when they
shuddered with apprehension and washed their hands to be clear of
innocent blood; by the rude Roman centurion, confessing under the cross,
in the name of the disinterested spectators, 'Truly, this was the Son of
God;' and by Judas himself, the immediate witness of his whole public
and private life, exclaiming in despair: 'I sinned in betraying innocent
blood.' Even dumb nature responded in mysterious sympathy, and the
beclouded heavens above and the shaking earth beneath united in paying
their unconscious tribute to the divine purity of their dying Lord.

The objection that the evangelists were either not fully informed
concerning the facts, or mistaken in their estimate of the character of
Christ, is of no avail. For, in addition to their testimony, we have his
own personal conviction of entire freedom from sin and unworthiness,
which leaves us only the choice between absolute moral purity, and
absolute hypocrisy; such hypocrisy would, indeed, be both the greatest
miracle and the greatest moral monstrosity on record.

The very fact that Christ came for the express purpose of saving
sinners, implies his own consciousness of personal freedom from guilt
and from all need of salvation. And this is the unmistakable impression
made upon us by his whole public life and conduct. He nowhere shows the
least concern for his own salvation, but knows himself in undisturbed
harmony with his Heavenly Father. While calling most earnestly upon all
others to repent, he stood in no need of conversion and regeneration,
but simply of the regular harmonious unfolding of his moral powers.
While directing all his followers, in the fourth petition of his model
prayer, to ask daily for the forgiveness of their sins as well as their
daily bread, he himself never asked God for pardon and forgiveness,
except in behalf of others. While freely conversing with sinners, he
always does so with the love and interest of a Saviour of sinners. This
is an undeniable historical fact, no matter how you may explain it. And
to remove every doubt, we have his open and fearless challenge to his
bitter enemies: 'Which of you convinceth me of sin?' In this question he
clearly exempts himself from the common fault and guilt of the race. In
the mouth of any other man, this question would at once betray either
the height of hypocrisy, or a degree of self-deception bordering on
madness itself, and would overthrow the very foundation of all human
goodness; while from the mouth of Jesus we instinctively receive it as
the triumphant self-vindication of one who stood far above the
possibility of successful impeachment or founded suspicion.

The assumption that Christ was a sinner, and knew himself such, although
he professed the contrary and made upon friends and enemies the
impression of spotless innocency, is the most monstrous deception that
can well be imagined. 'If Jesus was a sinner, he was conscious of sin,
as all sinners are, and therefore was a hypocrite in the whole fabric of
his character; realizing so much of divine beauty in it, maintaining the
show of such unfaltering harmony and celestial grace, and doing all this
with a mind confused and fouled by the affectations acted for true
virtues! Such an example of successful hypocrisy would be itself the
greatest miracle ever heard of in the world.'

It is an indisputable fact, then, both from his mission and uniform
conduct and his express declaration, that Christ knew himself free from
sin and guilt. The only rational explanation of this fact is, that
Christ _was_ no sinner. And this is readily conceded by the greatest
divines--even those who are by no means regarded as orthodox. The
admission of this fact implies the further admission that Christ
differed from all other men, not in degree only, but in _kind_. For
although we must utterly repudiate the pantheistic notion of the
necessity of sin, and must maintain that human nature, in itself
considered, is capable of sinlessness, that it was sinless, in fact,
before the fall, and that it will ultimately become sinless again by the
redemption of Christ; yet it is equally certain that human nature, in
its _present_ condition, is not sinless, and never has been since the
fall, except in the single case of Christ, and that for this very reason
Christ's sinlessness can only be explained on the ground of such an
extraordinary indwelling of God in him as never took place in any other
human being, before or after. The entire Christian world, Greek, Latin,
and Protestant, agree in the scriptural doctrine of the universal
depravity of human nature since the apostasy of the first Adam. Even the
modern and unscriptural dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, of the
freedom of the Virgin Mary from hereditary as well as actual sin, can
hardly be quoted as an exception; for her sinlessness is explained in
the papal decision of 1854 by the assumption of a miraculous
interposition of divine favor, and the reflex influence of the merits of
her Son. There is not a single mortal who must not charge himself with
some defect or folly, and man's consciousness of sin and unworthiness
deepens just in proportion to his self-knowledge and progress in virtue
and goodness. There is not a single saint who has not experienced a new
birth from above, and an actual conversion from sin to holiness, and who
does not feel daily the need of repentance and divine forgiveness. The
very greatest and best of them, as St. Paul and St. Augustine, have
passed through a violent struggle and a radical revolution, and their
whole theological system and religious experience rested on the felt
antithesis of sin and grace.

But in Christ we have the one solitary and absolute exception to this
universal rule, an individual thinking like a man, feeling like a man,
speaking, acting, suffering, and dying like a man, surrounded by sinners
in every direction, with the keenest sense of sin and the deepest
sympathy with sinners, commencing his public ministry with the call:
'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;' yet never touched in the
least by the contamination of the world, never putting himself in the
attitude of a sinner before God, never shedding a tear of repentance,
never regretting a single thought, word, or deed, never needing or
asking divine pardon, never concerned about the salvation of his own
soul, and boldly facing all his present and future enemies in the
absolute certainty of his spotless purity before God and man!


HIS ABSOLUTE HOLINESS.

A sinless Saviour surrounded by a sinful world, is an astounding fact
indeed, a sublime moral miracle in history. But this freedom from the
common sin and guilt of the race is, after all, only the negative side
of his character, which rises in magnitude as we contemplate the
positive side, namely, absolute moral and religious perfection. It is
universally admitted, even by deists and rationalists, that Christ
taught the purest and sublimest system of ethics, which throws all the
moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the
shade. The Sermon on the Mount alone is worth infinitely more than all
that Confucius, Socrates, and Seneca ever said or wrote on duty and
virtue. But the difference is still greater if we come to the more
difficult task of practice. While the wisest and best of men never live
up even to their own imperfect standard of excellency, Christ fully
carried out his perfect doctrine in his life and conduct. He both _was_
and _did_ that which he _taught_; he preached his own life, and lived
his own doctrine. He is the living incarnation of the ideal standard of
virtue and holiness, and is universally acknowledged to be the highest
model for all that is pure and good and noble in the sight of God and
man.

We find Christ moving in all ordinary and essential relations of life,
as a son, a brother, a friend, a citizen, a teacher, at home and in
public. We find him among all classes of society, with sinners and
saints, with the poor and the wealthy, with the sick and the healthy,
with little children, grown men and women, with plain fishermen and
learned scribes, with despised publicans and honored members of the
sanhedrim, with friends and foes, with admiring disciples and bitter
persecutors; now with an individual, as Nicodemus or the woman of
Samaria, now in the familiar circle of the twelve, now in the crowds of
the people. We find him in all situations, in the synagogue and the
temple, at home and on journeys, in villages and the city of Jerusalem,
in the desert and on the mountain, along the banks of Jordan and the
shores of the Galilean Sea, at the wedding feast and the grave, in
Gethsemane, in the judgment hall, and on Calvary. In all these various
relations, conditions, and situations, as they are crowded within the
few years of his public ministry, he sustains the same consistent
character throughout, without ever exposing himself to censure. He
fulfils every duty to God, to man, and to himself, without a single
violation of duty, and exhibits an entire conformity to the law, in the
spirit as well as the letter. His life is one unbroken service of God,
in active and passive obedience to His holy will--one grand act of
absolute love to God and love to man, of personal self-consecration to
the glory of his Heavenly Father and the salvation of a fallen race. In
the language of the people who were 'beyond measure astonished at his
works,' we must say, the more we study his life: 'He did all things
well.' In a solemn appeal to his Heavenly Father in the parting hour, he
could proclaim to the world that he had glorified him in the earth, and
finished the work he gave him to do.


UNITY OF VIRTUE AND PIETY.

The first feature in this singular perfection of Christ's character
which strikes our attention, is the perfect harmony of virtue and piety,
of morality and religion, or of love to God and love to man. He is more
than moral, and more than pious; he is holy in the strict and full sense
of the word. There is a divine beauty and perfection in his character,
the mere contemplation of which brings purity, brightness, peace, and
bliss to the soul.

Piety was the soul of his morality, and lifted it far above the sphere
of legality or conformity to law. Every moral action in him proceeded
from supreme love to God, and looked to the temporal and eternal
welfare of man. The groundwork of his character was the most intimate
and uninterrupted union and communion with his Heavenly Father, from
whom he derived, to whom he referred, everything. Already in his twelfth
year he found his life element and delight in the things of his Father.
It was his daily food to do the will of Him that sent him, and to finish
his work. To Him he looked in prayer before every important act, and
taught his disciples that model prayer which, for simplicity, brevity,
comprehensiveness, and suitableness, can never be surpassed. He often
retired to a mountain or solitary place for prayer, and spent days and
nights in this blessed privilege. But so constant and uniform was his
habit of communion with the great Jehovah, that he kept it up amid the
multitude, and converted the crowded city into a religious retreat. His
self-consciousness was at every moment conditioned, animated, and
impregnated by the consciousness of God. Even when he exclaimed, in
indescribable anguish of body and soul, and in vicarious sympathy with
the misery of the whole race: 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me!' the bond of union was not broken, or even loosened, but simply
obscured for a moment, as the sun by a passing cloud, and the enjoyment,
not the possession of it, was withdrawn from his feelings; for
immediately afterward he commended his soul into the hands of his
Father, and triumphantly exclaimed: 'It is finished!' So strong and
complete was this moral union of Christ with God at every moment of his
life, that he fully realized for the first time the idea of religion,
whose object is to bring about such a union, and that he is the personal
representative and living embodiment of Christianity as the true and
absolute religion.

With all this, the piety of Christ was no inactive contemplation, or
retiring mysticism and selfish enjoyment; but thoroughly practical, ever
active in works of charity, and tending to regenerate and transform the
world into the kingdom of God. 'He went about doing good.' His life is
an unbroken series of good works and virtues in active exercise, all
proceeding from the same union with God, animated by the same love, and
tending to the same end, the glory of God and the happiness of man.


COMPLETENESS AND UNIVERSALITY OF HIS CHARACTER.

The next feature we would notice, is the completeness or pleromatic
fulness of the moral and religious character of Christ. While all other
men represent at best but broken fragments of the idea of goodness and
holiness, he exhausts the list of virtues and graces which may be named.
His soul is a moral paradise full of charming flowers, shining in every
variety of color, under the blue dome of the skies, drinking in the
refreshing dews of heaven and the warming beams of the sun, sending its
sweet fragrance around, and filling the beholder with rapturous delight.

History exhibits to us many men of commanding and comprehensive genius,
who stand at the head of their age and nation, and furnish material for
the intellectual activity of whole generations and periods, until they
are succeeded by other heroes at a new epoch of development. As rivers
generally spring from high mountains, so knowledge and moral power rises
and is ever nourished from the heights of humanity. Abraham, the father
of the faithful; Moses, the lawgiver of the Jewish theocracy; Elijah,
among the prophets; Peter, Paul, and John among the apostles; Athanasius
and Chrysostom among the Greek, Augustine and Jerome among the Latin
fathers; Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus among the schoolmen; Leo I. and
Gregory VII. among the popes; Luther and Calvin in the line of
Protestant reformers and divines; Socrates, the patriarch of the
ancient schools of philosophy; Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton,
Göthe and Schiller in the history of poetry, among the various nations
to which they belong; Raphael among painters; Charlemagne, the first and
greatest in the long succession of German emperors; Napoleon, towering
high above all the generals of his training; Washington, the wisest and
best as well as the first of American presidents, and the purest and
noblest type of the American character, may be mentioned as examples of
those representative heroes in history who anticipate and concentrate
the powers of whole generations. But they never represent universal, but
only sectional humanity; they are identified with a particular people or
age, and partake of its errors, superstitions, and failings, almost in
the same proportion in which they exhibit its virtues. Moses, though
revered by the followers of three religions, was a Jew in views,
feelings, habits, and position, as well as by parentage; Socrates never
rose above the Greek type of character; Luther was a German in all his
virtues and faults, and can only be properly understood as a German;
Calvin, though an exile from his native land, remained a Frenchman; and
Washington can be to no nation on earth what he is to the American.
Their influence may and does extend far beyond their respective national
horizons, yet they can never furnish a universal model for imitation. We
regard them as extraordinary but fallible and imperfect men, whom it
would be very unsafe to follow in every view and line of conduct. Very
frequently the failings and vices of great men are in proportion to
their virtues and powers, as the tallest bodies cast the longest
shadows. Even the three leading apostles are models of piety and virtue
only as far as they reflect the image of their Heavenly Master, and it
is only with this limitation that Paul exhorts his spiritual children:
'Be ye followers of me even as I am also of Christ.'

What these representative men are to particular ages or nations, or
sects or particular schools of science and art, Christ was to the human
family at large in its relation to God. He and he alone is the universal
type for universal imitation. Hence he could, without the least
impropriety, or suspicion of vanity, call upon all men to forsake all
things and to follow him. He stands above the limitations of age,
school, sect, nation, and race. Although a Jew according to the flesh,
there is nothing Jewish about him which is not at the same time of
general significance. The particular and national in him is always duly
subordinated to the general and human. Still less was he ever identified
with a party or sect. He was equally removed from the stiff formalism of
the Pharisees, the loose liberalism of the Sadducees, and the inactive
mysticism of the Essenes. He rose above all the prejudices, bigotries,
and superstitions of his age and people, which exert their power even
upon the strongest and otherwise most liberal minds.

Witness his freedom in the observance of the Sabbath, by which he
offended the scrupulous literalists, while he fulfilled, as the Lord of
the Sabbath, the true spirit of the law in its universal and abiding
significance; his reply to the disciples, when they traced the
misfortune of the blind man to a particular sin of the subject or his
parents; his liberal conduct toward the Samaritans, as contrasted with
the inveterate hatred and prejudices of the Jews, including his own
disciples at the time; and his charitable judgment of the slaughtered
Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, and the
eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them. 'Think ye,'
he addressed the children of superstition, 'that these men were sinners
above all the Galileans, and above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem,
because they suffered such things? I tell you, nay: but except ye
repent, ye shall all likewise perish.'

All the words and all the actions of Christ, while they were fully
adapted to the occasions which called them forth, retain their force and
applicability undiminished to all ages and nations. He is the same
unsurpassed and unsurpassable model of every virtue to the Christians of
every generation, every clime, every sect, every nation, and every race.


HARMONY OF ALL GRACES AND VIRTUES.

It must not be supposed that a complete catalogue of virtues would do
justice to the character under consideration. It is not only the
completeness, but still more the even proportion and perfect harmony of
virtues and graces apparently opposite and contradictory, which
distinguishes him specifically from all other men. This feature has
struck with singular force all the more eminent writers on the subject.
It gives the finish to that beauty of holiness which is the sublimest
picture presented to our contemplation.

He was free from all one-sidedness, which constitutes the weakness as
well as the strength of the most eminent men. He was not a man of one
idea, nor of one virtue, towering above all the rest. The moral forces
were so well tempered and moderated by each other, that none was unduly
prominent, none carried to excess, none alloyed by the kindred failing.
Each was checked and completed by the opposite grace. His character
never lost its even balance and happy equilibrium, never needed
modification or re-adjustment. It was thoroughly sound, and uniformly
consistent from the beginning to the end.

We cannot properly attribute to him any one temperament. He was neither
sanguine, like Peter, nor choleric, like Paul, nor melancholy, like
John, nor phlegmatic, as James is sometimes, though incorrectly,
represented to have been; but he combined the vivacity without the
levity of the sanguine, the vigor without the violence of the choleric,
the seriousness without the austerity of the melancholic, the calmness
without the apathy of the phlegmatic temperament.

He was equally far removed from the excesses of the legalist, the
pietist, the ascetic, and the enthusiast. With the strictest obedience
to the law, he moved in the element of freedom; with all the fervor of
the enthusiast, he was always calm, sober, and self-possessed;
notwithstanding his complete and uniform elevation above the affairs of
this world, he freely mingled with society, male and female, dined with
publicans and sinners, sat at the wedding feast, shed tears at the
sepulchre, delighted in God's nature, admired the beauties of the
lilies, and used the occupations of the husbandman for the illustration
of the sublimest truths of the kingdom of heaven. His virtue was
healthy, manly, vigorous, yet genial, social, and truly human, never
austere and repulsive, always in full sympathy with innocent joy and
pleasure. He, the purest and holiest of men, provided wine for the
wedding feast, introduced the fatted calf and music and dancing into the
picture of welcome of the prodigal son to his father's house, and even
provoked the sneer of his adversaries that he 'came eating and
drinking,' and was a 'glutton' and a 'winebibber.'

His zeal never degenerated into passion or rashness, his constancy into
obstinacy, his benevolence into weakness, nor hi

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