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Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.

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Title: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, NO. XI.—APRIL, 1851—VOL. II. ***

HARPER'S

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

NO. XI.--APRIL, 1851--VOL. II.




[Illustration: Washington Irving

[From a Daguerreotype by Plumbe.]]


There is a freshness about the fame and the character of Mr. IRVING, no
less than about his writings, which enables us to contemplate them with
unabated delight. Few men are so identified personally with their
literary productions, or have combined with admiration of their genius
such a cordial, home-like welcome in the purest affections of their
readers. We never become weary with the repetition of his familiar name;
no caprice of fashion tempts us to enthrone a new idol in place of the
ancient favorite; and even intellectual jealousies shrink back before
the soft brilliancy of his reputation. In the present Number of our
Magazine, we give our readers a portrait of the cherished author, with a
sketch of his sunny residence, which we are sure will be a grateful
memorial of one, to whom our countrymen owe such an accumulated fund of
exquisite enjoyments and delicious recollections. We will not let the
occasion pass without a few words of recognition, though conscious of no
wish to indulge in criticisms which at this late day might appear
superfluous.

The position of Mr. IRVING in American literature is no less peculiar
than it is enviable. With the exception of Mr. PAULDING, none of our
eminent living authors have been so long before the public. He commenced
his career as a writer almost with the commencement of the present
century. The first indications of his rich vein of humor and invention
that appeared through the press, were contained in the Jonathan Oldstyle
Letters, published in the Morning Chronicle in 1802, when he was in the
twentieth year of his age. His health at this time having become
seriously impaired, he spent a few years in European travel, and soon
after his return in 1806, he wrote the sparkling papers in Salmagundi,
which at once decided his position as a shrewd observer of society, a
pointed and vigorous satirist, a graphic delineator of manners, and a
quaint moral teacher, whose joyous humor graciously attempered the
bitterness of his wit. It was not, however, till the appearance of
Knickerbocker, that his unique powers, in this respect, were displayed
in all their vernal bloom, giving the promise of future golden harvests,
which has since been more than redeemed in the richness and beauty of
the varied productions of his genius.

The lapse of years has brought no cloud over the early brightness of Mr.
Irving's fame. He has sustained his reputation with an elastic vigor
that shows the soundness of its elements. At the dawn of American
letters, he was acknowledged to possess those enchantments of style,
that betray the hand of a master. His rare genius captivated all hearts.
His name was identified by our citizens with the racy chronicles of
their Dutch ancestors, and soon became associated with local
recollections and family traditions. Born in a quarter of the town,
whose original features have passed away before the encroachments of
business, he has witnessed the growth of his fame with the growth of the
city. The memory of Diedrich Knickerbocker is now immortalized at the
corners of the streets, and in our most crowded thoroughfares. Even the
dusty haunts of Mammon are refreshed with the emblems of a man of genius
who once trod their pavements.

With his successive publications, a new phase of Mr. Irving's
intellectual character was displayed to the public, but with no decrease
of the admiration, which from the first had stamped him as a universal
favorite. The Sketch Book, Bracebridge Hall, and Tales of a Traveler
revealed a magic felicity of description, with a pathetic tenderness of
sentiment, that gave a still more mellow beauty to his composition;
while his elaborate historical work, The Life of Columbus, established
his reputation for unrivaled skill in sustaining the continuous interest
of a narrative, and in grouping its details with admirable picturesque
effect. His later productions, illustrative of Indian life, and his
still more recent works on the history of Mahomet and the biography of
Goldsmith, are marked with the characteristic traits of the author,
proving that his right hand has lost none of its cunning, nor his tongue
aught of its mellifluous sweetness.

It is highly creditable to the tastes of the present generation, that
Mr. Irving retains, to such a remarkable degree, his wonted ascendency.
Other authors of acknowledged eminence have arisen in various
departments of literature, since he won his earlier laurels, and many of
them since he has ceased to be a young man, but they have not enticed
the more youthful class of readers from the allegiance which was paid to
him by their fathers. The monarch that knew not Joseph has not yet
ascended the throne. Indeed many of the most true-hearted admirers of
Mr. Irving were not born until long after the Sketch Book had made his
name a household word among the tasteful readers of English literature.
This enduring popularity could not spring from any accidental causes. It
must proceed from those qualities in the author, which are the pledge of
a permanent fame. If a foretaste of literary immortality is desirable on
earth, we may congratulate Mr. Irving on the possession of one of its
most significant symbols, in the unfading brilliancy of his reputation
for little less than half a century.

We have already alluded to the use made by Mr. Irving of the historical
legends of our country. Nor is this his only claim on the American
heart. He is peculiarly a national writer. He has sought his
inspirations from the woods and streams, the lakes and prairies of his
native land. No poet has been more successful in throwing the spell of
romance around our familiar scenery. Under his creative pen the lordly
heights of the Hudson have become classic ground. The beings of his
weird fancy have peopled their forest dells, and obtained a "local
habitation" as permanent as the river and the mountains. His love of
country is a genial passion, inspired by the reminiscences of his youth,
and quickened by the studies of his manhood. He is proud of his
birthright in a land of freedom. His protracted residence abroad has
never seduced him from the ardor of his first attachment to the American
soil. His favorite writings are pervaded with this spirit. Yet he
betrays none of the prejudices of national pride. His patriotism is free
from all tincture of bigotry. He scorns the narrowness of exclusive
partialities. With genuine cosmopolitan tastes, he gathers up all that
is precious and beautiful in the traditions, or manners, or institutions
of other lands, finding materials for his gorgeous pictures in the
ancestral glories of English castles, and the splendid ruins of the
Alhambra, as well as in the quaint legends of Manhattan, and the
adventures of trapper life in the Far West. This singular universality
has given him the freedom of the whole literary world. As he every where
finds himself at home, his fame is not the monopoly of any nation. He
has his circle of admirers around the hearth-stones of every cultivated
people. Even the English, who are slow to recognize a melody in their
own language when spoken by a transatlantic tongue, have vied with his
countrymen in rendering homage to his genius. His evident mastery, even
in those departments of composition which have been the favorite sphere
of the most popular English writers, has softened the asperity of
criticism, and won a genial admiration from the worshipers of Addison,
Goldsmith, and Mackenzie. In this respect Mr. Irving stands alone among
American writers. Cherished with a glow of affectionate enthusiasm by
his own countrymen, he has secured a no less beautiful fame among
myriads of readers, with whom his sole intellectual tie is the
spontaneous attraction of his genius.

His universality is displayed with equal strength in the influence which
he exerts over all classes of minds. He has never been raised to a
factitious eminence by the applauses of a clique. His fame is as natural
and as healthy as his character, owing none of its lustre to the gloss
of flattery, or the glare of fashion. His themes have been taken, to a
great extent from common life. He has derived the coloring of his
pictures from the universal sentiments of humanity. He is equally free
from cold, prosaic, common-place hardness of feeling and from sickly and
mawkish effeminacy. He loves to deal with matters of fact, but always
surrounds them with the light of his radiant imagination. He exalts and
glorifies the actual, without losing it in the clouds of a vaporous
ideal. Refined and fastidious in feeling, he retains his sympathy with
the most homely realities of life, chuckles over the luscious comforts
of a Dutch ménage, and professes no philosophical indifference to the
savor of smoking venison in an Indian lodge. With the curious felicity
of his style, he uses no strange and far-fetched words. Its charm
depends on the beauty of its combinations, not on the rarity of its
language. He employs terms that are in the mouths of the people, but
weaves them up into those expressive and picturesque forms that never
cease to haunt the memory of the reader. Accordingly, he is cherished
with equal delight by persons of every variety of culture. His
fascinating volumes always formed a part of the traveling equipage of
one of the most celebrated New-England judges, and they may be found
with no less certainty among the household goods of the emigrant, and
the resources for a rainy day on the frugal shelves of the Yankee
farmer. They still detain the old man from his pillow, and the schoolboy
from his studies. Under their potent charm, the merchant forgets his
Wall-street engagements; the preacher lingers over their seductive
sentences till the Sunday becomes an astonishment; the statesman is
beguiled into oblivion of the salvation of his country; and the advocate
is absorbed in the fortunes of some "roystering varlet," till his own
forlorn client loses all chance of recovering his character.

The writings of Mr. Irving are no less distinguished by the truthfulness
and purity of their moral tone, than by their delightful humor, and
their apt delineations of nature and society. It is small praise to say
that he never panders to a vicious sentiment, that he makes no appeal to
a morbid imagination, and has written nothing to encourage a false and
effeminate view of life. His merits, in this respect, are of a positive
character. No one can be familiar with his productions, without
receiving a kindly and generous influence. His goodness of heart
communicates a benignant contagion to his readers. His mild and
beautiful charity, his spirit of wise tolerance, the considerateness and
candor of his judgments, the placable gentleness of his temper, and the
just appreciation of the infinite varieties of character and life are
adapted to mitigate the harshness of the cynic, and even to quell the
wild furies of the bigot. His sharpest satire never degenerates into
personal abuse. It seems the efflorescence of a rich nature, susceptible
to every shade of the ludicrous, rather than the overflow of a poisonous
fountain, spreading blight and mildew in its course. If he laughs at the
follies of the world, it is not that he has any less love for the good
souls who commit them, but that with his exuberant good-nature he has no
heart to use a more destructive weapon than his lambent irony. With his
fine moral influence, he never affects the sternness of a reformer. He
is utterly free from all didactic pedantry. We know nothing that he has
written with a view to ethical effect. He reveals his own nature in the
sweet flow of his delicate musings, and if he does good it is with
delightful unconsciousness. He would blush to find that he had been
useful when he aimed only to give pleasure, or rather to relieve his own
mind of its "thick coming fancies."

In describing the position of Mr. Irving in the field of American
literature, we have incidentally touched upon the characteristics of his
genius, to which he is indebted for his high and enviable fame. We need
not expand our rapid sketch into a labored analysis. Indeed every just
criticism of his writings would only repeat the verdict that has so
often been pronounced by the universal voice.

Nor is it exclusively as a writer that Mr. Irving has won such a
distinguished place in the admiration of his countrymen. While proud of
his successes in the walks of literature, they have regarded his
personal character with affectionate delight, and lavished the heartfelt
sympathies on the man which are never paid to the mere author. The
purity of this offering is the more transparent, as Mr. Irving has never
courted the favor of the public, nor been placed in those relations with
his fellow-men, that are usually the conditions of general popularity.
He has wisely kept himself apart from the excitements of the day; with
decided political opinions, he has abstained from every thing like
partisanship; no one has been able to count on his advocacy of any
special interests; and with his singular fluency and grace of
expression in written composition, he has never affected the arts
of popular oratory. His habits have been those of the well-educated
gentleman--neither cherishing the retirement of the secluded student,
nor seeking a prominence in public affairs--throwing a charm over the
social circles which he frequented by the brilliancy of his intellect,
the amenity of his manners, and the ease of his colloquial
intercourse--but never surrounded by the prestige of factitious
distinction by which so many inferior men obtain an ephemeral notoriety.
His appointment as Minister to Spain has been his sole official honor;
and this was rather a tribute to his literary eminence than the reward
of political services. On his return from Europe in 1832, after an
absence of nearly twenty years, he was received with a spontaneous
welcome by his fellow-citizens, such as has been seldom enjoyed by the
most successful claimants of popular favor; and from that time to the
present, no one has shown a more undisputed title to the character of
the favorite son of Manhattan. In his beautiful retreat at Sunnyside,
"as quiet and sheltered a nook as the heart of man could desire in which
to take refuge from the cares and troubles of this world," he listens to
the echoes of his fame, cheered by the benedictions of troops of
friends, and enjoying the autumn maturity of life with no mists of envy
and bitterness to cloud the purple splendors of his declining sun.

It is understood that Mr. Irving is now engaged in completing the Life
of Washington, a work of which he commenced the preparation before his
residence in Europe as Minister to the Spanish Court. We are informed
that it will probably be given to the public in the course of another
season. It can not fail to prove a volume of national and household
interest. The revered features of the Immortal Patriot will assume a
still more benignant aspect, under the affectionate and skillful touches
of the congenial Artist. With his unrivaled power of individualization,
his practiced ability in historical composition, and his acute sense of
the moral perspective in character, he will present the illustrious
subject of his biography in a manner to increase our admiration of his
virtues, and to inspire a fresh enthusiasm for the wise and beneficent
principles of which his life was the sublime embodiment. There is a
beautiful propriety in the still more intimate connection of the name of
WASHINGTON IRVING with that of the FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY. It is meet
that the most permanent and precious memorial of the First Chief of the
American Republic should be presented by the Patriarch of American
Letters. It would be a fitting close of his bright career before the
public--the melodious swan-song of his historic Muse.

[Illustration: SUNNYSIDE, THE RESIDENCE OF WASHINGTON IRVING.]




[Illustration: William Cullen Bryant.]


The birthplace of Mr. BRYANT, in a secluded and romantic spot
among the mountains of western Massachusetts, seems to have been
selected by Nature as a fit residence for the early unfolding of high
poetic genius. Situated on the forest elevations above the beautiful
valley of the Connecticut in the old county of Hampshire, surrounded by
a rare combination of scenery, in which are impressively blended the
wild and rugged with the soft and graceful, adorned in summer with the
splendors of a rapid and luxuriant vegetation, in winter exposed to the
fiercest storms from the northwest which bury the roads and almost the
houses in gigantic snow-drifts, inhabited by a hardy and primitive
population which exhibit the peculiar traits of New England character in
their most salient form, the little town of Cummington has the
distinction of giving birth to the greatest American poet.

It was here that he was first inspired with a sense of the glory and
mystery of Nature--first learned to "hold communion with her visible
forms," and to lend his ear to her "various language"--first awoke to
the consciousness of the "vision and the faculty divine," which he has
since displayed in such manifold forms of poetic creation. It was under
the shadow of his "native hills"--

  "Broad, round, and green, that in the summer sky
  With garniture of waving grass and grain,
  Orchards, and beechen forests basking lie,
  While deep the sunless glens are scooped between
  Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen"--

in the "groves which were God's first temples," where the "sacred
influences"

  "From the stilly twilight of the place,
  And from the gray old trunks, that high in heaven
  Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
  Of the invisible breath, that swayed at once
  All their green tops, stole over him"--

that the spirit of the boy-poet was touched with the mystic harmonies of
the universe, and received those impressions of melancholy grandeur from
natural objects, which pervade the most characteristic productions of
his genius.

Mr. BRYANT'S vocation for poetry was marked at a very early age. The
history of literature scarcely affords an example of such a precocious,
and, at the same time, such a healthy development. His first efforts
betray no symptoms of a forced, hot-bed culture, but seem the
spontaneous growth of a prolific imagination. They are free from the
spasmodic forces which indicate a morbid action of the intellect, and
flow in the polished, graceful, self-sustaining tranquillity, which is
usually the crowning attainment of a large and felicitous experience.
Among his earliest productions were several translations from different
Latin poets, some of which, made at ten years of age, were deemed so
successful, as to induce his friends to publish them in the newspaper of
a neighboring town. These were followed by a regular satirical
poem, entitled "The Embargo," written during the heated political
controversies concerning the policy of Mr. Jefferson, many of whose most
strenuous opponents resided at Northampton (at that time the centre of
political and social influence to a wide surrounding country), and from
the contagion of whose intelligence and zeal, the susceptible mind of
the young poet could not be expected to escape. This was published in
Boston, in 1808, before the author had completed his fourteenth year.
Its merits were at once acknowledged; it was noticed in the principal
literary review of that day; it was read with an eagerness in proportion
to the warmth of party spirit; and, indeed, so strong was the impression
which it made on the most competent judges, that nothing but the
explicit assertions of the friends of the writer could convince them of
its genuineness. It seemed, in all respects, too mature and finished a
performance to have proceeded from such a juvenile pen. This point,
however, was soon decided, and if any remaining doubts lingered in their
minds, they might have been removed by the production of "Thanatopsis,"
which was written about four years after, when the author was in the
beginning of his nineteenth year.

This remarkable poem was not published until 1816, when it appeared in
the North American Review, then under the charge of Mr. DANA,
who has himself since attained to such a signal eminence among the poets
and essayists of America, and between whom and Mr. Bryant a singular
unity of intellectual tastes laid the foundation for a cordial
friendship, which has been maintained with a warmth and constancy in the
highest degree honorable to the character of both parties. Meanwhile,
Mr. Bryant had established himself in the profession of the law, in the
beautiful village of Great Barrington, exchanging the mountain wildness
of his native region, for the diversified and singularly lovely scenery
of the Housatonic Valley, where he composed the lines "To Green Elver,"
"Inscription for an entrance to a Wood," "To a Waterfowl," and several
of his other smaller poems, which have since hardly been surpassed by
himself, and certainly not by any other American writer.

The "Thanatopsis," viewed without reference to the age at which it was
produced, is one of the most precious gems of didactic verse in the
whole compass of English poetry, but when considered as the composition
of a youth of eighteen, it partakes of the character of the marvelous.
It is, however, unjust to its rich and solemn beauty to contemplate it
in the light of a prodigy. Nor are we often tempted to revert to the
singularity of its origin, when we yield our minds to the influence of
its grand and impressive images. It seems like one of those majestic
products of nature, to which we assign no date, and which suggest no
emotion but that of admiration at their glorious harmony.

The objection has been made to the "Thanatopsis," that its consolations
in view of death are not drawn directly from the doctrines of religion,
and that it in fact makes no express allusion to the Divine Providence,
nor to the immortality of the soul. These ideas are so associated in
most minds with the subject matter of the poem, that their omission
causes a painful sense of incongruity. But the writer was not composing
a homily, nor a theological treatise. His imagination was absorbed with
the soothing influences of nature under the anticipation of the "last
bitter hour." In order to make the contrast more forcible, the poem
opens with a cold and dreary picture of the common destiny. Earth claims
the body which she has nourished; man is doomed to renounce his
individual being and mingle with the elements; kindred with the sluggish
clod, his mould is pierced by the roots of the spreading oak. The sun
shall no more see him in his daily course, nor shall any traces of his
image remain on earth or ocean.

But the universality of this fate relieves the desolation of the
prospect. Nature imparts a solace to her favorite child, glides into his
darker musings with mild and healing sympathy, and gently counsels him
not to look with dread on the mysterious realm, which is the final goal
of humanity. No one retires alone to his eternal resting-place. No couch
more magnificent could be desired than the mighty sepulchre in which
kings and patriarchs have laid down to their last repose. Every thing
grand and lovely in nature contributes to the decoration of the great
tomb of man. The dead are every where. The sun, the planets, the
infinite host of heaven, have shone on the abodes of death through the
lapse of ages. The living, who now witness the departure of their
companions without heed, will share their destiny. With these kindly
admonitions, Nature speaks to the spirit when it shudders at the thought
of the stern agony and the narrow house.

The stately movement of the versification, the accumulated grandeur of
the imagery, the vein of tender and solemn pathos, and the spirit of
cheerful trust at the close, which mark this extraordinary poem, render
it more effective, in an ethical point of view, than volumes of
exhortation; while, regarded as a work of art, the unity of purpose with
which its leading thought is presented under a variety of aspects, gives
it a completeness and symmetry which remove the force of the objection
to which we have alluded.

In a similar style of majestic thought is the "Forest Hymn," from which
we can not refrain from quoting an inimitable passage, descriptive of
the alternation between Life and Death in the Universe, which seems to
us to open the heart of the mystery with a truthfulness of insight that
has found expression in language of unsurpassable energy.

    "My heart is awed within me, when I think
  Of the great miracle that still goes on
  In silence, round me--the perpetual work
  Of thy creation, finish'd, yet renew'd
  Forever. Written on thy works, I read
  The lesson of thy own eternity.
  Lo! all grow old and die--but see, again,
  How on the faltering footsteps of decay
  Youth presses--ever gay and beautiful youth,
  In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
  Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
  Moulder beneath them. O, there is not lost
  One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
  After the flight of untold centuries,
  The freshness of her far beginning lies,
  And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
  Of his arch-enemy, Death--yea, seats himself
  Upon the tyrant's throne--the sepulchre,
  And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
  Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
  From thine own bosom, and shall have no end."

The soft and exquisite beauty of the lines entitled "To a Waterfowl" is
appreciated by every reader of taste. They belong to that rare class of
poems which, once read, haunt the imagination with a perpetual charm. A
more natural expression of true religious feeling than that contained in
the closing stanzas, is nowhere to be met with.

      "Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
  Hath swallow'd up thy form; yet, on my heart
  Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
      And shall not soon depart.

      "He who, from zone to zone,
  Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
  In the long way that I must tread alone,
      Will lead my steps aright."

[Illustration: BRYANT'S RESIDENCE, AT ROSLYN, (HEMPSTEAD HARBOR) L. I.]

But we have no space to dwell upon the attractive details of Mr.
Bryant's poetry, though it would be a grateful task to pass in review
the familiar productions, of which we can weary as little as of the
natural landscape. It needs no profound analysis to state their most
general characteristics. Bryant's descriptions of nature are no less
remarkable for their minute accuracy than for the richness and delicacy
of their suggestions in the sphere of sentiment. No one can ever be
tempted to accuse him of obtaining his knowledge of nature at second
hand. He paints nothing which he has not seen. His images are derived
from actual experience. Hence they have the vernal freshness of an
orchard in bloom. He is no less familiar with the cheerful tune of
brooks in flowery June than with the voices and footfalls of the
thronged city. He has watched the maize-leaf and the maple-bough growing
greener under the fierce sun of midsummer; the mountain wind has
breathed its coolness on his brow; he has gazed at the dark figure of
the wild-bird painted on the crimson sky; and listened to the sound of
dropping nuts as they broke the solemn stillness of autumn woods. The
scenes of nature which he has loved and wooed have rewarded him with
their beautiful revelations in the moral world. Her dim symbolism has
become transparent to the anointed eye of the reverent bard, and
initiated him into the mysteries which give a new significance to the
material creation.

It is true that the staple of his poetry is reflection, rather than
passion, reminding us of the chaste severity of sculpture, and not
appealing to the fancy by any sensuous or voluptuous arts of coloring.
But a deep sentiment underlies the expression; and he touches the
springs of emotion with a powerful hand, though he never ceases to be
master of his own feelings. The apparent coldness of which some have
complained, may be ascribed to the frigidity of the reader, with more
truth than to the apathy of the writer. With its highly intellectual
character, the poetry of Mr. Bryant is adapted to win a more profound
and lasting admiration than if it were merely the creation of a
productive fancy. It may gain a more limited circle of readers (although
its universal popularity sets aside this supposition), but they who have
once enjoyed its substantial reality will place it on the same shelf
with Milton and Wordsworth, with a "sober certainty" that they will
always find it instinct with a fresh and genuine vitality.

The influence of this poetry is of a pure and ennobling character; never
ministering to false or unhealthy sensibility, it refreshes the better
feelings of our nature; inspiring a tranquil confidence in the on-goings
of the Universe, with whose most beautiful manifestations we are brought
into such intimate communion. Its most pensive tones, which murmur such
sweet, sad music, never lull the soul in the repose of despair, but
inspire it with a cheerful hope in the issues of the future. The
"inexorable Past" shall yet yield the treasures which are hidden in its
mysterious depths, and every thing good and fair be renewed in "the
glory and the beauty of its prime."

  "All shall come back, each tie
    Of pure affection shall be knit again;
  Alone shall Evil die,
    And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign."

As a prose writer, Mr. Bryant is distinguished for signal excellencies
both of thought and expression, evincing a remarkable skill in various
departments of composition, from the ephemeral political essay to the
high-wrought fictitious tale, and graphic recollections of foreign
travel. The superior brightness of his poetic fame can alone prevent him
from being known to posterity as a vigorous and graceful master of
prose, surpassed by few writers of the present day.




THE CRYSTAL PALACE.


In the early months of last year the Great Exhibition had become as
nearly a "fixed fact" as any thing in the future can be. The place where
and the building in which it was to be held, then became matters for
grave consideration. The first point, fortunately, presented little
difficulty, the south side of Hyde-park, between Kensington-road and
Rotten-row, having been early selected as the locality.

The construction of the edifice, however, presented difficulties not so
easily surmounted. The Building Committee, comprising some of the
leading architects and engineers of the kingdom, among whom are Mr.
Barry, the architect of the new Houses of Parliament, and Mr.
Stephenson, the constructor of the Britannia Tubular Bridge, advertised
for plans to be presented for the building. When the committee met, they
found no want of designs; their table was loaded with them, to the
number of 240. Their first task was to select those which were
positively worthless, and throw them aside. By this process the
number for consideration was reduced to about sixty; and from
these the committee proceeded to concoct a design, which pleased
nobody--themselves least of all. However, the plan, such as it was, was
decided upon, and advertisements were issued for tenders for its
construction. This was the signal for a fierce onslaught upon the
proceedings of the committee. For the erection of a building which was
to be used for only a few months, more materials were to be thrown into
one of the main lungs of the metropolis, than were contained in the
eternal pyramids of Egypt. Moreover, could the requisite number of miles
of brickwork be constructed within the few weeks of time allotted? and
was it not impossible that this should, in so short a time, become
sufficiently consolidated to sustain the weight of the immense iron dome
which, according to the design of the committee, was to rest upon it?

The committee, fortunately, were not compelled to answer these and a
multitude of similar puzzling interrogatories which were poured in upon
them. Relief was coming to them from an unexpected quarter: whence, we
must go back a little to explain.

On New Year's Day, of the year 1839, Sir Robert Schomburgk, the
botanist, was proceeding in a native boat up the River Berbice, in
Demerara. In a sheltered reach of the stream, he discovered resting upon
the still waters an aquatic plant, a species of lily, but of a gigantic
size, and of a shape hitherto unknown. Seeds of this plant, to which was
given the name of "Victoria Regia," were transmitted to England, and
were ultimately committed to the charge of JOSEPH PAXTON, the
horticulturist at Chatsworth, the magnificent seat of the Duke of
Devonshire. The plant produced from these seeds became the occasion, and
in certain respects the model, for the Crystal Palace.

Every means was adopted to place the plant in its accustomed
circumstances. A tropical soil was formed for it of burned loam and
peat; Newcastle coal was substituted for a meridian sun, to produce an
artificial South America under an English heaven; by means of a wheel a
ripple like that of its native river, was communicated to the waters of
the tank upon which its broad leaves reposed. Amid such enticements
the lily could not do otherwise than flourish; and in a month it had
outgrown its habitation. The problem was therefore set before its
foster-father to provide for it, within a few weeks, a new home. This
was not altogether a new task for Mr. Paxton, who had already devoted
much attention to the erection of green-houses; and within the required
space of time, he had completed this house for the "Victoria Regia," and
therein, in the sense in which the acorn includes the oak, that of the
Crystal Palace.

[Illustration: THE GREAT EXHIBITION BUILDING.]

While Mr. Paxton was planning an abode for this Brobdignagian lily, the
Building Committee of the Exhibition were poring wearily over the 240
plans lying upon their table. They had rejected the 180 worthless ones,
and from the remainder had concocted, as we have said, with much
cogitation and little satisfaction, their own design. Such as it was,
however, it was determined that it should be executed--if possible.

This brings us down to the middle, or to be precise, to the 18th of
June, on which day Mr. Paxton was sitting as chairman on a railway
committee. He had previously made himself acquainted with the case laid
before them, and was not therefore under the necessity of now devoting
his attention to it. He took advantage of this leisure moment to work
out a design for the Exhibition Building, which he had conceived some
days previously. In ten days thereafter elevations, sections, working
plans and specifications, were completed from this draft, and the whole
was submitted to the inspection of competent and influential persons, by
whom it was unanimously announced to be practicable, and the only
practicable scheme presented.

This design was then laid before the contractors, Messrs. Fox and
Henderson, who at once determined to submit a tender for the
construction of a building in accordance with it. In a single week, they
had calculated the amount and cost of every pound of iron, every pane of
glass, every foot of wood, and every hour of labor which would be
required, and were prepared with a tender and specifications for the
construction of the edifice. But here arose a difficulty. The committee
had advertised only for proposals for carrying out their own design;
but, fortunately, they had invited the suggestion on the part of
contractors, of any improvements upon it; and so Mr. Paxton's plan was
presented simply as an "improvement" upon that of the committee, with
which it had not a single feature in common. This, with certain
modifications, was adopted, and the result is the Crystal Palace--itself
the greatest wonder which the Exhibition will present--the exterior of
which is represented in our accompanying Illustration.

The building consists of three series of elevations of the respective
heights of 64, 44, and 24 feet, intersected at the centre by a transept
of 72 feet in width, having a semicircular roof rising to the height of
108 feet in the centre. It extends in length 1851 feet from north to
south, more than one-third of a mile, with a breadth of 456 feet upon
the ground; covering 18 superficial acres, nearly double the extent of
our own Washington-square; and exceeding by more than one half the
dimensions of the Park or the Battery. The whole rests upon cast-iron
pillars, united by bolts and nuts, fixed to flanges turned perfectly
true, so that if the socket be placed level, the columns and
connecting-pieces must stand upright; and, in point of fact, not a
crooked line is discoverable in the combination of such an immense
number of pieces. For the support of the columns, holes are dug in the
ground, in which is placed a bed of concrete, and upon this rest iron
sockets of from three to four feet in length, according to the level of
the ground, to which the columns are firmly attached by bolts and nuts.
At the top, each column is attached by a girder to its opposite column,
both longitudinally and transversely, so that the whole eighteen acres
of pillars is securely framed together.

The roofs, of which there are five, one to each of the elevations, are
constructed on the "ridge and furrow" principle, and glazed
with sheets of glass of 49 inches in length. The construction will be at
once understood by imagining a series of parallel rows of the letter V
(thus, \/\/\/), extending in uninterrupted lines the whole length of the
building. The apex of each ridge is formed by a wooden sash-bar with
notches upon each side for holding the laths in which are fitted the
edges of the glass. The bottom bar, or rafter, is hollowed at the top so
as to form a gutter to carry off the water, which passes through
transverse gutters into the iron columns, which are hollow, thus serving
as water-pipes; in the base of the columns horizontal pipes are
inserted, which convey the accumulated water into the sewers. The
exhalations, from so large an extent of surface, from the plants, and
from the breath of the innumerable visitors, rising and condensed
against the glass, would descend from a flat roof in the form of a
perpetual mist, but it is found that from glass pitched at a particular
angle the moisture does not fall, but glides down its surface. The
bottom bars are therefore grooved on the inside, thus forming interior
gutters, by which the moisture also finds its way down the interior of
the columns, through the drainage pipes, into the sewers. These grooved
rafters, of which the total length is 205 miles, are formed by
machinery, at a single operation.

The lower tier of the building is boarded, the walls of the upper
portion being composed, like the roof, of glass. Ventilation is provided
for by the basement portion being walled with iron plates, placed at an
angle of 45 degrees, known as _luffer-boarding_, which admits the air
freely, while it excludes the rain. A similar provision is made at the
top of each tier of the building. These are so constructed that they can
be closed at pleasure. In order to subdue the intense light in a
building having such an extent of glass surface, the whole roof and the
south side will be covered with canvas, which will also preclude the
possibility of injury from hail, as well as render the edifice much
cooler.

In the construction of the building care has been taken to give to each
part the stiffest and strongest form possible in a given quantity of
material. The columns are hollow, and the girders which unite them are
trellis-formed. The utmost weight which any girder will ever be likely
to sustain is seven and a half tons; and not one is used until after
having been tested to the extent of 15 tons; while the breaking weight
is calculated at 30 tons. At first sight, there would seem to be danger
that a building presenting so great a surface to the action of the wind,
would be liable to be blown down. But from the manner in which the
columns are framed together they can not be overthrown except by
breaking them. Experiments show that in order to break the 1060 columns
on the ground floor, a force of 6360 tons must be exerted, at a height
of 24 feet. The greatest force of the wind ever known is computed at 22
pounds to the superficial foot; assuming a possible force of 28 pounds,
and suppose a hurricane of that momentum to strike at once the whole
side of the building, the total force would be less than 1500 tons--not
one-fourth of the capacity of the building to sustain, independent of
the bracings, which add materially to its strength. So that, if any
reliance at all can be placed upon theoretical engineering, there can be
no doubt as to the safety of the building.

Entering at the main east or west entrance, we find ourselves in a nave
64 feet in height, 72 in breadth, and extending without interruption the
whole length of the building, one-third of a mile. Parallel with this,
but interrupted by the transept in the centre, are a series of side
aisles of 48 and 24 feet in breadth, with a height of 44 and 24 feet.
Over the centre of the nave swells the semicircular roof of the
transept, overarching the stately trees beneath--a Brobdignagian
green-house with ancient elms instead of geraniums and rose-bushes. The
whole area of the ground floor is 772,784 square feet; and that of the
galleries 217,100; making in all within a fraction of one million square
feet; to which may be added 500,000 feet of hanging-space, available for
the display of the products of human heads and hands.

There are three refreshment rooms, one in the transept, and one near
each end, around the trees which were left standing, where ices and
pastry for the wealthy, and bread-and-butter and cheese for the poorer
are to be furnished. No wine, spirits, or fermented liquors are to be
sold; only tea, coffee, and unfermented drinks; pure water is to be
furnished gratis to all comers by the lessees of the refreshment rooms.

In respect to the decoration of the interior, a keen controversy has
been waged. The fact of iron being the material of construction renders
it necessary that it should be painted to preserve it from the action of
the atmosphere. On the one hand, it is said that the fact that the
structure is metallic should be indicated by the decoration, otherwise
the whole will have no more appearance of stability than an arbor of
wicker-work. Those who take this view recommend that the interior
should be bronzed. On the other hand, those to whom the decoration is
intrusted affirm that the object of using color is to increase the
effect of light and shade. If the whole were of one uniform dead color
the effect of the innumerable parts of which the building is composed,
all falling in similar lines, one before the other, would be precisely
that of a plane surface; the extended lines of pillars presenting the
aspect of a continuous wall. In order to bring out the distinctive
features of the building various colors must be used; and experiments
show that a combination of the primary colors, red, blue, and yellow, is
most pleasant to the eye. The best means for using these is to place
blue, which retreats, upon the concave surfaces, yellow, which advances,
upon the convex ones, reserving red for plane surfaces. But as when
these colors come in contact each becomes tinged with the complementary
color of the other--the blue with green, the red with orange--a line of
white is interposed between them. Applying these principles, the shafts
of the columns are to be yellow, the concave portions of their capitals
blue, the under side of the girders red, and their vertical surfaces
white.

Among all the wonders of the Crystal Palace nothing is more wonderful
than its cheapness, and the rapidity of its construction. Possession of
the site was obtained on the 30th of July; in a period of only 145
working-days the building was to all intents and purposes completed. As
to cheapness it costs less per cubic foot than an ordinary barn. If used
only for the Exhibition, and at its close returned to the contractors,
the cost will be nine-sixteenths of a penny a foot; or, if permanently
purchased, it will be one penny and one-twelfth. Thus: The solid
contents are 33,000,000 cubic feet; the price if returned is £79,800, if
retained £150,000. This simple fact, that a building of glass and iron,
covering eighteen acres, affording room for nine miles of tables, should
have been completed in less than five months from the day when the
contract was entered into, at a cost less than that of the humblest
hovel, opens a new era in the science of building.

As to the final destination of the Crystal Palace, it is the wish of the
designer that it should be converted into a permanent winter-garden with
drives and promenades. Leaving ample space for plants, there would be
two miles of walks in the galleries, and the same amount for walks upon
the ground floor; in summer the removal of the upright glass would give
the whole the appearance of a continuous walk or garden.




[Illustration: VOYAGE IN SEARCH OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN]


Sir JOHN FRANKLIN, in command of the "Erebus" and "Terror," having on
board one hundred and thirty-eight souls, set sail from England on the
19th of May, 1845, in search of a northwest passage. On the 26th of
July, sixty-eight days afterward, they were seen by a passing whaler
moored to an iceberg near the centre of Baffin's Bay; since which time
no intelligence of their fate has been received. No special anxiety was
entertained respecting them until the beginning of 1848, for the
commander had intimated that the voyage would probably continue for
three years, and that they might be the first to announce their own
return. But as month after month passed away without bringing any
tidings, an anxious and painful sympathy sprung up in the public mind,
and the British Government determined that searches for the missing
vessels should be made in three different quarters by three separate
expeditions fitted out for that purpose.

One quarter, however, that region known as Boothia, where there was a
probability of success, was beyond the scope of these expeditions, and
Lady Franklin determined to organize an expedition to explore that
region. For this purpose she appropriated all the means under her
control; and a subscription was opened to supply the deficiency. The
"Prince Albert," a ketch of less than ninety tons burden, measuring in
length about seventy-two feet, and seventeen in breadth, was purchased
for the expedition. She was taken to Aberdeen to be fitted up; a double
planking was put upon her, by way of pea-jacket to fit her for her
arctic voyage, and a crew of fourteen canny Scotchmen, secured by the
promise of double pay. Captain Forsyth, of the Royal Navy, proffered his
gratuitous services as commander. Attached to the expedition, having
special charge of the stores and scientific instruments, with the
express understanding that he should head one of the exploring parties
to be sent out from Regent's Inlet, was Mr. W. PARKER SNOW, from whose
Journal we propose to draw up some account of the pleasures of sailing
through the ice.

Mr. Snow seems to have been precisely the man for such an undertaking.
He left America at three days' notice to join any expedition which might
be sent out by Lady Franklin. With an active, hopeful temperament, never
so happy as in a gale of wind, if it was only blowing the right way, he
rushed to the embrace of the Arctic Snows with as much alacrity as
though they were kinsmen as well as namesakes. He had, moreover, a
happy faculty of turning his hand to every thing, and no disposition to
hide his talent in a napkin. A physician had been engaged for the
vessel; but when, two days before sailing, the disciple of Esculapius
saw the diminutive craft, he declined to proceed:--Mr. Snow volunteered
to perform his duties; he had read a little medicine at odd hours; and
by the aid of Rees's Guide, and Smee's Broadsheet, his practice was
uniformly successful--either in spite of, or on account of, his informal
professional training. The sailors, as might be expected from their
Scotch blood, were desirous of having religious worship on board:--Mr.
Snow offered his services as chaplain, reading and expounding the
Scriptures, and offering up prayer.

On the 6th of June, 1850, the Prince Albert set sail from Aberdeen; a
fortnight brought them within two hundred miles of the shores of
Greenland. Then came, for a week, a succession of heavy gales, which
drove them back upon their course; so that in six days their progress
was not more than a dozen miles. The 1st of July, however, found them
off Cape Farewell. Some idea of the multifarious occupations of the
many-officed Mr. Snow, at a time when his proper duties had not
commenced, may be gathered from his description of


LIFE ON SHIPBOARD.

"At half-past six I used to turn out; and, warm or cold, wet or dry,
take an immediate ablution in the pure and natural element. For half an
hour I would then walk on deck, fair or foul; and, a little before
eight, examine the men's forecastle; see to their condition, and whether
any of them were sick; and if so, give them medicine. At eight bells, I
would then take the chronometrical time for Captain Forsyth, while he
observed the altitude of the sun, to get our longitude. Latterly I used,
by his desire, to take a set of sights also myself, taking the time from
a common watch, and comparing it afterward with the chronometer. The
chronometers were then wound up by me, and the thermometer, barometer,
&c., registered. At eight o'clock the two mates went to breakfast; the
captain and I getting ours soon after them. During the forenoon I had to
attend to the stores, provisions, &c.; write my accounts, journals, and
other papers; and at noon worked up the ship's reckoning, the
observations, and wrote the ship's log, examining our present position
and future course. The mates had their dinner at noon: the captain and I
at three P.M.; after which, a stroll for an hour or so on deck was taken
by both of us. Tea came round at six, and at eight P.M. I used to try
the temperature of the air on deck, and of the sea. After that, we would
read together in the stern cabin. At ten, we would take our hot grog;
and, generally about eleven, when free from rough weather or the
neighborhood of ice, turn in for the night. Very little candle was
required below at night, as there was seldom more than an hour or two's
darkness during any part of our voyage, until we were returning. It was
not long after this date, moreover, that we had continued daylight
through the whole twenty-four hours."

The principal obstruction and danger in arctic navigation arises from
the ice; fields of which often occur of twenty or thirty miles in
diameter, and ten or fifteen feet in thickness. From these crystal
plains rise sometimes isolated, sometimes in groups, elevations of
thirty or more feet in height, called _hummocks_. Dr. Scoresby once saw
a field so free from hummocks and fissures that a coach might have
traversed it for leagues in a straight direction, without obstruction.
In May or June these fields begin to drift along in solemn procession to
the southwestward, in which direction they hold their steady course,
whether in calm or in spite of adverse winds. When these floating
continents emerge from the drift ice which had hitherto protected them,
they are shattered and broken up by the long, deep swell of the ocean. A
ground-swell, hardly perceptible in the open sea, will break up a field
in a few hours. These fields sometimes acquire a rotary motion, which
gives their circumference a velocity of several miles an hour, producing
a tremendous shock when one impinges upon another. "A body of more than
ten thousand millions of tons in weight," says Dr. Scoresby, "meeting
with resistance when in motion, produces consequences scarcely possible
to conceive. The strongest ship is but an insignificant impediment
between two fields in motion."--Mr. Snow gives the following account of


TAKING THE FIRST ICE.

"We had come so quickly and unexpectedly upon this "stream" (not having
seen it, owing to the thick weather, until close aboard of it), that
promptitude of decision and movement was absolutely necessary. It was
one of those moments when the _seaman_ comes forward, and by boldly
acting, either in the one way or the other, shows what he is made of. In
the present case the question instantly arose as to whether the vessel
should at once run through the ice now before her, or wait until clearer
and milder weather came. The mate, as ice-master, was asked by the
captain which, in his opinion, was best. He advised _heaving to, to
windward of it, and waiting_. The second mate was then asked; and he,
without knowing the other's opinion, strongly urged the necessity of
_running through at once_. Captain Forsyth, using his own judgment, very
wisely decided upon the latter, and accordingly run the ship on. And a
pretty sight, too, it was, as the "Prince Albert" under easy and working
sail, in a moment or two more entered the intricate channels that were
presented to her between numerous bergs and pieces of ice, rough and
smooth, large and small, new and old, dark and white. It was hazy
weather, snowing and raining at the time; and all hands having been
summoned on deck, were wrapped in their oil-skin dresses and waterproof
overcoats. Standing on the topsail-yard was the second mate conning the
ship; half-way up the weather rigging clung the captain, watching and
directing as necessary; while aft, on the raised counter near the wheel,
stood the chief mate telling the helmsman how to steer. This being the
first ice in any large and continuous quantity that we had met, I looked
at it with some curiosity. The moment we had entered within the outer
edge of the stream the water became as smooth as a common pond on
shore; and it was positively a pretty sight to see that little vessel
dodging in and out and threading her way among the numerous pieces of
ice that beset her proper and direct course. The ice itself presented a
most beautiful appearance both in color and form, being variegated in
every direction. We were soon in the very thick of it; and before five
minutes had elapsed from our first taking it we could see no apparent
means of either going on or retracing our steps. But it was well
managed, and after about an hour's turning hither and thither, this way
and that way, straight and crooked, we got fairly through, and found
clear water beyond.

"Throughout the night the wind blew a complete hurricane, and the short
high sea was perfectly furious; lashing about in all directions with the
madness of a maelström, and with a violence that, apparently, nothing
could resist. Heavy squalls, with sharp sleet and snowstorms from the
southward, added to the fearful tempest that was raging. It was
impossible to see three miles ahead, the weather being so thick.
Occasionally an iceberg would dart out through the mist, heaving its
huge body up and down in frightful motion, now advancing, next receding,
and again approaching with any thing but pleasant proximity. Our little
vessel, however, as usual, stood it well. Could we have divested
ourselves of the reality of the scene, it might have been likened to a
fancy picture, in which some strange and curious dance was being
represented between the sea, the ice, and the ship; the latter, by the
aid of the former, gallantly lifting herself to, and then declining from
the other. But it was too real; and the greater danger of the land being
possibly near, was too strongly impressed upon our minds, to allow any
visionary feeling to possess us at the time. It was the worst and most
dangerous night we had yet had, and hardly a man on board rested quietly
below until the height of it was past."

Soon after this a boat's crew was sent ashore for water, where in a
lonely spot they discovered the grave of an European, with an
inscription on a rude wooden tablet at its head, stating that "John
Huntley of Shetland, was buried there in August, 1847." The sailors
replaced the board which had blown down; and left the solitary grave,
with the humble tribute of a wish for the repose of the poor fellow's
soul. A few days later while on shore, Mr. Snow was spectator of the


OVERTURN OF AN ICEBERG.

"I was speedily awakened to reality by a sudden noise like the cracking
of some mighty edifice of stone, or the bursting of several pieces of
ordnance. Ere the sound of that noise had vibrated on the air, a
succession of reports like the continued discharge of a heavy fire of
musketry, interspersed with the occasional roar of cannon, followed
quickly upon one another, for the space of perhaps two minutes; when,
suddenly, my eye was arrested by the oscillation of a moderate-sized
iceberg not far beneath my feet, in a line away from the hill I was
upon; and the next moment it tottered, and with a sidelong inclination,
cut its way into the bosom of the sea upon which it had before been
reclining. Roar upon roar pealed in echoes from the mountain heights on
every side: the wild seabird arose with fluttering wings and rapid
flight as it proceeded to a quarter where its quiet would be less
disturbed: the heretofore peaceful water presented the appearance of a
troubled ocean after a fierce gale of wind; and, amid the varied sounds
now heard, human voices from the boat came rising up on high in honest
English--strangely striking on the ear--hailing to know if I had seen
the 'turn,' and also whether I wanted them to join me. But an instant
had not passed before the mighty mass of snow and ice which had so
suddenly overturned, again presented itself above the water. This time,
however, it bore a different shape. The conical and rotten surface that
had been uppermost, when I had first noticed it, was gone, and a smooth,
table-like plane, from which streamed numerous cascades and _jets
d'eau_, was now visible. The former had sunk some hundred feet below,
when the 'berg,' reversing itself, had been overturned by its extreme
upper weight, and thus brought the bottom of it high above the level of
the sea."

Northward, and still northward: thicker and more continuous grew the
ice-plains, while ever and anon a sound like the discharge of heavy
artillery booming along the lonely seas, announced that one iceberg
after another had burst amid this freezing arctic midsummer. They now
found that they were approaching the great Pack, where their labors were
properly to begin. Due preparations were made, by laying in order
ice-anchors, claws, and axes, getting tow-ropes, warps, and
tracking-belts in order for instant use, and


INSTALLING THE CROW'S NEST.

"The 'Crow's Nest' is a light cask, or any similar object, appointed for
the look-out man aloft to shelter himself in, and is in large ships
generally at the _topmast_ head. In smaller vessels, however, it is
necessary to have it as high up as possible, in order to give from it a
greater scope of vision than could be attained lower down. Consequently,
in the _Prince Albert_ it was close to the 'fore-truck,' that is,
completely at the mast-head. In our case, it was a long, narrow, but
_light_ cask, having at the lower part of it a trap, acting like a
valve, whereby any one could enter; and was open at the upper part. In
length it was about four feet, so that a person on the look-out had no
part of himself exposed to the weather but his head and shoulders. In
the interior of it was a small seat, slung to the hinder part of the
cask, and a spyglass, well secured. To reach this, a rope ladder was
affixed to the bottom of it, as seen in the engraving. This is called
the 'Jacob's Ladder,' and the boatswain may be observed attaching the
lower parts of it to the foremast-head. Upon the top-gallant yard are
two men, busy in securing the cask to the mast, while the second mate is
inside trying its strength, and giving directions concerning it. The
'Crow's Nest' is a favorite place with many whaling captains, who are
rarely out of it for days when among the ice. I was very frequently in
it myself, fair weather or foul--from six to a dozen times a day--both
for personal gratification, and for the purpose of looking out. It was a
favorite spot with me at midnight, when the atmosphere was clear, and
the whole beauty of arctic scenery was exposed to view. It was all fresh
to me: I enjoyed it; and had enough to do, admiring the enormous masses
of ice we were passing, the white-topped mountains in the distance, and
the strange aspect of every thing around me. It seemed, as we slowly
threaded our way through the bergs, that we were about approaching some
great battle-field, in which we were to be actively engaged; and that we
were now, cautiously, passing through the various outposts of the mighty
encampment; at other times I could almost fancy we were about to enter
secretly, by the suburbs, some of those vast and wonderful cities whose
magnificent ruins throw into utter insignificance all the grandeur of
succeeding ages. Silently, and apparently without motion, did we glide
along, amidst dark hazy weather, rain, and enough wind to fill the sails
and steady them, but no more."

Northward yet, and ever northward:--More frequent and massive grew the
icebergs among which the little "Prince Albert" threaded its way; while
far and near, to the east and north and west the eye met nothing but a
uniform dazzling whiteness shot up from the glittering ice-peaks. Now
and then a bear was seen, sitting a grim sentinel, by some seal-hole,
from which his prey was soon "expected out." As they advanced the ice
closed in around them, until at last they were fairly


[Illustration: SURROUNDED BY ICEBERGS.]

"We were fairly 'in the ice:' but ice of which most readers have no
idea. The water frozen in our ponds and lakes at home is but as a mere
thin pane of glass in comparison to that which now came upon us. Fancy
before you miles and miles of a tabular icy rock eight feet or more,
solid, thick throughout, unbroken, or only by a single rent here and
there, not sufficient to separate the piece itself. Conceive this icy
rock to be in many parts of a perfectly even surface, but in others
covered with what might well be conceived as the ruins of a mighty city
suddenly destroyed by an earthquake, and the remains jumbled together in
one confused mass. Let there be also huge blocks of most fantastic form
scattered about upon this tabular surface, and in some places rising in
towering height, and in one apparently connected chain, far, far beyond
the sight. Take these in your view, and you will have some faint idea of
what was the kind of ice presented to my eye as I gazed upon it from
aloft. We had at last come to the part most dreaded by the daring and
adventurous whalers. _Melville's Bay_, often called, from its fearful
character, the 'Devil's Nip,' was opening to my view, and stretching
away far to the northward out of sight. But neither bay nor aught else,
except by knowledge of its position, could I discover. Every where was
ice; and the wonder to me was, how we were to get on at all through
such an apparently insurmountable barrier.

"Our position now was becoming more and more confined as to sailing
room. The channel in which we had hitherto been quietly gliding,
narrowed till little better than the breadth of the ship. At 4^h 30^m
P.M. we could get no further, a barrier of 'hummocky' ice intervening
right across our passage between us and some open water, visible not
above seventy yards from us. Speedily the channel through which we had
come began to close, and after trying in vain to force our way through
the obstruction, we found ourselves at six o'clock completely beset. The
_Devil's Thumb_, which was now plainly visible, at this time bore S.E.
(compass) about thirty miles. Other land was also seen topping over
enormous glaciers, which were most wonderful to look at, and used to
entrance my gaze for hours. At six o'clock our actual labors in the ice
commenced. It was beginning to press upon us rather hard; and from the
appearance of that which blocked our way, it was evident there had been
a heavy squeeze here, and we were afraid of getting fixed in another.
Accordingly every effort was made to remove the obstacle which impeded
our passage. We first began to try and _heave_ the ship through by
attaching strong warps to ice anchors, which latter being fastened in
the solid floe, enabled a heavy strain to be put in force. The windlass
was then set to work, but to no purpose, as we hardly gained a fathom.
We next tried what heaving out the pieces that were in our way would do,
but this proved of no avail. The saws were then set to work to cut off
some angular projections that inconveniently pressed against our side;
and while this was being done, I sprung on to the hummocky pieces and
examined the difficulty. The obstacle, however, was not removed; and at
two in the morning a crack in the large floe to the westward of us was
observed to be gradually enlarging. In less than half an hour the water
appeared in larger quantities astern, and a 'lane' was opened, by a
circuitous route, into the clear space ahead of us, whither we wanted to
go. All hands were called to the ship, and the vessel's head turned
round to the southward, any further attempt to get through the channel
we had been working at being given up. Sail was made to a light breeze,
and some delicate manoeuvring had to be accomplished in getting the
ship round and in among some heavy ice, toward the passage we wished to
enter.

"When I went on deck the next morning about eight, I found the weather
very thick, with heavy rain. Our position seemed to me but little
improved from that of the past night, for numerous 'bergs' of every size
and shape appeared to obstruct our path. A fresh breeze was blowing from
the S.E., and our ship was bounding nimbly to it in water as smooth as a
mill-pond. But no sooner did she get to the end of her course one way,
than she had to retrace her steps and try it another. We seemed
completely hemmed in on every side by heavy packed ice, rough uneven
hummocks, or a complete fleet of enormous bergs. Like a frightened hare
did the poor thing seem to fly, here, there, and every where, vainly
striving to escape from the apparent trap she had got into. It was a
strange and novel sight. For three or four hours--indeed ever since we
had entered this basin of water, we had been vainly striving to find
some passage out of it, in as near a direction as possible to our proper
course, but neither this way, nor any other way, nor even that in which
we had entered (for the passage had again suddenly closed), could we
find one. At last, about ten A.M., an opening between two large bergs
was discovered to the N.W. Without a moment's delay our gallant little
bark was pushed into it, and soon we found ourselves threading through a
complete labyrinth of ice rocks, if they may be so called, where the
very smallest of them, ay, or even a fragment from one of them, if
falling on us, would have splintered into ten thousand pieces the
gallant vessel that had thus thrust herself among them, and would have
buried her crew irretrievably. Wonderful indeed was it all. Numerous
lanes and channels, not unlike the paths and streets of a mighty city,
branched off in several directions; but our course was in those that led
us most to the northward. Onward we pursued our way in this manner for
about two hours, when, suddenly, on turning out of a passage between
some lofty bergs, we found the view opening to us, a field of ice
appearing at the termination of the channel, and at the extreme end a
schooner fast to a 'floe,' that is, lying alongside the flat ice, as by
a quay. The wind was fair for us, blowing a moderate breeze, so that we
soon ran down to her in saucy style, rounding to just ahead of her
position, and making fast in like manner. To our great joy we found
that, as we had suspected, and, indeed, knew, as soon as colors were
hoisted, it was indeed Sir John Ross in the 'Felix.' Glad was I of an
opportunity to see the gallant old veteran, whose name and writings had
latterly been so frequently before me. Directly we got on board, Sir
John Ross came to meet us; I saw before me him who, for four long years
and more, had been incarcerated, hopelessly, with his companions, in
those icy regions to which we ourselves were bound. I was struck with
astonishment! It was nothing, in comparison, for the young and robust to
come on such a voyage; but that _he_, at his time of life, when men
generally think it right--and right, perhaps, it is, too--to sit quietly
down at home by their own firesides, should brave the hardship and
danger once again, was indeed surprising.

"In the evening both vessels had to move into another position, in
consequence of the bergs approaching too closely toward us. To watch
these mountain, icy monsters in a calm, as they slowly and silently, yet
surely and determinedly, move about in the narrow sheet of water by
which they chance to be encompassed, one could well imagine that it was
some huge mysterious thing, possessed of life, and bent on the fell
purpose of destruction. Onward it almost imperceptibly glides, until
reaching an opposing floe, it forces its way far through the solid ice,
plowing up the pieces and throwing them aside in hilly heaps with a
force and power apparently incredible. Should it happen that an impetus
is given to it by wind, or other causes besides those thus occasioned by
the tide, or current, it is mighty in its strength, and terrific in the
desolation it produces. Nothing can save a ship if thus caught by one,
as was the case in the memorable and fatal year of 1830, in this very
bay, when vessels were 'squeezed flat'--'reared up by the ice, almost in
the position of a rearing horse! others thrown fairly over on their
broadsides; and some actually overrun by the advancing floe and totally
buried by it.'"

The obstructions presented by the ice continued to increase so that in a
whole fortnight, in spite of the most strenuous exertions, they made
only twelve miles in their northward course. And even this, as they
subsequently learned, was more than was performed by the government
expedition, which was five weeks in advancing thirty miles. On the third
of August, in Melville's Bay, night closed in upon


[Illustration: THE PRINCE ALBERT IN A DANGEROUS POSITION.]

"There was still more danger now, on account of the heavier and worse
kind of ice about us. Several bergs and rugged hummocks were in very
close quarters to us. At four A.M. we had again to unship the rudder;
and this we could hardly do, in consequence of being completely beset.
The 'Felix,' was just ahead; but not a particle of water any where near
or around us could be seen. Several times both vessels were in extreme
danger; and once we sustained a rather heavy pressure, being canted over
on the starboard side most unpleasantly. But the 'Prince Albert' stood
it well; although it was painfully evident that should the heavy outer
floes still keep setting in upon those which inclosed us, nothing could
save her. To describe our position at this moment it will be only
necessary to observe that both vessels were as completely in the ice as
if they had been dropped into it from on high, and frozen there. It had
been impossible for me to sleep during the night in consequence of the
constant harsh grating sound that the floes caused as they slowly and
heavily moved along or _upon_ the ship's side, crushing their outer
edges with a most unpleasant noise close to my ear. My sleeping berth
was half under and half above the level of the water, when the ship was
on an even keel. In the morning I heard the grating sound still stronger
and close to me: I threw myself off the bed and went on deck. From the
deck, I jumped on to the ice, and had a look how it was serving the poor
little vessel. Under her stern I perceived large masses crushed up in a
frightful manner, and with terrific force, sufficient, I thought, to
have knocked her whole counter in. My only wonder was how she stood it;
but an explanation, independent of her own good strength, was soon
presented to me in the fact that the floe I was standing upon was moving
right round, and grinding in its progress all lesser pieces in its way.
This was the cause of safety to ourselves and the 'Felix.' Had the heavy
bodies of ice been impelled directly toward us, as we at first feared
they would be, instead of passing us in an angular direction, we should
both, most assuredly, have been crushed like an egg-shell. The very
_bergs_, or the _floating_ ones, near which we had been fast on the
previous day, were aiding in the impetus given by the tide or current to
the masses now in motion; and most providential was it that no wind was
blowing from the adverse quarter at the time, upon each side of the ship
the floes were solid and of great thickness, and pressing closely upon
her timbers. Under the bow, several rough pieces had been thrown up
nearly as high as the level of the bowsprit, and these were in constant
change, as the larger masses drove by them.

"I ascended on deck, and found all the preparations for taking to the
ice, if necessary, renewed. Spirits of wine, for portable fuel, had been
drawn off, and placed handy; bags of bread, pemmican, &c., were all in
readiness; and nothing was wanting in the event of a too heavy squeeze
coming. We could perceive that, sooner or later, a collision between the
two floes, the one on our larboard and the other on our starboard side,
must take place, as the former had not nearly so much motion as the
latter; but where this collision would occur was impossible to say.
Between the 'Felix' and us, the passage was blocked principally by the
same sort of pieces that I have mentioned as lying under our bow; and
astern of us were several small bergs that might or might not be of
service in breaking the collision. Very fortunately they proved the
former; for, presently, I could perceive the floe on our starboard hand,
as it came flushing and grinding all near it, in its circular movement,
catch one of its extreme corners on a large block of ice a short
distance astern, and by the force of the pressure drive it into the
opposite floe, rending and tearing all before it; while at the same time
itself rebounded, as it were, or swerved on one side, and glided more
softly and with a relaxed pressure past us. This was the last trial of
the kind our little 'Prince' had to endure; for afterward a gradual
slackening of the whole body of ice took place, and at ten it opened to
the southward. We immediately shipped the rudder, and began heaving,
warping, and tracking the ship through the loose masses that lay in
that, the only direction for us now to pursue, if we wished to get clear
at all."

On the 10th of August, as the sun, which now never sank below the
horizon, rose above a low-lying fog-bank; one of the government
expeditions was seen emerging from the mist. The expedition consisted of
two screw steamers, each having a sailing vessel in tow. A strange sight
it was to see these steamers--the first that ever burst into that silent
sea--gliding along amid the eternal ice of the arctic circle. They
proved of great service in breaking through the ice, dashing stem on
against the massy barriers; then backing astern, to gain headway, and
repeating the manoeuvre until a passage was forced. When the ice was
too thick to be broken in this manner, a hole was drilled in it, into
which a powder-cylinder was placed, the mine fired, and the fragments
dragged out by the steamers. The "Prince Albert" and "Felix" were taken
in tow, for some three hundred miles by the steamers. Mr. Snow gives the
following sketch and description of


[Illustration: THE ARCTIC DISCOVERY SHIPS AT MIDNIGHT.]

"I have before made mention of the remarkable stillness which may be
observed at midnight in these regions; but not until now did it come
upon me with such force, and in such a singular manner. I can not
attempt to describe the mingled sensations I experienced, of constant
surprise and amazement at the extraordinary occurrence then taking place
in the waters I was gazing upon, and of renewed hope, mellowed into a
quiet, holy, and reverential feeling of gratitude toward that mighty
Being who, in this solemn silence, reigned alike supreme, as in the busy
hour of noon when man is eager at his toil, or the custom of the
civilized world gives to business active life and vigor. Save the
distant humming noise of the engine working on board of the steamer
towing us, there was no sound to be heard denoting the existence of any
living thing, or of any animate matter. Yet there we were, perceptibly,
nay, rapidly, gliding past the land and floes of ice, as though some
secret and mysterious power had been set to work to carry us swiftly
away from those vexatious, harassing, and delaying portions of our
voyage, in which we had already experienced so much trouble and
perplexity. The leading vessels had passed all the parts where any
further difficulty might have been apprehended, and this of course gave
to us in the rear a sense of perfect security for the present. All
hands, therefore, except the middle watch on deck, were below in our
respective vessels; and, as I looked forward ahead of us, and beheld the
long line of masts and rigging that rose up from each ship before me,
without any sail set, or any apparent motion to propel such masses
onward, and without a single human voice to be heard around, it did seem
something wonderful and amazing! And yet, it was a noble sight: six
vessels were casting their long shadows across the smooth surface of the
passing floes of ice, as the sun, with mellowed light, and gentler, but
still beautiful lustre, was soaring through the polar sky, at the back
of Melville's Cape. Ay, in truth it was a noble sight; and well could I
look upward to the streaming pendant of my own dear country that hung
listlessly from the mast-head of the 'Assistance,' and feel the highest
satisfaction in my breast that I, too, was one of her children, and
could boast myself of being born on her own free soil, under her own
revered and idolized flag. But even as I beheld that listless symbol of
my country's name, pendant from the lofty truck, my glance was directed
higher; and as it caught the pale blue firmament of heaven, still in
this midnight hour divested of star or moon that shine by night, and
brightened by the sun; my heart breathed a prayer that He, who dwells
far beyond the ken of mortal eye, would deign to grant that the attempt
now making should not be made in vain, but that those whom we were now
on our way to seek might be found and restored to their home and
sorrowing friends; and that, until then, full support and strength might
be afforded them."

After parting company with the other vessels, the "Prince Albert" stood
on her way westward, until they almost reached the spot where it had
been proposed to winter, and where the design of the expedition would
begin to be put in execution. But they found the harbor which they had
proposed to enter blocked up with ice; and so unaccountable a
discouragement came over the expedition, that on the 22d of August a
sudden resolution was taken to return forthwith. The Journal of Mr. Snow
is extremely guarded as to the reasons for this determination. The
vessel had performed admirably; every preparation had been made for
wintering; they were provisioned for two years; the crew were in
excellent health: and yet the whole expedition, which had been fitted
out at such a sacrifice, was abandoned, almost before it was fairly
begun. We are led to infer that the true reason was that the officers in
command had not the cool, determined courage requisite for such a
charge. But we are sure that such a deficiency can not be laid to the
charge of our author. From this time forth a tone of deep and bitter
chagrin runs through the Journal at this inglorious termination of the
expedition. It was no small addition to this feeling of intense
mortification, that on the very day when they determined to abandon the
enterprise, and return home, the American Expedition fitted out by Mr.
GRINNELL, which they had seen, a fortnight before, blocked up by ice, as
they supposed, in Melville's Bay, but which had now overtaken them,
notwithstanding their own tow by the steamers, was seen boldly pressing
its way where they themselves dared not follow. Notwithstanding this
feeling of mortification, Mr. Snow has too intense a sympathy with
daring and courage, ennobled by high and philanthropic purpose, to fail
to do ample justice to


THE AMERICAN RELIEF EXPEDITION.

"Large pieces of ice were floating about, and setting rapidly up the
inlet. We had to stand away for some distance, to round the edge of this
stream; and as we approached the far end, we perceived that a vessel,
which we had some time before seen, was apparently standing right in
toward us. At first, we took her to be Sir John Ross's schooner, the
'Felix,' but a few moments more settled the point, by her size and rig
being different, and her colors being displayed, which proved her to be
one of the 'Americans!' All idea of sleep was now instantly banished
from me. The American vessels already up here, when we had fancied them
still in Melville's Bay, not far from where we had left them on the 6th
instant! Much as I knew of the enterprising and daring spirit of our
transatlantic brethren, I could not help being astonished. They must
have had either some extraordinary luck, or else the ice had suddenly
and most effectually broken up to admit of their exit, unaided by steam
or other help, in so short a time. I felt, however, a pleasure in thus
finding my repeated observations concerning them so thoroughly verified;
and I was not sorry for themselves that they were here. All exclusive
nationality was done away with. We were all engaged in the same noble
cause; we were all striving forward in the same animating and exciting
race, and none should envy the other his advance therein. We showed our
colors to him; and Captain Forsyth immediately determined to go on board
of him, and see whether the same plan of search for him was laid out as
for us. The boat was lowered, and in a short time we were standing on
the deck of the 'Advance,' Lieutenant De Haven, of the American Navy,
and most cordially received, with their accustomed hospitality, by our
transatlantic friends.

"The 'Advance' was most extraordinarily fortified to resist any pressure
of the ice, and to enable her to force her way against such impediments
as those she encountered this evening. Her bow was one solid mass of
timber--I believe I am right in saying, from the foremast. Her timbers
were increased in size and number, so that she might well be said to
have been doubled inside as well as out. Her deck was also doubled, then
felted, and again lined inside, while her cabin had, in addition, a
sheathing of cork. The after-part of the vessel was remarkably strong;
and a movable bulk-head, which ran across the forepart of the cabin,
could at any time be unshipped to afford a free communication fore and
aft when needed. The crew, if I remember rightly, lived in a strongly
built 'round-house' on deck, amidships, one end of which was converted
into a cook-house, called a 'galley,' and another the 'pantry.'
_Ten_ men formed the number of the working seamen; there were no
'ice-masters,' nor regular 'ice-men:' but most of the sailors were long
accustomed to the ice. A steward and a cook completed the full
complement of the ship. The officers lived in a truly republican manner.
The whole cabin was thrown into one spacious room, in which captain,
mates, and surgeon lived together. Their sleeping berths were built
around it, and appeared to possess every accommodation to make them
comfortable.

"The 'Advance' was one of two vessels (the other being the 'Rescue'--a
smaller craft) that had been bought and fitted out in the most noble and
generous manner, solely by one individual--HENRY GRINNELL, Esq., a
merchant of New York. This truly great and good man had long felt his
heart yearn toward the lost ones, whom we were now seeking, and their
friends; and desiring to redeem the partial pledge given by the
government of the United States to Lady Franklin, he yielded to the
strong impulses awakened by some of her private letters, which he had
had the opportunity of reading, and being blest with an ample fortune,
he determined to employ no small portion of it in sending out at his own
expense an expedition to this quarter of the world, to aid in the search
that England was making this year after her gallant children. It
required, however, not a trifling sum to accomplish this, and I well
know with what distrust and doubt of its fulfillment the first notice of
his intentions was received in New York and elsewhere, when publicly
made known. But he was not a man, it has appeared, to promise what he
means not, or can not perform. At a very heavy outlay he purchased two
vessels, one of, I believe, 125 tons, and the other of 95 tons, and had
them strengthened and prepared in a most efficient manner for the
service they were to enter upon. Applying to Congress, then assembled,
he got these ships received into the naval force, and brought under
naval authority. Officers and crews were appointed by the Board of
Administration for Maritime Affairs, and the government, moreover,
agreed to pay them as if in regular service, making an additional
allowance on each pay, of a grade in rank above. This having been
accomplished, and all things in readiness, on the 24th of May, 1850, he
had the satisfaction of seeing his two ships and their brave crews
depart from New York on their generous mission. He accompanied them
himself for some distance, and finally bid them farewell on the 26th,
returning in his yacht to the city, where, as he has often declared, he
can sit down now in peace, and be ready to lay his head at rest forever;
knowing that he has done his duty, and striven to perform the part of a
faithful steward with the wealth which he enjoys.

"The 'Advance' was manned by sixteen persons, officers included. Her
commander, Lieutenant De Haven, a young man of about twenty-six years of
age, had served in the United States exploring expedition, under
Commodore Wilkes, in the Antarctic Seas. He seemed as fine a specimen of
a seaman, and a rough and ready officer, as I had ever seen. Nor was he
at all deficient in the characteristics of a true gentleman, although
the cognomen is so often misapplied and ill-understood. With a sharp,
quick eye, a countenance bronzed and apparently inured to all weathers,
his voice gave unmistakable signs of energy, promptitude, and decision.
There was no mistaking the man. He was undoubtedly well-fitted to lead
such an expedition, and I felt charmed to see it.

"His second in command (for they were very differently organized from
us) was still younger and more slim, but withal of equally determined
and sailorlike appearance. Next to him was a junior officer, of whom I
saw but little; but that little was enough to tell me that the
executives under Captain De Haven would be efficient auxiliaries to him.
Last of all, though not least among them, was one of whom I must be
excused for saying more than a casual word or two. It was Dr. Kane, the
surgeon, naturalist, journalist, &c., of the expedition. Of an
exceedingly slim and apparently fragile form and make, and with features
to all appearance far more suited to a genial clime, and to the comforts
of a pleasant home, than to the roughness and hardships of an arctic
voyage, he was yet a very old traveler both by sea and land. His rank as
a surgeon in the American navy, and his appointment, at three days'
notice, to this service, were sufficient proof of his abilities, and of
his being considered capable of enduring all that would have to be gone
through. While our captain was talking to the American commander, Dr.
Kane turned his attention to me, and a congeniality of sentiment and
feeling soon brought us deep into pleasant conversation. I found he had
been in many parts of the world, by sea and land, that I myself had
visited, and in many other parts that I could only long to visit. Old
scenes and delightful recollections were speedily revived. Our talk ran
wild; and _there_, in that cold, inhospitable, dreary region of
everlasting ice and snow, did we again, in fancy, gallop over miles and
miles of lands far distant, and far more joyous. Ever-smiling Italy, and
its softening life; sturdy Switzerland, and its hardy sons; the Alps,
the Apennines, France, Germany, and elsewhere were rapidly wandered
over. India, Africa, and Southern America were brought before us in
swift succession. Then came Spain and Portugal, and my own England; next
appeared Egypt, Syria, and the Desert; with all of these was he
personally familiar, in all had he been a traveler, and in all could I
join him, too, except the latter. Rich in anecdote and full of pleasing
talk, time flew rapidly as I conversed with him, and partook of the
hospitality offered me. Delighted at the knowledge that I had been
residing for some time in New York, he tried all he could to make me
enjoy the moment."

After parting with the American Expedition, the "Prince Albert" took her
homeward way, reaching Aberdeen on the 1st of October. "As it was quite
dark," says Mr. Snow, "few witnessed our arrival, and I was not sorry
for it". Had we returned fortunate, it would have been different; as it
was, why, the night was, I thought, better suited to our condition. The
"Prince Albert" brought the latest tidings received of the "Advance" and
"Rescue," when


BROTHER JONATHAN GIVES JOHN BULL "A LEAD."

"If I had ever before doubted the daring and enterprising character of
the American, what I saw and heard on board of the 'Advance' would have
removed such doubt; but these peculiar features in the children of the
Stars and Stripes were always apparent to me, and admiringly
acknowledged. I was given a brief history of their voyage to the present
time, as also an outline of their future plans. They intended to push on
wherever they could, this way or that way, as might be found best, in
the direction of Melville Island, and parts adjacent, especially Banks's
Land; and they meant to winter wherever they might chance to be, in the
Pack or out of the Pack. As long as they could be moving or making any
progress, in any direction that might assist in the object for which
they had come, they meant still to be going on, and, with the true
characteristic of the American, cared for no obstacles or impediments
that might arise in their way. Neither fears, nor the necessary caution
which might easily be alleged as an excuse for hesitation or delay, at
periods when any thing like fancied danger appeared, was to deter them.
Happy fellows! thought I: no fair winds nor opening prospects will be
lost with you; no dissension or incompetency among your executive
officers exist to stay your progress. Bent upon one errand alone, your
minds set upon _that_ before you embarked, no trifles nor common
danger will prevent you daring every thing for the carrying out of your
mission. Go on, then, brave sons of America, and may at least some share
of prosperity and success attend your noble exertions!

"If ever a vessel and her officers were capable of going through an
undertaking in which more than ordinary difficulties had to be
encountered, I had no doubt it would be the American; and this was
evinced to me, even while we were on board, by the apparently reckless
way in which they dashed through the streams of heavy ice running off
from Leopold Island. I happened to go on deck when they were thus
engaged, and was delighted to witness how gallantly they put aside every
impediment in their way. An officer was standing on the heel of the
bowsprit, conning the ship and issuing his orders to the man at the
wheel in that short, decisive, yet _clear_ manner, which the helmsman at
once well understood and promptly obeyed. There was not a rag of canvas
taken in, nor a moment's hesitation. The way was before them: the stream
of ice had to be either gone through boldly or a long _detour_ made;
and, despite the heaviness of the stream, _they pushed the vessel
through in her proper course_. Two or three shocks, as she came in
contact with some large pieces, were unheeded; and the moment the last
block was past the bow, the officer sung out, 'So: steady as she goes on
her course;' and came aft as if nothing more than ordinary sailing had
been going on. I observed our own little barky nobly following in the
American's wake; and, as I afterward learned, she got through it pretty
well, though not without much doubt of the propriety of keeping on in
such procedure after the 'mad Yankee,' as he was called by our mate."




WHAT BECOMES OF ALL THE PINS?


Every body uses pins--men, women, and children. Every body buys them.
Every body bends them, breaks them, knocks off their heads, and loses
them. They enter into every operation, from the drawing-room to the
scullery. Go where you will, if you look sharp, you may calculate with
certainty on picking up a pin--in the streets, in the cabs, on
door-steps and mats, in halls and drawing-rooms, sticking in curtains
and sofas, and paper-hangings, in counting-houses and lawyers' offices,
keeping together old receipts and bills, and fragments of papers, in
ladies' needlework, in shopkeepers' parcels, in books, bags, baskets,
luggage--they are to be found every where, let them get there how
they may, by accident or design. Their ubiquity is astounding--and their
manufacture, being in proportion to it, must be something prodigious.
There is no article of perpetual use with which we are so familiar; and
out of this familiarity springs indifference, for there is no article
about whose final destination we are so profoundly ignorant. We know
well enough the end of things (not half so useful to us) that wear out
in the course of time, or that are liable to be smashed, cracked,
chipped, put out of order, or otherwise rendered unavailable for further
service; but of the fate of this little article, so universal in its
application, so indispensable in its utility, we know nothing whatever.
Nobody ever thinks of asking, WHAT BECOMES OF THE PINS? For our
own parts, we should be very glad to get an answer to that question, and
should be very much obliged to any person who could furnish us with it.

The question is by no means an idle one. If we could get at the
statistics of pins, we should have some tremendous revelations. The loss
in pins, strayed, stolen, and mislaid, is past all calculation. Millions
of billions of pins must vanish--no woman alive can tell how or
where--in the course of a year. Of the actual number fabricated,
pointed, headed, and papered up for sale from one year's end to another
(remember they are to be found in every house, large and small, within
the pale of civilization), we should be afraid to venture a conjecture;
but, judging from what we know of their invincible tendency to lose
themselves, and our own inveterate carelessness in losing them, we
apprehend that, could such a return be obtained, it would present an
alarming result. Think of millions of billions of pins being in course
of perpetual disappearance! And that this has been going on for
centuries and centuries, and will continue to go on, probably, to the
world's end. A grave matter to contemplate, my masters! A pin, in its
single integrity, is a trifle, atomic, in comparison with other things
that are lost and never found again. But reflect for a moment upon pins
in the aggregate. The grand sum-total of human life is made up of
trifles--all large bodies are composed of minute particles. Years are
made up of months, months of weeks, weeks of days, days of hours, hours
of minutes, minutes of seconds; and, coming down to the seconds, and
calling in the multiplication-table to enlighten us, we shall find that
there are considerably upward of thirty-one millions of them in a year.
Try a similar experiment with the pins. Assume any given quantity of
loss in any given time, and calculate what it will come to in a cycle of
centuries. Most people are afraid of looking into the future, and would
not, if they could, acquire a knowledge of the destiny that lies before
them. Pause, therefore, before you embark in this fearful calculation;
for the chances are largely in favor of your arriving at this harrowing
conclusion, that, by the mere force of accumulation and the inevitable
pressure of quantity, the great globe itself must, at no very distant
period, become a vast shapeless mass of pins.

As yet we have no signs or tokens of this impending catastrophe, and are
entirely in the dark about the process that is insidiously conducting us
to it; and hence we ask, in solemn accents, WHAT BECOMES OF THE PINS?
Where do they go to? How do they get there? What are the attractive and
repulsive forces to which they are subject after they drop from us? What
are the laws that govern their wanderings? Do they dissolve and
volatilize, and come back again into the air, so that we are breathing
pins without knowing it? Do they melt into the earth, and go to the
roots of vegetables, so that every day of our lives we are unconsciously
dining on them? The inquiry baffles all scholarship; and we are forced
to put up with the obscure satisfaction which Hamlet applies to the
world of apparitions, that there are more pins in unknown places and
unsuspected shapes upon the earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.




LAMARTINE ON THE RELIGION OF REVOLUTIONARY MEN.


I know--I sigh when I think of it--that hitherto the French people have
been the least religious of all the nations of Europe. Is it because the
idea of God--which arises from all the evidences of Nature, and from the
depths of reflection, being the profoundest and weightiest idea of which
human intelligence is capable--and the French mind being the most rapid,
but the most superficial, the lightest, the most unreflective of all
European races--this mind has not the force and severity necessary to
carry far and long the greatest conception of the human understanding?

Is it because our governments have always taken upon themselves to think
for us, to believe for us, and to pray for us? Is it because we are and
have been a military people, a soldier-nation, led by kings, heroes,
ambitious men, from battlefield to battlefield, making conquests, and
never keeping them, ravaging, dazzling, charming, and corrupting Europe;
and bringing home the manners, vices, bravery, lightness, and impiety of
the camp to the fireside of the people?

I know not, but certain it is that the nation has an immense progress to
make in serious thought if she wishes to remain free. If we look at the
characters, compared as regards religious sentiment, of the great
nations of Europe, America, even Asia, the advantage is not for us. The
great men of other countries live and die on the scene of history,
looking up to heaven; our great men appear to live and die, forgetting
completely the only idea for which it is worth living and dying--they
live and die looking at the spectator, or, at most, at posterity.

Open the history of America, the history of England, and the history of
France; read the great lives, the great deaths, the great martyrdoms,
the great words at the hour when the ruling thought of life reveals
itself in the last words of the dying--and compare.

Washington and Franklin fought, spoke, suffered, ascended, and descended
in their political life of popularity in the ingratitude of glory, in
the contempt of their fellow-citizens--always in the name of God, for
whom they acted; and the liberator of America died, confiding to God the
liberty of the people and his own soul.

Sidney, the young martyr of a patriotism, guilty of nothing but
impatience, and who died to expiate his country's dream of liberty, said
to his jailer--"I rejoice that I die innocent toward the king, but a
victim, resigned to the King on High, to whom all life is due."

The Republicans of Cromwell only sought the way of God, even in the
blood of battles. Their politics were their faith--their reign a
prayer--their death a psalm. One hears, sees, feels, that God was in all
the movements of these great people.

But cross the sea, traverse La Mancha, come to our times, open our
annals, and listen to the last words of the great political actors of
the drama of our liberty. One would think that God was eclipsed from the
soul, that His name was unknown in the language. History will have the
air of an atheist, when she recounts to posterity these annihilations,
rather than deaths, of celebrated men in the greatest year of France!
The victims only have a God; the tribunes and lictors have none.

Look at Mirabeau on the bed of death--"Crown me with flowers," said he;
"intoxicate me with perfumes. Let me die to the sound of delicious
music"--not a word of God or of his soul. Sensual philosopher, he
desired only supreme sensualism, a last voluptuousness in his agony.
Contemplate Madame Roland, the strong-hearted woman of the Revolution,
on the cart that conveyed her to death. She looked contemptuously on the
besotted people who killed their prophets and sibyls. Not a glance
toward heaven! Only one word for the earth she was quitting--"Oh,
Liberty!"

Approach the dungeon door of the Girondins. Their last night is a
banquet; the only hymn, the Marseillaise!

Follow Camille Desmoulins to his execution. A cool and indecent
pleasantry at the trial, and a long imprecation on the road to the
guillotine, were the two last thoughts of this dying man on his way to
the last tribunal.

Hear Danton on the platform of the scaffold, at the distance of a line
from God and eternity. "I have had a good time of it; let me go to
sleep." Then to the executioner, "you will show my head to the
people--it is worth the trouble!" His faith, annihilation; his last
sigh, vanity. Behold the Frenchman of this latter age!

What must one think of the religious sentiment of a free people whose
great figures seem thus to march in procession to annihilation, and to
whom that terrible minister--death--itself recalls neither the
threatenings nor promises of God!

The republic of these men without a God has quickly been stranded. The
liberty, won by so much heroism and so much genius, has not found in
France a conscience to shelter it, a God to avenge it, a people to
defend it against that atheism which has been called glory. All ended in
a soldier and some apostate republicans travestied into courtiers. An
atheistic republicanism can not be heroic. When you terrify it, it
bends; when you would buy it, it sells itself. It would be very foolish
to immolate itself. Who would take any heed? the people ungrateful and
God non-existent! So finish atheist revolutions!--_Bien Publique._




[From Dickens's Household Words.]

THOMAS HARLOWE.


  All amid the summer roses
    In his garden, with his wife,
  Sate the cheerful Thomas Harlowe,
    Glancing backward through his life.

  Woodlarks in the trees were singing,
    And the breezes, low and sweet,
  Wafted down laburnum blossoms,
    Like an offering, at his feet.

  There he sate, good Thomas Harlowe,
    Living o'er the past in thought;
  And old griefs, like mountain summits,
    Golden hues of sunset caught.

  Thus he spake: "The truest poet
    Is the one whose touch reveals
  Those deep springs of human feeling
    Which the conscious heart conceals.

  "Human nature's living fountains,
    Ever-flowing, round us lie,
  Yet the poets seek their waters
    As from cisterns old and dry.

  "Hence they seldom write, my Ellen,
    Aught so full of natural woe,
  As that song which thy good uncle
    Made so many years ago.

  "My sweet wife, my life's companion,
    Canst thou not recall the time
  When we sate beneath the lilacs,
    Listening to that simple rhyme?

  "I was then just five-and-twenty,
    Young in years, but old in sooth;
  Hopeless love had dimmed my manhood,
    Care had saddened all my youth.

  "But that touching, simple ballad,
    Which thy uncle writ and read,
  Like the words of God, creative,
    Gave a life unto the dead.

  "And thenceforth have been so blissful
    All our days, so calm, so bright,
  That it seems like joy to linger
    O'er my young life's early blight.

  "Easy was my father's temper,
    And his being passed along
  Like a streamlet 'neath the willows,
    Lapsing to the linnet's song.

  "With the scholar's tastes and feelings,
    He had all he asked of life
  In his books and in his garden,
    In his child, and gentle wife.

  "He was for the world unfitted;
    For its idols knew no love;
  And, without the serpent's wisdom
    Was as guileless as the dove.

  "Such men are the schemer's victims.
    Trusting to a faithless guide,
  He was lured on to his ruin,
    And a hopeless bankrupt died.

  "Short had been my father's sorrow;
    He had not the strength to face
  What was worse than altered fortune,
    Or than faithless friends--disgrace.

  "He had not the strength to combat
    Through the adverse ranks of life;
  In his prime he died, heart-broken,
    Leaving unto us the strife.

  "I was then a slender stripling,
    Full of life, and hope, and joy;
  But, at once, the cares of manhood
    Crushed the spirit of the boy.

  "Woman oft than man is stronger
    Where are inner foes to quell,
  And my mother rose triumphant,
    When my father, vanquished, fell.

  "All we had we gave up freely,
    That on him might rest less blame;
  And, without a friend in London,
    In the winter, hither came.

  "To the world-commanding London,
    Came as atoms, nothing worth;
  'Mid the strift of myriad workers,
    Our small efforts to put forth.

  "Oh, the hero-strength of woman,
    When her strong affection pleads,
  When she tasks her to endurance
    In the path where duty leads!

  "Fair my mother was and gentle,
    Reared 'mid wealth, of good descent,
  One who, till our time of trial,
    Ne'er had known what hardship meant.

  "Now she toiled. Her skillful needle
    Many a wondrous fabric wrought,
  Which the loom could never equal,
    And which wealthy ladies bought.

  "Meantime I, among the merchants
    Found employment; saw them write,
  Brooding over red-lined ledgers,
    Ever gain, from morn till night.

  "Or amid the crowded shipping
    Of the great world's busy hive,
  Saw the wealth of both the Indies,
    For their wealthier marts, arrive

  "So we lived without repining,
    Toiling, toiling, week by week;
  But I saw her silent sufferings
    By the pallor of her cheek.

  "Love like mine was eagle sighted;
    Vainly did she strive to keep
  All her sufferings from my knowledge,
    And to lull my fears to sleep.

  "Well I knew her days were numbered;
    And, as she approached her end,
  Stronger grew the love between us,
    Doubly was she parent--friend!

  "God permitted that her spirit
    Should through stormy floods be led,
  That she might converse with angels
    While she toiled for daily bread.

  "Wondrous oft were her communings,
    As of one to life new-born,
  When I watched beside her pillow,
    'Twixt the midnight and the morn.

  "Still she lay through one long Sabbath,
    But as evening closed she woke,
  And like one amazed with sorrow,
    Thus with pleading voice she spoke:

  "'God will give whate'er is needful;
    Will sustain from day to day;
  This I know--yet worldly fetters
    Keep me still a thrall to clay!

  "'Oh, my son, from these world-shackles
    Only thou canst set me free!'
  'Speak thy wish,' said I, 'my mother,
    Lay thy lov'd commands on me!'

  "As if strength were given unto her
    For some purpose high, she spake:
  'I have toiled, and--like a miser--
    Hoarded, hoarded for thy sake.

  "'Not for sordid purpose hoarded,
    But to free from outward blame,
  From the tarnish of dishonor,
    Thy dead father's sacred name,

  "'And I lay on thee this duty--
    'Tis my last request, my son--
  Lay on thee this solemn duty
    Which I die and leave undone!

  "'Promise, that thy dearest wishes,
    Pleasure, profit, shall be naught,
  Until, to the utmost farthing,
    Thou this purpose shalt have wrought!'

  "And I promised. All my being
    Freely, firmly answered, yea!
  Thus absolved, her angel-spirit,
    Breathing blessings, passed away.

  "Once more in the noisy, jostling
    Human crowd; I seemed to stand,
  Like to him who goes to battle,
    With his life within his hand.

  "All things wore a different aspect;
    I was now mine own no more:
  Pleasure, wealth, the smile of woman
    All a different meaning bore.

  "Thus I toiled--though young, not youthful
    Ever mingling in the crowd,
  Yet apart; my life, my labor,
    To a solemn purpose vowed.

  "Yet even duty had its pleasure,
    And I proudly kept apart;
  Lord of all my weaker feelings;
    Monarch of my subject heart.

  "Foolish boast! My pride of purpose
    Proved itself a feeble thing,
  When thy uncle brought me hither,
    In the pleasant time of Spring.

  "Said he, 'Thou hast toiled too closely;
    Thou shalt breathe our country air;
  Thou shalt come to us on Sundays,
    And thy failing health repair!'

  "Now began my hardest trial.
    What had I with love to do?
  Loving thee was sin 'gainst duty,
    And 'gainst thy good uncle too!

  "Until now my heart was cheerful;
    Duty had been light till now,
  --Oh that I were free to woo thee;
    That my heart had known no vow!

  "Yet, I would not shrink from duty;
    Nor my vow leave unfulfilled!
  --Still, still, had my mother known thee,
    Would she thus have sternly willed?

  "Wherefore did my angel-mother
    Thus enforce her dying prayer?
  --Yet what right had I to seek thee,
    Thou, thy uncle's wealthy heir!

  "Thus my spirit cried within me;
    And that inward strife began,
  That wild warfare of the feelings
    Which lays waste the life of man.

  "In such turmoil of the spirit,
    Feeble is our human strength;
  Life seems stripped of all its glory:
    --Yet was duty lord at length.

  "So at least I deemed. But meeting
    Toward the pleasant end of May
  With thy uncle, here he brought me,
    I who long had kept away.

  "He was willful, thy good uncle;
    I was such a stranger grown;
  I must go to hear the reading
    Of a ballad of his own.

  "Willing to be won, I yielded.
    Canst thou not that eve recall,
  When the lilacs were in blossom,
    And the sunshine lay o'er all?

  "On the bench beneath the lilacs,
    Sate we; and thy uncle read
  That sweet, simple, wondrous ballad,
    Which my own heart's woe portrayed.

  "'Twas a simple tale of nature--
    Of a lowly youth who gave
  All his heart to one above him,
    Loved, and filled an early grave.

  "But the fine tact of the poet
    Laid the wounded spirit bare,
  Breathed forth all the silent anguish
    Of the breaking heart's despair.

  "'Twas as if my soul had spoken,
    And at once I seemed to know,
  Through the poet's voice prophetic,
    What the issue of my woe.

  "Later, walking in the evening
    Through the shrubbery, thou and I,
  With the woodlarks singing round us,
    And the full moon in the sky;

  "Thou, my Ellen, didst reproach me,
    For that I had coldly heard
  That sweet ballad of thy uncle's,
    Nor responded by a word.

  "Said I, 'If that marvelous ballad
    Did not seem my heart to touch;
  It was not from want of feeling,
    But because it felt too much.'

  "And even as the rod of Moses
    Called forth water from the rock;
  So did now thy sweet reproaches
    All my secret heart unlock.

  "And my soul lay bare before thee;
    And I told thee all; how strove,
  As in fierce and dreary conflict,
    My stern duty and my love.

  "All I told thee--of my parents,
    Of my angel-mother's fate;
  Of the vow by which she bound me;
    Of my present low estate.

  "All I told thee, while the woodlarks
    Filled with song the evening breeze,
  And bright gushes of the moonlight
    Fell upon us through the trees.

  "And thou murmured'st, oh! my Ellen,
    In a voice so sweet and low;
  'Would that I had known thy mother.
    Would that I might soothe thy woe!'

  "Ellen, my sweet, life's companion!
    From my being's inmost core
  Then I blessed thee; but I bless thee,
    Bless thee, even now, still more!

  "For, as in the days chivalric
    Ladies armed their knights for strife,
  So didst thou, with thy true counsel,
    Arm me for the fight of life.

  "Saidst thou, 'No, thou must not waver,
    Ever upright must thou stand:
  Even in duty's hardest peril,
    All thy weapons in thy hand.

  "'Doing still thy utmost, utmost;
    Never resting till thou'rt free!--
  But, if e'er thy soul is weary,
    Or discouraged--think of me!'

  "And again thy sweet voice murmured,
    In a low and thrilling tone;
  'I have loved thee, truly loved thee,
    Though that love was all unknown!

  "'And the sorrows and the trials
    Which thy youth in bondage hold,
  Make thee to my heart yet dearer
    Than if thou hadst mines of gold!

  "'Go forth--pay thy debt to duty;
    And when thou art nobly free,
  He shall know, my good old uncle,
    Of the love 'twixt thee and me!'

  "Ellen, thou wast my good angel!
    Once again in life I strove--
  But the hardest task was easy,
    In the light and strength of love.

  "And, when months had passed on swiftly,
    Canst thou not that hour recall--
  'Twas a Christmas Sabbath evening--
    When we told thy uncle all?

  "Good old uncle! I can see him,
    With those calm and loving eyes,
  Smiling on us as he listened,
    Silent, yet with no surprise.

  "And when once again the lilacs
    Blossom'd, in the merry May,
  And the woodlarks sang together,
    Came our happy marriage day.

  "My sweet Ellen, then I blessed thee
    As my young and wealthy wife,
  But I knew not half the blessings
    With which thou wouldst dower my life!"

  Here he ceased, good Thomas Harlowe;
    And as soon as ceased his voice--
  That sweet chorusing of woodlarks
    Made the silent night rejoice.




[From Fraser's Magazine.]

PHANTOMS AND REALITIES.--AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

  (_Continued from Page 468._)




PART THE FIRST--MORNING.


VII.

"I am not about to relate a family history," he began; "but there are
some personal circumstances to which I must allude. At nineteen, I was
left the sole protector of two sisters, and of a ward of my father,
whose guardianship also devolved upon me. It was a heavy responsibility
at so early an age, and pressed hard upon a temperament better adapted
for gayety and enjoyment. I discharged it, however, with the best
judgment I could, and with a zeal that has bequeathed me, among many
grateful recollections, one source of lasting and bitter repentance."

"Repentance, Forrester?" I cried, involuntarily.

"You may understand the sort of dangers to which these young creatures
were exposed in the spring-tide of their beauty, protected only by a
stripling, who knew little more of the world than they did themselves.
Upon that point, perhaps, I was too sensitive. I knew what it was to
struggle against the natural feelings of youth, and was not disposed to
place much trust in the gad-flies who gathered about my sisters. Well--I
watched every movement, and I was right. Yet, with all my care, it so
happened that an offense--an insult such as your heartless libertines
think they may inflict with impunity on unprotected women--was offered
to one of my sisters. Our friendless situation was a mark for general
observation, and it was necessary that society should know the terms I
kept with it. My enemy--for I made him so on the instant--would have
appeased me, but I was inaccessible to apologies. We met; I was wounded
severely--my opponent fell. This fearful end of the quarrel affected my
sister's health. She had a feeling of remorse about being the cause of
that man's death, and her delicate frame sunk under it."

"Perhaps," said I, "there might have been other feelings, which she
concealed."

"That fear has cast a shadow over my whole life. But we will not talk of
it. I must hasten on. There was a fatal malady in our family--the
treacherous malady which is fed so luxuriously by the climate of
England. My remaining sister, plunged into grief at our bereavement,
became a prey to its wasting and insidious influence. You saw that the
servant who opened the door was in mourning? I have mentioned these
particulars that you may understand I was not alone in the world, as I
am now, when the lady you have seen came to reside in my house. At that
time, my sisters were living."

"And she?"

"Was my father's ward, of whom I have spoken. During the early part of
her life she lived in Scotland, where she had friends. Now listen to me
attentively. Gertrude Hastings lost her mother in her childhood; and
upon the death of her father, being a minor, her education and
guardianship devolved upon my father, who was trustee to her fortune. At
his death, which took place soon afterward, the trust came into my
hands. It was thought advisable, under these circumstances, that she
should have the benefit of wiser counsel than my own, and for several
years she was placed in the house of her mother's sister, who lived at
no great distance from the English Border. It was my duty to visit her
sometimes." He hesitated, and his voice trembled as he spoke.

"Well--I entreat you to proceed."

"Let me collect myself. I visited her sometimes--at first at long
intervals, then more frequently. Every man in his youth forms some
ideal, false or true, of the woman to whom he would devote his love.
Such dreams visited me, but my situation forbade me to indulge in them,
and I resolved to devote myself to the charge I had undertaken, and to
forego all thoughts of marriage. I never found this conflict beyond my
strength until I saw Gertrude Hastings."

I was struck with horror at these words, and shuddered at what I feared
was yet to come. He perceived the effect they took upon me, and went on:

"You are precipitate in your judgment, and I must beg that you will hear
me patiently to the end. I will be brief, for I am more pained by the
disclosure than you can be. Why should I prolong a confession which you
have already anticipated? I loved her; and every time I saw her, I loved
her more and more. I was justified by the circumstances that drew us
together--the equality of our births--the connection of our families.
She was free to choose--so was I. I knew of no impediment, and there was
none at the time she inspired me with that fatal passion which, when it
grew too strong to be concealed from her, she was unable to return."

I breathed more freely; but seeing the emotion under which poor
Forrester was laboring, I kept silence, and waited for him to resume.

"I despise what is called superstition," he said, "as much as any of
those bald philosophers we are in the habit of meeting. When they, or
you, or I, talk of supernatural agencies, we must each of us be judged
by the measure of our knowledge. Ignorance and unbelief evade the
question they fear to examine by the easy process of rejecting the
evidence on which it rests. If the evidence be trustworthy, if it be
clear and coherent in every particular, if it be such as we should be
bound to admit upon matters that come within the range of our
experience, I have yet to learn upon what grounds it can be rejected
when it relates to matters of which we know nothing. Our inability to
refute it should make us pause before we heap odium on the witnesses who
vouch for its truth."

Forrester was proceeding in this strain, apparently under an
apprehension that the disclosure he was about to make required some
prologue of this kind to bespeak credit for it, little suspecting that
there were incidents in my own life which rendered me too easy a
recipient of such statements. But I interrupted him by an assurance that
I was quite prepared to believe in things much more extraordinary than
any which he could have to relate. He then returned to the narrative.

"Gertrude's aunt had been bred up in Scotland, and was a staunch
supporter of the old customs, and a stickler for the popular faith in
the ceremonies that are practiced there on certain anniversaries. On
one of these occasions, Gertrude, whose imagination had, probably, been
affected by the stories she had heard concerning them, was induced, half
in play and half in earnest, to try the virtue of one of the charms
prescribed for the Eve of All Hallows. We might safely smile at these
things, if they did not sometimes, as in this instance, lead to serious
results. You see I am relating it to you calmly and circumstantially,
although it has blighted my existence. The charm worked out its ends to
a miracle. The table was laid out with supper, the necessary
incantations having been previously performed, and Gertrude, hiding
behind a screen, waited for the appearance of the lover who was to
decide her future destiny. They say there was a long pause--at least it
seemed so to her--and then a footstep was heard, and then the figure of
a man entered the room, and seated himself at the table. Trembling with
terror, she looked out from her hiding-place, and saw him clearly within
two or three yards of her. The chair had been so placed that his face
was exactly opposite to her. She scanned his features so accurately,
that she remembered the minutest particulars, to the color of his hair
and eyes, and the exact form of his mouth, which had a peculiar
expression in it. The figure moved, as if to rise from the chair, and
Gertrude, struck to the heart with fear, uttered a loud shriek, and fell
in a swoon upon the ground. Her friends, who were watching outside,
rushed into the room, but it was empty."

"And that figure--has she never seen it since?"

"Never till to-night. _She recognized you in an instant._"

My amazement at this narrative nearly deprived me of the power of
speech.

"What followed this?" I inquired.

"A delusion that has occupied her thoughts ever since. It took such
complete possession of her, that all arguments were useless. When she
was asked if she believed it to be real, her invariable answer was that
it was real to her. I suffered her to indulge this fancy, hoping that
one day or another she would recover from what I regarded as a trance of
the mind; but I was mistaken. She always said she was sure of your
existence; and looked forward to the realization of her destiny, like
one who lived under an enchantment. By slow degrees I relinquished all
hopes, and resolved to sacrifice my own happiness to hers, if the
opportunity should ever arrive. After this she came to London, broken
down in health, and rapidly wasting away under the influence of the
protracted expectation that was destroying her. Then it was I first met
you. I had some misgiving about you from the beginning, and prevailed
upon her to describe to me again and again the person of my spectral
rival. It was impossible to mistake the portrait. My doubts were cleared
up, and the duty I had to perform was obvious. But I determined to make
further inquiry before I revealed to either what I knew of both, and
having heard you speak of your birth-place and residence, I went into
the country, satisfied myself on all points respecting you, and at the
same time learned the whole particulars of your life. Still I delayed
from day to day my intention of bringing you together, knowing that when
it was accomplished my own doom would be sealed forever. While I
delayed, however, she grew worse, and I felt that it would be criminal
to hesitate any longer. I have now fulfilled my part--it remains for you
to act upon your own responsibility. My strength exerted for her has
carried me so far--I can go no further."

As he uttered these words he rose and turned away his head. I grasped
his hand and tried to detain him. He stood and listened while I
expressed the unbounded gratitude and admiration with which his conduct
inspired me, and explained, hurriedly, the fascination that had held me
in a similar trance to that which he had just described. But he made no
observation on what I said. It appeared as if he had resolved to speak
no more on the subject; and he exhibited such signs of weariness and
pain that I thought it would be unreasonable to solicit his advice at
that moment. And so we parted for the night.


VIII.

I pondered all night upon the history related to me by Forrester. In the
desire to escape from the clouds which still darkened my judgment, I
endeavored to persuade myself at one moment that Forrester was trying to
impose upon me, and at another that he must be laboring under a mental
aberration. The pride of reason revolted from the incredible particulars
of that extraordinary narrative; yet certain coincidences, which seemed
to confirm their truth, made me hesitate in my skepticism. If I had
related to him what had happened to myself, he would have had as good a
right to doubt my sanity or veracity as I had to doubt his. This was
what staggered me.

I sifted every particle of the story, and was compelled to confess that
there was nothing in it which my own experience did not corroborate. The
fetch, or wraith, or whatever it was that had appeared to Gertrude, was
a counterpart illusion to the figure that had appeared to me. Upon her
memory, as upon mine, it had made so vivid an impression, that our
recognition of each other was mutual and instantaneous. That fact was
clear, and placed the truth of Forrester's statement beyond controversy.
It was competent to others, who had no personal evidence of such
visitations, to treat with indifference the mysteries of the spiritual
world; but I was not free, however much I desired it, to set up for a
philosophical unbeliever. All that remained, therefore, was to speculate
in the dark on the circumstances which were thus shaping out our
destiny, and which, inscrutable as they were, commanded the submission
of my reason and my senses.

It occurred to me that, as Gertrude's residence beyond the border might
not have been distant many miles from the spot where I imagined I had
seen her, it was possible--barely possible--that her appearance there
might have been a reality after all. This supposition was a great relief
to me, for I would gladly have accepted a natural solution of the
phenomenon, and I accordingly resolved to question her upon the subject.

I thought the next day would never come, yet I shuddered at its coming.
I was eager to see her again, although I dreaded the interview; and I
will frankly acknowledge, that when I approached the house I trembled
like a man on the eve of a sentence which was to determine the issue of
life or death.

The blinds were down in all the windows, and the aspect of the whole was
chill and dismal. Where sickness is, there, too, must be cheerlessness
and fear. The passion which had so long possessed me was as strong as
ever, but it was dashed with a hideous terror; there was so much to
explain and to be satisfied upon before either of us could rightly
comprehend our situation.

I knocked faintly. There was no answer. I knocked again, more loudly,
but still lowly, and with increasing apprehension. The door was opened
by Forrester. He looked dreadfully haggard, as if he had been sitting up
all night, worn by grief and watching. I spoke to him, something broken
and hardly articulate: he bent his head, and, raising his hand in token
of silence, beckoned me to follow him. He was evidently much agitated,
and a suspicion crossed my mind that he already repented the sacrifice
he had made. But I did him wrong.

When we reached the door of the room in which we had seen Gertrude on
the preceding night Forrester paused, as if to gather up his manhood for
what was to follow; then, putting forward his hand, he pushed open the
door.

"Go in--go in," he cried, in a choking voice; and hurrying me on he
retreated back into the shadow, as if he wished to avoid being present
at our meeting.

The room was in deep twilight. The curtains were drawn together over the
windows, and there was less disorder in the apartment than when I had
last seen it. The evidences of illness which I had observed scattered
about were removed, and the furniture was more carefully arranged. The
atmosphere was heavy, and affected me painfully. But I thought nothing
of these things, although the slightest incident did not escape me.
Gertrude still lay upon the sofa, and appeared to be more tranquil and
composed. There was a solemn hush over her as she lay perfectly calm and
motionless. I fancied she was asleep, and approached her gently. Her
hands were stretched down by her sides, and I ventured to raise one of
them to my lips. I shall never forget the horror of that touch. A thrill
shot through my veins, as if a bolt of ice had struck upon my heart and
frozen up its current at the fountain. It was the hand of a corpse.

In the first feeling of madness and despair which seized upon me I ran
my hands wildly over her arms, and even touched her face and lips,
doubting whether the form that lay before me was of this world. Some
such wild apprehension traversed my brain; but the witnesses of death in
the flesh were too palpable in many ways to admit of any superstitious
incredulity. The violent surprise and emotion of the night before had
proved too much for her wasted strength, and she had sunk suddenly under
the fearful re-action.

The shock overwhelmed me. Not only was she taken from me at the very
instant of discovery and possession, but all hope of mutual explanation
was extinguished forever. Upon one point alone had I arrived at
certainty, but that only rendered me more anxious to clear up the rest.
I had seen her living, had spoken to her, and heard her voice; and now
she was dead, the proof of her actual humanity was palpable. It was some
comfort to know that she to whom I had dedicated myself under the
influence of a sort of sorcery, was a being actuated by passions like my
own, and subject to the same natural laws; but it was the extremity of
all conceivable wretchedness to lose her just as I had acquired this
consoling knowledge. The phantom had scarcely become a reality when it
again faded into a phantom.

A few days afterward, for the second time, I followed a hearse to the
grave. The only persons to whom I had consecrated my love were gone; and
this last bereavement seemed to me at the time as if it were final, and
as if there was nothing left for me but to die. My reason, however, had
gained some strength by my rough intercourse with the world; and even in
the midst of the desolation of that melancholy scene I felt as if a
burden had been taken off my mind, and I had been released from a
harassing obligation. At all events I had a consciousness, that as the
earth closed over the coffin of Gertrude, I passed out of the region of
dreams and deceptions, and that whatever lay in advance of me, for good
or evil, was of the actual, toiling, practical world. The exodus of my
delusion seemed to open to me a future, in which imagination would be
rebuked by the presence of stern and harsh realities. I felt like a
manumitted slave, who goes forth reluctantly to the hard work of
freedom, and would gladly fall back, if he could, upon the supine repose
which had spared him the trouble of thinking for himself.

Forrester bore his agony with heroic endurance. I, who knew what was in
his heart, knew what he suffered. But his eyes were still and his lips
were fixed, and not a single quiver of his pulses betrayed his anguish
to the bystanders. When the last rites were over, and we turned away, he
wrung my hand without a word of leave-taking, and departed. A few days
afterward he left England. The associations connected with the scenes
of his past life--with the country that contained the ashes of all he
loved--embittered every hour of his life, and he wisely sought relief in
exile. I was hurt at not having received some communication from him
before he went away; but I knew he was subject to fits of heavy
depression, and his silence, although it pained me at the time, did not
diminish the respect and sympathy inspired by his conduct.

I will not dwell upon the immediate effect which the dissolution of
Gertrude, and the phantoms connected with her, had upon my mind.
Shattered and subdued, I re-entered the world, which I was now resolved,
out of cowardice and distrust of myself, not to leave again; taking
mental exercise, as an invalid, slowly recovering from the prostration
of a long illness, tests his returning strength in the open air. I had a
great fear upon me of going into the country, and being once more alone.
The tranquillity of Nature would have thrown me back into despair, while
the crowded haunts of London kept me in a state of activity that
excluded the morbid influences I had so much reason to dread. Of my new
experiences in the second phase of my life, as different from the former
as light from darkness, I shall speak with the same fidelity which I
have hitherto strictly observed.




PART THE SECOND--NOON.


I.

When I had deposited Gertrude in the grave I was a solitary tree,
singled out by the lightning, from the rest of the forest, and blasted
through every part of its articulation. There was no verdure in my soul.
I was dead to the world around me. I lived in what was gone--I had no
interest in what was to come. I believed that the fatal spell that had
exercised such a power over my thoughts and actions had accomplished its
catastrophe, and that there was nothing further for me to fulfill but
death. My Idol had perished in her beauty and her love. She had withered
before my eyes, destroyed by the supernatural passion which had bound us
to each other. How then could I live, when that which was my life had
vanished like a pageant in the sky? I thought I could not survive her.
Yet I did. And seeing things as I see them now, and knowing the
supremacy of time over affliction, I look back and wonder at the thought
which desolated my heart under the immediate pressure of a calamity that
appeared irreparable, but for which the world offered a hundred
appeasing consolations.

I went again into the bustle--the strife of vanities, ambitions,
passions, and interests. At first I merely suffered myself to be carried
away by the tide; my plank was launched, and I drifted with the current.
But in a little time I began to be excited by the roar and jubilee of
the waters.

For many months Gertrude was ever present to me, in moments of respite
and solitude. As certain as the night returned, the stillness of my
chamber was haunted by her smiles. The tomb seemed to give up its tenant
in the fresh bloom and sweet confidence of life, and she would come in
her star-light brightness, smiling sadly, as if she had a feeling of
something wanted in that existence to which death had translated her,
and looking reproachfully, but sweetly down upon me for lingering so
long behind her. By degrees, as time wore on, her form grew less and
less distinct, and, wearied of watching and ruminating, I would fall
asleep and lose her; and so, between waking and sleeping, the floating
outlines vanished, and she visited me no more. At last I almost forgot
the features which were once so deeply portrayed upon my heart. Poor
human love and grief, how soon their footprints are washed away!

I resided entirely in London, without any settled plan of life, tossed
about upon the living surge, and indifferent whither it swept me. I
lived from hour to hour, and from day to day, upon the incidents that
chanced to turn up. People thought there was something singular in my
manner, and that my antecedents were ambiguous; consequently I was much
sought after, and invited abroad. My table was covered with cards. I was
plagued with inquiries, and found that ladies were especially anxious to
know more about me than I chose to tell. My silence and reserve piqued
their curiosity. Had I been a romantic exile, dressed in a bizarre
costume, with an interesting head of hair, and an impenetrable
expression of melancholy in my face, I could not have been more
flattered by their inconvenient attentions. Out of this crush of
civilities I made my own election of friends. My acquaintance was
prodigious--my intimacies were few. Wherever I went I met a multitude of
faces that were quite familiar to me, and to which I was expected to
bow, but very few individuals whom I really knew. I had not the kind of
talent that can carry away a whole _London Directory_ in its
head. I could never remember the names of the mob of people I was
acquainted with. I recognized their faces, and shook their hands, and
was astonished to find how glibly they all had my name, although I
hardly recollected one of theirs, and this round of nods and
how-d'ye-do's constituted the regular routine of an extensive
intercourse with society. The clatter, frivolous as it was, kept me in
motion, and there was health in that; but it was very wearisome. A man
with a heart in his body desires closer and more absorbing ties. But we
get habituated to these superficialities, and drop into them with
surprising indifference; knowing or hoping that the sympathy we long for
will come at last, and that, if it never comes, it is not so bad a thing
after all, to be perpetually stopped on the journey of life by lively
gossips, who will shake you by the hand, and insist upon asking you how
you are, just as cordially as if they cared to know.

There was one family I visited more frequently than the rest of my
miscellaneous acquaintance. I can hardly explain the attraction that
drew me so much into their circle, for there was little in it that was
lovable in itself, or that harmonized with my tastes. But antagonisms
are sometimes as magnetic as affinities in the moral world. They were
all very odd, and did nothing like other people. They were so changeable
and eccentric that they scarcely appeared to me for two evenings in
succession to be the same individuals. They were perpetually shifting
the slides of character, and exhibiting new phases. Their amusements and
occupations resembled the incessant dazzle of a magic lantern. They were
never without a novelty of some kind on hand--a new whim, which they
played with like a toy till they got tired of it--a subtle joke, with a
little malicious pleasantry in it--or a piece of scandal, which they
exhausted till it degenerated into ribaldry. Their raillery and mirth,
even when they happened to be in their most good-natured moods, were
invariably on the side of ridicule. They took delight in distorting
every thing, and never distorted any thing twice in the same way. They
laughed at the whole range of quiet, serious amiabilities, as if all
small virtues were foibles and weaknesses; and held the heroic qualities
in a sort of mock awe that was more ludicrous and humiliating than open
scoffing and derision. In this way they passed their lives, coming out
with fresh gibes every morning, and going to bed at night in the same
harlequinade humor. It seemed as if they had no cares of their own, and
made up for the want of them by taking into keeping the cares of their
neighbors; which they tortured so adroitly that, disrelish it as you
might, it was impossible to resist the infection of their grotesque
satire.

One of the members of this family was distinguished from the rest by
peculiarities special to himself. He was a dwarf in stature, with a
large head, projecting forehead, starting eyes, bushy hair, and an
angular chin. He was old enough to be dealt with as a man; but from his
diminutive size, and the singularity of his manners, he was treated as a
boy. Although his mental capacity was as stunted as his body, he
possessed so extraordinary a talent for translating and caricaturing
humanity, that he was looked upon as a domestic mime of unrivaled
powers. He could run the circle of the passions with surprising
facility, rendering each transition from the grave to the gay so
clearly, and touching so rapidly, yet so truly, every shade of emotion,
that your wonder was divided between the dexterity, ease, and
completeness of the imitation, and the sagacious penetration into
character which it indicated. Acting, no doubt, is not always as wise as
it looks; and the mimicry that shows so shrewd on the surface is often a
mere mechanical trick. But in this case the assumptions were various,
distinct, and broadly marked, and not to be confounded with the low art
that paints a feeling in a contortion or a grimace. During these strange
feats he never spoke a word. He did not require language to
give effect or intelligence to his action. All was rapid, graphic, and
obvious, and dashed off with such an air of original humor that the most
serious pantomime took the odd color of a jest without compromising an
atom of its grave purpose. Indeed this tendency to indulge in a kind of
sardonic fun was the topping peculiarity of the whole group, and the
dwarf was a faithful subscriber to the family principles.

I suffered myself to be most unreasonably amused by this daily
extravagance. The dwarf was a fellow after my own fancy: an
irresponsible fellow, headlong, irregular, misshapen, and eternally
oscillating to and fro without any goal in life. He never disturbed me
by attempts to show things as they were, or by over-refined reasoning
upon facts, in which some people are in the habit of indulging until
they wear off the sharp edge of truths, and fritter them down into
commonplaces. In short, he never reasoned at all. He darted upon a
topic, struck his fangs into it, and left it, depositing a little poison
behind him. His singularities never offended me, because they never
interfered with my own. He turned the entire structure and operations of
society to the account of the absurd; and made men, not the victims of
distaste as I did, but the puppets of a farce. We arrived, however, at
much the same conclusion by different routes, and the dwarf and I agreed
well together; although there was an unconfessed repulsion between us
which prohibited the interchange of those outward tokens of harmony that
telegraph the good fellowship of the crowd.

From the first moment of our acquaintance I had a secret distrust about
my friend the dwarf. I shrank from him instinctively when I felt his
breath upon me, which was as hot as if it came from a furnace. I felt as
if he was a social Mephistophiles, exercising a malignant influence over
my fate. Yet, in spite of this feeling, we became intimate all at once.
As I saw him in the first interview, I saw him ever after. We relaxed
all formalities on the instant of introduction, when he broke out with a
gibe that put us both at our ease at once. We were intimates in slippers
and morning-gowns, while the rest of the family were as yet on
full-dress ceremony with me.


II.

After I had known this family a considerable time, a lady from a distant
part of the country, whom I had never seen or heard of before, came on a
visit to them. She was a woman of about twenty-five years of age, with a
handsome person, considerable powers of conversation, and more intellect
than fine women usually take the trouble to cultivate or display,
preferring to trust, as she might have safely done, to the influence of
their beauty. Her form was grand and voluptuous; her head, with her hair
bound up in fillets, had a noble classical air; and her features were
strictly intellectual. She had never been married; and exhibiting, as
she did at all times, a lofty superiority over the people by whom she
was surrounded in this house, it opened a strange chapter of sprightly
malevolence to observe how they criticised her, and picked off her
feathers, whenever she happened to be out of the room. They affected the
most sublime regard for her, and the way they showed it was by wondering
why she remained single, and trying to account for it by sundry
flattering inuendos, with a sneer lurking under each of them.

The men had no taste--this was said so slily as to make every body
laugh--or perhaps they were afraid of her; she was hard to please; her
mind was too masculine, which made her appear more repulsive than she
really was; she did not relish female society, and men are always
jealous of women who are superior to themselves, and so, between the
two--hem!--there was the old adage! Then she aimed at eccentricity, and
had some uncommon tastes; she was fond of poetry and philosophy, and
blue stockings are not so marketable as hosiery of a plainer kind: in
short, it was not surprising that such a woman should find it rather
difficult to suit herself with a husband. But whoever did succeed in
overcoming her fastidiousness would get a prize!

These criticisms, probably, awakened an interest in my mind about this
lady. She was evidently not understood by her critics; and it was by no
means unlikely that, in attributing peculiarities to her which did not
exist, they might have overlooked the true excellencies of her
character. In proportion as they depreciated her, she rose in my
estimation, by the rule of contrarieties. It had always been a weakness
of mine to set myself against the multitude on questions of taste, and
to reverse their judgment by a foregone conclusion. I then believed, and
do still in a great measure believe, that persons of genius are not
appreciated or comprehended by the mob; but I occasionally committed the
mistake of taking it for granted that persons who were depreciated by
the mob must of necessity be persons of genius.

Astræa--for so she was familiarly called, at first in the way of covert
ridicule, but afterward from habit--was thoroughly in earnest in every
thing she said and did. She could adapt herself to the passing humor of
vivacity or sarcasm without any apparent effort, but her natural manner
was grave and dominant. Beneath the severity of her air was an unsettled
spirit, which a close observer could not fail to detect. It was to carry
off or hide this secret disquietude of soul (such, at least, it appeared
to me), that, with a strong aversion to frivolity, she heeded all the
frivolous amusements; but then it was done with an effort and excess
that showed how little her taste lay in it, and that it was resorted to
only as an escape from criticism. She had no skill in these relaxations,
and blundered sadly in her attempts to get through them; and people
tried to feel complimented by her condescension, but were never really
satisfied. And when she had succeeded in getting up the group to the
height of its gayety, and thought that every body was fully employed,
she would take advantage of the general merriment and relapse into her
own thoughts. It was then you could see clearly how little interest she
took in these things. But she was too important a person to be allowed
to drop out, and as she was well aware of the invidious distinction with
which she was treated, she would speedily rally and mix in the frivolity
again. All this was done with a struggle that was quite transparent to
me. She never played that part with much tact. Yet her true character
baffled me, notwithstanding. There was an evident restlessness within;
as if she were out of her sphere, or as if there were a void to be
filled, a longing after something which was wanted to awaken her
sympathies, and set her soul at repose. Of that I was convinced; but all
beyond was impenetrable obscurity.

The mystery that hovered about her manner, her looks, her words,
attracted me insensibly toward her. She was an enigma to the world as I
was myself; and a secret feeling took possession of me that there were
some latent points of unison in our natures which would yet be drawn out
in answering harmony. This feeling was entirely exempt from passion.
Gertrude had absorbed all that was passionate and loving in my
nature--at least, I thought so then. And the difference between them was
so wide, that it was impossible to feel in the same way about Gertrude
first and Astræa afterward. Simplicity, gentleness, and timidity, were
the characteristics of Gertrude; while Astræa was proud, grand, almost
haughty, with a reserve which I could not fathom. If it be true that the
individual nature can find a response only in another of a certain
quality, then it would have been absurd to delude myself by any dreams
of that kind about Astræa. If I had really loved Gertrude, I could not
love Astræa. They were essentially in direct opposition to each other.
As for Astræa, she appeared inaccessible to the weaknesses of passion;
her conversation was bold, and she selected topics that invited
argument, but rarely awakened emotion. Energetic, lofty, and severe, her
very bearing repelled the approaches of love. He would have been a brave
man who should have dared to love Astræa. I wondered at her beauty,
which was not captivating at a glance, but full of dignity. I wondered,
admired, listened, but was not enslaved.

She treated me with a frankness which she did not extend to others. This
did not surprise me in the circle in which I found her. It was natural
enough that she should avail herself of any escape that offered from
that atmosphere of _persiflage_. I was guided by a similar
impulse. But the same thing occurs every day in society. People
always, when they can, prefer the intercourse which comes nearest to
their own standard. It does not follow, however, that they must
necessarily fall in love. Such a suspicion never entered my head.

I soon discovered that her knowledge was by no means profound; and that
her judgment was not always accurate. Setting aside the showy
accomplishments which go for nothing as mental culture she was
self-educated. She had been an extensive reader, but without method.
She touched the surface of many subjects, and carried away something
from each, to show that she had been there, trusting to her vigorous
intellect for the use she should make of her fragmentary acquisitions.
It was only when you discussed a subject fully with her that you
discovered her deficiencies. In the ordinary way, rapidly lighting upon
a variety of topics, she was always so brilliant and suggestive that you
gave her credit for a larger field of acquirements than she really
traversed. This discovery gave me an advantage over her; and my
advantage gave me courage.

One evening we were talking of the mythology, one of her favorite
themes.

"And you seriously think," I observed, in answer to something she said,
"that the story of Hercules and the distaff has a purpose?"

"A deep purpose, and a very obvious moral," she replied.

"Will you expound it to me?"

"It is quite plain--the parable of strength vanquished by gentleness.
There is nothing so strong as gentleness."

This reply took me by surprise, and I observed, "I should hardly have
expected that from you." I was thinking more of the unexpected admission
of the power of gentleness from the lips of Astræa, than of the truth or
depth of the remark.

"Do you mean that as a compliment?" she inquired.

"Well--no. But from a mind constituted like yours, I should have looked
for a different interpretation."

"Then you think that my mind ought to prostrate itself before a brawny
development of muscles?"

"No, no; remember, you spoke of gentleness."

"That is the mind of woman," she answered, "taking its natural place,
and asserting its moral power. For gentleness, like beauty, is a moral
power."

"Beauty a moral power?" I exclaimed.

"That is its true definition, unless you would degrade it by lowering it
to the standard of the senses," she replied, kindling as she spoke.
"It elevates the imagination; we feel a moral exaltation in the
contemplation of it; it is the essential grace of nature; it refines and
dignifies our whole being; and appreciated in this aspect, it inspires
the purest and noblest aspirations."

This creed of beauty was very unlike any thing I had anticipated from
her. If any body in a crowded drawing-room had spoken in this style, I
should have expected that she would have smiled somewhat contemptuously
upon them.

"Your definition is imperfect," I ventured to say; "I do not dispute it
as far as it goes, but it is defective in one article of faith."

"Oh! I am not sent from the stars--though they have voted me Astræa--to
convert heathens. Pray, let us have your article of faith."

"I believe implicitly in your religion," said I; "but believing so much,
I am compelled to believe a little more. If beauty calls up this homage
of the imagination, and inspires these pure and elevating aspirations,
it must awaken the emotions of the heart. To feel and appreciate beauty
truly, therefore, is, in other words, to love."

"That is an old fallacy. If love were indispensable to the appreciation
of beauty, it would cruelly narrow the pleasures of the imagination."

"On the contrary," I replied, "I believe them to be inseparable."

"You are talking riddles," she replied, as if she were getting tired of
the subject; "but, true or false, I have no reliance upon the word love,
or the use that is made of it. It means any thing or nothing."

"Then you must allow me to explain myself;" and so I set about my
explanation without exactly knowing what it was I had to explain. "I
spoke of love as an abstract emotion." She smiled very discouragingly at
that phrase, and I was, therefore, bound to defend it. "Certainly there
is such a thing--listen to me for a moment. I was not speaking of the
love of this or that particular object--a love that may grow up and then
die to the root; but the love which may be described as the poetical
perception and permanent enjoyment of the ideal."

"We must not quarrel about the word," interrupted Astræa, as if she
wished to bring the conversation to a close; "we agree, possibly, in the
thing, although I should have expressed it differently."

"I grant," said I, trying to gather my own meaning more clearly, "love
must have an object. Abstractions may occupy the reason, but do not
touch the heart. When beauty appeals to the heart it must take a
definite shape, and the love it inspires must be addressed to that
object alone."

"We have changed our argument," observed Astræa, quickly, "and see, we
must change our seats, too, for supper is announced."

I felt that I was rhapsodizing, and that, if I had gone on much further,
I must have uttered a great deal that Astræa would have inevitably set
down as rank nonsense. I was not sorry, therefore, that the conversation
was broken off at that dubious point. We were both scared out of our
subtleties by the flutter and laughter that rang through the room as
every body rose to go to supper; and in a few moments I found myself
seated at table with Astræa next to me, and my friend the dwarf seated
exactly opposite.


III.

The chatter of the party was, as usual, noisy and sarcastic. They were
in an extraordinary flow of spirits, and indulged their unsparing
raillery to an extravagant excess. The dwarf had quite a roystering fit
upon him, and tossed his great shapeless head about with such outrageous
fun, that one might suppose he was laboring under a sudden access of
delirium, or had, at least, fallen in with a rare God-send to exercise
his powers of frantic ridicule upon. These things, no doubt, presented
themselves to me in an exaggerated light, for I was a little out of
humor with myself; and could not help contrasting the reckless levity of
the group with the stillness of Astræa, who must have secretly despised
the companionship into which she was thrown.

Whenever any body uttered a joke (and dreary and miserable jokes they
were), the dwarf, who acted a sort of chorus to their obstreperous
humors, would jerk his head back with a theatrical "Ha!" and spread out
his hands like so many coiling snakes, with an indescribable
exaggeration of astonishment. Then a sneer and chirrup would run round
the table, rising presently into a loud laugh, which the lady of the
house would discreetly suppress by lifting her finger half way to her
face--a signal that was understood to imply a cessation of hostilities
when the ribaldry was supposed to be going too far.

I looked at Astræa involuntarily on one of these occasions, and found
her eyes turned at the same instant to mine. The same thought was in
both our minds. We both abhorred the coarseness of the scene, and felt
the same desire to be alone. The position which thus extracted the
feelings that we held in common was full of peril to us; but at such
moments one never thinks of peril.

I asked her to take wine, pouring it into her glass at the same moment.
This implied a familiarity between us which I certainly did not intend,
and should not have been conscious of if I had not chanced to notice the
face of the dwarf. He was looking straight at us, his mouth pursed out,
and his head thrust forward as if to make way for a sudden writhing or
elevation of his shoulders. It was the express image of a man who had
discovered something very strange, or in whom a previous doubt had just
been confirmed. I could not at all comprehend his meaning; but I knew he
had a meaning, and that threw me back upon myself to find out the point
of the caricature. I attributed it to the unceremonious freedom I had
taken with Astræa, and regretted that I had given occasion to so pitiful
a jest; but I was by no means satisfied that there was not an _arrière
pensée_ in the mind of the dwarf.

The spiteful mirth went on in a rapid succession of vulgar inuendos,
puns, and jokes. The peculiarities of one intimate friend after another
were anatomized with surprising skill; nobody was spared; and the finger
of the hostess was in constant requisition to check the riot, and direct
the scandal-hunters after fresh quarry. As none of the people who were
thus made the subjects of unmerciful ridicule were known to me or
Astræa, we took no part in their dissection, and imperceptibly dropped
into a conversation between ourselves.

We resumed our old subject, and talked in low and earnest tones. I
supposed that they were all too much engaged in the personal topics that
afforded them so much amusement to think about us, and had no suspicion
that they were observing us closely all the time. I was apprised of
the fact by the astounding expression I detected on the face of
my indefatigable Mephistophiles: I shall never forget it. It was a
face of saturnine ecstasy, with a secret smile of pleasure in it,
evidently intended for me alone, as if he rejoiced, and wondered, and
congratulated me, and was in high raptures at my happiness. I was
astonished and confounded, and felt myself singularly agitated; yet, I
knew not why--I was not angry with him: for although his manner was
inexplicable, and ought to have been taken as an offense from its
grossness, still, for some unaccountable reason, it was pleasant rather
than disagreeable to me.

I forgot the little demon, however, in the delight of looking at Astræa,
and listening to her. There was such a charm in her eyes, and in the
sound of her voice, that I was soon drawn again within its powerful
influence. As to the subject of our conversation, it was of secondary
interest to the pleasure of hearing her speak. Whatever I said was but
to induce her to say more. To struggle in an argument was out of the
question--all I yearned for was the music of her tones. Not that I quite
lost the thread of our discussion, but that I was more engaged in
following the new graces and embellishments it derived from her mode of
treating it, than in pursuing the main topic. Again I turned to the
dwarf, and there he was again glaring upon us with a look of transport.
But his fiery eyes no longer leaped out upon me alone; they were moved
quickly from Astræa to me alternately, and were lighted up with a wild
satisfaction that appeared to indicate the consummation of some
delirious passion. I never saw so much mad glee in a human face; all the
more mad to me, since I was entirely ignorant of the source from whence
it sprang. Once I thought Astræa observed him, but she turned aside her
head, and hastily changed the conversation, apparently to defeat his
curiosity.

Many times before I took leave that night the mime repeated his antics;
and, as if to make me feel assured that I was really the object of his
pantomimic raptures, he squeezed my hand significantly at parting, and
with more cordiality than he had ever shown me before.

As I bade Astræa "good-night," she gave me her hand--in the presence of
the whole family; there was nothing to conceal in her thoughts. I took
it gently in mine, and, gazing for a moment intently into her face, in
which I thought I perceived a slight trace of confusion, I bowed and
withdrew.

That was a night of strange speculation. For some time past, I had
thought little of Gertrude--had almost forgotten her. That night she
returned, but unlike what she had ever been before. The smile, like
sunlight let in upon the recesses of a young bud, no longer cleft her
lips; and her eyes were cold and glassy. I felt, too, that I had
recalled her by an effort of the will, and that she did not come
involuntarily, as of old.

There was a sense of guiltiness in this. Was Gertrude fading from my
memory?--and was Astræa concerned in the change? No, Astræa was nothing
to me--she was out of my way--the height on which she stood was frozen.
What was it, then, that troubled and excited me, and blotted out the
past?

I was more unhappy than ever; yet it was an unhappiness that carried me
onward, as if there was an escape for it, or a remedy. I was perplexed
and disturbed. I was like a bird suddenly awakened in its cage amidst
the glare of torches. I tried to think of Gertrude, but it was in vain.
The thought no longer appeased me. The dwarf-mime was before me with all
his devilish tricks and gestures. I could not rid myself of his hideous
features. They danced and gibbered in the air, and were always fastened
upon me. He was like a human nightmare; and even the gray dawn, as it
came through the curtains, only showed that misshapen head more clearly.
What was this dwarf to me that he should haunt me thus, and become an
agony to my soul. Was he my fate? or was he sent to torture me to some
deed of self-abandonment? I should have gone mad with this waking dream,
but as the morning advanced, and the light spread, my aching eyes closed
in an uneasy sleep.

I was dissatisfied with myself, without exactly knowing why. I hated the
dwarf, yet was fascinated by the very importunity that made me hate him.
Why should he meddle with me? Why should he exult in any diversion of my
fortunes? What was he to me, or Astræa to either of us? I was an
unchartered ship, in which no living person had an interest, drifting on
the wide waste of waters. Why should his eyes traverse the great expanse
to keep watch on me? Could he not let me founder on the breakers,
without making mocking signals to me from the shore, where he and his
stood in heartless security? My sleep was full of dreams of that
malignant demon, and I awoke in a state of actual terror from their
violent action on my nerves.


IV.

The next morning I went out, determined to dissipate these harassing
reflections, and, above all things, resolved not to see Astræa. I
wandered about half the day, perfectly sincere in my intention of
avoiding the quarter of the town in which she lived. My mind was so much
absorbed, that I was quite unconscious of the route I had taken, until,
raising my eyes, I saw the dwarf standing before me on the steps of his
own door. I had dropped into the old track by the sheer force of habit,
and have no doubt that my tormentor put the worst construction on the
flush that shot into my face at seeing him. The same riotous glee was in
his eyes that I had noticed, for the first time, on the evening before;
but it now took something of a look of triumph that perplexed me more
than ever.

"Ha!" he exclaimed, with a chuckle that literally palpitated through his
whole body--"you are come at last. I have been looking out for you the
whole morning."

"Indeed!"

"How did you sleep last night?" he continued; "what sort of dreams had
you? I'll answer for it that no dancing dervish ever went through such
contortions!"

"What do you mean?" I demanded.

"Why, there!" he replied, "you turn red and white by turns. Are you
hit?--are you hit? Confess yourself, and I will comfort you."

"Come, come," said I, anxious not to provoke the explanation I panted
for, yet dreaded, "this _badinage_ is sorry work for the day-light.
You should keep it till the lamps are lighted!"

"Have at you, then," he returned, his features undergoing a comical
transition into affected gravity; "I will talk proverbs with you, and
look as gloomy as a mute at a funeral:" giving, at the same time, an
irresistible imitation of one of those ghastly, wire-drawn, drunken
faces. "Mercy upon us! what ominous tokens are in that doleful
countenance of yours! The candle gives out its warning-sheet for the
bespoken of the grave; the sea has its sights and sounds for the doomed
man who is to sup with the fishes; the cricket challenges death in the
hearth; the devil gives three knocks at the door when some miserable
wretch is passing through the mortal agony; and there are signs in your
face of a living torture, which any man galloping by may see. What does
it mean? Is the leaf only turned over by the wind, and will the next
blast whisk it back again? or are its fibres riven past recovery?"

I could not bear this tantalizing mockery; and if I had not been afraid
of exciting the malice of that fiendish nature, there must have been an
explosion at this moment. I managed, however, to control myself, and
spoke to him calmly, but with a resolution in my voice which admitted of
no mis-construction. "Now, listen to me, my friend," I said, "and
understand distinctly what I am going to say. You have extraordinary
talents for sarcasm, but I must ask you not to practice them upon me. I
don't like to be questioned and criticised in this way. I dare say you
don't intend any thing beyond an idle joke; but I don't like being made
the subject of jokes. I covet no favor from you but to be spared your
gibes--and that is not much for you to grant."

"The hardest thing in the world to grant!" he answered. "To be spared my
gibes! What is to become of us, if I'm not to have my gibes? You might
as well ask me to look you straight in the face and not to see you.
Nonsense! you mustn't impose such a penance upon me."

"But why do you jest with me in this way? Do you think I am a fit object
for burlesque and buffoonery?"

"Burlesque and buffoonery?" he returned, twitching his mouth as if he
were stung to the quick; "I do not burlesque you, and I am not a
buffoon."

"Then drop this strange humor of yours, and try to be serious with me."

"Do you desire me to be serious with you?"

"Most assuredly I do. I don't understand any thing else."

"Then it is a bond between us henceforth," he cried, in a tone of deep
earnestness. "From this hour I jest with you no more."

As he spoke he glanced at me darkly under his eyebrows, and turned into
the house. I was rather taken by surprise at this new manifestation of
his versatile genius, and followed him mechanically, utterly forgetful
of the wise resolution with which I had set out.

We went into the drawing-room. Astræa was surrounded by a group o girls,
some kneeling, others dispersed about her, while she was directing their
employment on a piece of tapestry on a large frame. The _tableau_
was striking, and I thought Astræa never looked so well Her fine figure
was thrown into a graceful attitude, the head slightly averted, and one
hand pointing to the tracery, while the other was raised in the air,
suspending some threads of the embroidery. The face that formed a circle
round her were looking up, beaming with pleasure and presented an
animated picture. Here was Astræa in a new aspect. I felt the injustice
her flippant critics had committed in unsexing her, and depriving her of
her domestic attributes.

Our entrance disturbed the group, and, springing up, they took to flight
like a flock of birds.

"You see, Astræa," said the dwarf, in a sharp voice, meant to convey
sneer through a compliment, "you are not allowed to be useful in this
world. You are invaded at all your weak points: the force of you
attraction will not suffer you to enjoy even your needle in private."

"A truce, sir, to this folly!" exclaimed Astræa, turning from him an
advancing to meet me.

 The dwarf twirled painfully on his chair, as if the scorn had taken
full effect upon him. We had both struck him in the same place. Had we
premeditated a plan of operations for wounding his vanity we could not
have acted more completely in concert.

 "I hope," said I, desiring to change the subject, "you have recovered
our merriment of last night?"

 "Merriment?" interposed Mephistophiles; "Good! _Your_ merriment
You and Astræa were like dull citizens yawning over a comedy, which we
were fools enough to act for you. When next we play in that fashion may
we have a livelier audience."

 "The reproach, I am afraid, is just," I observed, looking at Astræa.
But she was not disposed to give the vantage ground to Mephistophiles.
"I hope next time you may have an audience more to your liking," she
observed; "tastes differ, you know, in these matters."

"Yes, that's quite true," returned the dwarf, dryly; "but _your_
tastes, it seems agree wonderfully."

Thus Astræa and I were coupled and cast together by the mime, who
evidently took a vindictive delight in committing us to embarrassments
of that kind. To have attempted to extricate ourselves would probably
have only drawn fresh imputations upon us; so we let it pass.

Every body has observed what important events sometimes take their
spring in trifles. The destiny of a life is not unfrequently determined
by an accident. I felt that there was something due to Astræa or the
freedom to which she was exposed on my account. Yet it was an
exceedingly awkward subject to touch upon. The very consciousness of
this awkwardness produced or suggested other feelings that involved me in
fresh difficulties. I felt that I ought to apologize for having brought
this sort of observation upon her; but I also felt that explanations on
such subjects are dangerous, and that it is safer to leave them
unnoticed. The impulse, however, to say something was irresistible; and
what I did say was not well calculated to help me out of the dilemma.

"I feel," said I, quite aware at the moment I spoke that it would have
been just as well to have left my feelings out of the question--"I feel
that I ought to apologize to you for bringing discredit on your taste.
The whole fault of the dullness lies with me."

"Not at all," she replied; "I am perfectly willing to take my share of
it. Be assured that the highest compliment is often to be extracted from
some people's sarcasms."

This was a "palpable hit," and I apprehended that it would rouse the
dwarf to a fierce rejoinder. But he had left the room, and we were
alone.

There was a pause; and Astræa, who had more courage under the
embarrassment than I could command, was the first to speak. "They
mistake me," she said slowly; "it has been my misfortune all my life to
be misunderstood. Perhaps the error is in myself. Possibly my own nature
is at cross-purposes, marring and frustrating all that I really mean to
do and say. I try to adapt myself to other people, but always fail. Even
my motive are misinterpreted, and I can not make myself intelligible. It
must be some original willfulness of my nature, that makes me seem too
proud to the proud, and too condescending to the humble; but certain it
is that both equally mistake me."

"_I_ do not mistake you, Astræa," I cried, startled by the humility
of her confession.

"I feel you do not," she answered.

"They say you are scornful and unapproachable--not so! You are as timid
at heart as the fawn trembling in its retreat at the sound of the
hunter's horn. But you hold them, with whom you can not mingle, by the
bond of fear. You compel them to treat you with deference, from the
apprehension that they might otherwise become familiar. The translate
your high intelligence into haughtiness; and because they can not reach
to your height, they believe you to be proud and despotic."

"I know not how that may be," she returned; "but I will acknowledge that
my feelings must be touched before the mere woman's nature is awakened.
They who do not know me think--"

"That you are insensible to that touch," said I, supplying the
unfinished sentence; "they libel you, Astræa! Achilles had only one
vulnerable spot, but that was fatal. Protected in all else, you are
defenseless on one point, and when that is struck your whole nature is
subjugated. Do I describe you truly? When the woman is awakened, the
insensibility and fortitude in which you are shut up will melt
away--your power will be reduced to helplessness: absorbing devotion,
unbounded tenderness, which are yearning for their release, will flow
out; the conqueror will become the enslaved, living, not for victories
which you despise, but for a servitude which will bring your repressed
enthusiasm into action. For this you would sacrifice the world--pride,
place, applause, disciples, flattery!"

"Not a very agreeable picture--but, I am afraid, a faithful one."

"Strong feelings and energy of character are not always best for our
happiness," I went on; "you expected too much; you found the world cold
and selfish, and your heart closed upon it. This was the action of a
temperament eager and easily chilled; and it was natural enough that
people who could not move your sympathies should think that your heart
was dead or callous. Yet there it was, watching for the being who was
one day to call up its idolatry--for it is not love that will constitute
your happiness, Astræa--it must be idolatry. It is that for which you
live--to relinquish yourself for another. All is darkness and probation
with you till she who now inspires so much worship to which she is
indifferent, shall herself become the worshiper. It is the instinct of
your nature, the secret of the enigma, which makes you seem exactly the
opposite of what you are."

I might have run on I know not to what excess, for I felt my eloquence
kindling and rising to an extravagant height, when I perceived Astræa
change color and avert her eyes.

"Have I offended you, Astræa?" I inquired.

"Offended me?" she answered; "no, you have done me a service. You have
shown me the error of my life--the folly and delusion of hoping for a
destiny different from that of the ordinary lot."

"Why do you call it a delusion? You will yet find that haven of rest
toward which your heart looks so tremulously. The bird whose instinct
carries it over the wild seas from continent to continent sometimes
droops its jaded wings and sinks, but it makes land at last."

"No, no; it was a dream. There is no reality in such foolish notions."

"Come," said I, with increasing earnestness, "you must not speak against
your convictions. You do not think it a dream--you rely confidently on
the hope that the time will come--"

"The thought is madness," interrupted Astræa, quickly;
"no--no--no--there is no such hope for me. Do not misconceive me. You
have read my nature as clearly as if the volume of my whole life to its
inmost thoughts were laid open before you. But the dream is over. It
might have been the pride and glory of my soul to have waited upon some
high Intelligence--to have followed its progress, cheered it patiently
in secret to exertion, encouraged its ambition, and lain in the shadow
of its triumphs. It is over. That may never be!"

Her voice shook, although she looked calmly at me as she spoke, trying
to conceal her emotion. Her hand accidentally lay in mine. There was a
danger in it which I would not see.

"And you have not found the Intelligence for which you sought?" I
demanded, in a voice that conveyed more than it expressed in words.

"Yes," she replied slowly, "I have found Intelligence--original, hard,
athletic; but wanting in the sympathy that alone wins the heart of
woman."

"Astræa," I replied, "your imagination has pictured an ideal which I
fear you will never find realized."

"I _have_ found it!" she cried, betrayed into a transport of
feeling; then, checking herself, she added, "and I have lost it. Would
to God I had never found it!"

Her head drooped--it touched my shoulder; my arm pressed her waist--I
was ignorant of it; a haze swam before my eyes. Tumultuous sensations
beat audibly at my heart. Astræa, the haughty beauty--the intellectual,
proud Astræa--where was her dominant power--her lofty self-possession
now? Subdued, bowed down by emotion, the strength of her will seemed to
pass from her to me, reversing our positions, and placing in my hands
the ascendency she had so lately wielded. The air seemed to palpitate
with these new and agitating feelings. I made an effort to control
myself and speak, but could only pronounce her name

"Astræa!"

There were a hundred questions in the word; but she was silent, and in
her silence a hundred answers.

"Not here, Astræa," I cried; "we shall be more free to speak
elsewhere--away from those vacant eyes through which no hearts find
utterance for us. One word, and I will be still--one word--"

She trembled violently, and pressed my hand convulsively, as if she
desired that I should not ask that word. But it was no longer possible
to restrain it.

That word was spoken.

A shudder passed over her, and as she bent her head I felt a gush of
tears upon my hand. At that moment a muffled step was on the stairs, and
I had scarcely time to disengage myself when our imp half opened the
door, and looked in with a leer of ribaldry and suspicion that chilled
me to the core.

  (_To be continued._)




WILLIAM PENN'S CONVERSION TO QUAKERISM.[1]


[Footnote 1: From a new life of Penn, by Hepworth Dixon, in the press of
Blanchard and Lea, Philadelphia.]

Penn did not remain long in London. His father, anxious to keep him
apart from his old Puritan friends--and to sustain the habit of devotion
to his temporal interests into which he seemed gradually falling, sent
him again into Ireland. He had no suspicion that the enemy of his peace
lay in ambush at the very gates of his stronghold. But the youth had not
resided more than a few months at Shangarry Castle before one of those
incidents occurred which destroy in a day the most elaborate attempts to
stifle the instincts of nature. When the admiral in England was pluming
himself on the triumphs of his worldly prudence, his son, on occasion of
one of his frequent visits to Cork, heard by accident that Thomas Loe,
his old Oxford acquaintance, was in the city and intended to preach that
night. He thought of his boyish enthusiasm at college, and wondered how
the preacher's eloquence would stand the censures of his riper judgment.
Curiosity prompted him to stay and listen. The fervid orator took for
his text the passage--"There is a faith that overcomes the world, and
there is a faith that is overcome by the world." The topic was
peculiarly adapted to his own situation. Possessed by strong religious
instincts, but at the same time docile and affectionate--he had hitherto
oscillated between two duties--duty to God and duty to his father. The
case was one in which the strongest minds might waver for a time. On the
one side--his filial affection, the example of his brilliant friends,
the worldly ambition never quite a stranger to the soul of man--all
pleaded powerfully in favor of his father's views. On the other there
was only the low whisperings of his own heart. But the still voice would
not be silenced. Often as he had escaped from thought into business, gay
society, or the smaller vanities of the parade and mess-room--the moment
of repose again brought back the old emotions. The crisis had come at
last. Under Thomas Loe's influence they were restored to a permanent
sway. From that night he was a Quaker in his heart.

He now began to attend the meetings of this despised and persecuted
sect, and soon learned to feel the bitter martyrdom to which he had
given up all his future hopes. In no part of these islands were the
Quakers of that time treated as men and as brethren--and least of any
where in Ireland. Confounded by ignorant and zealous magistrates with
those sterner Puritans who had lately ruled the land with a rod of iron,
and had now fallen into the position of a vanquished and prostrate
party--they were held up to ridicule in polite society, and pilloried by
the vulgar in the market-place. On the 3d of September (1667), a meeting
of these harmless people was being held in Cork when a company of
soldiers broke in upon them, made the whole congregation prisoners and
carried them before the mayor on a charge of riot and tumultuous
assembling. Seeing William Penn, the lord of Shangarry Castle and an
intimate friend of the viceroy, among the prisoners, the worthy
magistrate wished to set him at liberty on simply giving his word to
keep the peace, but not knowing that he had violated any law he refused
to enter into terms, and was sent to jail with the rest. From the prison
he wrote to his friend the Earl of Ossory--Lord President of
Munster--giving an account of his arrest and detention. An order was of
course sent to the mayor for his immediate discharge; but the incident
had made known to all the gossips of Dublin the fact that the young
courtier and soldier had turned Quaker.

His friends at the vice-regal court were greatly distressed at this
untoward event. The earl wrote off to the admiral to inform him of his
son's danger, stating the bare facts just as they had come to his
knowledge. The family were thunderstruck. The father especially was
seriously annoyed; he thought the boy's conduct not only mad but what
was far worse in that libertine age--ridiculous. The world was beginning
to laugh at him and his family:--he could bear it no longer. He wrote in
peremptory terms, calling him to London. William obeyed without a word
of expostulation. At the first interview between father and son nothing
was said on the subject which both had so much at heart. The admiral
scrutinized the youth with searching eyes--and as he observed no change
in his costume, nor in his manner any of that formal stiffness which he
thought the only distinction of the abhorred sect, he felt re-assured.
His son was still dressed like a gentleman; he wore lace and ruffles,
plume and rapier; the graceful curls of the cavalier still fell in
natural clusters about his neck and shoulders: he began to hope that his
noble correspondent had erred in his friendly haste. But a few days
served to dissipate this illusion. He was first struck with the
circumstance that his son omitted to uncover in the presence of his
elders and superiors; and with somewhat of indignation and impatience in
his tone demanded an interview and an explanation.

William frankly owned that he was now a Quaker. The admiral laughed at
the idea, and treating it as a passing fancy, tried to reason him out of
it. But he mistook his strength. The boy was the better theologian and
the more thorough master of all the weapons of controversy. He then fell
back on his own leading motives. A Quaker! Why, the Quakers abjured
worldly titles: and he expected to be made a peer! Had the boy turned
Independent, Anabaptist--any thing but Quaker, he might have reconciled
it to his conscience. But he had made himself one of a sect remarkable
only for absurdities which would close on him every door in courtly
circles. Then there was that question of the hat. Was he to believe that
his own son would refuse to uncover in his presence? The thing was quite
rebellious and unnatural. And to crown all--how would he behave himself
at court? Would he wear his hat in the royal presence? William paused.
He asked an hour to consider his answer--and withdrew to his own
chamber.

This enraged the admiral more than ever. What! a son of his could
hesitate at such a question! Why, this was a question of breeding--not
of conscience. Every child uncovered to his father--every subject to his
sovereign. Could any man with the feelings and the education of a
gentleman doubt? And this boy--for whom he had worked so hard--had won
such interest--had opened such a brilliant prospect--that he, with his
practical and cultivated mind, should throw away his golden
opportunities for a mere whimsy! He felt that his patience was sorely
tried.

After a time spent in solitude and prayer, the young man returned to his
father with the result of his meditation--a refusal.

The indignant admiral turned him out of doors.




THE BIRTH OF CRIME--A SKETCH FROM LIFE.


He was scarce past his childhood, and yet, at a glance, I perceived that
he had commenced life's warfare for himself; that necessity had, with a
stern, unbending brow, pointed out to him the way he was to take, and
taught him, young as he was, that his fate must be to battle for himself
on the path of life. His very humble and tattered dress, the sorrowful
expression which had settled on his pallid yet interesting features,
told their own story, and I involuntarily sighed while observing him.
"Want alone," I mentally exclaimed, "has hitherto been his companion;
light hearts, gamboling playmates of his own years, exuberance of the
young spirit, which gives buoyancy to the foot, throws sunshine on the
heart, and 'neath whose spell all things seem beautiful--he, poor boy!
has never known. He knows naught of the green fields and flowers, of
murmuring brooks and leafy trees, amidst whose branches sweet music
dwells: in some pent-up, crowded alley is his home, and his young mind
hath been awoke in confines close, amidst scenes of toil and misery."

The gentle and dejected expression of his countenance first attracted my
attention, and, unobserved by him, I watched his movements as he slowly
advanced down the crowded street toward the spot where I stood.
Occasionally he paused, and after looking up and down the busy
thoroughfare, apparently awaiting or looking for some expected object to
come in sight, he resumed his saunter, keeping close to the wall, so as
to avoid intercepting the way of the numbers who were hurrying past him.
The more I saw of the boy, the more was my interest in him increased,
and my desire to know what object had brought him thither. So young,
could his design be criminal? had he been initiated into the craft of
pocket-picking? did he thus linger amidst the bustle of the crowded
pathway to mark where he could successfully seize the spoil? I looked at
him more earnestly as he approached me still nearer, and I felt that in
the bare suspicion I had done him an injustice.

While I was thus speculating on his character, he paused within a few
paces of me, and gazed earnestly down the street, where something
appeared to be exciting his attention. Following the direction of his
earnest look, I perceived at a little distance a gentleman on horseback
slowly advancing, while looking inquiringly at the houses he was
passing, as though in search of one of them in particular. He had
arrived within a few yards of the place where I stood, when he halted,
and dismounted: in an instant the boy I have spoken of was at his side,
and touching the ragged apology for a cap which he wore, evidently
tendered his services to hold the horse. The horseman cast a hasty
glance at the little fellow, and was apparently about to resign the
reins into his hands, when the door of the house before which he was
standing opened, and a servant advanced to address him. I indistinctly
caught the words "from home" and "to-morrow," when the functionary
retired to the house; the horseman remounted, and cantered down the
street, leaving the boy disappointedly and wistfully gazing after him.

Yes, I saw the gleam which had irradiated the little fellow's face
vanish; and fancied I heard a sigh, which his young breast heaved forth
as he turned away dejectedly from the spot. Thus unsuccessful, I saw him
next, from some of the passers-by, ask charity; but so timidly, that I
saw he feared the repulse of harsh words, which, as I watched him, in
some instances met his solicitations; while others passed him without
the slightest notice. Apparently very tired, he now seated himself on a
door-step, still looking eagerly about him, as though anxious for
another opportunity to present itself, when he might, with success,
offer his services. While he was thus employed, an open carriage came
rattling up the street, and, pulling up, a lady alighted at the house
immediately opposite to where the young street-wanderer sat. I watched
the play of his features as his gaze rested upon two little fellows of
apparently his own age who were in the carriage, and who, in spite of an
elderly-looking nurse's efforts to restrain them, were gamboling with
each other rather boisterously. In the true spirit of boyish glee and
mischief, they were endeavoring with parasols to push off the hat of the
footman; who, seemingly, as much amused as themselves, while standing by
the carriage awaiting the lady's return, was giving them opportunities
to accomplish their object. Yes, right joyous were they; and with their
costly dresses, rosy cheeks, and bright eyes, presented a striking
contrast to the little fellow, who, in rags and wretchedness, from the
door-step, was earnestly observing them. I would have given much to have
known his thoughts in those moments; to have read, like the pages of a
book, the feelings of his heart, while watching them in their gambols.
There was no envy in the expression of his countenance; but, by the
fixedness of his gaze, I judged that the sight of the carriage and its
young occupants, at that juncture, had given birth to a train of
thoughts and ideas as new as they were, perhaps, saddening. Did he think
that fate had dealt hardly with him? Did he in his cogitations become
bewildered in a labyrinth of thought, in endeavoring to account for the
why of their being so differently situated? or, did fancy in his young
brain raise some strange speculation on the world and the designs of Him
who made it?

After a short time had elapsed, the door of the house opened, and the
lady came forth; she entered the carriage, the footman mounted behind,
away they rattled down the street, and were soon out of sight. I turned
to look at the boy; he seemed to have fallen into a reverie, sitting
motionless, while his gaze rested on the part of the street where the
carriage had disappeared.

When I again observed him, he had left his seat, and was rapidly
crossing the street, to meet a female who, attired somewhat above the
common garb, was advancing on the opposite side, and bearing in her arms
a rather bulky parcel, which she appeared inconveniently to carry. As I
had seen him salute the horseman, the street-wanderer, in addressing
her, touched his cap, and evidently tendered his services to carry the
parcel. The woman paused for a moment to look at the applicant, when,
either deeming him too diminutive for the burden, or actuated by a
spirit of economy, with some brief but decisive remark she turned from
him, and resumed her walk. At the same moment a boor of a porter, rather
than diverge from his path, knocked roughly against the boy, who was
standing on the pavement, and sent him staggering against the wall,
continuing his heavy tread onward, without as much as turning his head
to see whether or not the little fellow had fallen.

Thus twice had I seen the cup held to his lips and dashed away; twice
had I seen him strong in hope, and twice in disappointment deep. Where
now, boy, is thy energy? where thy spirit, thy resolution? Methinks thou
needst them now. Alas! thou art but a child; and at thy age the green
fields, where birds are blithely singing, or the jocund playground with
young kindred spirits, where sport hath its daring and its perseverance
too, were more fitting place to bring forth such exalted qualities than
the crowded street--where want, perhaps, spurs thee to attempt; where
fortune frowns upon thee, and seems hope to whisper only to deceive!
Courage thou hast no more. Energy, it has left thee; else wouldst thou
not so dejectedly hang thy head, and creep along the street as though
thou wert upon forbidden ground, or trespassing in sharing the light of
the fading day and the breath of heaven with those who are heedlessly
hurrying past thee.

After his last unsuccessful application, I next saw the dispirited
little fellow turn down a small, little-frequented street, and, with the
intention of meeting and speaking to him, I made a short _détour_, soon
gaining the opposite end of the street which I had seen him enter. The
buildings consisted entirely of warehouses, which were all closed for
the night; and knowing that he could scarcely have entered one of them,
I was not a little surprised to find the street apparently deserted.
Advancing a few paces, however, the mystery was soon solved. Nestling in
the corner of a warehouse doorway, with his head resting on his little
hand, my eyes fell upon the wanderer I was in search of. Absorbed in his
grief, I approached him unseen, unheard. Ah! need I say that he was
weeping bitterly?

Reader, the boy had a home; I saw it; a cellar, whose bare walls and
brick-uncovered floor bespoke it the abode of poverty and misery. He was
not an orphan; for on a heap of rags, which served her for a bed, I saw
an emaciated figure which he called his mother; a brother and a sister,
too, were there, younger than my guide, and in their tattered, dirty
garments scarcely distinguishable from the bed of rags on which they
were huddled beside the dying woman. He was not an orphan; the young
street-wanderer had a father. Him, too, I saw; a rude, blear-eyed
drunkard, whose countenance it was fearful to look upon; for there might
be seen that the worst passions of our common nature had with him
obtained a perilous ascendency--a brute, whose intellect, perhaps never
bright, had become more brutal under the influence of the fire-spirit,
to which he bore conspicuous marks of being a groveling soul-and-body
slave. To me he appeared like the demon Ruin midst the wreck around. On
him, now that the wife could work no more, were they dependent. Need I
say that there were days when they scarce tasted food, when the young
wanderer had been unsuccessful in the streets? and when hungry, tired,
and dejected, he gave current to his grief, as when I found him in the
midst of his heart-breaking sorrow?

Yes, my first surmise was painfully correct. He had, indeed, commenced
life's warfare for himself; young as he was, it was his fate to battle
his way on the path of life, and not a soul to advise and guard him
against the demon Crime, whose favorite haunts are the footsteps of the
ignorant and needy.

Reader, how many of the victims of crime who fill our prisons, were
their histories known, would prove to have commenced life like this boy!
Not always, then, let us unpitying behold the criminal, who, in his
early manhood or the prime of life, is banished from his country, or
suffers the dread penalty of death, without reflecting how much those
who brought him into the world were concerned with so melancholy an
issue--without reflecting that, like the little fellow of whom these
pages tell, he may have had a father little better than the brute of the
field, and in his childish years have been turned out to get his
bread--a wanderer in the streets.




THE HOUSEHOLD OF SIR THO^S. MORE.


LIBELLUS A MARGARETA MORE, QUINDECIM ANNOS NATA, CHELSEIÆ INCEPTVS.

       *       *       *       *       *

  "Nulla dies sine linea."

       *       *       *       *       *

  CHELSEA, _June 18_.

On asking Mr. Gunnel to what use I s^d put this fayr _libellus_, he did
suggest my making it a kinde of family register, wherein to note y^e
more important of our domestick passages, whether of joy or griefe--my
father's journies and absences--the visits of learned men, theire
notable sayings, etc. "You are smart at the pen, Mistress Margaret," he
was pleased to say; "and I woulde humblie advise your journalling in y^e
same fearless manner in the which you framed that letter which soe well
pleased the Bishop of Exeter, that he sent you a Portugal piece. 'Twill
be well to write it in English, which 'tis expedient for you not
altogether to negleckt, even for the more honourable Latin."

Methinks I am close upon womanhood.... "Humblie advise," quotha! to me,
that hath so oft humblie sued for his pardon, and sometimes in vayn!

'Tis well to make trial of Gonellus his "humble" advice: albeit, our
daylie course is so methodicall, that 'twill afford scant subject for
y^e pen--_Vitam continet una dies._

       *       *       *       *       *

... As I traced y^e last word, methoughte I heard y^e well-known tones
of Erasmus his pleasant voyce; and, looking forthe of my lattice, did
indeede beholde the deare little man coming up from y^e river side with
my father, who, because of y^e heat, had given his cloak to a tall
stripling behind him to bear. I flew up stairs, to advertise mother, who
was half in and half out of her grogram gown, and who stayed me to clasp
her owches; so that, by y^e time I had followed her down stairs, we
founde 'em alreadie in y^e hall.

So soon as I had kissed their hands, and obtayned their blessings, the
tall lad stept forthe, and who s^d he but William Roper, returned from
my father's errand over-seas! He hath grown hugelie, and looks mannish;
but his manners are worsened insteade of bettered by forayn travell;
for, insteade of his old franknesse, he hung upon hand till father bade
him come forward; and then, as he went his rounds, kissing one after
another, stopt short when he came to me, twice made as though he would
have saluted me, and then held back, making me looke so stupid, that I
c^d have boxed his ears for his payns. 'Speciallie as father burst out
a-laughing, and cried, "The third time's lucky!"

After supper, we took deare Erasmus entirely over y^e house, in a kind
of family procession, e'en from the buttery and s

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