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The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 4, April, 1852

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Title: The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 4, April, 1852

Author: Various


        
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Language: English

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Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections.)







THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

Of Literature, Art, and Science.

Vol. V. NEW-YORK, APRIL 1, 1852. No. IV.




WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS, LL.D.

[Illustration]


A steadily growing reputation for almost twenty years, justified by the
gradually increasing evidence of those latent, exhaustless,
ever-unfolding energies which belong to genius, has inwoven the name of
Simms with the literature of America, and made it part of the heirloom
which our age will give to posterity. Asking and desiring nothing to
which he could not prove himself justly entitled, he has wrested a
reputation from difficulty and obstacle, and conquered an honorable
acknowledgment from opposition and indifference. Even if we had not
proofs of genius in the treasury of thought and imagination constituted
by his writings, still the nobility of the example of energy,
perseverance, and high-toned hopefulness, which he has given, would
deserve a grateful homage.

William Gilmore Simms is the second, and only surviving, of three
brothers, sons of William Gilmore Simms, and Harriet Ann Augusta
Singleton. His father was of a Scotch-Irish family, and his mother of a
Virginia stock, her grandparents having removed to South Carolina long
before the Revolution, in which they took an active part on the Whig
side. He was born on the 17th of April, 1806. His mother died when he
was an infant. His father, failing in business as a merchant, removed
first to Tennessee, and then to Mississippi. While in Tennessee he
volunteered and held a commission in the army of Jackson (in Coffee's
brigade of mounted men), which scourged the Creeks and Seminoles after
the massacre of Fort Mims. Our author, left to the care of a
grandmother, remained in Charleston, where he received an education
which circumstances rendered exceedingly limited. He was denied a
classical training, but such characters stand little in need of the
ordinary aids of the schoolmaster, and, with indomitable application, he
has not only stored his mind with the richest literature, but has
received an unsolicited tribute to his diligence and acquisitions, in
the degree of Doctor of Laws, conferred upon him by the respectable
University of Alabama.

At first it was designed that he should study medicine, but his
inclination led him to the law. He was admitted to the bar of South
Carolina when twenty-one, practised for a brief period, and became part
proprietor of a daily newspaper, which, taking ground against
nullification, ruined him--swallowing up a small maternal property, and
involving him in a heavy debt which hung upon and embarrassed him for a
long time after. In 1832, he first visited the North, where he published
Atalantis. Martin Faber followed in 1834, and periodically the long
catalogue of his subsequent performances.

There are few writers who have exhibited such versatility of powers,
combined with vigor, originality of copious and independent ideas, and
that faculty of condensation which frequently by a single pregnant line
suggests an expansive train of reflection. As a poet, he unites high
imaginative powers with metaphysical thought--by which we mean that
large discourse of reason which generalizes, and which seizes the
universal, and perceives its relations to individual phenomena of nature
and psychology. His poems abound in appropriate, felicitous, and
original similes. His keen and fresh perception of nature, furnishes him
with beautiful pictures, the truthfulness and clearness of which are
admirably presented in the lucid language with which they are painted,
and, in his expression of deep personal feelings, we find a noble union
of sad emotion and manliness of tone. He draws from a full treasury of
varied experience, active thought, close observation, just and original
reflection, and a spirit which has drank deeply and lovingly from the
gushing founts of nature. His inspiration is often kindled by the sunny
and luxuriant scenery of the beautiful region to which he was born, and
besides the freshness and glow which this imparts to his descriptive
poetry, it makes him emphatically the poet of the South. Not only has he
sung her peculiar natural aspects with the appreciation of a poet and
the feeling of a son, but he has a claim to her gratitude for having
enshrined in melodious verse her ancient and fading traditions.

Mr. Simms commenced writing verses at a very early period. At eight
years of age he rhymed the achievements of the American navy in the last
war with Great Britain. At fifteen, he was a scribbler of fugitive verse
for the newspapers, and before he was twenty-one he had published two
collections of miscellaneous poetry, which his better taste and prudence
subsequently induced him to suppress. Two other volumes of poems
followed, in a more ambitious vein, which are also now beyond the reach
of the collector, and were issued while he was engaged in the
occupations of a newspaper editor and a student and practitioner of law.
These volumes were followed by Atalantis, a poem which has been highly
praised by the best critics of our time.

As a prose writer, his vigorous, copious, and original ideas are clothed
in a manly, flexible, pure, and lucid style. His first production,
Martin Faber, succeeded Atalantis. It was the initial of a series of
tales, which we may describe as of the metaphysical and passionate or
moral imaginative class. These, with two or more volumes of shorter
tales, are numerous, and perhaps among the most original of his
writings. They comprise Martin Faber and other Tales, Castle Dismal,
Confessions, or the Blind Heart, Carle Werner and other Tales, and the
Wigwam and Cabin. There are other compositions belonging to this
category, and, it may be, not inferior in merit to any of these, which
have appeared in periodicals and annuals, but have not yet been
collected by their author.

The first novel of Mr. Simms belonged to our border and domestic
history. This was Guy Rivers; and to the same class he has contributed
largely, in Richard Hurdis, Border Beagles, Beauchampe, Helen Halsey,
and other productions. In historical romance, he has written The
Yemassee, the Damsel of Darien, Pelayo, and Count Julian, each in two
volumes. The scenes of the two last are laid in Europe. His romances
founded on our revolutionary history, are The Partisan, Mellichampe, and
The Kinsmen. In biography and history, he is the author of The Life of
Marion; The Life of Captain John Smith, founder of Virginia; a History
of South Carolina; a Geography of the same State; a Life of Bayard; and
a Life of General Greene.

It is impossible to enumerate accurately his poetical productions, as
many, published in periodicals, have never been printed together; but
the collection of his poems now in course of publication at Charleston,
will supply a desideratum to the lovers of genuine American letters and
art. Atalantis, Southern Passages and Pictures, Donna Florida, Grouped
Thoughts and Scattered Fancies, Areytos, Lays of the Palmetto, The
Cassique of Accube and other Poems, Norman Maurice, and The City of the
Silent, constituting distinct volumes, are, however, well known.

The orations of Mr. Simms, which have been published, comprise one
delivered before the Erosophic Society of the Alabama University,
entitled, The Social Principle--the true source of National Permanence;
another before the town council and citizens of Aiken, South Carolina,
on the Fourth of July, 1844, entitled, The Sources of American
Independence; and one delivered before literary societies in Georgia,
entitled Self-development.

As a writer of criticism, Mr. Simms is known by numerous articles
contributed to periodicals; by a review of Mrs. Trolloppe, in the
American Quarterly, and of Miss Martineau in the Southern Literary
Messenger (both subsequently republished in pamphlets, and received with
general approval), as well as by many others of equal merit--a selection
from which, wholly devoted to American topics, has been published in two
volumes, under the title of Views and Reviews in American History and
Fiction.

Scarcely a production of Mr. Simms has been unmarked by a cordial
reception from the best literary journals; and the praise of the London
_Metropolitan_ and _Examiner_--the former when under the conduct of
Thomas Campbell, the latter of Albany Fonblanque--was generously
bestowed, especially on _Atalantis_; of which the _Metropolitan_ said,
"What has the most disappointed us is, that it is so thoroughly English:
the construction, the imagery, and, with a very few exceptions, the
idioms of the language, are altogether founded on our own scholastic and
classical models;" and Fonblanque, in reviewing a tale by Simms,
entitled, _Murder will Out_, said, "But all we intended to say about the
originality displayed in the volume has been forgotten in the interest
of the last story of the book, _Murder will Out_. This is an American
ghost story, and, without exception, the best we ever read. Within our
limits, we could not, with any justice, describe the whole course of its
incident, and it is in that, perhaps, its most marvellous effect lies.
It is the _rationale_ of the whole matter of such appearances, given
with fine philosophy and masterly interest. We never read any thing more
perfect or more consummately told."

But the testimony of the critical press, or even of the successful sale
of an author's works, is not so suggestive of merit as the fact that his
productions have entered into the popular mind; and this tribute Mr.
Simms has received in the fact that in regions which he has identified
with legends created for them by his own genius, localities of his
different incidents are pointed out with a sincere belief in their
historical verity. The dramatic powers manifested in his novels, have
been still more largely displayed in his _Norman Maurice_, a play of
singular originality, in design, character, and execution, the nervous
language and felicitous turns of expression in which remind us of the
best of the old dramatists. We have heretofore expressed in the
_International_ a conviction that Norman Maurice is the best American
drama that has yet been published--the most American, the most dramatic,
the most original.

As a member of the Legislature of his native State, and on various
public occasions, Mr. Simms has vindicated a title to fame as an orator;
and a recent nomination for the presidency of the South Carolina
College, although he declined being a candidate, is an evidence of the
impression which his ability, information, and high character have
produced on his fellow citizens.

His intense intellectual activity, united with a habitually reflective
and philosophical mode of thought, and unwearied laboriousness, enable
him to accomplish an almost incredible amount of literary labor. The
catalogue of his works which is subjoined, gives but an inadequate idea
of what he has really performed; for multifarious productions, many of
them of the highest order in their respective classes, are scattered in
the pages of periodicals, or still in manuscript; while the unceasing
demands on his pen, with his arduous editorship, prevent him from
accomplishing many fruitful designs, whose inception he has hinted in
various ways. To his intellectual gifts, he unites a brave, generous
nature, a kindly, and strong heart, a genial, impulsive, yet faithful
and determined disposition, warm affection and friendship, a spirit to
do and to endure, and a soul as much elevated above the petty envies and
jealousies which too often deform the _genus irritabile_, as it is in
large sympathy with the beautiful, the true, the just--with humanity and
with nature. P.

       *       *       *       *       *

_CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS BY MR. SIMMS._

     1. Lyrical and other Poems: 18mo, pp. 208, Charleston, Ellis
     & Noufvillle, 1827.

     2. Early Lays: 12mo. pp. 108, Charleston, A. E. Miller,
     1827.

     3. The Vision of Cortes, and other Poems: Charleston, J. S.
     Burgess.

     4. The Tri-Color, or Three Days of Blood in Paris, 1830:
     Charleston.

     5. Atalantis, a Story of the Sea: New-York, J. & J. Harper,
     1832.

     6. Martin Faber, a Tale: New-York, J. & J. Harper, 1833.

     7. The Book of My Lady, a Melange: Phila., Key & Biddle,
     1833.

     8. Guy Rivers, a Tale of Georgia: 2 vols. 12mo., New-York,
     Harper & Brothers, 1834.

     9. The Yemassee, a Romance of Carolina: 2 vols., New-York,
     Harper & Brothers, 1835.

     10. The Partisan, a Tale of the Revolution: 2 vols.,
     New-York, Harper & Brothers, 1836.

     11. Mellichampe, a Legend of the Santee: 2 vols., New-York,
     Harper & Brothers, 1836.

     12. Martin Faber, and other Tales: a new edition, 2 vols.,
     New-York, Harper & Brothers, 1836.

     13. Pelayo, a Story of the Goth: 2 vols., New-York, Harper &
     Brothers, 1838.

     14. Carl Werner, an Imaginative Story, with other Tales of
     the Imagination: 2 vols., New-York, George Adlard, 1838.

     15. Richard Hurdis, or the Avenger of Blood, a Tale of
     Alabama: 2 vols., Philadelphia, Carey & Hart, 1838.

     16. Southern Passages and Pictures: 1 vol., New-York, G.
     Adlard, 1839.

     17. The Damsel of Darien: 2 vols., Philadelphia, Lea &
     Blanchard.

     18. Border Beagles, a Tale of Mississippi: 2 vols.,
     Philadelphia, Carey & Hart, 1840.

     19. The Kinsman, or the Black Riders of the Congaree: 2
     vols., Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard, 1841.

     20. Confession, or the Blind Heart: 2 vols., Philadelphia,
     Lea & Blanchard.

     21. Beauchampe, or the Kentucky Tragedy, a Tale of Passion:
     2 vols., Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard, 1842.

     22. History of South Carolina: 1 vol. 12mo., Charleston,
     Babcock & Co.

     23. Geography of South Carolina: 1 vol. 12mo., Charleston,
     Babcock.

     24. Life of Francis Marion: 1 vol., New-York, J. & H. G.
     Langley.

     25. Life of Capt. John Smith, the Founder of Virginia: 1
     vol., New-York, Langley.

     26. Count Julian: 2 vols. 8vo., New-York, Taylor & Co.,
     1845.

     27. The Wigwam and the Cabin: 2 vols., New-York, Wiley &
     Putnam.

     28. Views and Reviews in American History, Literature and
     Art: 2 vols., New-York, Wiley & Putnam, 1846.

     29. Life of Chev. Bayard: 1 vol., New-York, Harper &
     Brothers, 1848.

     30. Donna Florida: 1 vol. 18mo., Charleston, Burgess &
     James, 1848.

     31. Grouped Thoughts and Scattered Fancies, a Collection of
     Sonnets: 1 vol. 18mo., Richmond, McFarlane.

     32. Slavery in the South: 1 vol 8vo., Richmond, McFarlane,
     1831.

     33. Araytos, or the Songs of the South: 1 vol, 12mo.,
     Charleston, John Russell, 1846.

     34. Lays of the Palmetto, a Tribute to the South Carolina
     Regiment in the War with Mexico: 12mo., Charleston, John
     Russell, 1848.

     35. Atalantis, a Story of the Sea, with the Eye and Wing
     (Poems chiefly Imaginative): 1 vol. 12mo., Carey & Hart,
     1848.

     36. Life of Nathaniel Greene: 12 mo., New-York, Coolidge &
     Bro., 1849.

     37. Supplement to Writings of Shakspeare, Edited with Notes:
     (First collected edition) 1 vol. 8vo., New-York, Coolidge &
     Brothers.

     38. The Social Principle, the true Secret of National
     Permanence, an Oration: 1842.

     39. The Sources of American Independence, an Oration: 1844.

     40. Self Development, an Oration: 1847.

     41. Castle Dismal, a Novelette: 1 vol. 12mo., Burgess &
     Stringer.

     42. Helen Halsey, 1 vol, 12mo., New-York, Burgess &
     Stringer.

     43. Katherine Walton, or the Rebel of Dorchester, a Romance
     of the Revolution: A. Hart, Philadelphia, 1851.

     44. The Golden Christmas; a Chronicle of St. John's,
     Berkeley: Charleston, Walker & Richards, 1852.




THE PALACES OF TRADE.

[Illustration: PETERSON & HUMPHREY'S CARPET HOUSE.]


It were well if not only William B. Astor, Stephen Whitney, the heirs of
Peter Stuyvesant (of blessed memory), and others who own real estate in
this city, and likewise all mayors, common councilmen, and others in
authority, were endued with more taste, with a higher regard to the
general interest, and a juster sense of the matters that pertain to a
good administration, so that it might be said in after times that the
beneficence of the Creator (who in things natural has done more for ours
than for any other city), had been seconded by the pious wisdom of the
creature, and Manhattan pointed to as in all respects the metropolis of
the world. Why not? If the very stones in the streets of London, Paris,
and Vienna, were turned to pure gold, they would not purchase for those
cities advantages that should be compared with such as we already
possessed by our beautiful island--a giant mosaic, set in emerald,
studding the bosom of Nature.

Whatever may be said by our excellent neighbor, the minister of the
dingy-looking red brick meeting-house round the corner, it is not less a
work of piety to create any work of beauty--a beautiful house, or shop,
or poem, for example--than to teach a class in the Sunday school,--which
doctrine may be incidentally fortified from Jonathan Edwards's Theory of
True Virtue, and more directly from the best philosophies of later
years. It is ordered that the dignity of human nature shall in a great
degree be dependent upon a sympathetic association with what is
admirable. It was Hazlitt, we believe,--certainly it was some one who
appreciatingly recognized the highest earthly ministry,--who said it was
impossible to entertain an angry feeling in the presence of a lovely
woman's portrait,--which, done fitly, is the highest accomplishment of
art. Whatever is beautiful or sublime has the same purifying and
ennobling tendency. The beggars do shrewdly who sit in _front_ of
Stewart's. The same person who would give a shilling there, would as
likely as not steal a penny from the hat of the blind man round the
corner, where those detestable red bricks so outrage every principle
known to a builder fit to handle the trowel. There is nothing more
offensive than this custom of making of different materials the various
fronts of the same edifice. It may be allowable to construct the _rear_
of a house, or a side that is to be built against speedily, of a cheaper
stone; but to make the face upon one street of marble, and the face
around the corner of brick, as in the case of Stewart's store, and the
Society Library, is an outrage as ridiculous as it would be to make
alternate gores of a woman's skirt of Petersham and Brussels lace.
Bricks are very respectable; we say nothing in their dispraise; but to
any man of taste, an edifice is much more beautiful built entirely of
bricks than it is with but one of two exposed parts of marble; and let
us say to the affluent merchant to whom New-York is indebted for the
structure just mentioned, that until he paints his bricks on
Reade-street, so that they correspond as nearly as may be with his
fronts on Chambers-street and Broadway, his store will indicate but a
shabby gentility, an unnatural association of tow cloth and satin,
copper and silver, poverty and riches, which should blush in the face of
the most inferior exhibition of consistency. With the abolition of this
strong contrast, the observer who goes down Broadway will contemplate
with delight the classical air of this most imposing Palace of Trade
that has yet been erected in the cities of the United States. How easily
Broadway, for the money that its piles of brick and stone will have cost
in ten years, might be made the most splendid street in Christendom, by
a mere observance of the principles of taste and unity!

[Illustration: PRINCIPAL HALL OF PETERSON & HUMPHREY'S CARPET HOUSE.]

In a little hamlet of five or fifteen hundred inhabitants, great
buildings are out of place. In a city like ours, every thing should be
in keeping, and the predominant principle should be the _gigantesque_.
If the lot-holders from Bowling Green to the New Park would but consider
the matter, with intelligent reference not only to the glory of the city
but to their own profit; if each separate square were built as if it
were _one_ edifice (as, without any blending of property, it might be
very easily), though these squares were all of plain brick, and no more
costly than the well-known row of stores in William-street, what an
imposing spectacle they would present! But if one block were like the
Astor House, the next like Stewart's (except only the Reade street
front), the next a row of free-stone, the next one of brick, the next
one of granite,--here a Gothic, there a Byzantine, then a Corinthian,
then, if you please, as plain a front as that of the New-York
Hotel--with here and there a church, library, lyceum, or art gallery, of
a style less suitable for shops or dwellings,--and there would be
nothing in the world to compare with Broadway. But this running of
democracy into the ground, this whim of every vulgar fellow who owns a
front of twenty feet, that he must illustrate his independence by
building on it in his own peculiar way, is baulking Providence, and for
the full cost of magnificence confining us to tricksy meanness. Two or
three years ago rose the chaste and simple front of 349 Broadway, in a
row of decayed brick shops, which, it was hoped would give place to an
entire range in imitation of the initial structure. But since then, the
owner of a couple of adjoining lots--a Connecticut man probably--has
caused to be put up two stores of a different style, not of half the
value of continuations of the less expensive edifice which they join. If
instead of this patchwork, now planted here for half a century, there
had been an extension of uniform stores from corner to corner--though
either Beck's or the building we have mentioned had been the model--the
single splendid edifice would have been a pride and boast of the city,
and the separate stores would have been of much greater value than the
best can be now. It is as revolting (and much more vexatious, for its
publicity) as the worst case of Saxon and Congo amalgamation. A
magnificent pile has been erected in Wall-street on the corner west of
the Exchange; but some person, ignorant, it is to be hoped for his
soul's sake, of the true obligations of morality applicable in the case,
has built, at the same time, at the same cost, of the same height, and
without any conceivable justifying reason, an utterly incongruous basket
of offices, as if for the special purpose of vexing the eyes of men who
have instincts of decency.

[Illustration: THOMPSON'S SALOON.]

The imposing edifice on the corner of Broadway and White-street, of
which a view is presented on a preceding page, is one of the
improvements of the city made during the last year. In the great
carpet-house of Peterson & Humphrey are offered the productions of the
best looms in the world, in a variety and profusion probably unequalled
elsewhere in America. The principal saloon is like a street, and it is
almost always thronged with people.

Not far from the store of Peterson & Humphrey--at 359 Broadway--is the
new and beautiful building erected by the well-known confectioners,
Thompson & Son. This was opened to the public but a few weeks ago, and
it is the most splendid establishment of the kind in America. The
several sales during the last three quarters of a century of the ground
upon which it is built, illustrate the rapid increase of value in real
estate in this city during that period. The lot formed a part of the De
Peyster farm, and was called pasture ground. On the death of Major De
Peyster, the farm was divided, and this lot, then thirty-two feet wide,
was on the 13th of December, 1784, sold for L100 New-York currency; in
1789 it was sold for L150; in 1805 for $1500; in 1820 for $4000; in 1825
for $11,000; and in 1850 it was bought by Mr. Thompson for $60,000, and
he has expended $50,000 in the erection of the building with which it is
now occupied, and which is twenty-eight feet wide, one hundred and
ninety feet deep, and sixty-two feet high. It is built in a very rich
style, of Paterson stone, similar to that used in Trinity church. The
architects were Field and Correja, and the decorations in fresco are by
Rossini. Mr. Thompson, senior, has been a quarter of a century in the
business for which he has erected this new edifice, and in which he has
accumulated his fortune. In 1820 there were but one or two houses of
the kind in New-York, and these were of limited capacity and in every
way inferior to Taylor's, Weller's, or Thompson's, of the present day.
These are among the most luxurious and comfortable resorts for ladies
and gentlemen who visit the city but for a part of a day, or who have
not time or inclination to go to houses in distant parts of the town, to
lunch or dine, or for those who come down Broadway to do shopping, and
need a resting place, or enjoy an exchange for gossip.

[Illustration: PRINCIPAL SALOON AT THOMPSON'S.]

The next of the Palaces of Trade recently erected in the city, for which
we have now room for any description, is the great silk house of the
well-known merchants, Bowen & McNamee, constituting one of the most
attractive features of the lower part of Broadway. It is built of white
marble, and the style of architecture is Elizabethan, and peculiarly
elaborate and effective. The building is thirty-seven and a half feet
wide, one hundred and forty-seven deep, and four stories high; and each
story consists of a single unbroken hall, lined with the richest
English, German, French, Italian and Indian goods. The architect was Mr.
Joseph C. Wells, and his plans were used in all the minutest details of
ornament and furniture. It is regarded, we believe, as the greatest
triumph of its kind of which our commercial metropolis has to boast;
indeed in magnificence of design, beauty of execution, and perfect
adaptation to its purposes, there is nothing superior to it, probably,
among the buildings devoted to trade in all the world.

It was said by Jefferson that the genius of Architecture would never
make her abode in America; but the new edifices in New-York, of which we
have described some prominent specimens, may lead others to a different
conclusion. And we are of opinion that the progress of this country, in
the last quarter of a century, has been less conspicuous in any thing
else than in this noble art, little as it is now understood, much as it
is still disregarded. In some recent speculations on the subject, the
_Tribune_ observes:

"There is no American architecture, unless the Lowell factories may be
regarded as such. Our churches are small and imperfect imitations of a
miscellaneous Gothic, and our exchanges, colleges, lyceums, banks and
custom-houses affect the Greek, with as much propriety as our merchants,
professors and clerks would indue themselves with the Athenian costume.
There is no hope of the churches and banks. They are nothing if not
Gothic and Grecian. We shall not discuss the probable character of our
architecture. It is clear that New-York will build brick houses, and in
blocks. But beauty costs no more than ugliness, and although every man
has the right to build a house of that appearance which best pleases
himself, yet every citizen is bound to have at heart the beauty of the
city. He cannot escape it. His pride compels it; and therefore every man
who builds a house ought to consult, to some extent, the general effect
of his building, and as he would not paint it blue or black, he should
no less consider its form than its color.

"Cheapness and convenience will, of course, be the first principles in
our building, beauty and picturesqueness will be secondary. The point is
to combine these without much compromising either. At present our cities
are the unhandsomest in the world. The street architecture is monotonous
and heavy. The houses, compared with those of other capitals, are low,
but they are not light. Paris and the Italian cities have always a
festal air. Vienna is brilliant. Even grim old Rome seems waiting to be
gay. You do not immediately see the reason of this. The houses are high,
the streets narrow, shutting out the sky, and the swarms of passengers
do not explain the charm. But if you look narrowly you will see that the
difference of effect produced, arises, not so much from any essential
architectural superiority; because the mass of building in any city is
of about the same general character--but that it is due to the "broken
and various lines which every where meet the eye, relieving the heavy
gravity of the smooth fronts which with us are entirely unrelieved.
Sometimes, indeed, a street is built with regard to its architectural
beauty, as the _Rue de Rivoli_, in Paris, of which the harmony is
uniformity and not monotony. One side of this street is the garden of
the Tuileries, and the other is like a prolonged palace front. The
northern side of the _Boulevards des Italiens_ is truly picturesque, but
for directly the contrary reason--the infinite variety of line
presented.

[Illustration: BOWEN & M'cNAMME'S SILK HOUSE.]

"It is to these lines of gallery and balcony which break and lighten the
mass of building, that we must look for a hint of very feasible
improvement. If any city reader wishes an illustration of this fact, let
him observe how the iron verandah upon the Collamore House redeems the
otherwise bald, dead weight of that building. Then let him cast his eye
up Broadway to the long front of Niblo's Hotel--unrelieved and
blank--and consider the cheerful effect of a continuous gallery along
each story, or separate balconies at every window, as on the beautiful
_Chiaja_ at Naples. On the other hand let him ask his Metropolitan pride
how it would like a street of such edifices as the City Assembly Rooms
on the site of Tattersalls? So, also, in dwelling-houses, the balcony
which is now confined to the parlor floor might occasionally be carried
up through the other stories, and this, in narrow streets, with a
peculiarly happy effect, as is seen in such streets of foreign cities,
where the style, if elaborated in lattices and bay-windows, becomes
romantic and poetic.

"Greater variety in the mouldings of doors and windows, and in the
designs of porticoes, might easily be obtained, with an infinite gain of
grace to the city. The Broadway Theatre illustrates this, for it is
certainly one of the most impressive buildings upon that street. The
question, it must be remembered, is not one of art, so much as of
picturesqueness and effect. The galleries and balconies, &c., are only a
subterfuge. If an edifice is intrinsically beautiful and
well-proportioned, it claims no such accessories, as Stewart's building,
which, although a simple square mass, yet from the admirable proportion,
rather than the material, is as stately and imposing as many a foreign
palace. But where there is no regard--as is the usual case--to the
dignity or propriety of form, there we must take advantage of an
alleviation, and obtain lightness, gayety, and variety as we best can.

"There is, however, one point peculiar to American, or more properly to
New-York building, which calls for the determined and constant censure
of every man who values human life. We mean the flimsy style of building
arising from the frenzied haste with which we do every thing. This has
long been our reproach. Scarcely a year passes that we do not record
some disaster of this kind, often involving a melancholy waste of life.
'_Is it strong?_' is a question constantly asked of a new building, and
a question which, in any civilized community, it should be as
unnecessary to ask, as whether the public wells are poisoned.

"We know many who will not pass under buildings now going up or recently
erected. A friend walked down Broadway one morning, while a building
was in course of erection on the site of the present Waverly House, and
returning in the afternoon found that it had all tumbled down. Our
readers have not forgotten the frightful fall of a block in Twenty-first
street last spring. One is curious to know if nothing is ever to be
done--if the city means to take no security for the lives of the
citizens in this matter. It would be very easy to prevent this flimsy
building, and even were it very difficult it should be effectually done.
This, too, is a matter in which every citizen is interested.

"Stores and Warehouses have their own proprieties. Warehouses properly
avoid even the _appearance_ of lightness. They are devoted to heavy
storage. No life, save of bales and boxes,--and not of the contents of
bales and boxes--is associated with them. Security is the first and only
thing we demand of them, provided the structures are not painfully
disproportioned. So with Prisons. In fact, in architecture, the ornament
must depend upon the use, must be developed from the use. For the same
reason that balconies become a dwelling-house they disfigure a
warehouse. Stores again should partake, in their appearance, of the
intrinsic character and associations of shops. When shop-keeping becomes
royal, it should be royally housed, as in Stewart's building.

"The theme unravels itself endlessly. It is one of those common
interests of constantly recurring importance which it is always worth
while to talk about. Because there is no American architecture, there is
no occasion for making our buildings mere piles of brick and mortar,
punctured here and there for light--and because we are a commonsense,
go-ahead people, there is no need that our houses should offend the eye;
but--for that reason--great need that they should please it.

"Lorenzo of Florence was the magnificent, not because he was rich, but
because he knew the use of riches."

Despite all drawbacks, our city is growing wonderfully in splendor as
well as in size; and perhaps no previous season has promised so many
improvements in Broadway, uptown, or by the different parks, as the
present. Surpassing already any metropolis in the world in the number
and magnificence of our hotels, we are to have in occupancy within a few
weeks the splendid St. Nicholas and the gigantic Metropolitan, besides
half a dozen of inferior pretensions, which will yet surpass the best in
other cities; and new churches, and galleries, and public halls, are
talked of, in number and capacity, as in beauty, sufficient for all the
possible contingencies of a great capital, increasing in wealth, and
power, and beauty, with such unexampled rapidity. The power and
magnificence of New-York have been built up by her merchants, whose
private enterprise, public spirit, and intelligence and taste, are
especially conspicuous in the new edifices devoted to trade, of which we
have given descriptions.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF BOWEN & M'cNAMEE'S SILK HOUSE.]




HERMAN HOOKER, D.D.

[Illustration]


Herman Hooker is one of the most able and peculiar writers in religion
and religious philosophy now living in America. Indeed, we are inclined
to doubt whether the Episcopal Church in the United States embraces
another author whose name will be as long or as respectfully remembered
in the Christian world. If he is not mentioned in "every day's report,"
it is because he adds to genius an unobtrusive modesty, as rare as are
the admirable qualities with which in his case it is associated.

Dr. Hooker is a native of Poultney, Rutland county, Vermont. He was
graduated at Middlebury College in 1825, and soon after entered upon the
study of divinity at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Princeton.
He subsequently took orders in the Episcopal Church, and acquired
considerable reputation as a preacher; but at the end of a few years ill
health compelled him to abandon the pulpit, and he has since resided in
Philadelphia. The distinction of Doctor in Divinity was conferred upon
him three or four years ago by Union College.

Dr. Hooker published in 1835 _The Portion of the Soul, or Thoughts on
its Attributes and Tendencies as Indications of its Destiny_; in the
same year _Popular Infidelity_, which in later editions is entitled,
_The Philosophy of Unbelief, in Morals and Religion, as discernible in
the Faith and Character of Men_; in 1846, _The Uses of Adversity and the
Provisions of Consolation_; in 1848, _The Christian Life a Fight of
Faith_; and soon after, _Thoughts and Maxims_, a book worthy of
Rochefoucauld for point, of Herbert for piety, and Bacon for wisdom.

Upon meeting with qualities like Dr. Hooker's in one not known among the
popular authors of the country, we are prompted to say with Wordsworth,
"Strongest minds are often those of whom the world hears least," or in
the bolder words of Henry Taylor, "The world knows nothing of its
greatest men." It is surprising that a voice like his should have
awakened no echoes. He deserves a place among the first religious
writers of the age: for he has been faithful to the great mission laid
upon the priesthood, which is, not to labor upon "forms, modes, shows,"
of devotion, nor to dispute of systems, schools, and theories of faith,
but to be witnesses of a law above the world, and prophets of a
consolation that is not of mortality. When we take up one of his books,
we could imagine that we had fallen upon one of those great masters in
divinity, who in the seventeenth century illustrated the field of moral
relations and affections with a power and splendor peculiar to that age.
These great writers possessed an apprehension of spiritual subjects,
sensitive, yet profoundly rational; a vision on which the rays of a
higher consciousness streamed in lustre so transcending that the light
of earth seemed like a shadow thrown across its course; which differed
from inspiration in degree rather than in kind. The resemblance of Dr.
Hooker to these great authors is obviously not an affectation. It is not
confined to style, but reaches to the constitution and tone of the mind.
His productions indicate the same temper of deep thoughtfulness upon
man's estate and destiny; the same union of a personal sympathy with a
judicial superiority, which suffers in all the human weaknesses which it
detects and condemns; the same earnest sense of their subjects as
realities, clear, present and palpable; the same quick feeling, toned
into dignity by pervading, essential wisdom; and that direct cognizance
of the substances of religion, which does not deduce its great moral
truths as consequences of an assumed theory, but seizes them as primary
elements that verify themselves and draw the theories after them by a
natural connection. Fretted and wearied with metaphysical theologies;
vexed by the self-illustration, the want of candor, the fierceness, the
ungenial and unsatisfying hollowness of popular religionism, we turn
with a grateful relief to this soothing and impressive system which
speculates not, wrangles not, reviles not, but, while it every where
testifies of the degradation we are under, touches our spirits to power
and purity by the constant exhortation of "sursem corda!"

The style of Dr. Hooker abounds in spontaneous interest and unexpected
graces. It seems to result immediately from his character, and to be an
inseparable part of it. It is free from all the commonplaces of fine
writing; has nothing of the formal contrivance of the rhetorician, the
balanced period, the pointed turn, the recurring cadence. Yet the charms
of a genuine simplicity, of a directness almost quaint, of primitive
gravity, and calm, native good sense, renders it singularly agreeable to
a cultivated taste. Undoubtedly there is in spiritual sensibility
something akin to genius, and like it tending to utterance in language
significant and beautiful. We meet at times in Dr. Hooker's writings
with phrases of the rarest felicity and of great delicacy and
expressiveness; in which we know not whether most to admire the vigor
which has conceived so striking a thought, or the refinement of art
which has fixed it in words so beautifully exact.




SUNSET.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE.

BY R. S. CHILTON


    See with what pomp the golden sun goes down
    Behind yon purple mountain!--far and wide
    His mellow radiance streams; the steep hill-side
    Is clothed with splendor, and the distant town
    Wears his last glory like a blazing crown.
    We cannot see him now, and yet his fire
    Still lingers on the city's tallest spire,--
    Chased slowly upward by the gathering frown
    Of the approaching darkness. God of light!
    Thou leavest us in gloom,--but other eyes
    Watch thy faint coming now in distant skies:--
    There drooping flowers spring up, and streams grow bright,
    And singing birds plume their moist wings for flight,
    And stars grow pale and vanish from the sight!




NEW-YORK SOCIETY, BY THE LAST ENGLISH TRAVELLER.


The Hon. HENRY COPE has lately published in London a _Ride across the
Rocky Mountains, to California_--a book abounding in striking adventure
and description, and illustrating in its general tone the spirit of an
English gentleman. Its temper and good sense may be inferred from the
following specimen, on the never-failing subject of Society in New-York:

     "Any observations I might be tempted to make on New-York, or
     even, I am inclined to think, on any of the civilized parts
     of the states, would probably be neither novel nor
     interesting. I am not ambitious of circulating more
     'American notes,' nor do I care to follow in the footsteps
     of Mrs. Trollope. Enough has been written to illustrate the
     singularities of second-rate American society. Good society
     is the same all over the world. General remarks I hold to be
     fair play. But to indulge in personalities is a poor return
     for hospitality; and those Americans who are most willing to
     be civil to foreigners, receive little enough encouragement
     to extend that civility, when, as is too often the case,
     those very foreigners afterwards attempt to amuse their
     friends on one side of the Atlantic, at the expense of a
     breach of good faith to their friends on the other. Every
     one has his prejudices: I freely confess I have mine. I like
     London better than New-York, but it does not, therefore,
     follow that I dislike New-York, or Americans either. I have
     a great respect for almost every thing American--I do not
     mean to say that I have any affection for a thorough bred
     Yankee, in our acceptation of the term; far from it, I think
     him the most offensive of all bipeds in the known world.
     Yankee snobs too I hate--such as infest Broadway, for
     instance, genuine specimens of the genus, according to the
     highest authorities. The worst of New-York is its
     superabundance of snobbism. The snob here is a snob "_sui
     generis_" quite beyond the capacities of the old world.
     There is no mistaking him. He is cut out after the most
     approved pattern. If he differs from the original, or
     whatever that might have been, it must be in a surpassing
     excellence of snobbism which does credit to the progressive
     order of things. Tuft-hunting is a sport he pursues with
     delight to himself, but without remorse or pity for his
     victim. It is necessary for the object of his persecutions
     to be constantly on the alert. He is frequently seen
     prowling about in white kid gloves, patent leather boots,
     and Parisian hat. Whenever this is the case, he must be
     considered dangerous and bloody-minded, for in all
     probability he is meditating a call. Often he has been known
     to run his prey to ground in the Opera or other public
     places, and there to worry them within less than an inch of
     their good temper. Offensive as he is, generally speaking,
     he sometimes acts on the defensive; for, not very well
     convinced of his own infallibility, he is particularly
     susceptible of affronts, to which his assumed consequence
     not unfrequently makes him liable. Baits are often proffered
     by these swell-catchers to lure the unwary. Such as an
     introduction to the nymphs of the _corps de ballet_; the
     _entre_ to all the theatres, private gambling-houses, &c.,
     &c. But beware of such seductions."




EMILIE DE COIGNY.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

BY RICHARD B. KIMBALL.

[Illustration: EMILIE DE COIGNY AND THE STUDENTS.]


A morning at _La Morgue_ is hardly as agreeable as a day at the Louvre,
yet it is not without a certain fascination. Let but the influence once
fasten on you, and it will be very hard to shake it off. At one period I
confess it was to me almost irresistible, and I shudder sometimes when I
recollect how punctually every morning at the same hour I took my place
on one side of that fearful room--not for the purpose of inspecting the
bodies of the suicides (I rarely turned to look at them), but to regard
the countenances of the anxious ones who came to realize the worst, or
to take hope till the morrow. Literally there are no spectators in that
dismal solitude--if we except an occasional visit from the foreign
sight-hunter, who comes in charge of a valet, and passes in and out and
away to the "next place." In London or in New-York, an establishment so
public would be thronged with persons eager to gratify a prurient
curiosity. Not so in Paris. The French possess a sensibility so
refined--it may be called a species of delicacy--that they cannot enjoy
such a spectacle, can scarcely endure it: and if the tourist will bring
the subject to mind, he will recollect that while his guide pointed out
the entrance, he himself declined going into the apartment.

I know not how it happened, but, as I have remarked, the habit of
visiting this spot every morning, was fastened on me. Never shall I
forget some of the faces I encountered there. One image is impressed on
me indelibly; it is that of a woman of middle age, with a very pale
face, and having the appearance of one struggling with some wearing
sorrow, who for two weeks in succession came in daily, and walking
painfully up to the partition, looked intently through the lattice work,
and turned and went away. I never before felt so strong an impulse to
accost a person, without yielding to it. Indeed I had resolved to speak
to her on the morning of the fifteenth day, but she did not come and I
never saw her again. Who was she? did her fears prove groundless? what
became of her? An old man I remember to have seen--a very old man,
feeble and decrepit, who came once only, looked at the dead, shook his
head despairingly, and tottered away: I know not if he discovered the
object of his search. Young girls who had quarrelled with their lovers,
and lovers who in moments of jealousy had been cruel to their
sweethearts, would look anxiously in, and generally with relieved
spirits pass out, almost smilingly, resolving no doubt to make all up
before night should again tempt to suicide. Another incident I cannot
omit, although it is impossible to recall it without a dreadful pang.
One morning a pretty fair-haired child, not more than four years old,
came running in, and clasping the wooden bar with one hand, pointed with
her little finger through the opening, and with a tone of innocent
curiosity said, "There's mamma!" The same moment two or three rushed in,
and seizing the unconscious orphan, carried her hastily away. She had
wandered after some of the family, and heard enough as they came from
the fatal place to lead her to suppose her lost mamma was there, and so
she ran to see. What could be the circumstances so untoward, that even
the child could not bind the mother to life?

A long chapter might be written of the occurrences at my singular
rendezvous, but I had no design, when I began, of alluding to them, and
I will only remark here that, leaving Paris some time after for the
south of Europe, I got rid of this nightmare impulse, and although I
returned the following season I never again entered _La Morgue_....

It was in the spring when I came back. The foliage was deep and green,
and in the _Jardin des Plants_, which was near my quarters, the various
flowers and shrubs and trees filled the atmosphere with fragrance, and
tempted us to frequent strolls along its avenues.

"Come with me at six o'clock," said my friend Partridge, "and you shall
see an apparition."

"Where?"

"I will not tell you, till we are on the Spot."

"I will go, but hope the rendezvous will be an agreeable one." Just
then, I know not why, I thought of _La Morgue_, and shuddered.

"The most agreeable in all Paris."

This conversation took place in the Hospital _de Notre Dame de Pitie_,
just as we were finishing our morning occupation of following the
celebrated LOUIS through the fever wards. Partridge was my room-mate,
and generally a fellow traveller, but I had left him behind in my late
tour, to devote himself more entirely to his medical pursuits, while I,
to my shame be it spoken, began to tire of the lectures of Broussais,
and the teachings of Majendie; and, even now that I had returned, was
tempted every day to slip across to the _Rue Vivienne_, where were
staying some fascinating strangers, whose acquaintance I had made _en
route_, and who had begun to engross me too much for any steady progress
in my studies; at least so thought Partridge, who shook his head and
said it would not do for a student to cross the Seine--he ought to stay
in his own _quartier_; that I had had too much recreation as it was--I
should forget the little I know, and as for the _Rue Vivienne_, and the
_Boulevard des Italiens_, the _Rue de la Paix_, &c., I must break off
all such associations or be read out of the community. I was glad,
therefore, to appease my friend by consenting to go with him--I knew not
where--and see an apparition.

Accordingly a few minutes before six, we started together on the strange
adventure. We passed down the street which leads to the _Jardin des
Plants_, and entering through the main avenue, walked nearly its entire
length, when my companion turned into a narrow path, almost concealed by
the foliage, which brought us into a small open space. Here he motioned
me to stop, and pointing to a rustic bench we both sat down. At the same
moment, the chimes from a neighboring chapel pealed the hour of six, and
while I was still listening to them, my friend seized my arm and
exclaimed in a whisper, "Look!" I cast my eyes across to the other side,
and beheld a figure advancing slowly toward us. It was that of a young
girl, in appearance scarcely seventeen. Her form was light and graceful,
simply draped in a loose robe of white muslin. On her head she wore a
straw hat, in which were placed conspicuously a bunch of fresh spring
blossoms. The gloves and mantelet seemed to have been forgotten. Her
demeanor was one of gentleness and modesty. She cast her eyes around as
if expecting to meet a companion, and then quietly sat down on a rude
seat not very far from where we were. I remained for ten minutes
patiently waiting a demonstration of some kind, either from my companion
or the strange appearance near us. But now I began to yield to the
influence of the scene. The sun was declining, and cast a mellow and
saddening light over the various objects around. Gradually as I gazed on
the motionless form of the maiden, I felt impressed with awe, which was
heightened by the solemn manner of my friend, who appeared as much under
the charm as myself. At length I whispered to him, "For Heaven's sake
tell me what does all this mean?" A low "Hush," with an expressive
gesture to enforce quiet, was the only response. I made no further
attempt to interrupt the silence, but sat spell-bound, always looking at
the figure, until I was positively afraid to take my eyes from it. Again
the chimes began their peal for the completion of the last quarter. It
was seven o'clock. The moment they ceased, the girl rose from her seat,
glanced slowly, sadly, earnestly around, pressed her hand across her
eyes, and proceeded in the path toward us. We both stood up as she came
near; my friend lifted his hat from his head in the most respectful
manner as the maiden passed, while she in return gazed vacantly on him,
and walking slowly by, disappeared in the direction opposite that from
which she came. We did not remain, but proceeded with a quickened pace
to our lodgings. Arrived there, I asked for an explanation of what we
had witnessed.

"Do you remember," said Partridge, "Alfred Dervilly?"

"Perfectly well. He was your room-mate after I left you last summer, and
twenty times I have been on the point of inquiring for him, but
something at each moment prevented. Where is he?"

"Dead."

"Dead! How, when?"

"Killed by the apparition yonder."

"Nonsense! Do not talk any more in riddles. Out with what you have to
say about Dervilly and the apparition, as you call it, and this
afternoon's adventure."

"_Bien_, let us light the candles, fasten the doors, close the windows,
and take a fresh cigar."

This was soon done, and accommodating himself to his seat in a
comfortable manner, my companion commenced:

"Yes--you recollect Dervilly of course, and must remember that before
you left us we used to joke him about a fair unknown, who was engaging
so much of his time."

"I had forgotten--but I now recall the circumstance; I remember, I was
walking with him near the 'Garden,' and he made some trivial excuse to
leave me and turn into it. You afterwards told me he had an appointment
there, but I thought little of it."

"Well, I will give you the story as I now have it, quite complete, for I
was partly in Dervilly's confidence, and was with him during his illness
and when he died. He was born in Louisiana, of French parents, who,
after spending some years in America, returned to their native country.
He spoke English fluently, as you know, and when you deserted me we
became very intimate. Then it was I learned how deeply the poor fellow
was in love, actually _in love_. No mere transitory emotion--no
momentary passion for an adventure--no affair of gallantry, was this:
his very being was absorbed--he became wholly changed--it seemed as if
he had bound himself, body and soul, to some spirit of another world. I
never saw, never read, of so engrossing a feeling. At last he confessed
to me. He said he had met, a few months before, at the house of a former
friend of his family, who had been of considerable consequence under the
previous reign, but was now reduced, and lived in obscurity, a creature
of most exquisite shape and feature, who proved on acquaintance to be
possessed with a loveliness of character, a modesty, an irresistible
charm of manner, which took him captive. Dervilly became completely
enamored with Emilie de Coigny. This he discovered to be her name, but
on inquiring of the persons at whose house he first met her, he could
get no satisfactory information; indeed a very singular reserve, as poor
Dervilly thought, was maintained whenever her name was mentioned, so
that he could not, in fact, glean the slightest particulars about her.
This did not prevent him from confessing his passion, for the girl came
frequently to this house, and their acquaintance ripened very fast.
Emilie de Coigny felt for the first time that her heart was occupied,
and all that restlessness of spirit caused by the unconscious longing of
the affections laid at rest, and Alfred Dervilly became the sole object
of her thoughts and of her hopes, if hopes she had. All this, I repeat,
Emilie de Coigny felt; but, singular to say, she hesitated to confess
what was in her heart, even when her lover passionately entreated; it
seemed as if something stood between her and happiness, to which she
feared to allude. It is not easy to deceive the _heart_, and Dervilly
knew, despite the apparent calmness of Emilie, despite her sometimes
cold demeanor, that he was loved in return. But one thing troubled and
perplexed him; one thing filled him with vague fears and apprehensions,
and checked the ecstatic feelings which were ready to overflow his
heart. A mystery hung about this beautiful girl; she claimed no one for
her friend, she spoke of no acquaintances, she never alluded to parents,
or to brother or sister, or other relation; she made no mention of her
home. Besides, a strange sadness, strange in one so young, seemed to
possess her, and to pervade her spirit, and while contemplating that
imperturbable countenance, Dervilly at times felt an awe come over him
for which he could not account, and which for moments subdued even the
force of his passion. It appeared to him then, as if he were under a
spell; but presently, when a gentle smile illumined her face, her eyes
would be turned on him so lovingly, and her look express, as plainly as
look could, that all her trust was in him and in him only. Dervilly
would forget every thing in the raptures of such moments; indeed in his
ecstasy he would be driven almost to madness; for of all characters,"
continued Partridge, "hers was the one to set a youth of ardent
temperament absolutely crazy. So matters advanced, or rather I should
say, so time advanced, while affairs did not. It was at this period,"
said my friend, "that Dervilly gave me his confidence. Our intimacy had
gradually increased from the hour of your leaving us, and at length he
unbosomed himself completely. My first impression, after hearing his
story, was that the pretty mademoiselle was no more nor less than an
arrant flirt; that her charms were magnified to a lover's vision, and
that the mystery which attended her would turn out to be no mystery at
all--so I treated the case lightly, laughed at his description, called
Mademoiselle Emilie a coquette, and added, a little seriously, that it
was a shame for her to trifle with so warm-hearted a fellow. You know
how grating are the disparaging remarks of a friend about one in whom we
confess to ourselves a deeper interest than we care to acknowledge. What
I had said was kindly intended, but it touched Dervilly to the quick. 'I
did not think you capable,' he exclaimed, 'of thus making light of my
confidence--I find I was deceived--you are at liberty to make as much
sport of me as you will. I have learned a lesson which I shall take care
to remember.' 'You must not speak so,' I said,' I really was not
serious. I take back every word. I would not wound you for the
world--forgive me.' Then we shook hands, and Dervilly assured me I had
misjudged his Emilie; he would ask her permission to introduce me, and I
should see for myself. The permission was never accorded, although
Dervilly urged to Mademoiselle de Coigny, that I was his best and almost
his only friend. She was unyielding; she would not see me. Meanwhile his
passion increased with every impediment--yet he gained no assurance of
its being returned, save what his heart whispered to him. In the
_Jardin des Plants_ they were accustomed to meet daily, when the weather
was propitious--so much Emilie yielded to her lover--and spend an hour
together; and if they could not meet in the open air, they repaired to
the house where they first became acquainted. On one occasion Dervilly,
unable to bear suspense any longer, seized her hand, and passionately
pledged himself, his existence, his soul, his all to Emilie de Coigny;
he swore his fate was indissolubly linked with hers, that their destiny
could not be severed, and he demanded from her an avowal of the truth of
what he said. The violence of Dervilly alarmed her; she drew her hand
from his, and looking him steadily in the face, inquired:

"'What has prompted Monsieur to this sudden show of feeling?'

"'Do you ask what?' exclaimed Dervilly; 'it is _you_. Are you not
answered? How can I resist what is inevitable? how curb myself when
_all_ hold is lost? Are you then so cruel? _Dieu merci!_ be not so
deadly calm--it means the worst for me--be angry, vexed, any thing, but
look not on me with that glazed look--it maddens me.'

"'Monsieur Dervilly,' said Emilie, without change of tone or manner,
'what you have said, if it means any thing, means every thing; it means
all a maiden longs to hear from lips that are beloved. To respond, I
must be assured how far your judgment will confirm what now seems to be
a mere passionate ebullition. Excuse me,' she continued, as Dervilly
made an impatient gesture; 'I have heard and read of similar
protestations which had little true significance.'

"'I accept any conditions,' interrupted the young man, 'and will bless
you from the depths of my soul for naming any, even the hardest; yes,
the hardest--I care not what, so that they are from you.' The girl
regarded Dervilly as if she would search his very nature. 'You are
silent--speak; I can no longer contain myself,' exclaimed he, wildly.

"'Monsieur,' once more observed Mademoiselle de Coigny, 'you know not to
whom you address yourself; should I tell you, you would retract all
those strong words, and hasten to escape in the least humiliating way
possible.'

"'Never. Heaven is my witness, never! I care not who you are; I will
never seek to know; when you choose, you shall inform me. You need never
tell me. I say, I care not, so that you are mine.'

"'And you will be _mine_ for ever?' said the girl, slowly.

"'For ever.'

"'I am yours--yours,' and Emilie de Coigny sunk into the arms of her
lover.

"In one instant the fortunes of Dervilly were changed--from despair he
was raised to a condition of delicious joy. His raptures were so
unnatural, that I cautioned him against such violent indulgence of them.
But he was too excited to listen to me. Indeed, I feared he would lose
his reason. It seemed as if more than ordinary passion had possession of
him, and that it was inspired by something unearthly; and, without ever
having seen the girl, I began to attribute to her a supernatural
influence. Besides, Dervilly confessed he knew as little of his
affianced as before, and that occasionally the same icy look would be
turned on him, as it were quite inadvertently, and hold him spell-bound
with horror, while it still served to increase his frenzy beyond all
bounds. Then, her endearing smiles, her truthful and confiding love, her
absolute reliance, her entire dependence, on Dervilly, made him so
frantic with happiness, that he lost all capacity to reason.

"The summer passed away, but Dervilly had learned nothing more of the
history of his betrothed; she still avoided the subject, and, when he
alluded to it, she would beg him to desist, and hide her face in his
bosom and weep.

"Strange thoughts at last found their way into his brain, fearful
surmises began to disturb his peace, and, when absent from Emilie, he
would resolve at their next interview, to insist on knowing all. But
when the time came, and he met, turned on him, the open and innocent
look of the maiden's clear eyes, which expressed so earnestly how
entirely her soul rested on his, all courage failed him, and he could
not go on.....

       *       *       *       *       *

"One evening," continued Partridge, after a pause, and with the tone of
a person approaching an unpleasant subject, "One evening, after
dinner--I think it was the first week in September--when the day had
been excessively sultry, I strolled into the large garden, which you
recollect belonged to our old lodgings in the _Rue d' Enfer_ and after a
while sat down in the summer-house. Presently little Sophie Lecomte came
running out to me, and I remained amusing myself with the child's
prattle till it was dark. The moon shone brightly, and I did not
perceive how late it was, until reminded of the hour by finding that
Sophie was fast asleep in my lap. I rose and carried her into the house,
and went quietly to my room. I seated myself near the window without
lighting the candles, feeling that the glare would not just then
harmonize with my feelings. The truth is, I was thinking of you, and of
that romantic passage across the Apennines, and of the fair stranger,
and so forth. I sat by the window, the moonlight streaming across the
room, over the top of the old chapel, the windows and doors open, and
every thing still except the monotonous chirping of a single cricket,
louder than that of any French cricket I ever heard before, and which
sung the very same song I used to hear when a boy from under the large
kitchen hearthstone at home. I began to feel a little lonely, and so
started up, and stamped with my feet in order to silence the solitary
insect, or arouse the rest of the family, but the old one only sung the
harder, and the others would not wake, and I sat down again, and half
closed my eyes in order to lose myself, if I could, in some pleasant
revery. My eyes _were_ half closed, the perfume from the graperies
filled the room, and had a pleasant effect upon my senses, and thus I
began to forget where I was and what was about me. Presently I heard a
rapid unsteady step along the corridor; it grew more rapid and more
unsteady; I raised my head, and at that instant Dervilly hurried into
the room. 'I knew it--I knew it,' he exclaimed, wildly; 'one of the
sirens sent from hell! I have sold myself, body and soul!--I am
lost--lost. Ah! I knew it--I knew it.' Shocked and surprised as I was by
such an extraordinary scene, I did not forget that Dervilly was of a
most nervous and excitable temperament. I rose, took hold of him kindly,
and asked him what had happened. As I placed my hand on his head, I
perceived that the veins were distended, and that the carotid and
temporal arteries were throbbing violently. I hastened to strike a
light, while he continued to repeat nearly the words I have just
mentioned, in a wild and incoherent manner. I could now see his
countenance, and it seemed as if the destroyer had been ravaging it. His
cap was gone. His hair, which was usually so neatly arranged, was tossed
over his face in twisted locks; his eyes were fixed, and bloodshot, and
sparkling.

"'My dear friend, you are ill--you are excited--let me bring you to your
bed' (we occupied the large room in common, with a small bedroom for
each, leading from it); with this I took his arm, and gently urged him
to his apartment.

"'Not there, not there!' he cried vehemently; 'Have I not lain _there_,
night after night, thinking of her?--have I not dreamed there happy
dreams, and seen dear delightful visions? Not there--never--never
again!'

"'You shall not,' I said, endeavoring to humor him; 'you shall lie in my
bed, and I will watch by you till you are better.'

"The young man burst into tears. This action evidently relieved him, and
made him more rational, for he took my arm and I assisted him to bed,
and tried to soothe him; but he soon relapsed into an excited fever.
Shortly after, he called me to him, and throwing his arms closely around
me, exclaimed, 'Partridge, we were born in the same land; I implore you,
by that one common tie, not to leave me an instant; I am a doomed
wretch; but save me, save me from the fiend, as long as it is possible.'

"I now became very much alarmed. My first impulse was to administer an
opiate; but the case seemed so critical that I determined to send at
once for Louis, whose sympathy for the students, you know, is universal.
I called to young Stabb, who occupied the next room, and he set off
immediately. After a few minutes Dervilly dozed a little; and then he
started up, and gazed around, as if attempting to discern some object.

"'Do you wish for any thing?' I said. He took no notice of my question,
but continued to glance piercingly in every direction.

"'What do you see?' I asked.

"'_La Morgue!_' he exclaimed, with a shudder, and pointing into the
other room--'_La Morgue!_'

"He continued to gaze madly in the same way, still holding his arm
outstretched, while his whole frame seemed convulsed with terror; but I
could gain no clue to the catastrophe which had fallen so terribly on
the ill-fated sufferer.

"It seemed to me an age--it really was but an hour--before Stabb
returned. He was accompanied by Louis. It was the great Louis whose
skill as a physician, and especially in the treatment of fevers, is
world renowned. I had 'followed' him during the whole of your absence;
had become, as a matter of course, one of his warmest admirers; and was
fortunate enough to secure his friendship. He also knew Dervilly.
Hearing them enter, I stepped into the principal room, to meet him.
'_Mon Dieu! Monsieur Partridge, quel est le mal?_' said Louis, with
great feeling. 'Monsieur Dervilly was at the hospital in the morning,
and I met him as late as six o'clock this afternoon, passing into the
_Jardin des Plants_.'

"'God only knows,' I replied. 'Something horrible has suddenly befallen
him.' And I gave an account of what had occurred since Dervilly came to
his rooms. Louis was silent for a moment, and then began to question me
very minutely about him, while Stabb went in to keep watch over the poor
fellow.--Among other things, I mentioned his love affair; and believing
it to be my duty to do so, I told Louis, briefly, all Dervilly had
confided to me. He listened with great attention, and after I had
concluded, we passed into the little chamber where Dervilly lay. He
started up with violence as we came in, as if a severe paroxysm were
about to follow. He stared wildly on seeing Louis, and seizing his hand,
he exclaimed, 'Ah, _mon Professeur_, you are a very great man, and you
are very kind to come to me, but your knowledge avails nothing here,'
touching his forehead. Suddenly he extended his finger, and cried again,
'_La Morgue--La Morgue._'

"'What see you in _La Morgue_?' said Louis, tenderly.

"'See? _Her, her!_' screamed Dervilly.

"'Who, _mon enfant_? said the Professor, very gently.

"'Who, but the fiend--the fiend! She has my soul--lost, lost for ever.'

"'You should not speak so harshly of Mademoiselle de Coigny,' continued
Louis, in a soothing tone.

"'Pronounce not that name: a bait, a trap, a wile of Satan; repeat it,
and I will tear you piecemeal!' cried the maniac.

"'But, _mon pauvre enfant_, what does she at La Morgue?'

"'_She?_ the fiend--the fiend--sits perched on the top of the wooden
rail all night, watching--watching--and when some of the corpses show
signs of life, sails down, and sits upon, and strangles them. Keep me
away from there. Ah, _mon Professeur_, do not let me go there, to lie on
the board, and have her bending over me, eyeing me, watching me, ready
to strangle me. There again! keep those glazed eyes away--keep them
away, I say--'

"All this time Louis was making a minute examination of Dervilly's
symptoms.

"The latter presently seemed aware of what he was doing, for he
exclaimed, 'The usual symptoms, _eh, mon Professeur_; strongly marked,
_n'est ce pas_? Act promptly and decisively, as you say sometimes. Let
blood--let blood--_appliquez des sangsues_--ha, ha, ha! that's what we
call bleeding, both general and local, ha, ha, ha! then come on with
your cold applications: ice, ice, a mountain of ice piled round about
the head! follow up with cathartics, refrigerant diaphoretics, after
depleting blister!--say you not so?--blisters to the nape of the
neck--blisters behind the ears--shave the scalp--I forgot that--shave
the scalp--strange I had not thought of it,--and the hair. _Mon
Professeur_, I know you will think me very foolish, but--save the
hair--I shan't have another growth--save the hair. Where was I?--ah, the
blisters--that will pretty nearly do for me--keep every thing quiet,
very quiet--after a while, digitalis and nitre--digitalis and nitre,
_mon Professeur_--have I not said my lesson well?'

"Louis stood perfectly still, regarding the poor fellow with a mournful
interest. As Dervilly paused, he took off his spectacles, and wiped his
eyes. 'Ah, Monsieur Louis, you talk very eloquently about medical
science, but I baffle you; I am sure of it. Call the class
together--_Ah, Notre Dame de Pitie_--call the class together; _voila la
clinique_. Thus being thus, it must necessarily be thus. That's a wise
saying, _mon Professeur_. Call the class together; propound why of
necessity you can do nothing? because of a necessity nothing can be
done. Call the class together; be active--vigorously antiphlogistic;
time is precious--the patient in danger. Purgatives--I doubt as to
purgatives. What think you?' And Dervilly paused, and cast on Louis a
look so naturally inquiring, that the latter replied, as it were,
involuntarily, '_Moi aussi je doute._' And it was so; with all his
genius, all his knowledge, all his experience, and all his skill, the
great practitioner stood, while minute after minute was lost, apparently
hesitating what to do. At last he called me into the other room. 'Is it
not possible to find Mademoiselle de Coigny?' he inquired.

"'I have no means of knowing where to seek her,' I replied. At the same
time I remembered she was in the habit of visiting the house in which
Dervilly first met her, and fortunately knew the street and number.

"'Let her be sent for instantly,' said Louis. 'Do not go yourself; you
may be of service here.' Accordingly I gave Stabb the direction, and
instructed him to procure Mademoiselle de Coigny's address, if possible;
but if he were unsuccessful in this, to communicate the fact of
Dervilly's alarming illness, and beg that Mademoiselle might be
immediately summoned.

"We returned to the sick room, and Louis, seating himself in a chair,
remained lost in thought for nearly a quarter of an hour, while I did
what I could, to pacify the sufferer. I could not help wondering that a
man, so prompt and so efficient, should lose a moment when the least
delay was to be avoided; and as I was reflecting on this, Louis rose so
suddenly from his seat that I was startled. 'There is but one course,
and the poor boy has very accurately defined it. Let his head be shaved,
and pillowed in ice; bleed him at once--if he faints, all the better.'
'No danger of that,' shouted Dervilly. 'No syncope with me but the
_last_ syncope--no syncope--ha, ha, ha! double the ounces--you are
timid--no syncope, I say--' He continued the whole time raving, much in
the manner I have described. The room was kept quite dark, and no one
was permitted to come in. Louis did not leave the bedside the entire
night. Dervilly never slept for an instant. On one occasion he threw
himself close on one side, and screamed, 'Take her away--take her away!'

"'What is it?' I asked.

"'Do you not see her?' he shrieked, 'sitting on the bed, looking into my
eyes; take her away, take her away!'

"I need not detail to you," continued Partridge, "the whole of these
fearful scenes. Late in the evening Stabb returned; he had found the
house; and although he could not obtain Mademoiselle de Coigny's
address, he was promised that his message should be communicated early
in the morning.

"'It will be too late,' said Louis, mournfully.

"What a long night it was. The morning dawned at last, but it brought no
change to poor Dervilly. I had sent for his nearest relative, who lived
over on the _Boulevard Poissonniere_, and was awaiting his arrival with
considerable anxiety. It was not later than nine. Stabb, the good
fellow, had relieved me from my watch, and I was in the sitting-room, in
my large arm-chair, still anxious and fearful, when there came a slight
tap at the door; it opened--and Emilie de Coigny stood before me. Ah,
how beautiful she was, yet how terrified! It was not terror of
excitement--mere surface passion--but from the depths of her soul. She
was stirred by intense emotion. 'Tell me,' she said, coming earnestly up
to me, 'tell me where he is, and what has happened to him!' I put my
finger on my lips to prevent her from saying more, and led her to the
further corner of the room; but she would not sit down; she begged to be
told every thing at once; and I, in a low voice, gave Mademoiselle do
Coigny a minute account of all I had witnessed. When I came to
Dervilly's exclamation, '_La Morgue--La Morgue_,' the young girl became
suddenly very pale, her fortitude forsook her, and she murmured faintly,
'He saw me go in--he saw me go in.' I must admit I was, for the moment,
not a little tremulous. I recollected stories of devils taking
possession of the dead bodies of virgins, in order to lure young men to
perdition. I thought of the tale of the German student, who, on retiring
with his bride, beheld her head roll from her body (she had been
guillotined that morning), leaving him wedded to the foul fiend. In
spite of me, I looked on the pale stricken creature before me as in one
way or another connected with the adversary, and holding a commission
from the Prince of the Power of the Air. I had little time for thought
on the subject, for Mademoiselle de Coigny insisted on seeing Dervilly.
I hesitated, but she was decided. She threw aside her pretty straw hat,
and a light shawl, and stepped toward the apartment where her lover lay.
She passed the threshold before he saw her. She called him by his name,
'Alfred.' He turned, and as his eyes fell on her, he uttered mad
exclamations; crouching frantically in the furthest corner of the bed.
'Avaunt,' he screamed; 'vampyre--devil--owl of hell--come no nearer,
(she still advanced, calling to him tenderly); I know that syren voice;
it has damned and double damned me.--Partridge! Stabb! take her away,
or,' he continued, in a fierce tone, 'I will do second execution on
her.'

"Poor girl--it was too much--she swooned away....

"You may imagine that it was a terrible scene," continued Partridge. "I
set to work immediately for her recovery, having first carried her out
of the room where Dervilly lay. She opened her eyes at last, but what a
look of anguish was in them! 'Is he better?' she asked in a faint tone.
I shook my head. 'Tell me,' she exclaimed, 'will he die? oh, will he,
_must_ he die?'

"'He is very sick, Mademoiselle.'

"'I have killed him, I have killed him,' she cried.

"'Pardon me', said I, 'Monsieur Dervilly is in great danger; still if we
knew the cause of this dreadful attack we might gain some advantage by
it.'

"'Ah, it is my work,' murmured the fair mystery to herself, without
heeding my observation; 'I have done it, and if he dies, I am a
murderer--_his_ murderer.' She appeared no way disposed to betray her
secret, and I did not press the subject. Presently Louis came in. He
made his inquiries of me, and then went to the patient. There was no
change, except in the increase of fatal symptoms. The delirium was more
furious, the pulse hard, full, frequent, and vibrating. The most
vigorous course was adopted; two other students were called in to assist
Stabb and myself, and every means used to give effect to the prescribed
treatment.

"As for Mademoiselle de Coigny, she remained in the sitting-room, the
picture of intense anguish. I urged her to retire, but she shook her
head. I now begged her to tell me what had caused this strange attack,
but she was silent. At length I went and called Madame Lecomte--you
recollect what a kind-hearted creature she was--and told her briefly the
little I knew of the unfortunate girl. She answered the summons at once,
and in the most gentle manner endeavored to persuade Mademoiselle de
Coigny to go with her. It was in vain. She would not leave the room.
Occasionally, through the day, she would step to Dervilly's bedside, and
in the softest, sweetest, gentlest tone I ever heard, say, 'Alfred.' The
effect was always the same as at first--exciting the poor fellow to
still deeper paroxysms, and more violent exclamations. On the fourth day
he died; the symptoms becoming more and more aggravating, until _coma_
supervened to delirium. During the whole period of his sickness
Mademoiselle de Coigny never left the house--scarcely the room--Madame
Lecomte on two or three occasions almost forcing the wretched girl away
to her own apartments. When poor Dervilly sunk into that deep lethargic
slumber, so much dreaded by the physician, because so fatal, she came
almost joyfully into his chamber, and threw her arms tenderly around
him, 'He sleeps at last,' she said, 'is it not well?'

"I would have given the world for the freedom of bursting into tears, so
deeply was I affected by that hopeful, trustful question. What could I
do, but shake my head mournfully and hasten out of the place.... He
died, and made no sign; not a word, not a look, not the slightest
pressure of the hand, for the one he loved so tenderly, and who watched
so anxiously for some slight token. 'Oh,' I exclaimed to myself, as the
hardness of such a fate was impressed on me, 'God is just, there is a
hereafter, these two _must_ meet again.' ... Emilie de Coigny left the
room where her dead lover lay, only when he himself was borne to his
last resting-place. She followed him to the spot where he was buried in
_Pere la Chaise_, and remained standing by it after every one else had
come away. In this position she was found--standing over the grave--late
at night by her friends--some members of the family I have
mentioned--who sought her out. She left that splendid city of the dead
bereft of reason, and so she has ever since continued. When the day is
fine, she invariably keeps her fancied engagement with her lover at the
appointed place in the _Jardin des Plants_; she patiently sits the hour,
and retires sadly, as you saw her. When the weather is forbidding, she
goes to her friend's house and waits the same period, never showing the
least symptom of impatience, but, on the contrary, evincing the signs of
a bruised but most gentle spirit." ...

Here Partridge paused, as if at the end of his story.

"Is that all?" said I.

"That is all," he responded.

"Surely not," I continued; "you have said nothing about the strange
mystery which killed our poor friend, and which, as it seems to me, is
the main point, in the story."

"True enough--it is singular I should have left it out, but it is
explained in a word. These same friends of Mademoiselle de Coigny gave
me the information. It appears that on one inclement night, as the
_keeper of the Morgue_ was returning from an official visit to the Chief
of Police, toward his own quarters, which are adjoining and over the
_dead room_--he stumbled over something which a flash of lightning at
the instant showed to be the body of a man. He was quite dead, but,
nestled down close by his side, with one of her little hands on his
face, was a child, about two years of age. Jean Maurice Sorel, although
long inured to repulsive sights, had not grown callous to misery. By
birth he was considerably above his somewhat ignominious office; he had
narrowly escaped with his life when Louis XVI. was brought to the
scaffold, for some indiscreet expressions that savored too much of
royalty; but in the tumults which succeeded, he had, he scarcely knew
how, through some influence with the chief of one of the departments,
been appointed to this repulsive duty. But as I have said, his heart was
just as kind as ever, after many years discharge of it; and Jean Maurice
Sorel, instead of repining at his lot, blessed God daily that he had the
means of supporting a wife and children, while so many of his old
friends had literally starved to death. Such was the person who stumbled
over the body of the dead man, and discovered the living child beside
it. He called at once for assistance, and had the corpse conveyed to his
house, while he carried the little girl in his arms. She was too young
to give any information about herself, but on searching the pockets of
the deceased, several papers were found which disclosed enough to
satisfy Jean Maurice Sorel that in the wasted, attenuated form before
him, he beheld his once friend and benefactor the Marquis de Coigny,
who, he supposed, had perished by the guillotine in the revolution. The
papers permitted no doubt of the fact that the little girl was his
granddaughter and only descendant, and she was commended to the care of
the kind-hearted when death should overtake him.

"The old Marquis was buried, and the little Emilie adopted into the
family of the good Jean Maurice. Her education was conducted in a manner
far superior to that of his own children, and the choicest garments of
those which fell to him were selected to be made over for her. Perhaps
unwisely, her history was explained to her, so that she lived all her
life with the sense that she belonged in a different sphere--not that
she was ungrateful or unamiable--quite the contrary--she was sweet
tempered, affectionate and gentle, and loved by Jean Maurice and all his
family with a devoted fondness: but the world had charms for her which
the world withheld; she felt that she never could become an object of
love where she could love in return, and so she repined at her destiny.
By accident she made the acquaintance of the family where Dervilly first
met her. They had known her father and her grandfather, and she loved
them for that. She resisted for a long time the feeling for her lover
which she perceived was taking strong hold of her, and when she could
resist no longer, she yet delayed to tell him what a home she inhabited.
This was her pride--her weakness--and how terribly did she pay the
penalty! Day after day (so I was told), she resolved to explain all, but
she procrastinated, till her lover, no longer able to restrain his
anxiety, and full of excitements and fears and perturbations, followed
her at some little distance, just at twilight, and saw or fancied he saw
her enter _La Morgue_. It was too much for his nervous temperament. His
brain caught fire--he came home raving with delirium--and DIED! Now you
have the whole."




A LEGEND.

TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL FROM THE SPANISH,

BY MRS. M. E. HEWITT.

    "Sin vos, y sin Dios y mi."


    The motto that with trembling hand I write,
      And deep is traced upon this heart of mine,
    In olden time a loyal Christian knight
      Bore graven on his shield to Palestine.

    "_Sin vos_," it saith, "if I am without thee,"
      Beloved! whose thought surrounds me every where--
    "_Sin Dios_," I am without God, "_y mi_,"
      And in myself I have no longer share.

    Where pealed the clash of war, the mighty din,
      Where trump and cymbal crashed along the sky;
    High o'er the "Il Allah!" of the Moslemin,
      "God and my lady!" rang his battle-cry.

    His white plume waved where fiercest raged the flight,
      His arm was strong the Paynim's course to stem:
    His foot was foremost on the sacred height,
      To plant the Cross above Jerusalem.

    False proved the lady, and thenceforth the knight,
      Casting aside the buckler and the brand,
    Lived, an austere and lonely anchorite,
      In a drear mountain-cave in Holy Land.

    There, bowed before the Crucifix in prayer,
      He would dash madly down his rosary,
    And cry "Beloved!" in tones of wild despair,
      "I have lost God, and self, in losing thee!"

    And I, if thus my life's sweet hope were o'er,
      An echo of the knight's despair must be;
    Thus I were lost, if loved by thee no more,
      For, ah! myself and heaven are merged in thee.




CAGLIOSTRO, THE MAGICIAN.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

BY CHARLES WYLLYS ELLIOT.


"Know, then, that in the year 1743, in the city of Palermo, the family
of Signor Pietro Balsamo, a shopkeeper, were exhilarated by the birth of
a boy. Such occurrences have now become so frequent, that, miraculous as
they are, they occasion little astonishment;" and, it may be well to
add, that, except in some curious cases, there is no longer that
exhilaration now felt, but, as in Ireland, a leaden sense of future woe.
We are not told by the parents that any strange or miraculous appearance
attended or preceded this advent, though one cannot but believe that the
future Archimagus and his followers must have had a more or less
distinct opinion upon this point. Not to lose time in speculation, we
learn that "we have here found in the Count Alessandro di Cagliostro
(the above-named boy), pupil of the sage, Altholas--foster-child of the
Scherif of Mecca--probable son of the last king of Trebizond; named also
Acharat, and unfortunate child of nature; by profession, healer of
diseases, abolisher of wrinkles, friend of the poor and impotent,
grand-master of the Egyptian Mason lodge of High Science, spirit
summoner, gold cork, grand cophta, prophet, priest, and thaurmaturgic
moralist and swindler; really a LIAR of the first magnitude;
thorough-paced in all provinces of lying, what one may call their king."

Under the common tent, the great canopy of life, it would not be fair to
prejudge the mind of the reader upon so grave a thing as character,
which we are now considering--it might be best to let each come to an
after-thought respecting it--upon our caustic and noble author let the
blame, if any, hang, while we now proceed to dip in, here and there, to
his magic page.

As the boy grows, we learn, that "as he skulks about there, plundering,
pilfering, playing dog's-tricks, with his finger in every mischief, he
already gains character. Shrill housewives of the neighborhood, whose
sausages he has filched, whose weaker sons maltreated, name him Beppo
Maldetto, and indignantly prophecy that he will be hanged--a prediction
which the issue has signally falsified." We also may learn, what, in the
treatment of our whole subject it is extremely important to remember,
that, in the "boy," a "brazen impudence developes itself, the crowning
gift," &c. "To his astonishment," though, "he finds that even here he is
in a conditional world, and if he will employ his capability of eating
(or enjoying) must first, in some measure, work and suffer. Contention
enough hereupon; but now dimly arises, or reproduces itself, the
question. Whether there were not a _shorter_ road--that of stealing!"

But how he was entered into the convent, and under the convent
apothecary proceeded to learn certain arts and mysteries of the retorts
and alembics (which lucky knowledge, after that, came to use), while he
was learning his other trade of monkery and mass-chanting, we will omit.
It is enough to know, that he would not answer for the convent, and was
again afloat on the wide sea of existence. That he floated is certain;
for "he has a fair cousin living in the house with him, and she again
has a lover. Beppo stations himself as go-between; delivers letters;
fails not to drop hints that a lady to be won or kept must be generously
treated; that such and such a pair of ear-rings, watch, or sum of money,
would work wonders: which valuables, adds the wooden Roman biographer,
he then appropriated furtively." Slowly but certainly he makes his way:
"tries his hand at forging" theatre tickets--a will even, "for the
benefit of a certain religious house;" and, further on, can tell
fortunes, and show visions in a small way--all these inspirations are
vouchsafed him, or, rather, these things he is permitted to do, and
others not to be mentioned here.

It is well to note, that in all times, and among all peoples, there is a
deep and profound conviction that there _is_ not only a "short and
certain" way of getting to heaven, and to know the eternal truths, but
also that these earthly treasures do exist, in untold quantity, in the
elements; and if one could only discover the secret by which the gases
could be condensed into solid gold, or the gnomes be persuaded or
compelled to give them up, ready solidified to hand, it would at least
save time and be satisfactory. It is only curious, as a matter of
speculation, to know what we shall eat when the lucky age arrives, and
spirits will do our bidding in this matter of gold and diamonds. The
"boy," as he grew, discovered this world-wide capacity; and who should
have this power of setting the "spirits" to work but he?

"Walking one day in the fields with a certain ninny of a goldsmith,
named Marano, Beppo begins in his oily voluble way to hint that
treasures often lay hid; that a certain treasure lay hid there (as he
knew by some pricking of his thumbs, divining rod, or other talismanic
monition), which treasure might, by the aid of science, courage,
secrecy, and a small judicious advance of money, be fortunately lifted.
The gudgeon takes--advances, by degrees, to the length of 'sixty gold
ounces'--sees magic circles drawn in the wane or the full of the moon,
blue (phosphorous) flames arise--split twigs auspiciously quiver--and at
length demands, peremptorily, that the treasure be dug!"

Alas! why is it that the "spirits" so often fail us at our sorest need?
Do _they_ deceive us; and, if not, who does? The treasure vanishes, or
does not appear, "the conditions are imperfect," and the "ninny of a
goldsmith" being roughly handled by these spiritual visitants,
threatens to stiletto the adept; who, overcome with the ingratitude of
the world, concludes to quit;--at least, in the words of his Inquisition
biographer, "he fled from Palermo, and overran the whole earth."

We may see how he has grown--how, as in ordinary mortals, he advances
step by step--even he, the favorite son of the higher intelligences,
learns as he goes. How is it, then, that we can have no full-grown
inspiration; that we know of no perfection--that we only go on towards
it? Can it be that prophets and priests really do _learn_, and that even
now, men may grow into the future? Might not a more thorough and
scientific seminary for this purpose be established than any we now
have--theologic, thaumaturgic, theosophic, or other variety? It is a
question easier asked than answered.

"The Beppic Hegira brings us down in European history to somewhere about
the period of the peace of Paris"--(A.D. ----), supervening upon which
is a portentous time--"the multitudinous variety of quacks that, along
with Beppo, overran all Europe during that same period--the latter half
of the last century. It was the very age of impostors, cut-purses,
swindlers, double gaugers, enthusiasts, ambiguous persons, quacks
simple, quacks compound, crack-brained or with deceit prepense, quacks
and quackeries of all colors and kinds. How many mesmerists (so speaks
this strange author), magicians, cabalists, Swedenborgians, illuminati,
crucified nuns, and devils of Loudun! To which the Inquisition
biographer adds vampyres, sylphs, rosicrucians, free-masons, and an _et
cetera_. Consider your Schropfers, Cagliostros, Casanovas, Saint
Germains, Dr. Grahams, the Chevalier d'Eon, Psalmanazar, Abbe Paris, and
the Ghost of Cock-lane!--as if Bedlam had broken loose!"

The great, the inexplicable, the mysterious Beppo, being now fairly
afloat, let us try to comprehend how he has begun to touch upon the edge
of those trade winds, which shall drive him along toward the golden
Indies, Ophir, and the land of promise, for which the men of this world
do so hunger and thirst.

He married a beautiful Seraphina, afterward countess, graceful and
lady-like, once the daughter of a girdle-maker, and named Lorenza
Feliciani. Every one, simple or sedate, knows that it is best to hunt in
couples. What one has not the other may have. So Seraphina had beauty,
lightness, buoyancy, and could float up her count when the demons and
harpies of a certain troublesome devil, called law or justice, seemed
bent upon his swift destruction. Could she not, too, "enlist the
sympathies of admiring audiences"--by her sweet smiles and "artless
ways," gain belief, and "a wish to believe?" More than that, could she
not turn the heads of young and old? "noble" perhaps, perhaps
"ignoble"--"moneyed do-nothings" (so says this writer), whereof in this
vexed earth there are many, ever lounging about such (?) places--scan
and comment on the foreign coat-of-arms--ogle the fair foreign woman,
who timidly recoils from their gaze, timidly responds to their
reverences, as in halls and passages they obsequiously throw themselves
in her way. Ere long, one moneyed do-nothing (from amid his tags,
tassels, sword-belts, fop-tackle, frizzled hair, without brains beneath
it) is heard speaking to another--"Seen the countess?--divine creature
that!" Indeed, one cannot but wonder that any should question the unity
of the race, at least, of those known as "civilized." In a small way, or
in a large way, how this thing ever goes on--on church steps, on
Broadways, in Metropolitan Halls, Congresses, the Palais-Royal, at home
and abroad! And men do yet call _this_ "reverence for the sex," and holy
sentiment; and indulge in hallelujahs to that hoary myth, "a gentleman
of the old school;" while women--God help us--women loving it, hate
those who, hating it, hate hollowness and hell. With slight imagination,
then, one may see how important an element this "divine creature" must
have become in any conjuration or mystic "renovation of the universe,"
which the high mystagogue might be impressed to set on foot. Enough,
that _she_ helped and learned the arts of prophecy and perfection faster
than her master! But we read--alas! alas!--"As his seraphic countess
gives signs of withering, and one luxuriant branch of industry will die
and drop off, others must be pushed into budding." He, the indefatigable
count, is not idle. "Faded dames of quality (over all Europe, all
creation) have many wants: the count has not studied in the convent
laboratory, or pilgrimed to the Count St. Germain, in Westphalia, to no
purpose. With loftiest condescension he stoops to impart somewhat of his
supernatural secrets--for a _consideration_. Rowland's Kalydor is
valuable; but what to the beautifying water of Count Alessandro! He that
will undertake to smooth wrinkles, and make withered, green parchment
into a fair carnation skin, is he not one whom faded dames of quality
will delight to honor? Or, again, let the beautifying-water succeed or
not, have not such dames (if calumny may in aught be believed) another
want? This want, too, the indefatigable Cagliostro will supply--for a
consideration. For faded gentlemen of quality the count likewise has
help. Not a charming countess alone, but a "wine of Egypt" (Cantharides
not being unknown to him), sold in drops, more precious than nectar;
which, what faded gentlemen of quality will not purchase with any thing
short of life. Consider, too, what may be done with potions, washes,
charms, love-philters, among a class of mortals idle from their mother's
womb," &c., &c.

It is well to know, once for all, that the count, chief-priest of his
order--which yet thrives, and if not great, deserves to be called for
its number, Legion--made money out of this his enterprising trade; that
he was enabled to pay his way; to ride post with the ever potent
"voucher of respectability, a coach-and-four," with out-riders and
beef-eaters, and couriers and lackeys, and the other paraphernalia which
the greedy tooth of man desires--which helps one forward so far toward
happiness, provided always that "there _is_ no heaven above and no hell
beneath," of which let each first make sure; and more than all, let such
as wish to travel this road, take great courage from the contemplation
of this one model.

We must hasten to the year 1776, a year rather noted in our annals, and
in that of England, perhaps, independently of this the "first visit" of
the famed Count Cagliostro to its shores, which happened then. Should it
have so chanced that he had lived now, would he have stopped there does
the reader think? Having an insight into _their_ national character, and
finding "great greed and need," and but small heed, what might he not
have done on this transatlantic shore, whose free people can so nobly
cherish even its Barnum, its----, its----! But let names go. We make the
most of what we have, and if not equal to the greatest, the fault rests
not on our shoulders. We are not responsible for the past, if for the
present or future.

'Twas in England that the master developed most bravely the art of
prophecy; perhaps finding there a demand for his supply--such, according
to some, being the only law of God or man. It is enough to know that he
does a trade in foretelling the lucky lottery numbers by means of his
"occult science," whereby at least he put money in _his_ purse, and
satisfied good-natured men that as there were gulls, and necessarily a
guller, he above all others deserved praise and not blame; the whole
thing, this life, being really a juggle, and the smartest fellow of
course the best juggler. As man goes on he developes, so many think--so
did Cagliostro, and in his growth he reaches to masonry--Egyptian
masonry--and in "sworn secrecy" finds a new Talisman, for which men will
pay five guineas each. He resolves to "free it from all vile
ingredients, and make it a new Evangile." "No religion is excluded from
the Egyptian society"--for is it not certain that religion _pays_?
Charity too, pays, as we shall see by-and-by. No religion is
tabooed--none--all who admit the existence of a God, and the immortality
of the soul, may, for the small sum of five guineas, be certain to gain
"perfection by means of a physical and moral regeneration." He promises
them by the former or physical to find the _prime matter_ or
philosopher's stone, and the _acacia_ which consolidates in man the
forces of the most vigorous youth, and renders him immortal; and by the
latter or moral, to procure them a Pentagon which shall restore man to
his primitive state of innocence, lost by his original sin. It must be
understood that this masonry was founded by Enoch and Elias, had been
corrupted by the Egyptian priests, but was now restored to its pristine
vigor by its last and greatest Grand Cophta, and includes not only men
but women, of whom the Countess Seraphina is Cophtess.

We cannot do better than to gain some insight into the forms and
symbolic practices of these worshippers; and especially will those who
desire to practise this or any short and easy way to perfection or
happiness, be glad to learn what has been done, and thus be encouraged
to begin.

In the _Essai sur les Illumines_, printed in Paris in 1789, are the
following details quoted by this before-mentioned known author.[1] These
bear an air of truth and probability which will win for them easy
admission. Many of them are not unlike what we have seen amongst us
during the few past years.

"They take a young lad or a girl who is in the state of innocence: such
they call the _Pupil_ or _Colomb_: the Venerable communicates to him the
power he would have had before the fall of man; which power consists
mainly in commanding the pure spirits: these spirits are to the number
of seven. It is said they surround the shrine, and that they govern the
seven planets. Their names are Arael, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel,
Zobiachel, Anachiel." Nothing certainly can begin more favorably. We
learn that "she the Colomb," can act in two ways, either behind a
curtain, behind a hieroglyphically-painted screen with table and three
candles, or before the Caraffe and showing face. If the _miracle fail_
it can only be because she is not "in the state of innocence." _An
accident must be guarded against._ Surely our mystic professors, both
clerical and lay, will take heed to these things. Much may be learned.

Cagliostro accordingly (it is his own story) brought a little boy into
the lodge, son of a nobleman there. He placed him on his knees before a
table, whereon stood a bottle of pure water, and behind this some
lighted candles. He made an exorcism round the boy, put his hand on
head, and both in this attitude addressed their prayers to God for the
happy accomplishment of the work. Having then bid the child look into
the bottle, directly the child cried that he saw a garden. Knowing
hereby that Heaven assisted him [why this is so proven he does not
explain], Cagliostro took courage, and bade the child ask of God the
grace to see the Archangel Michael. At first the child said, "I see
something white; I know not what it is." Then he began jumping and
stamping like a possessed creature, and cried, "Now, I see a child like
myself, which seems to have something angelical (!)" _All the assembly
and Cagliostro himself remained speechless with emotion...._ [How like
this is to what we at this day have seen.] The child being anew
exorcised with the hands of the Venerable on his head, and the customary
prayers addressed to Heaven, he looked into the bottle, and said he saw
his sister at that moment coming down stairs, and embracing one of her
brothers. That appeared impossible, the brother in question being then
hundreds of miles off. However Cagliostro felt not disconcerted; said
they might send to the country-house, where the sister was, and see--if
they chose!

Do some still doubt? Time nor paper will allow us to allay that doubt.
We must, as rapidly as we can, introduce what may yet be useful in
certain cases of the like kind, either in whole or in part. It is the
introduction of a novice into the holy Mysteries.

"The recipiendary is led by a darksome path into a large hall, the
ceiling, the walls, the floor of which are covered by a black cloth,
sprinkled over with red flames and menacing serpents; three sepulchral
lamps emit from time to time a dying glimmer, and the eye half
distinguishes, in this lugubrious den, certain wrecks of mortality
suspended by funeral crapes; a heap of skeletons forms in the centre a
sort of altar; on both sides of it are piled books; some contain menaces
against the perjured; others the deadly narrative of the vengeance which
the invisible spirit has exacted; of the infernal evocations for a long
time pronounced in vain.

"Eight hours elapse. Then phantoms, trailing mortuary vails, slowly
cross the hall and sink in caverns, without audible noise of trapdoors
or of falling. You notice only that they are gone by a fetid odor
exhaled from them.

"The novice remains four and twenty hours in this gloomy abode, in the
midst of a freezing silence. A rigorous fast has already weakened his
thinking faculties. Liquors prepared for the purpose first weary and at
length wear out his senses. At his feet are placed three cups, filled
with a drink of a greenish color. Necessity lifts them to his lips:
involuntary fear repels them.

"At last appear two men: looked upon as the ministers of Death. These
gird the pale brow of the recipiendary with an auroral-colored-ribbon
dipped in blood, and full of silvered characters mixed with our lady of
Loretto. He receives a copper crucifix, of two inches length: to his
neck are hung a sort of amulets wrapped in violet cloth. He is stripped
of his clothes; which two ministering brethren deposit on a funeral
pile, erected at the other end of the hall. With blood on his naked body
are traced crosses. In this state of suffering and humiliation, he sees
approaching with large strides five Phantoms armed with swords, and clad
in garments dropping blood. Their faces are vailed: they spread a velvet
carpet on the floor; kneel there, pray; and remain with outstretched
hands crossed on their breasts, and faces fixed on the ground in deep
silence. An hour passes in this painful attitude. After which fatiguing
trial, plaintive cries are heard; the funeral pile takes fire, yet casts
only a pale light; the garments are thrown on it and burnt. A colossal
and almost transparent figure rises from the very bosom of the pile. At
sight of it the five prostrated men fall into convulsions insupportable
to look on: the too faithful image of those foaming struggles wherein a
mortal, at hand-grips with a sudden pain, ends by sinking under it.

"Then a trembling voice pierces the vault, and articulates the formula
of those execrable oaths that are to be sworn: my pen falters: I think
myself almost guilty to retrace them."

Strange as it may seem, we stop here with Monsieur the Author. Strange
too that some deny the reality of all this--and tell of magic lanterns
and science--stranger still that men are who believe all--all--'tis to
them a spasmodic miracle, and he is an infidel of course who doubts.
Strange too is it, that men do not see here the monstrous power of what
is called Symbolism, and that they should not help nor hinder; who say,
Let the world go--who cares! Men live and women too who say, "There's
_something_ in it"--there must be! and is there not? Figure now all this
boundless cunningly devised agglomerate of royal arches, deaths' heads,
hieroglyphically painted screens, "columns in the state of innocence,
with spacious masonic halls--dark, or in the favorablest theatrical
light-and-dark: Kircher's magic lantern, Belshazzar handwritings (of
phosphorus), plaintive tones, gong-beatings, hoary head of a
supernatural Grand Cophta emerging through the gloom--and how it all
acts, not only directly through the foolish senses of men, but also
indirectly connecting itself with Enoch and Elias, with philanthropy,
immortality," &c. Let such as _will_ now say there is nothing in
it--something there is, for a thoughtful man to consider well of, asking
himself what also does this of clairvoyance, and spiritual knockings,
and Jenny-Lind manias, and Jerkers--truly mean? and what kind of a
person am _I who have had_ part and lot with these?

But the lofty science of Egyptian Masonry flourishes, lodges are
established over Europe, and the Grand Master travels hither and
thither, "mounts to the seat of the Venerable, and holds high discourse,
hours long, on masonry, morality, universal science, divinity, and
things in general," with a "sublimity, and emphasis and unction,"
proceeding it appears "from the special inspiration of the Holy Ghost."
He is received with shouts and exultation--every where the great heart
of man thrills at the coming of this mystic symbol, which
contains--cunningly enfolded, as their eyes can and do see--every
virtue, every greatness--is he not indeed the Incarnation of these, and
therefore to be worshipped; such gift of reverence is in the heart of
man, and to such things does he again and again bow down!

To go on. Cheers, and the ravishment of thronging audiences can make him
maudlin; render him louder in eloquence of theory; and "philanthropy,"
"divine science," "depth of unknown worlds," "finer feelings of the
heart"--and so shall draw tears from most asses of sensibility. "The few
reasoning mortals scattered here and there, that see through him,
deafened in the universal hub-bub, shut their lips in sorrowful disdain,
_confident in the grand remedy, Time_." So says our author, and can we
blame him? Will the reader allow the current of this prosperity to be
checked for one moment by a certain Count M.? One of the chosen few at
Warsaw, who having spent the night with the "dear Master," in conversing
with spirits, had returned to the country to transmute metals
perhaps--perhaps to do other mighty works. Count M. seems to have been
afflicted with doubts, to have supposed that by sleight-of-hand the
"sweet Master" had substituted the crucible with melted ducats, for the
other--carefully filled with red lead, "smelted and set to cool," "and
now found broken and hidden among these bushes"--the whole golden
crucible standing in its place. "Neither does the Plenagon or Elixir of
Life, or whatever it was, prosper better--our sweet master enters into
expostulation--swears by his great God, and his honor, that he will
finish the work and make us _happy_." In vain--"the shreds of the broken
crucible lie there before your eyes"--and the usurper has its place.
That "resemblance of a sleeping child, grown visible in the magic
cooking of our Elixir, proves to be an inserted rosemary leaf. The Grand
Cophta cannot be gone too soon."

Already it has been said that "Charity pays," philanthropy, benevolence,
all these--sometimes? if one sows his bread on the waters shall he not
expect its return after many or after few days?--the sooner the better
for your Cagliostros, your Barnums. Shout it daily to an envious
world--"Am I not a charitable man? If I have done wrong myself (as who
has not?) has not a great deal of good _grown out_ of my wickedness? I
have therefore done my share, for which if the world has paid me in
'praise and pudding,' it is no more than it has done before, and will do
again!" Take courage!

Cagliostro doctors--heals--the poor, for nothing!--even gives them
alms--does a great deal of good--who but he? At Strasburg in the year
1783 (year of our peace with England), he "appears in full bloom and
radiance, the envy and admiration of the world. In large hired
hospitals, he with open drug-box (containing 'Extract of Saturn'), and
even with open purse, relieves the suffering poor; unfolds himself
lamblike, angelic, to a believing few, of the rich classes. Medical
miracles have at all times been common, but what miracle is this of an
occidental or oriental Serene-highness that 'regardless of expense,'
employs himself in curing sickness, in illuminating ignorance?" We at
the present day know nothing like it; the mere giving of a few surplus
hundreds or thousands to certain Slavery, Anti-Slavery, Peace,
Temperance or other societies, is benevolence of the "rocking chair"
species--is not to be mentioned with this, of the self-denying
Cagliostro's diving into cellars, and mounting into garrets, to seek and
to save--at the risk of not only life but comfort--the first of which
happily was not thus sacrificed:--nor indeed on the whole was comfort
lost sight of, as the "coach-and-four with liveries and sumptuosities
bears witness." There is often profound wisdom in this thing called
_public_ or newspaper charity. Does it--or does it not--pay?

The favorite of the gods, he who holds high discourse with spirits, and
to whom is opened the hidden secret of earth and heaven, finds ready
acceptance--backed as he is by charities, by elegancies: finds
acceptance with the poor, the ignorant to whom he ministers--but also
"with a mixture of sorrow and indignation" it is recorded, among the
great--and not only they, but among the learned, "even physicians and
naturalists." It does not seem worth while to expend sorrow and
indignation upon this fact, not at all new, as we now fifty years
farther along have discovered; for we can show our physicians and
naturalists, and also our priests and prophets, in small crowds with
whom marvels find acceptance. We shall see more of them by and by.

But one among the rich and great, was the Cardinal Prince Count Rohan,
Archbishop of Strasburg. "Open-handed dupe," as some term him--now out
of favor with the Queen Marie Antoinette (after that beheaded and called
unfortunate). Banished from his beloved Paris and the sunshine of
royalty, what should he do but to regain his pedestal? necessary no
doubt, for the glory of God, and his church; necessary at least for the
Count Rohan. Cagliostro is all powerful--he will help the Cardinal
Prince--not only by philters and charms, but by prophecies from the
gods, who speaking through their earthly oracle, will of course (it
paying best), promise success and not failure. The Archbishop tries all
things, and at last the far-famed "diamond necklace," upon the queen,
which no woman's heart can withstand, not even the queen's. Sad to tell,
the miserable queen knew nothing of the necklace; and only the Md'lle De
la Motte, styled countess, by superior arts had outjuggled Cagliostro
himself, Cardinal Rohan, queen and all: the diamonds were gone--the
queen's character blackened, cardinal, cophta, and countess, all in the
Bastille, where they lay some nine months (year 1781), disastrous
months, when "high science" wasted itself in eating out its own heart.
Cagliostro escaped, was let go--but a plundered, banished, suspected
high priest, was quite another thing from a golden cophta, with the
foreign coat-of-arms, serene countess--and open purse relieving the
unfortunate.

Cagliostro now flits to England, to Bale, to Brienne, to Aix, to Turin,
he wanders hither and thither; we cannot follow him. The end of all, the
lofty and the low, must come--that seems drawing near to Cagliostro
too--but how? not in ruddy splendor as of departing day, not quiet,
serene, as of nature sinking to rest--rather like the disastrous death
of the bleeding shark it seems: his brethren, his friends--- sharks of
his own kind, of all kinds, high and low--rush upon the wounded shark,
as to a banquet to which they were bidden. He is exiled here, he is
persecuted there--imprisonment, despair, degradation haunt him--the
houseless, unfortunate--now vagabond, once renovator of the human race,
and friend of lords and friend of gods and princes. Such is gratitude!
such is popular favor! a thing to be bought and bargained for, to be
given when _not needed_. Such, no doubt, Cagliostro decided!

He is sore bested, and begins "to confess himself to priests," for a man
must do something in his extremity. It avails him not; he is at last in
the gripe of the holy Inquisition at Rome, "in the year of our Lord,
1789, December 29," and must match himself with a power which this world
knows something of: face to face, hand to hand, at last. Have they
juggles equal to his juggles, miracles equal to his--high science equal
to his--legions of angels equal to his?--enough that they have dungeons,
and sbirri--and in his case, hearts harder than the nether
mill-stone--not to be softened "by demands for religious
books"--assertions of the divinity of the Egyptian Masonry--promises of
wonderful revelations--oaths, flatteries, or any of the mystic
paraphernalia of the now powerless professor and prophet: they will not
let him out! but rather will introduce him to a new art, that of
becoming a Christian, and get him, the toughest in a tough time, into
heaven as they best can. Did they find Loyola's twenty days sufficient,
and was the article then turned out of hand complete for that other
state? The Inquisition biographer does not dwell upon this, it was
perhaps as well. We learn at last that he died in the year 1795, and
went, the writer says, "_Whither_ no man knows!" So ended a Magician!

NEW HAVEN, Feb., 1852.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] T. Carlyle.




BITTER WORDS.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE,

BY R. H. STODDARD.


    Bitter words are easy spoken;
      Not so easily forgot;
    Hearts it may be can be broken--
      Mine cannot!

    When thou lovest me I adore thee;
      Hating, I can hate thee too;
    But I will not bow before thee--
      Will not sue!

    Even now, without endeavor,
      Thou hast wounded so my pride,
    I could leave thee, and for ever--
      Though I died!




THE MURDER OF LATOUR.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE,

BY HON. W. H. STILES.[2]


The cabinet remained in deliberation at the Ministry of War, situated at
the corner of the square called the Hof. The tide of insurrection now
rose to an unconquerable height. The nearest shots of the retiring
cannons, the advancing shouts of the infuriated people, warned the
ministers that all defence was rapidly becoming hopeless. The building
itself still offered some means of resistance, and there were two
cannons in the court; but at that crisis was issued a written order,
signed by Latour and Wessenberg, "to cease the fire at all points," and
given to officers for distribution.[3] It was in vain. The popular
torrent rolled on toward the seat of government, which was destined ere
long to be disgraced by atrocious crime. The minister of war, Count
Latour, prepared for defence. The military on guard in front of the war
office were withdrawn into the yards, with two pieces of artillery
loaded with grape. The gates were closed, the military distributed to
the different threatened points, and the cannons directed towards the
two gates; soon the scene of battle had reached the Bogner Gasse,
immediately under the windows of the war department; the ministers in
consultation heard the cry, "The military retreat." The great square of
the Hof was soon cleared, the soldiers retiring by the way of the
Freyung. The guards and academic legion pursuing; the military
commander's quarters in the Freyung are soon captured. The retiring
military not being able to escape through the Schotten-Thor, as they had
expected, that gate being closed and barricaded, they cut their way
through the Herrn Gasse.

So intent were the respective combatants, either in retreat or pursuit,
that the whole tempest of war swept over the Hof, and left that square,
for a short time, deserted and silent.

But that stillness was but of short duration; a few moments only had
elapsed, when a number of straggling guards, students, and people, came
stealing silently from the Graben, through the Bogner, Naglus, and
Glosken Gasse, on to the Hof, and removed the dead and the wounded into
the neighboring dwellings, and into the deserted guard-house in the war
department. These were soon followed by a fierce and noisy mob, armed
with axes, pikes, and iron bars, which halted before the war office, and
began to thunder at its massive doors.

The officer of ordnance in vain attempted to communicate to the crowd
the order of the ministry, that all firing should cease. A member of the
academic legion, from the window, over the gateway, waved with a white
handkerchief to the tumultuous masses, and, exhibiting the order signed
by Latour and Wessenberg, read its contents to the crowd.

But a pacification was not to be thought of; the people were too
excited, their fury could only be appeased by blood; that delayed
measure was not sufficient; they made negative gesticulations, and
summoned the student to come down and open the portals to their
admission. The tumult increased from minute to minute; the closed doors
at length gave way under the axes of the mob, and the people streamed
in, led by a man "in a light gray coat."

The secretary of war, having by this time abandoned the idea of defence,
on the ground either that it was useless or impolitic, no shots were
fired or active resistance offered; but the orderlies with their horses
retired to the stables, and the grenadiers into an inner court. At first
only single individuals entered, and their course was not characterized
by violence; then groups, proceeding slowly, listening, and searching;
and, at last the tumultuous masses thundered in the rear.

Ere long the cry rung on the broad staircase, "Where is Latour? he must
die!" At this moment the ministers and their followers in the building,
with the exception of Latour himself, found means to escape, or mingled
with the throng. The deputies, Smolka, Borrosch, Goldmark, and
Sierakowski, who had undertaken to guarantee protection to the
threatened ministers, arrived in the hope of restraining the mob. The
numerous corridors and cabinets of the war office (formerly a monastery
of the Jesuits) were filled with the crowd; the tide of insurrection now
rose to an uncontrollable height; and the danger of Latour became every
moment more imminent.

The generals who were with him, perceiving the peril, entreated him to
throw himself upon the Nassau regiment or the Dutch Meister grenadiers,
and retreat to their barracks. He scorned the proposal, denied the
danger, and even refused, for some time, to change his uniform for a
civilian's dress, until the hazard becoming more evident, he put on
plain clothes, and went up into a small room in the roof of the
building, where he soon after signed a paper declaring that, with his
majesty's consent, he was ready to resign the office of minister of war.
A Tecnicker, named Ranch,[4] who, it was said, had come to relieve the
secretary of war, was seized and hung in the court by his own scarf, but
fortunately cut down by a National Guard before life was extinct. The
mob rushed into the private apartment of the minister, but plundered it
merely of the papers, which were conveyed to the university. They came
with a sterner purpose. The act of resignation, exhibited to the crowd
by the deputy Smolka, was scornfully received by the people, while the
freshness of the writing, the sand adhering still to the ink, betrayed
the proximity of the hand which had just traced it. Meanwhile, the crowd
had penetrated the corridors of the fourth story, and were not long in
discovering the place of Latour's concealment. Hearing their approach,
and recognizing the voice of Smolka, vice-president of the assembly, who
was doubtless anxious to protect him, Latour came out of his retreat.

They descended together from the fourth story by a narrow stairway, on
the right-hand side of the building, and entered the yard by the pump.
At each successive landing place, the tumult and the crowd increased;
but the descent was slow, and rendered more and more difficult by the
numbers which joined the crowd at every turn of the stairs. At length
they reached the court below, and Count Latour, although he had been
severely pressed, was still unhurt; but here the populace, which awaited
them, broke in upon the group that still clustered around Latour, and
dispersed it. In vain did the deputies, Smolka and Sierakowski, endeavor
to protect the minister; in vain did the Count Leopold Gondrecourt
attempt to cover him by the exposure of his own body. A workman struck
the hat from his head; others pulled him by his gray locks, he defending
himself with his hands, which were already bleeding. At length a
ruffian, disguised as a Magyar, gave him, from behind, a mortal blow
with a hammer, the man in the gray coat cleft his face with a sabre, and
another plunged a bayonet into his heart. A hundred wounds followed,
and, with the words, "I die innocent!" he gave up his loyal and manly
spirit. A cry of exultation from the assembled crowd rent the air at
this event. Every indignity was offered to his body; before he had
ceased to breathe even, they hung him by a cord to the grating of a
window in the court of the war office. He had been suspended there but a
few minutes when, from the outrages committed on it, the body fell.

They then dragged it to the Hof, and suspended it to one of the bronze
candelabras that adorn that extensive, and much frequented square, and
there treated it with every indignity; it remained for fourteen hours
exposed to the gaze of a mocking populace.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] A chapter from Mr. Stiles's forthcoming work on Austria, which we
have mentioned elsewhere in this number of the International.

[3] The last order issued by the unfortunate Latour was instructed to
Colonel Gustave Schindler, of the imperial engineers, an efficient
officer, as well as a most amiable and accomplished gentleman, and one
well and favourably known in the United States, from his kind attention
to Americans who have visited the Austrian capital. The colonel was in
the act of passing out of the great door of the war office, which opens
on the Hof, when the mob reached that spot. Recognized by his imperial
uniform, he was instantly surrounded and attacked. He received many
blows on the head, inflicted by the crowd with clubs and iron bars; was
most severely wounded, and would probably have been killed but for the
timely interference of one of the rabble, who, riding up on horseback
between the colonel and the mob, shielded him from further blow, and
finally effected his escape.

[4] A student of the Polytechnic school, for brevity, usually called
Tecnickers.




SOME SMALL POEMS.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE,

BY R. H. STODDARD.


               SONG.

    I hung upon your breast in pain,
    And poured my kisses there like rain;
    A flood of tears, a cloud of fire,
    That fed and stifled wild desire,
    And lay like death upon my heart,
    To think that we must learn to path;
    For we must part, and live apart!

    Had I, that hour of dark unrest,
    But plunged a dagger in your breast
    And in mine own, it had been well;
    For now I had been spared the hell
    That racks my lone and loving heart,
    To think that we must learn to part;--
    For we must part, and die apart!


                LU LU.

    The shining cloud that broods above the hill,
    Casts down its shadows over all the lawns,
    The snowy swan is sailing out to sea,
    Leaving behind a ruffled surge of light!
    Lu Lu is like a cloud in memory,
    And shades the ancient brightness of my mind:
    A swan upon the ocean of my heart,
    Floating along a path of golden thought!

    The light of evening slants adown the sky,
    Poured from the inner folds of western cloud;
    But in the cast there is a spot of blue,
    And in that heavenly spot the evening star!
    The tresses of Lu Lu are like the light,
    Gushing from out her turban down her neck;
    And like that Eye of heaven, her mild blue eye,
    And in its deeps there hangs a starry tear!


     THOSE WHO LOVE LIKE ME.

    Those who love like me,
      When their meeting ends
    Friends can hardly be,
      But less or more than friends!

    With common words, and smiles,
      We cannot meet, and part,
    For something will prevent--
      Something in the heart!

    The thought of other days,
      The dream of other years;
    With other words, and smiles,
      And other sighs and tears!

    For all who love like me,
      When their parting ends,
    Friends must never be,
      But more or less than friends!


            TO THE WINDS

    Blow fair to-day, ye changing Winds!
      And smooth the story sea;
    For now ye waft a sacred bark,
      And bear a friend from me.
    From you he flies, ye Northern Winds,
      Your Southern mates to seek;
    So urge his keel until he feels
      Their kisses on his cheek:
    And when their tropic kisses warm,
      And tropic skies impart,
    Their floods of sunshine to his veins,
      Their gladness to his heart--
    Blow fair again, ye happy Winds!
      And smooth again the sea,
    For then ye'll waft the blessed bark,
      And bear my friend to me!


    "WIND OF SUMMER, MURMUR LOW."

    Wind of summer, murmur low,
    Where the charmed waters flow,
    While the songs of day are dying,
    And the bees are homeward flying,
    As the breezes come and go.
    Come and go, hum and blow,
    Winds of summer, sweet and low,
    Ere my lover sinks to rest,
    While he lies upon my breast,
    Kiss his forehead, pale and fair,
    Kiss the ringlets of his hair,
    Kiss his heavy-lidded eyes,
    Where the mist of slumber lies;
    Kiss his throat, his cheek, his brow,
    And his red, red lips, as I do now,
    While he sleeps so sound and slow,
    On the heart that loves him so,
    Dreaming of the sad, and olden,
    And the loving, and the golden
    Wind of summers long ago!




THE LATE ELIOT WARBURTON.


The melancholy fate of the author of _The Crescent and the Cross_,
_Canada_, _Darien_, &c., has been stated in these pages. In Great
Britain, where he was well known and highly esteemed by literary men,
there have been many feeling and apparently just tributes to his memory,
one of the most interesting of which is a memoir in the _Dublin
University Magazine_, from which we transcribe the following paragraphs:

     "It was during an extended tour in the Mediterranean about
     ten years ago, that Mr. Warburton sent some sheets of
     manuscript notes to Mr. Lever, at that time Editor of the
     _Dublin University Magazine_. These at once caught that
     gentleman's attention, and he gladly gave them publicity,
     under the title of "Episodes of Eastern Travel," in
     successive numbers of the magazine, where they were
     universally admired for the grace and liveliness of their
     style. Mr. Lever, however, soon saw that though for the
     purposes of his periodical these papers were extremely
     valuable, the author was not consulting his own best
     interests by continuing to give his travels to the world in
     that form; and, with generous disinterestedness, advised him
     to collect what he had already published, and the remainder
     of his notes, and make a book of the whole. Mr. Warburton
     followed his advice, entered into terms with Mr. Colburn,
     and published his travels under the title of 'The Crescent
     and the Cross.'

     "Of this book it is needless for us to speak. In spite of
     the formidable rivalry of an 'Eothen,' which appeared about
     the same time, it sprang at once into public favor, and is
     one of the very few books of modern travels of which the
     sale has continued uninterrupted through successive editions
     to the present time. Were we to pronounce upon the secret of
     its success, we should lay it to its perfect
     _right-mindedness_. A changeful truth, a versatile propriety
     of feeling initiates the author, as it were, into the heart
     of each successive subject; and we find him as profoundly
     impressed with the genius of the Holy Land, as he is
     steeped, in the proper place, in the slumberous influences
     of the dreamy Nile, upon whose bosom he rocks his readers
     into a trance, to be awakened only by the gladsome
     originality of these melodies which come mirthfully on their
     ears from either bank. And, we may observe in passing, it is
     precisely the _want_ of this, which prevents the
     indisputable power and grace of 'Eothen' from having their
     full effect with the public.

     "Passages of beauty, almost of sublimity, stand isolated
     from our sympathies by the interposed cynicism of a few
     caustic remarks; and scenes of the world's most ancient
     reverence and worship become needlessly disenchanted under
     the spell of some skeptical sneer.

     "But we must not turn aside to criticise. Since the
     publication of the 'Crescent and the Cross,' Mr. Warburton
     has written, or edited, a number of works, some historical,
     others of fiction, of which his last romance, 'Darien,' only
     appeared as he was on the eve of departing on the fatal
     voyage. It has been remarked as a singular circumstance,
     that in this tale has prefigured his own fate. A burning
     ship is described in terms which would have served as a
     picture of the frightful reality he was himself doomed to
     witness. The coincidence, casual as it is, has imparted a
     melancholy interest to that story, which will long be wept
     over as the parting and presaging legacy of a gifted spirit,
     prematurely snatched away.

     "These lighter effusions most probably grew out of the
     craving of the publishers for the _prestige_ of his name,
     already found to be valuable even on title-pages; and the
     ready market they commanded could not but prove an
     excitement to continue and multiply them. This might be
     considered in an ulterior sense unfortunate; for we are
     inclined to think that the true bent of Mr. Warburton's
     mind, if not of his talents, was towards graver and less
     imaginative studies; and we know that this propensity was
     growing upon him with maturer years and soberer reflections.

     "It is not exclusively from the bearing of his researches
     and the general drift of his correspondence that we infer
     this; though both set latterly in that direction. He had for
     some time been actually at work with definite objects in
     view. One subject which he took up warmly was a _British_
     History of Ireland; that is, a history intended to deal
     impartial justice between the Irish people on the one side,
     and the British empire on the other; reviewing the politics
     of successive periods, neither from the Irish nor the
     English side of the question, but with reference to the
     general interests of the whole.

     "The task, would have proved an arduous one, under any
     circumstances--perhaps an invidious one; but what was worse,
     even when accomplished, the book might have turned out a
     dull affair. So, with a view to lightening the reading, he
     had proposed to embody with it memoirs of the Viceroys, thus
     keeping the British connection prominent, while enlivening
     the pages with biographical touches.

     "Acting on these ideas, he had actually begun a 'History of
     the Viceroys' in conjunction with a literary friend, and was
     only deterred from prosecuting it by the apathy, or rather
     discouragement, of the London publishers, who felt no
     inclination to venture upon an Irish historical speculation.
     Unfortunately, neither he nor his friend could afford to
     pursue the task gratuitously, and it was accordingly
     abandoned.

     "Still later, he employed himself in collecting materials
     for a History of the Poor--a vast theme; perhaps too vast
     for a single intellect to grasp. To him, however, it was a
     labor of love; and he had succeeded in getting together a
     considerable mass of curious and valuable material _pour
     servir_. His last visit to his native country had researches
     of this nature for one of its objects; and we are sure many
     persons connected with the charitable institutions of
     Dublin, will recollect the persevering zeal with which he
     visited the haunts of poverty, as well as the asylums for
     its relief, noting down every thing which might prove
     afterwards serviceable on that suggestive topic.

     "With an upwelling of philanthropy so pure and perennial as
     this, the preliminary investigations could have been only a
     delight to him. Other men might be forced to them as a
     revolting duty; he chose the inquiry, with very dubious
     hopes of bettering himself by prosecuting it, because his
     heart was full of compassion, and he thought he might do
     good. We repeat, what we can state from personal knowledge,
     that the bent of Mr. Warburton's mind was latterly towards
     works of general utility; and it is with great satisfaction
     we learn, what we had not been aware of until the public
     papers announced it, that his projected visit to the New
     World was a mission, in which the interests of humanity were
     to have in him an advocate and champion.

     "Into his private life we feel that, under present
     circumstances, it would be indelicate, as well as out of
     place, to enter. Surrounded as he was with all the blessings
     which the domestic relations can bestow, beloved by his
     intimates, caressed by the gifted and the good, Eliot
     Warburton lived the centre of a radiating circle of
     happiness. His personal qualities were of no common order.
     His society was eagerly sought after. With a fastidious
     lassitude of air, and an apparent disinclination to
     exertion, he possessed remarkable force of thought and
     fluency of diction; and it was no uncommon thing to see him,
     when he had begun to relate passages from his experience in
     foreign countries, or adventures in his own, the centre of a
     gradually increasing audience, amidst which he sat,
     improvisating a sort of romantic recitation, until he was
     completely carried away on the current of his own eloquence,
     and lost every sense of where he was or what he was doing,
     in the enthusiasm he had fanned up and saw reflected around
     him. This power was a peculiar gift; and he loved to
     exercise it. In this form many of his happiest effusions
     have been given utterance to; and every body who has heard
     him at such inspired moments has felt regret that the
     brilliant bursts which so delighted him, should have been
     stamped upon no more retentive tablets than the ears of
     ordinary listeners.

     "Of this amiable, refined and gifted individual, we are
     afraid to speak as warmly as our heart would dictate. Before
     us lie the few hasty lines--but not too hurried to be the
     channel of a parting kindness--scrawled to us on the first
     day of this year--the last day the writer was ever to pass
     in England. They are, perhaps, amongst the latest words he
     ever wrote. 'I am off,' they run 'for the West Indies
     to-morrow. _But I have accomplished your affair._' Oh,
     vanity of human purpose! Man proposes--God disposes. We were
     next to hear of him, standing on the deck of the burning
     vessel in the Atlantic, alone with the captain, after every
     other soul had disappeared, surveying--we feel convinced,
     with a courage of a lion--the awful twofold death close
     before him, and which he had in probability deliberately
     preferred to an early relinquishment of his companions to
     their fate. It is a fine picture--one that shall every hang
     framed with his image in our memory; helping us to believe
     that

    "'-----Lycidas our sorrow is not dead.
    Sunk though he be beneath the watery flood,'--

     But that he hath mounted to a higher sphere--

    "'Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.'"




AUTHOR OF "THE FOOL OF QUALITY."


Of the interesting papers in the February Dublin University Magazine, we
have read none with more satisfaction than the biographical sketch and
portrait of one of the most distinguished Irishmen of his own or any
age, the gifted and pure minded author of _Gustavus Vasa_ and _The Fool
of Quality_, HENRY BROOKE. Of his literary fate it might be said that
the most unfortunate thing he did was to assert the patriotism of Dean
Swift; and the most unfortunate thing was to be left out of Doctor
Johnson's "Lives of the Poets." Trials had he to undergo, although not
absolutely driven to the wall, like many children of "the fatal dowry,"
and those of Irish complexion, in particular; but he bravely bore up
against them. Those who deem that relatives may live more happily apart,
and that friendship is best preserved in full dress, may look at the
picture of Henry Brooke, the poet and politician, and Robert Brooke, the
painter, with their wives and children, not less than twenty, living
together in perfect peace and amity at Daisy Park, in the flattest part
of Kildare, where, in those dull seats and distant times, a family
breeze might now and then have been looked on in the Irish sense as a
"convenience and a comfort." "While Henry wrote," says the biographer,
"Robert painted, and sold his pictures; and thus these two loving
brothers, having lost their property, made a right and manful use of
their intellectual gifts, and supported their large families by the
sweat of their brows."

     "In his politics, Brooke was of the old whig school; and,
     had he lived in 1829, he would probably have been an
     emancipator. He was a right-minded, ardent Irishman in his
     love for fatherland; hated oppression; idolized liberty;
     wrote most keenly against Poyning's infamous laws; mourned
     over the misrule and misgovernment of his country, under the
     tyranny and rapacity of the Stuart dynasty; admired King
     William, and was an exulting Protestant; yet greatly loved
     his Roman Catholic neighbors, and would preserve to them
     their properties, though he disliked their principles, and
     deprecated their ascendency."

Dr. Johnson's feelings respecting Brooke are accounted for, not
improbably, as follows:

     "It may be asked why did Dr. Johnson exclude Brooke from his
     'Lives of the Poets,' where so many names of little note are
     to be found? In 1739, Johnson had written in Brooke's praise
     in his 'Complete Vindication,' and twenty years afterwards,
     when the learned Dr. Campbell showed a spirited 'Prospectus
     of a History of Ireland' written by him, to the great
     moralist, he read it with much pleasure and praise, saying
     that 'every line breathed the true fire of genius.' It is
     recorded that, on this occasion, Johnson lamented that 'the
     vanity of Irishmen, even if their patriotism were extinct,
     did not enable Brooke to carry his design into execution.'
     In Johnson's letter to Charles O'Connor we have his mind on
     the subject. To Brooke he appears never to have written;
     there had been an ancient quarrel between them. They had
     argued and disagreed; and the traditionary story in Brooke's
     family bears _so_ heavily on the manner of the philosopher,
     and is _so_ flattering to the courtesy of the poet, that we
     should prefer not to write it down. Brooke was at all times
     strangely careless of fame; independent to a fault, and more
     proud than vain; and though much urged by his friends to
     humble himself, yet he could not be induced to 'bow down' to
     the cap of this literary Gesler, much as he regarded his
     learning and noble intellect. This dislike of the Doctor
     continued during his life; and Boswell narrates that on the
     occasion of a play being read to him (it was Brooke's
     _Gustavus Vasa_) and a circle of friends, on coming to the
     line--

    "Who rules o'er free men should himself be free!'

     the company applauded, but Johnson said it might as well be
     said--

    "'Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat--'

     a stupid and inapt verbal sophism, and unworthy of his great
     and good mind; but such was often his way. In this fashion
     one might string endless parodies on the line, and equally
     inapplicable; for example:--

    "'Who keeps a madhouse should himself be mad!'

     "Mr. Brooke's elegant and honest mind probably had in view
     that word of Scripture which saith, 'he that ruleth his own
     spirit is better than he who taketh a city'--(Prov. xvi.
     32.)

"By this unhappy difference Brooke lost his Johnsonian niche in the
temple of biographical fame. Yet we must remember that a better fate was
his,--'his record is on high,'--and his spirit with that Saviour who
loved him and made him what he was. Faults and inconsistency were in
him, no doubt, but still we know not of any of whom it could be so well
and suitably said--

    "'His life was gentle, and the elements
    So mixed him, that Nature might stand up
    And say to all the world, 'This was a man.'"




BANCROFT'S AMERICAN REVOLUTION.[5]

From the Westminster Review.


Among the historians who have attained a high and deserved reputation in
the United States, within the last few years, we are inclined to yield
the first place to George Bancroft. His great work on the history of the
United States has been brought down from the commencement of American
colonization to the opening of the Revolutionary War, to which subject
it is understood that he intends devoting the three succeeding volumes.
His researches in the public offices of England, while he was Minister
of the United States at the Court of St. James, have brought to light a
great mass of documentary evidence on the antecedents and course of the
Revolution, which have not yet been made public. With his critical
sagacity in sifting evidence, his hound-like instinct in scenting every
particle of testimony that can lead him on the right-track, and his
plastic skill in moulding the most confused and discordant materials
into a compact, symmetrical, and truthful narrative, he cannot fail to
present the story of that great historical drama with a freshness,
accuracy, and artistic beauty, worthy of the immortal events which it
commemorates. Mr. Bancroft is now exclusively occupied in the
completion of this work. He pursues it with the drudging fidelity of a
mechanical laborer, combined with the enthusiasm of a poet and the
comprehensive wisdom of a statesman. With strong social tastes, he gives
little time to society. His favorite post is in his library, where he
labors the live-long day in the spirit of the ancient artist, _Nulla
dies sine linea_. His experience in political and diplomatic life, no
less than his rare and generous culture, and his singular union of the
highest mental faculties, enable us to predict with confidence that this
work will be reckoned among the genuine masterpieces of historical
genius. The volumes of the History of the United States already
published, are well known to intelligent readers both in Great Britain
and America. They are distinguished for their compact brevity of
statement, their terse and vigorous diction, their brilliant panoramic
views, and the boldness and grace of their sketches of personal
character. A still higher praise may be awarded to this history for the
tenacity with which it clings to the dominant and inspiring idea of
which it records the development. Whoever reads it without comprehending
the standpoint of the author, is liable to disappointment. For it must
be confessed that as a mere narrative of events, the preference may be
given to the productions of far inferior authors. But it is to be
regarded as an epic in prose of the triumph of freedom. This noble
principle is considered by Mr. Bancroft as an essential attribute of the
soul, necessarily asserting itself in proportion to the spiritual
supremacy which has been achieved. The history, then, is devoted to the
illustration of the progress of freedom, as an out-birth of the
spontaneous action of the soul. It is in this point of view that the
remarkable chapters on the Massachusetts Pilgrims, the Pennsylvania
Quakers, and the North American Indians, were written; and their full
purport, their profound significance, can only be appreciated by readers
whose minds possess at least the seeds of sympathy and cognateness with
this sublime philosophy. The chapter on the Quakers is a pregnant
psychological treatise. Sparkling all over with the electric lights of a
rich humanitary philosophy, it invests the theologic visions of Fox and
Barclay with a radiance and beauty which have been ill-preserved in the
formal and lifeless organic systems of their successors. The parallel
run by the historian between William Penn and John Locke is one of the
most characteristic productions of his peculiar genius. Original,
subtle, suggestive, crowded with matter and frugal of words, it brings
out the distinctive features of the spiritual and mechanical schools in
the persons of two of their 'representative men,' with a breadth and
reality which is seldom found in philosophical portraitures. Mr.
Bancroft was the son of an eminent Unitarian clergyman in Worcester,
Massachusetts. He was born about the beginning of the present century,
and is consequently a little more than fifty years of age. He graduated
at Harvard University, with distinguished honors, before he had
completed his fifteenth year. Soon after he sailed for Europe, and
continued his studies at the German Universities, returning to his own
country just before the attainment of his majority. Devoting himself for
several years to literary and educational pursuits, he acquired a
brilliant reputation as a poet, critic, and essayist; and at a
subsequent period, entering the career of politics, he has signalized
himself by his attachment to democratic ideas, and the eloquence and
force with which on all occasions he has sustained the principles with
the prevalence of which he identifies the progress of humanity.

       *       *       *       *       *

From the Athenaeum.

The further this work proceeds, the more do we feel that it must take
its place as an essentially satisfactory history of the United States.
Mr. Bancroft is thoroughly American in thought and in feeling, without
ceasing to have those larger views and nobler sympathies which result
from cosmopolitan rather than from local training. His style is original
and national. It breathes of the mountain and the prairie--of the great
lakes and wild savannahs of his native land. A strain of wild and
forest-like music swells up in almost every line. The story is told
richly and vividly. It has hitherto been thought by Americans
themselves, even more than by Europeans, that the story of the English
colonies presented but a dreary and lifeless succession of petty
squabbles between the settlers and the crown officers--of unintelligible
persecutions of each other on the ground of differences of opinion in
religion. Mr. Bancroft has shown how ill founded has been this
impression. In his hands American history is full of fine effects.
Steeped in the colors of his imagination, a thousand incidents hitherto
thought dull appear animated and pictorial. Between Hildreth and
Bancroft the difference is immense. In the treatment of the former,
dates, facts, events are duly stated--the criticism is keen, the
chronology indisputable,--but the figures do not live, the narrative
knows no march. The latter is all movement. His men glow with human
purposes,--his story sweeps on with the exulting life of a procession.

Yet because Mr. Bancroft contrives to bring out the more romantic
aspects of his theme, it is not to be supposed that he fails in that
strict regard to truth--truth of character as well as of incident--which
is the historian's first duty, and without which all other qualities are
useless. Of all American writers who have written on the history of
their own country, we would pronounce him to be the most conscientious.
His former volumes were remarkable for the amplitude and accuracy of
their references. The authorities cited were often recondite and
obscure,--yet it was evident that they had been sifted carefully and
critically. The same may be said of the volume before us.

Careful research had enabled Mr. Bancroft to throw new light on several
points connected with the settlement and early history of his country.
As his dates approach nearer to the present time, the sources of new
information open on him in abundance. The MS, additions to our knowledge
of the times treated of in these volumes are considerable; but they are
spread pretty fairly over the entire narrative--lending a new light to
the events and adding a new trait to the characters--rather than thrown
into masses. The effect produced is more that of greater roundness and
completion than of absolute change in old historical verdicts. We quote
one out of innumerable instances of these minute but characteristic
additions. The historian is speaking of the Duke of Newcastle,--whose
ignorant government of the colonies was one of the chief sources of
their discontent:--

     "For nearly four-and-twenty years he remained minister for
     British America; yet to the last, the statesman, who was
     deeply versed in the statistics of elections, knew little of
     the continent of which he was the guardian. He addressed
     letters, it used to be confidently said, to 'the island of
     New England,' and could not tell but that Jamaica was in the
     Mediterranean. Heaps of colonial memorials and letters
     remained unread in his office; and a paper was almost sure
     of neglect unless some agent remained with him to see it
     opened. His frivolous nature could never glow with
     affection, or grasp a great idea, or analyze complex
     relations. After long research, I cannot find that he ever
     once attended seriously to an American question, or had a
     clear conception of one American measure."

Walpole had told us that Newcastle did not know where Jamaica was:--the
amusing address "Island of New England" Mr. Bancroft finds referred to
in a manuscript letter of J. Q. Adams. It serves to suggest that what is
usually thought to be a joke of Walpole's was probably the literal
truth:--the man who is sufficiently innocent of geography to make New
England an island, would have no difficulty in confounding the East and
West Indies.

In this volume we first meet with the great character who is to be the
hero of the Revolution now looming before the reader. Mr. Bancroft
treats us to no full-length portrait of George Washington:--instead of a
picture he presents us with the man. Washington comes before us at
twenty-one,--in the chamber of Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia; from
whom he is accepting a perilous but most important mission--to cross the
forests, rivers, and mountains which separate Williamsburg and Lake
Erie, in the depths of a severe winter, and there endeavor to detach the
Delaware Indians from the French alliance. All the elements of
Washington's greatness--his courage, hardihood, military prescience, and
merciful disposition--are stamped indelibly on this the first act of his
public life:--

     "In the middle of November, with an interpreter and four
     attendants, and Christopher Gist as a guide, he left Will's
     Creek, and following the Indian trace through forest
     solitudes, gloomy with the fallen leaves, and solemn sadness
     of late autumn, across mountains, rocky ravines, and
     streams, through sleet and snows, he rode in nine days to
     the fork of the Ohio. How lonely was the spot, where, so
     long unheeded of men, the rapid Allegheny met nearly at
     right angles 'the deep and still' water of the Monongahela!
     At once Washington foresaw the destiny of the place. 'I
     spent some time,' said he, 'in viewing the rivers;' 'the
     land in the Fork has the absolute command of both.' 'The
     flat, well-timbered land all around the point lies very
     convenient for building.' After creating in imagination a
     fortress and a city, he and his party swam their horses
     across the Allegheny, and wrapt their blankets around them
     for the night, on its northwest bank. From the Fork the
     chief of the Delawares conducted Washington through rich
     alluvial fields to the pleasing valley at Logstown. There
     deserters from Louisiana discoursed of the route from New
     Orleans to Quebec, by way of the Wabash and the Maumee, and
     of a detachment from the lower province on its way to meet
     the French troops from Lake Erie, while Washington held
     close colloquy with the half-king; the one anxious to gain
     the west as a part of the territory of the ancient dominion,
     the other to preserve it for the Red Men. 'We are brothers,'
     said the half-king in council; 'we are one people; I will
     send back the French speech-belt, and will make the Shawnees
     and the Delawares do the same.' On the night of the
     twenty-ninth of November, the council-fire was kindled an
     aged orator was selected to address the French the speech
     which he was to deliver was debated and rehearsed; it was
     agreed that, unless the French would heed this third warning
     to quit the land, the Delawares also would be their enemies;
     and a very large string of black and white wampun was sent
     to the Six Nations as a prayer for aid. After these
     preparations, the party of Washington, attended by the
     half-king, and envoys of the Delawares, moved onwards to the
     post of the French at Venango. The officers there avowed the
     purpose of taking possession of the Ohio; and they mingled
     the praises of La Salle with boasts of their forts at Le
     Boeuf and Erie, at Niagara, Toronto, and Frontenac. 'The
     English,' said they, 'can raise two men to our one; but they
     are too dilatory to prevent any enterprise of ours.' The
     Delawares were intimidated or debauched; but the half-king
     clung to Washington like a brother, and delivered up his
     belt as he had promised. The rains of December had swollen
     the creeks. The messengers could pass them only by felling
     trees for bridges. Thus they proceeded, now killing a buck
     and now a bear, delayed by excessive rains and snows, by
     mire and swamps, while Washington's quick eye discerned all
     the richness of the meadows. At Waterford, the limit of his
     journey, he found Fort Le Boeuf defended by cannon. Around
     it stood the barracks of the soldiers, rude log-cabins,
     roofed with bark. Fifty birch-bark canoes, and one hundred
     seventy boats of pine, were already prepared for the descent
     of the river, and materials were collected for building
     more. The Commander, Gardeur de St. Pierre, an officer of
     integrity and experience, and, for his dauntless courage,
     both feared and beloved by the Red Men, refused to discuss
     questions of right. 'I am here,' said he, 'by the orders of
     my general, to which I shall conform with exactness and
     resolution.' And he avowed his purpose of seizing every
     Englishman within the Ohio Valley. France was resolved on
     possessing the great territory which her missionaries and
     travellers had revealed to the world. Breaking away from
     courtesies, Washington hastened homewards to Virginia. The
     rapid current of French Creek dashed his party against
     rocks; in shallow places they waded, the water congealing on
     their clothes; where the ice had lodged in the bend of the
     rivers, they carried their canoe across the neck. At
     Venango, they found their horses, but so weak, the
     travellers went still on foot, heedless of the storm. The
     cold increased very fast; the paths grew 'worse by a deep
     snow continually freezing.' Impatient to get back with his
     despatches, the young envoy, wrapping himself in an Indian
     dress, with gun in hand and pack on his back, the day after
     Christmas quitted the usual path, and, with Gist for his
     sole companion, by aid of the compass, steered the nearest
     way across the country for the Fork. An Indian, who had lain
     in wait for him, fired at him from not fifteen steps'
     distance, but, missing him, became his prisoner. 'I would
     have killed him,' wrote Gist, 'but Washington forbade.'
     Dismissing their captive at night, they walked about half a
     mile, then kindled a fire, fixed their course by the
     compass, and continued travelling all night, and all the
     next day, till quite dark. Not till then did the weary
     wanderers 'think themselves safe enough to sleep,' and they
     encamped, with no shelter but the leafless forest-tree. On
     reaching the Allegheny, with one poor hatchet and a whole
     day's work, a raft was constructed and launched. But before
     they were half over the river, they were caught in the
     running ice, expecting every moment to be crushed, unable to
     reach either shore. Putting out the setting-pole to stop the
     raft, Washington was jerked into the deep water, and saved
     himself only by grasping at the raft-logs. They were obliged
     to make for an island. There lay Washington, imprisoned by
     the elements; but the late December night was intensely
     cold, and in the morning he found the river frozen. Not till
     he reached Gist's settlement, in January, 1754, were his
     toils lightened."

Washington reported the state of affairs on the Lakes,--and active
measures were consequently adopted. Of the rapid and brilliant
development of his military genius, we are not now to trace the
progress; but it is scarcely possible to read without a shudder of "the
hair-breadth 'scapes" of the young man whose life was of such
inestimable consequence to his country. Thus, in the battle fought by
Braddock--to whom Washington acted as aide-de-camp--against the French
and Indians in 1755, he appeared to others as well as to himself to bear
a charmed life. In this action, says Mr. Bancroft,--

     "Of eighty-six officers, twenty-six were killed--among them,
     Sir Peter Halket,--and thirty-seven were wounded, including
     Gage and other field officers. Of the men, one half were
     killed or wounded. Braddock braved every danger. His
     secretary was shot dead; both his English aids were disabled
     early in the engagement, leaving the American alone to
     distribute his orders. 'I expected every moment,' said one
     whose eye was on Washington, 'to see him fall.' Nothing but
     the superintending care of Providence could have saved him.
     An Indian chief--I suppose a Shawnee--singled him out with
     his rifle, and bade others of his warriors do the same. Two
     horses were killed under him; four balls penetrated his
     coat. 'Some potent Manitou guards his life,' exclaimed the
     savage. 'Death,' wrote Washington, 'was levelling my
     companions on every side of me, but, by the all-powerful
     dispensations of Providence, I have been protected.' 'To the
     public,' said Davis, a learned divine, in the following
     month, 'I point out that heroic youth, Colonel Washington,
     whom I cannot but hope Providence has preserved in so signal
     a manner for some important service to his country.' 'Who is
     Mr. Washington?' asked Lord Halifax, a few months later. 'I
     know nothing of him,' he added, 'but that they say he
     behaved in Braddock's action as bravely as if he really
     loved the whistling of bullets.'"

Thus opened that career of glory, moderation, and success--thus, at the
period of nascent manhood were exhibited the marking traits of that
serene and devoted character--which have placed the name of Washington
on the noblest and loftiest pedestal in the Temple of Fame.

Leaving for a while the only figure in that scene of miserable and
savage warfare on which the mind can dwell with any degree of trust and
satisfaction, we will move to the north-east of the English settlements,
and follow the story of the unhappy people of Acadia. Mr. Bancroft has
drawn a touching picture of the homely virtues and obscure happiness of
this rural population before the interference of the British officers
changed their joy into wailing, and endowed their simple annals with a
dark and tragic interest:--

     "After repeated conquests and restorations, the treaty of
     Utrecht conceded Acadia, or Nova Scotia, to Great Britain.
     Yet the name of Annapolis, the presence of a feeble English
     garrison, and the emigration of hardly five or six English
     families, were nearly all that marked the supremacy of
     England. The old inhabitants remained on the soil which they
     had subdued, hardly conscious that they had changed their
     sovereign. They still loved the language and the usages of
     their forefathers, and their religion was graven upon their
     souls. They promised submission to England; but such was the
     love with which France had inspired them, they would not
     fight against its standard or renounce its name. Though
     conquered they were French neutrals. For nearly forty years
     from the peace of Utrecht they had been forgotten or
     neglected, and had prospered in their seclusion. No
     tax-gatherer counted their folds, no magistrate dwelt in
     their hamlets. The parish priests made their records and
     regulated their successions. Their little disputes were
     settled among themselves, with scarcely an instance of an
     appeal to English authority at Annapolis. The pastures were
     covered with their herds and flocks; and dikes, raised by
     extraordinary efforts of social industry, shut out the
     rivers and the tide from alluvial marshes of exuberant
     fertility. The meadows, thus reclaimed, were covered by
     richest grasses, or fields of wheat, that yielded fifty and
     thirty fold at the harvest. Their houses were built in
     clusters, neatly constructed and comfortably furnished, and
     around them all kinds of domestic fowls abounded. With the
     spinning-wheel and the loom, their women made, of flax from
     their own fields, of fleeces from their own flock, coarse,
     but sufficient clothing. The few foreign luxuries that were
     coveted could be obtained from Annapolis or Louisburgh, in
     return for furs, or wheat, or cattle. Thus were the Acadians
     happy in their neutrality and in the abundance which they
     drew from their native land. They formed, as it were, one
     great family. Their morals were of unaffected purity. Love
     was sanctified and calmed by the universal custom of early
     marriages. The neighbors of the community would assist the
     new couple to raise their cottage, while the wilderness
     offered land. Their numbers increased, and the colony, which
     had begun only as the trading station of a company, with a
     monopoly of the fur trade, counted, perhaps, sixteen or
     seventeen thousand inhabitants."

The transfer of this colony from French to English rule could not fail
to be productive of some untoward results. The native priests feared the
introduction among them of heretical opinions:--the British officers
treated the people with insolent contempt. "Their papers and records"
says our historian, "were taken from them" by their new masters:--

     "Was their property demanded for the public service? 'they
     were not to be bargained with for the payment.' The order
     may still be read on the Council records at Halifax. They
     must comply, it was written, without making any terms,
     'immediately,' or 'the next courier would bring an order for
     military execution upon the delinquents.' And when they
     delayed in fetching firewood for their oppressors, it was
     told them from the governor, 'If they do not do it in proper
     time, the soldiers shall absolutely take their houses for
     fuel.' The unoffending sufferers submitted meekly to the
     tyranny. Under pretence of fearing that they might rise in
     behalf of France, or seek shelter in Canada, or convey
     provisions to the French garrisons, they were ordered to
     surrender their boats and their firearms; and, conscious of
     innocence, they gave up their barges and their muskets,
     leaving themselves without the means of flight, and
     defenceless. Further orders were afterwards given to the
     English officers, if the Acadians behaved amiss to punish
     them at discretion; if the troops were annoyed, to inflict
     vengeance on the nearest, whether the guilty one or
     not,--'taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'"

There is no reason to believe that these atrocious orders were not
executed in the spirit in which they had been conceived. But worse
remained to come:--

     "The Acadians cowered before their masters, hoping
     forbearance; willing to take an oath of fealty to England;
     in their single-mindedness and sincerity, refusing to pledge
     themselves to bear arms against France. The English were
     masters of the sea, were undisputed lords of the country,
     and could exercise clemency without apprehension. Not a
     whisper gave a warning of their purpose till it was ripe for
     execution. But it had been 'determined upon' after the
     ancient device of Oriental despotism, that the French
     inhabitants of Acadia should be carried away into captivity
     to other parts of the British dominions. * * France
     remembered the descendants of her sons in the hour of their
     affliction, and asked that they might have time to remove
     from the peninsula with their effects, leaving their lands
     to the English; but the answer of the British Minister
     claimed them as useful subjects, and refused them the
     liberty of transmigration. The inhabitants of Minas and the
     adjacent country pleaded with the British officers for the
     restitution of their boats and their guns, promising
     fidelity, if they could but retain their liberties, and
     declaring that not the want of arms, but their conscience,
     should engage them not to revolt. 'The memorial,' said
     Lawrence in Council, 'is highly arrogant, insidious and
     insulting.' The memorialists, at his summons, came
     submissively to Halifax. 'You want your canoes for carrying
     provisions to the enemy,' said he to them, though he knew no
     enemy was left in their vicinity. 'Guns are no part of your
     goods,' he continued, 'as by the laws of England all Roman
     Catholics are restrained from having arms, and are subject
     to penalties if arms are found in their houses. It is not
     the language of British subjects to talk of terms with the
     Crown, or capitulate about their fidelity and allegiance.
     What excuse can you make for your presumption in treating
     this government with such indignity as to expound to them
     the nature of fidelity? Manifest your obedience by
     immediately taking the oaths of allegiance in the common
     form before the Council.' The deputies replied that they
     would do as the generality of the inhabitants should
     determine; and they merely entreated leave to return home
     and consult the body of their people. The next day, the
     unhappy men, foreseeing the sorrows that menaced them,
     offered to swear allegiance unconditionally."

But it was now too late. The savage purpose had been formed. That the
cruelty might have no excuse, it happened that while the scheme was
under discussion letters arrived leaving no doubt that all the shores of
the Bay of Fundy were in the possession of the British. It only remained
to be fixed how the exportation should be effected:--

     "To hunt them into the net was impracticable; artifice was
     therefore resorted to. By a general proclamation, on one and
     the same day, the scarcely conscious victims, 'both old men
     and young men, as well as all the lads of ten years of age,'
     were peremptorily ordered to assemble at their respective
     posts. On the appointed 5th of September, they obeyed. At
     Grand Pre, for example, 418 unarmed men came together. They
     were marched into the church, and its avenues were closed,
     when Winslow, the American commander, placed himself in
     their centre, and spoke:--'You are convened together to
     manifest to you His Majesty's final resolution to the
     French inhabitants of this his province. Your lands, and
     tenements, cattle of all kinds, and live stock of all sorts,
     are forfeited to the crown, and you yourselves are to be
     removed from this his province. I am, through his Majesty's
     goodness, directed to allow you liberty to carry off your
     money and household goods, as many as you can, without
     discommoding the vessels you go in.' And he then declared
     them the King's prisoners. Their wives and families shared
     their lot; their sons, 527 in number, their daughters, 576;
     in the whole, women and babes and old men and children all
     included, 1,923 souls. The blow was sudden; they had left
     home but for the morning, and they never were to return.
     Their cattle were to stay unfed in the stalls, their fires
     to die out on their hearths. They had for that first day
     even no food for themselves or their children, and were
     compelled to beg for bread. The 10th of September was the
     day for the embarkation of a part of the exiles. They were
     drawn up six deep, and the young men, 161 in number, were
     ordered to march first on board the vessel. They could leave
     their farms and cottages, the shady rocks on which they had
     reclined, their herds and their garners; but nature yearned
     within them, and they would not be separated from their
     parents. Yet of what avail was the frenzied despair of the
     unarmed youth? They had not one weapon; the bayonet drove
     them to obey; and they marched slowly and heavily from the
     chapel to the shore, between women and children, who
     kneeling, prayed for blessings on their heads, they
     themselves weeping, and praying, and singing hymns. The
     seniors went next; the wives and children must wait till
     other transport vessels arrived. The delay had its horrors.
     The wretched people left behind were kept together near the
     sea, without proper food or raiment, or shelter, till other
     ships came to take them away; and December with its
     appalling cold had struck the shivering, half-clad,
     broken-hearted sufferers before the last of them were
     removed. 'The embarkation of the inhabitants goes on but
     slowly,' wrote Monckton, from Fort Cumberland, near which he
     had burned three hamlets, 'the most part of the wives of the
     men we have prisoners are gone off with their children, in
     hopes I would not send off their husbands without them.'
     Their hope was vain. Near Annapolis, a hundred heads of
     families fled to the woods, and a party was detached on the
     hunt to bring them in. 'Our soldiers hate them,' wrote an
     officer on this occasion, 'and if they can but find a
     pretext to kill them, they will.' Did a prisoner seek to
     escape, he was shot down by the sentinel. Yet some fled to
     Quebec; more than 3,000 had withdrawn to Miramichi and the
     region south of the Ristigouche; some found rest on the
     banks of the St. John's and its branches; some found a lair
     in their native forests; some were charitably sheltered from
     the English in the wigwams of the savages. But 7,000 of
     these banished people were driven on board ships, and
     scattered among the English colonies, from New Hampshire to
     Georgia alone; 1,020 to South Carolina alone. They were cast
     ashore without resources; hating the poor-house as a shelter
     for their offspring, and abhorring the thought of selling
     themselves as laborers. Households, too, were separated; the
     colonial newspapers contained advertisements of members of
     families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to reach
     and relieve their parents, of mothers mourning for their
     children. The wanderers sighed for their native country; but
     to prevent their return, their villages, from Annapolis to
     the isthmus, were laid waste. Their old homes were but
     ruins. In the district of Minas, for instance, 250 of their
     houses, and more than as many barns, were consumed. The live
     stock which belonged to them, consisting of great numbers of
     horned cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses, were seized as
     spoils and disposed of by the English officials. A beautiful
     and fertile tract of country was reduced to a solitude.
     There was none left round the ashes of the cottages of the
     Acadians but the faithful watch-dog, vainly seeking the
     hands that fed him. Thickets of forest-trees choked their
     orchards; the ocean broke over their neglected dikes, and
     desolated their meadows."

Nor were the woes of this ill-treated people ended:

     "Relentless misfortune pursued the exiles whereever they
     fled. Those sent to Georgia, drawn by a love for the spot
     where they were born as strong as that of the captive Jews,
     who wept by the side of the rivers of Babylon for their own
     temple and land, escaped to sea in boats, and went coasting
     from harbor to harbor; but when they had reached New
     England, just as they would have set sail for their native
     fields, they were stopped by orders from Nova Scotia. Those
     who dwelt on the St. John's were torn once more from their
     new homes. When Canada surrendered, hatred with its worst
     venom pursued the 1,500 who remained south of the
     Ristigouche. Once more those who dwelt in Pennsylvania
     presented a humble petition to the Earl of Loudoun, then the
     British Commander in-Chief in America; and the cold-hearted
     peer, offended that the prayer was made in French, seized
     their five principal men, who in their own land had been
     persons of dignity and substance, and shipped them to
     England, with the request that they might be kept from ever
     again becoming troublesome by being consigned to service as
     common sailors on board ships of war."

And so it was throughout:--"We have been true," said they in one of
their petitions, "to our religion, and true to ourselves; yet nature
appears to consider us only as the objects of public vengeance."--"I
know not," writes Mr. Bancroft, "if the annals of the human race keep
the records of wounds so wantonly inflicted, so bitter and so perennial
as fell upon the French inhabitants of Acadia."

American history has at least one element of peculiar character. The
voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers--the settlement of the Virginia
cavaliers--the foundation of Pennsylvania,--though all events of
profound moral interest, as well as productive of fine pictorial
effects, are not without parallels more or less close in the varied tale
of ancient and modern colonization. But that which is distinctive and
peculiar in the story of American civilization is, its struggle against
the Red Men. Settlers, it is true, have often found themselves in
strange company. In Africa the Greek colonizer elbowed the swarthy
Ethiop. In South America the Spaniard stood beside the Peruvian and the
Carib. Dutchmen have encountered the Malay and the Dyak. For two
centuries English settlers have had to deal with the uncivilized races
of the East and West--from the Bushmen of the Cape to the savages of New
Zealand. But none of these races present the same attractive features as
the brethren of the Iroquois and the Mohicans. About these latter there
are points of romantic and chivalric interest. Though not free from the
vices of the savage, they often exhibit virtues which might shame the
European. There is something of dignity in their aspect and bearing.
They are seldom without a natural and original poetic sense,--and their
language has a wild Ossianic music. They are bold in metaphor and apt in
natural illustration. A group of actors on the scene having
characteristics so peculiar and so attractive as the Red Skin is
invaluable to a historian whose tendency is to see events and note
character under their most pictorial aspects.

The part taken by the Indians in that war between the French and English
in America which ended in the conquest of Quebec and the expulsion of
the Lilies from Canada is narrated at great length by Mr. Bancroft,--and
the atrocious nature of the conflict is well brought out. At the
commencement of the war, we are allowed a glimpse at a curious
war-council:

     "'Brothers,' said the Delawares to the Miamis, 'we desire
     the English and the Six Nations to put their hands upon your
     heads, and keep the French from hurting you. Stand fast in
     the chain of friendship with the Government of Virginia.'
     'Brothers,' said the Miamis to the English, 'your country is
     smooth; your hearts are good; the dwellings of your
     governors are like the spring in its bloom.' 'Brothers,'
     they added to the Six Nations, holding aloft a calumet
     ornamented with feathers, 'the French and their Indians have
     struck us, yet we kept this pipe unhurt;' and they gave it
     to the Six Nations, in token of friendship with them and
     with their allies. A shell and a string of black wampum were
     given to signify the unity of heart; and that, though it was
     darkness to the westward, yet towards the sun-rising it was
     bright and clear. Another string of black wampum announced
     that the war-chiefs and braves of the Miamis held the
     hatchet in their hand, ready to strike the French. The
     widowed Queen of the Piankeshaws sent a belt of black shells
     intermixed with white. 'Brothers,' such were her words, 'I
     am left a poor, lonely woman, with one son, whom I commend
     to the English, the Six Nations, the Shawnees, and the
     Delawares, and pray them to take care of him.' The Weas
     produced a calumet. 'We have had this feathered pipe,' said
     they, 'from the beginning of the world; so that when it
     becomes cloudy, we can sweep the clouds away. It is dark in
     the west, yet we sweep all clouds away towards the
     sun-rising, and leave a clear and serene sky.' Thus, on the
     alluvial lands of Western Ohio, began the contest that was
     to scatter death broadcast through the world. All the
     speeches were delivered again to the Deputies of the
     Nations, represented at Logstown, that they might be
     correctly repeated to the head Council at Onondaga. An
     express messenger from the Miamis hurried across the
     mountains, bearing to the shrewd and able Dinwiddie, the
     Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, a belt of wampum, the scalp
     of a French Indian, and a feathered pipe, with letters from
     the dwellers on the Maumee and on the Wabash. 'Our good
     brothers of Virginia,' said the former, 'we must look upon
     ourselves as lost, if our brothers, the English, do not
     stand by us and give us arms.' 'Eldest brother,' pleaded the
     Picts and Windaws, 'this string of wampum assures you, that
     the French King's servants have spilled our blood, and eaten
     the flesh of three of our men. Look upon us and pity us, for
     we are in great distress. Our chiefs have taken up the
     hatchet of war. We have killed and eaten ten of the French
     and two of their negroes. We are your brothers; and do not
     think this is from our mouth only; it is from our very
     hearts.' Thus they solicited protection and revenge."

The Duke of Newcastle was unequal to the task of driving the soldiers of
France from Canada or from the valley of the Mississippi. The North and
South were both in the hands of France. The route of the Ohio and the
Mississippi had been discovered by adventurers and missionaries of that
nation; and a few years of quiet possession of the territory would have
allowed French statesmen to consolidate their power in those regions,
and to draw a strong cordon around the entire group of English colonies
on the Atlantic sea-board. But Pitt's genius was brought to bear at a
critical moment on the arrangement of this great question--and he
conceived the project of breaking the Mississippi line and attacking the
enemy in their strongholds on the St. Lawrence. Three expeditions were
fitted out. Amherst and Wolfe were ordered to join the fleet under
Boscawen, destined to act against Louisburgh--Forbes was sent to the
Ohio Valley--Abercrombie was intrusted with the command against Crown
Point and Ticonderoga, though Lord Howe was sent out with the last named
as the real soul of the enterprise. Mr. Bancroft writes:

     "None of the officers won favor like Lord Howe and Wolfe.
     Both were still young. To high rank and great connections
     Howe added manliness, humanity, capacity to discern merit,
     and judgment to employ it. As he reached America, he entered
     on the simple austerity of forest warfare. James Wolfe, but
     thirty-one years old, had already been eighteen years in the
     army; was at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and had won laurels at
     Laffeldt. Merit made him at two-and-twenty a
     lieutenant-colonel, and his active genius improved the
     discipline of his battalion. He was at once authoritative
     and humane, severe, yet indefatigably kind; modest, but
     aspiring and secretly conscious of ability. The brave
     soldier dutifully loved and obeyed his widowed mother, and
     his gentle nature saw visions of happiness in scenes of
     domestic love, even while he kindled at the prospect of
     glory, as 'gunpowder at fire.'"

On the 28th of May the expedition reached Halifax.--

     "For six days after the British forces on their way from
     Halifax to Louisburgh, had entered Chapeau Rouge Bay, the
     surf, under a high wind, made the rugged shore inaccessible,
     and gave the French time to strengthen and extend their
     lines. The sun still dashed heavily, when, before daybreak,
     on the 8th of June, the troops, under cover of a random fire
     from the frigates, attempted disembarking. Wolfe, the third
     brigadier, who led the first division, would not allow a gun
     to be fired, cheered on the rowers, and, on coming to shoal
     water, jumped into the sea; and, in spite of the surf, which
     broke several boats and upset more, in spite of the
     well-directed fire of the French, in spite of their
     breastwork and rampart of felled trees, whose interwoven
     branches made one continued wall of green, the English
     landed, took the batteries, drove in the French, and on the
     same day invested Louisburgh. At that landing, none was more
     gallant than young Richard Montgomery; just one-and-twenty;
     Irish by birth; an humble officer in Wolfe's brigade; but
     also a servant of humanity, enlisted in its corps of
     immortals. The sagacity of Wolfe honored him with
     well-deserved praise, and promotion to a lieutenancy. On the
     morning of the 12th, an hour before dawn, Wolfe, with light
     infantry and Highlanders, took by surprise the light-house
     battery on the north-east side of the entrance to the
     harbor; the smaller works were successively carried. On the
     23d, the English battery began to play on that of the French
     on the island near the centre of the mouth of the harbor.
     Science, sufficient force, union among the officers,
     heroism, pervading mariners and soldiers, carried forward
     the siege, during which Barre by his conduct secured the
     approbation of Amherst and the confirmed friendship of
     Wolfe. Of the French ships in the port, three were burned on
     the 21st of July; in the night following the 25th, the boats
     of the squadron, with small loss, set fire to the Prudent, a
     seventy-four, and carried off the Bienfaisant. Boscawen was
     prepared to send six English ships into the harbor. But the
     town of Louisburgh was already a heap of ruins; for eight
     days, the French officers and men had had no safe place for
     rest; of fifty-two cannon opposed to the English batteries
     forty were disabled. The French had but five ships of the
     line and four frigates. It was time for the Chevalier de
     Drucour to capitulate. The garrison became prisoners of war,
     and, with the sailors and marines, in all 5,637, were sent
     to England. On the 27th of July, the English took possession
     of Louisburgh, and, as a consequence, of Cape Breton and
     Prince Edward's Island. Thus fell the power of France on our
     eastern coast. Halifax being the English naval station,
     Louisburgh was deserted. The harbor still offers shelter
     from storms; the coast repels the surge: but a few hovels
     only mark the spot which so much treasure was lavished to
     fortify, so much heroism to conquer. Wolfe, whose heart was
     in England, returned home with the love and esteem of the
     army. His country was full of exultation; the trophies were
     deposited with pomp in the cathedral of St. Paul's; the
     churches gave thanks; Boscawen, himself a member of
     parliament, was honored by a unanimous tribute from the
     House of Commons. New England, too, triumphed; for the
     praises awarded to Amherst and Wolfe recalled the heroism of
     her own sons."

This success inspired Pitt to still greater efforts. He resolved to
annex the "boundless north," as it was then called, to the British
empire in America; and early in the spring Wolfe again went out,--this
time, to conquer Quebec and find a soldier's grave. Many of his
companions in arms were then and afterwards famous men:--Jervis,
afterwards the renowned Earl St. Vincent, James Cook, the navigator,
George Townshend, Barre, and Colonel Howe.

     "On the 26th of June, the whole armament arrived, without
     the least accident, off the Isle of Orleans, on which, the
     next day, they disembarked. A little south of west the cliff
     of Quebec was seen distinctly, seemingly impregnable, rising
     precipitously in the midst of one of the grandest scenes in
     nature. To protect this guardian citadel of New France,
     Montcalm had of regular troops no more than six wasted
     battalions; of Indian warriors few appeared, the wary
     savages preferring the security of neutrals; the Canadian
     militia gave him the superiority in numbers; but he put his
     chief confidence in the natural strength of the country.
     Above Quebec, the high promontory on which the upper town is
     built expands into an elevated plain, having towards the
     river the steepest acclivities. For nine miles or more above
     the city, as far as Cape Rouge, every landing-place was
     intrenched and protected. The river St. Charles, after
     meandering through a fertile valley, sweeps the rocky base
     of the town, which it covers by expanding into sedgy
     marshes. Nine miles below Quebec, the impetuous Montmorenci,
     after fretting itself a whirlpool route, and leaping for
     miles down the steps of a rocky bed, rushes with velocity
     towards the ledge, over which, falling two hundred and fifty
     feet, it pours its fleecy cataract into the chasm. As Wolfe
     disembarked on the Isle of Orleans, what scene could be more
     imposing? On his left lay at anchor the fleet with the
     numerous transports; the tents of his army stretched across
     the island; the intrenched troops of France, having their
     centre at the village of Beanport, extended from the
     Montmorenci to the St. Charles; the city of Quebec,
     garrisoned by five battalions, bounded the horizon. At
     midnight on the 28th, the short darkness was lighted up by a
     fleet of fire-ships, that, after a furious storm of wind,
     came down with the tide in the proper direction. But the
     British sailors grappled with them and towed them free of
     the shipping. The river was Wolfe's; the men-of-war made it
     so; and, being master of the deep water, he also had the
     superiority on the south-shore of the St. Lawrence. In the
     night of the 29th, Monckton, with four battalions, having
     crossed the south channel, occupied Point Levi; and where
     the mighty current, which below the town expands as a bay,
     narrows to a deep stream of but a mile in width, batteries
     of mortars and cannon were constructed. The citizens of
     Quebec, foreseeing the ruin of their houses, volunteered to
     pass over the river and destroy the works; but, at the
     trial, their courage failed them, and they retreated. The
     English, by the discharge of red-hot balls and shells, set
     on fire fifty houses in a night, demolished the lower town,
     and injured the upper. But the citadel was beyond their
     reach, and every avenue from the river to the cliff was too
     strongly intrenched for an assault."

The summer was going rapidly, and as yet no real progress had been made.
Wolfe was eager for action,--and he pursued his researches into the
nature of the formidable position with extraordinary eagerness:--

     "He saw that the eastern bank of the Montmorenci was higher
     than the ground occupied by Montcalm, and, on the 9th of
     July, he crossed the north channel and encamped there; but
     the armies and their chiefs were still divided by the river
     precipitating itself down its rocky way in impassable eddies
     and rapids. Three miles in the interior, a ford was found;
     but the opposite bank was steep, woody, and well intrenched.
     Not a spot on the line of the Montmorenci for miles into the
     interior, nor on the St. Lawrence to Quebec, was left
     unprotected by the vigilance of the inaccessible Montcalm.
     The General proceeded to reconnoitre the shore above the
     town. In concert with Saunders, on the 18th of July, he
     sailed along the well-defended bank from Montmorenci to the
     St. Charles: he passed the deep and spacious harbor, which,
     at four hundred miles from the sea, can shelter a hundred
     ships of the line; he neared the high cliff of Cape Diamond,
     towering like a bastion over the waters, and surmounted by
     the banner of the Bourbons; he coasted along the craggy wall
     of rock that extends beyond the citadel; he marked the
     outline of the precipitous hill that forms the north bank of
     the river,--and every where he beheld a natural fastness,
     vigilantly defended, intrenchments, cannon, boats, and
     floating batteries guarding every access. Had a detachment
     landed between the city and Cape Rouge, it would have
     encountered the danger of being cut off before it could
     receive support. He would have risked a landing at St.
     Michael's Cove, three miles above the city, but the enemy
     prevented him by planting artillery and a mortar to play
     upon the shipping. Meantime, at midnight, on the 28th of
     July, the French sent down a raft of five-stages, consisting
     of nearly a hundred pieces; but these, like the fire-ships a
     month before, did but light up the river, without injuring
     the British fleet. Scarcely a day passed but there were
     skirmishes of the English with the Indians and Canadians,
     who were sure to tread stealthily in the footsteps of every
     exploring party. Wolfe returned to Montmorenci. July was
     almost gone, and he had made no effective advances. He
     resolved on an engagement. The Montmorenci, after falling
     over a perpendicular rock, flows for three hundred yards,
     amidst clouds of spray and rainbow glories, in a gentle
     stream to the St. Lawrence. Near the junction, the river
     may, for a few hours of the tide, be passed on foot. It was
     planned that two brigades should ford the Montmorenci at the
     proper time of the tide, while Monckton's regiments should
     cross the St. Lawrence in boats from Point Levi. The signal
     was made, but some of the boats grounded on a ledge of rocks
     that runs out into the river. While the seamen were getting
     them off, and the enemy were firing a vast number of shot
     and shells, Wolfe, with some of the navy officers as
     companions, selected a landing-place; and his desperate
     courage thought it not yet too late to begin the attack.
     Thirteen companies of grenadiers, and two hundred of the
     second battalion of the Royal Americans, who got first on
     shore, not waiting for support, ran hastily towards the
     intrenchments, and were repulsed in such disorder that they
     could not again come into line; though Monckton's regiment
     had arrived, and had formed with the coolness of invincible
     valor. But hours hurried by; night was near; the clouds of
     midsummer gathered heavily, as if for a storm; the tide
     rose; and Wolfe, wiser than Frederic at Colin, ordered a
     timely retreat."

In this unsuccessful attempt Wolfe lost 400 men. On the tortures of a
body wasted by fever and a mind preyed on by its own restless energy, we
will not dwell. Wolfe reckoned on assistance from the corps of
Amherst,--but this did not arrive. At last he perceived that his fate
rested in his own hands alone,--and he conceived the daring plan 

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